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The Danger of Drug Companies
Over the past fifty years, medical patients have fallen victim to pharmaceutical
companies and their never-ending side effects that outweigh the benefits. Whenever someone
turns on a television they are bombarded with constant drug company’s brand new product that
will help with anything from A-Z. At the end of the commercial or at the bottom of a magazine
page there is a list of side effects that is written so small or spoken so fast that you usually cannot
read or comprehend what was just said. These large pharmaceutical companies have corrupted
the practice of medicine through their enormous influence on how drugs are created, how they
are tested, and how medical knowledge is presented. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration)
has turned pharmaceutical companies into their clients and meeting the needs of drug companies
has taken priority over meeting the needs of patients. This has resulted in increased
hospitalizations and even death. Drug companies use their power to fool doctors, family
physicians, medical journals, and normal people and should be held accountable for false
advertising.
Pharmaceutical drugs are so common and popular in modern medicine that almost every
U.S. adult will use pharmaceutical drugs at some point in their lifetime. According to the book,
Informing the Future: Critical issues in Health, “Four out of five U.S. adults will use
prescription medicines, over-the-counter drugs, or dietary supplements. Nearly one-third of
adults will take five of more different medications” (Informing the Future: Critical issues in
Health). With the enormous use of these drugs, one would think that these would be beneficial
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to one’s health. The major problems come from the never-ending side effects and the error of
prescribing drugs to the patients.
Similarly, institutional corruption is a major issue when discussing pharmaceutical
companies and their business motto on using the best science and technology to save lives.
When in reality, they develop new drugs that are barely better than the ones on the shelves today.
According to Donald Light, Joel Lexchin, and Jonathan Darrow from the Journal of Law,
Medicine, and Ethics. “Institutional corruption consists of distortion of responsibilities, such as
approving drugs that are not much better than existing medications, failing to ensure sufficient
testing for serious risks, and inadequately guarding the public from harmful side effects” (Light,
Lexchin, and Darrow). These lies serve their interest in commercial revenue and interests very
well and the well keeping of public health very poorly.
The list of side effects from pharmaceutical drugs is horrid. According to Dr. Mercola,
some of the side effects include; liver damage, kidney damage, shingles, congestive heart failure,
hallucinations, or fainting and the list goes on (Dr. Mercola). Additionally, the reactions from
prescription drugs has become one of the nation’s top causes of deaths per year, according to the
FDA (FDA). These reactions happen so often due to the fact when someone takes even the best
drug possible, they are putting the drugs in themselves and will not be able to control what
happens next. When you mix this drug with another one, they can react badly with one another.
Today, many of the drugs are pushed through the testing process so quick to be approved
that they do not know if they are safe, many of these studies are biased, or the results are
changed to favor the drug company. These lead to the never ending articles in medical journals
or magazines that talk about the latest drug disaster that has harmed many innocent people.
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People before taking any drug, should do some research on it so they know what they are putting
in their bodies, because once you take the drug there is nothing your body can do besides wait.
Likewise, a major area where drug companies use their power is through medical journals
and publishing their work. When any scientific study is conducted someone has to pay and fund
the research. The biggest spender when paying for this type of research on a new drug is the
pharmaceutical company that is developing it (Dr. Mercola). Obviously, if someone discovered
or produced something new they want to show how great of a product it is. This is what
pharmaceutical companies do with their products. An example of how this happens is with
statins. According to Dr. Golomb, the Associate Professor of Medicine at University of
California at San Diego, states that all the major scientific studies conducted on the drug comes
directly from the drug corporations (Dr. Mercola). When these studies are conducted the next
step is to publish their work and findings. This is where the problem arises with the drug
companies. All major drug companies tend to publish only a small portion of the studies they
conduct, the ones that promote their drug. If a study is not beneficial to their product, it is almost
a guarantee that it will not be published for an audience to read. Based on this, it can be
concluded that there are over hundreds of studies that have been conducted that never reach
everyday people or your family doctor. This is because today, drug companies use editors and
reviewers to uphold their plan. From all this, it can be concluded that drug companies are one of
the most biased industry’s in the medical field.
In the same way, pharmaceutical companies are notorious for manipulating the medical
field into believing that negative results towards their drug are actually positive and will benefit
their customers. In a trial conducted in 2008, FDA official’s analyzed seventy four
antidepressants, which included some trials that were published and others that were not. These
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findings were written in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. They found that
thirty six trials had questionable findings. Of the thirty six, twenty two were not published at all,
and eleven conveyed the results as if they were positive. If an everyday person would go straight
to the published work from the trials, it would look as if ninety four percent of the findings were
positive, when in reality only fifty percent where positive (New England Journal of Medicine).
