Abbott Lab's cholesterol drug, Niaspan, got a patent way back in 1997.
The folks at Abbott have been selling a ton of this crap ever since. It
is in the Top 50 of all drug sales. I don’t have the total
cumulative sales, but in 2009 global revenue came to $717,000,000, in
2010 it was more than $900mm. Over the life of the drug, total sales are
in the tens of billions. The stuff is worthless. It might even be bad for you.
The National Institute of Health did a five-year study. The conclusion:
"The lack of effect on cardiovascular events is unexpected and a striking contrast to the results of previous trials and observational studies," said Jeffrey Probstfield, M.D.
NPR had this guy (another expert) on air to discuss the findings. When
asked to comment on the results of the NIH study he had this to say:
"The drug did not change the health outcome at all."
"We’re not as smart as we thought we were."
The Congressional Budget Office did a write up
about this last week. The CBO found that in 2008 spending for drug
promotion came to $21 billion in just the US. Of that ¼ was spent on ads
to consumers. The CBO raises the very legitimate question of whether
this promotional effort by the drug companies is actually educating the
public or just manipulating the public to buy drugs that are either not
needed or simply don’t work at all.
I bitch and moan about the banks, the Fed, Treasury, the SEC and the
other financial players that seem to be lying and cheating us on a
regular basis. Add to that list the drug companies. The big pharmas are
the same as the banks. They don’t really care about their customers.
They just want to sell pills and make profits. They have the FDA in
their pocket. As usual, the average citizen gets thrown under a bus.
And now we have killer [organic] cucumbers with e-coli out of Spain and salmonella-laced cucumbers in the US:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13587182
(In the US): http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/05/fda_recalling_salmonella-taint.html
And German doctors are rushing to use the most expensive drug in the world, Soliris:
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110527/full/news.2011.332.html
There is a new drug out by big pharma if you think your getting screwed by them. It is called accepteriol. Two tablets a day, and you accept anything they say.
I hadn't heard of accepteriol. But a lot of my friends are on fuckitol.
Cogitation is contraindicated in patients using Accepteriol. Periods of confusion or uncertainty lasting more than 4 hours may indicate a serious medical condition. Seek professional care.
Wanna live long ?
ONE alcoholic beverage /day
Beta-alanine
Zinc for viral infections
Coffee 4-5 cups / day
Vitamin D 5000 UI
Exercise
Sex
Not necessariy in that order....
Words to live by.
DSK had at least #s 1, 4 & 7
Alcohol/excercise big time.
Fat and/or drug addicted (including alcoholics) people are clogging up the system and costing a friggin fortune.
Once you get on the medicine train, you are go all in pretty quick, as they want to control all of your systems.
To defray the insurance costs (even if it is all outgoing), you need drug dividends or you get eaten alive.
I abhor the system!
+++
"Being a banker is like having Aids. Once you have it you can't get rid of it and you die from it?"
yup pretty much. you made your bed, a few dozen articles don't make a wash though I'm sure in your experience that type of thing is par for the course and no there is no social statute of limitations on sleaze, so don't whine now.
My biggest problem with big pharma is the deliberate over-prescribing of dangerous meds for children. Anti-psychotics make kids gain about 30 pounds and can cause, yes cause, diabetes. Kids on anti-psychotics become corpulent zombies.
A corrupt Harvard child psychiatrist promoted anti-psychotics, particularly risperdal, for a new label he was promoting, biopolar disorder. Dr. Joseph Biederman was (surprise) getting lots of kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies. He failed to disclose their "grants" in his published work (surprise again). See Harris "research center" below.
Sources:
by Marian Wang ProPublica, May 23, 2011, 12:55 p.m.
"About a third of psychiatrists serving Florida’s juvenile jails and prescribing drugs to incarcerated youths have accepted payments from the drug companies [1] that manufacture antipsychotic medications, according to an investigation by the Palm Beach Post.
Carey, Benedict. “Bipolar Illness Soars as a Diagnosis for the Young.” The New York Times 4 September 2007. 4 September 2007 www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/health/04psych.html.
Carey, B. “Parenting as Therapy for Child’s Mental Disorders.” The New York Times 22 December 2006. 22 December 2006 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9506E7DC1131F931A15751C1A9609C8B63
Harris, Gardiner. “Proof is Scant on Psychiatric Drug Mix for Young.” The New York Times 23 November 2006: A1.
Harris “Research Center Tied to Drug Company.” The New York Times 24 November 2008. 24 November 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/health/25psych.html.
Harris. “Use of Antipsychotics in Children is Criticized.” The New York Times 19 November 2008. 19 November 2008 www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/health/policy/19fda.html.
