<p>Busdriver, if I wanted to whine about Big Pharma, I’d be talking about the ones that lie about their trial results and all the subsidiaries.</p>
<p>See, I knew you had a whine on your lips.</p>
<p>Then again, so do I (but mine is called Apothic Red).</p>
<p>Great choice, busdriver! I heard that a glass of polyphenolic potion a day keeps big pharma away. ;)</p>
<p>Parent1986 and dstark should partner on a screenplay about corruption and conspiracy in Big Bad Pharma and go peddle it to Hollywood. Some out there are still trying to capitalize on all that nonsense.</p>
<p>fwiw, my DH was a tenured academic with several millions in NIH funding who left for Big Pharma. He just wanted to work with smarter people who actually made stuff that helps people.</p>
<p>I have been learning more than I ever knew before about science research from my graduate student kids.
Very disillusioning. 
I am not sure why I expected it to be without conflict of interest.
Maybe because it seems so important.</p>
<p>No profit = shortages and stagnation. You can have rosy fantazies and pretty pictures, but reality and historical facts in all of the countires in the world shows completely opposite picture. The centrazed effot works for army and border control, everything else gets destroyed by it.</p>
<p>This isn’t exactly on topic but does deal with Pfizer and other Corporations. In other words, it talks about a different type of legal corruption - not the one DStark addressed in his original argument.</p>
<p>In other words, the companies are engaged in a practice to not increase jobs or productivity in general, but to INCREASE CEO SALARY .</p>
<p>"<a href=“Rash to Some, Stock Buybacks Are on the Rise - The New York Times”>Rash to Some, Stock Buybacks Are on the Rise - The New York Times;
<p>"What is more, share buybacks have not fulfilled their stated purpose of rewarding investors over the last decade, experts say. “It’s a symptom of a deeper problem, which is a lack of investment in the long term,” said William W. George, a Harvard Business School professor and former chief executive of Medtronic, a medical technology company. “If we’re not investing in research, innovation and entrepreneurship, we’re going to be a slow-growth country for a decade.”</p>
<p>Liberal critics insist the trend is another example of top corporate executives raking in an inordinate share of the nation’s wealth, even as their employees suffer.</p>
<p>“It’s an extraordinarily unimaginative way to use money,” said Robert Reich, a former secretary of labor under President Clinton who now teaches public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. After diving in the wake of the financial crisis, buybacks have made a remarkable comeback in recent years, with $445 billion authorized this year, the most since 2007, when repurchases peaked at $914 billion."</p>
<p>The other option is dividend payouts which I prefer.</p>
<p>I agree. ^^^ Or, how about investing in new buildings, labs and research?</p>
<p>
It’s not nonsense, it’s actually well documented:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And apparently Pfizer has reached the ranks of “too big to fail”:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>[Pfizer</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“Pfizer - Wikipedia”>Pfizer - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>It depends on what the investor is looking for - growth or income or a mix.</p>
<p><a href=“Opinion | Why Doesn’t No Mean No? - The New York Times”>Opinion | Why Doesn’t No Mean No? - The New York Times;
<p>"As a result of that first, optimistic study, the Food and Drug Administration gave the drug “accelerated approval,” meaning it could be marketed as a breast cancer therapy while further studies were conducted. Those follow-up studies are what caused a panel of F.D.A. experts to then withdraw that approval. That decision, you may recall, was made this summer, after a heated two-day meeting that included pleas from breast cancer victims and enormous pushback from Genentech, which markets the drug and reaps around $7 billion in annual Avastin sales. After weighing the evidence, the F.D.A. panel voted 6 to 0 against Avastin.</p>
<p>Less understandable was the reaction from conservatives, who cast the F.D.A. decision as an example of the nanny state making decisions that more properly belonged to doctors and their patients. The Wall Street Journal editorial page called Dr. Hamburg’s decision a “blunt assertion of regulatory power” and described Avastin as “potentially life-saving,” which it most certainly is not.</p>
<p>The strangest reaction, though, has come from the nation’s health insurers and the administrators of Medicare. Despite the clear evidence of Avastin’s lack of efficacy in treating breast cancer, they have mostly agreed to continue paying whenever doctors prescribe it “off label” for breast cancer patients. Avastin, by the way, costs nearly $90,000 a year.</p>
<p>We talk, as a society, of our need to get health care costs under control. Conservatives, in particular, insist that Medicare must be reformed. Here is an enormously expensive drug that largely doesn’t work, has serious side effects and can no longer be marketed as a breast cancer therapy. Yet insurers, including Medicare, will continue to cover it.
