Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Parke-Davis, a subsidiary of pfizer, promoted and sold cocaine. It even produced a "cocaine injection kit" complete with a syringe for shooting up. Skeptical? You can view the picture yourself by clicking www.NewsTarget.com/gallery/articles/ParkeDavisInjection.jpg
3. A subsidiary of Novartis, Sandoz Laboratories, introduced the world to LSD in 1938, marketing it as a psychiatric drug named Delysid. This same drug company also created saccharin, the artificial chemical sweetener.
4. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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 If it is true that Merck, pfizer, and other pharmaceutical companies knew the truth about cardiovascular dangers, then they are fully culpable in tens of thousands of deaths.
"That's murder," whispered Fran.
But what about pain relief? What about allowing people to "work, walk, garden, and do all the little things that make life worthwhile? |
| The panel's endorsement of both drugs will definitely help Merck and pfizer fend off the hundreds of lawsuits already filed by patients and their survivors."
The panel's chairman, trying to put the whole debacle in perspective, made the unfortunate comment: "It would be a brave man or woman [physician] who started a patient with a clear history of heart disease on these drugs."48
"That's not brave," complained Fran. "It's either incompetent or negligent.!"
What are the lessons of COX-2 Inhibitors for our book?
We live in a hypermodern society. Everything happens at breakneck speed. |
| When did Merck and pfizer find out about their COX-2 problems? According to the Wall Street Journal, internal Merck e-mails reveal that the company knew the potential risks of their best-selling drug as early as the year 2000. Merck's marketing literature included documents for its sales representatives which discussed how to respond to questions about Vioxx.
It was labelled "Dodge Ball Vioxx!"41
And Pfizet? In October 2004, the company asserted that it had no studies prior to that year which indicated problems with Celebrex. |
Andreas Moritz
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 The research is sponsored by government agencies such as National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and huge pharmaceutical companies such as Glaxo, pfizer, Squibb and Genentech. One of the studies, "The Effect of Anti-HIV Treatment on Body Characteristics of HIV-infected Children" seeks to identify the causes of "Wasting and Lipodystrophy [fat redistribution]" by using drugs known to cause wasting and lipodystrophy. |
| At $7,8 billion a year, pfizer is now the most profitable of all Fortune 500 companies. Who wins, and who loses? Consider the following facts. In the United States:
• adverse prescription drug reactions are responsible for the death of 105,000 people each year.
• 95 percent of all drug reactions are not properly identified or reported by doctors, hence their true risks and potentially deadly consequences are not known.
• doctors not only treat the symptoms of disease but also the side effects these treatments produce. |
Anne Harrington
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 Pfizer made a short industrial film, The Relaxed Wife, that aimed explicitly to encourage doctors to think of the stressed businessman as a target for treatment with minor tranquilizers. Filled with strategically humorous images (e.g., a businessman with a head literally about to explode under pressure), lots of talk about the tensions of corporate life, and the importance of learning to relax, the film managed to promote its anxiolytic product, Antarax, without using the word "anxiety" once. |
Craig Pepin-Donat
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 End of Drug Trial Is a Big Loss for Pfizer" (New Cholesterol Drug Trials Fail)
Alex Berenson
New York Times Health Section (December 4, 2006)
"Risks of Drug-Coated Stents Divide Federal Review Panel"
BarnabyJ. Feder
New York Times Health Section (December 8, 2006)
"Many Prescription Drugs Have Unexpected Harmful Effects"
Maryann Napoli Health/acts (May 2002)
"David J. Graham, MD, MPH, Senate Testimony"
ConsumersUnion.Org (November 18, 2004) Non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports
"Death by Medicine"
Gary Null, Ph.D. et al.
Life Extension (www.lef. |
Charles Barber
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 The initiative came about as a result of gifts from pfizer, Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Procter & Gamble, and Wyeth-Ayerst.90
While the public, historically, has been innocently unaware of these details, they are starting to get wise. In the public's view, the pharmaceutical industry has recently joined the oil industry as the most exploitative and reviled sector of corporate America. The perception of manipulation and arrogance on the part of Big Pharma is starting to stick. A trust factor appears to have been violated. |
| One can only imagine the marketing spree the big drug companies would go on if they were to come across a pill with similar proven efficacy to, say, cognitive-behavioral therapy. pfizer, Lilly, et al. would unleash a blizzard of commercials on the airwaves. A drug that halves suicide attempts! A drug that reduces criminal recidivism by a third! A drug that cures people of phobias! We would never hear the end of it.
