Sorry Joe, Pharma's one of the very few sectors I will not compromise or negotiate on.
1st, there is no such thing as a 'Side Effect'. There are only Direct Effects. Side Effect is weasel speak designed to CYA the maker and distributor's legal liability in Court After the fact.
As to the $Billion spent to get a drug through trials and approved, the tanking, hiding, and misrepresenting of clinical trial data is a byword with Pharma.
The control group requirement for drugs is placebo.
All the drug maker has to show with its trial data is that their drug outperformed NOTHING, a Sugar Pill.
With the entire class of antipsychotic drugs, used to treat the SYMPTOMS of an Opinion of a disease, the control group is often people suffering from withdrawal rebound by being taken off whatever sledgehammer antipsychotic drug they Were on. It's called Washout.
And it is a female dog for mirror imaging psychosis.
So the control group is jonesing at mach 3 or 4 as the active group is beaten into semi slumber acquiescence from the new drug.
BINGO! 'Our New Drug Is SO MUCH BETTER than even WE Ever Imagined. Our subjects outperformed people who were NOT ON ANY DRUG that it would be, well, almost Criminal to deny suffering humanity our drug's obvious, and (grossly rigged) Clinically Proven, (on Our dime) benefits.'
http://psychroaches.blogspot.com/2011/06/sc-judge-calls-j-actions-detestable-so.html
"this Court finds the actions of the Defendants, upon this audience, to be detestable."
"Annual Sales of Risperdal worldwide per annual reports of Johnson & Johnson, Inc.
1994: $0.172 Billion
1995: $0.343 Billion
1996: $0.502 Billion
1998: $0.588 Billion
1999: $0.892 Billion
2000: $1.083 Billion
2001: $1.845 Billion
2002: $2.146 Billion
2003: $2.512 Billion
2004: $3.05 Billion
2005: $3.552 Billion
2006: $4.180 Billion
2007: $4.697 Billion
2008: $1.309 Billion
2009: $1.425 Billion
2010: $1.50 Billion
Total for the period: $29.796 Billion
Testimony at trial indicated that the profit margin for sales of Risperdal was 97% or $28.90 Billion for the period of 1994-2010"
Note; the link to the pdf of that slip opinion is no longer valid, but anyone who would like a copy of it can PM me a valid email and I'll put it in your mailbox.
South Carolina's just one State, but here's the blog's post tag for South Carolina:
http://psychroaches.blogspot.com/search/label/South%20Carolina
Another winner. (they're all beauts)
South Carolina Calls Janssen's Risperdal Defense "If We Lied, Nobody Fell For It."
http://psychroaches.blogspot.com/2015/05/south-carolina-supreme-court-calls.html
Clinical Trials are usually run for 4, 6, or 8 weeks, but the destructive effects of the drug don't manifest themselves as permanent brain and CNS damage perceivable by the naked eye until months down the road.
Welcome to Pharma World, where 'The Benefits Outweigh The Risks'. (That's GSK speak to peddle Paxil.)
Hi, My Name Is Kristi And I Have Tardive Dyskenisia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXPnngZUFLY
This is because the entire Class of these drugs Shrinks the pre-frontal cortex of human brains.
I don't care how big or how small a drug maker is. Almost all of them belong in prison.
What this is just one manifestation of is a problem that is thrashing western society, Capitalism (or at least capitalism with moral principles) and even our systems of government and jurisprudence.
Bad science.
In some quarters, it has become so commonplace as to be considered 'valid', and those tests fit the definition.
Good science (despite iterations of the 'scientific method') does not start with a belief and set out to prove it. It starts with an idea and tries to test whether that may be right. It looks for answers, it looks for data which do not fit the explanations. It looks at all the angles.
Those drug tests don't necessarily look at the whole picture, just the part they are trying to prove.
I was referring to anitbiotics and oncology drugs,. Psychopharmacology is a whole 'nother critter, imho.
As for the whole huge batch of anti-depressant drugs, now being used as painkillers and for other uses, I must note that most of the mass murderers we know medical data about were at one time or another taking prescribed antidepressants. So many of the drugs on my television advertised for "moderate to severe", often primarily skin conditions, have a list of side effects* that would definitely make anyone not obsessed with the original condition stop in their tracks, and that doesn't include the universally depressing commercials about antidepressants.
*I used the term "side effects", but we can call them
unintended effects, or even
additional effects if common enough, but those effects have been accepted in terminology as "side effects", effects other than the intended actions of the drug on the condition for which it was prescribed--although that term is a misnomer.
Yep, some of those trials did not monitor for, nor were the subjects monitored for those effects for nearly long enough. I am glad that my mother who had lost six pregnancies out of nine (three of us made it) discarded the Thalidomide prescribed for her. My sister and I were both born with normal limbs as a result of her obstinance, a trait I have inherited.
I am in my sixth decade, and in reasonable health, and take no medication on a daily basis. Mrs. Joe is in the same boat. We both avoid what we call 'too much doctoring', only going to the doctor when we can't figure out what is wrong and take care of it.
That does not mean we don't avail ourselves of the diagnostics of modern medicine, but most matters of the spirit are not going to be healed by a pill.
If you are unhappy or consistently bummed, figure a way out of it. It can be challenging at times, but it is the only way to find lasting relief. Even small accomplishments can have major effect.
Unfortunately, people have been convinced they have a need to feel happy, be of a certain weight, look a certain way, or never know pain. I don't consider that living, although pain can be a handy symptom to tell you something is wrong. Then you fix that or get it fixed, if it can be.
I must note that before the tobacco was vilified, there was less talk of depression. Funny thing, that evil weed happens to be a stimulant, which aside from pulmonary effects tends to have the opposite effect of alcohol on the body. Unfortunately, not on judgement or coordination, but on vasodilation, blood pressure, etc.--which is why nonsmokers used to ask for cigarettes when they drank a lot. The vasoconstrictor, blood pressure and such effects are the reason people smoked cigarettes after harrowing experiences or even being wounded. It helps ward off shock. I believe one of the effects of tobacco use was as an antidepressant as well.
But with that mechanism for self-dosing to ward off depression removed, increased numbers of people sought relief from pills, and the very fields which once grew tobacco were now used in some places to grow GMO tobacco to produce drugs.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-to-grow-an-ebola-vaccine-with-a-tobacco-plant and
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-figured-out-how-hijack-tobacco-plants-make-malaria-drugs-180960877/https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130201100244.htmIn the meantime someone was selling nicotine gum, patches, etc....
And cases of 'depression' seemed to skyrocket.
So yes, as one who worked in tobacco fields in his youth, I am not a fan of Big Pharma, or the lies that have been and continue to be told about everything from butter to tobacco (a plant with no redeeming medical use according to the experts), or a host of other things.
I think we have the responsibility to be skeptics, to eat what makes us feel good, in quantities which maintain a comfortable weight for us, and do so replete with the knowledge we are not going to live forever.
Yet that does not mean little companies might not have solid ideas, or good discoveries.
If there was a way to make testing of new drugs unbiased and good science, removed from the profit motive, I'd be all for it.
