Big pharma against people- new drugs and treatments

[Otter]

I thought I would start a thread to discuss the battle being fought every day by big pharma to maximize their profits with NEW DRUGS AND TREATMENTS. What often stands in the way of them is "old drugs and treatments". Drugs like baclofen which are now generic, made and sold cheaply around the world are saving people's lives while the real money, many billions of dollars a year from the US government alone, are funneled into "NEW DRUGS AND TREATMENTS". It doesn't pay to hear about some old cheap drug being "repurposed" to a new use, let alone an on-line community where this drug has spontaneously caught the interest of thousands of people because it actually works. This leaves the researchers scratching their heads standing in the dust as the old drug takes off.



I posted this on the other thread but I will post it again here:



Patents Against People: How Drug Companies Price Patients out of Survival | Dissent Magazine



As the spirit moves me, I will try to post all the dirt out there being generated by these monstrous hipocrites who say they are developing NEW DRUGS AND TREATMENTS which are going to cure us all, when, in fact, most of this research, pretty much 100% of it in addiction, comes to nothing. It does, however, pay big bucks to the researchers who queue up for the money from the US budget for research into medical issues, and for money from big pharma, big universities, charities, all of whom are fed the line that we must keep looking for "NEW DRUGS AND TREATMENTS", even when an old drug has been found which by the purest of luck has an overlooked quality of suppressing addictive craving.



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[Otter]

Here we have a paper on "direct advertising" by pharma which the paper says is misleading. The article ends with a comment about how pharma is making drugs which actually don't produce any benefit:

"So, how to increase pharma companies competitiveness? By making medicines which offer real therapeutic
advantage as defined in the ISDB Declaration on therapeutic advance (5).

In contrast to pseudo-innovations such products do not need big marketing efforts. "

http://www.isdbweb.org/documents/uploads/vecchi/press_release/patient%20english.pdf

[Otter]

From the above paper:

"The International Society of Drug Bulletins (ISDB) warns that industry is not a source of reliable and
trustworthy information and that it is a mistake to confuse advertising with information. In the contrary
there is a need to limit industry influence on patients and prescribers alike. What is needed is to improve
drug use with reliable, independent and comparative information so that patients and the public can make
informed choices"

[Otter]

What is happening in places where these NEW DRUGS AND TREATMENTS are being promoted is that the public is suffering:

"USA and New Zealand. In both countries it has been shown that DTCA (direct to customer advertising) has detrimental effects on health. Pharmaceutical companies messages are focused on relatively few top sellers, exaggerating effects and concealing risks, confusing patients and putting pressure on doctors to prescribe drugs they would not use otherwise.

Be wary of anyone pushing NEW DRUGS AND TREATMENTS. They are a known risk to public health.

[Otter]

Everyone should read what Ameisen says about the researchers who simply ignored him. One said that they had too much on their plates to even think about doing anything with baclofen. They all had grants to research into other medicines so how could they possibly take time out and look at an out of patent generic.

[kuya]

The pharmaceutical companies are a business bound by company law to deliver the highest profits to their shareholders or be found criminally negligent.

How anyone can remain shocked that they behave in the way they do in the light of this knowledge beggars belief.

They do not give a flying fuck about ANYONE'S health. Never did. Never will.

Your doctor may have entered medical school to help people but is just as vulnerable to advertising and bribery as anyone else. My doctor took statins for his 'high' cholesterol and had emergency open heart surgery last year as his reward....he, too, believed the BS from big pharma.

Caveat emptor folks, caveat emptor.

[Baclofenman]

How anyone can remain shocked that they behave in the way they do in the light of this knowledge beggars belief.

They do not give a flying fuck about ANYONE'S health. Never did. Never will.

Certainly in the UK (following the US lead) the health secretary Jeremy Hunt (sic) has called for a "Sunshine" Rule to be implemented and I believe will come into force in 2016 relating to transactions in 2015

However having briefly read through some of it, which was pretty much "the same old" phrases like for "services such as" and "to report payments or transfers of value" kept cropping up, which did not fill me with a lot of confidence - If I feel more motivated later I might try and get into the nitty gritty but I expect there is none, perhaps someone with time on their hands can clarify this?

For years HCP have been getting "sweetners" - I must look next time I see my GP as to who supplies her Pens, notebook, calander etc -

Regards


Bacman

[Otter]

I realized a few years ago that this is too difficult a problem to be resolved within the medical/pharma community. That is too big an industry.

The shame of it is that baclofen does work and it is a very easy to use, cheap public health option for alcoholism and other addictions. There is a huge dead weight of public opinion, medical attitude, laziness and dogma surrounding the whole addiction and alcoholism field.

