Big pharmacy and medical schools

      Pharmaceutical companies have a huge amount of control over universities and colleges that have medical programs. Many of the teachers are doing research funded by the drug companies. They control the experiments done and the results of those experiments. If the results of an experiment involving one of their drugs does not show the results that the drug company is looking for, it will be quashed, and no one will know those results.

      Both this scientists and the drug companies have a vested interest to protect. The researchers, themselves, want to keep the funding that the drug companies provide to maintain the wealth and status of the University of which they are a part. The drug companies know that their financial clout will bias the universities in their favor. The research done at the schools can give a drug company new products which they alone will have a right to produce. This is a huge profit incentive for them to finance the schools.

      Once the research on product is complete, the drug companies only release those portions to the public that they want them to see. Side effects of drugs are played down or hidden until they show up. Even though the FDA has strict rules for the testing of medicines many are still allowed on the market that are potentially dangerous to some people.

      Drug companies have a cavalier attitude toward their products and their safety. The analogy of breaking eggs to make an omelette usually typifies their thinking. They will put a drug on the market, and if a few people die, they will pay off the families and keep the product going until they are stopped by the government or by public uproar. 

      Suits against drug companies are as common as ambulance chasers. Lawyers know that juries will usually lean to the favor of the plaintiff. This means good business for them. The fact that these companies use sophisticated marketing to get their drugs into the hands of suffering people through TV advertising and marketing to their doctors shows that only money is the reason for what they do. That bothers me, and it should bother you.