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Corruption Is Profitable. But Does It Have To Be This Profitable?
Aduhlem, a drug that is supposed to slow Alzheimer's effects, had failed to show efficacy in two trials. It showed some reduction of plaques in the brain which may or may not be significant.
Ten of the eleven advisors of the Federal Drug Administration voted "no" when asked if there was enough evidence that the drug is useful. One voted "uncertain". Last week the FDA approved the drug and claimed that the plaques reduction effect is somewhat meaningful.
Three of the advisors resigned.
The cost per patient per year for the drug will be some $56,000. There are some 6 million people in the U.S. with Alzheimer's. Medicare and Medicaid, which will have to pay for the drug because it is FDA approved, will have to bear the costs. The company which makes the drug, Biogen, will gain ginormous profits from it. As will physicians who prescribe the drug, administer the infusions and bill 6% of the drug's price for it.
The above is a portrait of a deeply corrupt system in which all incentives are set in the wrong direction.
Now, corruption in national medical systems is not unusual and can be found all over the world. But what I find astonishing with the U.S. system is how little money companies like Biogen actually have to pay to get deals done that will make them billions.
The man who pushed for the FDA approval was no other than President Joe Biden. As the American Conservative, linked below, writes:
Less than two weeks prior to the approval, President Joe Biden said that “if we don’t do something about Alzheimer’s in America… every single [hospital bed] will be occupied in the next 15 years with an Alzheimer’s patient.” Guess which 2020 candidate was the largest recipient of campaign funds by a large margin from Biogen and affiliated parties? Joe Biden, with $76,241.
How cheap is that?
Within the next few years Biogen will make a million times more money than it paid to Joe Biden's campaign. Couldn't he have asked for 10%, 1% or an already cheap 0.01%? It would still have been a great deal for the company. But Biden is so downright cheap that he sold out for 0.000001% of Biogen's gain.
What a lowlife.
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Sources:
The whole of the Covid-19 saga says everything you need to know about “science based” western medicine in the 21st century. The Biogen approval is only another manifestation. It is not just in the USA, it is worldwide (but every aspect of every defect is worse in the USA).
Western medicine is profoundly corrupt at every level. The corruption is insidious. When a medical student starts studying at university he already gets exposed to “gifts” and sweeteners of every kind by the pharma industry. Throughout his studies, and throughout his career, he gets bribed and incentivised to conform to the interests of Big Pharma.
“Science” is no longer science. The current editors of both The Lancet and the New England Medical Journal – the two top medical journals worldwide – complained during the Covid saga, after a major study published by the Lancet was shown to be fraudulent – that publishing medical science is impossible due to the extreme power of the pharmaceutical industry. An earlier editor of the Lancet some years ago published an article in which he claimed that he could no longer have confidence in any medical paper, because the quality and trustworthiness of scientific research had been so profoundly degraded.
The vast majority of medical “research” is funded by industry. Results which do not match industrial interests are not published. Many drugs (especially cancer chemotherapy drugs) manufactured by the top Pharma companies have minor or non-existent benefits, are extremely dangerous, and have had grossly inadequate or scientifically invalid testing. This is especially true for cancer therapies for non-mainstream cancer types. By contrast, herbal treatments or pharmaceutical products from small non-influential companies are sometimes very effective, very rigorously tested for safety, very safe, and yet denied approval and hounded by the industry because they threaten the interests of the biggest companies.
The entire foundation of western medicine is corrupt. Western chemical medicine was essentially founded by Rockefeller, who was looking for ways to increase sales of chemicals. He funded medical colleges, with the condition that his people must be on the board and guide what is taught in the syllabus. He funded, if I remember correctly, the foundation of the FDA (or its precursor organisation?), with conditions attached as to what it could do and how. He funded a publication produced by the FDA which was influential in the use of drugs. He funded hospitals, on condition that his people be on the board… and so on, at every level of the medical industry. He ensured at every level that only chemical medicines were permitted, use of herbal medicines was not permitted.
Yet the interesting thing about Rockefeller is that he himself refused to take chemical medicines at all, he used only herbal medicines
Western medicine today has been so thoroughly corrupted and so thoroughly degraded, it is incurable. It is a terminal disease. It needs to be replaced by a new type of medicine. We need a new start.
For decades (from memory I think the first major study was about 1976) numerous rigorous scientific studies have found that medical practice is – overall – harmful to health.
# Whenever there is a hospital strike, deaths are reduced during that period. When the strike finishes, deaths increase to their former level.
# On average, cancer patients who accept conventional cancer treatment have a survival expectancy of about 5 to 7 years after diagnosis. On average, patients who have no conventional treatment at all (chemotherapy, surgery or radiology) have a survival expectancy of about 10 years. This advantage has been found consistently in major review studies over several decades, and no satisfactory explanation has ever been advanced in terms of conventional western medicine.
# Over the last 80 years, incidence of cancer and the proportion of deaths due to cancer have increased dramatically and relentlessly; in the 1940’s it was a rare disease. Even up until the 1980’s, child cancer was so rare it could virtually be dismissed as almost zero risk. Today child cancer is extremely common. The cancer industy worldwide is many trillions of dollars per year. Big Pharma make more money out of dead patients than cured patients – they have a financial incentive not to cure patients. They make far more profit by poisoning patients than by curing them. Is it any wonder the medical industry is so corrupt?
# Life expectancy in the early period after WWII increased quite dramatically in the West, but it has been shown that this increase is attributed exclusively to better nutrition and better sanitation. There is absolutely no evidence for any increase in life expectancy in the West due to advances in medicine, despite all the hyped “medical advances”. On the contrary, (if I am not mistaken) there has been a slight decline in life expectancy over the last several decades (probably due to increasing poverty).
Many years ago there used to be a very different model for medicine in China in rural areas (maybe this model still exists in some places, I have no idea). All the villagers would pay a regular fee to the local doctor, as long as they are healthy. As soon as they get sick, they stop paying until they are cured by the doctor, who is obliged to treat them free. Notice that the vested interests of the doctor are reversed compared to the western model: the doctor has a vested interest in the good health of the patient, he profits from their good health. By contrast, the western doctor has a vested interest in the sickness of his patients, he profits from their disease!
Another alternative model comes from India and Sri Lanka, where traditionally an Ayurvedic doctor would charge no fee. Instead, he relies on donations from his patients*. If he is a good doctor and treats his patients well, he will be well rewarded. If he is incompetent and disinterested in the welfare of his patients, he will get very little income. Again, the vested interests are reversed relative to the western model. He has a vested interest in the recovery of his patients. These alternative models cannot simply be transplanted directly into the western context – the western society is too degenerate for these models to work – but they illustrate the paucity of the western model for medicine, and that other incentive models do exist.
* This is still true today to some extent, but not universally.
Posted by: BM | Jun 14 2021 16:36 utc | 9
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