The Black Informant

With all this talk in the media recently regarding prescription drugs (Viagra causes blindness, Viagra given to inmates, Vioxx, etc.), I decided to provide you with some additional information regarding the pharmaceutical industry as a whole. Check this out:

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The check for $10,000 arrived in the mail unsolicited. The doctor who received it from the drug maker Schering-Plough said it was made out to him personally in exchange for an attached “consulting” agreement that required nothing other than his commitment to prescribe the company’s medicines. Two other physicians said in separate interviews that they, too, received checks unbidden from Schering-Plough, one of the world’s biggest drug companies.

“I threw mine away,” said the first doctor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concern about being drawn into a federal inquiry into the matter.

Those checks and others, some of them said to be for six-figure sums, are under investigation by federal prosecutors in Boston as part of a broad government crackdown on the drug industry’s marketing tactics. Just about every big global drug company — including Johnson & Johnson, Wyeth and Bristol-Myers Squibb — has disclosed in securities filings that it has received a federal subpoena, and most are juggling subpoenas stemming from several investigations. (original article is only accessible via subscription to NYTimes, but a copy can be located here)

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This is not an isolated case! Apparently doctors all across America are given such proposals from the pharmaceutical industry to sell their products to their patients. The following excerpt provides us with yet another example of the dirty deeds of the pharmaceutical industry:

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Dr David Franklin, a former employee of the Warner- Lambert Pharmaceutical Company, has filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that its sales representatives encouraged doctors to prescribe gabapentin (Neurontin) for unapproved uses.

Gabapentin was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1994 for the treatment of epilepsy, including elementary partial seizures and complex partial seizures with impaired consciousness.

Dr Franklin has accused Warner-Lambert’s sales representatives of encouraging doctors to prescribe the drug for pain, bipolar disorder, and attention deficit disorder in children. Unsealed court documents show that some doctors, in exchange for money, allowed sales representatives into their examining rooms to meet patients, review medical charts, and recommend what drugs to prescribe…more

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If you are a black American reading this piece, you should now realize that the calls from our community for “better healthcare” need to be better refined and defined. And there is no doubt that WE have suffered the most from this “under the table” madness. A question that begs an answer is “what kind of meds are being shipped to continents like Africa?”

Activists have been pounding pharmaceutical industries for years to provide cheaper medicine to fight diseases like AIDS; however, very little information is provided that shows us that the medicine that has been in Africa is actually working. At least we here in America have the opportunity to hear about SOME of the side effects of these drugs while we watch cheesy pharmaceutical commercials of a happy couple sailing off into the sunset.

As Americans, we need to erase out of our commercialized mind the mental picture of villagers leaping for joy when a box of pharmaceuticals reach their location. Surely some of these medicines do work, but we really do not know the success rate? The following excerpt from the online book entitled “Death by Medicine” (link will be provided at the end of this piece):

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Another aspect of scientific medicine that the public takes for granted is the testing of new drugs. Unlike the class of people that take drugs who are ill and need medication, in general, drugs are tested on individuals who are fairly healthy and not on other medications that can interfere with findings. But when they are declared “safe” and enter the drug prescription books, they are naturally going to be used by people on a variety of other medications and who also have a lot of other health problems. Then, a new Phase of drug testing called Post-Approval comes into play, which is the documentation of side effects once drugs hit the market. In one very telling report, the General Accounting Office (an agency of the U.S. Government) “found that of the 198 drugs approved by the FDA between 1976 and 1985… 102 (or 51.5%) had serious post-approval risks… the serious post-approval risks (included) heart failure, myocardial infarction, anaphylaxis, respiratory depression and arrest, seizures, kidney and liver failure, severe blood disorders, birth defects and fetal toxicity, and blindness.”47

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Because of the vast amount of information on this subject, I will simply provide you with links that will provide you with additional information. This is definitely a subject that I would like to revisit in the near future. Stay tuned!!

Requiring Drug Companies to Disclose Marketing Expenditures to Physicians

HARD SELL: How Marketing Drives the Pharmaceutical Industry…

Unlawful drug marketing: GlaxoSmithKline & 4,000 doctors Face Criminal Charges in Italy

Prescribing Under the Influence

Massive medical fraud exposed: pharmaceutical company paid doctors to prescribe drugs and run sham clinical trials

Beatrice Newbery describes how some pharmaceutical companies are using conditions in the developing world to promote drugs and not health.

Survey: Drug companies control study results

Death by Medicine