pharmaceutical companies

[loveweed]

Hi all,

It’s been quite awhile since I have been here on the nexus and I must say im glad to be back. I find this place to be full of interesting people with inquisitive minds, discussing all kinds of topics that I find myself thinking about regularly.

I would like to get some opinions on something that has been on my mind lately regarding pharmaceutical companies.

So my question is…… do you believe that the side effects of taking some medications are intentional, designed to keep people sick and dependent on there medicines or do you believe any side effects are just a by product that cant be helped and these companies really are doing all they can to make people better while still making a profit?

I find that the more I think about this the more confused I become.

Is there really a bunch of evil scientists in their lab working on ways to keep you sick?

If so where do the companies find these people?

Do they place a job advertisement in the paper asking for all evil minded people with a background in pharmaceuticals and a desire to harm there fellow man to apply?

Would highly educated people really want to make others suffer or would a highly educated person want to use the knowledge to help others. I like to think that anyone who is smart enough to be in these positions would want to help their fellow human.

But….. I realise there are very intelligent people who will do these jobs. Weapons companies are a fine example of this. People who design bullets or bombs really have no excuse and would have to know that their knowledge is going to be used to harm other people, yet this is what they choose to do.

Anyway, enough said, I would love to hear what others think about this.

Cheers..

 

[Jungleheart]

I wouldn't go confusing ignorance with malicious intent.

 

[Rivea]

My suspicions are not so much with the biochemists who research for these corporations, but I am highly skeptical of the intentions of the senior management. They are out to make a buck for themselves first, then shareholders. The best way to make money is to make a drug that is taken each day by a large segment of the population.

Take cholesterol drugs for example. $3 per pill taken every day for life in their treatment (business) model which treat only the symptom of high cholesterol. These drugs do not actually treat the cause which is inflamation of the vascular inner surface, the endothelium. The side effects include raised liver enzymes, mind fog, muscle deterioration, hormone imbalance, cramps, and more fun stuff. The disclaimer label for these product used to state on many of these products that they have not been proven to reduce the incidence of heart attacks. Check it out for yourself... come to your own conclusions. These guys in my opinion have made many useful drugs for solving acute illness, but there is little if any benevolence among their management.

 

[proto-pax]

As someone who is friends with a lot of students in these fields, I have to agree with Rivea. Most of these guys just want to make an honest living and don't really think outside the box.

 

[loveweed]

So do you think the senior management of these corporations might leave something in some medications, say something that causes cramps just to be able to
sell another type of medication that will reduce cramping that is a result of taking the first medication?

 

[corpus callosum]

I think the management of drug companies are motivated by delivering a dividend to the share-holders and this impacts on the chemistry bods who construct the compounds.The scientists who are just employees are usually motivated by their academic interest and a degree of philanthropy but their scope for investigation is restricted by those higher up.

Rivea mentions cholesterol meds and these (statins) are pretty interesting.When it comes to the level of cholesterol in the blood this is not the sole issue of importance; the serum cholesterol has to be weighed up against the amount of HDL cholesterol you have as HDL is 'good' and protective, so the ratio of cholesterol:HDL is important.You also need to consider whether you are talking about primary prevention (ie using statins in someone whose not had a stroke/heart attack) or as secondary prevention (ie. in someone who has had a stroke/MI).Statins are of benefit in those who have had a stroke/heart vattack but the NNT (number needed to treat) is pretty crap ie you have to treat a load of people to prevent just one further episode.

Current thinking on primary prevention presently states that statins do have a stabilising effect on the inflamed vascular endothelium ('plaques') irrespective of what effect the statin has on the actual cholesterol level, ie take the statin and dont bother checking the cholesterol level as its not really being used to just drop the number.The evidence that statins do stabilise plaques is pretty good but still sounds a bit dodgy to me.For example, how do you know you have severe bad plaques if youve never had a stroke/MI or even angina?


As always,I reckon the guidelines will change at some point in the future.And yes, statins can be pretty user-unfriendly.Ive come across a number of people whose sleep is fucked as a result with insomnia and nightmares.

 

[Autodidactic]

I don't know, though I know there is more money in a treatment for things then there is for a cure for things. A cure for anything is bad news for their revenue streams, and sadly, legally they are in business for their shareholders, rather then their patients.

