The First Amendment Gone Wild: Big Pharma’s ‘Right’ to Find Out What Doctors Are Prescribing

[babylonsister]

The First Amendment Gone Wild: Big Pharma’s ‘Right’ to Find Out What Doctors Are Prescribing
by Robert Weissman


The founders of the United States took the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the concepts of free speech and freedom of conscience very seriously.

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech,” said Benjamin Franklin.

“Information is the currency of democracy,” intoned Thomas Jefferson — one of countless Jefferson odes to the central importance of ideas and free transmission of information in fostering a working democracy.

But could they possibly have imagined the twisted purposes to which the First Amendment is put today?

Two crucial developments in U.S. constitutional jurisprudence — the grant of Bill of Rights protections to corporations, and the extension of First Amendment protections to commercial speech — have enabled corporations to invoke the First Amendment to defend their right to hawk goods, so long as they are legal, by almost any means short of outright lying or clear deception.

Now corporations are suggesting the First Amendment should effectively immunize them from government-imposed rules related to the simple commercial exchange of information.

This new expansion of the First Amendment to block broad public regulatory powers emerges from efforts in New England to control one of the most insidious pharmaceutical marketing practices.


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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/11/6311/

[benld74]

1. How can the effin lawyers working for them sleep at night?

[NashVegas]

2. Human Beings Are Natural Resources

To be exploited in the brave new world.

[KT2000]

3. It's the doctors!

At some point in time, doctors are going to have to get off it and lay down the law. Why are they seeing drug reps 5 times a day? Because there is something in it for them.
They have a lot more power than they are using to stop these practices and it is time they do.

Doctor offices have no problem turning away the uninsured or making patients wait for hours but they always welcome the drug reps.
They should stop these practices and deny the reps access. If the purpose is to learn about new drugs, then have a monthly info meeting for all doctors in a city or county.

[babylonsister]

4. Good point; if docs made a stink, maybe people would listen. nt

[RC]

5. Take away a cooperation's person-hood and we would not be subject to

bullshit. (That's English, BTY, not French)

[babylonsister]

6. .

[Triana]

7. More of the type of shit JRE would like to put a stop to..

...pharmaceutical and insurance companies interfering in the doctor-patient relationship - and thus interfering with our treatment, health, and in many cases, our very survival and quality of life.

[alittlelark]

8. Corporations should have NO 1st ammendment rights

I mean...WTF?

It's crazy that an inherently sociopathic entity should be deemed a 'person'.:mad: :mad: :puke:

[Laelth]

9. Corporations do not have Constitutional rights.

Only people have rights under the 1st Amendment. A corporation is not a person, and it has no 1st Amendment rights. Or, so I would argue.

The lawyers just argue what they're paid to argue. It's the Judges you have to worry about. If we get too many corporate judges in the wrong places, we end up with an oligarchy (if we're not there already).

It's so strange that intelligent people, even Judges, forget what corporations are. Corporations are legal fictions created by the state for the purpose of serving the common good of the state. As a creation of the state, the state ought to be able to regulate them at will and restrict them or abolish them if they no longer serve the public interest. Corporations certainly, as agents of the state, ought not to have rights granted to people. Those rights are in place to protect the people from the state--not to protect the state (corporations) from itself (the government).

-Laelth

[Catherine Vincent]

10. K&R!