Harris, Gardiner, and Carey, Benedict. (2008, June 8). “Researchers Fail to Reveal Full Drug Pay.” The New York Times 8 June 2008. 8 June 2008
Child’s Ordeal Shows Risks of Psychosis Drugs for Young. The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/business/02kids.html?th&emc=th
Tracking the American Epidemic of Mental Illness. The Public Record. June 9, 2010.
By Evelyn Pringle
http://pubrecord.org/nation/7823/tracking-american-epidemic-mental/
You bring up good points and I understand exactly where you're coming from. However, they don't get to the heart of the matter-- Deep Capture of the government regulatory agencies by the companies they're supposed to be regulating. A lot of this problem comes from the revolving door between government and the private sector. If I work for the government and I play real nice with the people I'm regulating, then maybe they'll give me a good job later. Conversely, when a new Administration comes in, it sometimes appoints people who used to work in the private sector to publicly oversee their old colleagues.
Here on ZH we all watch the slow-motion train wreck between what goes on in the US financial markets and the agency responsible for regulating them, the SEC.
Mr Krasting has brought up another instance of Deep Capture, that of the FDA and Big Pharma, which some readers of ZH might not be so familiar with (unlike you and me).
I could also bring up the relationship between the USDA and Big Ag. It's also not a pretty picture.
However, I just want to say that I have an old-fashioned belief that the sovereign is supposed to help level the playing field between the little people like me and the big rapacious predators, who have only their own narrow interests at heart. This is about the last thing that is happening in the US right now and the public is being very poorly served by the regulators who are supposed to be their servants.
Although it happens everywhere, America has a huge revolving door policy that creates apathy, collusion, fraud and crony capitalism. Every sector in industry whether it be banking, Pharma, energy, food, oil.... etc...
Although this page is old, it highlights just how bad it can be...I can site many examples but have not found a more recent list.
http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/politics/revolvingdoor.html
This site has a search by person or by industry
http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/index.php
I just taught a class on food and you are so right about the revolving door and regulatory capture. Additionally, universities are "captured" by grant money and that is playing out in scary ways in both food (GM) and pharma
GM and livestock deaths--univ profs afraid of repurcussions for research
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/websites-spread-retired-researchers-warning-about-gm-crops-but-scientists-question-claims/2011/04/01/AFiLCpEC_story.html?nl_headlines
wikileaks: Us Blackmail of EU on GM
http://213.251.145.96/cable/2007/12/07PARIS4723.html
GM contamination of waterways
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-09-28/toxin-from-biotech-corn-detected-in-u-s-streams-study-finds.htmlpfffft, wait...so, what you're saying is that big pharma is screwing us too?!?
So... we've uncovered a costly drug, widely used, that doesn't do anything... and this is supposed to surprise and shock us? Why? It's just another visible symptom of our decayed, dysfunctional governance structure. Add it to the list.
We've got an expensive, widely used education system that often doesn't educate...
We've got an expensive, overgrown anti-poverty system that doesn't actually cure poverty...
We've got an expensive, overly used judicial system that has apparently misplaced its sense of justice...
Should I go on..?
This is just the same old song-and-dance.
Truth is dead and not quantified in money -- not a chance of that changing.
Thank bankers like yourself Bruce for castrating truth in the name of greed.
How about another round of TARP with mustard. We can't have mark to market no matter what -- nothing but lies incorporated.
Your fake position on truth being of value to a market is bipolar bullshit. Where's your failure rewards pom-poms?
Give me a break. Read my bio. I have not been a banker since 1990. 21 years later and 600 articles and you still run me down?
Being a banker is like having Aids. Once you have it you can't get rid of it and you die from it?
Have a nice holiday....
It is your support of TARP that gave you the HIV, not being a banker.
As to longevity, you can thank your brethren for continued ripping off of the US taxpayer and savers to pay themselves record bonuses while countries collapse and breaking the law is rewarded. Since truth is a principle, explain to me the principle behind TARP and continued mark to fantasy?
Modern finance has been stink since the 70's, and the S&L crisis that resulted because of fraud. Nothing has changed.... you are sympathetic to the conditions favorable to banks and big business that come at the deplorable expense of everyone else.
When bankers personally lose their asses for their failures, and the "free" market isn't distorted for their gain I'll leave you alone. Private profit and socialized loss is not the way out of this mess.
Happy holidays.
You are bad and deserve a spanking!
As of this entry, no one has mentioned eating right and excercising regularly.
This is the first preventative solution. The older you get the more you should do this. It is a better form of pain than medical/surgical pain.
