Conflict of Interests Between Dr. and Drug Company

June 28, 2003

tapa-chemtrails , GaleWildAngel@a... wrote:

Conflict of Interests Between Doctors and Drug Companies -

The entanglement between doctors and drug companies is creating

controversy

in both the public and academic worlds as it becomes clear that the

integrity

of medical research and the prescription habits of doctors are being

influenced.

The close relationship between doctors and drug companies is

attracting

increasing public and academic scrutiny, as drug costs grow ever

higher.

Despite evidence that information from drug company representatives

is often

overly positive, 80 percent to 95 percent of doctors see drug reps

regularly.

Many doctors also receive gifts from drug companies each year.

In the United States an estimated 80,000 drug company

representatives, backed

by more than $19 billion of industry's combined annual promotional

budgets,

are visiting doctors every day.

Evidence has shown that gifts from drug companies influence

doctorâ€™s

prescribing habits and have been associated with an increase in

prescriptions of the

promoted drug. Nonetheless, meals

Forms of Drug Company Conflicts of Interest

Â Â Face-to-face visits from drug company representatives

Â Â Acceptance of direct gifts of equipment, travel, or

accommodation

Â Â Acceptance of indirect gifts, through sponsorship of software or

travel

Â Â Attendance at sponsored dinners and social or recreational

events

Â Â Attendance at sponsored educational events, continuing medical

education,

workshops, or seminars

Â Â Attendance at sponsored scientific conferences

Â Â Ownership of stock or equity holdings

Â Â Conducting sponsored research

Â Â Company funding for medical schools, academic chairs, or lecture

halls

Â Â Membership of sponsored professional societies and associations

Â Â Advising a sponsored disease foundation or patients' group

Â Â Involvement with or use of sponsored clinical guidelines

Â Â Undertaking paid consultancy work for companies

Â Â Membership of company advisory boards of " thought leaders " or

" speakers'

bureau "

Â Â Authoring " ghostwritten " scientific articles

Â Â Medical journals' reliance on drug company advertising, company

purchased

reprints, and sponsored supplements

and expenses for travel or accommodation for industry-sponsored

educational

meetings, which often highlight the sponsorâ€™s drug, are commonly

accepted by

doctors.

The industry has recently implemented a voluntary code to address

relationships with health care professionals. However, many question

the effectiveness of

such codes considering that if a company flies 300 doctors to a golf

resort,

reimburses their costs, pays them to attend, and educates them about

the

company's latest drug, in order to train them to become members of

the company's

stable of paid speakers, the entire activity would be in compliance.

Further, many professional societies rely on industry sponsorship and

their

medical journals often rely on industry-funded research trials,

sponsored

research tends to yield results that are favorable to sponsor much

more often

than non-industry studies.

The many conflicts of interest have led one expert to say that the

medical

profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry.

Moreover, many experts agree that the entanglement between drug

companies and

doctors is part of the reason for ever-increasing drug costs and part

of the

reason why attempts to control costs are undermined.

British Medical Journal May 31, 2003;326:1189-192 (Part 1, Full Text

Article)

British Medical Journal May 312003;326:1193-1196 (Part 2, Full Text

Article)

Gangsters In Medicine? Author: Thomas Smith Valley@h...

The Journal of the American Medical Association recently reported

that as

many as 106,000 deaths occur annually in US hospitals due to adverse

reactions to

prescription drugs that are properly prescribed by physicians that

use them

as directed by the drug companies.

Even worse, the National Council for Patient Information and

Education

reported that an additional 125,000 deaths occur annually due to

adverse reactions

to drugs that the physician never should have prescribed. In these

deaths the

doctor did not follow the instructions on proper administration of

the drugs.

For example, Glucophage, a diabetic oral hypoglycemic, should never

be

prescribed for patients with Kidney disease or Congestive Heart

Failure because it can

cause fatal Lactic Acidosis in these patients. A warning label is

prominently

placed on the medication container to warn of this potential misuse.

However, JAMA reported that almost 1/4 of the patients who had been

prescribed Glucophage had Kidney damage or Congestive Heart failure

or both.

The annual death toll from synthetic prescription drugs, both from

the

correctly prescribed and the incorrectly prescribed, amounts to about

231,000 deaths

every year. To put this into perspective, this is the equivalent of a

world

trade center disaster every week for over a year and a half or the

crash of two

fully loaded 747 aircraft every day of the year.

