Big Pharma en de medische wetenschap
In een boeiend verhaal in de Easy Diagnosis Second Opinions Newsletter wordt kort beschreven hoe farmaceutische bedrijven invloed uitoefenen op de publicaties in medische tijdschriften en hoe negen van de tien schrijvers en ‘peer reviewers’ in die bladen banden hebben met diezelfde farmaceuten.
The science fiction writer, Neal Stephenson, author of Snow Crash (1992), the three part trilogy The Baroque Cycle, and other philosophical-historical novels, offers an intriguing name to current medical economics. He describes how the political system has always been subject to “power disorders,” sudden deviations or disequilibria in which “certain groups or persons suddenly concentrate a lot of power and abuse it.” Does this phenomenon describe what is happening to medicine today? Or is it perhaps only one of many pathologies afflicting our present system of health care?
Dr. Paul Rosch, President of The American Institute of Stress, discusses Big Pharma in his outstanding publication, Health and
Stress. He documents multiple examples of “misleading drug
promotion, overpricing, and the corruption of the medical and Governmental
establishment by the pharmaceutical industry in a pattern of widespread abuse.”
Dr. Rosch also reports that a year ago 94% of the more than 5,000 scientists at
NIH were engaged in lucrative conflict of interest activities, and that top
officials had received over $2.5 million in fees and stock options from drug
companies over the past decade. In 2002, the pharmaceutical industry spent $91.4
million on federal lobbying activities, and at least another $50 million was
spent to “influence Congress and others through advertising, direct mail,
telemarketing, and grants. Drug companies had 675 registered lobbyists and 26 of
these were former members of Congress.” This, according to other articles quoted
by CNN and appearing in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, The Nation,
and other publications, is only the tip of the iceberg.
Big Pharma and the Ties That Bind: The Politics of Drug
Promotion
