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

[Guest guest]

NewsTarget.com

Originally published March 10 2006

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.

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