| Big Pharma is the new enron. But instead of playing with our electric bill, it's playing with our lives. It will do anything and say anything to maximize profits and power, and that includes actively preventing disease prevention. In fact, a failure to do so by the director of a Pharma corporation could be a breach of fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders. Corporations are contractually required to use every legal means necessary to maximize their own profits, and this is used as an excuse to rationalize selling out the health of the population. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 This is how we created enron, a company that deceived an entire country and took advantage of people in order to generate profits for itself. This is how we ended up with the WorldCom fiasco, the Disney meltdown, and the horrifying modern day FDA. It is a lack of ethics that has created many of the problems in this country. Not a lack of capitalism or a lack of ingenuity or a lack of technical ability, but an inability of people to demonstrate even the fundamentals of ethical behavior.
I have a theory on why medical schools, in particular, don't want to teach ethics. |
James Howard Kunstler
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 The exemplar of this was the Company of the West, the enron of its day.
The strange history of the Company of the West begins in France roughly a hundred years after the Pilgrims established their Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1715 King Louis XIV was dead and the French royal treasury was in a shambles after the Sun King's splendiferous and expensively long reign. The heir to the throne was his five-year-old great-grandson, crowned Louis XV. Obviously incapable of ruling, the tot's official duties were shifted to a regent, his great-uncle, the Duke of Orleans. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 I have called for a criminal investigation of Merck and key FDA decision makers because these actions are, in my opinion, worse than white-collar crimes like those committed by enron executives. These crimes by pharmaceutical companies and FDA regulators result in the death and injury of American citizens. Hopefully the Justice Department will send a strong message with the criminal indictment of Merck executives and FDA decision makers who were involved in what increasingly appears to be a conspiracy to conceal the negative side effects of Vioxx while the drug was heavily promoted and sold. |
Alex Steffen
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 Corporate crime and mismanagement (think enron, WorldCom, Halliburton) are driving many large institutional investors into supporting responsible practices. "Corporate irresponsibility," says analyst Cliff Fei-genbaum in Barron's, "did for social investing what Watergate did for politics" (Blumenthal 2003).
The World Is Becoming Uninsurable
¦mm Reinsurance companies offer insurance for insurers. That is, when we buy insurance policies, the companies we buy from also take out policies of their own, protecting themselves in case of some unforeseen disaster. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 We may be very good at manufacturing drugs, marketing those drugs and selling electricity futures (as in the case of enron), but we're not very good at propagating an honest, ethical business model that creates a positive effect not just for employees and shareholders, but also the customers and the public at large.
And if you ever meet someone who works for Merck, don't expect to find a dark, sinister figure shrouded in evil intent. You'll probably meet a nice, regular, everyday person. A person who's just doing their job and following orders. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Ethics: With enron gone, we need a new, national example of strong ethics that properly communicate the essence of American corporate greed. Pharmaceutical companies could make enron look like the Girl Scouts.
6. Political Fundraising: We need drug companies to support the re-election efforts of honest national leaders like President Bush who, as we all know, is crucial for protecting our civil liberties.
7. Publishers: Without drug company advertising, who would support all the newspaper and magazine publishers in this country? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 After all, enron was a fiasco, but at least in the end it was only money, not lives at stake. But with Big Pharma, it's both.
Let's take a closer look at some of the actual figures that reveal just how egregious the drug companies have been in their overcharging of prescription drugs: (this is from the Office of Alabama Attorney General)
Where will all this go? Stay tuned to this site. We'll cover the lawsuit as it progresses and find out whether the drug companies will ever have to face the music on this one. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 It's worse than enron. Because in this case we're talking about the lives of literally millions of people.
