Home
Newsletter
Events
Blogs
Reports
Graphics
RSS
About Us
Support
Write for Us
Media Info
Advertising Info
Bad medicine

JAMA says doctors should stop accepting bribes from drug companies

Wednesday, March 01, 2006
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: bad medicine, conventional medicine, medical ethics


Most Viewed Articles
https://www.naturalnews.com/019179_bad_medicine_conventional.html
Delicious
diaspora
Print
Email
Share

The Journal of the American Medical Association is rocking the boat in conventional medicine. An article in JAMA has come up with the suggestion -- aghast! -- that doctors should stop accepting bribes from drug companies. Most people didn't know that doctors routinely accept bribes (including hundreds of thousands of dollars in "contractor's fees" for signing patients up for drug trials), so this news may come as a bit of a shock to some.

Big Pharma spends nearly $19 billion a year bribing and influencing physicians, by the way. That's billion with a "B." How much money is $19 billion? It's more money than NASA wastes smashing satellites into Mars and exploding space shuttles in Earth's upper atmosphere. It's more money than the entire junk food industry spends hypnotizing obese children into nagging their parents for another box of sugar-bomb breakfast cereal at the quickie mart. Heck, it's more money than the entire United States spends on genuine disease prevention and health education.

In other words, it's a lotta dough. But bribing doctors requires a lot of cash. Doctors have big-dollar appetites. They drive Mercedes Benz, Hummers and Audis. They live in 5,000 square-foot houses with high heating and cooling bills (especially for the outdoor pool). They have expensive habits, expensive travel, and expensive dinner bills (fortunately, drug companies pick up most of the travel and dinner). Let's face it: Doctors have just gotten used to the idea that they're supposed to be treated to a higher level of comfort and prestige than the rest of the population, and if it takes drug money to buy that lifestyle, then bring on the drug reps!

Actually, I'm being facetious. Most doctors hate those pesky drug reps. And the smart ones can't stand Big Pharma, either. The really good doctors will first see if they can get patients to make healthy lifestyle changes on their own, and if they can't, they'll prescribe generic drugs instead of the overpriced brand-name drugs. But really good doctors, sadly, are also really rare. I happen to know a few, but they are the exception, not the rule.

Nevertheless, nearly all doctors -- the good ones, the bad ones and the downright corrupt ones -- take money and gifts from drug companies. Walk into any doctor's office, and you'll be hard pressed to find a single object (mugs, paper pads, pens, etc.) that isn't emblazoned with the logo of a high-profit prescription drug. And those aren't even the bribes, those are just trinkets. But it shows you how completely drug companies have penetrated the offices of most doctors.

The majority of doctors say these gifts don't influence their prescribing behavior, just like the majority of consumers claim television advertising has no influence on their grocery purchases, either. Studies prove otherwise. Studies prove that drug company gifts to doctors are, indeed, not only effective, but quite a bargain for the drug companies. It's sort of like street corner drug dealers handing out crack in order to gain new customers, except that nobody denies crack is actually bad for your health.

Speaking of crack, Pfizer's CEO Hank McKinnell says all this talk about banning the bribing of doctors is unnecessary because Pfizer already has its own "voluntary code of conduct." Well that's a relief. All the bribery in the industry is going to be stopped by the drug dealers themselves!

The doctor bribery problem has reached such a high level of ridiculousness that even JAMA, which usually plays the role of blowing the pro-drug propaganda horn, has noticed there is a problem. In fact, it has suggested a course of action that, if adopted, might actually reign in drug company bribes and restore a bit of honesty to the world of medicine. But that's only if it is widely adopted, and that's about as likely as asking a heroin addict to agree to stop shooting up.

Specifically, the anti-bribery proposal would:

  • Prohibit doctors from accepting free drug samples.
  • Exclude doctors who have financial ties to drug companies from serving on the hospital panels that determine which medicines should be on the preferred prescribing lists.
  • Prohibit drug companies from providing direct financing for educational programming.
  • Prohibit medical faculty from belonging to pharmaceutical companies' speakers' bureaus or publishing drug company articles as their own.
  • Require faculty members that receive financial support from pharmaceutical companies to post them on public Internet sites.

Reading this list is fascinating all by itself, because it makes you realize that all these things are going on right now. In other words, doctors who are paid "consulting fees" by drug companies are, in fact, sitting on the hospital panels and voting on which medicines should be on the prescribing lists. Drug companies are funding educational programs (gee, I wonder if the "education" maybe mentions a drug, too?). Conflicts of interest between doctors and drug companies are almost never made public. And the transgressions continue...

Exasperatingly, the industry has been so deeply corrupted by drug company money that the seemingly simple act of banning bribes is going to take a political miracle to accomplish.

Just don't expect Congress to jump in and pass national laws outlawing the bribing of doctors. They're also on the take when it comes to drug money. The financial influence of Big Pharma is now so deep-rooted with lawmakers, medical schools, doctors and the mainstream media that it's going to take the emergence of a massive, deadly scandal to jolt this nation back to its senses.

Vioxx, apparently, did not kill quite enough Americans (only 60,000+ according to Dr. David Graham's estimates), meaning that we will have to see a massive drug-based chemical holocaust, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans, before genuine reform is likely. That chemical holocaust, by the way, is well under way. It's only a matter of time before another Vioxx surfaces. Only this time, the cost in human lives may be far worse than 60,000.


Receive Our Free Email Newsletter

Get independent news alerts on natural cures, food lab tests, cannabis medicine, science, robotics, drones, privacy and more.




About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation.

Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and Native American Indians. He's also of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution.

Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journal Natural Science Journal, the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books.

In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released over a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

comments powered by Disqus



Natural News Wire (Sponsored Content)

Science.News
Science News & Studies
Medicine.News
Medicine News and Information
Food.News
Food News & Studies
Health.News
Health News & Studies
Herbs.News
Herbs News & Information
Pollution.News
Pollution News & Studies
Cancer.News
Cancer News & Studies
Climate.News
Climate News & Studies
Survival.News
Survival News & Information
Gear.News
Gear News & Information
Glitch.News
News covering technology, stocks, hackers, and more