If we’re not willing to say no to a drug like Avastin, then what drug will we say no to?"</p>
<p>Big Pharma has a ho hum day.</p>
<p>[Merck</a> to Pay $950 Million in Vioxx Settlement - WSJ.com](<a href=“Merck to Pay $950 Million in Vioxx Settlement - WSJ”>Merck to Pay $950 Million in Vioxx Settlement - WSJ)</p>
<p>“Merck & Co. Inc. will pay $950 million to settle criminal and civil charges that it illegally promoted the painkiller Vioxx, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
The department said Merck will plead guilty to a misdemeanor offense and pay a $321.6 million criminal fine. The company is entering into a civil settlement in which it will pay $628 million to resolve additional allegations regarding off-label marketing of Vioxx and false statements about the drug’s cardiovascular safety, the department said.
The plea and settlement resolve a long-running investigation into Merck’s marketing of Vioxx, which was withdrawn from the market in 2004.”</p>
<p>I don’t want to pay for drugs that don’t work…</p>
<p>There is a very strong possibility that Vioxx killed my brother’s mother-in-law…</p>
<p>Especially because…before she took it…she had no heart disease…</p>
<p>After she took it…</p>
<p>“If we’re not willing to say no to a drug like Avastin, then what drug will we say no to?”</p>
<p>well parent1986 that is the big million dollar question. It is not only drugs, but other medical treatments as well. At what point should we do a cost benefit analysis?. It is easy to logically think and draw a line, but how can you fight emotions of affected. If private insurer pay for something and Medicaid doesn’t pay, can you imagine the political backlash?</p>
<p>“If we’re not willing to say no to a drug like Avastin, then what drug will we say no to?”</p>
<p>well parent1986 that is the big million dollar question. It is not only drugs, but other medical treatments as well. At what point should we do a cost benefit analysis?. It is easy to logically think and draw a line, but how can you fight emotions of affected. If private insurers pay for something and Medicaid doesn’t pay, can you imagine the political backlash?</p>
<p>I don’t want private insurers to pay for avastin for breast cancer either…</p>
<p>Because the insurer really isn’t paying for it…the insured are.</p>
<p>Good points re to Avastin^^^, but don’t you see the inherent contradiction of the stance the right is taking with this drug, in light of their other professed policies - ie. somebody is in somebody’s pocket - it just reaks of corruption, or an ulterior motive.</p>
<p>To clarify - the Right is not saying NO to Avastin, and they should be saying no - its effectiveness is questionable.</p>
<p>Merck is simply closing up ship here in the good old USA just like a number of other pharma. And btw, that case, is going to get reviewed by the Supremes. The sales rep involved in the alleged illegal marketing has appealed and the Supreme Court is quite likely to rule that the whole junk prosecution of drug makers for marketing their products for therapeutic uses not yet approved by the FDA is, in fact, a violation of free speech.</p>
<p>Germany did to its pharma industry what the FDA is doing to the US pharma. That’s why Germany lost the world leadership of the industry. Now they are leaving here. Yay! what a win for the country.</p>
<p>BTW, the off label marketing in the Vioxx case was for disease states fully approved in Europe and Japan (of all places – historically very conservative in approving any kind of drug).</p>
<p>Parent1986 if what you long for is a conspiracy theory then think about the notion that the FDA and several administrations have wanted very much to socialize medical care in this country. A key component is to destroy pharma. The goal is to make health care a very cheap commodity with no real options beyond old generics that cost pennies. That way we can all dwell in utopia where healthcare is really free!</p>
<p>And ponder this – why are prescription medications subjected to decades of clinical trials and endless waits while the FDA dithers while charlatans hawk nutraceuticals, supplements, herbal treatments and all sorts of garbage, much of which is quite seriously dangerous if taken in excess or with the wrong medication mix or if it precludes the foolish patient from seeing an actual physician and getting on the right med when appropriate?? How about the billions getting made in that big mess of capitalistic fervor??</p>
<p>But the important thing is that pharma is truly shutting down in the US. Pharma is realizing that the American marketplace with it’s cost pressures and FDA hijinks is simply not worth the investment to go on with R&D and manufacturing here.</p>
<p>Yay.</p>
<p>Yes, it is too bad there are now a lot of generics and the drug companies can’t keep collecting all that money - and that the mergers they are attempting to compensate for the lost moola are being blocked by the US. C’est la vie!</p>