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Quotes about Drug Companies from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"Meanwhile, the FDA continued to protect the drug companies in its final analysis of antidepressant suicidality in children and youth. In March 2006, the agency published its findings and concluded, "Use of antidepressant drugs in pediatric patients is associated with a modestly increased risk of suicidality."15 This is simply false. For the signal to show up in clinical trials, it had to be much more than modest. The report itself acknowledged that the signal from the clinical trials was "robust." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.) "I have evaluated hundreds of cases of drug-induced mental and emotional disturbances, some in my clinical practice as a psychiatrist treating patients, some as a consultant to patients injured by drugs, and many in my role as medical expert in criminal cases, in malpractice suits against doctors and hospitals, and in product-liability suits against drug companies. The stories in this book are about children and adults who have been emotionally injured and sometimes driven mad by psychiatric medications, many committing horrific crimes." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.) "Even when they are not personally involved with the drug companies, they are likely to have indirect ties, for example, through drug-company support of their professional associations, their universities, or the journals that they edit and contribute to. The ties are so intimate that the FDA always issues a series of letters before each hearing in which the agency lists these conflicts of interest and then exonerates each committee member from any legal liability for these conflicts. The role of these committees is advisory, but they have considerable influence over FDA decisions." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.) "The FDA was so eager to protect the drug companies that it failed to require them to mention the proven lack of efficacy of these drugs in treating childhood depression. Under heavy political influence, the agency has come increasingly prone to favor drug-company profits over consumer safety. The president of the United States appoints the FDA commissioner, Congress directly supervises the agency, and both the president and the Congress are eager to stay in favor with the enormously wealthy and powerful pharmaceutical industry." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.)

"Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, states: "Drug companies have become vast marketing machines wielding nearly limitless influence over medical research, education and how doctors do their jobs." There are volumes of solid, credible clinical trials and medical studies that validate the safety and efficacy of bio-identical hormone therapies. Unfortunately, the medical research institutions and universities that publish these studies do not have the budget to hire a sales force to go out into the field to educate physicians." - C. W. Randolph, M.D., From Belly Fat to Belly FLAT: How Your Hormones Are Adding Inches to Your Waistline and Subtracting Years from Your Life (Get the book.)

"In reverse order of causality, they are: First, there does not seem to be any relationship, or at least "no clear relationship," between SSRIs and suicide. drug companies have broadcast this conclusion. We are not guilty, they declare. This finding, according a 2005 guest editorial in the British Medical Journal "should encourage doctors to prescribe effective doses of these drugs for [moderate to severe depression]."42 Well, perhaps. Yet for us a finding that SSRIs do not (or may not) cause suicide is hardly a positive." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.)

"Although the drug companies push their newest product, one does not work any better than the next. Ambien will soon be available as a generic and provides the best overall effect of drugs in this group, so I prescribe it most often. Since the remaining drugs in this class are quite expensive and can also be habit-forming, my next choice is Rozerem, the melatonin-like drug I mentioned earlier, because it is the only one of the sleep-inducing drugs that is not habit-forming." - Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D., Your Symptoms Are Real: What to Do When Your Doctor Says Nothing Is Wrong (Get the book.) "The new class of antidepressants called the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, are particularly good at doing this, and drug companies have found new indications and new populations for this class of drugs. These drugs reverse the tendency for low brain serotonin levels in depression. An older class of antidepressants, called tricyclic antidepressants, or TCAs, was also effective at reducing anxiety, but general practitioners avoided them due to their frequent and disturbing side effects including an often uncomfortably fast heart rate, weight gain, and very dry mouth." - Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D., Your Symptoms Are Real: What to Do When Your Doctor Says Nothing Is Wrong (Get the book.) "Over the past decade, drug companies have worked hard to isolate these immune active materials, which are called cytokines. In studying the actions of cytokines, researchers learned that they can also improve health in diseases with dysregulated cytokine release or viral infection. Therefore the pharmaceutical industry has invested many millions of dollars to develop cytokines—or substances that neutralize the actions of cytokines—for use as drugs." - Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D., Your Symptoms Are Real: What to Do When Your Doctor Says Nothing Is Wrong (Get the book.)

