Wednesday, March 4, 2020

MEGA-PHARMA MARCHES ON

3-2-20    “How do you ensure a story has a fairy tale ending?  You write the ending yourself of course,” David Bandurski, the co-director of the China Media Project, an independent research, fellowship and exchange program in partnership with the Journalism & Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong, pointed out.
“So it seems that while we all wait to see how Covid-19 fares in the rest of the world, the verdict is already out on the epidemic as a major show of resolve on the part of the Chinese Communist Party. The story has already been written,” he said.
“According to the Xinhua News Agency release on the book, it ‘collectively reflects General Secretary Xi’s commitment to the people, his sense of mission, his far-reaching strategic vision and outstanding leadership as the leader of a major power,’” Bandurski added.  https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/chinas-ruling-elite-stumbles-into-a-disaster/
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1-24-2019  The chairman of a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee on the approval of new opioids says the agency is bowing to the influence of big pharmaceutical companies who want new powerful new opioids, and ignoring the danger of the drugs to Americans, 72,000 of whom died of overdose in 2017.
Anesthesiologist Raeford Brown told the Guardian that a war is now raging within the FDA over the agency’s policies and practices when reviewing and approving painkillers. Some are pushing for tougher approval guidelines for opioids, while others believe that big drug companies should be granted the chance to bring new drugs to market. Brown says the FDA has failed to learn from its own mistakes, and continues to ignore the abuse risks of new drugs….
The most alarming part of the Guardian report is the idea that a crucial aspect of the FDA–the part that protects patients from harm from dangerous opioids–has effectively been privatized. A legal change in the 1990s allowed for more industry funding, and now the FDA division that approves new opioid drugs receives 75% of its funding from the industry.   https://www.fastcompany.com/90296853/fda-advisor-opioid-approvals-are-controlled-by-big-pharma
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1-16-2015  Big Pharma’s top eleven corporations generated net profits in just one decade from 2003 to 2012 of nearly three quarters of a trillion dollars – that’s just net profit alone. The net profit for 2012 amongst those top eleven amounted to $85 billion in just that one year. The majority of these largest pharmaceuticals are headquartered in the US – including the top four, Johnson & Johnson (#39 on Fortune 500 list), Pfizer (#51), Merck (#65) and Eli Lilly (#129) along with Abbott (#152) and Bristol Myers Squibb (#176). The healthcare research company IMS Health projects worldwide sales of Pharma drugs to exceed one trillion dollars by 2014. With that kind of obscenely powerful money to throw around, what Big Pharma wants, Big Pharma nearly always gets.
Just as the oligarchs buy, own and control national governments to do their sleazy bidding, Big Pharma as an extension of those same oligarchs does too. Perhaps what makes Big Pharma unique in the US is that the industry outspends all others in laying down cold hard cash into its lobbying efforts – another word for bribing governments that includes not only US Congress (and parliaments) but its US federal regulator, the bought and sold Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It poured $2.7 billion into its lobbying interests from 1998 to 2013, 42% more than the second most “Gov. Corp.” bribe which happens to be its sister industry insurance.
And it’s this unholy trinity of the medical establishment (personified by the American Medical Association), embedded insurance industry that wrote Obamacare into law and Big Pharma that makes the United States the most costly, broken, corrupt, destructive healthcare system in the entire world. The structured system is designed and layered with built in incentives at every tier to make and keep people sick, chronically dependent on their drugs for survival that merely mask and smother symptoms rather than cure or eradicate the root cause of disease.  https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-evils-of-big-pharma-exposed/5425382
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1-16-20    China's enormous population is a lucrative market for pharma, and the country is also actively trying to build up its own domestic drug industry. But it's not guaranteed that China will actually abide by the agreement.
Details: The trade agreement would set up patent protections in China that are similar to U.S. law.
  • It would help protect branded drugs from generic competition while they're still under patent protection.
  • Drugmakers could also receive a patent extension if there's a delay during the approval process.
The big picture: This is good news for Big Pharma, especially after biologic protections were recently removed from the trade agreement with Mexico and Canada that's currently making its way through Congress.   https://www.axios.com/us-china-trade-deal-could-be-good-for-big-pharma-be017e4d-8bb2-4d40-9e1d-9e274f396ce5.html
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2-23-2017   Big Pharma Quietly Enlists Leading Professors to Justify $1,000-Per-Day Drugs

As it readies for battle with President Trump over drug prices, the pharmaceutical industry is deploying economists and health care experts from the nation’s top universities. In scholarly articles, blogs and conferences, they lend their prestige to the lobbying blitz, without always disclosing their corporate ties.  https://www.propublica.org/article/big-pharma-quietly-enlists-leading-professors-to-justify-1000-per-day-drugs

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