Re: I saw for the 2nd time Kevin's infomercial

I don't buy your Conspiracy about Quackwatch. They seem honest, straightforward group, and this unlike Trudeau is a non-profit organization.

Seems to me that if you are making a profit then you are no position to castigate others from doing so as well. I also don't think there has been a proven case in which an FDA scientist has been proven to take a bribe in order to pass a drug. It just would not pay off in the long run. The resultant cost of first defending litigation and any possible damage awards would make it more cost more than they could ever make. Mistakes have been made, but not from maliciousness but ignorance and poor or incomplete research.

If the drug industry has a fault is the over marketing of drugs to the public. But this is only the result of a society that is obsessed with the quick fix. Lose 30 pounds in one week, Get fit with just seconds a day. Longer erections, Better orgasm. No need to change your diet, take lipitor. Gastric bypass surgery. Have your fat sucked out over the weekend. Get rid of that pain now - instead of waiting 1 hour for it to go away naturally. Cure your Geriatric Profanity Disorder (ok I got that from the Simpsons) but the point is made. Drug companies make their money no on drugs for disease but on "lifestyle drugs" like v1agra, lipitor, Nexium and on Analgesics. There is also the case of "me-too" drugs, new drugs that are just tweeks of old formulations in order to avoid generic competion and keep the monopoly. The write: "For example, the top-selling drug in the world, Pfizer's Lipitor, is the third of 3 me-too drugs to cash in on the success of the first statin, Merck's Mevacor. All of these drugs inhibit the same rate-limiting enzyme in cholesterol synthesis. There is generally no good reason to believe that one me-too drug is better than another, since they are seldom compared head-to-head at equivalent doses in clinical trials. Instead, they are tested against placebo, and so all we know is that they are better than nothing. In fact, it's conceivable that, within me-too families, each successive drug is actually worse than the one before" I, too wonder how good these "me-too" drugs really are.

But on drugs that treat real, life threatening diseases, the profit is marginal. According to the Canadian Medical Association Journal the profit margin for the top company Pfizer was 26% and the median for the top 10 was 17%. But this is mainly becaus in the US unlike Canada and Europe, drug prices are not regulated. And according to the journal the US is the major profit center for all drug companies. But If they weren't making good money on some drugs then other drugs which attend to rare diseases would never come into marked, they just could not afford it.

Bringing a drug to market is a painstakingly difficult process that could be derailed by almost the most inoccous things. It takes years and millions of dollars to pass through each of the phases required by new drug submission and the paperwork is obscenely complicated. It makes sense the companies would want a person with experience to guide the process.

This is straight from the Quackwatch site:

Quackwatch is a nonprofit corporation whose purpose is to combat health-related frauds, myths, fads, and fallacies. Its primary focus is on quackery-related information that is difficult or impossible to get elsewhere. It was founded in 1969 as the Lehigh Valley Committee Against Health Fraud and was incorporated in 1970. In 1997, it assumed its current name and began developing a worldwide network of volunteers and expert advisors.

Quackwatch, Inc., has no salaried employees. It operates with minimal expense, funded mainly by small individual donations, commissons from sales on other sites to which we refer, sponsored links, and profits from the sale of publications. If its income falls below what is needed for the research, the rest comes out of my pocket.

Many people wonder whether Quackwatch is a "front" for the American Medical Association, the pharmaceutical industry, the "medical establishment," or whomever else they might not like. Nearly every week I get e-mails accusing me of this—and worse. Quite frankly, the idea is preposterous.

* Neither Quackwatch nor I have any financial ties to any commercial or industrial organization.
* My viewpoints are not for hire. Even if they were, none of my imaginary funders would actually have a reason to hire me.
* Standard medicine and "alternative medicine" do not actually compete for patient dollars. Well-designed studies have shown that most "alternative" methods are used in addition to—rather than instead of—standard methods.
* The total cost of operating Quackwatch's many Web sites is approximately $7,000 per year.

I've spent almost as much on my Carbon Fibre Triathlon Bike

 

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