Universities and cancer clinics are all on the take from Big Pharma payoffs

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 by: Willow Tohi
Tags: universities, Big Pharma, payoffs

(NaturalNews) "Womb to the Tomb" was actually the theme of the national pharmaceutical convention a few years ago. Big Pharma isn't even bashful about wanting all of us on meds before we even get here, and certainly for our whole lives. But one silver lining of the economic downturn is that more and more Americans can't afford health insurance. Combine that with more and more people getting sicker at younger ages, and people are beginning to question what the medical establishment is pushing. They are beginning to see the correlation between bad food, ill health, multiple prescriptions, and these behemoth corporations dictating legislation with the billions they make off of our ill health, and how the whole cycle is perpetuated.

As people begin to question, they hit the internet. They learn about natural, safe, affordable remedies for what ails them as well as logical explanations about what caused it in the first place. With that freedom to educate ourselves, how do the behemoths fight back? On several fronts of course, such as, "if you can't afford your medication we may be able to help" but also, more insidiously, by taking over the dissemination of information to our young people. Raise them steeped in the propaganda, and fewer will question. They also control what your doctor reads and "learns" to further their profit agenda. When people find themselves ill and go to the doctor, the only options they are given are those lined out by the profit-mongering giants.

A good investment

All schools need more money, especially schools run on tax dollars. That's how we ended up with that whole fiasco of having Coke machines in elementary schools. Plus, making a "donation" to an educational entity is a tax write off, so its a win-win for pharmaceutical giants to fund research through university programs and medical schools - more researchers for less money, all while becoming the "good guys" to the young population, and then writing it all off. The same is true for paying doctors in cancer clinics. Surgery, radiation, and chemo are big bucks, but so are all the side prescriptions to deal with the symptoms and complications. And, again, a great place to get some research done on trials and experimental treatments. Cancer is a billion dollar-a-year industry. Curing it would put a big hole in the industry.

Last year alone, eight pharmaceutical companies spent more than $220 million on promotional speakers for their products, according to ProPublica.com. This practice has been a trade secret until whistle blower lawsuits recently forced the companies to disclose the information. Doctors are allowed to keep their day jobs while raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars for promoting and talking about new drugs for a specific company. Is it any wonder that those are the drugs they prescribe? This conflict of interest is most surprising for its blatancy. It would never be allowed to that extent, or that openly, amongst law-makers, and that's saying something as few of us hold them up as the ethical pillars of our communities. Now that its public knowledge, many doctors have begun pulling out of these arrangements, and the companies have been cutting back on "promotional spending."

The status quo in medicine will never change as long as the pro-industry propaganda machine rolls on; but with the unique situation of pharmaceutical trials requiring doctors, where is that line into conflict of interest? This is similar to Big Ag and Monsanto taking over research universities to advance research toward more use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and chemically based crop systems. It is the way of our country now - corporate takeover. Folks, the fox is guarding the hen house.

One thing is for sure. Cancer will never be cured, at least not in America. They will make progress, sure, to keep the machine rolling. But, as cancer is the result of something being out of balance in the body, and the pharmaceutically funded medical establishment is only looking for a chemically based cure (think: Guardasil vaccine), the only widespread cure any of us can count on is prevention.

Sources and references for this article include:

http://www.propublica.org

http://www.bizjournals.com

http://projects.propublica.org

http://www.naturalnews.com