Big Pharma Shoves America Off the Wagon

[marmar]

from Minyanville:



Big Pharma Shoves America Off the Wagon
Ryan Goldberg Jul 09, 2009 1:00 pm

Percentage of people using prescription drugs is staggering.


As expected, most industries have retrenched during this recession. Not so the pharmaceutical industry: It keeps spending, and spending, and spending -- on lobbying, to beat back health-care reform, and on advertising, to inspire people to buy its sweet, sweet drugs.

In the first 3 months of 2009, the pharmaceutical and health-care-products industry spent more than $66.5 million on lobbying Congress -- about $1.2 million per day, or $50,000 an hour, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And big pharma’s total spending on advertising certainly hasn’t declined significantly, either: Advertising Age recently reported that it spent $12.7 billion on marketing in 2008, with more money than ever dumped into television commercials. Fourteen of the top 100 advertisers are pill-pushers.

The recession has presented drug companies with an opportunity to tell everyone that a cure for depression, impotence, and the sniffles is only a tiny pill away. Close to 10% of men and women in America are now taking drugs to combat depression, and, in the United Kingdom, 2.1 million more antidepressant prescriptions were written in 2008 than in 2007.

And in this recession, former big shots whose stars have fallen are looking for a quick fix for what ails them, and the list is long: depression, panic disorders, attention deficits, and (gasp) erectile dysfunction can all result from chronic stress and general misfortune -- or so big pharma would have you believe. Sources of such stress could mean anything from being on the end of a losing trade to going bankrupt when your company collapses. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.minyanville.com/articles/PFE-SGP-GSK-lly/index/a/23468/from/home

[Captain Hilts]

1. Thanks for all your posts such as this one, Marmar. nt

[marmar]

2. De nada, amigo.

n/t

[RufusTFirefly]

3. I think there's a prescription drug that will help get you off prescription drugs

Granted, there may be side effects, but luckily there's something you can take for them.

[tridim]

6. It's called Cannabis, but unfortunately it's highly illegal..

Because it grows like a weed and has the horrible side effect of making you feel better.

[Ilsa]

4. I won't be long before they'll have to keep us all drugged to prevent

the peasants from revolting. ("That right! They stink on ice!" -- Mel Brooks, History of the World, Part I, I believe.)

[DCKit]

5. I think we passed that milestone almost a decade ago Ilsa.

We're two generations in already.

[Froward69]

7. I HATE drug pushers.

the "legal" ones even more.