"Major drug companies have been in the news for blatant violations. Under a marketing campaign called "Viva Zyprexa," Eli Lilly pushed Zyprexa, indicated for bipolar and schizophrenia, on patients who did not suffer from either condition. The patients were actually suffering from dementia, a condition for which Zyprexa is not approved. In fact its use for dementia is warned against by the FDA, which has stated that Zyprexa can increase the risk of death for older patients with dementia-related psychosis.67 In the last few years, Lilly has paid $1." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.) "Their use in everyday clinical practice to guide treatment and drug choices will remove us from the diagnostic gray areas that the drug companies have so successfully exploited. For now, however, the difference between Depression and depression is a matter of completing symptom checklists and clinical judgment. But I can say that a highly experienced and expert clinician can instantly identify major depression when they see it. It is immediately detectable to people who know what they are doing." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.) "The second type of letter, a "warning letter," requires the drug companies only to stop the original ads and issue new ones that correct previous misinformation.43 There is a dire need for an objective, scientific evaluation of drug safety. One of every five drugs introduced to the market between 1975 and 2000 was taken off the market, or had to have so-called black box warnings, because of safety concerns.44 ("Black box warnings," so called because the warning is printed inside a black frame on the package, indicate that the drug may have serious and even life-threatening effects." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"Drug companies are reluctant to step in because of patent issues—and because each of these diseases, taken individually, does not afflict a large enough number of patients. We go month to month hoping that something will happen with funding that will allow us to keep going." - Donna Jackson Nakazawa, The Autoimmune Epidemic (Get the book.) "Meanwhile, as drug companies see a worldwide trend in which rates of lupus are doubling and tripling, there is a horse race just breaking out of the starting gate to see who can be the first one to gain approval to make and market the first new lupus drug in many decades. At this writing, there are currently three other drugs in late-stage lupus trials in addition to Rituxan." - Donna Jackson Nakazawa, The Autoimmune Epidemic (Get the book.) "Despite her breakthrough, Faustman could not convince drug companies or major diabetes foundations to offer research funding. In 2003, two fellow colleagues at Joslin Diabetes Center—not on Faustman's research team—sent a letter to the New York Times, which had run an article describing Faustman's work, deeming the claim that she was the first scientist to cure diabetes in mice "patently false." The researchers also apologized to patients with diabetes "on behalf of Dr. Faustman" for "having their expectations cruelly raised." - Donna Jackson Nakazawa, The Autoimmune Epidemic (Get the book.)

"At least eight studies in peer-reviewed journals have documented that the marketing of drugs to physicians via drug reps, honorariums, enticements, seminars, and samples has a profound influence on both their prescribing behavior and their tendency to buy "hook, line, and sinker" what the drug companies tell them about their products. One study—published January 19, 2000, in no less than the ultra-conservative Journal of the American Medical Association— concluded that "the present extent of physician-industry interactions appears to affect prescribing and professional behavior." Ya think?" - Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why (Get the book.) "A spate of "natural cure" books have looked at some of the marketing practices of the drug companies, the power of the food companies and Big Pharma, and the porous influence of these huge conglomerates on agricultural policy and on the FDA, and these books and authors have concluded that it's all a great big government conspiracy to keep you from knowing what you need to get yourself well and to stay healthy and out of the medical system. That the big evil people in government and in power don't want you to know the truth." - Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why (Get the book.)

"Many find social and political factors at the root of the epidemic—overcrowded schools, the desire to replace family and teaching with pharmaceutical control of youngsters, and the profit motive of drug companies always in search of new markets. Some of the children's so-called symptoms, they say, are often normal childhood behavior. Or the product of boredom in unchallenging school situations. "The fundamental problem," as Dr. Peter Braughman puts it, "is that the diagnosis is entirely subjective." - Gary Null and Amy McDonald, The Food-Mood Connection: Nutrition-based and Environmental Approaches to Mental Health and Physical Wellbeing (Get the book.)

"To rely on drug companies for unbiased evaluation of their products makes about as much sense as relying on beer companies to teach us about alcoholism." So wrote commented Angell, when she was still editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. WHAT IF? If medicine were to disappear, so would the pharmaceutical industry. What would result? We have discovered that the huge and vaunted pharmaceutical industry accomplishes less—in terms of saving lives—than one might expect. Seven new drugs in 2002 is hardly a great record. But, let us review the efficacy of the best-selling drugs." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.)

"Moreover, in today's world where people do a lot of self-medicating with over-the-counter drugs (more of which continue to spill onto the market as drug companies lose patents and the FDA loosens its rules on what should be prescribed or not), the risk for unwittingly overburdening your body is much bigger. Add to that the fact we'd like to think anything over-the-counter is "safe" and we've got ourselves a recipe for disaster." - Brenda Watson and Leonard Smith, The Detox Strategy: Vibrant Health in 5 Easy Steps (Get the book.)

