Making profits from sickness is the name of the game when it comes to drug based
‘health’ care.

Let’s look at the anatomy of the ‘system’.

1. First we create a drug
2. Next we invent a disease that the drug can be used for
3. Then we lobby governments to pay for the drug
4. Now we sell doctors on diagnosing the disease
5. Then we must sell doctors on the need to prescribe the drug

And, hey presto what have you got? Huge profits from drugs for every disease.

For today, let’s look at points number 4 and 5 – the selling part.

Selling doctors, and the public on a given drug is a major undertaking. Whilst
the usual ‘bribes’ for doctors of lavish seminars, holidays, conferences and
dinners are used to good effect, the need to maximize profits goes even further.

In a study published in the British Medical Journal, February 28, 2004, p. 485
the researchers found that only 6% of drug advertising material is supported by
evidence. “A new study of the advertising material and marketing brochures sent
out by drug companies to GPs in Germany has shown that about 94% of the
information in them has no basis in scientific evidence.” “The study, carried
out by the Institute for Evidence-Based Medicine, a private independent research
institute in Cologne, evaluated 175 brochures containing information on 520
drugs, which were either sent by post or handed out to 43 GPs.” The study was
published in Arznei Telegramm (Thomas Kaiser and Peter Sawicki, February
2004;35:21-3).

The advertising material presents distorted images of the drugs’ profiles
including:

1. Medical guidelines from scientific societies are misquoted or changed.
2. The side effects of drugs are minimized.
3. Groups of patient are wrongly defined.
4. Study results are suppressed.
5. Treatment effects are exaggerated.
6. Drug risks are manipulated.
7. The effects of drugs were drawn from animal studies, not human studies.

Such misinformation must surely put patients’ health at risk as doctors tend to
base their treating decisions on the information and advertising material
received from the drug companies.

Pathological Profits, what else could you say?