Small rant

Why is there so much bad said about pharmaceutical companies?

<runs and hides under rock>

I'm not sure, but from what I understand, they are unlinked because they charge so much for their drugs. Now, I'm not a pharmacist, but I'm pretty sure that whenever a new drug comes out, it has to go through all kinds of testing and crazy expensive processes. That's why new drugs usually cost a lot. But then, once it is approved and they have been able to pay off all the testing fees, they will rarely ever drop the price of the drug.
Personally, I don't have a huge problem with them, but maybe that's why some people might say bad things about them.
I wish I was more informed to tell you, but I really don't know much more than that.

It seems they drive the research agenda and "invest" in research that means profits to them leaving aside illnesses that are "rare" or will not have a significant $$$ return. They use tricky advertisement strategies including co-opting doctors to prescribe, they dedicate much effort to lobby congress and others so laws and so on don't go against their interests. They back up NGOs that are all for diminishing the personhood of patients while are not eager to sponsor self-advocacy groups or other groups that seek to empower people with mental health issues. All these things and more i heard

I don't like to generalize, and I haven't kept up with the stats (it upset me too much tbh)....

When I was in college in 2007, I took a Business Ethics course...

privately owned, major pharma companies were spending their funds on....

20% Research & Development on drugs
80% MARKETING & advertising

Capitalism at it's finest...

The majority of life saving drugs are not being produced... literally.. because the company will not make a profit on it. If only the poor need the drugs, the wouldn't be able to pay.

One company, Merc, manufactured a Malaria drug for 3rd world nations and gave it out for $5 or less. It was the "golden" case study. However, this was their last "hail Mary" play, because they were losing so much business due to a scandal.

That is just the tip of the ice burg. I won't go on...

I suspect I am one of those people it's fine to ask. Please don't feel like you need to hide. I have no problem explaining why I have such a hard time with them.

First, meds work for people. No doubt about that. They have worked for me. I just needed to say that.

Pharma companies have a built in conflict of interest which is loyalty to their stockholders from providing medicine to sick people. It is one of the worst conflicts. When you or someone you care about is sick and the medicine is available but super expensive, what do you do? You pay for it with whatever means available.

If you think they don't influence FDA rules or the APA you are not seeing things clearly. DSM 3 changed everything by making pdocs responsible for prescriptions. This was in the late 70's. Pdocs needed something to separate themselves from psychologists. There are actual letters discussing the marketing shift from DSM 3-4.

Pharma spends billions on marketing every year to sell their branded drug. TV ads and internet ads that follow you around are designed to get the consumer to tell the doctor what they want. And it works! Lots of doctors, more then you might think, comply without a lot of thought. Doctors get speaking and research funding if they prescribe their branded product. Patients get coupons if they can't afford it. They aren't being charitable. Abilify is one of the most successful meds ever. Part of that is giving away so many coupons. The coupons are actually a war on the insurance companies, btw.

I have to say researchers employed by big pharma for the most part retain their ethics. It is the marketing arm that really is the part that does the most damage. Gosh, I wish I could remember the story completely... One of the pioneers in advertising came up with the idea of making a "want" into a "desire". He was freud's son.

Time and time again there are studies on herbal treatments that we never hear about because they don't get big pharma capital. Why on earth would they pay for something they can't make a profit on? So we completely miss out on potential treatments that are a lot safer and less expensive. Did you know there has been a double blind study on chamomile? Quality German chamomile should just be in you med cabinet it is so helpful for so many things. There is promising studies on lavender as well and a pill approved in Germany for anxiety. If you want to buy it you have to go through amazon.de.

(Sigh) I want to go on but I'm tired. I may edit this tomorrow. I really recommend Robert Whitaker's anatomy of an epidemic. It's actually a fast read despite it's length. He does a much better job then I can. It is also very well referenced. When I was reading it I had all these people telling me it was pseudoscience so I looked up a lot of the references and found them to be reliable. The bottom line is we are being sold misleading information in order to sell product. As a result we have a highly malfunctioning system of care which isn't very effective and is unnecessarily expensive.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Why don't medical/psych associations produce more criticism on the way the system sickens people instead of just focussing on the individual, his/ her brain, etc? If they do not do that, if the most important thing they do is to prescribe medication and focus on the individual, they are part of the problem. I am not saying that all the causes of our mental issues are situated in the system. But the system is rotten, we have lost our links to each other, there is a lot of pressure and stress in our lives, the sense of community, solidarity are lost. More and more people find problems to adapt to a rotten society. That has an impact on people's mental health for sure, but not many are talking about it. On the contrary, they stuff us with pills, and, with luck, they send us to take yoga classes or to walk.

There are people doing something about it. You have to look past the marketing and traditional doctors who take the easy road. My T compiles a list of patient centric doctors in our area. It is encouraging to know it is growing little by little. Dr. Breggin teaches and practices patient centric care and has professional seminars on empathic therapy. His book on withdrawal is designed to be read by patients, doctors and therapists in a patient centric approach. My PA enthusiastically agreed to read it.