No information was reported on the number of outpatient and doctor's

office

deaths caused by these very same drugs when prescribed by these very

same

doctors. The reported figures alone, however, make drug deaths caused

by physicians

the third leading cause of death in the US. It is far ahead of

accidents,

drunk driving, homicides, airline accidents, as well as all other

disease with

the sole exceptions of cancer and heart disease.

Many of these drugs responsible for the death statistics cited are

diabetic

drugs. None of these drugs cure or even were intended to cure

diabetes. During

the time a patient is on the drugs his body is suffering great damage

due to

the uncontrolled progress of the disease. This is in addition to the

risk and

damage caused by the drug itself.

According to Dr. Mendelsohn, author of " Confessions of a Medical

Heretic " ,

2.4 million unnecessary operations are performed every year and they

cost over

12,000 lives.

When the records of six New York hospitals were examined it was found

that

43% of the Hysterectomies that were performed were medically

unnecessary.

No one should ever submit to any surgical procedure without first

obtaining

several unrelated medical opinions, at least not here in the United

States.

Women are particularly vulnerable to this type of victimization.

Disease in America.

According to the World Health Report 2000 the United States ranks

twelfth,

that is second from the bottom, in their thirteen country survey of

sixteen

available health indicators. We are dead last for low birth weight

and neonatal

and infant mortality. We rank between ninth and twelfth for all life

expectancy

categories between one year and 40 years. Another study ranked the

United

States as fifteenth in the twenty-five industrialized countries

studied.

Diabetes, Hypoglycemia, Hyperinsulinemia are so widespread in the

United

States that it is estimated that over half the population exhibits

one or more

symptoms of these life destroying diseases. Symptoms of Adult onset

diabetes are

now being routinely noted in six year old children. Obesity and it's

Failure, a

symptom of advanced Type II Diabetes, remains in the top three killer

diseases in

the Westernized countries.

Although the cause and cure for Type II Diabetes and related

endocrine

failure has been increasingly well understood in the scientific

community for the

last forty years, this disease is not being cured by todays orthodox

treatment

regimens. In order to find a cure it is necessary to seek alternative

medical

approaches to this disease.

Some of the economics of Medicine.

A large part of this medical disaster that the United States

currently

experiences is due to the way our medical community is organized.

Basically it is

not organized to heal and to cure disease; the medical community,

particularly

at its upper levels, is a commercial venture organized to make money

for its

practitioners.

Although the record of the United States Medical community in the

cure of

disease is deplorable, the same cannot be said for its ability to

produce income

and profit. For example, for the top fifteen pharmaceutical

companies,

including such names as Abbot, Wyeth, Hoffman-La Roche, Merck and

others, the second

quarter revenue for 2002 was reported as $63,520.6 million and the

corresponding reported income was 11,731.8 million respectively. This

is second only to

the defense industry in the United States.

In 1997, the latest year for which we have the figures, the earnings

of

physicians were reported by Broad as averaging around $200,000 per

year. The lowest

reporting specialty, Rheumatology reported $158,500 and the highest,

cardiovascular surgeon, reported $363,300. When examining the

numbers, we noted that

the high salaries seemed to be concentrated in members of the AMA.

Those

belonging to less powerful trade unions did not fare nearly so well

even though they

did most of the actual patient care work. For example, the median

staff

salary of registered nurses was $35,256 US.

The Cardiac surgeon, for example, does nothing whatsoever to cure

cardiac

disease. Three to five percent of the heart surgery patients die on

the operating

table. Cardiac surgery provides no better three year survival rate

than no

treatment at all. A Harvard survival study of 200,000 patients

revealed that the

long term survival rate of patients subjected to surgery was no

better than

the survival rate of those that had no surgery.

Of course, your cardiac surgeon will not tell you this when you need

to make

a decision on whether or not to elect cardiac surgery.

Never in history have so many accumulated so much wealth for

providing their

customers or clients or patients with so little real benefit.

Exceptions to the rule.

Many doctors of integrity are as much victims of the system as are

their

patients. Today's doctor is not free to treat disease as his

conscience dictates.