I've spent a lot of time over the past year looking at the research and studies in this field and it was only last December that it hit me like a bolt out of the blue what the issue was. I had been writing my paper and just about finished it and then realized I had to re-write it.

The problem is a legal one and also a methodological one. It turns out, that if you conduct the most intensive investigation into the links that people throw around about alcohol and all sorts of problems supposedly emanating from alcohol abuse, there is simply no scientific basis for any of it. None. I was shocked, truly.

So, I decided to not waste too much time arguing with people here and elsewhere about the efficacy of baclofen or the other issues which come up here.

I sent my paper off to Paris and its conclusions were presented at a conference last week. I am now waiting for the publishable version of the second edition of the paper before going public, which I hope will be in a couple of weeks time.

For me, this is like the issues Ralph Nader raised. This is about a "recall" on the whole treatment of addiction as "not fit for purpose" and that is a legal issue. We can argue all want, post all we want, steer people to doctors, etc. It might slowly make some difference, but the real money is in refining a marketable baclofenic product to the public, which Reckitts are doing, and in illustrating the legal and ethical consequences of "failing" and "refusing" as professionals, doctors and lawyers, to treat people properly, whether in medical or legal practices. I can't make any difference by coming here. It does nothing for anyone and we can see that it is so easy for some drug company, rehab chain or research "foundation" to shut down a forum which could launch a movement throughout the English speaking world to get baclofen accepted as "the" treatment for alcoholism AND other addictions. This is huge and one small minded little man with a big mouth, no morals and no brain can mess the whole thing up. Which is why this forum, all forums, are not great for social/medical treatment activism...certainly if they are just a sub-forum on a commercial site aimed at health food options such as L-glutamine.

[Otter]

Bac,

I have done something like this before which went global. I made nothing out of it but it was personal and the result is something which everyone on the planet knows about. I'll explain later.

Cheers

Otter "Ivan" Illich

[kuya]

I realized a few years ago that this is too difficult a problem to be resolved within the medical/pharma community. That is too big an industry.





I sent my paper off to Paris and its conclusions were presented at a conference last week.



Which is why this forum, all forums, are not great for social/medical treatment activism...certainly if they are just a sub-forum on a commercial site aimed at health food options such as L-glutamine.

Bac,



I have done something like this before which went global. I made nothing out of it but it was personal and the result is something which everyone on the planet knows about. I'll explain later.



Cheers



Otter "Ivan" Illich

Firstly congratulations on having a presentation at conference.



Yes, you are right, this and fora in general are NOT for activism, they are for support and community.



I understand your frustration, but it has always been the case that it takes either big money or intense dedication and time to make social changes.



I know, and have been there, it was exhausting!



Good luck and remember to pace yourself, and to not take it all TOO seriously.



Yes, people die uneccessarily of alcohol related diseases, but we all die eventually.



Remember to also laugh along the way.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

How anyone can remain shocked that they behave in the way they do in the light of this knowledge beggars belief.

...

Caveat emptor folks, caveat emptor.

Agreed.

I'll take exception with three things, though. One is that the individual researchers and physicians who are doing the work are not in themselves corrupt or bad people. They are looking for solutions. They can only get paid to do what people will pay them to do.

The second is that the system is set up to allow this corruption. I don't blame the people who run the pharma companies. (Though their salaries are UNBELIEVABLE.) I blame the shareholders who demand profit year after year, regardless of the health and well being of the population. And our politicians. Which goes without saying.

Finally, the doctors can only know what they are taught. It's not their fault, either. I went to nursing school. You would not believe the bull shit we learned in my psychiatry class. And for those of you who have never been in a psychiatry ward, let me tell you, it's as bad as you think. A revolving door of really, really sick people with no support, no money, no options, who can't stay on their meds because of the system. The only places for the generic alcoholic/addict are treatment centers and those cost tens of thousands of dollars.

In my not so humble opinion, if there is ANYTHING or ANYONE to blame specifically for the abysmal "treatment" of this disease, it's the individual directors, doctors and therapists who run these treatment centers. THEY are the ones who should be reading the research, going to conferences, learning from other doctors, and they still maintain that religious-based, spiritual-awakening, 12-step groups are an adequate first-line-treatment for this disease. DESPITE the evidence. grrrrrrr.

And perhaps, rather than caveat emptor, I would encourage people to educate themselves and become their own advocate. Or find one.

Congrats, again, Otter, and keep it coming.

[Otter]

Thanks, Ne.



Ameisen gives a good description of what is going in with alcoholism/drugs research in his book. You can't "blame" people, it's true, for looking for answers, particularly if it is their job.



The more I think about it, though, after frying my brain researching it, is that this "discovery" or development of baclofen treatment is very, very significant and sheds a lot of light on other research and where it has hitherto gone wrong in alcoholism.