The problem is there's no money in it. Psychologists, social workers, and researchers tend not to be the best marketers in the world. |
| Many of Pfizer's major products are made in Puerto Rico. A plant in Barceloneta makes Zoloft and Viagra, and another in Vega Baja makes Lipitor and Neurontin.)82
I loved the scientific poetry of some of the names of the drugs, and when I came across a really terrible new name, like a new antipsychotic called Abilify, I resolved that I could do better, and my next career should be as a namer of drugs. Some of the drugs cost $5 for a month's supply, and others $250. Most of my clients were taking three, four, five, six different types of drugs, typically at a cost of $200 to $300 a month. |
| Lamenting the fact that politicians increasingly like to blame Big Pharma for government deficits and that his company in particular is under scrutiny from shareholders, McKinnell said, "I call it generalized anxiety disorder," perhaps not fully realizing he was citing a diagnosis upon which pfizer and other companies have made a tidy profit.145 chapter three
The Triumph of Biological Psychiatry
The path that psychiatry has traversed in the past one hundred years has been extraordinary. |
| And it's not just the CEOs: in 2000, the average unexercised stock options of the top executives at Merck were $73 million; at Bristol-Myers Squibb, $65 million; at pfizer, $54 million; at Eli Lilly, $33 million.5
Even after the woes that Big Pharma experienced between 2004 and 2007—the withdrawal of Vioxx from the market, the loss of half of the injectable flu vaccines because of quality control problems, and a growing public awareness of profiteering and an all-too-cozy relationship with the Bush administration—no one should worry unduly about the industry's fortunes. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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| We repeat two scientific findings: first, COX-2 inhibitors really do hospitalize and even kill people; second, amazingly, they are no better at relieving pain than over-the-counter medications, a finding which was published a full year before the pfizer CEO's rhapsody.49
THE AMERICAN PHARMACY
Remember the millennial article in the New England Journal from the first page of this book. "Medicine is one of the few spheres of human activity," wrote the Journals editors, "in which the purposes are unambiguously altruistic. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 If vitamin D were a cancer drug made by pfizer, the American Cancer Society would likely be pushing it as the next "miracle" drug and calling for everyone to be put on the drug. But since it's a nutrient that cannot be patented, and can actually be manufactured for free by exposing your skin to natural sunlight, the entire U.S. cancer industry now laughingly pretends that vitamin D supplementation offers no benefits. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Speaking of crack, Pfizer's CEO Hank McKinnell says all this talk about banning the bribing of doctors is unnecessary because pfizer already has its own "voluntary code of conduct." Well that's a relief. All the bribery in the industry is going to be stopped by the drug dealers themselves!
The doctor bribery problem has reached such a high level of ridiculousness that even JAMA, which usually plays the role of blowing the pro-drug propaganda horn, has noticed there is a problem. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Think about it: pfizer, Monsanto, Merck, Eli Lilly... would anybody really mind these greedy profiteers going out of business? We'd all be better off if these corporate monstrosities were put out of business anyway. It is in society's interest to eliminate these corporations that harm our health and enslave the population in a medical racket that does nothing to enhance health, abundance or quality of life.
#2 Ban aspartame, water fluoridation and mercury fillings
You probably know the stories on aspartame, fluoride and mercury fillings by now. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Speaking of crack, Pfizer's CEO Hank McKinnell says all this talk about banning the bribing of doctors is unnecessary because pfizer already has its own "voluntary code of conduct." Well that's a relief. All the bribery in the industry is going to be stopped by the drug dealers themselves!
The doctor bribery problem has reached such a high level of ridiculousness that even JAMA, which usually plays the role of blowing the pro-drug propaganda horn, has noticed there is a problem. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 It now appears that pfizer is going to have its anti-inflammatory drug Bextra subjected to a "black-box" warning that would warn physicians about the rather bizarre side effects that can be caused by Bextra. Such a warning would not only harm the stock price of pfizer, but it would also reduce the sales of the drug. Of course this is the kind of warning that should have been on the drug in the first place. And it is only now, after the FDA is under intense scrutiny for the Vioxx scandal with Merck, that this black-box warning is finally being enforced with companies like pfizer. |
Bottom Line Health
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| In fact, pfizer Inc., the manufacturer of Exubera, apparently delayed the application for US approval for three years to finish safety studies.
"Because this is a new way to deliver insulin to patients, it has been extensively studied with respect to safety and efficacy," says Dr. Robert Meyer, director of the FDA Office of Drug Evaluation II, which oversees the Division of Metabolic and Endocrine Drugs.
