Is Big Pharma really deceiving humanity?
Miscellaneous / / August 01, 2021
Allegedly, Big Pharma is hiding a cure for cancer, bribing politicians and even creating disease.
What is Big Pharma
Big Pharma, or Big Pharma (from the English Big Pharma), is a shorthand name for some of the largest pharmaceutical companies. These includeL. Urquhart. Top companies and drugs by sales in 2020 / Nature Reviews Drug Discovery:
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- American Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co, Wyeth, Eli Lilly and Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb;
- British GlaxoSmithKline, and British-Swedish AstraZeneca and British-Dutch Unilever;
- French Sanofi;
- Swiss Roche and Novartis;
- German Boehringer Ingelheim and Bayer;
- Japanese Takeda Pharmaceutical and Astellas Pharma;
- Israeli Teva Pharmaceutical Industries;
- Chinese Sinopharm;
- and others.
This word also denotes a group of theoriesR. Blaskiewicz. The Big Pharma conspiracy theory / Medical Writing
, according to which the medical community, primarily large pharmaceutical companies, in pursuit of profit cheat the whole world. For example, they hide really working drugs, sell "dummies" and even harmful drugs, so that later people have to be treated for side effects.Medical corporations are allegedly assisted by high-ranking politicians, officials, scientists and doctors. Ordinary people do not know anything about the conspiracy, and they hide the truth from them.
These theories can also include accusations against the largestN. Huet, C. Paun. Meet the world’s most powerful doctor: Bill Gates / Politico private sponsor of the World Health Organization Bill Gates, fear of 5G towers, rumors about chipping and other crazy concepts.
What Big Pharma is accused of
Information about the conspiracy is spread primarily by conspiracy theorists.
Lobbying your interests
The global pharmaceutical market is estimatedJ. Bilfield. Big Pharma & Big Lies: The Hidden Cancer Cure / The Psychology of Extraordinary Beliefs not less than one trillion US dollars. And in order to snatch a bigger piece from him, Big Pharma supposedly stops at nothing.
For example, it bribes inspection bodies, politicians and scientific journals. This allows for more convenient laws to be pushed through, the strict requirements of government commissions bypassed, and useless drugs on the market. And then also publish pseudoscientific articles about the effectiveness of such drugs.
Some even believe that powerful medical corporations are creating pocket politicians. One of these is calledIN. Nikiforov. The cure for freedom. Big Pharma cracked down on human rights / RIA Novosti French President Emmanuel Macron. He worked in his youth at the bank of David de Rothschild, which conducted major successful deals with Pfizer. Yes, that was enough to be included in the list of conspirators.
However, according to conspiracy theorists, drug manufacturers do not disdain even smaller bribery. For example, they supposedly influenceB. I. Koerner. Dr. No Free Lunch / Mother Jones on doctors: they donate medical equipment, give gifts, take them to restaurants, or simply pay bribes. As a result, corrupt physicians begin to prescribe and recommend more expensive and useless drugs instead of cheaper or effective alternatives.
Manufacture of pacifiers and harmful drugs
Opponents of big pharma are confident that companies are not interested in fighting diseases, because this will reduce drug sales. So firms produce a huge number of drugs that are not easy useless, but harmful. Many conspiracy theorists also believe that corporations are eager to create funds that the patient will be hooked on.Why It’s Time To Put Big Pharma Conspiracy Theories To Rest / Forbes and who will be forced to buy all my life.
So, writer and journalist, author of independent investigations Celia Farber in a Harper's Magazine column accused the developers of the drug nevirapine for HIV and AIDS of conspiracy. Among other things, she stated that HIV does not lead to AIDS, and during experiments, nevirapine was administered to pregnant women, which caused them to die. Farber's claims have been refuted. But the raised resonance actually didS. C. Kalichman. Denying AIDS: Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, and Human Tragedy the AIDS denial movement is well known and has led many followers to it.
Concealment of working funds
By selling useless drugs, pharmaceutical companies allegedly keep effective treatments secret from people or slow down their creation. For example, they do not patent really acting drugs and use corrupt officials in order not to let the development of independent researchers enter the market.
Opponents of corporations believeD. R. Grimes. On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs / PLoS ONEthat a remedy for the treatment of all forms oncology already invented. In addition to cancer, Big Pharma allegedly interferes with the fight against a number of diseases. Here are just a fewM. Shermer. Cures and Cons / Scientific American of them:
- herpes;
- arthritis;
- AIDS;
- phobias;
- depression;
- obesity;
- diabetes;
- multiple sclerosis;
- lupus;
- chronic fatigue;
- ADHD - attention deficit hyperactivity disorder;
- muscular dystrophy and others.
