The pharmaceutical industry hasn’t been shown in the best of light over the years. The media has always portrayed Big Pharma as the ‘bad guys’, the villains, the wrong doers...
Is this a case of the media hyping an issue that isn’t as bad and far-fetched as it’s presented to the public?
Well, in my quest to answer this question I spent a few hours on the internet looking up what Big Pharma has been up to.
I’m sharing with you a little bit of what I found. (Prepare to be shocked)
1)During 2003 to 2004, Merck and Co payed the Australian branch of the publishing giant Elsevier vast sums of money to print a ‘fake journal’ for them. This journal mostly contained reprinted articles, about Merck drugs and Merck studies, which showed the company and it’s products in a favorable light. Many of the articles were to do with the osteoporosis medication Fosamax and the infamous killer NSAID Vioxx.
In no article was there a mention that the journal and articles were sponsored by Merck.
What’s wrong in this,one may ask? These articles showed the company and it’s products in a positive light at the same time ignoring the possible dangers of their drugs. The journal was basically a marketing tool for the company. When publishing articles about a drug, the negative aspect of the drug cannot be ignored.
2) In 1996, Pfizer tested an experimental antibiotic Trovan on children in Nigeria. 11 children died after using the drug and 181 other children developed brain damage and arthritis. Trovan was tested on 200 Nigerian children at so-called epidemic camp (there was a meningitis epidemic in Nigeria at the time) in the city of Kano in Nigeria.
Pfizer, in a total violation of all sorts of international laws and ethical guidelines, did not obtain informed consent from the 200 subjects before administering the drug. The parents of these children were not informed that they could opt for their children to be treated with meningitis medication which had already been tested. Pfizer claims that the parents of these children were well aware that their children were to receive the drug. Trovan was banned by both the FDA and the EU in 1997 after reports that it caused liver damage.
This July, Pfizer reached a $75 million settlement with the Nigerian authorities.
3) Something even more shocking:
Merck developed a ‘hit-list’ of doctors who were not pleased with Merck’s drug Vioxx. These doctors were supposed to be ‘neutralized’ according to e-mails sent by Merck employees to each other.
As we can see, the media isn’t totally wrong. Lack of disclosure while publishing articles, absence of informed consent during clinical trials, targeting a vulnerable population during clinical trials, and planning to ‘neutralize’ doctors for not liking your drug....well it’s illegal, unethical, and plain wrong.
Big Pharma does save lives by making life-saving medication, but it somehow doesn’t even begin to compensate for their other activities.
