Accidental Blogger

All those serene and earnest sounding messages you see and hear on pharmaceutical company ads, promising to find a cure for this deadly disease and that … don’t believe them.  They are about as sincere as Exxon Mobil and British Petroleum promising to clean up the environment. Edward Jenner, Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin could not have succeeded in their research at the big commercial drug labs of today. Bottom line in business is far more crucial to the companies than your health. Vaccines are particularly bad for business. It is more profitable to keep sick people on maintenance drugs than to develop and market a cure for a deadly disease. If a vaccine is found against AIDS, cancer, leprosy or malaria, it is much more likely to be the result of an NIH funded research scientist working in a university than due to any efforts within the multi-billion dollar research labs of Pfizer, Merck or Glaxo Smith & Kline. They don’t want to direct resources towards the R & D of vaccines and cures. They’d much rather spend their dollars in filling the campaign coffers of politicians and in marketing those cheery commercials with sunshine, butterflies,rainbows and happy people, that you see during the evening news. Congress eagerly subsidizes the big name pharmaceutical companies with our tax dollars. Price gouging, market protection, immunity from law suits are concessions that are written into law with little regard for the sick, elderly and rising health care costs. Lobbyists for drug manufacturers are among the most powerful on Capitol Hill. What is most ironic is that drugs developed by NIH funded research are marketed by pharmaceutical companies, who make no investment in their development, for huge profits – with no money from the profits going back to the NIH. These are the same hypocrites in congress and business who shamelessly feed at the public trough while clamoring to "keep government out of our lives" in order to garner votes and market shares.

"In an unusually candid admission, the federal chief of AIDS research says he believes drug companies don’t have an incentive to create a vaccine for HIV and are likely to wait to profit from it after the government develops one.

And that means the government has had to spend more time focusing on the processes that drug companies ordinarily follow in developing new medicines and bringing them to market.

"We had to spend some time and energy paying attention to those aspects of development because the private side isn’t picking it up," Dr. Edmund Tramont testified in a deposition in an employment lawsuit obtained by the Associated Press.

"If we look at the vaccine, HIV vaccine, we’re going to have an HIV vaccine. It’s not going to be made by a company," Tramont said. "They’re dropping out like flies because there’s no real incentive for them to do it. We have to do it."

"They will eventually — if it works, they won’t have to make that big investment. And they can make it and sell it and make a profit," he said……

In an e-mail response for comment, Tramont said the HIV vaccine mirrors the history of other vaccines. "It is not just a HIV vaccine — it’s all vaccines — that is why there was/is a shortage of flu vaccines," Tramont wrote….."

In his Christmas Day message, Pope Benedict  warned scientists against the danger of technological advances made in the absence of faith. "…But the men and women in our technological age risk becoming victims of their own intellectual and technical achievements, ending up in spiritual barrenness and emptiness of heart. The modern age is often seen as an awakening of reason from its slumbers, humanity’s enlightenment after an age of darkness," he (the Pope) said. "Yet, without the light of Christ the light of reason is not sufficient to enlighten humanity and the world.", said the Pope. It would be interesting to know if a similar exhortation was directed towards corporate business practices. But then, organized religion is big business too.  No wonder the papal message of purity and ethics addressed scientists and not business biggies who make marketing decisions for drug companies. After all, perpetual  suffering and fear of terrible death are two reliable guarantees of maintaining a profitable consumer base for both big religion and big pharma.