"We have a large amount of data from the clinical trials speaking to the safety of this product overall, and its safety in the lungs as well. |
| The research—all of which was funded by the drug's maker, pfizer Inc.—is encouraging, experts say, because smokers do not have many medications that are useful in helping them quit.
Unlike Zyban and nicotine-replacement methods (patches and gums), Chantix works by stimulating the release of the brain chemical dopamine, to reduce cravings, while simultaneously blocking the brain cell receptors that help sustain addiction. |
Too Profitable to CureBrent Hoadley, Ph.D.
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| Pfizer Slams Dissident Executive Who Backs Drug Import Bill.
• Pharma, New Medicine. New Hope, 8/31/04. New Research Shows Patients Need Choice of Medicines for Best Treatment,
You, the juror, can choose to believe the professional media advertisements claiming that pharmaceuticals are untiring in their efforts to find cures for your chronic disease. Or, you can choose to read on. |
Thomson Healthcare, Inc.
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 Visine AC®, zinc sulfate and tetrahydrozoline hydrochloride. pfizer Consumer Health Care, Parsippany, NJ, USA, 1994
Wood RJ & Zheng JJ. High dietary calcium intakes reduce zinc absorption and balance in humans. Am J Clin Nutr; 65(6): 1803-1809. |
Shannon Brownlee
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 In 200c, pfizer was ordered by the FDA to put a warning on its Viagra labels that the drug can cause irreversible vision damage, and in rare cases, blindness.
Saying Viagra treated a disease also allowed advertisers to quietly appeal to the public's desire for self-improvement and -enhancement—while simultaneously pretending the drug wasn't really about improving anybody's sex life. Viagra was for a disease, not for wild, all-night sex. |
| In 2002, pfizer, the
Less Is More
295 world's biggest drug company, reported a 28.4 percent return on sales. That was two and a half times better than the 10.7 percent return of General Electric, which is ranked as America's best-managed company. It was nearly nine times better than the 3.3 percent return of Wal-Mart, America's most efficient retailer. Device makers do even better: About 30 percent of the thirty billion dollars we pay for such implantable medical devices as vena cava filters, cardiac defibrillators, artificial hips, and cardiovascular stents is profit. |
| When it was pfizer funding the studies, its drug, Geodon, was best. In fact, this tendency for the sponsor's drug to come out on top held true for 90 percent of the more than thirty trials in the survey.
Now, it's pretty obvious that all atypicals can't possibly be superior to all other atypicals, unless the drugs were tested in some fantasyland like an M.C. Escher print or radio host Garrison Keillor's fictional Lake Wobegon, where all children are above average. How, then, could the head-to-head trials of these drugs come up with such impossible results? |
| Within a few weeks, the orthopedist was jetting off to a speaker-training session at a luxury hotel, courtesy of pfizer. When he returned, Howard began organizing extravagant dinners, at which the doctor would serve as the featured guest and speaker. "You go to all your orthopods in the area, and you say, 'Dr. So-and-So is going to talk about knee pain postsurgery' " Howard says. She and her partner were careful not to make the dinner sound like a drug sales pitch to the other physicians they were inviting. "You don't say he's going to talk about Celebrex. |
| She recalls that the pressure on reps to hit their quotas was intense. "If pfizer was having a dinner at a really nice restaurant, you had to come up with [Green Bay] Packers tickets—and a bus to the game," she says. As reps upped the gift-giving ante, doctors began feeling entitled to increasingly luxurious favors. In an online chat room, one rep reported that a doctor asked him for money to build a music room in the doctor's house; another said she was asked to cater a doctor's daughter's wedding. An "unrestricted grant" from Gene Carbona paid for a doctor's swimming pool. |
| Now a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Oldani worked for pfizer for nine years, until 1998, when he suffered a crisis of conscience. He entered graduate school in anthropology at Princeton and wrote his dissertation on the anthropology of selling pharmaceuticals. His thesis is a gold mine of insight into the game of give-and-take in which doctors and reps engage. Often the gift itself is not what's important to the doctor; it's what the gift symbolizes, Oldani told me. |
Charles Barber
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| In 2003, the chief executive officer of pfizer, Henry "Hank" McKinnell, sat in his corner office in midtown Manhattan. McKinnell was paid $9.7 million a year in earnings143 and ultimately received $200 million in retirement and deferred compensation.144
It was raining outside, and McKinnell was feeling blue. "We're the industry and the company that nobody loves," he said. "I'm just kind of puzzled at how we got here. |
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