Connecting the Big Pharma Dots

Someone on the Dr. Bernstein forum posted a link to the following Seattle Times article which is actually just one story in a series focused on the astounding influence of pharmaceutical companies on the ever increasing amount of preventative treatment in our society. As stated in the article:

You are suddenly sick, simply because the definitions of disease have changed. And behind those changes, a Seattle Times examination has found, are the companies that make all those newly prescribed pills.

The Times found that:

• Pharmaceutical firms have commandeered the process by which diseases are defined. Many decision makers at the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and some of America's most prestigious medical societies take money from the drug companies and then promote the industry's agenda.

• Some diseases have been radically redefined without a strong basis in medical evidence.

• The drug industry has bolstered its position by marketing directly to the health-conscious consumer, leading younger and healthier people to consider themselves at risk and to start taking medications.

While the article is a bit dated, I think it is almost more relevant now.

A related big pharma dot that I wanted to connect to that article is with regards to the following New York Times article which relates how a series of diabetic clinics focused on helping people make lifestyle changes. The article discusses why the clinics had to shut down:

They did not shut down because they had failed their patients. They closed because they had failed to make money. They were victims of the byzantine world of American health care, in which the real profit is made not by controlling chronic diseases like diabetes but by treating their many complications.

When are we going to realize how messed up the situation is and demand that our government, primarily the FDA an NIH get a grip on their sad scientific state of affairs and stop the corporatacracy?

Honestly, it is so self-evident and as I sit here in a hospital with an injured family member it is enough to make you doubt so and double check absolutely everything. I can't sum it up any better then with the following quote by a doctor in the Seattle Times article:

"You can't tell me that three-quarters of my population is sick before I start," he said. "That just doesn't pass the laugh test.

"Our business is in a hard place right now," Welch said. "A lot of docs know it's not right."

It is a complex issue to be sure, but I want to believe we are merely at an extreme and that our system of governance and the scientific process itself will help pull it back a bit towards center before it is too late. Reminds me of the parodied press release, "Cholesterol Theory Wipes Out the Human Race"--hopefully we don't allow ourselves to get much further down the path towards that press release becoming a reality in many different disease dimensions.