Side effects, generic drugs and glucosamine sleight of hand (satire)

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Health Roundup: Side effects, generic drugs and glucosamine sleight of

hand (satire)

Posted Friday, March 10, 2006 by Mike Adams

 

 

 

 

Health Roundup: Side effects, generic drugs and glucosamine sleight of

hand (satire)

 

Following the well-publicized fact that anti-inflammatory prescription

drugs have killed at least 60,000 Americans, and that NSAIDs

(over-the-counter painkillers) kill at least another 16,500 each year,

combined with the new realization that ADHD drugs are now killing

children, Sidney Taurel, Chief Executive of Eli Lilly & Co., one of

the largest drug makers in the world, had this to say: " There's too

much talk about the side effects of drugs! "

 

I'm not making this up. Taurel claims that really good drugs are being

delayed in the approval process because -- get this -- too many people

are concerned about their side effects. Gee, I suppose if we all just

agreed that heart attacks, strokes, muscle wasting, liver damage,

kidney failure, brain fog, nutritional deficiencies and death were of

no consequences, then we could get all these drugs approved lickity split!

 

The arrogance of Big Pharma knows no bounds, it seems. The chemical

holocaust taking place right now in the United States due to the mass

over-consumption of dangerous, medically unnecessary, and fraudulently

approved prescription drugs is apparently of no concern to this

industry. Its leaders simply want to find more ways to drug more

people with fewer regulatory " hassles " such as paying attention to

side effects.

 

Taurel also said he wants tort reform, meaning he wants caps on

damages awarded to victims harmed by drug side effects. Why not just

throw in blanket legal immunity for all drug companies, too? After

all, they ARE trying to find the cure for cancer, aren't they?

 

(The following paragraph is pure sarcasm...) I agree with Taurel that

we should stop talking about these negative side effects. We should

also stop hassling auto manufacturers over defective brakes that get

people killed. While we're at it, we should stop giving food

manufacturers grief over using carcinogenic ingredients in their

processed food products, too -- just let 'em use anything they want.

We can trust 'em , can't we? Let's face it: Corporate America has your

best interests at heart, and we should just let these companies

operate with impunity so that they can get down to the business of

helping everyone.

 

Taurel says we should focus more on the BENEFITS of the drugs. Like

how much money they make shareholders, for example. Or, perhaps, how

prescription drugs are good for the economy because they create new

job opportunities for doctors, nurses and surgeons to treat all the

dangerous drug side effects.

 

How much of a better deal does Taurel want than today's

industry-friendly FDA, anyway? It's hard to get any more lenient on

drug companies than the FDA is right now. That's why some people call

the FDA the, " Federal Drug Advocates. "

 

Yet another clever way to boost Big Pharma profits

Always pondering ways to make the drug market more lucrative for large

pharmaceutical corporations, the FDA is now floating the idea of

charging application fees to manufacturers of generic drugs. This, in

turn, would make it more expensive for generic drugs to receive

approval, hiking their price and limiting their price advantage vs.

brand-name drugs. The end result? Greater brand-name drug sales

(which, of course, is what the FDA is ultimately after).

 

The whole problem with corruption and fraud at the FDA today is

largely due to the fact that the agency is largely funded by

brand-name drug makers through drug application fees. Thus, drug

companies are the FDA's " customers. " But the FDA is supposed to be

regulating these companies, not serving them like royal guests at a

five-star hotel. And this idea of accepting even more money from more

drug companies would only compromise the integrity of the agency even

further.

 

The agency, of course, is spinning this whole proposal as a huge

benefit to consumers, saying it would help them approve generic drugs

more quickly, thereby saving U.S. employers hundreds of millions of

dollars in lower drug costs. Of course, those same corporations could

save BILLIONS if they invested in nutrition, prevention and natural

health instead of drugs and surgery, but that's another story.

 

Clearly what we need is genuine FDA reform, not making the FDA even

more addicted to industry money. But don't expect to see any real

reform efforts until there's a changing of the guard in Washington, as

the current administration is quite cozy with Big Pharma.

 

Researchers now try to discredit glucosamine chondroitin sulfate

supplements

Always working hard on new ways to discredit nutritional supplements,

conventional medical researchers have now found a clever way to attack

nutritional supplements used to treat joint pain. In what can only be

called a fraudulently designed study, the Glucosamine-chondroitin

Arthritis Intervention Trial (GAIT) compared these nutritional

supplements with Celebrex, a prescription drug that only treats joint

pain symptomatically and does nothing to rebuild cartilage or other

tissue.

 

In other words, the study compared what is essentially a short-term

painkiller with nutritional supplements that obviously take time to

support the rebuilding of tissue. When Celebrex turned out to produce

faster pain-reducing results, the mainstream media essentially

declared glucosamine supplements to be useless.

 

It's nonsense, of course. All smoke and mirrors. Or, in this case, a

comparison of apples and oranges. Masking pain with a painkiller is

always fast. But if you really want to solve the underlying problem,

you need good nutrition, not just dangerous chemicals that also cause

heart attacks and strokes as side effects, by the way.

 

By the way, the study also used a low-dose, cheap version of

glucosamine known to have poor assimilation. That's how the majority

of so-called " alternative " studies are conducted: Researchers just

happen to coincidentally use synthetic, low-dose vitamins or

supplements, all the while acting like they're conducting real science.

 

This isn't real science. It's a charade. And once again, the

mainstream media bought the whole thing hook, line and sinker.

 

If you're going to compare glucosamine with Celebrix, why not run

another trial and compare calcium with crack? I can see the results

now: " 100% of the patients reported feeling better on crack.

Therefore, calcium is useless. " It's exactly the same stupid logic.

I'm convinced many researchers are actually ON crack.