Фармацевтические монополии и коррупция

[onb2017]

Фармацевтические монополии, всё больше поглощающие рынок медикаментов, вот уже несколько лет пользуются излюбленными методами увеличения своих прибылей даже в ведущих империалистических державах, не говоря уж о странах, которые акулы капитализма считают второсортными. К таким относятся и Россия, и бывшие союзные республики, и некоторые бывшие

Comments

[matrixmann]

Only read part of that text in a translator and I think it rings a bell in me.
Unfortunately there's not much research about it, as it surely would also bring Western pharmaceutical enterprises down into shame, but the GDR allegedly also had some kind of "programs", "contracts" or whatever you wanna call it with the West for medication.
What it was supposed to be one doesn't know exactly until today - on both sides.
As far as I got it until now - you know how big pharma goes to countries like India these days where people can't afford health care and where they "help" them with overcoming common and uncommon diseases? On the outside, everyone celebrates the unconditional charity, but behind all this orchestration it's actually nothing more than a possibility for the enterprise to test new medication on humans which they could not do that freely in the countries they're from. People are thankful if the medication helps as they couldn't afford themselves any in each way, if it doesn't save someone they're not sad too because that would have been someone's destiny from the start.
I don't know if it was exactly that stunt they performed with the GDR, but something similar to that it must have been.
The GDR thought of it, them making their studies on their territory, so they'd get hold of a few medications whose patents lied with Western enterprises and were pretty expensive for the state to import (thanks to the currency traded underneath its value).
They must have had the assumption all of that which they went on testing and studying had been tested on humans before and was safe - but, if you go through biografies of enough families, it seems like this wasn't the case. People which have received some of that medication - first they did better and suddenly then they died. If they did not die right away when replacing the previous compund with the new one.
Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't have happened, or only with like one in ten thousand, but it allegedly was more often than that. So there must have been something wrong with the medication the West tested.
Be it either placebo tests or the compounds received their tests on humans then (in the GDR) and they've only been tested before on mice in the West.

For sure you won't find much information about that and if, then only such which condemns the GDR for such practices and fails to mention the Western big pharma enterprises whose medication it was that was subject of the experiments.

[onb2017]

Thanks for taking time translation through google. Basically, the point here is that big pharma is corrupted beyond any reason and work together with governments to get their expensive medications prescribed to people without need or over the other cheaper ones or send them to other countries. And like you said either simply make money of unfortunate people or test on them. Although I read even in the USA, they don't much care about possible law suits. It will cost them less to pay all the victims than give up profit and sell something that has terrible side effects. Like for example they treat depression and it can cause some people to commit suicide but they would rather pay compensation than give up selling the medication.

[matrixmann]

Well, I don't think it's not an incorrect assumption that something like that what happened in West Germany with Contergan can never happen again. It's a matter of profit vs. gain comparison for the big pharma enterprises.

If you're dependent on medication, you can tell yourself there's not much you can do as you barely got a choice to not take a pill. Without it, your condition is gonna get worse. Maybe you've got the luck to have a good doctor which is sceptic to changing medication too often - or you got a severe disease where new treatments take long time and you gonna be put on the same stuff for a pretty long time if it works for you.

As you name depression: Think I read an article this year which made me laugh. They experimented with ketamine and found out it's a pretty good drug to treat depressive people. I know that stuff from the Acid Techno scene in talking, and it made me laugh for that reason "What do you think people always ate that for at Techno parties? To become happier than they otherwisely were already! That shit does work!!"
You know, maybe it's for reason that in English you can use for both medication as well as for dope to your body one and the same word - "drugs".
They should sometimes even get back to it if not these known drugs contain some compounds that can help you for a modern problem of civilization that didn't exist when these substances were created. (You know, most of all chemical drugs known today in several party scenes were already known by the time WWII happened.)
As people with ADHD say who did coke: The shit calms you down. The shit that's supposed to make you go hyper calms these people with this brain anomaly down and makes them reach concentration for once. I don't know how the famous Ritalin works, but I could guess the principle is no other.

[onb2017]

Or and speaking of synthetic drugs, I read that there are lots of natural substances that are effective but they don't want to use them because you cannot patent them. But then they synthesize the same damn thing, put a brand name on it and sell it making billions of dollars.

[matrixmann]

Well... Part yes, part no. Saying, people in the Middle Ages before modern medicine emerged, they were a lot of dumb, but some way they also must have survived if they got sick. They sometimes knew a few things about medicine - straight from your Central European envionment - which are totally forgotten these days. These things come back into play if modern medicine reaches the limits of its knowledge.
On another hand again, this gives a lot of potential to hocus pocus treatment.

[onb2017]

Don't get me wrong I am not saying we have to treat illnesses only with herbal stuff. For example, penicillin was very important for humanity. What I am trying to say that sometimes there are natural formulas that are available but corporations use synthesis to create drugs to make them their exclusive possessions so they can make money of unfortunate people.

[matrixmann]

I think I got that right, no worries.
Even though, I remain with what I said.
Maybe you know it yourself - people being terminally ill or dissatisfied with what modern medicine can offer to you or worried over nothing, just having seen a campaign stating XYZ is poisonous to the human body, and they turn to "alternative medicine" and believe in every shit they see there from then on.

[onb2017]

Oh yeah, alternative medicine is alternative way of making money all right. I know what you mean. And all these herbal stuff that they promise will cure cancer and grow an arm on you if you are missing one. Just kidding on this one but this is pretty much what they claim.

[matrixmann]

That's what I meant.