 

[Bill Cipher]

What you're suggesting probably isn't all that remote a possibility. It's not so different, for example, than the R&D team at RJ Reynolds engineering more powerfully addictive additives, in an effort to keep smokers smoking. Then there are the frequent recalls when medications are revealed to have caused serious (and even deadly) health concerns; i.e. vioxx, celebrex, avandia, meridia, phen phen (to name just a few) - and in several of these cases, leaked internal memoranda have proven manufacturers' prior awareness before their drugs ever hit the market. This doesn't mean that Merck & Co. set out to give people heart attacks, but it does mean they aggressively marketed a product (in vioxx) that they knew with certainty would do exactly that.

The bottom line is the bottom line for the pharmaceutical industry. They are in business to maximize shareholder profits by any and all means necessary. If they are able to engineer medications that will then necessitate secondary medications to treat ailments caused by the first, I think it's reasonable to expect that this is something they're going to pursue. Who's going to stop them, after all? Certainly not the FDA.

Just this morning, GlaxoSmithKline was fined $750MM for selling adulterated and improperly made drugs. Every once in awhile, one of these fucker corporations are called to answer for some enormous transgression. But the problem is endemic to the industry as a whole, and it ain't going to go away.

 

[Jungleheart]

What bothers me most is the money doctors get paid for promoting these drugs; hundreds of thousands of dollars per year extra salary. For that one vaccine for HPV Virus, Gardasil, the company used the same marketing company as the tobacco industry. I saw an article recently that these companies are hiring ex-cheerleaders as their salespeople.

But I find it hard to blame the company when people want quick fixes for their symptoms, without doing the dirty work of addressing the real problem. They want to take a pill for heart burn or diabetes, instead of addressing diet and exercise. Who is really to blame? It all comes back to the fact that the individual is responsible for his or her own life. The pharmaceutical companies meet the needs of lazy consumers, aren't they just giving people what they want? The tobacco companies are terrible, evil, and malicious? Couldn't people just quit?

I'm not saying that the status quo is fine and dandy, I would never work for the pharmaceutical industry, even though they pay well and I have the opportunity to, just referring back to the notion that we have to pull our own weight to get anywhere.

 

[Rivea]

Ethics seems to be a quality that has been greatly attenuated over the last few decades in my opinion especially in this area.

I still have a difficult time with the fact that prescription medications for just about any malady that you can think of are advertised on TV. Prohibiting those commercials here in the USA would better serve the public... They previously were not on television before about the mid to late 1990's from what I remember.

 

[Jungleheart]

Ethics seems to be a quality that has been greatly attenuated over the last few decades in my opinion especially in this area.

I still have a difficult time with the fact that prescription medications for just about any malady that you can think of is advertised on TV. Prohibiting those commercials here in the USA would better serve the public... They previously were not on television before about the mid to late 1990's from what I remember.

This is kind of off topic, but I hope these things come full circle, and that companies figure out how to temper profit with morality. This may be unpopular, but I don't think big business is all bad. These effects are the very painful "growing pains" while we figure out the kinks of the system. This is my hope for humanity, at least.

 

[loveweed]

I guess some paranoia might stem from the fact that tobacco is allowed to be sold so long as it has a warning on the
packet and not sold to people under 18.
to me that is very scary that this is just the way it is.

If I was to sell a product, say a soft drink that was addictive and toxic, leading to chronic health problems and eventual death but with a
warning label on the can stating the dangers of using it, im sure I would be strung up and quartered but it seems that its ok for giant
tobacco companies to do this. I worry’s me that they might be the bench mark for selling products that may harm you.

On the other hand, i understand the human body is incredibly complex and medications will cause different side effects on different individuals,
so it must be very hard to find the magic pill that works exactly the same for everyone without any side effects.

THis leads me to think that the evil corporations probably aren’t tyring to poison us but they are most
defiantly pushing the boundaries and some of them are completely disregarding these boundaries in order to make a buck.

I think Uncle Knucles is onto something,if its true that R J Reynolds really are making more addictive stuff to put in tobacco
who is going to stop them??? the smokers? probably not, the government, probably not, they would have banned smoking years ago if they were concerned,
all the non smokers, they will say just quit smoking, it cant be that hard.

I posted this topic after watching some stuff on the net about vaccinations and population control and wondered what others thought. Tanks for the replies :d
Personally i want to see the best in the system we live in and not feel completely paranoid, Junglehart, growing pains is a great way to view this.

Ultimately I think the best way to avoid the pharmaceutical companies is to stay healthy!

 

[kyrolima]

It is simple:
You need to create a new substance in order to have a patent on it.
This is why the effort is that great!
What these modern scientists (and i bet, that there are a lot of honorable and genius man)
DON'T get is, that nature has already everything available to provide health, energy and happiness.

We just have to grasp it.

Profit oriented meds are there, because people lack knowledge.