Please give examples of how greed kills.

[begin_within]

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. 18,000 Amurkans each year succumb to their fortunate status of

having no healthcare.... this while this dick in D.C. is spending hundreds of billions infesting Iraq with his corporate donors... I'd say this is a good example.


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0522-05.htm
Study Blames 18,000 Deaths in USA on Lack of Insurance
by Steve Sternberg

WASHINGTON -- More than 18,000 adults in the USA die each year because they are uninsured and can't get proper health care, researchers report in a landmark study released Tuesday.

The 193-page report, ''Care Without Coverage: Too Little, Too Late,'' examines the plight of 30 million -- one in seven -- working-age Americans whose employers don't provide insurance and who don't qualify for government medical care.

About 10 million children lack insurance; elderly Americans are covered by Medicare.

It is the second in a planned series of six reports by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) examining the impact of the nation's fragmented health system. The IOM is a non-profit organization of experts that advises Congress on health issues.

Overall, the researchers say, 18,314 people die in the USA each year because they lack preventive services, a timely diagnosis or appropriate care.

[devilgrrl]

2. The war in Iraq doesn't qualify?

El Salvator, Viet Nam....

and don't give me that shit that we were fighting communism, it was for natural resources just like Iraq.

[StClone]

8. I have heard this before and can't find a source

noting what resource we were targeting in the Viet Nam War. Do you know of a link?

[devilgrrl]

13. I read it in...

Howard Zinn's 'A People's History of the United States'

This may help: http://www.sevenstories.com/html/textbook/Chapter%2018.pdf

[Deja Q]

3. They ship your job overseas, call you uneducated, and let you rot.

With no jobs readily available, it's russian roulette, only slower and more painful.

[flowomo]

4. Enron and other corporate lootings....

the poor suckers who lost their jobs, life savings. Some committed suicide, others lost their health.

[Joebert]

5. When profit overrides safety concerns.

How many times have we heard of cost savings through reducing safety precautions coming back to harm or kill people?

Releasing product to market because it only kills 2 people a year, and makes enough profit to pay their families off and still profit.

A pharmacist who dilutes certain medicines to sell more bottles of less material, profiting on the extras sold. Those who need the medication dying because it's not the proper dosage.

[me b zola]

6. Enron priced gouged energy/power

Older people couldn't afford their medications and died.

[Dees]

7. Tobacco....n/t

[Face_in_the_Crowd]

9. United Fruit Company

It has been well documented that the United States vehemently opposed leftist Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in the 50's, because of his "red" connection and ALSO because of US official's stakes in the United Fruit Company which Arbenz expropriated and distributed to land-less peasants.
Their reaction?

The coup unleashed one of the most brutal military regimes in the hemisphere. Some 140,000 people have been killed and another 45,000 disappeared in a U.S. backed scorched earth campaign to wipe out dissidents, rebels and activists for peace and social justice in Guatemala. The abuses by the Guatemalan military and its death squads were so horrific that even Amnesty International reported that they "strained credulity."


And I'll just use the obvious...Halliburton and the Iraq War?


GREED KILLS

[Ksec]

10. OK

When any man is able to make an inordinate amount of money , human nature will always want more. Its never enough. You are consumed with your money, like a drug. You become anti social and paranoid thinking everyones out to steal your money and shlt.

Greed is when you cant get enough. Its like a disease with no cure.

Eventually anyone with lots of money coming in will become greedy. Just look at Americas wealthy.

[Pirate Smile]

11. I remember seeing a segment on CNN about an experimental drug

for a certain type of cancer (a relatively small number of people are diagnosed with it every year). The drug was extremely effective and would save many or most people diagnosed with the cancer but the company decided to halt the production of the drug and further research because they decided they couldn't make enough money selling it.

They spoke with a family whose child was being helped by the drug because she was part of the research program but the program was going to simply end and the therapy for the patients wasn't over but the product was simply no longer going to exist.

Sorry, they said, it is cost prohibitive. It would save lives but the Drug Company decided they couldn't make money off of it so, just forget about it.

It was a story by Sanjay Gupta (sp?), the CNN doctor who is one of their medical experts.

I think the formula should be turned over to the government scientist for research (do we have any anymore?) because it could eventually lead to the breakthrough against other cancers or diseases - who knows?

It was very sad and frustrating. But, hey, that is how the markets work, right - the law of supply and demand?

:-(

[Divernan]

12. Big Pharma fudging stats on drug tests to make $$$,

knowing that in whatever time it takes for the known-to-them-but deleted -from-the-drug-test -reports fatal side effects, they can make huge profits. By the time they are forced to pull one product off the market, they have already developed, PATENTED,
and faux-tested it's money making replacement.

Big Pharma paid off Bush/GOP with campaign contributions which has resulted in the gutting of FDA and firing of whisteblowers therein.

Big Pharma has also successfully blocked generic forms of many of their drugs, even though only generics could be afforded by people in 3rd world countries.

Finally, Big Pharma refuses to spend money developing drug treatments for diseases which predominate in third world countries but rarely occur in "the West". For example a new treatment for malaria has not been introduced in decades, even though the ones currently marketed have never been more than 80 percent effective and may have debilitating side effects.

[Carolab]

14. Katrina. n/t

[OneBlueSky]

15. the Bush administration . . . n/t

.

[progressivebydesign]

16. When the government assigns a dollar value on your life.

And.. when your life is worth less than a certain number (i.e. you're old, disabled, or ill), then you are considered acceptably expendable when they make decisions affecting your life and ultimately.. your death.

[U4ikLefty]

17. Tax cuts for the rich. Paid for by neglecting NOLA flood protection

a few folks died on that one.

[FreedomAngel82]

18. 9/11

[applegrove]

19. By not paying taxes to improve inner cities you kill many. Poverty kills.

So does going to war to set a precedant for more war. So does lack of education or good public schools. So does Pharmaceutical companies trying to solve "market sexy" illnesses... instead of looking for the next superbug anti-biotic. Seems finding a new pill to help with chronic condition that already have pills... is a better way to make money.

Fact is the market only delivers profits. It doesn't fix issues. Where the hell is the man birth control pill? A little estrogen and much crime would dissappear.

Dressing up a predator in a pin stripe suit doesn't make someone less of a predator. It just results in more power and the ability to influence the lives of more people.

[dddem]

20. Google "committee of Ten Thousand"

A dear friend lost her son to AIDS. He was 9 years old and a hemophiliac when he became infected through the blood clotting factor they used at the time. He died when he was 21. During a conversation with his father, in trying to comfort these poor people, I pointed out that they really had no choice but to use the medication. I was informed that, had they known, they could have done straight transfusions, but it was a lot of hassle for a little kid, so they opted for the clotting factor. They found out after the fact that the pharmaceutical companies knew that a certain percentage of hemophiliacs would become infected, and they also knew that heat-treating the product would kill the virus, BUT THEY DECIDED IT WOULD BE MORE COST EFFECTIVE TO SETTLE WITH THE VICTIMS THAN TO RECALL THE PRODUCT. An estimated 10,000 little kids and their caregivers subsequently became infected because of this decision (hence the Committee of ten thousand - a class action lawsuit), so I can tell you for a fact that I've seen greed kill. And by the way, my friend's son was named John, and he was a great kid, who was beginning to grow into a wonderful man.