The Dirty Little Tricks of Drug Companies

[tater]

The profit graph they have is meaningless. Express it as a simple % profit or STFU. If a XX% profit is unacceptable for a drug company, it's unacceptable for ANY business, or even person.

Given the exactly even numbers of deaths, we can assume that the numbers are made up based on guestimates of doses used and the % of deadly complications. In other words, those numbers are meaningless. Actual deaths could be considerably different in either direction.

The source is clearly bogus, it's be as bad as an OP about how awesome all drugs are with the source as a drug company.

"Journalists" would be a similarly unreliable source unless the author is a trained medical doctor or toxicologist at the very least (journalists show most all the time that they don't have even a basic grasp of the science they report on—if you can't read a real scientific paper and follow it, you shouldn't be writing about science)

A paper about this off PubMed or something would be a reliable source on mortality (and would still likely be equivocal).

[Sailor Steve]

Objection #1: The graph, under the heading "Exaggerated Costs" gives no evidence for the difference or the number they cite. Everyone seems to be taking them at their word.

Objection #2: While we're discussing the cost of drug development and production no one seems to mention the fact that for every drug accepted by the FDA four are rejected, so no matter the actual cost of developing a drug there are four more that will never show any profit at all.

Objection #3: Under the heading "Persuade The Doctors" doesn't mention why any of that would be necessary. It seems that these companies are actually in competition with each other. When one develops something new that actually works, the others want to profit from it too, and of course the feel the need to get doctors to use theirs rather than somebody elses. Is this wrong? Should competition be banned? Limited? Encouraged?

Objection #4: "Cheap Testing Overseas" is a seemingly legitimate complaint, but it looks to me like "No, we don't want you to save money. We want you to spend more so your profits are minimized." This seems weird to me, but maybe I'm just weird to start with.

Objection #5: "Make Billions Of Dollars". Are the comparisons listed correct? Is the complaint that these companies are actually making money? Making too much? Who determines how much is "too much"? Cheating people? If that's true then they are liable to criminal prosecution. Have the government in their pockets? The why aren't you blaming the government.

Personally I think John Stossel has the right answer: Get rid of the FDA and let an independent private organization like UL handle it. UL doesn't have the power to shut down anybody, and yet appliance makers the world over scramble for their approval. I also think that much of the "complaints" about 'Big Pharma' are similar to complaints about Wal*Mart - people need someone to blame, and the bigger the target the easier it is to blame them for everything. Hate needs no reason, but the people who hate do, and here is one they can rally against.