Perhaps there will be a new generation of doctors who are willing to turn their backs on being bought off by Big Pharma, and, instead, focus on health care and patient care.

There may be hope after all.

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More students could learn from this student. In fact, we should switch the "professor" and student position wise. Thanks for exposing that puppet posing as a "professor".

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Keep looking and keep investigating. Patents are one place to start. Big Pharma is on-campus in a big way. So is private money from other sources and so is government money.

A lot of this is channeled into research for a wide variety of projects. Now, search through the process and find out where the patents wind up. They will most certainly wind up in private corporate hands. The research is funded by big corporations partially (cheap in that they fund a "portion" but not all). Then other private sources and charities along with the government. Then, when the project produces valuable "products" the patents wind up in private corporate hands. The universities are not willing to control this because they are being funded by big Pharma.

Now, also, many of the key academic chairs are funded by outside corporate sources as well. So the key chairmanships fall under the hidden control of big Pharma (and others). The same "revolving door" exists here as well. You leave a PhD in place in a University chair until he moves over to big-corp job and then back and forth just like revolving door with government.

Harvard does what with its endowment? other than keep building it up, and up and up. That money is directed to cover the research (along with lots of other things too) to benefit the corporate contributors to the chairs and various projects.

The point in all this is to leverage big Pharma (and others) investment in patents that they wind up with. They pay pennies on the dollar for the actual costs inherent in research yet wind up with the patents.

Nice work.

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I had suspected that several of my doctors were little more than shills for Big Pharma. Now I know where it starts...right at the begining of their medical education. Otherwise, why would two different doctors want to give me Levaquin for a simple bladder infection, when Levaquin has a huge black box warning about it causing one's tendons to snap like rubber bands.

No wonder this nation's health is going down the toilet. They never talk about exercise, nutrition, or vitamins and herbs. It's all about the latest, most expensive drug they can prescribe.

I was having trouble respecting my physicians and their dismissive attitudes when all the crap they were doling out wasn't working. That is one profession that will be struggling to maintain it's high-flying lifestyle in the next decade, as people become more aware of healthful living, and stay away from dangerous prescriptions.

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"just say no to greed,inequity and corruption"

Your profession is calling you back to its roots

Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton.Pa

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I worked for a medical publishing company who also did Phase 4 work and CME's. The CME programs and small speciality magazines were all sponsored by the pharms.

While everything was peer reviewed they had their name and products first and foremost. It was and still is a big game involving big $$$$.

It's a hard system to change due to the lobbyist

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The foundation for this unfortunate relationship between academic medicine and pharmaceuticals companies was laid by the relentless cuts in federal funding for medical research. Science is expensive, and somebody has to pay for it. If we went back to government funding and made the patents available to any qualified manufacturer, the costs of drugs would be greatly reduced.

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It's time to expose all these snake oil salesman who hide their true identity from those they have influence over. Learning, especially in medicine should not be done just for the sake of some corporations benefit but for knowledge itself. These pariahs could care less about the affects on patients who are prescribed these well lobbied drugs, but rather only on the effects which occur on their balance sheets.
Expose all of them and rise above them. The first step is to form an independent watchdog group to weigh in on existing and new drugs approved by Federal Drug Asswipes, so that some off the truth comes out and the people can learn and be better protected. The second is to get all the Pharma students to ban together and create a group that can be known for not going along with the corporations and thus showing integrity. Maybe the small independent pharmacy s can carve this out and away from the big boxes like CVS and the rest. Just imagine how well integrity in medicine will sell. Give it a try.

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If we went back to government funding and made the patents available to any qualified manufacturer of cheap steroids., the costs of drugs would be greatly reduced...

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check out these stories via the web:
3/4/09
"Wyeth ruling may put spotlight on drug safety"

12/12/08
Drugmaker said to pay "Ghostwriters for Journal Articles."
NYTimes
4/16/08
Merk wrote Drug studies for Doctors
NYTimes
Report:
Drug firms distorted Paxil test results-

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