by Michael L. Culbert
Sc.D.
Editor of Health Freedom News
Board member of the National Health Federation
In good times and bad you can count on the
US (and global) pharmaceutical industry (Big Pharma, some call
it) to prosper. And why not? Its primary captive, organized
western allopathic— uh, "scientific or "rational" — medicine
is its bridge to the lemming-like dupes and consumers
(patients and the general public) who ultimately pay the bills
for BP’s grossly overpriced pills and potions.
Thanks to Public Citizen’s Congress Watch, we were informed
June 23 that, even though 2002 was not a year to write home
about the American economy, the 10 biggest drug companies
listed in the Fortune 500 actually
saw a 3.5 percent reduction in profits over 2001 — while
tallying a nifty $35.9 billion in take-home.
Before Care packages are sent to the big guys, though, bear in
mind that in 2002 the Fortune 500 units as a whole saw profits
sag a startling 66.3 percent. Thanks, again, to Public Citizen
we learned that despite rickety 2002 the 10 drug giants’
profits, however slightly down, were equal to more than half
the $69.9 billion in profits garnered by the entire Fortune
500!
As a sign that Big Pharma is ever alert, the advocacy group
reported June 23 that the pharmaceutical industry spent a
record $91.4 million on lobbying activities in 2002 while
hiring an army of 675 lobbyists. Spending on lobbying by
the druggies was 12 percent higher than in 2001 while the
actual number of backslapping influence peddlers was up by 4
percent.
Assessed Public Citizen, among the drug industry’s lobbyists
in 2002 were 26 former members of Congress, and 342 of the
lobbyists had ties of one kind or another to the federal
government.
Public Citizen estimates that the drug industry has spent $650
million on lobbying Congress since 1997, including $478
million in direct lobbying efforts and $172 million in federal
campaigns, advertisements, funding
for non-profit organizations (seen by many as "fronts" for Big
Pharma) and "other activities."
While drug industry lobbying has tended to favor Republicans
over Democrats (the current Administration is larded with so
many reps and/or holders of drug company stocks that it seems
at times to be an extension
of the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America
(PRMA), which collectively "speaks for the industry), plenty
of legal cash has gone to both parties.
Hence it is no particular surprise that President Bush picked
Randall Tobias, the former chief executive officer of Eli
Lilly & Co., to ramrod a new program whereby the US (that is,
taxpayers) will provide $15 billion to battle AIDS in Africa
and the Caribbean, but primarily in Africa, where UN figures
(some cast into considerable doubt) have painted a
consistently gloomy picture of more than a dozen countries
bearing such enormous numbers of alleged
HIV infections that it is a wonderment that at the end of each
year there are more people being born in the Dark Continent
than dying in it.
It is questionable whether the former Lilly executive will be
pushing for things that might really help, such as clean
water, nutrition, better sanitation and hygiene all around,
and numerous ways to improve immune systems hobbled by a
plethora of bacterial and fungal infections. But it is likely
that he will find ways and means to unload into Africa the
outrageously expensive and often extremely hazardous
"cocktail" antiviral drugs which, giving the devil his due,
have indeed slashed death rates among the HIV infectees in the
Western
world who can tolerate them.
But we won’t prejudge the outcome.
Even as President Bush was announcing the Tobias nomination, a
number of African companies were expressing interest in the
"oral therapeutic vaccine" V-1 produced heroically by the
upstart Immunitor Corporation Co. in Thailand.
V-1 of course, aside from solidly researched studies
indicating its efficacy in bolstering immunity, decreasing
"viral loads," attacking fungi and helping reverse the
"wasting syndrome" characteristic of much of AIDS in the
world, is anathema to Big Pharma: It is too damned cheap. Of
the 65,000 people in the world "on" the little pink pills by
this summer in 65 countries, more than 40,000 — most of them
Thais — had received the treatments for free. Even when they
paid at roughly cost by Thailand terms the take is about $20 a
month.
Assuming expanded production for profit might even double or
triple the price, V-1 remains the least expensive and most
effective AIDS treatment around just now, and it has the added
virtue of being nontoxic. But you rarely hear about it.
Passing strange, that.
It would be good to see the Gates Foundation, International
AIDS Czar Tobias, and others, take up the cause of V-1. At
home, where Big Pharma’s tentacles also wrap around sectors of
Thai medicine and industry, the international drug companies
have done everything imaginable to thwart, hinder, block and
frustrate the extremely useful invention of pharmacist Vichai
Jirathitikal, who has one of those Buddhistic/moralistic
hang-ups — he can’t understand why people should make money
off dying AIDS patients.
Note in this edition, too, how the vaccine sector of Big
Pharma, like Topsy, "just growed" again last year and keeps
growing.
American hats should be off to United Press
International (UPI) — yes, freed of the press really does mean
something at times — which July 20 published the results of a
four-year probe into the big, bad vaccine business.
UPI’s Mark Benjamin reported that even as the industry since
the 1980s had doubled the numbers of jolting jabs forced on
children up to age 2 to nearly 40, "the annual global market
for vaccines is expected to go from $6 billion to $10 billion
by 2006."
UPI’s survey includes the striking gathering evidence of the
relationship between childhood disorders (autism in
particular) and other defects to the national frenzy to
vaccinate the kiddies. It also notes plenty of adult side
effects, as well.
So vaccines constitute a growth industry all by themselves. It
is aided and abetted by industry-influenced politicos who,
through federal and state legislation, have literally forced
American public school children to get the shots — or else.
Luckily, the ever-crackling Internet is rife with information
from outraged anti-vax parental groups, primarily in the USA
(but the Brits are not far behind) on how there are various
forms in the various states for parents to fill out to keep
their children off the mandated shots for religious or other
reasons.
Hopefully, enough of this exclusionism will occur before
Homeland Security decides that immunization-opposing parents
are threats to the body politic and need to be relocated
somewhere. Guantanamo, say.