Here are a few links to get you started:

http://www.breggin.com/

http://www.westonaprice.org/

http://nourishedkitchen.com/nutritio...-chronic-pain/

http://www.madinamerica.com/

http://beyondmeds.com/

http://www.madnessradio.net/

I'll be honest. Some of these come across as very anti med at first. If you keep an open mind... Take what works kind of attitude you'll find that is not what they are saying at all. Sometimes it feels like you have to TALK REALLY LOUD and still it isn't loud enough to reach over the big pharma din.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

One reason is that big pharma has so much influence at the FDA and in Congress. They spend more on lobbying than anyone else. Also there is the revolving door. They hire former FDA officials and former congressman to lobby for them.
A glaring example was when Billy Tauzin chairman of energy and commerce (has jurisdiction over big pharma) retired he was hired by big pharmas biggest lobbying group as the head of it. There are laws that say a congressman has to wait so much time to become a lobbyist but they just get around it by giving him another title. I think this happened right after medicare part D prescription drug coverage was passed. That was a big boon to big pharma. the guy who gets it passed retires and goes to work for them for big bucks.
Big pharma does there own studies and the FDA approves or denies them. If you have the FDA in your back pocket you are in like flynn.
They have cracked down on the marketing in recent years and made it illegal for sales reps to give gifts to doctors and there staffs. My brother in law worked for phizer and was always setting up free lunches and free gifts, pens, ect. The salesmen tactics they use do have a big influence on doctors. Some doctors refuse to even meet with them.

I appreciate everyone's opinions here. It's fascinating. I come up against a negative attitude to pharmaceutical companies (it seems) all over....It's just more concentrated here, probably for other reasons, but in particular, most of us take some form of meds and so I had a higher concentration to ask.....thank you all.
It's a complex issue, I think, that (like anything in life, I suppose) we focus on those particular facets that really hit a nerve.....Perhaps focusing on one or two aspects that we're really passionate about.

I am actually glad of that in an unrelated way....finding passion about anything when you have depression surely must be a good thing....No?

I don't think it is all bad. They do come up with life saving drugs. The two latest antidepressants are from companies I have never heard of. One if from Japan I think. I am sure they will be way expensive though.

No, of course it is not all bad. But it is like once for all we, the ones that suffer from depression, need to take the lead of our own lives. That also means to understand how the world works, how our illness is contributing to fill the pockets of other people, how these people sometimes manipulate stuff for their own benefit regardless the consequences for our lives. It is to make an effort to understand further, to understand that beyond our brain and personal background there are characteristics in our society that push us down. That has to be changed, as well, and not only our body, brain and personal life style, if we want long term solutions.
I am just sick and tired of adapting to a sick world.

I feel historically speaking, there's a serious mistrust of big pharm, especially where psyche meds are concerned. If, I were at my laptop, I'd pull some old links to books, etc, when I was sorting through why one family line, nearly staunchly opposed to meds, the other not so much.
Post civil war lit, comes to mind, as does some video treatment of patients in a psyche hospital for showing treatment of schizophrenia.
Ethics, money, lobbying, maltreatment, embedded in oral family traditions and psyches.

Sent from my LG-MS910 using Tapatalk 2

If you read Whitaker's book he goes into the formation of pharmaceutical companies. It is a very interesting story. They have always been in bed with the government. Having over sight was supposed to be a safety measure but it also locked out small business and gave big companies the upper hand.

ADs haven't really innovated in a long time. They add one component or another but the core is still the same. There are even things called "me too" drugs which are copies of successful drugs with just enough tweaking to pass as a different drug. The pharma company makes almost all it's money while it's patent protected. ADs are popular to do that with because they a cheap to manufacture. That's why they do it.

Psychiatry is more of an issue because pills are just about their only solution. And it hasn't been a good experience for too many people.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The "me toos" are just the active metabolite of the first one. Take Pristiq - patented and marketed as a brand new drug and expensive. actually it is the active metabolite of effexor. in other words if you take effexor it right away turns into pristiq.

There are alot of generics now for AD's where the patent has run out. Michanne is right though they have not really made any progress since Prozac. I do not think they has invested much research in it while NIMH and universities have.

Why do they get so much negativity?
Greed

They have a proven track reacord of putting profit above ethics. It's hard to trust when a group would rather pay out damages because it cost less than admitting all the research was for naught. To them a few deaths are about cost balance sheets not human suffering.
To be sure we do get benifets but what is the cost if even one unnecessary death or life long disability is judged ok? It is society and family that pays the price. Those affected can no longer work, their medical costs are now higher and must be paid by someone. In the past before the lobby for be Pharma grew so strong there were better controls and checks for the safety of consumers. Now the Companies use wants and desires of the consumers to decide what they will develop instead of science. For example, Viagra, Yaz, and other drugs that were developed because that's what consumers want and will willingly pay for. Yaz was a bad drug, so were many others recently pushed out too quickly. The companies pay doctors to push the drugs, and direct market to the consumers get your drugs just ask for it by name and you will have a happy life on a beach.
Personally I don't believe profit should be above safety. I don't believe in advertising medicine. It's one thing to have the info out there and accessible but presented objectively with all of the study results available not just the adjusted studies and it's a completely different thing when it is being marketed. Yes research is expensive but so is the cost of bad drugs dumped out there too quickly and then recalled after the big Pharm recoups there reaserch cost. They still come out ahead after paying damages. But they are doing long term damage by destroying people faith that drugs are life saving and good by putting their immediate greed ahead of humanity.

Well, I don't know that ALL companies aren't "greedy"....

I do know that any company has employees to pay.

I guess I'm neutral, and I HATE paying 100 dollars for a bottle of thirty pills. But there's way more behind that one pill than manufacturing.

Interesting what you said, sidestepper, about not believing in advertising medicine...I may be crazy, but I seem to remember a day when there were no commercials for them. Am I correct?

Yes you are correct. Not sure which came first... A ban on cigarette advertising or approval for antidepressant advertising.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk