Big Pharma Is Out To Kill You

[joreth]

This is for all those people who insist that Big Pharma is only interested in profits, even to the point that they will release drugs for the purpose of killing us, and that the government cannot be trusted to regulate Big Pharma because the FDA is in Big Pharma's pocket.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-07-27-fda-cancer-drugs_N.htm

Study: 'Accelerated' FDA approval too slow for cancer drugs

"Cancer therapies in the FDA's "accelerated approval" program — created in 1992 to help patients with life-threatening diseases such as AIDS — get to market no more quickly than other drugs"

"New cancer drugs took about seven years to get approved, whether they were part of the accelerated process or not, "

"The accelerated approval program is supposed to allow promising drugs to go on the market early, in order to save the lives of people with a short time to live, Bennett says. People with advanced cancer are often willing to accept a higher level of risk — and the potential for serious side effects — if they have no other hope for extending their lives, he says.

"We're not talking about people with skin conditions," Bennett says. "These people are going to die.""

"Today, the agency prefers that companies perform larger studies with comparison groups, although it may accept interim results ... But with so many more patients, these large-scale studies, which measure results such as overall survival, may cost more than $600 million and take an additional five years to complete,"

It's an imperfect process, but the regulatory agencies do not haphazardly push through dangerous treatments or outright poisons in an effort to make more money.  At the very, very least, killing off the population means there aren't any more people around to give you money.  The FDA and agencies like it, are extremely rigorous in their analysis and protection methods of the public.  Of course some things slip through, but for every Phen-fen on the market, how many bottles of Asprin did not kill people?  Drugs are also not without their non-lethal side-effects, but these are all clearly labeled, as per regulations.  Of course there is a chance that you might you might vomit when you do chemotherapy, and it's a pretty good chance too, but without it, you'll almost certainly die when you have cancer.  The point is that the side-effects are disclosed and people can choose (and do choose) to risk it because the alternative is worse.

But reactionaries' anti-government propaganda has much bigger drawbacks.  The deliberate spread of misinformation, and the exaggeration, omission, and outright lies about the products and the regulatory procedures have created a public misconception that has resulted in the FDA being even more cautious than it used to be, which means that dying people cannot have access to the medications they need to prolong their life or improve their quality of life.  All the wonderful advancemens in science that I write about are little comfort to the people on their deathbeds when they learn that this treatment will not be available for 7 more years.

It is still possible to obtain these non-approved treatments and take your chances but without the federal approval process, the patient has to pay through the nose to get it, which means that the best healthcare is reserved for the wealthy (not to mention the fact that it has not even been established yet that it is "the best" because it hasn't gone through the approval process yet) and the poor are just shit out of luck.

Comments

[phishtails.livejournal.com]

"The deliberate spread of misinformation, and the exaggeration, omission, and outright lies about the products and the regulatory procedures have created a public misconception that has resulted in the FDA being even more cautious than it used to be ..."

I agree with that. Some overzealous activists hurt the credibility of the entire group when they use such exaggerations as "The FDA is out to kill us." It not only causes the FDA to be more cautious, it also makes activist look like a bunch of half-cocked loons. There are Limbaughs on the Left too.