He is forced to administer approved protocols whether they are known

to work

or not. To deviate from these approved protocols invites law suits,

peer

criticism and censure from State medical licensing boards.

This writer knows of two local doctors who tried to buck the

establishment

and really help their patients. Both lost their license to practice

medicine.

One is currently working as an administrator in a California hospital

and the

other has started a nutritional clinic.

Takeover of the American medical Association.

This sad state of affairs is directly traceable to the takeover of

the

American Medical Association by the Carnegie and Rockefeller

foundations in the

early part of the twentieth century.

At the turn of the century the medical community was in a sad state

of

disrepair. There were no qualifications to become a doctor. If one

wanted to be a

doctor it was only necessary to hang out a shingle and start the

practice of

medicine. Medical schools were poorly financed, often taught

contradictory

medical philosophies and had little impact on the practice of

medicine. In 1910 the

American Medical Association, toadies AMA, was on the verge of

bankruptcy. Few

doctors belonged to it and even fewer paid any attention to it.

Quackery of

all kinds was rampant. The market was flooded with fake cancer cures

and 80

proof liver tonic.

It was in this environment that Rockefeller and Carnegie moved in and

bought

the AMA and then used it to take control of the entire United States

medical

establishment. In 1910, Henry Prichard president of the Carnegie

foundation,

bought control of the AMA for the sum of $10,000. He then financed

the

publication of the Flexner report, as it was then called, to gain

popular support for

the changes that were to be made in the medical community. With

public backing

secured by the publication of the Flexner report, Carnegie and

Rockefeller

commenced a major upgrade in medical education by financing only

those medical

schools that taught what they wanted taught. Predictably, those

schools that had

the financing churned out the better doctors.

In return for the financing, the schools were required to teach

course

material that was exclusively drug oriented. That is why today our

doctors are so

heavily biased toward synthetic drug therapy and know little or

nothing about

nutrition.

Dr. David Edsall, former dean of Harvard medical school, said " I was,

for a

period, a professor of Therapeutics and Pharmacology, [at Harvard]

and I knew

from experience that students were obliged then by me and by others

to learn

about an interminable number of drugs, many of which were valueless,

many of

them useless, some probably even harmful.... "

For a time, these changes actually improved the practice of medicine

in the

United States. Then, as the distorted medical curriculum began to

churn out

doctors whose only concern was prescribing synthetic drugs, things

began to

deteriorate into what we see today.

Today the average medical doctor receives 3 hours or less training on

nutrition despite the fact that our bodies are constructed entirely

of what we eat

and drink. Toadies doctor receives much of his ongoing education from

detail

men. The detail man is the drug company salesman whose job it is to

teach the

doctor how to use the latest drugs.

Treatment instead of cure.

Even with all of this history the medical doctor retained a great

deal of his

autonomy through the 1930's and into the late 1940's. In 1949 another

major

change took place in the medical community that set the stage for the

disaster

we see today. It was in 1949 that the medical community reorganized

itself

into the competing medical specialty groups we see today. Prior to

1949 a doctor

was a doctor; he dealt with all disease and injury. After 1949 this

was not

so.

The reorganization established many of the specialties that we know

today. It

was then that the Cardiac Specialist, the Endocrinologist, the

Hepatic and

Biliary Specialist and many other professional specialty groups were

formed. The

symptoms of the then raging epidemic of Type II Diabetes were divided

among

the specialty groups so that each group had their own set of

proprietary

symptoms.

The story given out for the reorganization was that it would help to

focus

more attention on the then current Diabetes epidemic. However, in

practice it

caused the entire medical community to treat their own proprietary

symptom set

and nobody focused on curing the disease anymore. This was the origin

of the

" treat the symptom " and " ignore the cause " philosophy that now

dominates the

entire medical community.

This was the turning point event that led to the removal of the word

" cure "

from the medical vocabulary. Today, if you mention the " c " word

around your

doctor he will usually glaze over and pretend not to hear you. He

only responds

to the word " treatment " .

Under the Rockefeller and Carnegie influence their pharmaceutical

firms

started to pour out the vast array of synthetic drugs that the

doctors trained to

their medical school standards now prescribed almost to the exclusion

of any

other remedies. Among the first drugs to be marketed this way were

the oral

hypoglycemic agents. They were deliberately designed to treat the

symptom while

not curing the disease.

