GSK & Pfizer to merge their Healthcare Operations. Is this to improve patient health? Or is it Unity in Dishonesty, Fraud and Corruption?

Two of the largest and most influential drug companies, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Pfizer are to merge their healthcare operations, whose combined annual sales will reach nearly £10 billion. The deal still has to be approved by shareholders, but as they are more interested in profit than patient health, this is not likely to be a problem.

Earlier this year, GSK took full control of a previously joint operation with Novartis, paying them over £9 billion for its 36.5% stake in their Consumer Healthcare Business.

The merger deals are about selling drugs, as many drugs as possible, for as much profit as possible. Every industry engages in similar manoeuvres, but the merger between drug companies makes particular sense. They all profit from the sale of drugs and vaccines. They all profit from ongoing sickness and disease. But more importantly, they are all leaders in an industry that is regularly, some would say routinely, engaged in

• dishonesty
• fraud
• corruption

So drug companies fit well together!

The evidence for such a devastating judgement on the ethics of the pharmaceutical industry is plentiful, although it has not been well publicised by our governments, or by our compliant media, both of whom have studiously failed/refused to publicise the evidence against this powerful and influential industry.

I have written about this before, in some detail, when outlining the ongoing failure of the Conventional Medicine, so here I will do no more than outline some of the details of this activity over the last decade or so, appertaining just to these two companies.

• 2009. Pfizer, was fined $2.3 billion when it pleaded guilty to misbranding the painkiller, Bextra, with the intent to mislead and defraud, and then promoting it to treat acute pain at dosages the drug regulator, FDA, had previously deemed dangerous. Bextra had been banned in 2005 for safety reasons. It was also found that Pfizer had illegally promoted three other drugs, the antipsychotic Geodon, an antibiotic Zyvox, and an anti-epileptic drug, Lyrica.
• 2012 GSK was fined 400,00 pesos when 14 babies died in an illegal vaccine trial. It was found that doctors had taken advantage of illiterate parents who took their children for treatment, but were pressured and forced to sign a 28-page consent form.
• 2012 GSK agreed to pay $3 billion in civil and criminal liabilities following its promotion of several drugs, failure to report negative safety data, and making unsupported safety claims, particularly for its diabetes drug, Avandia. The company was aware that the drug increased the risk of heart attacks, and congestive heart failure but they withheld this information for 7 years! The company also pleaded guilty to promoting the antidepressant drug, Paxil, for patients under 18 although it had never been approved for that age group. GSK were also found guilty of paying bribes to doctors, with one attorney prosecuting the case saying that the company used every imaginable form of high-priced entertainment and paid millions of dollars in bribes to doctors. One doctor is reported as receiving $275,000 to promote just one GSK drug.
• 2012. Pfizer were forced to pay $60 million after bribing European and Asian health officials to dispense their drugs and vaccines. The fraud involved doctors and public health officials in Bulgaria, China, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Kazakhstan, Russia and Serbia. When the company realised they might be caught they apparently attempted to hide the illicit transactions by burying them in accounting records as 'business expenses'.
• 2014. GSK were ordered to pay $105 million to 44 states for providing it sales representatives with financial incentives to make misleading claims and statements to doctors about its drugs Advair, Paxil and Wellbutrin. The company was sued for deceptive trade practices and violations of consumer law.

So the business practices of both these drug companies seem well suited! These are just the criminal cases in which GSK and Pfizer were involved. There are many others, listed on the page referred to, that have been taken against other pharmaceutical companies. In my book I concluded.

               "And so it goes on. The list of fraud and dishonesty practised by the pharmaceutical companies is a long one, and certainly a continuing one. Those mentioned above are just a few selected examples from recent years. They are not isolated incidents. They have become a regular part of the pharmaceutical business. They form a pattern of behaviour that has continued over many decades. And for every case brought to court there are probably hundreds more that never reach that stage, or which go unexamined."

So this merger has little to do with patient health. It is to do with safeguarding the future profitability of the industry. This has become more necessary as more people realise that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are harmful to health, and so resistance to taking them is increasing. The competitors of GSK and Pfizer is no longer each other - it is falling drug sales, the banning and withdrawal of failed drugs, and the failure over many years now to come up with new 'blockbuster' drugs. So the industry is reforming itself to tackle these problems.

