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This isn't directly pertinent to OLA, but another example of corporate greed screwing us over.
I have gout, an arthritic condition. The two medicines for this are Indocin and Colchicine. Colchicine has some nasty side effects, but works, and it used to be really cheap, at 10 cents per pill. It's been used as a treatment for some 3500 years (i.e. before Jesus or the Buddha walked the earth). Indocin is rougher on the kidneys, so colchicine is better in that way.
In 2009, to get this pre-FDA drug clinically tested, the FDA gave URL Pharma an exclusive right to sell the drug. They raised the price to $5 per pill, and then sued to prevent other drug companies from selling colchicine.
This is a rip off against patients and insurance companies. The FDA should just do its own trials, and keep the price down to 10 cents - or if necessary to fund the trials from pill sales, put a surcharge on the pills.
I've taken five pills so far. In the old days, this would have cost 50 cents. Today, it's $25. Thankfully, I have insurance - but I actually feel sympathy for the insurance company on this one! More rage at the link:
http://www.arthritistoday.org/news/colchicine-gout-drug-discontinued086.php
Occupy the FDA
Submitted by wesower on
It's not only Wall Street that is corrupt.
The FDA is basically "OWNED" by Big Pharma - There have been treatments that successfully cure cancer and the FDA along with Big Pharma have tried to imprison one doctor so that they could steal his treatment (after first saying it didn't work).
watch http://www.burzynskimovie.com/
also sign the petition at White House Website - http://wh.gov/48x This non toxic cancer treatment has been delayed by FDA since 1995 while deadly chemo treatments are approved for big pharma in 6 months. Dr. Burzinsky's treatment has a 27%-50% cure rate for cancers that were supposedly "not curable"
Drug companies are the reason why Health Care is unaffordable and they are making record profits off of Americans - Fight Back for Goodness Sake, Put them in jail for this criminal activity.
http://wesower.org
Oh yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaah big pharma is a good issue
Submitted by Fex on
I have not had enough caffeine today to properly make an argument about big pharma. There's just too much that is wrong with pharma in this country.
But to ad a lil' something, here's an article that points out in the last 3 years there have been more deaths from prescription medication overdose than from both cocaine and heroin overdoses combined. If that makes you depressed, no worries, there's a pill for that.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-drugs-epidemic-20110918,0,551769...
Short sum up of my thoughts regarding big pharma with absolutely no evidence given (I need that coffee in order for me to pull up references for all of ye), so yeah for now treat this as opinion until there's evidence to back it up (I do encourage people to do their own research too).
- Big pharma and the FDA have a similar relationship that the 1% and our government does. That is, big pharma pays off the FDA and has people who worked in the FDA with legislative influence who are now part of big pharma, and vice versa there are people in the FDA who were once working in big pharma.
- When the FDA asks a pharma company to get their drugs tested and assed by a 3rd party company, often said third party company is in the pocket of the pharma company, so testing is biased- this is how many drugs from companies get approved. Big business does the same thing with colatteral for loans (they have a third party company that is in their pocket or otherwise friendly to their interests to assess their colatteral in order for them to price it as worth more than it actually is).
- Big pharma experts and advertisements are considered "trusted" by many Americans. The same that media/news and products from Big Business are trusted.
- Big pharma will give discounts and/or bonus to doctors based on the amount of prescriptions the doctors give. This encourages doctors to make money by writing prescriptions, which in turn increases profits for pharma companies when a patient goes to buy their prescription. What is truly despicable is this practice means many doctors (not all) will prescribe drugs to patients who do not need the drugs and even worse may be harmful to their patients. Prescription drugs have become the top cause for drug induced death in the USA.
- Big pharma fights like hell to protect their patents, and win rediculous court cases with their sueing (a lot like Monsanto does in agriculture), all to supress competition and to prevent possible cures (there's not much money in a actual cure). As their patents run out, big pharma companies are coming out with new patented drugs that are simply combinations of previous drugs (and combinations of their patents, not sure if this successfully renews the patent in a round-about-way and thus disallowing competition or not)- these drugs cost even more and are less safe for use.
- Which, in conclusion, big pharma is a part of dangerous and harmful corruption that obtains much of it's power through being able to control legislature and definitely should be discussed by Occupy especially regarding possible demands. Getting money out of politics in theory would alleviate the whole problem, since pharma IS big business interfering with politics, however we do not elect the FDA, so perhaps we should figure out a demand or demands to prohibit business corruption tactics in all branches of government.
"Word following word- I wrought words. Deed following deed, I wrought deeds." - The Havamal
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