"Since 1992, drug companies have paid "user fees" to the FDA. In 2002, this amounted to $576,000 per new drug application, for a total of $260 million. Sad to say, that money, now an integral part of the FDA budget, buys considerable influence. Add to that the practice of using outside experts to help the FDA reach its decisions. At 92% of these meetings in the year 2000, one expert had a financial conflict of interest, and at 55% of the meetings, at least half the members had a conflict of interest.51 This does not mean that consultants are dishonest, but it does raise considerable suspicion." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.)

"Once the drug companies have developed a "new" drug, they patent it and begin clinical trials in the hopes of gaining FDA approval for its use. In order to get approval, they must perform two multicenter randomized placebo, or sugar-pill-controlled, studies demonstrating that their drug is better than nothing. This means that patients get randomly assigned to either the drug or placebo for, say, three months, and neither the doctors nor the patients know what they are on." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.) "In response to efforts to regulate the content of TV ads for drugs, Billy Tauzin, president of the Pharmaceutical Research Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the lobbying organization for the drug companies, was quoted by the New York Times (May 17, 2005) as having said, "We don't make ice cream or handbags or automobiles, we make products that save lives" ("Drug Industry Is Said to Work on Ad Code"). The argument drug manufacturers make for the high cost of their products, which has become an old saw by now, is that the money supports research and development of new life-saving meds." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"Lyme hysteria," as well as the excesses of the drug companies and why medicine's approach to saving women from breast cancer was an unconscionable overreach.. I highly recommend Disease Mongers as a template for print and media medical journalists. Shannon Brownlee needed no such template. Her Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (2007) picks up where Payer left off and does so brilliantly. Lynn left me with memories and lessons, lessons that relate to the difficult task faced by journalists attempting to make sense of "health care" in the United States." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.)

"The subject has become what Erasmus calls a "cholesterol scare": The cholesterol scare is big business for doctors, laboratories, and drug companies. It is also a powerful marketing gimmick for vegetable oil and margarine manufacturers who can advertise their products to be 'cholesterol-free.' The fact is that 999 out of every 1000 people (or 499 out of every 500, depending on which expert source you read) can control their cholesterol level and, more importantly, their cardiovascular health, by nutritional improvement." - Ron Garner, Conscious Health: A Complete Guide to Wellness Through Natural Means (Get the book.)

"In 2006 he disclosed that he was a paid adviser to six drug companies, a paid speaker for six companies, and a paid researcher for ten companies. Dr. Biederman coauthored the article with eight other scientists, including five employees of Novartis. In 2005, Dr. Biederman was found to be the most highly cited scientist in the field of attention deficit disorders. By then he had written 294 papers, which had been cited in other journal articles almost seven thousand times. An interviewer asked Dr." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.) "There were Viagra beach towels and posters and even a fuzzy Viagra teddy bear. The drug companies also copied some of RJR's direct marketing techniques. GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of Wellbutrin, had "Racing for Life" trailers at the track where fans were screened for depression and other diseases. An added attraction at the trailer was a visit from Bobby Labonte, the driver of the No. 18 Wellbutrin car, and his crew chief, Michael "Fatback" McSwain. NASCAR lovers are among the most dedicated of sports fans." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.) "The firm said its data did not include names and addresses, but such information was easy to obtain. The drug companies had also begun collecting the private data directly from Americans through what some executives called one-on-one relationship marketing. To do this, the marketers created websites to attract people looking for health information. The websites offered gifts to those willing to fill out surveys and provide personal information." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.)

"As described in The Lancet (April 24, 2004, "Depressing Research"), after reviewing the evidence from clinical trials conducted by the drug companies, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) of the United Kingdom (U.K.) quickly decided that all SSRIs, with the exception of fluoxetine, did not have efficacy for the treatment of childhood depression and that they were associated with a doubling of suicidal thoughts. The FDA then sent its data to Columbia University, which came to the same conclusions." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"I came away with a whole new understanding of how behind-the-scenes financial relationships between the drug companies and the academic experts (who write the articles in medical journals that are then received as "scientific evidence") can neutralize potential criticism. I was starting to understand that these issues were all of a piece: the changes in my own practice, the disordered priorities, and the growing commercial influence in clinical research and medicine." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

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