A new Congressional report explains how Big Pharma earns billions of profits from often ineffective and unsafe and almost always super expensive drugs. Action Alert!
The report, released by Congresswoman Katie Porter (CA-45), details the monopolistic practices of Big Pharma, finding that mergers in the industry destroy innovation and competition. The result? Few, if any, life-saving medications for diseases with few or no cures, but rather small tweaks to existing drugs to stave off generic competition to their “government-granted monopoly patents.” These are ideas ANH-USA has communicated for years.
In ten years, the number of international pharmaceutical companies has reduced from 60 to 10, the report tells us. We’re often told by Big Pharma that drug are expensive because the cost of research and development is so high, and many drug candidates fail. This is a smokescreen. The report details how prices have skyrocketed over the last few decades, but investments in research and development have failed to match this same pace. From 2008-2018, Big Pharma also spent more on stock buybacks and dividends than they did on research and development.
Indeed, Big Pharma is perfectly happy to leave the expensive and time-consuming process of research and development to the taxpayers. Of the 210 medicines approved by the FDA between 2010 and 2016, every one originated in government labs, or university labs funded by the government.
Keep in mind that many of the top grossing drugs simply don’t work, and come with a number of nasty side effects.
The truly innovative sector of healthcare today is in natural medicine, and Big Pharma knows it. That’s why they are using an FDA back-channel to steal natural substances like CBD, l-glutamine, and pyridoxamine and turn them into drugs.
The pandemic also showed the incredible promise of natural medicines, particularly in the absence of pharmaceutical alternatives in the first few months of COVID-19. We saw how vitamin D deficiency was linked with worse COVID outcomes, how Thailand approved the herb Andrographis paniculate for COVID-19 treatment based on promising studies, not to mention all of the other natural medicines like zinc, quercetin, and intravenous vitamin C that have much to recommend them in terms of COVID treatment and prevention.
But the government stands in the way of furthering innovation in unleashing the power of natural medicine. The FDA is beholden to drug companies, who pay exorbitant sums to the agency in the form of user fees. The FDA, along with the FTC, then help keep natural medicine from competing with drugs, as we saw with the censorship campaign launched by these agencies when doctors communicated the benefits of natural medicines for COVID-19.
When only FDA-approved drugs can claim to treat or prevent a disease, even though we know that natural medicines like supplements have incredible healing power, there is something seriously wrong. Our legislation aims to improve this situation by allowing companies to cite reputable studies describing the benefits of food and supplements. Please help us spread this message to members of Congress.
Action Alert! Write to Congress, telling them to support our legislative proposal allowing the free flow of information about food and supplement benefits. Please send your message immediately.
