Captured: How Big Pharma Lobbying and Research Bias Shape American Medicine

The United State congress is corrupt, especially in reference to the Pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceutical companies lobby Congress and buy influence in government organizations and institutions such as the FDA. The FDA has no oversight organization except congress and Congress has been bought out by the drug, insurance, and other medical companies. 1 It is to the point that Congressional speeches are written by Big Pharma lobbyists who also fight against generic drugs.

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If you have ever wondered why the cost of prescription drugs in the United States are the highest in the world or why it's illegal to import cheaper drugs from Canada or Mexico, you need look no further than the pharmaceutical lobby and its influence in Washington, D.C.

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According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, congressmen are outnumbered two to one by lobbyists for an industry that spends roughly $100 million a year in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses to protect its profits. 2

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The tactics used by sales representatives are only part of a much broader problem with the drug industry. The whole drug process is being questioned by activists, lawyers, and ethical healthcare professionals alike. The process starts with how clinical trials are designed and conducted. Today, clinical trials are designed by the same companies trying to push a particular product. Doing this creates biases and corruption in science. One can imagine and find how easy it would be to conform research findings to a specific goal by manipulating the design of the study or how the results are presented. 

John Abramson, M.D., has been a practicing family doctor in Appalachia and Hamilton, Massachusetts. He is currently on the clinical faculty at Harvard Medical School, where he teaches primary care and is the author of the book Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine. In the independent documentary Money Talks: Profit Before Patient Safety, Abramson expands on the topic of scientific, academic, and research corruption in reporting prescription drug risks, effects, and results. The following is him expressing his concerns:

"Before 1980 most clinical research was funded by the National Institutes of Health [NIH]. Academic researchers… ‘snubed their noses’ at doing commercially funded research before 1980.

When president Regan came into office the economy was slow, the ethos was for small government, and the NIH funding of clinical studies went down dramatically. The drug companies were very happy to come in and lend a helping hand. Nothing much changed until 1991 because the studies were still being done in universities but during the 90’s most of that research got pulled out of universities and was brought to for-profit research organizations. Nothing inherently unethical about that, it was efficient and quicker for the drug companies; the problem is that that gave virtual complete control over the research to the drug companies. They could design the studies. They have control of data so many of the authors of the most important articles published in our best journals aren’t even allowed to see their own data, they don’t get free access to their own data, and they have control over publication." The bottom line is that now most clinical studies are funded by the drug companies. The odds are five times greater that commercially funded studies will support their products. I think it would be a major step forward if the drug companies that sponsor research made their data available to impartial scientists to make sure that the conclusions that have been drawn in the medical journals and that are driving our medical care really are supported by the research data. Right now, that data is treated like the recipe for Coca-Cola.

The data that I found on the FDA’s website showed that in the company's own study, in Merck’s own study, called the Vigor study, where Vioxx was compared to Naproxen or Aleve sold over the counter, Vioxx is no more effective than Aleve. The important thing is that the manufacturer's own data shows that Vioxx causes significantly more cardiovascular complications, heart attacks, blood clots, and strokes than Aleve, and overall, Vioxx is a more dangerous drug than Aleve. If I ask a family doctor to prescribe Vioxx to a hundred patients in a row within the next year their would be two and a half serious complications cause I treated those patients with Vioxx instead of Aleve.

"I saw an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in August of 2000 about Pravachol which is a cholesterol lowing drug reducing the risk of stroke, It seemed to be a bias article so I went through it very carefully and then I got in touch with a research expert in Boston to review my critique of the article with him to see if he agreed with me. So we went through it point by point and said yes, he thought I was right, he didn’t see anything wrong with my analysis. So I asked him if he would be interested in writing a paper with me. I thought it would be powerful if a practicing family doctor and a research expert wrote a paper together to help to immunize practicing physicians from the growing commercialization in even our most respected journals. He said to me, ‘I’d rather not do a little consulting for the drug companies, and I’d rather not get involved.’ That really was a turning point for me because I naively had believed that the universities were the overseers of the integrity of medical science and knowledge in general. That showed me that there’s enough drug influence in our best researchers so that the oversight function was no longer functioning. 

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More than half of the division of the FDA that approves new drugs and oversees drugs safety is funded by the drug companies. 90% of the clinical studies are funded by the drug companies. 59% of the experts who write the clinical guidelines that create imperatives for us to follow have an active financial relationship with the drug that is being considered in the guideline process. About 70% of our continuing medical education that doctors participate in, maintain their state licenses is funded by the drug companies. We all know now that there’s one drug rep for every four and a half practicing doctors. The drug companies are spending about $30 thousand dollars per doctor each year for marketing." 3

This brings to light the fact that what academics, doctors, and healthcare officials think they are learning is actually vastly distorted. This creates serious concerns for accurate information and applying that information to a patient's health. 

1. Harris, Gardiner. “Report Assails F.D.A. Oversight of Clinical Trials.” The New York Times. September 28, 2007. 

2. Singer, Michelle. "Under The Influence." 60 Minutes. July 23rd 2007.

3. Big Bucks Big Pharma: Marketing Disease & Pushing Drugs (DVD). Goodman, Amy. Media Education Foundation.

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