Mighty Pharmaceutical Giants Under Attack

Never in medical history the pharmaceutical giants, who reportedly enjoy clout next only to the international arms dealers, have witnessed such sustained assault on their credibility as in recent weeks. (By the way the mysterious silence of the U.N.’s World Health Organization on this issue is intriguing.)

The latest attack was triggered yesterday by an analysis of published and unpublished trials of modern antidepressants, including Prozac and Seroxat, showing they offer no clinically significant improvement over placebos (dummy pills) in most patients. (But doctors said patients on the drugs should not stop taking them without consulting their GPs.)

The Independent reports: “The pharmaceutical industry came under assault from senior figures in medical research yesterday over its practice of withholding information to protect profits, exposing patients to drugs which could be useless or harmful.

“Experts criticised the stranglehold exerted by multinational companies over clinical trials, which has led to biased results, under-reporting of negative findings and selective publication driven by the market, which was worth £10.1bn in the UK in 2006, amounting to 11 per cent of total NHS costs.

“It was the first time researchers – from the UK, Canada and the US – had successfully used freedom of information legislation to obtain all the data presented to regulators when the companies applied to license their drugs. In some cases it had not been made public for 20 years. Drug companies are required by law to provide all data on a drug, published and unpublished, to the regulatory authorities when applying for a licence.

“Professor Mike Clarke, the director of the UK Cochrane Centre, an international collaboration between researchers in 100 countries which has published more than 3,000 systematic reviews of published trials to establish best medical practice, said lack of co-operation from the drug industry was damaging medical care. When we ask for details of a trial the company might tell us nothing.

“If we have only got access to half of the data, when we see evidence that a drug works we don’t know whether to believe it or not. It makes us doubtful – that’s the big worry. The companies are in the business of making profits – but they are also in the business of providing safe, effective health care.”

More here…

Obviously people just can’t go off drugs even though many of these could be dummy pills. It is an addiction/dependence worse than alcohol and smoking because for decades the people have been indoctrinatd into believing in the miracle of these drugs. One can understand the profit motive. But if the industry does not care about social responsibility, then how is it different from ordinary criminals?

And, yes, there has to be some cheaper/credible alternative to drugs/pills even if we find out that they only have a placebo effect. So why have the governments not initiated any research in the field of alternative medicine although the warning bells had begun to ring loud and clear almost a decade or two ago?

Is it because the powerful pharmaceutical industry has friends and wellwishers in the corridors of power who would bail them out in moments of crisis? Or, are we witnessing a new dawn, a beginning of an era, when humanity would experience different forms of healing (in the real sense of the world)?