This is something that I have been wondering about for a while now: why do so many people believe everything that Big Pharma tells them without conclusive evidence? One would have thought that governments and the medical community would want to see rigorous testing before spending big bucks for some ‘miracle’ drug.
Why have governments around the world spent US$3 billion since the emergence of H1N1 on Tamiflu, a drug that seems to do very little? That’s the question raised by The Atlantic, after the British Medical Journal revealed that researchers were unable to conclude that the drug is really effective.
Reuters reported in May that Malaysia was boosting its Tamiflu stockpile to cover 10 per cent of its 27 million population from 7.5 percent.
Now, in an explosive report, The Atlantic reveals:
Governments, public health agencies, and international bodies such as the World Health Organization, have all based their decisions to recommend and stockpile Tamiflu on studies that had seemed independent, but had in fact been funded by the company and were authored almost entirely by Roche employees or paid academic consultants…
That trust appears to have been misplaced, and a drug touted as beneficial on the basis of flimsy evidence has by now become so entrenched that no one appears willing to conduct the sort of study needed to prove whether or not it can, in fact, save lives.
Read the full story here.
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What about rapid test kit? Everyone is rushing to produce the vaccine, but no one is producing the rapid test kit! When come to diagnose the doctors become hopeless they will simply treat any influenza like illness as H1N1. Mind you again, vaccination is not a treatment it should be a prevention, but now use as a drug to cure H1N1.How scientific????…
Gerakan K,
Where do you think Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai’s wife got her RM600K MPV from huh? Think with his minister’s salary he is able to purchase that expensive vehicle and maintain it? Now you know why that back-door minister president of Gerakan still so thick skin, had to eat his words and insist on backdoor entrance? LOL !!!!
Dear Speak out against my own, such eloborated explanation, with such justification, what a pity. Ask my grandma, bottomline, grandma solves the problem even before we discovered these namesake flus. No offfence, but everything is nature, when nature makes its call, no theology, thesis or justification can justify any act that obdurate the menace that we chose to create against humanity against the nature. People need to face the real truth not an artificial truth for those chosen few as truth does not need an armor.
this only shows that someone can reap huge benefit by manipulating and exaggerating the fear of death, even though death is the only certain thing that will happen to every living things.
This is a good site for increasing public awareness about potentially dangerous pharmaceutical drugs already on the market in the USA (i.e. already approved by the Food and Drug Administration).
Note that the name of the drug may be different in other countries
http://www.worstpills.org
Oh btw, I read the post on flu vaccinations in this blog, but was on holidays so didn’t comment. I think the majority of readers misunderstood or missed the point or made conclusions of their own from the article mentioned. What the article actually says is that the flu vaccine doesn’t help people who are at highest risk of being badly affected by flu. There is no doubt that flu vaccines work to elicit immunity, but how much, or if at all, immunity is elicited depends on the health of the person’s immune system. If they are immune-compromised already (eg.… Read more »
Argh! I wrote a nice long insightful comment, but lost it all when I accidentally closed my window!!! This will be a less organised version: Phua Lai Kit’s link is very true. However, it only tells a small part of the story, and the tail-end for that matter. Problems/corruption/conflict of interest begin very early in the process of drug (medicine) discovery. Drug discovery is a long arduous journey and the foundation that allows later players to mislead/misguide the public is laid by scientists struggling to pay their bills and who will lose their jobs when the project (drug) they are… Read more »
I understand Canada has been put on full alert after shocking discovery of dangerous side-effects that poses health problems.
The FDA has been reviewing reports of abnormal behavior and other brain effects in more than 1,800 children who had taken the flu medicine Tamiflu.
The symptoms have included convulsions, delirium or delusions, and in Japan, 5 deaths have been reported in children under 16 as a result of neurological or psychiatric problems.
There have also been nine deaths among older teens and adults, attributed to neuropsychiatric problems or brain infections.
Here’s a good article on
why we have pharmaceutical drug marketing scandals
such as Vioxx etc
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0404.brownlee.html
Pharma, just like the private hospital,they will tell you to spend this and that so you can get well. Sometimes spending big money do not work really.. Thats why I always go to the General Hospital as they are now giving better service and medical attention. Many keep asking me why when I am driving a big car and earning quite a lot. The reason is good service and facilities. For 1.00 and 5.00 you could get the best medicine, attention & facilities. Morever if the medical personnels and doctors are rude or not performing you can make a complain.… Read more »
You must thank to BN government at least.
Aeyah Bos, so naive mah!! of course it is a scam, should ask my grandma how naturally she had cured any flu just by using natural stuff. The modern medicine is nothing that a bio pirated element of traditional and herbal medicines that is packed and sold with excellent marketing scheme of fear to the public for the benefits of the pharmaceutical companies and their kuncu-kuncu. 200 years ago people lived and so will people hopefully for another 200 years, but how you live and what you live for is the golden question. If people can figure this,then the answer… Read more »
it worked … they managed to get rid of huge inventory that were near expiry date and oso ‘expired’ inventory with ‘extended’ shelf life from their warehouse & at the same time created new demand …
Why doesn’t this surprise me…Ha Ha Ha