The shocking link between the feds and Big Pharma

It’s the type of scam you’d expect to read about in a criminal indictment.

A shadowy front group is established to accept millions in dirty cash. And then it kicks the money back to its parent organization as a so-called “donation.”

But this scheme wasn’t cooked up at an Enron board meeting or by some organized crime syndicate. In fact, it’s being run by our government right now.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has told us for years that it doesn’t accept money from the drug companies. That its only guiding principles are science and what’s best for your health.

But a major medical journal has finally exposed how Big Pharma has spent a fortune influencing — and even directing — CDC policy for years. And we’re now learning the truth about the foundation the CDC created to practically launder millions in drug company cash.

A deal with the devil

“CDC does not accept commercial support.”

You’ll find that disclaimer stamped on just about every recommendation the CDC issues. But there’s only one problem — it’s a complete and utter lie.

In fact, the CDC and the drug companies are now engaged in what Dr. Jerome R. Hoffman, an emeritus professor of medicine at UCLA, calls a “devil’s bargain.”

He’s just one of the medical experts who worked with the journal BMJ to shed light on how the CDC quietly filters a fortune in drug company donations through a nonprofit.

Despite its claims of neutrality, the CDC has long been authorized to accept payoffs from the drug industry. But even Congress realized that a direct financial pipeline between Big Pharma and the CDC looked fishy.

So it established the CDC Foundation — a so-called charity that could collect drug company millions and then kick the money back to the CDC. That way the donations the CDC receives appear to be coming from the CDC Foundation and not the drug makers who actually contributed the cash.

The CDC Foundation website makes no bones about how it “launders” the money it receives. It brags about connecting the CDC with private organizations and about the many millions it’s sent over to the mother ship — the CDC — to “support (its) work.”

But the drug companies aren’t just supporting the CDC through these donations — they’re practically controlling it.

You’ll remember how the CDC kept promoting Roche’s Tamiflu during flu season, even though it’s a dud drug that’s potentially fatal and has only been proven to shorten your flu by a few hours. But CDC head Tom Frieden even made the outrageous and downright untrue statement that Tamiflu could “save your life.”

Of course, BMJ investigators found that the Tamiflu plugs were part of a CDC initiative called the “Take 3 flu campaign.” Step 3, of course, was to take an antiviral like, you guessed it — Tamiflu — if you get sick.

We know now that Roche was bankrolling the Take 3 campaign — all through a “directed donation” routed through the CDC Foundation.

Cash filtered through the CDC Foundation also may have influenced a curious hepatitis recommendation the CDC made a few years ago.

In 2012 the agency suddenly decided that everyone born between 1945 and 1965 needed to be tested for hepatitis C. That’s called cohort screening and most researchers will tell you it’s not good science.

But two years before the CDC called for the screening, its foundation launched something called the Viral Hepatitis Action Coalition. It raked in $26 million from companies like Abbott Laboratories, Merck and Gilead that manufacture hepatitis test kits and treatments.

Of course, that’s really chump change considering that Gilead’s hepatitis C drug goes for $1,000 a pill. Maybe the CDC should have held out for a bigger paycheck.

The CDC is in the middle of what Dr. Hoffman calls a “very bad arrangement” with the drug companies — an arrangement that’s leaving the agency’s credibility in tatters. He thinks it may even take an act of Congress to fix.

Or maybe we can just go back to a simple rule that the CDC and FDA were supposed to operate under — that government agencies should be free of commercial influence.

Sources:

“Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: protecting the private good?” Jeanne Lenzer, May 15, 2015, BMJ, bmj.com