Bet if you check, the Fortune magazine article had Big Pharma’s fingerprints on it. They will go to any length to protect their big bucks…including carnage! –From Don L in Florida
The tolerance of Big Pharma for “carnage,” as dramatically but aptly put by our reader, has been demonstrated repeatedly. Examples include Baycol, Vioxx, Tylenol, and other prescription and OTC products.
As a big business, Big Pharma achieves quite the precarious balancing act. They turn huge profits on patented drugs, while maintaining profitable generic and OTC sales. And what a balancing act it is…considering the huge profits they need to achieve for new drugs under government patent protection and the quasi-monopolistic and insanely expensive FDA “approval” process. Thus, the outsize prices they demand on their patented drugs. They must make the most they can before patents expire.
At the same time, doctors and patients must keep in perspective the science that supports those relatively rare new drugs that have represented true therapeutic breakthroughs. Breakthroughs for treating modern killers like diabetes and hypertension that offer realistic options for many people.
Even more disappointing is the contemporary emphasis on new “blockbuster treatments” for largely “made-up” medical “problems” such as cholesterol, low-T, ED, and others. Treatment for these “problems” is superfluous and silly when it is not downright dangerous. These maneuvers trap millions more healthy people in the web of drug “treatment.” They have no actual disease.