Drugging America: The drug industry exposed

[JPV]

The Washington Times - Drugging America: The drug industry exposed

Sunday, March 27, 2011 - Omkara World by Adam Helfer

Washington D.C., March 27, 2011 – Pharmaceuticals are a $650 plus billion dollar a year industry. For years the most profitable business in the U.S. has been the pharmaceutical corporations, which routinely top the annual fortune 500 list. Doctor prescribed drugs support an industry which out-earns the GNP of many nations.

A core attribute to big Pharma’s overwhelming ‘success’ lays in the liaison between the corporations and the ‘symptoms management’ health care industry: The pharmaceutical representative. The men and women we see meeting with physicians, walking into offices with gifts of lunch for the staff, meeting with the doctor while you wait for our appointment.

Gwen Olsen was a top level pharmaceutical rep for some of the biggest in the industry: Johnson & Johnson, Syntex Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott Laboratories and Forest Laboratories.

Through some chilling wake up calls in her tenure, and the tragic drug-related death of her niece, Gwen has dedicated her life to making people aware of the dangers of prescription drugs and how the drug industry manipulates doctors into prescribing, and over prescribing, their drugs.

She is exposing the dark, deep-rooted deception and corruption that is prevalent in this industry.

Gwen Olsens words are powerful. Her message absolutely frightening. Below is a transcript of our conversation as well as a video of Gwen speaking out, including her appearance on a CBS Evening News Eye On Your Children news segment.

The rest of the article can be read here: http://communities.washingtontimes....11/mar/27/dark-secrets-drug-industry-exposed/

 

[JPV]

Another excerpt:

Adam Omkara: How did you come to an awakening towards the industry. Did it all hit you all of the sudden, or was it a slow process?

Gwen: I realized early on I was in a position where I could harm people; In a position where I could literally take lives. My grand realization arrived when I started promoting a specific new drug.

I went to a national sales meeting for this new drug launch and was told the wonders on how it was going to help people. We immediately were sent out into our individual territories to get support for the new drug with key prescribing physicians.

Drug reps are given profiles of all the physicians in the territory on what their ‘writing habits’ are, i.e. their general personality, their prescribing habits like whether they are high volume prescribers or early adopters, or late adopters/skeptics.

Reps have all this information available before making a sales call so that they know how to approach the doctor and can develop a sales strategy.

So there was one doctor in my territory that was profiled as a “late adopter/skeptic.” That meant he was going to be difficult for me to get him to prescribe my new drug.

The marketing plan developed at launch emphasized to the sales force that as a last ditch effort, if a doctor didn’t want to write prescriptions for the new product, then the rep was to ask for just one patient- the most difficult patient that the doctor had. The theory was that if the drug worked for them, then the doctor would be more likely to use it in his broader practice later.

I did my presentation and the doctor told me his policy was he didn’t prescribe a new drug until it’s been on the market for at least a year. He had been burned on new drugs before.

However, with some hesitation he agreed to try it in his most difficult patient who had failed all other therapies and I left him samples.

Some time later I got a call from my district manager. I was being sent out to gather information for an Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) report, as there has been a death in my territory from our new drug and it was a patient of that doctor. And guess what- it was his mother! She had gone into renal failure and died from complications in dialysis. I was devastated!

After I went to get the ADR info, it took me almost 6 months to work up the nerve to go see that man again and look him in the eye. I was acutely aware that it had been my over-zealous and persistent marketing of the product that had influenced him to do something against his better judgment and, as a consequence, his own mother had paid with her life!

I’ll never forget his angry, terse remark to me, “Well, I see you all put a lot more effort into your marketing plan than you did your drug research and development!” What could I say to him after that?

That was my very first clue as a young rep that my job had serious ramifications.
Once this happened more and more things started falling into place. So with that awareness I began to see the job and industry with new eyes…

The rest of the article can be read here: http://communities.washingtontimes....11/mar/27/dark-secrets-drug-industry-exposed/

 

[JPV]

This segment, of an interview with Gwen Olsen, goes a long way to explain why psychiatrists are so eager to paint PCWs as having psychological problems:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4bYng7X7Kk#t=3m42s

 

[Enid]

Yes I can believe the lot - my brother (Prof Neurology) warned me that all drugs have some side effect (and that's the good ones - excluding the number which had to be withdrawn). Medics are not "pushovers" and recognise the need for thorough research - insufficient it seems. The Psyches must be more easily suggestible though.

 

[markmc20001]

good one

JPV good post. Happy to see that author finally woke up and got on the good side instead of the dark side.

As someone having CFIDS for so long I have always intuitively known that drugs are bad because of how ill I would immediately get and in the following days. After a round of vicodin I became bedbound for months.

Funny what she says about psychologists. The last psychologist I saw, after telling him about my chemical sensitivity and sensitivity to all drugs. The first thing he says is "I won't talk to you unless I can prescribe you a medication".

Got another good one. My brother was on a drug cocktail for years. One for sleep, another for depression, etc.etc. He was bedbound and basically disabled for three years at the age of 45 and finally dropped all the drugs and started a vitamin program with a naturopath after reading a book about the drug companies. He is now activily involved in the community and activism. With the drugs before he was on a slow path to CFS. Crazy.

 

[JPV]

I clearly remember back when drugs like Prozac were first being introduced, how the psychological community, en masse, declared that these sorts of drugs signaled a clear shift in their belief that most psychological conditions were actually chemical and not emotional.

What a bunch of degenerates.