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As a physician who was involved in holistic (non-drug) mental health care for the last decade prior to my retirement a few years ago, I developed a deep skepticism for every profit-motivated, pharmaceutical industry-sponsored “scientific study” that sounded like a new wonder drug had just been discovered (and is now available to save lives!). Sometimes such “studies” claimed that an old drug had just been approved by the FDA for a new medical indication or perhaps there was a newly-identified disease for which there would soon be an FDA-approved drug.

The excitement about these new (and usually unaffordable if one did not have good health insurance) patented products was usually artificially generated by the cunning use of television and medical journal advertising which was usually reinforced by the up close and personal persuasion/seduction by physically attractive pharmaceutical “reps” who had been sent by their drug companies to regularly “visit” every medical clinic in America. For those select physicians who were likely to be “high prescribers” of a drug or medical device, the drug companies would often provide extra rewards or incentives such as lobster and steak dinners at free continuing medical education (CME) seminars or even all-expense-paid junkets (also with CME credits awarded) to expensive resorts.

A little known but very sobering reality is that upwards of 90% of the studies on synthetic prescription drugs, medical devices and new vaccines are funded by the drug companies (or by closely related for-profit research organizations that have financial ties to the drug companies) that will profit handsomely if the products reach the market – and the sooner the better. Thus there are often serious conflicts of interest inherent in most pharmaceutical company-sponsored research and development.

BigPharma’s “Blue Ribbon” Panels Might Not be Trustworthy

Every once in awhile there will be pronouncements from an entity (that is often referred to as a “Blue Ribbon Panel”) proclaiming new therapeutic guidelines for certain maladies, such as diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure or a mental illness. In recent years such expert panels have announced brand new diagnostic entities for which the experts have recommended new treatments. (The panelists, of course, are usually well paid by the pharmaceutical corporations whose markets will be expanded if the new diagnoses and treatments are embraced by the rest of the medical industry.)

Included among these new theoretical “pseudo-diseases” are “pre-diabetes”, “pre-hypertension” or even “pre-schizophrenia” all of which are actually non-entities (with no diagnostic code numbers) but which the drug industry feverishly promotes as real disorders. And the pharmaceutical industry pays physician “experts” who have often, for a price, signed on as authors of company-sponsored, often “ghost-written” journal articles that claim to prove the existence or seriousness of the new disorders. Of course these non-diseases (not yet substantiated by truly independent professional groups) will further enrich the already obscenely wealthy multinational drug companies by increasing public awareness, public appetites, indications and markets for their drugs. And clinics and physicians may likewise be enriched because the new diseases will result in increased demand for prescriptions that will have to be written by physicians at a clinic visit and which will have to be filled at a pharmacy. Everybody benefits economically except the patient.

These Blue Ribbon Panels are mostly occupied by pro-drug academic specialists that have been co-opted (or otherwise “bribed”) by the drug industry and who will, in addition, be paid honoraria for lectures at medical conventions and the afore-mentioned lobster/steak CME seminars. For the biggest names in academic medicine, there are also offers of research grants, company stock options and even lucrative corporate advisory board appointments. Examples of these conflicts of interest are too numerous to mention, but they involve most specialties. If one wonders about the significance of these realities, it is usefull to remember the deep truth of the old adage: “Whoever pays the piper, calls the tune.”

The Precautionary Principle Should be Applied to Prescription Drugs and Other Synthetics, but it Usually Isn’t

Thus any corporate-sponsored study involving a new medical device, a new drug or a new indication for an existing drug should be viewed with skepticism until truly independent investigators have confirmed, in long-term studies, the safety and efficacy of a medical device or drug. That is simply an application of the Precautionary Principle, which essentially says that any ethical business, governmental agency or culture should err on the side of caution before new chemicals, technologies, procedures, services, food additives, drugs, surgical procedures, etc are introduced into the marketplace (and the environment) – and only then when there is absolute proof that the substances are effective and not dangerous to the environment, human/animal life, the water supply, the soil and the air, in other words, the future of the planet.

Unfortunately, there are virtually no academic research physicians, big drug companies, big food companies or big chemical companies in the US that pay any attention whatsoever to the Precautionary Principle. What used to be an important ethical issue isn’t regarded as even valid in corrupt capitalist cultures like the United States. Instead, the US government and its so-called regulatory agencies allow unelected corporate shadow organizations like the Federal Reserve Bank, the WTO, NAFTA, the Pentagon, the weapons industries, BigPharma, Wall Street and the most recent threat to democracy and freedom, the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership to run amok. (See: http://americablog.com/2013/11/bill-moyers-trans-pacific-partnership-free-trade-agreement-death-democracy.html.)

A few years ago, the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) had to reverse its long-held principle of not publishing studies if there were authors with drug-company-related conflicts of interest. The NEJM knew implicitly that such articles were contaminated, but there were so many academic physicians that had lost their independence and creativity by being seduced by drug company money that the journal had to compromise and reverse its previous ethical stance. Drug company-influenced researchers now have their studies published quite freely in the NEJM, with disclaimers about their conflicts of interest published in very small print at the end of the articles where it is often not noticed.