Of course, not everybody in the medical community agrees that the FDA is engaged in criminal behavior. But certainly more and more are now convinced that the FDA has lost its credibility and can no longer be trusted to monitor the safety status of prescription drugs. Make no mistake: there are certainly people within the FDA who are credible, well-informed drug safety scientists who could do a fantastic job of protecting the health of the American public. |
James Howard Kunstler
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| In the face of the things like the dotcom meltdown, the LTCM scare, the enron scandal, and other disasters that eroded the notional value of financial paper, home ownership itself was now turned into a magical generator of unearned riches for both borrowers and lenders. It was consistent with the Las Vegas-ization of the national moral sense, chiefly the increasingly popular belief at every level of American life that it really was possible to get something for nothing. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 FDA officials will make the enron trials sound like a high school debate.
It is not only inevitable that drug company executives and FDA senior officials will do prison time for their crimes against humanity, it is important that they be loudly condemned via such punishments for knowingly defrauding, harming and ultimately killing countless Americans in exchange for one thing: Corporate profits.
American medicine is now the shame of the world, and the conduct of senior officials at the FDA is nothing less than criminal. |
Ray Dodd
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 An energy conglomerate employing more than 21,000 people in more than 40 countries, enron was the industry leader, growing at a staggering rate—a colossus feeding off new technologies, new markets, and innovation. Like most modern corporations it had a well-formulated mission statement defining its purpose (why the organization exists, what it is going to do, and how it will be done) along with a set of carefully selected core values (principles that guide people's actions and attitudes that uniquely affect an organization's culture). |
| By the arrival of spring in 2002, Enron's bankruptcy became the most spectacular corporate collapse in the history of business. As the walls came tumbling down, they revealed the worst of corporate greed, an avalanche triggered by lies and fear. Losses to investors, customers, and employees were shattering—so large that a shudder was felt throughout the global economy. In the aftermath of the collapse, criminal charges were leveled at the firm's top executives. |
| The conduct of the executives at enron was hardly an isolated incident. The startling gap between the values an organization proclaims and the actual behavior of its leaders has been exposed many times throughout history, and again in recent criminal proceedings against executives at some of the world's largest corporations.
Criminal indictments and statistics on white-collar crime are not the only yardsticks to measure the disconnect between stated corporate values and what really happens day to day in an organization. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| If you were to go back in time and interview many of the German citizens who were the common working folk of the Nazi party – the accountants, the factory workers, the truck drivers, the paper pushers – you would find that nearly all of them were individually honest, hardworking, friendly people, much like the everyday people who work for Merck or enron or the FDA. Yes, they were part of a terrible machine of human suffering and destruction, but it does not mean that those low-level individuals themselves are evil people. The evil intent came from the top and trickled down. |
| By and large, the regular employees for enron, Merck, the FDA or any other large company are hardworking, honest people. Most people who have these jobs are intelligent, have good ethics and try to do a good job. But at the top of these organizations, you often find a few decision makers who guide the company into actions and decisions that are ultimately destructive to society.
I believe this is true at the FDA, where the bureaucrats make decisions that override the good sense of the FDA's drug safety scientists. |
Dr. Timothy Scott
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 Bethany McLean and Peter Elkins's book The Smartest Guys in the Room5 makes it clear that there were at least four dynamics (aside from the greed and some carefully planned deceit by enron insiders) which kept almost everyone fooled right up until the end.
(1) Assumption: "Surely the company must be sound since the government's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) inspects the company's financial statements and requires regular quarterly reports that are made public for inspection by any consumer as well as the experts. If there were something wrong, we would all know it. |
| Perhaps the single most important lesson we can learn from the enron story is one which we all should see very clearly: Just because lots of experts agree, does not make it true. That lesson has great application as we discuss mind drugs.
Drug Companies' First Priority: Fool the Psychiatrists
There is a pecking order in the mental health profession. Psychiatrists (medical doctors who have completed a psychiatric residency after earning their MD degree) are on top. Psychologists are generally viewed as being next in line. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 This thrilled major ConPhuzer shareholders such as the ghost of Kenneth Lay, the former CEO of enron who is now apparently immune to all insider trading crimes because he is no longer living.
Most of the people who need treatment for Television Deficiency Disorder are not receiving it, say members of non-profit patient advocacy groups. They offer free screenings to the public in order to help people determine if they, too, may suffer from undiagnosed Television Deficiency Disorder. Screenings are held with very large screens to maximize the disorder detection accuracy. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 This company is the opposite of enron, and if more Fortune 500 firms operated with half the heart of the Amazon Herb Co., our country wouldn't be in such a mess today.