Insurance fraud.

Since the name of the medical game was money, a means had to be

devised to

provide the patient with money that could only be used to pay for

approved

medical treatment. Enter the insurance company concept. Today

employees have, as an

important part of their remuneration for their work, a health

insurance

policy. This health insurance policy does not pay for all health

related needs; it

only pays for those health related services that are approved. These,

of

course, are the synthetic drug therapies that are known to work

poorly, if at all.

In order to secure effective medical treatment from the alternative

sector of

the economy the patient must pay for it himself; insurance companies

specifically exclude virtually all alternative treatment. One wonders

why so many

continue to pay for an insurance program that cannot, even in

principle, be of any

real benefit to them.

Government coercion in medical practice.

In the ordinary course of events, good medicine would eventually

drive out

bad medicine. As more and more people discover ways to maintain and

improve

their health, without drug therapy, they will simply abandon bad

medicine and

resort to alternative therapies.

Indeed, this is happening. Also happening is a concerted government

effort to

discredit and declare unlawful those effective therapies that

represent the

greatest threat to orthodox medicine. In the last fifty years many

effective

cures have been developed for many of the major killer diseases that

we have. In

each instance the developer has been branded a quack, his business

has been

ruined and in some cases he has been sent to jail.

Even with outright governmental attacks on those that would promote

effective

therapies in America, the tide is turning. More and more Americans

are waking

up to the reality of our medical community. More and more they are

finding it

to be a fraud and they are turning to less conventional treatments

and

modalities.

Informed Americans that require effective medical treatment for

anything more

serious than a head cold are turning away from orthodox drug quackery

in

droves. The medical community is trying hard to make it illegal to

refuse their

treatment. A major effort is currently underway (Codex) to severely

restrict the

availability of nutritional supplements to those that use them

throughout the

world. Our government is seriously considering mandatory vaccination

programs.

Many believe that our Food and Drug Administration, FDA, represents

the

American people and that the FDA acts to insure that our food and

drugs are safe

and effective. Nothing could be further from the truth. The FDA acts

entirely to

restrain and manage competition between and among those that

manufacture our

food and drugs. They do this only for the purpose of minimizing

competition in

business. Rockefeller is famous for proclaiming the only sin is

competition.

Willy Ley, a former head of the FDA, said it best when he said " What

the Food

and Drug Administration does and what the public thinks that it does

are a

different as night and day " .

Today in America the practice of medicine is not free. It is one of

the most

tightly controlled commercial enterprises in the world. That is why

it

produces such extraordinary income for it's favored and such misery,

disease and

death for its victims.

What to do.

Given the growth of the medical monster that ate the United States,

what can

we who live here do to effectively manage our own health.

Perhaps the single most important thing that we all must do is to

recognize

that our health is our most important possession. We have no choice

but to

accept total responsibility for our own health. To leave such an

important

consideration to someone who clearly has much to gain by lying to us

just does not

make sense. Typically, we buy our cars and houses with a great deal

more wisdom

than we bring to the doctor's office when we go there.

The modern orthodox medical community treats symptoms; they do not

cure

disease. When you visit the doctor, it is perfectly in order for you

to ask bluntly

whether or not the treatment he wants to give you will cure the

disease you

have.

Some years ago, when I had a serious case of Type II Diabetes, I

asked my

doctor that question about the treatment he offered me. First he

pretended he did

not hear me. When I persisted and made eye contact and repeated the

question

he replied " this is the prescribed treatment " . Such an evasive answer

to such

a direct question sent me to the library where I did the research to

get a

better answer. I quickly discovered that the drug he offered me would

not only

not cure the disease, but that it was guaranteed to put me on the

road to

becoming an invalid long before my time.

Fortunately I rejected his treatment. I went on to search the

scientific

literature where I quickly found what I needed. It had nothing to do

with

synthetic drugs. It took me about 3 1/2 months to fully reverse my

diabetes. That was

seven years ago. The disease remains in full remission to this day.

There is one important caveat that must be mentioned at this point.

If you

are currently under a doctors care and are dissatisfied with the

results you are

getting, do not just stop taking the prescribed medication. Get your

doctor,

or another doctor if yours will not cooperate, to help wean you off

prescription drugs and to help you to devise a workable alternative

therapy. Many of

these synthetic drugs will produce serious side effects if they are

abruptly

discontinued. When I had the problem I had not yet taken prescription

medication.

