Of Pharma Follies and Thai Vaccines

[Guest guest]

http://www.thenhf.com/health_freedom_news_11.htm

 

Of Pharma Follies and Thai Vaccines

 

by Michael L. Culbert Sc.D.

Editor of Health Freedom News

Board member of the National Health Federation

 

 

 

In good times and bad you can count on the US (and

global) pharmaceutical industry (Big Pharma, some call

it) to prosper. And why not? Its primary captive,

organized western allopathic— uh, " scientific or

" rational " — medicine is its bridge to the

lemming-like dupes and consumers (patients and the

general public) who ultimately pay the bills for BP’s

grossly overpriced pills and potions.

 

Thanks to Public Citizen’s Congress Watch, we were

informed June 23 that, even though 2002 was not a year

to write home about the American economy, the 10

biggest drug companies listed in the Fortune 500

actually saw a 3.5 percent reduction in profits over

2001 — while tallying a nifty $35.9 billion in

take-home.

 

Before Care packages are sent to the big guys, though,

bear in mind that in 2002 the Fortune 500 units as a

whole saw profits sag a startling 66.3 percent.

Thanks, again, to Public Citizen we learned that

despite rickety 2002 the 10 drug giants’ profits,

however slightly down, were equal to more than half

the $69.9 billion in profits garnered by the entire

Fortune 500!

 

As a sign that Big Pharma is ever alert, the advocacy

group reported June 23 that the pharmaceutical

industry spent a record $91.4 million on lobbying

activities in 2002 while hiring an army of 675

lobbyists. Spending on lobbying by the druggies was

12 percent higher than in 2001 while the actual number

of backslapping influence peddlers was up by 4

percent.

 

Assessed Public Citizen, among the drug industry’s

lobbyists in 2002 were 26 former members of Congress,

and 342 of the lobbyists had ties of one kind or

another to the federal government.

 

Public Citizen estimates that the drug industry has

spent $650 million on lobbying Congress since 1997,

including $478 million in direct lobbying efforts and

$172 million in federal campaigns, advertisements,

funding for non-profit organizations (seen by many as

" fronts " for Big Pharma) and " other activities. "

 

While drug industry lobbying has tended to favor

Republicans over Democrats (the current Administration

is larded with so many reps and/or holders of drug

company stocks that it seems at times to be an

extension of the Pharmaceutical Researchers and

Manufacturers of America (PRMA), which collectively

" speaks for the industry), plenty of legal cash has

gone to both parties.

 

Hence it is no particular surprise that President Bush

picked Randall Tobias, the former chief executive

officer of Eli Lilly & Co., to ramrod a new program

whereby the US (that is, taxpayers) will provide $15

billion to battle AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean,

but primarily in Africa, where UN figures (some cast

into considerable doubt) have painted a consistently

gloomy picture of more than a dozen countries bearing

such enormous numbers of alleged HIV infections that

it is a wonderment that at the end of each year there

are more people being born in the Dark Continent than

dying in it.

 

It is questionable whether the former Lilly executive

will be pushing for things that might really help,

such as clean water, nutrition, better sanitation and

hygiene all around, and numerous ways to improve

immune systems hobbled by a plethora of bacterial and

fungal infections. But it is likely that he will find

ways and means to unload into Africa the outrageously

expensive and often extremely hazardous " cocktail "

antiviral drugs which, giving the devil his due, have

indeed slashed death rates among the HIV infectees in

the Western world who can tolerate them.

 

But we won’t prejudge the outcome.

 

Even as President Bush was announcing the Tobias

nomination, a number of African companies were

expressing interest in the " oral therapeutic vaccine "

V-1 produced heroically by the upstart Immunitor

Corporation Co. in Thailand.

 

V-1 of course, aside from solidly researched studies

indicating its efficacy in bolstering immunity,

decreasing " viral loads, " attacking fungi and helping

reverse the " wasting syndrome " characteristic of much

of AIDS in the world, is anathema to Big Pharma: It is

too damned cheap. Of the 65,000 people in the world

" on " the little pink pills by this summer in 65

countries, more than 40,000 — most of them Thais — had

received the treatments for free. Even when they paid

at roughly cost by Thailand terms the take is about

$20 a month.

 

Assuming expanded production for profit might even

double or triple the price, V-1 remains the least

expensive and most effective AIDS treatment around

just now, and it has the added virtue of being

nontoxic. But you rarely hear about it. Passing

strange, that.

 

It would be good to see the Gates Foundation,

International AIDS Czar Tobias, and others, take up

the cause of V-1. At home, where Big Pharma’s

tentacles also wrap around sectors of Thai medicine

and industry, the international drug companies have

done everything imaginable to thwart, hinder, block

and frustrate the extremely useful invention of

pharmacist Vichai Jirathitikal, who has one of those

Buddhistic/moralistic hang-ups — he can’t understand

why people should make money off dying AIDS patients.

 

Note in this edition, too, how the vaccine sector of

Big Pharma, like Topsy, " just growed " again last year

and keeps growing.

 

American hats should be off to United Press

International (UPI) — yes, freed of the press really

does mean something at times — which July 20 published

the results of a four-year probe into the big, bad

vaccine business.

 

UPI’s Mark Benjamin reported that even as the industry

since the 1980s had doubled the numbers of jolting

jabs forced on children up to age 2 to nearly 40, " the

annual global market for vaccines is expected to go

from $6 billion to $10 billion by 2006. "

 

UPI’s survey includes the striking gathering evidence

of the relationship between childhood disorders

(autism in particular) and other defects to the

national frenzy to vaccinate the kiddies. It also

notes plenty of adult side effects, as well.

 

So vaccines constitute a growth industry all by

themselves. It is aided and abetted by

industry-influenced politicos who, through federal and

state legislation, have literally forced American

public school children to get the shots — or else.

 

Luckily, the ever-crackling Internet is rife with

information from outraged anti-vax parental groups,

primarily in the USA (but the Brits are not far

behind) on how there are various forms in the various

states for parents to fill out to keep their children

off the mandated shots for religious or other reasons.

 

Hopefully, enough of this exclusionism will occur

before Homeland Security decides that

immunization-opposing parents are threats to the body

politic and need to be relocated somewhere.

Guantanamo, say.