Vaccine Vendors’ Greed Gone Viral (Part II)
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…
Vaccine Vendors’ Greed Gone Viral (Part I)
[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.
Industry Lobbying: Profits Before Health?
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: Parallels Between the Vaccine and Tobacco Industry
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…
A Sick and Unproductive America: The New Norm
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…
Birth of the Zika Industry
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.