Big Pharma: Getting Away With Murder

Posted by clnews _Featured_, Big Pharma Thursday, June 7th, 2012

(NaturalNews) If a study comes up negative for your favorite drug, just don’t publish it! 68 percent of all drug studies are swept under the carpet to keep those pesky side effects from being reported. Only 32 percent of studies come up positive, and a lot of those studies are “shortened” to limit the long-term findings. Studies cut short were found to overestimate the study drug’s effectiveness and miss dangerous side effects and complications by an average of 30 percent. This would explain the amazing 85 percent drug study success rate in the hands of Big Pharma according to the Annals of Internal Medicine.

In some cases, shortened studies don’t just make a drug look more effective than it ever could be, but they also turn dangerous and ineffective meds into miracle drugs, according to a study in JAMA. Studies are often cut short when researchers get “overwhelmingly convincing evidence” of a drug’s effectiveness. If you want to make money with your drug, find an early spike in the data and run with it before the data dives. Get in, get the result you want, get out fast, and make lots of money.

Crime does pay!

Remember Vioxx? Big Pharma research backing that killer drug was all roses. Merck reported over $11 billion in Vioxx sales during the 5 years the drug was on the market. So far the company has paid nearly $6 billion in litigation settlements and criminal fines over Vioxx. Well, that still leaves quite bit of cash left over to pay the greedy executives who were in charge of the company and making criminal decisions. It’s all about getting the FDA approval, buying the politicians, making loads of money (even at the expense of human life) and then minimizing the penalties and rebuilding the public relations for another run.

Oh, Merck claims they did a voluntary recall of Vioxx… but the recall came just days after the announcement that an FDA investigator was releasing a study indicating that Vioxx greatly increased the risk of fatal heart attacks and strokes and had probably been responsible for at least 55,000 American deaths during the five years it had been on the market.

How many really died from Vioxx?

Looking back we see the largest ever rise in US mortality rates occurred in 1999, the very year Vioxx was introduced. Not exactly a smoking-gun until you compare it with the largest ever drop in mortality in 2004, the year Vioxx was withdrawn. The net increase was 100,000 deaths per year in 1999 through 2004. Get the picture yet? This equates to 500,000 people who died needlessly and Vioxx is the prime suspect in these murders.