Conspiracy theorists also talk about hidden drugs. For example, coral calcium supposedly cures cancer, while Biotape pain reliever relieves pain forever.
Disease creation
Some go further and accuse drug manufacturers of inventing non-existent diagnoses. Everything to increase the drug market. Sometimes the proponents of the theory even claim that Big Pharma itself creates viruses and contributes to the spread of diseases. For example, it deliberately does everything to continue the coronavirus pandemic in order to force governments to vaccinate people.
Many conspiracy theorists believeD. R. Grimes. On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs / PLoS ONEas herself vaccination is carried out to weaken the immunity of people, infect them with new diseases or make them more obedient. All this supposedly allows pharmaceutical giants to earn even more. Such views give rise to rumors about the dire side effects of vaccinations and medications. For example, the link between mumps vaccine and autism risk.
What's really going on
Most often conspiracy theorists come up with problems, play on the fears and ignorance of people who trust them. However, sometimes conspiracy theorists are not so far off the mark.
Large companies really control the pharmaceutical market
Pharmaceuticals is a complex but very profitable business that takesD. Ostwald, M. Cramer, N. Albu et al. The Global Economic Impact of the Pharmaceutical Industry 8% of the global health market and growing rapidly. So, 13 pharmaceutical corporations wereGlobal 500 / Fortune in the list of the 500 largest companies in the world.
But noWhy It’s Time To Put Big Pharma Conspiracy Theories To Rest / Forbes it is not unusual for firms to seek to increase profits and gain substantial market share. This happens in many industries. If you look at the global economy, there are world leaders everywhere: for example, in the automotive industry, IT industry, clothing and food production.
Pharmaceutical lobby exists
For example, in the United States, in 1998-2004 alone, two organizations associated with large drug manufacturers lobbiedR. J. Smith, J. H. Birnbaum. Drug Bill Demonstrates Lobby's Pull / Washington Post 1,600 laws. Pharma corporations spent $ 900 million on this, more than any other firm in any other sector of the economy. On average, US pharmaceutical companies spendO. J. Wouters. Lobbying Expenditures and Campaign Contributions by the Pharmaceutical and Health Product Industry in the United States, 1999-2018 / JAMA International Medicine for lobbying $ 235 million annually. The total amount of investments in 1998-2018 amounted to 4.7 billion.
This helps to promote laws that are beneficial to themselves. For example, avoid controlling the retail price of drugs. Indeed, the price of drugs in the United States canInternational Federation of Health Plans 2012 Comparative Price Report / International Federation of Health Plans be 2-3 times higher than in other developed countries.
True, there is an alternative opinionR. E. Santerre, J. A. Vernon. Assessing Consumer Gains from a Drug Price Control Policy in the United States / Southern Economic Journal, according to which the lack of regulation stimulates innovation. Pharmaceutical companies themselves refer to this. They say the cost is high due to research programs that are getting more expensive every year. Nevertheless, the costs for them are several times less.D. W. Light, J. R. Lexchin. Pharmaceutical research and development: what do we get for all that money? / BMJ revenue received by drug manufacturers and are comparableM ‑ A. Gagnon. The Cost of Pushing Pills: A New Estimate of Pharmaceutical Promotion Expenditures in the United States / PLoS Medicine with the costs of marketing.
And pharmaceutical companies use advertisingTurn the Volume Down on Drug Ads / The New York Times very active. In the middle of the last century, it was placed only in special medical journals, rightly believing that only a professional can assess the advantages and disadvantages of the drug. Today advertising a wide variety of media can be seen anywhere. This often misleads people and contributes to the demand for newer, more expensive drugs.
Pharmaceutical companies did release harmful drugs and tried to hide it
There are many examples when drugs released on the market did real harm. One of the most notorious scandals was the banning of the sleeping pill thalidomide in the 1960s. His reception in pregnant women led to terrible bone abnormalities in newborns. After many cases were opened, the drug was banned, and a large-scale test began in the United States. She confirmed that 40% of the funds on the market are completely ineffective.The History of Drug Regulation in the United States / FDA.
Show the effects of taking thalidomide
Hide
There have also been cases when corporations deliberately violated the law and tried to avoid publicity of high-profile failures. For example, this happened when Pfizer was illegally selling the psychotropic drug Geodon (ziprasidone). The company paidD. Wilson. Side Effects May Include Lawsuits / The New York Times $ 301 million in fine, but did not acknowledge the violation.
