What’s disturbing is that pharma designs the clinical trials and those conducting them are selected by pharma and beholden to pharma for economic reasons to get the “right” results.
The papers submitted to the so called best medical journals in the nation are frequently not even written by the scientists who are listed on the paper. They just sell their name. The medical journals are heavily dependent on pharma.
The public health entities FDA, CDC, NIH are also not only financially dependent on pharma; but the regulators are a revolving door from public health entity to pharma lobbyist.
Then pharma engages in heavy marketing campaigns to convince doctors which are relying on false information and their patients that they need drugs which in the end have very bad adverse events.
Bottom line, the whole system is corrupt and there are no checks and balances. Pharma owns medicine...:-(
Advertising cigarettes and whiskey was banned from television and magazines. Too bad this cannot happen for drugs. At a minimum, advertising prescription drugs should not be a tax deductible expense. Some drug companies spend half of their budgets on advertising.