If you want to heal yourself, help heal the planet, help share the good news with others and make an honest living at the same time, I strongly encourage you to check out this company and contact one of the distributors listed above (or the person who already introduced you to the company, if that's the case).
And if you're looking to simply be a customer like me, enjoy the products! |
Dr. Timothy Scott
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| Assumption: "A big corporation like enron must have a lot of smart guys who have it all figured out. They know what they are doing."
(4) Intimidation: "Who do you think you are? We have smart people here who have done their homework and know this business. You just don't understand."
Common reaction: "Who am I to question these experts?"
Biological psychiatry (the chemical imbalance theory) has parallels to each of these dynamics.
(1) Assumption: "The government's FDA approves drugs to fix the chemical imbalance. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Conventional medicine is about to have an enron moment, and whistleblowers have a rare opportunity right now to help expose the fraud of drug companies, the FDA and the entire disease mongering system known as conventional medicine.
Whistleblowers are unique individuals. No one is born a hero; they become a hero by making a decision to take a stand against a grave injustice, even when doing so is unpopular. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 From Big Pharma to WorldCom and enron, the corporations that exploit the most people have always been richly rewarded with dollars, recognition by the business press, and plenty of political clout. Why do U.S. lawmakers suddenly expect our corporations to act with -- gulp! -- ETHICS?
Since when were ethics part of the equation of success in this country? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 People like the guys who ran enron, who still don't admit they did anything wrong.
Bush has promised that if spending $136 billion over ten years to boost the quality of education in American schools doesn't do the trick, he's ready to slash achievement standards across the nation (just like with the "No Child Left Behind" fiasco), instantly transforming all schoolchildren into A+ students. If that doesn't work, Bush is ready to bomb China, India, Korea and Japan during study hours, just to make sure their students can't concentrate (thereby making U.S. students relatively more competitive). |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 You've seen the enron scandals, you've seen WorldCom and you remember the dot-com boom and bust, which was a giant scam designed to exploit the savings of the American people. You've seen it all. You know there are operators out there who aren't honest. It's not limited to the hoodia industry by any means. This sort of dishonesty is rampant in the pharmaceutical industry and in the insurance industry, which is now up for major criminal charges thanks to investigations done by Eliot Spitzer, attorney general of New York. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 In the age of enron, Worldcom, insider trading and other cataclysmic gaps in corporate ethics, it's time for organizations of all kinds (publishers, product makers, news organizations and otherwise) to offer straight talk to their customers and readers about their ethical guidelines and boundaries. This document is Truth Publishing's effort to do just that.
Thank you for your interest in the Truth Publishing Declaration of Journalistic Independence. |
Peter Rost
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 Please note that I was investigating all this before the downfall of enron and WorldCom, and before Bristol-Myers Squibb pleaded guilty to stuffing the channels in 2004.1 took what, now, seems to be a low-key approach to the problems. My worry at that time was my bonus and the fact that some renegade affiliates might be playing fast and loose with their numbers. I didn't know that companies would actually go belly up and CEO's would go to jail because of this kind of behavior. Darren told me that he would contact his superiors regarding this matter. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| In the enron example, there are a few top bureaucrats who have been convicted and are now facing jail time for being responsible for that company's financial fiasco. At the FDA, there are a few key decision makers at the top who are the driving force of the agency. A full 90 percent of FDA scientists are actually dedicated, caring people who applaud the actions of whistleblowers like Dr. David Graham (also an FDA drug safety scientist). |
| This was true at enron, where a few greedy executives padded their pockets at the expense of investors and workers. I believe it's also true at Merck, where a few top executives are making the big decisions, while overlooking the positive intentions of the company's employees. But there's more to it than just that. It also has to do with the nature of the corporation itself, something that supersedes any intention of any individual employee or decision maker.
Corporations exist to generate profits, period. |
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