It is a well-known, very worrisome reality that advertising dollars from drug companies heavily subsidizes most mainstream medical journals, including JAMA, (the Journal of the American Medical Association) and the American Journal of Psychiatry as well as the budgets of many professional medical organizations. The inane, and often laughable prescription drug commercials seen on prime time television are essentially identical to the ones published in medical journals. And most of us physicians don’t seem to be negatively influenced by them.  Go figure.

In the year 2000, Dr. Marcia Angell, editor-in-chief of the NEJM, was fired from her job as a consequence of an editorial she wrote that exposed the unethical influences of the drug industry on her journal. Dr. Angell, who is now Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, expanded her very valid points by writing a book that was published in 2005 about the negative influence that BigPharma has on the practice of American medicine. The book was titled: The Truth about Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It.

Vioxx: Merck’s Lethal Blockbuster Drug

Just one example – of many - of why extreme caution about new drugs is urgently called for is the story of Vioxx, a blockbuster drug heavily marketed as an anti-inflammatory/arthritis drug by the giant trans-national drug company Merck, Inc. This now-infamous drug was eventually banned some years after Merck had covered-up the evidence that it was indeed lethal. By the time it was finally taken off the market Vioxx had killed more than 50,000 users and had sickened – albeit not yet to the point of death - countless others, most of whom may still be unaware of their drug-induced disorders. The drug had unexpectedly caused long-term cardiovascular diseases including often fatal myocardial infarctions because Merck had not done long-term testing for such adverse effects.

Of course, despite Merck’s criminality, the company is still alive and well and solvent in spite of the tens of billions of dollars of fines and lawsuits that the deaths generated. Many more victims have gone without suitable compensation from the company. Despite what could be called drug-induced (albeit involuntary) mass manslaughter, no Merck executives have gone to jail (just like the Wall Street executives who caused the economic crash in 2008). Most of these guilty financial giants are still in business today - continuing to lavish huge bonuses on their insider partners in crime.

Merck, as is true of most of the rest of BigPharma, is just another one of those corporate entities that are deemed too big to fail; and therefore these corporations continue to push their potentially lethal products on an unsuspecting public, knowing that they are also too big to be given the death penalty for what could otherwise be considered capital crimes.

It is useful to recall that Merck is just another one of many thousands of US mega-corporations that have been granted “personhood” by the infamous, unethical and outrageous 2010 Citizens United ruling by the US Supreme Court. Therefore, it seems to me, if there is such a thing as a capital crime, these corporations should be, just like real human criminals who commit heinous crimes, considered for the death penalty. (See https://movetoamend.org/ and http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed.)

How to Educate Yourself About Unanticipated Drug or Vaccine-Induced Disease

Before criticizing the contents of this essay (especially for those readers who would like more proof for the statements above) I would simply urge that readers check out the following short sample of the hundreds of well-researched books, articles and websites on these topics: 1) Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning us all Into Patients, by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels, (http://raymoynihan.com/); 2) The Hundred-Year Lie: How Food and Medicine are Destroying Your Health, by Randall Fitzgerald, (read an interview with Fitzgerald at: http://www.naturalnews.com/019434_harmful_chemicals_polluted_environment.html); 3) The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry is Destroying Our Brains and Harming our Children, by Carol Simontacchi; 4) Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications, by Peter Breggin and David Cohen; 5) Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications, by Peter Breggin (http://www.breggin.com/); 6) Mad In America and Anatomy of an Epidemic, by Robert Whitaker (www.madinamerica.com); 7) Make an Informed Vaccine Decision for the Health of Your Child: A Parent’s Guide to Childhood Shots, by Meyer Eisenstein, MD.(http://homefirst.com/cms/index.php/health-info/vaccine-choice).

The above books and websites will present many more reasons to be cautious about indiscriminately swallowing (or inhaling) everything that the Big Pharma, Big Food or Big Chemistry industries are selling. The powerful drug, food (the exception is organic food) and chemical industries are all extremely well-financed and well protected by rafts of cunning full-time lawyers that are charged with defending against lawsuits. These corporations also spend lavishly on credible-sounding but usually deceptive advertising that reassures the naïve consumer or prescriber that the product has been adequately tested and found to be safe and effective. After decades of experience and an insider’s view of the powerful drug, medical and psychiatric industries, I can confidently say that not only can some of BigPharma’s products make patient’s sick and sicker, but they can also make them dumb and dumber.

These makers of potentially dangerous vaccines and occasionally lethal synthetic drugs need to be intensively scrutinized by every consumer and prescriber of their products, whether injectable vaccines, prescription pills or new medical devices. Consumers of these products are on their own against these behemoths because the liability of the drug company or prescribing physician often can’t be proven in court, even if a drug-injured patient could find a courageous lawyer who might be willing to take the case. Some of my Duty to Warn columns are intended to assist in carrying out that scrutiny.

Dr, Kohls is a retired physician who writes about issues of health, not just of the human and animal creatures of the earth, but the intimately inter-connected health of our poisoned planet as well. He cautions against making changes in existing drug therapy without the counsel of a qualified physician who has the knowledge and the experience in treating drug-withdrawal syndromes and who is also aware of the potential for infant neurotoxicity from vaccine-containing mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde and /or viral contaminants in many commonly administered vaccines.