Bill Moyers' interview with author of "Our Daily Meds"

[olsen]

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05162008/watch2.html

"As a reporter for THE NEW YORK TIMES Melody Petersen covered the drug industry for four years, winning one of the highest honors in business journalism - the Gerald Loeb Award. Then she spent another four years researching and writing this book. She concludes that selling prescription drugs - rather than discovering them - has become the industry's obsession.

She found companies pitching drugs with cartoon characters, popping up on email and websites, on buses and street corners, at NASCAR races and even at the world-famous state fair in Iowa where Melody Petersen grew up....


BILL MOYERS: Here you are possessed to stay with one subject for eight years...

...MELODY PETERSEN: It was actually gradual. When I started writing about the pharmaceutical companies for The Times I didn't know anything about the drug companies and I actually thought that they were a lot about science. That's what they tell the public. They are all about science and discovering new drugs. But as I started to follow their daily activities and talk to executives, I learned that really it was marketing that drove them. .."

[lurkingforacure]

She did a fabulous job of exposing big pharma although I know there is even more to it than she wrote. It's a horrific problem and our elderly and children the most directly targeted: the elderly, because they watch daytime TV where there are so many Rx ads and they are scared they have this or that "syndrome" (translation: most recently concocted disease for which the drug company doing the advertising conveniently has a pill); the children, because if they can hook them onto a script young, they have a lifelong patient....much like an annuity. Sick, but true.

We now have so many doctors in my town that I am seeing actual billboard advertisements for their clinics and screenings. Screenings=big bucks, and often lead to scripts! But I am intrigued by the doctors/clinics advertising, as this is relatively new, and I wonder: are they advertising because there are now so many doctors that the patient pool has been sufficiently divided up so that very few doctors can lead the "golf course life", as I call it (ie, not enough patients per doc because there are too many docs) or, as I would like to believe, are more people taking charge of their own health and trying "alternative" therapies and no longer are going to the doc like they used to?
Hmmm.

[paula_w]

we need to find a way to turn away from relying on phrma for money. let mjff do something else. why not look toward google and the internet? take responsibility of fundraising away from mjff and perhaps ask for sergey to help ....create a way online to generate funding. mike can't go on saying his life is perfect forever, but the perfect celebrity life brings in the money. i know he has a wonderful family becuase that's pretty much alll he says. i don't say this to criticize him, i know there are a lot more sides of him, and that he could be using them as well. there has to be another way that mike can contribute, along with all the other brilliant people he has working with him. turn away from pharma.....don't just go online for research, go online for other things. we need to be at the table....or else it will forever be more of the same.

we must stop being controlled by pharma ....the evidence is all there. who wants to brain storm?

shoot i was ready for death in my last post. so glad there was an article aout psychosis on mjff site. someone up there understands. let's seek another source of funding ...independent and privately generated..what are your ideas? while we are revamping medical care, let's really change research funding.

hmmm maybe a video?
paula

[olsen]

debated whether to post this --seems appropo given the topic. As a disclaimer, I am NOT anti western medicine, anti-western Physicians nor anti-researchers. I have worked with and known many honorable, hard working, and even altruistic physicans and researchers. I am completely dismayed with the present relationship btn Pharma and academic research, which has perverted western medicine, and dismayed with the money power that has been used to corrupt our western medical model. I think the following is directed at the financial sector, though feel it is emblematic of the ills of modern medicine today. I would laugh at the utter insanity of the price were it not so sad. If anyone on this forum has unlimited funds and obtains the report, would you clue us all in to whatever it contains. It MUST be really, really impressive information at this price. THink there may be a "freedom of information" act applicable to this stuff????I think the price works out to ~ $40/page.

http://www.alacrastore.com/storecont...YTICS-50306493

Report title: CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM PARKINSON DISEASE-DRUG PIPELINE REPORT
from TF Market Research
469 page report published May 26, 2009

Price $18,760.00 available for immediate download
This report is also available for purchase on a per-page basis.
Report Overview Search Inside
...A comprehensive overview of the active market in PARKINSON DISEASE,including product summaries,sales,market-affecting events,epidemiology, and expert analysis. Publication Date: May ##,#### Life Science Analytics www.lifescienceanalytics.com ### James Avenue Scranton, PA ##### Parkinson Disease - Therapy Area Pipeline Report ¬ Life Science Analytics, Inc. #### (published May ##,####) #...

[Fiona]

Madelyn, my mouth is just hanging open. Every time I think my mind can't be any more paranoid, it turns out things are way stranger and more out of control than I could have possibly imagined.

Paula, I'm resonating with your feeling - I just need a minute or two to get over the shock of this material.

[lurkingforacure]

I too am shocked but keep in mind that this report is probably really being targeted to investors, who are used to paying huge sums of money to get information so they can best invest $$$. And not just theirs, I am talking about investment firms, who can afford this price tag, and want the information so they can advise their clients/investors accordingly. They price it so high so that the average joe-blow cannot afford it, and thus cannot gain any investment advantages without going through the big firms that can pay for reports like this. My two cents.

This report probably includes a fairly comprehensive review of FDA, patent, and other applications, probably here and abroad. Would be neat to have, but at that price, well, that's a lot of meds and DIY therapies!

Thanks for posting this.

[LindaH]

If you don't have $18,000 to spend on this report, take a look at the Parkinson Pipeline Project Database of PD Treatments in Development, It might not be as pretty as the commercial report, but the price is right -- $0 -- and it was created and is maintained by PWP volunteers. see:
www.pdpipeline.org
Click on database access
start at the scorecard, which can be sorted by any column

[Fiona]

I guess it's not the lack of access to the information that bothers me, as much as the huge sums of money - I guess it makes me realize all over again what cash cows we are...the difference in tone between those looking to "manage" PD as a way to make a killing versus people who are desperately fighting for their lives every day...I think the world just ain't working right.

I read the Moyers interview...strong stuff. Very struck again by the estimate of 100,000 deaths in US annually, due to completely correctly administered prescription drugs ... or "medicines' as the industry calls it. Can u imagine if we had the same number of deaths from terrorist attacks or swine flu, what the public sentiment might be?

[olsen]

Hi Fiona, that's the "risk/bnefit" ratio at work. My husband has a solution for one aspect of the problem--the one in which our govt sells newly discovered and patented drugs to a pharmaceutical entity for "further development" and production. He suggests that the patent never be sold and there be a cap placed on the amount for which the pharm company could sell the drug. i think it disingenuous for the govt to maintain it is not equipped to manufacture and market drugs, that the private sector is more able to do this. The profits realized by the pharm industry (last yr, 1 drug responsible for >$28 Billion for the pharm industry )are outrageous. The pharmaceutical lobby in washington to maintain the status quo is also outrageous.
Everything is reduced to the bottom line.

I posted the listing not for its information but for the implication of the egregious amt of $$ required to obtain the information. I understand it was specifically targeted to the financial sector. I understand the takers are interested in Parkinson's disease only in terms of exploiting its financial potential. I understand someone has to purchase stock in the pharma cos so that more R and D can occur. In the venacular of my children, I think the present system sucks.

[jcitron]

I'm not surprised, Heidi and Fiona. We are one of the cash cows that these businesses benefit by, so as I've said before, any hopes of a cure are far and few between now and the near future. Perhaps after healthcare reformation has taken place, and hopefully for a single-payer system, that things might change because the pharma companies won't have the incentive to gut the public and anyone else of every cent they have in their pockets.

John