Come back, Big Pharma, all is forgiven

Bashing large Western pharmaceuticals companies is a popular sport on Above Top Secret. Big Pharma is accused of being a kind of rolling conspiracy mill, of deliberately making people sick to sell them drugs, and even of being the willing agent of secret elites with plans to depopulate the world or simply make its citizens stupid and pliable by drugging them.

While such accusations are paranoid nonsense, the Western pharmaceutical industry is surely no consortium of angels. It has long been known to indulge in various forms of wrongdoing and shady practice, such as faking the results of drug trials to make medicines seem safer than they are, or patenting traditional folk remedies from poor countries and then making people in those countries pay through their noses for the same remedies in pill form. In the past, its inflexible stand on patent and licensing rights caused hundreds of thousands or even millions of people in the developing world to die from AIDS and other common infectious diseases, because it made the drugs they needed to save their lives unaffordable or simply unavailable.

Thanks to the work of activist groups in the developing world, supported by concerned people in rich countries, Big Pharma’s international oligopoly has now been officially broken, and Third World drug manufacturers are free to manufacture ‘generics’, drugs that contain the same medicines as their Western equivalents, but are much cheaper because the manufacturers don’t have to pay licence fees to the patent holders (and also, don’t have to cover rich-world manufacturing and distribution overheads). By an agreement under World Trade Organization rules, Third World firms can manufacture and distribute these drugs so long as they are not then marketed in rich countries so as to undersell the products of Western drug companies and eat into their market shares.

Which is good. But sometimes, things happen that make us pine for the days of Big Pharma. Their drugs are expensive, but at least one has a reasonable assurance that the medicine inside the package contains nothing but the ingredients listed on the outside.

They don’t, for instance, have rusty metal hooks inside them.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/75013e95824a.jpg[/atsimg]
The above photograph appeared in one of the biggest national newspapers in my country. A woman had bought some pills at a drugstore in a provincial town. When she got home and opened the packet, she found a rusty hook embedded in one of the pills.

As you can see clearly enough from the photo, the brand-name of this medicine is Bigmet. If you live in Europe, Japan or America, or in any other rich-world country, you won’t find it on your local drugstore shelf. The patent ingredient in Bigmet is metformin, manufactured in the USA by Bristol-Myers Squibb and sold under the brand-name Glucophage. It is probably the most popular oral anti-diabetic medicine in the world.

Also clearly visible in the photo is the name of the manufacturer. Renata is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in... Bangladesh. Their products are available in a number of poor countries in Asia and Africa, including my own.

I’m sure Renata, like any other drug company, does its best to ensure that its products are formulated and manufactured properly, free of any contamination; however, for a number of more or less obvious reasons, it is a lot harder to assure this in Bangladesh than it would be in, say, Japan.

All over the poor world, people benefit from cheap ‘generic’ drugs from local or regional suppliers. The manufacturers of these generics copy formulas developed and marketed by Western drug companies without paying royalties to them. The system represents a rare and significant defeat for Big Pharma, but like all good things it comes at a price. For one woman in a small South Asian town, that price – a rusty metal hook in her diabetes medicine – may have been too high. Perhaps Big Pharma has its virtues, after all.

some links to confirm the story you tell ?

reply to post by Astyanax


Oh You think this kind of fear mongering is gonna work? Are you for real?
Just because people are paranoid, dosn't mean they shouldn't be.
This is just as bad as the razors in apples on holloween B.S.


Oh and popular sport ? WTF?

:facepalm: at your post. Seems the Obamacare bonanza wasn't such a good idea after all, huh?

I'm sorry. I know it sounds mean, but no star fairy for you. I loooooathe these people.

This is a clear example of why you should not trust big pharma:

I do not agree with you're assessment and think it's very un-educated at best. Big Pharma turning around? lmaoo Drugs are coming out consistently that are being turned into lawsuits just as fast as they hit the market. My childs Dr. prescribed her a sinus med the other day.. I went online to check to see if it's under lawsuit yet..hahahahaha it is. Along with pages and pages and pages and pages and pages of other lawsuits as I stated above.

I am a pain management patient. Less then a year ago my Doctor was told that I had to switch from Lortab 10... a low grade narcotic/120 pills costing me 20-30$ a month to Oxycotin 80, High grade narcotic/ 60 pills costing me 860.00$. It doesn't take ATS or anyone else to help me see the conspiracy in that.

If Big Pharma cared sooo much they wouldn't allow our Seniors to take their SS checks and pay for prescriptions and not eat. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Should we talk about the H1N1 that was made and produced under a year? To many cases of people that had their lives ruined over this drug.

Should we talk about the medication they want to give our little girls and now boys to help stop certain cancers that they may or may not get later in life? It turns out for quite a large group of girls they didn't have to wait to become ill later in life.. some lost their lives and others were ruined due to the side effects.

Big Pharma? Angels? Turning over a new leaf? Doing the right thing because the Moral side of Society has started fighting back and making them do the right thing? Are you kidding me?

New drugs if hyped the right way...before the lawsuits set in...WallStreet makes a killing over their new Miracle/Junk wonder drugs.

I'm with the poster above me... no S&F.. I think you need to really go back to educating yourself or find another job. I here their retirement plan sucks! lol

I really do think the title of this thread needs to be changed to: Come back, Big Pharma, I, Me, Astyanax, Forgives you. 1 down, 10billion to go!

The reality is that life expectancy increases year on year throughout the west.
My friend's 80+ mother just died after a long illness and amazing attempts to keep her alive. To be brutally honest, for her sake, I wondered why.
It seems Big Pharma isn't very successful at depopulating. Some of those 3rd world countries where people don't live much beyond 50, would be only too grateful to get their hands on some of the drugs some peeps here so sneeringly reject.

Originally posted by starchild10
The reality is that life expectancy increases year on year throughout the west.
My friend's 80+ mother just died after a long illness and amazing attempts to keep her alive. To be brutally honest, for her sake, I wondered why.
It seems Big Pharma isn't very successful at depopulating. Some of those 3rd world countries where people don't live much beyond 50, would be only too grateful to get their hands on some of the drugs some peeps here so sneeringly reject.

Some things, like antibiotics and emergency procedures, are great. Others, like cancer treatments, are simply terrible. While you can certainly see a rise statistically in life span, much of modern life is lived in a state of constant sickness and side effects. In combination infertility causing GMO foods, cancer rates and heart disease due to food and air quality e.c.t...things are moving along swimmingly. That 80+ mother was here most likely because of antibiotics. It has only been a little over a hundred years since people figured out washing their hands can prevent infections.

I think some of you are missing the point of the O.P. It's acknowledged that big pharma have had their fair share of controversy, but what it's asking (I think) is that you need to consider that the alternatives are not always better and can often-times be worse.

As an example, I worked in a lab last year that liases with a company here in Australia called Mediherb. They are a natural remedy company that produces and imports various herbal products, etc. and who do not do animal testing. They worked quite heavily with our lab and others on our level to try and figure out the active ingredients in some of the natural products they sell as well as how they work. The sales rep for the company used to tell us a huge lot of stories about some of the products they used to get shipped in from suppliers overseas, as well as other brand names. Some of them were just terrible. A lot of the time, their products either wouldn't have what they were meant to have in them (there was one case of a sample of echinacea not actually having ANY echinacea in it at all) or they would have compounds in them that weren't meant to be there and that are known to be very toxic.