Natural News | July 9 2012
(NaturalNews) Those of us who have long been describing the pharmaceutical industry as a “criminal racket” over the last few years have been wholly vindicated by recent news. Drug and vaccine manufacturer Merck was caught red-handed by two of its own scientists faking vaccine efficacy data by spiking blood samples with animal antibodies. GlaxoSmithKline has just been fined a whopping $3 billion for bribing doctors, lying to the FDA, hiding clinical trial data and fraudulent marketing. Pfizer, meanwhile has been sued by the nation’s pharmacy retailers for what is alleged as an “overarching anticompetitive scheme” to keep generic cholesterol drugs off the market and thereby boost its own profits.
The picture that’s emerging is one of a criminal drug industry that has turned to mafia tactics in the absence of any real science that would prove their products to be safe or effective. The emergence of this extraordinary evidence of bribery, scientific fraud, lying to regulators and monopolistic practices that harm consumers is also making all those doctors and “skeptics” who defended Big Pharma and vaccines eat their words.
To defend Big Pharma today is to defend a cabal of criminal corporations that have proven they will do anything — absolutely anything — to keep their profits rolling in. It makes no difference who they have to bribe, what studies they have to falsify, or who has to be threatened into silence. They will stop at nothing to expand their profit base, even if it means harming (or killing) countless innocents.
Let’s take a look at recent revelations:
GlaxoSmithKline pleads guilty to bribery, fraud and other crimes
It what is now the largest criminal fraud settlement ever to come out of the pharmaceutical industry, GlaxoSmithKline has pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $1 billion in criminal fines and $2 billion in civil fines following a nine-year federal investigation into its activities.
According to U.S. federal investigators, GlaxoSmithKline (http://www.naturalnews.com/036416_GlaxoSmithKline_fraud_criminal_char…):
• Routinely bribed doctors with luxury vacations and paid speaking gigs
• Fabricated drug safety data and lied to the FDA
• Defrauded Medicare and Medicaid out of billions
• Deceived regulators about the effectiveness of its drugs
• Relied on its deceptive practices to earn billions of dollars selling potentially dangerous drugs to unsuspecting consumers and medical patients
And this is just the part they got caught doing. GSK doesn’t even deny any of this. The company simply paid the $3 billion fine, apologized to its customers, and continued conducting business as usual.
By the way, in addition to bribing physicians, GSK has plenty of money to spread around bribing celebrities and others who pimps its products. The company reportedly paid $275,000 to the celebrity doctor known as “Dr. Drew,” who promoted Glaxo’s mind-altering antidepressant drug Wellbutrin (http://naturalsociety.com/top-radio-doctor-paid-by-glaxosmithkline-to…).
As the Wall Street Journal reports:
In June 1999, popular radio personality Dr. Drew Pinsky used the airwaves to extol the virtues of GlaxoSmithKline PLC’s antidepressant Wellbutrin, telling listeners he prescribes it and other medications to depressed patients because it “may enhance or at least not suppress sexual arousal” as much as other antidepressants do. But one thing listeners didn’t know was that, two months before the program aired, Dr. Pinsky — who gained fame as “Dr. Drew” during years co-hosting a popular radio sex-advice show “Loveline” — received the second of two payments from Glaxo totaling $275,000 for “services for Wellbutrin.” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230393340457750503200685…)
Merck falsified vaccine data, spiked blood samples and more, say former employees
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