Saturday, October 28, 2006

Big Pharma Tries to Buy Elections

Big Pharma had already poured 8 million into vote buying, and the month of October hadn’t even started.  At stake is the Bush-granted gravy train called Medicare, bilking older Americans by not permitting the government to negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma - one major item in a long list of Big Pharma thefts from American workers and retirees.

The biggest recipient is Pennsylvania Republican Rick Santorum, taking in almost $500,000 of Big Pharma-tainted money.  His opponent, state treasurer Bob Casey Jr., regularly attacks the Medicare program as “a giveaway to Big Pharma.”

Next in line at the Big Pharma printing press is Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), receiving $300,000.  Is it any wonder Hatch is selling out the supplement industry with Big Pharma- sponsored Adverse Event Legislation intended to destroy the supplement industry.

Americans should realize that they are paying inflated drug prices, allowing Big Pharma to buy votes that perpetuates the thievery.  A stench smelt round the world.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Prozac Causes Aggression in Youth

One more study confirms what drug companies have known and hidden for years, that the class of antidepressants known as SSRIs can have severe adverse effects in the developing nervous system.  When will the FDA stop the poisonous experiment on our children?  Answer: When they no longer accept funding from drug companies and when drug companies can no longer lobby Congress.  Since such changes are nowhere in sight, I suggest that parents ban all use of psychotropic medication in their children.  There are only a very small percentage of children with serious problems that may benefit from the use of these drugs, and even those children need very close monitoring due to the high risk of adverse side effects.  Brain meds are not candy; wake up parents.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Drug Wholesalers Scam American Workers

It is difficult for the American working class to realize the multiple different ways that Big Pharma and related businesses are stealing the profits of American labor and placing it in their pockets.  In the Wild West at least you could tell when a bank robbery was taking place.  Numbed and befuddled consumers pay for the billions of dollars in drug ads they watch on nightly news, lavish perks for doctors, “free” samples of drugs, outlandish mark-up on drug production costs, and massive lobbying on Capital Hill.  My advice, make all of these activities illegal and stop the great bank robbery of the twenty-first century.

An excellent expose article by Barbara Martinez, published in the Wall Street Journal on October 6, 2006, explains another angle on the bank robbery.  Large drug wholesalers like Wallgreens and San Francisco-based McKessan Corporation have been in cahoots with a price-fixing scandal orchestrated by a division of Hearst Corporation called First DataBank.  First DataBank publishes wholesale price lists for drugs.  In 2002 they began raising prices for no reason, enabling the middle-man organizations and large pharmacy groups to reap an estimated 7 billion heist from American workers and taxpayers.  Needless to say, small family pharmacies were run out of business and saw none of these profits.  Instead, profits in the large scam artist associations doubled and tripled.