This shows that drug companies are very talented at conveying their products so their drug looks
favorable to consumers. When these companies hide their findings, it becomes very detrimental
to someone’s health.
Furthermore, many of the articles that are published in medical journals or magazines are
supposedly written by credible academic sources, when in reality they are written by
“ghostwriters” who are on pharmaceutical payroll. Ghostwriters are people who write material
for the named author. According to Dr. Mercola, an example of this comes from Parke-Davis
and their drug Neurontin which says the following:
Parke-Davis contracted with a “medical education communication company,” or MECC,
which is a company paid almost exclusively by pharmaceutical companies to write
articles, reviews, and letters to editors of medical journals to cast their products in a
favorable light. In this case, MECC was paid $13,000 to $18,000 per article. In turn,
MECC paid $1,000 each to friendly physicians and pharmacists to sign off as authors of
the articles, making the material appear independent (Dr. Mercola).
In this case, the drug company wrote the article and then looked for scientists to claim authorship
and write it off as their own. This goes to show how far pharmaceutical companies will go to
gain a profit even if it means blatantly lying to the public.
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Today, medical journals are considered to be a source of reliable information by medical
practitioners, but they also can be considered as business. Big pharmaceutical companies spend
just as much on marketing and advertising as they do on medical research (Dr. Mercola).
Pharmaceutical companies use their power to manipulate people into supporting the drug
companies. This is, because the journals are backed by the most prestigious peer-reviewed
sources science has to offer. When in reality this is completely false. Peer-review has come to
mean credibility, when it’s just writers getting paid by the companies. In addition to this, medical
journals have become the number one source of information for family physicians, almost eighty
percent of physicians use journals for their education (Dr. Mercola). Advertising for the
“newest and greatest” drugs to hit the market are barely any better than the ones already in the
market. This forces physicians to prescribe the new and expensive drugs, which in turn, drives
up healthcare costs. In an article published in PLOS Medicine by authors Adriane Fugh-Berman,
Karen Alladin, and Jarva Chow. They talk about the Pharmaceutical advertising. It concludes the
following: “The scholarly nature of journals confers credibility on both articles and
advertisements within their pages. By exclusively featuring advertisements for drugs and
devices, medical journals implicitly endorse corporate promotion of the most profitable products.
Advertisements and other financial arrangements with pharmaceutical companies compromise
the objectivity of journals” (Berman, Alladin, Chow). The main goal of pharmaceutical
companies should the patient that they are supposed to be helping, when instead they worry more
about gaining a profit.
The interaction between pharmaceutical companies and doctors has been a long-lasting
one. Doctors in training are exposed to the power and influence drug companies can throw at
them. Today, doctors often do not know if they are prescribing effective or ineffective drugs to
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their patients. This is, because many drug companies stop or end halfway through a trial if the
looks are promising. According to Ben Goldacre, author of the book Bad Pharma:
A 2010 Harvard/Toronto study showed that 85% of the industry-funded studies were
positive, but only 50% of the government-funded trials were – and in another analysis,
industry-funded trials of statins were 20 times more likely to give results favoring the test
drug (Goldacre).
This in result, will lead the doctors to prescribing useless drugs to their patients. In addition to
this, if the doctors who do their research into the drugs and find faults in them, they get attacked
by the drug companies. An example of this comes from an article published in Journal of the
American Medical Association from Danish scientists. The study focused on industry funded
trials, which in turn, lead to criticism from the drug company. “Lif, the Danish pharmaceutical
industry association, called for professional misconduct investigations into the researchers,
though they couldn’t provide any evidence of the alleged misconduct” (Goldacre). This shows
that anyone who tries to show the public the faults of drug companies, will be met with many
different accusations.
Now, there are everyday people and those in the medical and drug industry who do not
believe that pharmaceutical companies are corrupt and believe that they do more good than bad.
According to the website of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactures of America, they
claim the innovation of better healthcare and improving the use of medicine (PHRMA). This
includes advancements in medicine, which involves the screening of different patients and see
how they react to different medications. The use of these different screenings will lead to less
deaths and reduce trial and error. Which, in turn, will lead to more low-risk medications and
advanced treatment for disease. According to The Human Genome Project, it is estimated that
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pharmacogenetics could lead to the reduction of the 100,000 deaths and 2 million
hospitalizations annually in the United States from drug reactions (Genome). Additionally,
according to Brody H, author of Pharmaceutical industry financial support for medical
education: benefit, or undue influence? Half of all medical education or CME comes from
pharmaceutical industry (Brody). These medical education programs are followed by a strict set
of guidelines that limit the influence of sponsors. The presenters at these programs are very well
educated on the topic being discussed, which allows physicians to accumulate large amounts of
information. The drug information being presented allows new practices to be released to the
general public. These medical education programs benefit the pharmaceutical companies, which
in turn, increase sales and positively boost the economy.