An even darker story came from Pfizer in Nigeria, where one of the company's drugs from meningitis. Then, numerous cases of corruption and death of children were revealed. The pharmaceutical giant never pleaded guilty and settledDonald G. McNeil Jr. Nigerians Receive First Payments for Children Who Died in 1996 Meningitis Drug Trial / The New York Times the case is out of court.
Another company, GlaxoSmithKline, pleaded guilty in 2012 to withholding information about the safety of its drugs, bribery of doctors and a discrepancy between the actual effect of drugs and advertised ones. The total amount of compensation wasGlaxoSmithKline to pay $ 3bn in US drug fraud scandal / BBC News $ 3 billion is one of the largest fines in pharmaceutical history.
Dummy drugs exist, but the academic community is holding back their distribution
Big Pharma does sponsor studies that show positive results with drugs of questionable effectiveness. They hire authors to write mock articles, conduct educational programs for doctors, and sponsor some journals. It is no coincidence that drug efficacy studies funded by pharmaceutical companies yield positive results more oftenT. Tungaraza, R. Poole. Influence of drug company authorship and sponsorship on drug trial outcomes / The British Journal of Psychiatrythan independent.
Therefore, scientists are required to disclose potential conflicts of interest. Simply put, tell who paid for the research.
However, this does not prevent the publication of articles criticizing dummies. For example, the respected British medical journal BMJ has published a reviewG. C. Machado, C. G. Maher, P. H. Ferreira et al. Efficacy and safety of paracetamol for spinal pain and osteoarthritis: systematic review and meta ‑ analysis of randomized placebo controlled trials / BMJ studies showing that paracetamol does not help with lower back pain and is almost useless for osteoarthritis.
Scientific publications that value their reputation always review publications, demandConfronting conflict of interest / Nature Medicine from authors indicate potential conflicts of interest and conduct reviews of articles in other journals.
This makes it possible to fairly successfully detect facts of abuse. However, such information rarely reaches ordinary people.
Working drugs hit the market
Despite the dominance of large companies, the market is still very highWhy It’s Time To Put Big Pharma Conspiracy Theories To Rest / Forbes competition. The effectiveness of a drug largely determines its success, and selling pacifiers forever is a losing strategy.
Therefore, only a madman will refuse to patent, for example, a remedy for cancerthat will bring not only huge profits, but also numerous awards. For example, the Nobel Prize.
In addition, conspiracy theorists for some reason forget that medicine has already advanced quite far in the treatment of many diseases. For example, the number of deaths from cancer is constantly decreasing.J. Bilfield. Big Pharma & Big Lies: The Hidden Cancer Cure / The Psychology of Extraordinary Beliefs. Every year, new surgical and therapeutic ways of dealing with it appear.
It is significant that rumors about the concealment of effective techniques and drugs are spread byD. R. Grimes. On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs / PLoS ONE supporters and creators of alternative medicine techniques. So they try to explain why scientists do not recognize unconventional treatments, which do not have scientifically proven data on effectiveness. For example, such ridiculous means asM. Shermer. Cures and Cons / Scientific American magnetic mattress pad or peptide crocodile squirrel.
In reality, they certainly don't work. This does not stop "truth-tellers" from selling their natural medicines and miracle pills.
The conspiracy of the pharmaceutical giants is statistically impossible
Estimated J. Bilfield. Big Pharma & Big Lies: The Hidden Cancer Cure / The Psychology of Extraordinary Beliefs researchers, the number of participants in the Big Pharma conspiracy should be more than 700 thousand people. The existence of such a ramified and secret agreement is simply impossible mathematically. Too many people have to be “on the topic”. So the information leaked out quickly enoughD. R. Grimes. On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs / PLoS ONE would be in the media and scientific publications.
For example, a conspiracy of doctors and pharmacists to prolong the coronavirus pandemic was going to become common knowledge very quickly. The likelihood of someone spilling out or otherwise divulging a secret would increase to 50% in just 10 weeks after the first infections.
Big Pharma's conspiracy theory distracts people's attention from real problems
Vaccination helpedM. Shermer. Cures and Cons / Scientific American to defeat most infectious diseases, and medicines have saved many lives. However, this does not prevent the supporters of the theory from considering their conclusions convincing.
The arguments of conspiracy theorists are irrational, based on a misinterpretation of reality, ignoring statistics for the sake of special cases, or simply erroneous. Most often, Big Pharma's opponents believe in several conspiracy theories at once and live in their own reality, so it's almost impossible to convince such people.
Unfortunately, conspiracy theorists divert public attention from the real problems of pharmaceuticals. For example, fraud large companies or the existence of drugs with low efficiency.
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