Big Pharma’s ‘worst of the worst’ of 2014
It’s hard to believe that 2014 is down to the wire.
And it was a year of health care scandals and disgraces that may go down in history — starting with the first full year of that outrage called Obamacare.
It was pretty obvious that this “great” plan to bring health insurance to everyone wasn’t going to work from the start — beginning with a website that crashed and burned.
And even the name, the “Affordable Care Act,” was a joke (on us) from the beginning, as insurance companies are protected from all losses for another two years by a government safety net.
That’s right. We won’t know how high premiums will go until Obama is gone from the White House! Very convenient, don’t you think?
But Obamacare wasn’t the only disgrace I told you about this year.
There were other things taking place that deserve to be mentioned again, as well as receive special “honors” in the 2014 Hall of Shame.
A killer sales pitch
If you’ve watched TV for more than 10 minutes this year, you’ve certainly seen the commercials for the blood thinner Pradaxa. It’s new! It’s improved! Why you don’t need any blood testing with Pradaxa!
How easy is that?
The only problem with that sales message is that the people who know the most about Pradaxa didn’t believe one word of it. Secret documents and emails unsealed by a judge in Illinois revealed that Boehringer Ingelheim employees knew full well that many would still need regular blood testing. And that the bleeding danger increases with a patient’s age. And that for older patients it was much more dangerous than warfarin.
But the company’s marketing department said it would be harder to sell if that information got out. So it didn’t.
And Boehringer made over $2 billion in sales on the drug. And over a thousand people who took Pradaxa may well have died as a result.
The Lipitor lollypop?
Pfizer, still in a deep depression over the expiration of the patent on its risky stain drug Lipitor, hatched a new idea on how to keep bringing in the billions: make Lipitor as easy to buy as candy.
By getting it sold over the counter, it will allow everyone to get their hands on this dangerous med. One that should be considered too risky to take even if prescribed by your doctor!
Pfizer got all its ducks in a row this year to get this insane idea approved.
All it needs now to keep the Lipitor money rolling in is a wink and a nod from the FDA. And soon after that, you’ll find the drug on the shelf at every 7-11.
The 325 mg solution
After three years to “get ready,” Big Pharma finally had to lower the amount of acetaminophen in its prescription drugs to 325 mg this year.
The FDA had been protecting this sacred cow for decades. But it finally admitted that amounts higher than that “are no longer considered safe.” A bigger dose, it said, doesn’t give enough benefit to “outweigh” the risk of destroying your liver.
But wait…what about the zillions of OTC drugs out there — from cold meds to arthritis pills — that contain double that amount? Why isn’t the FDA limiting those doses?
Tylenol Arthritis Pain pills, for example, can be purchased almost anywhere. And if you take just one, you’ve downed 650 mg of acetaminophen!
But, as usual, the FDA doesn’t have an answer for that one. Its only words of advice are if you’re taking acetaminophen, “please be careful.”
The Big Sleep
Belsomra, a new sleeping pill the FDA approved this year, is so dangerous, even the agency is worried.
And even if you never take pill one, you still have to watch out.
That’s because Belsomra works in a “special” new way. It’s so new and so special that no one is exactly sure how those who take this drug will react to it.
But one thing we do know is that anyone who pops a Belsomra to get to seep may not be fit to drive the next day. And the kicker is, they’ll likely have no idea that driving is a really bad idea for them, either.
The FDA calls that “psychomotor impairment.”
And that’s just a fancy way to say there may be a zombie driving toward us on the highway…or sidewalk.
The most terrible secret of all
I first told you about this horror back in April. And of all the things I’ve discovered over the years, this has to be the most awful.
Certain vaccines contain cells and DNA derived from aborted fetuses.
These “ingredients” are in the shingles shot for adults, Varivax (chicken pox) for children, MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), and the polio and hepatitis vaccines.
And nothing your doctor or pharmacy gives you about these shots will tell you that. It’s not on any signs, information sheets, or even the release form you have to sign.
Aside from the shock of hearing what terrible ingredients these vaccines contain, a new study this year found a link between these fetal-cell vaccines and autism. It seems that autism rates jumped significantly each time another vaccine containing these immoral ingredients came out.
Now, while we can’t stop things like this from going on, we can let others know.
So let’s hope that in 2015, this, and all other deep, dark FDA and Big Pharma secrets won’t be able to stay secret for very long.
