The 6 Top Thugs of the Medical World

[ProfessionalLeftist]

Fraud. Kickbacks. Price-setting, bribery and illegal sales activities, including a felony count of assisting the Arab League in acquiring documents on Israeli business activities. Add in all the doctored and back-dated documents, federal and civil lawsuits, and billions of dollars in government sanctions, fines, and penalties – not to mention the deaths – and you'd think it was the script for a thriller global action movie.
But no, it's just Big Pharma at its deceitful best, dancing all the way to the bank while continuing to defraud the world of billions of dollars, and endangering the lives of regular people like you and me.

When I set out to investigate some of the criminal activities that the 12 largest pharmaceutical companies had been convicted of lately, I had a general idea of the hornet's nest I would be stepping into.

But the amount of gross misconduct, fraud and deceit I found was so insidious, so massive, and so overwhelming that I decided to narrow my original 12 picks down to just five for the purposes of this article.

Because of the uniqueness of one particular company's offense – a felony guilty plea to conspiring with the Arab League – I added a sixth.

'Get Out of Jail Free'

I'm sure that each and every one of the drug companies who have had to pay fines for their criminal activities would argue that they've hardly been given a "get out of jail free" pass. But when you look at what they took, compared to what they've had to pay back, I think you'll agree their punishment amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist.

The six companies I'm highlighting, in descending order of their annual revenues, are:

Johnson & Johnson
Pfizer
Roche
GlaxoSmithKline
Novartis
Baxter International

MORE...

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/11/18/drug-companies-are-ranked-in-the-top-100-corporate-criminals-of-the-1990s.aspx

[burrowowl]

1. K&R

[Bonhomme Richard]

2. I was wondering the other day. Have any of these companies actually cured anything?

I constantly see more medication for this or that but I can't remember if any have cured anything. Every so often you hear on the news about a breakthrough that could lead to cures. They always seem to be some independent research group with a real potential 10 years or so away. This has gone on for decades and still no results. You don't even hear about that group again because they are so obscure or tied to University funds.
Maybe I'm just way too cynical but I can't help but think that there isn't any money to be made curing anything so somehow these research groups fade away or are shut down by big pharma so that all we get are medications to help with symptoms...never getting rid of the disease.
The diseases in the past that were actually "cured" were done a very long time ago typically by independent researchers.
Am I wrong? Has any major ailment been eradicated in the last 50 years?

[sendero]

3. Big pharma..

... is not in the business of curing anything. They are in the business of getting you hooked on a monthly prescription for something that may or may not alleviate your symptoms.

They no longer do any meaningful research on antibiotics, for example, because you only need them now and then. How can they make money on that?

Any minute now some ahole will come on here talking about "medical science". That "science" consists of studies paid for by big pharma themselves, the results interpreted by big pharma themselves and then folks are surprised when more dangerous "pharmaceuticals" that KILL PEOPLE have been pulled off the market in the last 10 years or so than in the entire previous history.

In America, anywhere there is big money there is big corruption. Pharmaceuticals are not one bit different. And yes, this is enabled by our lovely government that lets white collar criminals off with 5% of the punishment you or I would receive for a crime of similar gravity. And this is Republicans AND Democrats.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

4. +1

IMO, big pharma is a racket. Every freaking 5 minutes one of their ads run on TV - all day long 24 x 7. They don't "need" to charge as much as they do for Rx and the money does not go to research. I suspect most of it goes to advertising.

I'm not basing this on any studies, stats, etc. but you can see what they're doing all around you every day. I don't know of one thing they've cured? Not even their own greed.

[Mosaic]

6. Big pharma

Seems to be playing a sick subliminal degrading of our culture and nation. Ads announce their drugs may cause suicide, death, and all sorts of horrible things. Repeated over and over, it's like they want a sick nation. This is beyond greed, it is simply evil. I won't even mention the disgusting 4 hour erection ads. WTF happened to the US? I want respect, if you just sit there and take it do you think you are just a nice capitalist/patriot, wrong, you are an idiot.

[Snake Alchemist]

8. Name some of the cures of the past. nt

[Bonhomme Richard]

9. Actually I think you are right. I can't find any cures but what you .....

do come up with are vaccines that prevented the disease, Polio for example.

[Snake Alchemist]

10. And they're still coming out with vaccines.

I know that statins and anti-malarials have greatlyh extended my life, but unfortunately they are not a cure.

I would say the greatest chance to cure diseases come from gene therapy, but that brings up a whole other host of issues.

[Bonhomme Richard]

11. I just read an article about 12 diseases that could be eliminated if...

everyone had access to the vaccines available. Interesting but, then again, it all comes down to money.

[Snake Alchemist]

12. Money, resources, access. All factors. nt

[annabanana]

5. .coming soon:

The scourge of elbow odor....

[Bonhomme Richard]

7. My Doctor ( my bands keyboardist) suggested I take Claritan to

see if it helped with a cough I have. I was going to go to Rite Aid but decided to go to Walmart and check out the Claritan against the Equate generic version. They had the Claritan on sale for around $10 for 10 pills. I looked at the Equate version and it was like $10 for 60 pills. Turns out the Claritan was $95/100 count and the Equate was $13/100 count. That difference is insane and I guess it gives a pretty good idea the cost that marketing add to a product not to mention their incessant greed.

[musette_sf]

18. If you are referring to the product with decongestant

that must be obtained at the pharmacy counter, I had for years used the store's generic version instead of the name brand.

Until I started noticing that the generic brand was no longer as effective as the name brand.

Generics are NOT 100% equivalent and identical to the name brand. Generics are permitted by law to have less of the active ingredients of the name brand, within a certain percentage. Generics also have different components such as binders and excipients, that can cause the generic to be metabolized differently than the name brand. Obviously it is cheaper for the generics manufacturer to use exactly the amount of active ingredients specified by law, than to manufacture the generic to be functionally equivalent in strength and dosage to the name brand. And if there are binders and excipients that are cheaper than those used by the name brand, those will be used in the generic, too.

I've been ponying up for the name brand products since then. Wish it weren't so, but it is.

[Bonhomme Richard]

19. Actuive ingrediants were identical.....

The only difference was the starch used. It seems to work anyway.

[Archae]

13. Find a better source.

Mercola is a loon.

http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2011/12/273-joseph-joe-mercola.html

[ProfessionalLeftist]

14. Regardless Mercola

big pharma is greedy and evil.

[Archae]

15. ALL of them?

By the same "logic," ALL democrats are like Randall Terry.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

17. Most of them.

So you want something to criticize. You don't like the source I cited. If it hadn't been that, it would have been something else. You just wanna ARGUE. Very interestink.

OK. Since this is your little game, why don't YOU give us a list of all the big pharma corporations. Break them down by 'good' ones and 'bad' ones and by degrees ie: how good and how bad on a scale of say, 1 - 10 (10 being the worst). Oh and list the reasons why they're good or bad or in-between.

Hmm? Go ahead. We're waiting. Instead of demanding that from me, how about creating it yourself. Your perfect big pharma post! Show us what that looks like.

Meanwhile, I have to help my Mom pay for a $327 dollar Rx she can't afford on a fixed income because that's what one of the wonderful big pharma pigs charge so they can shove their advertising in our faces 24 x 7.

Jeeze.

[raouldukelives]

16. Great stocks to own though.

A solid backbone for any well funded 401k. Probably great to work for too. Helping to create that much human suffering must pay well.