Even though the sponsorship of CME programs from pharmaceutical companies could
lead to positive results in the health care and overall satisfaction from patients, they do in fact
interfere with physician relationships with their patients. Today, many physicians claim that the
gifts they receive from pharmaceutical companies from these programs has no effect on what
they prescribe to their patients (Orlowski, Wateska). However, the opposite it true, marketing
from pharmaceutical companies has an enormous amount of influence on the prescribing from
physicians. The companies continue to use the same marketing tools they have used in the past
because they have worked and they will not change. In a study conducted by Paul Muijrers,
Richard Grol, Jildou Sijbrandij, Rob Janknegt, and J Andre Knottnerus on the impact of one-onone visits from pharmaceutical industry representatives, shows that these one-on-one are used to
push brand name drugs, in exchange for large amounts of favors (Muijrers, Grol, Sijbrandij,
Janknegt, Knottnerus). This goes on to show the power of marketing from pharmaceutical
companies on influencing physicians to prescribe their drugs.
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The power pharmaceutical companies have on doctors, physicians, medical patients and
medical journals is uncontrollable. Today, four of five U.S. adults use prescription medicines,
over-the-counter drugs, or dietary supplements. With the large use of prescription drugs by U.S.
adults, one would think the pharmaceutical companies would try to improve their quality of
medicine. When, in fact, this is not true. Pharmaceutical companies barely produce anything that
is better than what is already on the shelves, but yet tell the people that they are always
producing the best possible medicines. They do this by publishing their work in medical journals
and using ghostwriters to write off that their research has come back positive. These studies are
conducted by the drug corporations and they only publish what benefits their product and not the
entire study. In addition to this, pharmaceutical companies also use their power over doctors to
fool the doctors into prescribing sometimes useless drugs to their patients. By doing this, the
patient really never heals and is forced to buy more medication, which drives up pharmaceutical
revenue for the companies. If any medical professional speaks out against the drugs and the
research conducted by the company they could be met with never ending aggression from the
pharmaceutical company. Many people in the industry claim that their work has no influence
over doctors and what they are doing is completely moral and right. However, if anyone does
their research they will find that this also false. Overall, this goes to show the corruption within
pharmaceutical companies and how they will do anything to gain a profit and if anyone gets in
their way they will do anything in their power to bring them down.
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Works Citied
"All About The Human Genome Project (HGP)." All About The Human Genome Project (HGP).
National Human Genome Research Institute, Web. 10 May 2016.
Doctorow, Cory. "Pharmaceutical Companies Deliberately Mislead Doctors into Prescribing
Useless and Even Harmful Meds." BoingBoing, 22 Sept. 2012. Web. 5 May 2016.
Fugh-Berman, Adriane, Karen Alladin, and Jarva Chow. "Advertising in Medical Journals:
Should Current Practices Change?" PLOS Medicine:. N.p., 2 May 2006. Web. 10 May
2016.
H, Brody. "Result Filters." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National
Library of Medicine, 2009. Web. 12 May 2016.
Institute of Medicine. Informing the Future: Critical issues in Health. Institute of Medicine,
2001. National Academic Press. Web. 2001.
Light, Donald W., Joel Lexehin, and Jonathan J. Darrow. "Institutional Corruption Of
Pharmaceuticals And The Myth Of Safe And Effective Drugs." Journal Of Law,
Medicine & Ethics 41.3 (2013): 590-600. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 May
2016.
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Mercola, Dr. Joseph. "How Corrupted Drug Companies Deceive and Manipulate Doctors."
Mercola.com, 10 May 2010. Web. 10 May 2016.
Mercola, Dr. Joseph. "The Terrifying Side Effects of Prescription Drugs." Mercola.com. N.p., 12
Apr. 2008. Web. 10 May 2016.
Orlowski, James P., and Leon Wateska. "The Effects of Pharmaceutical Firm Enticements on
Physician Prescribing Patterns." Chest 102.1: 270-73. American Collage of Chest
Physicians. Web. 8 May 2016.
"Read "Informing the Future: Critical Issues in Health, Fourth Edition" at NAP.edu."
Pharmaceuticals: The Good and the Bad. The National Academies Press, 2007. Web. 12
May 2016.
Turner, Erick, Annette Matthews, Eftihia Linardatos, Robert Tell, and Robert Rosenthal.
"Selective Publication of Antidepressant Trials and Its Influence on Apparent Efficacy —
NEJM." New England Journal of Medicine, 17 Jan. 2008. Web. 10 May 2016.
"U.S. Food and Drug Administration." Preventable Adverse Drug Reactions: A Focus on Drug
Interactions. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 14 Mar. 2016. Web. 10 May 2016.
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