After accepting full responsibility for your own health, the second

most

important consideration is to do your homework and learn about the

disease or

disability that you have. Buy books, attend seminars, to

newsletters,

search the internet, learn about what it takes to actually reverse

the disease

that afflicts you. Investigate alternative medical practitioners.

Many

Naturopaths and Chiropractors can be of great help in actually curing

disease. Do not

fall for the idea that only doctors are smart enough to understand

these

things.

Look for that unusual doctor that will risk really trying to help

you; and,

realize that he is taking a substantial risk when he does so. In

other words,

do the best you can to find something better for yourself than what

your doctor

offers. Help each other. If you discover something important, don't

be afraid

to share the information. Be vocal when government organizations

attempt to

restrict or deny your access to natural nutritional supplements.

If you are fortunate to find a doctor with this kind of integrity,

understand

the importance of what you have found and give him all of the support

that

you can give. There is a medical doctor in California, we will call

him Doctor

Q, that refused to compromise his integrity in his practice of

medicine. He

ended up in jail, put there by his fellow doctors. His patients got

together, got

him out of jail and had a special bill passed in the State

legislature to

protect his practice of medicine. Today he still runs a flourishing

practice

where he ministers to patients from all over this country. He is

actually curing

disease not just treating it.

Third, after accepting responsibility for your own health and

becoming

informed, recognize that medicine is a business. Your doctor is a

paid consultant

just like your electrician or plumber and he is listed in the same

yellow pages.

You have every right to get the information for which you are paying.

When

your doctor retreats into arrogance and refuses to provide direct

answers to

direct questions, consider getting another doctor. There really are

many safe and

effective therapies that go far beyond drugs. However, we must demand

them on

the firing line, in the doctor's office, when we need them.

Thomas Smith is a reluctant medical investigator having been forced

into

seeking a cure for his own Diabetes because it was obvious that his

doctor would

not or could not cure it. He has published the results of his

successful

Diabetes investigation in his special report entitled " Insulin: Our

Silent Killer "

written for the layman but also widely valued by the medical

practitioner. This

report may be purchased by sending $25.00 US to him at PO Box 7685

Loveland,

Colorado 80537. He has also posted a great deal of useful information

about

this disease on his web page www.Healingmatters.com He can be reached

by

telephone at 970 669-9176.

Medical Research or Drug Company Secrets?

Ideally, medical research should be independent and should receive

its

support from non-industry sources, such as governments. However,

funding for such

research can be hard to come by, if not non-existent.

In reality, drug companies have become the largest sponsors of

medical

research. The research produces valuable information, but a recent

report voiced

concern that the sponsors' influence and control over the studies may

represent a

conflict of interest.

Pharmaceutical companies represent such a large portion of medical

studies

that results could inappropriately impact healthcare policies,

leaving them in

favor of drug treatment rather than non-drug alternatives. At the

same time,

this research " monopoly " could make it harder for alternative

opinions to be

heard, thus furthering the use of drugs and possibly causing

important new routes

of research to be overlooked.

The report noted that pharmaceutical companies spend more time on the

generation and dissemination of information than they do producing

medicines. Though

this is partly to satisfy licensing requirements and protect patents,

companies also use this data to promote sales of their medications.

The authors worry

that as independent sources of information decrease, prescribers will

become

reliant on drug-company representatives for information on

medications.

The report, which focuses on multinational drug firms, brings up the

fact

that medical research results are selectively released and often kept

secret from

the public. Only select data is made publically available through

papers in

medical journals, presentations at medical conferences or product

labeling.

One author stated that when results support a product, there is ample

information released about the product and its functions. Conversely,

if a product

does not perform well in a study, information is often hard to come

by.

Publication is a major way that research studies can raise awareness

about a

drug, however publishing information that may cast doubt about a drug

could

cause product sales to go down. To increase drug sales, it is

necessary that the

publication show the product in a positive way. As a possible result

of this,

the report states that trials with negative results tend to be

published much

later than those with positive conclusions.

Additionally, authors note that company-sponsored studies tend to

have

results that favor the sponsor's product much more than those

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Conflict of Interests Between Dr. and Drug Company

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