Big Pharma conspiracies

These conspiracies involve the idea that big pharmaceutical companies are profiting off of keeping people sick and dependent on their outrageously priced drugs. One aspect of this theory is that the big pharmaceutical companies are trying to monopolize drug production by suppressing smaller generic manufacturers.

I can certainly see why this is a popular conspiracy theory. The one about trying to prevent generic drug production has been proven. They pay them off to not produce. There is also the recent Hedge Company executive that purchased a generic pharmaceutical company and then raised the price of a common generic drug 6000%. That idiot has been indicted for fraudulent activity. Recently, generic drug prices have skyrocketed because of suspicious activity in the generic drug industry, including consolidations and mergers that are not being properly monitored. Supposedly, the government is checking out these staggering price hikes. Good luck there!

Unfortunately, some of these Big Pharma conspiracies are true. There are lots of criminal activities in this industry that go unpunished, including bribery, keeping generics off the market, faking clinical trial data, and the most egregious is fraudulent marketing.

GlaxoSmithKline has pleaded guilty to bribery, fraud and other crimes. This is only one example of how corrupt drug manufacturing has become.

Merck falsified vaccine data and spiked blood samples with animal antibodies to inflate immune system efficacy. Is there no shame?

Pfizer has been sued over anticompetitive schemes. They allegedly obtained a fraudulent patent, and entered price-fixing agreements with generic companies.

There is no doubt that these big pharmaceutical companies spend a boatload of cash on advertising. There is a steady stream of TV, magazine, and newspaper adds inundating the media daily with the sneaky plea: ask your doctor about ___.  These are usually the new and very expensive new drugs. The idea here is to get people hooked on them despite the possibility that they could have dire side effects. Big Pharma ads have taken over for the once ubiquitous cigarette ads of the past with the same goal in mind: get people hooked on their wares.

What's really serious about all of this is that the government is not investigating these crimes in an efficacious manner. This smacks of bribery and collusion. Obama Care was supposed to alleviate these drug price increases and make medicine more affordable, but that's not what's happening. The exact opposite is occurring. Remember that the pharmaceutical industry has an army of lobbyists in Washington and that they pay doctors big bucks to give favorable lectures on their products at physician meetings. These same doctors are coerced with money to prescribe these same drugs to their patients. This is an unmitigated disgrace!

I am sad to say that this is one conspiracy theory that I agree is valid.

Thanks for reading.