If you never go here, get used pain and expense.
Actually, insurance cost is a killer, so the expense baseline is high anyway.
Edit: My wife is a nurse and her experience is that a majority of her work is dealing with self induced afflictions.
Oh wow, there are still Amerikan idiots watching TeeVee??
You think you are going to learn something from morons like Brian Williams, Schieffer, Couric and the idiot Matt Lauer... on whose predictive programming "shows" these propaganda "advertisements" appear?
You poor dumb bastard peasant serfs... kill that TeeVee with a sledge hammer before the political whore season, read a book, get outside and do some work...
you wanna see some big pharma lies? research vaccines.
Vioxx made by Merck, approved by the FDA killed 300k people. What more do you need to know? Wake the F up.
dump your insurance and take back your health.
http://www.earthclinic.com/ailments.html
http://www.aboutclay.com/testimonials.htm
http://hawaiihealthguide.com/healthtalk/display.htm?id=915&hhsid=9ea42c3...Colloidal silver.
10 million North American users. Make you own medicine.
http://www.colloidalsilvercuresmrsa.com/mrsa_cure.htm
I'm glad Bruce brought this up in thus forum. Note, this pharmafib issue is exactly the medium I have used successfully in opening up realization to a few others who were rejecting their recognition of the financial morass we are in.
Easier to introduce recognition of the economic lie through the easily identified and less cog dis related Big Pharma scam than ambushing those in ignore-ance and immersing them into real/notional values, BLS/CPI/GDP scams, etc.
A spoon full of medicine will help the aspartame come back up.
A generic statin costs about 30 cents a day and has a 35 year track record. The only thing you give up is the ability to drink grapefruit juice in ungodly quantities. It works great for a majority of the affected public. Yet, they continue to push ineffective or even dangerous (e.g., Zetia) alternatives.
More generally, why doesn't Medicare require bids on a per-pill basis?
That's not entirely true and fair, is that? People want to live healthy, and don't wan to die early. They want the pills to help them. I am sure there was a study at the time showing it was working. FDA has rules and people at FDA follow their rules for drug approval. There are many incidences that later study showed different results from the original ones. But that does not say FDA and drug companies are all to cheat you for money. many life saving drugs have been developed, and people are living healthy and longer. As for this particular drug, it didn't work. Remember you got a darn plaque in your artery which is a physically calcified bump in the vessel. Unless you drink a couple of gallons of acid to dissolve it, you need to pray a lot more than bitching about the drug companies, FDA or your own doctors.
By the way, nobody put that plaque in your artery, don't blame anyone for that.
I am a pharmacist and I do not think drugs are helping. I see many people suffering to help others pay for medication that may do more harm than good.
Tks for this. A pharmacist that thinks drugs are not helping. It's like a joke, not funny though.
I learned to keep myself, family and patients off drugs as much as possible. The same for any screening tests involving any radiation. Less is more.
Yeah, so what else is new?
Hmm, those people in the first picture certainly don't look like they are eating and exercising properly in the first place!
I worked on drug development. If drug clears animal studies, the team is driven to get a drug approved with the best profile possible...efficacy, safety and patient convenience.
The problem is people are sheep, especially Americans. People would rather pop a pill to solve a symptom than address the fundamental problem lack of exercise and poor diet. People take advantage of people throughout history...only change is scale.
The funny part is FDA. People thinks the government protects them; instead government protects corporations. Now the people want more government....funny!
What's funny is you saying "the people" want more government.
The "people" want something for nothing. Do they want more government of the current US variety if they have to pay for it? Not bloody likely, as Eliza Doolittle famously said.
Bernaysian application of Hegelian Dialect methodologies.
I actually pointed out the Niaspan ads out to my kids. They go through this whole "you need to do something about arterial plague" and then halfway down the ad in small print is a statement that Niaspan hasn't been shown to reduce the instance of heart attack or stroke. I'm trying to educate them that most of the Big Pharma's products are crap.
IF they put as much effort into feeding children in the first place and educating them on basic nutrition and giving them fresh rather than mass produced junk foods then then there would be no need for a lot of these drugs at all.
What I don't understand is why the author sounds so surprised.
I used to have a great business, we took 18 wheeler trucks, and sold fresh Indian River grapefruit, "fresh off the truck" at shopping centers & Wal-Mart parking lots. Well.... our grapefruit sales plummeted by 50% or more, and never recovered when big pharma declared that the combination of statin type drugs & grapefruit juice was harmful. It was all CYA because of the trial lawyers.