Another problem faced by drug companies is the growing realisation that curing illness and disease is actually bad business for the industry! It is better not to cure disease, to keep patients sick, so that they continue to be drug consumers! 

Goldman Sachs have confirmed this in a recent report, admitting that biotech companies have no incentive to cure illnesses. Their analysis was published in a report entitled, “The Genome Revolution” which looked at whether curing patients was a sustainable business model. Their answer was a clear - "No" - it is not sustainable!

But selling drugs that don't work, better still if side effects cause even more illness, is sustainable. But drug companies are realising that to continue selling them they can continue convincing patients that their drugs and vaccines DO make sick people better when in fact they don't! 

So combining their healthcare operations makes a great deal of sense.

Drug Companies bribing NHS officials to sell their drugs

Pharmaceutical companies are bribing NHS officials in Britain to use their drugs within the NHS. So reported the Daily Telegraph on 27th July 2015.

          "The undercover investigation found that dozens of NHS officials in control of medicines budgets were being paid thousands of pounds by drug companies. It raises questions about whether the health service’s rules on hospitality and financial interests are being followed – and if they need to be tightened.

Is it a matter of public concern that our doctors are prescribing drugs to patients on the basis of bribery?

Well, apparently not! Not to our mainstream media, anyway. The Telegraph must be praised for this piece of investigatory journalism. Yet I write this over 3 months after the newspaper reported this fraudulent activity, and what has happened to the information.

• It has not been picked up by any other mainstream media vehicles.
• It has not been the subject of any comment by the NHS, or by the British government.
• There have been no admissions of guilt, no denials

In other words it has been followed by total silence. There has been no discussion, no consideration of the morality involved. There has been no consideration of the quality of the information obtained by the Telegraph. It has been totally ignored.

The Telegraph evidence alone is clearly a matter of public concern. The fact that nothing has been done following the report is reason for even greater public concern.

The fact that our media is disinterested speaks volumes about its attitude to public health. 

• If pharmaceutical companies issue a public statement about a new drug, a new vaccine, a new treatment, we are bombarded with the 'good' news. 
• If there is news about serious adverse reactions to drugs or vaccines, there is a deafening silence.
• If there is fraud found within the so-called 'science' of conventional medicine, if this fraud has implications on how doctors treat us, and what they treat us with, it appears to be treated by the media as if it has not happened.

Even our 'public service' broadcaster, the BBC, is blind to any news that might place the conventional medical establishment in a bad light. They should have no financial interests in Big Pharma companies. They should have no Big Pharma directors on its board, as with other media corporations. The BBC should be focusing on news that is of interest to its main interest group - the public. There is no good reason for it doing so. 

• Yet it steadfastly refuses to report on the fraud and corruption regularly found within the conventional medical establishment.
• It regularly refuses to report on the damage that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are causing to patients.

Next time your doctor want you to take a drug, or vaccine, ask whether the prescription is based on lavish trips to exotic places or to some other bribe! As one doctor is reported as saying in the Telegraph article.

          “I can only describe it as superb. And all the delegates came back with this glow. Great company, great to deal, you know… Germans always like to show off in superb hotels".

A nice business to be in perhaps? But if the result is that we, as patients, are given drugs on that basis, it is not a good deal for us!

How close are our GPs to the Pharmaceutical drug companies?

The question about doctors being too close to drug companies is recognised as a serious problem. In a Daily Telegraph article on 9^th July 2006, the GMC (General Medical Council) was said to be warning doctors about taking ‘freebies’ from pharmaceutical companies, and to ‘blow the whistle’ on colleagues who were ‘taking bribes’ from drug companies. They were revising their rules to enable such doctors to be removed from the register, and ‘struck off’.

          “The decision to toughen up the rules comes as evidence increases that, in return for promoting their products, some doctors are taking inappropriate gifts and hospitality from the pharmaceutical industry.

The article pointed to a report by the campaign group Consumers International that said doctors were continuing to accept kickbacks, gifts, free samples and consulting agreements in exchange for prescribing or promoting drugs. It said that such inducements accounted for a substantial part of the £33 billion spent on product promotion by the industry worldwide each year.

