Black eyes for Big Pharma - sort of

[Guest guest]

A rare, bona-fide smack-down... Of course, you know I love passing along word of lifesaving alternative therapies or warning my readers about the dangers of mainstream treatments - but do you know what really makes my day? Being able to report to you that Big Pharma has gotten a bit of a comeuppance. That's exactly the case with a pair of stories today. In the first of these, a UK-based branch of the beleaguered Merck pharmaceutical brand (they made the ill-fated Vioxx painkiller) has been suspended from its own lobbying body, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry... Why? Because an investigation conducted by Britain's Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority found the company - called Merck, Sharpe, and Dohme, Ltd. (MSD) - in violation of drug sales and promotion ethics rules in several key ways: Subtly linking the instruction materials for

a program designed to help nurses audit medication use with the promotion of an MSD blood pressure drug called Cozaar Offering doctors blood pressure screening services for their patients - but only those physicians who regularly prescribe Cozaar These breaches violate the ABPI's code of conduct, hence the three-month suspension. Hmmm. Interesting, isn't it, that the drug business's lobbying arm in Britain helps to police its own industry? They clearly see the benefits of a clean and respectable image in the eyes of doctors and the public. They clearly understand that there's more to the promotion and selling of drugs than merely making a profit. Think that would happen here in the U.S.? Fat chance. Our answer to the ABPI is an ultra-powerful lobbying organization called PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research And Manufacturers of America). To my knowledge, they've

never distanced themselves from anything Big Pharma does - no matter how sketchy, unethical, or deadly. In fact, I know in my heart of hearts that PhRMA does everything it can to quash or discredit unflattering information about the drug business here in the U.S... Case in point: Even this story from the UK barely got a whisper here in the mainstream media. I had to grab it off the blogs and opinion sites to even find out the skinny. Coincidence? I don't think so. As for the second Big Pharm And a payoff disguised as a payback As you may actually HAVE heard in the mainstream media (there's a reason for this, as you'll soon discover), Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline is being forced to shell out more than $40 million to settle out of court a class-action lawsuit brought against them by at least 40 U.S. states. The allegation: That they were price-gouging cancer

medication, antibiotics, and other drugs, defrauding Medicaid in the process. No, not Big Pharma! They'd never do such a thing, right? As shocking and inconceivable as that may seem, the U.S. Justice Department, the National Association of Medicaid Fraud Control Units, and New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer have teamed up to force Glaxo to cough up at least a small measure of restitution for its greed. All told, including reimbursement for Spitzer's costs of prosecution, the drug maker could possibly be on the hook for as much as $70 million or so... Of course, this is probably a drop in the bucket compared to how much their gouging banked them over the years! And of course, part of the deal is that GlaxoSmithKline gets away without admitting ANY WRONGDOING. A company spokesperson claimed the drug giant was shelling out merely to put the matter behind them

- and that states' health plans choose to buy the drugs at the higher prices. In other words, this whole exercise isn't so much a measure that'll make Big Pharma think twice about artificially inflating drug prices - more like proof to them that they can gouge us all they want and only have to toss a few bucks back to the states IF they get caught. Without even so much as a slap on the wrist in court! Thanks for nothing, Spitzer and friends. You've just given Big Pharma permission to steal our tax dollars - as long as you get some payoff money (and crusading do-gooder headlines) in return... Describing the bribing, William Campbell Douglass II, M.D. To start receiving your own copy of the Daily Dose, visit: http://www.douglassreport.com/dailydose/freecopy.html Or forward this e-mail to a

friend so they can sign-up to receive their own copy of the Daily Dose. "Get off your ass and take your government back." ~Rocky Ward

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