Doctors tried to put me on statin drugs, no matter which kind, my arm joints ached and ached. I said "screw it", did my own research and lowered my number with red rice yeast, exercise and lifestyle. My numbers are fine, and I have never looked back.
Fresh grapefruit juice is actually really beneficial to the joints. My wife has had problems with her shoulder for ages - sometimes she can't raise one arm over her head. But if I give her fresh grapefruit juice every day it vastly improves her joint mobility. The grapefruit tend to have a bit of a bitter bite to them so I usually juice a pineapple/grapefruit combo since pineapple is good for the joints too. Fresh juice would do more to help people with most minor ailments than the buckets of pills they are taking.
what kind of juicer do you recommend? i got a vita mix and it makes lousy orange juice.
What else is crazy that I noticed recently when the "organics" went on a crazy sale at my local market. I bought a giant bag of organic carrots for like four bucks, which was much cheaper than the gigantic bag of regular carrots.
I steam my veggies in the microwave steamer. (If you don't have one, get one!). Normally, the water in the bottom gets kind of pinkish when I am steaming regular carrots and I used to worry about having steamed out the nutrients.
Well, I peeled my organics, chopped them and put them down in the steamer. Five minutes later, I removed the basket containing my perfectly soft and crisp carrots and the water in the steamer was almost red. In fact, it had stained the sides of my steamer orange!
All this time, I thought I was doing well for myself but, it turns out, I was only eating plastic carrots.
Try it at home. You'll be amazed.
Try eating all those veggies raw, uncooked.
You can cure diabites in 30 days by eating only uncooked veggies, fruits, and nuts.
http://youtu.be/CM9S-XQCbhw
Leo Kolvalkis mentioned Vitamin D here a whort while back. I looked into it. Most of us are deficient. It can help with tons of stuff for which big pharma would rather shovel expensive pills. I wonder how many other life-threatening symptioms are the result of basic nutrient deficiencies?
I plan to find out, by getting a complete nutrient analysis done and work from there. Or as complete as I can afford. That kind of analysis ain't cheap.
I'm suplementing D now, and feeling a bit better, overall.
Say whatever you want about Leo, serendipity and that guy's mention of D in his post has enhanced and may in the long run have extended my life.
And his 'Spying on Elite Funds' series of posts is pretty good, too.
Mike-You have been successfully marketed to by the Vit D testing and mfr industry. Nothing proven. As a fat-soluble vitamin, vit D builds up in the tissues and liver and may not be safe.
yes of course there are the usual greedy people in the vitamin industry as there are every where. Those who have liver problems are probably not getting enough vitamin D...
The skin makes vitamin D3 (Cholecalciferol) from the sun. The cholesterol layers in your skin are actually what synthesises UV rays into vitamin D The liver and kidneys further process it further so it is activated and can be used by the various receptors in your body (and as I said earlier there are thousands.)
Now what was said above is true... there is plain old vitamin D that is sold and your liver has to work hard to process it into a useable vitamin. That is why D3 is recommended.
Also, you WANT vitamin D to build up... because without it your immune system can't function... and a lot of your body won't function either. Your body stores vitamin D for months, and it can also take months for stores to build up. One proper session of 15 minutes of direct UV rays (that's why fall and winter won't make D in the skin) will give you 10k units each time. (note how one trip in the winter to a sunny locale will make you good to go for months?)
So please... do not listen to the "doc". Drink milk, get sunshine and take supplements. (just do not overdo it)
So...not having 'enough' D is 'better?'
D3 is the most like what our bodies make from the sun, so be sure to take D3.
There are thousands of receptors in the body for Vitamin D alone. Those empty receptors may take up toxins (like the chemicals from smoke) but the main thing you need to know is, without enough vitamin D, your immune system can't activate to fight illness. So if you are deficient, or already have been ill D is depleted, you do not have the stores needed to even put up your dukes, let alone fight. Even mild deficiency can be a problem in some people.
There have been links to many cancers and a huge list of illness associated with D deficiency... so it is wise to supplement and to read the extensive info out there. (and remember d and calcium are both symbiotic for absoption and necessary for tooth and bone strength)
Also magnesium can be absorbed through the skin by bathing in Epsom salts for 20 minuets. It is the best way to absorb it being the stomach acids and even other nurients can destroy it. There are numerous links between magnesium deficiencies and type 2 diabetes and other illness (CF, fibromyalgiea, etc) the tin foil hat crowd might also like to know daily baths can rerlease toxins, such as mild exposure to radiation.
F big pharma. I take supplements (read about them so you don't overdo it) and use antioxidents (high orac) and eat fairly organically with plenty of fruits and veggies The difference in my health is amazing.