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Pharmaceutical Fraud - About Health | Blog

Pharmaceutical Fraud

You may find this uncomfortable to believe, but you will probably find it impossible to reject, such is the nature of an inconvenient truth. I was reading an article in the Guardian newspaper the other day and while I have written about pharmaceutical company fraud in the past, this is one of the better articles you can read in five minutes. It covers most of the bases; corrupt scientists, intimidation of researchers who don’t play ball, massive manipulation of data, and most commonly, simply burying studies that demonstrate their drugs are either unsafe or don’t work at all. What it doesn’t touch on are the attacks on the supplement industry or the bribing of elected officials and bureaucrats across the globe, but that’s another story.

Many of you know, perhaps deep down, some consciously, that you are not  being told the truth about the drugs prescribed by your doctor. We seem to have an in-built mechanism that, if we are faced with a decision that requires us to change, our brains start manufacturing reasons about why we shouldn’t change. It is a very comforting feeling knowing that when things go wrong with your health, you just go to your doctor, they give you a pill and everything will be fine. It’s the safety net that allows us to live unhealthy lifestyles; lack of exercise, smoking, obesity, excessive drinking, and when it all turns to custard, the doctor, specialist or surgeon will be there to sort it out.

Mentally, we have managed a neat trick; we have outsourced the consequences for our poor lifestyle choices. Eat, drink, be merry, Carpe Diem. Unfortunately, as my father found out, Doctor Emperor has no clothes. The human capacity to fool ourselves is an interesting phenomenon. I have often wondered why we believe the things that we do. Those of you who have read George Orwell’s book 1984 will be aware of the fictional concept of ‘double think’, the state of believing two contradictory facts simultaneously. We know that many drugs don’t work, certainly not as described to us. We know that they have dangerous, often deadly side effects, but we live our lives and make all decisions as though they do work and that they are safe. We are so indoctrinated to trust our doctors, ‘Doctors Orders’ ‘Doctor knows best’ I guess it is just too much for us, especially as we get older to think that this great safety net actually isn’t there. Like circus performers getting shot out of a cannon, it works every time, right up until the day that it doesn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, your GP actually cares, he/she prescribes drugs that are real, it’s just that no one mentions the elephant in the room. The drugs don’t work, and they are often extremely unsafe. How unsafe? In 2006, Dr Wallace Bain, a lawyer and  pharmacist, studied death rates from supplements and pharmaceutical drugs. In the last year our authorities kept records, which was (strangely) back in 1998, 1524 New Zealanders died from the side effects of drugs prescribed by doctors, around four times the road toll, and that death toll does not even count medical misadventure. Where are the TV campaigns warning us to be wary of prescriptions?

When Labour was in power, the health minister was trying flat-out to convince us all that supplements needed regulating. For the record, they are regulated, but Labour decided we needed 497 pages of new legislation, I counted; just shy of a whole ream. This was simply an attempt to kill our industry, the proverbial death by a thousand cuts. It was regulation so onerous that no one could really comply, especially our smaller businesses in New Zealand. Annette King, then the Minister of Health said (regarding supplements) ‘These things are killing people!’ Really? I thought, Dr Wallace Bain (acting Crown Coroner at the time) could find no instances of a New Zealander ever dying from using a supplement. Annette King said she had 3 examples … over 11 years (vs. 1524 from pharmaceutical drugs in just one year, 1998). Statistically, even if you believe Annette Kings 3 deaths, and when you consider that over half the country uses supplements (perhaps as high as 70% now) the industry is statistically safer than food. I thought at the time, how many pages of regulations does it require to keep those tobacco companies under control? Probably not that many. Tobacco kills one person every 2 hours in New Zealand yet cigarettes are sold in dairies outside schools; So, why the need for a full ream of papers worth of regulations for the supplements industry? Whenever our freedom to choose what’s right for us gets in the way of government agenda, it’s always the safety argument. Apparently you are not smart enough to make your own health choices and we need a government to ‘protect’ us by regulating certain things out of existence. It’s just that the only choice you will have left when us ‘wascally’ supplement companies are out of the way, are pharmaceutical drugs, just as nature intended. At About Health, we sell supplements that have as much research as possible; when people question this statement, think on this. Fish Oil has had around 18,000 studies since the 1980’s, Resveratrol around 4,000, including human research in a number of key areas and Vitamin D, 4,000 studies in the last year alone. Research into supplements is open, mostly independent and rarely carried out by the supplement industry. Most supplement research is conducted by universities and government research organisations around the world. There are agendas at play with this research, but the very availability of the data is the single reason people can make informed choices. Contrast this to what you will read in the link to the Guardian article below. If you have read this far, I sincerely hope you will take the time to read this article. I truly believe it will challenge your perception of drugs prescribed by your GP. Truth and irrefutable facts that strike at the very heart of medicine simply make their own argument. My only gripe (as the author is a GP) is that he is a bit soft on doctors who, apparently, ‘never knew anything was wrong’ I guess they are a bit like us; we have all been drinking the cool-ade. You should be aware that although the Guardian article is abbreviated and only a couple of drugs are listed, many authors have written on the subject. The issues he highlights are the rule of drug company research, not the exception. For decades, this is how we have been systematically deceived by drug companies across every major category of drugs. Should you go to your doctor? There are many things you GP can do for you, and you should go there when sick, it’s mainly when they try to get you on drugs for the rest of your life that many of these issues appear, like cholesterol lowering drugs or antidepressants. Short-term drugs can be beneficial, such as antibiotics, for instance. Modern medicine has many advances, and many to come. I write this just as the Nobel Prize for medicine has gone to two scientists who have figured out how to make stem cells from normal adult cells. Remember the hoo haa about using embryonic stem cells? This ethical issue could soon be consigned to the past, and we can get onto some amazing things, like mending severed spinal cords. My purpose has never been to attack doctors, just to get you to ask more questions about safety and efficacy of drugs, and not to be so trusting. Remember, neither you nor your GP, in many cases actually know which drugs really work, and what the real side effects are, because these crooks in drug companies aren’t telling. GP’s are very busy, but they need to take more responsibility in finding out the truth about the drugs they prescribe. It is encouraging to note that some actually do. And by the way, the first drug he talks about, reboxetine is prescribed in New Zealand. I checked the government safety sheet ‘for all us consumers that need protection’, and could find no mention of the fact that a meta-analysis of the evidence suggested that it didn’t work at all. Some drugs are important, some can be dangerous to stop suddenly, and you should raise any concerns with your doctor before stopping or changing prescription medicine. Here is the link; http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/sep/21/drugs-industry-scandal-ben-goldacre Daniel King MSc (hons)