Despite this, concerns continue. WDDTY reported on 6^th November 2007 that the drug giant Bristol-Myers Squibb (annual sales: $17.9bn) had been handed a $515m fine for mis-selling drugs, inducing doctors to prescribe drugs inappropriately, and setting fraudulent prices on some of its products. It said that the company had been caught making illegal payments to doctors as an inducement to get them to buy their drugs. Doctors had also received ‘consulting fees’ to sit on ‘advisory’ boards and programmes, some of which involved necessary trips to luxury locations. Meanwhile, the company was paying retail and wholesale pharmacies to buy its drugs. It was also encouraging doctors to prescribe its anti-psychotic drug Abilify (aripiprazole) to children when it had been licensed for use only with adults. (The source of this information was the British Medical Journal, 2007; 335: 742-3).

In another WDDTY article, “Bribery: Doctors gifted $100,000 a year to use hip replacement products”, dated 29^th November 2007, Orthopedic surgeons in the US were reported to have received bribes of $100,000 and more every year to use special hip and knee replacement products on their patients. Apparently five manufacturers were fined $311m (£150m) by the US Department of Justice. The companies admitted paying 'many' orthopaedic surgeons 'consulting fees' that ranged from $10,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.  Investigators discovered that the payments had been common practice between 2002 and 2006, and that as well as receiving “consulting fees”, the surgeons were also treated to lavish trips and expensive gifts. (The source of this information was the British Medical Journal, 2007; 335: 1065).

The objectives of the ‘No free meals’ group of doctors is as follows:

     “We are health care providers who believe that pharmaceutical promotion should not guide clinical practice. Our mission is to encourage health care providers to practice medicine on the basis of scientific evidence rather than on the basis of pharmaceutical promotion. We discourage the acceptance of all gifts from industry by health care providers, trainees, and students. Our goal is improved patient care.

     "We aim to achieve our goal by informing health care providers as well as the general public about pharmaceutical industry efforts to promote their products and influence prescribing; provide evidence that promotion does in fact influence health care provider behaviour, often in ways that run counter to good patient care; and provide products that can replace pharmaceutical company paraphernalia and spread our message.

     "We believe that there is ample evidence in the literature-contrary to the beliefs of most heath care providers - that drug companies, by means of samples, gifts, and food, exert significant influence on provider behaviour. 

     "There is also ample evidence in the literature that promotional materials and presentations are often biased and non-informative. We believe that health care professionals, precisely because they are professionals, should not allow themselves to be bought by the pharmaceutical industry: It is time to Just say no to drug reps and their pens, pads, calendars, coffee mugs, and of course, lunch.

These are laudable objectives. However, there appears little evidence that their motives have been generally accepted by the conventional medical establishment.

This article was first published in my e-book, "The Failure of Conventional Medicine".

Is your doctor paid to give you dangerous drugs?

Or, in other words, why isn't your doctor telling you the truth about dangerous, disease-inducing drugs?

Drug companies are now allowed to advertise their drugs in the UK. So getting GPs to prescribe them is good marketing.

The Dr Mercola website has recently published some information about this, appertaining to the USA (where drugs can be advertised directly to the public). They found that $282 million was paid to doctors by drug companies in a single year, and asks whether this is compromising the best interests of patients?

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/12/17/how-much-is-your-doctor-being-paid-and-manipulated-by-the-drug-companies.aspx

You can be sure it is! But by and large, people trust their GPs. So there are important question we should all ask our doctors.

     Why have you been so willing, so consistently, over decades, been prepared to prescribe us drugs that have ultimately proven to be ineffective, and dangerous?


     Why do you trust drug companies who have proven to act so irresponsibly in marketing drugs to the public when so often they are useless, and cause serious disease?


     How can you assure me the drugs you are prescribing today are not equally useless, or dangerous?

As Dr Mercola says, the chances are "your doctor has fallen prey to pharmaceutical marketing tactics. Most doctors simply do not have the time to research each drug, and rely heavily on information from their pharmaceutical reps and from other 'experts', that is, doctors who are receiving significant fees to talk about drug companies".

Some doctors do recognise the problem, and have even formed a group to counter the propaganda and bribes of the drug companies.