Big Pharma blackmails Greece; halts medicine supply over cash demands

Thursday, June 03, 2010 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: Greece, Big Pharma, health news

(NaturalNews) In the midst of runaway economic problem in Greece, the pharmaceutical industry has decided to blackmail the nation and halt shipments of medicines to Greece until it agrees to pay full price for the drugs. In order to cut costs during its severe debt crisis, Greece had announced it would pay drug companies 25 percent less for their products, but this loss of profit was enough to convince several pharmaceutical companies supplying key drugs to the country to initiate their own medical blockade where they simply refuse to deliver any more medicines.

In doing this, Big Pharma shows its true character. When the profits are flowing and the companies are raking in full-price profits, they're you're best friend. But when budgets get tight and everybody is asked to take a cut, Big Pharma betrays your country and its citizens, withholding medicines in a thinly-veiled blackmail attempt to force you to cough up more cash.

The Big Pharma betrayal

Such is the danger of any nation depending on the pharmaceutical industry. If nations based their health care systems on natural products such as healing foods, herbs, and nutritional supplements, they couldn't be held hostage by patent-holding drug companies that will obviously use their medicines as economic weapons to try to extort yet more profits out of a nation.

Pharmaceutical companies are determined to get their profits, you see, no matter what the cost. If a few thousand people have to die during a pharmaceutical blockade, that's a small price to pay for them ensuring years of billion-dollar profits as a result.

That drug companies would engage in this behavior exposes the real scam of drug-based medicine. Drug companies approach nations with the false promise that their patented chemicals will make people well. And yet they don't. In reality, pharmaceuticals only cause more disease requiring more pharmaceuticals. There is no such thing as a "pharmaceutical cure" for any disease.

If anything, using pharmaceuticals only creates more dependence on pharmaceuticals. This cycle of drug-symptom-drug continues until Big Pharma has most of your nation hooked on dangerous, high-profit chemicals. And if you try to negotiate a lower price, they'll yank your chain and cut off their supply, leaving your entire population without medical options. All during this, by the way, they will also attack dietary supplements and healing foods, claiming those are all quack products while only their own patented chemicals have any medical merit.

It's all so blatantly obvious, isn't it? These companies don't care about your health; they only care about profits and market share. They are only your friend for as long as you keep writing those inflated checks that buy their drugs at ridiculous mark-ups such as 65,000 percent of the cost of ingredients.

Danish drug companies blackmail Greece

So far, two Danish pharmaceutical companies have announced their blackmail efforts targeting Greece: Leo Pharma and Novo Nordisk.

Leo Pharma is withholding distribution of its anti blood-clotting drug, sending Greece's pharmacies and hospitals into a panic. (Gee, don't these people know omega-3 oils will accomplish the same thing?)

A few days ago, Novo Nordisk halted supplies of its insulin product, leaving Greece's diabetics with few options (and there are a LOT of diabetics running around that country, remember My Big Fat Greek Wedding?).

The BBC is now reporting:

"Greek government officials believe the Danish companies are blackmailing Athens because they monopolise the market with certain key drugs. Stefanos Combinos, the director general of the economy ministry, told the BBC that Greece was one of the three most expensive countries in Europe for medicines. He said pharmaceutical companies had enjoyed great profits out of Greece over the decades and had an obligation to accept price reductions."

Too bad, Greece! This is what you get when you deal with the devil. You would have been better off favoring natural remedies over pharmaceuticals, and had you done that, you wouldn't be in this mess!

I wonder how many people will die from lack of insulin drugs or anti blood clotting medicines because of this Big Pharma blackmail attempt? I also wonder how long it will take for Greek patients to simply turn to natural, alternative remedies that can accomplish the same thing as these drugs but without all the toxic side effects?

Any nation that lives by pharmaceuticals will die by them.

The drug industry is not your friend. It is in business to make money, period. And it will do anything and everything it can to make as much money as possible regardless of whose lives it will risk in the process.

Your life means nothing to these drug companies compared to the value of their bottom-line monopoly profits. If you don't believe me, just ask the Greek government.

Sources for this story include:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/1019...