Corrupte arts voor het gerecht
De Bolognese medicus Roberto Corinaldesi, die voor het gerecht staat wegens corruptie, heeft toegegeven dat de Volksgezondheidssector en de farmaceutische industrie twee handen op één buik zijn. Feitelijk lopen de belangen zó gelijk dat de volksgezondheidssector niet meer zou kunnen bestaan zonder de (financiële injecties van) de farmaceuten.
Onderzoekers zijn zo op zoek naar financiering dat ze op de knieën liggen voor de farmaceuten en kritiekloos het onderzoek doen dat van hun gevraagd wordt. Of meer: de dingen willen bewijzen die de farmaceuten graag bewezen willen hebben. En daarom worden ook steeds nieuwe ‘problemen’ in de volksgezondheid ontdekt: er moeten nieuwe markten gecreëerd worden voor deze industrie.
July 16 [08:00 GMT] – Italian payola follow up: “public health is hopelessly in the hands of the pharmaceutical industry” – Interesting follow-up on the latest Italian pharmaceutical payola scandal we reported a few days ago. During the course of investigations by the authorities, a 2005 statement by Roberto Corinaldesi, director of Department of Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology of the St. Orsola hospital in Bologna, came to the surface. While interrogated by the authorities in that year, Corinaldesi laid on the table what we have said for years about the fundamental failure of the “public health” mandate and its total prostitution to the interests of Big Pharma.
“Not a penny can be found anywhere”, says Corinaldesi. “The health institutions are in a desperate condition … [I know], I am part of the financial committees. I can tell you that it’s bad enough to cry. … Without [the pharmaceutical funds] we would get no results… we are always there in person to say — all the time — ‘give me, give me, give me’.” The conclusions, as drawn by the newspaper itself, are clear: “It’s a hopeless panorama of the trend of the public health institutions, basically in the hands of the [pharmaceutical] industry”. The situation is no different anywhere else in the world – and it is a problem that is recognized and lamented everywhere.
Why do you think that the “public health” authorities blatantly lie to the people about smoking whilst fabricating “epidemics” for fat, drinking, and on and on? Why do you think that the WHO, official partner with the industry, falsifies information on active and passive smoke while allowing 5 million people a year to die of malaria? Because Big Pharma wants the immense nicotine market along with other “lifestyle therapies” much more than they want the market for malaria drugs, because those who are dying of malaria cannot pay for the medications they need.
Big Pharma, insatiably, needs markets – and commands “public health” to lie. Politicians of all ranks, along with a foolish public inebriated with a deference to “authority”, believe “public health”– on smoking, eating, drinking, and on whatever other fraud is needed for the next mass-marketing push.
The synthesis is this: “public health” IS the pharmaceutical industry, the industry IS “public health”. A deadly trap then follows: a war against the pharmaceutical industry becomes a war against “public health”. “Public health”, which has managed to slither its way into the collective imagination as the most important institution/value of a (sick) society which has lost a coherent vision of itself, is now a source of unquestionable authority and of what little hope a disenchanted and aging western world has for the future. So Public Health cannot be questioned. That’s not only a political fact, but an emotional one. Thus, the agenda of the pharmaceutical industry as a motor for modern Public Health will never be questioned deeply, either. The collective imagination cannot disentangle itself.
Just as there has been a historical movement to obtain the separation of Church and State, now that the state is enmeshed with the healthist religion there must be one for the separation of public health institutions and the pharmaceutical industry. That’s the only way to move towards a principled public health function in society. The junk science (and authoritarian bans of all kinds) will be set aside, and freedom will return to its rightful place as a paramount value. Real epidemics such as malaria will be the focus of the health institutions once again. That is the way it was, that is the way it must be again.
(Forces International)
