Big Pharma and The Real Moral Decline of American Society
We have the pharmaceutical industry to thank for an amazing array of drugs that alleviate suffering, help repair damaged bodies and minds and prolong life.
I myself popped a Lisinopril and a Plavix, along with an aspirin, this morning, which has been a daily regimen since I suffered a mild stroke several years ago. I also take Methotrexate, which originally was a cancer drug, once a week to minimize the effects of rheumatoid arthritis.
These drugs work marvelously, have no side effects of consequence for this otherwise healthy, diet conscious and exercise inclined old fart, and are relatively inexpensive.
My homage to Big Pharma notwithstanding, it is a dangerously underregulated industry that repeatedly commits the most outrageous ethical lapses, some of which constitute outright criminality, and is representative of the real moral decline of American society.
I do not shock easily when it comes to the hijinks of drug companies, but The New York Times did a fine job of blowing my mind the other day with an investigative piece on how drug companies routinely pay doctors to dispense experimental drugs who have been disciplined or convicted of crimes.
The takeout by Gardiner Harris and Janet Roberts focused on Dr. Faruk Abuzzahab (photo), a Minneapolis psychiatrist who gets paid handsomely by pharmaceutical companies to oversee the testing of drugs on patients despite a record of reckless disregard for the welfare of his patients, five of whom died in his care or shortly afterward.
For their part, the drug companies refused to comment. Natch.
The family values crew has yammered endlessly about the moral decline of American society. Their focus is, of course, on same-sex marriage, reproductive rights, smutty library books and Hollywood violence.
But I would suggest that it is behavior like that of arrogant Big Pharma — beholden to obscene profits built on slash-and-burn business tactics and reprehensible actions like those revealed by The Times — that truly represent moral decline.
8 Responses to “Big Pharma and The Real Moral Decline of American Society”
I was shocked the other day that the drug companies get away with paying competitors not to produce cheaper generics, in order to maximize their profits, AND our court system is backing them up in antitrust suits.
Are we headed towards, or already ensconced in a corporatocracy, where consumers are just an incidental ingredient in the marketplace and competition is severely limited by these companies’ political clout????
Shaun,
I wish you could attend the oncology institutional review board with the half day meetings and the 2 feet of documents to review before you claim that the drug industry is underregulated. I have a consulting job with three of them and they are very painful. One of the odd parts is when they realize that physicians have not renewed their paperwork but kept on doing research.
Actually, a better argument is that the drug industry is more like the immigraiton regulation There are many rules and reuglations but the are routinely ignored or followed enough to generate paperwork instead of to really protect people. And just like immigration control, the drug/medical device research and approval control is something that the culture of the government is just not set up to do well.
Adding another 500 pages of regulations to title 21 Code of Federal Regulations will not make things any safer.
superdestroyer:
Thank you for your perspective. It certainly is valid, and more paperwork is not going to right the moral compasses of big drug companies who believe that they are above the law. For them, doctors who harm and kill patients yet nevertheless continue to be paid handsomely to participate in drug trials, are a small price of doing business. I do not expect this situation to change anytime soon.
With Pharma and any other area, the arguments go on about too much/too little regulation.
I can understand the frustration with tons of paperwork. However, nobody has prohibited the companies from hiring staff to help with the tiresome tasks, leaving scientists free to do what scientists do. Doing business does involve costs, and it’s a company’s responsibily to underwrite the costs of doing business according to the law.
On the other side, instead of just complaining, businesses could work with regulators on ways to cut down the number of pages in favor of clarity. I’m sure there are bright people available to help with methods of efficiency and common sense solutions.
The alternative of no regulation is simply too dangerous.
People and their lives do matter.
domajot,
The participating hospitals, clinics, and physicians have to complete a huge amount of paperwork in order to conduct research, used developmental drugs, or used unapproved devices. That is what (at least some) of the money from the drug companies is meant to offset . If a physician opts out (say an oncologist) then they are cut off from all of the experimental drugs for the patients who did not respond to the conventional treatment.
The required paperwork keeps growing because every incident or controversy creates more regulations and thus more paperwork.
The consent forms signed by the patients are upwards of 20 pages now and must list any support received from drug companies along with the intent, risks, alternatives, and protections.
In reading the NY Times article, the drug companies, the sponsors, would not have been happy with the physicians since they were not following the protocols and thus their participation was worthless.
SD-
Dealing with bureucracies and bureucratic paperwork gets out of hand, I’m convinced, because a system is set up in bits and pieces, each new piece adding on to the whole.
No one ever confronts the system as a whole. Everyone just deals (or not) with his little part or assigned task.
Streamlining, especially in the technological age, is possible, I’m sure. It just takes someone, or a group. to step back and confront the monster.
At least, the Pharma companies could assemble a presentation of what the problems are. Then they could deal with the regulators to spiff things up.
Non-compliance should come as no surprise. Step no 1 after making a rule is to create a mechanism for dealing with the breaking of the rule.
No, “evil” corporations are not “the real” moral decline, though there are obvious problems.
Did y’all notice recently that the practice of prescribing EPO and overuse of EPO is being reviewed and is likely to be changed (reduced prescriptions)? Were y’all aware that EPO is the drug that built Amgen (likely from original research done at public expense by the federal government, but EPO is patented by Amgen) and that Amgen is known for issuing, ahem, “rebates” to doctors and clinics who use this drug and bill Medicare for it?
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=epo+medicare+fda
[...] an aspirin, this morning, which has been a daily regimen since I suffered a mild stroke source: Big Pharma and The Real Moral Decline of…, The Moderate Voice » Domestic and international news [...]