“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”
— William Wilberforce
While Merck & Co. and many health authorities share the view that the benefits of the human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV), Gardasil, outweigh the risks, an eight-month investigation by medical journalist Frederick Joelving, which was published by the online magazine Slate, confirms…
From the 1930s to 1950s, smoking cigarettes was the norm and the epitome of “cool,” and the habit was fashionable for both men and women. Hollywood movies depicted smoking as intelligent, sophisticated and healthy. The medical community was not immune from the trend: in the…
In Part II of this series about the high costs of U.S. healthcare, I’ll talk about how politicians collude with pharma to ensure their mutual interests. Bet you already know that common ground is greed and power. For anyone who reads my column, you know that I worked in pharmaceutical…
A recent phenomena in the healthcare industry is the rise of medical tourism. You’ve probably read an article or two that describes how someone can get surgery in Spain and enjoy a two week vacation while there—and the whole trip, including airfare, surgery and the hospital stay…
So how do such vaccines enter the Indian market to begin with? According to paediatricians, this happens through a well-oiled system of quid pro quo between vaccine companies and organisations responsible for recommending vaccines. “Most doctors depend on the recommendations given by organisations such as…
[Vaccination] is a nexus controlled by big private vaccine makers, mostly foreign, that decides your baby gets 15 shots more for the doctor to make money. Even if the vaccine is useless—not to talk of the huge mark-ups. There is no vaccine against the venal mind. No [vaccination] ever invented gives us a complete coat of armor.
Most of the money that flows through the political system in America originates from special interest groups. Corporations, industry groups, labor unions and single-issue organizations spend billions of dollars each year on campaign contributions and lobbying to gain access to the government policy and law-making process with the ultimate goal of…
Industry-sponsored research has become the norm in the United States. In fact, most U.S. clinical trials within the fields of science and medicine, notably within the pharmaceutical sector, are now funded by industry. This has created a plethora of opportunities for funders to create data to fit their business agenda, thus creating a dilemma articulated in American author Upton Sinclair’s…
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is defined as “the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period.” It is a “broad measurement of a nation’s overall economic activity.” In the past decade, economic growth in the United States—as reflected by GDP—has risen as high as 2.7% in 2006 and dropped to as…
It doesn’t take much to create a new industry. Basically, all you need to do is create fear. Create a threat, an enemy, and then offer a solution to eliminating that threat and vanquishing the enemy, and… voilà, you have the beginnings of an industry. It doesn’t matter if any of it is true. You have the essentials of what is required to give birth to an industry and, eventually, a market.