Drug Warning: Stay Away from Michael Moore!

Next Moore documentary on the Drug Industry?

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Drug Warning: Stay Away from Michael Moore!

By E&P Staff
Published: December 22, 2004 10:00 PM ET


NEW YORK Everyone seems to have a blog or online newspaper nowadays, even the embattled drug giant Pfizer. And what is Pfizer using its for? Warning its employees about filmmaker Michael Moore.

The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday quoted Stephen Lederer, a spokesman for Pfizer Global Research and Development, saying, "We ran a story in our online newspaper saying Moore is embarking on a documentary -- and if you see a scruffy guy in a baseball cap, you'll know who it is." The company is hardly alone. As Elaine Dutka put it in the Times, “America's pharmaceutical industry is putting out an advisory about the latest potential threat to its health: Michael Moore.”

The director of “Fahrenheit 9/11” and other muckraking films is next targeting the health care/insurance/drug company system, in a movie that may be called “Sicko.” According to Dutka, “At least six of the nation's largest companies already have issued internal notices to their work forces, preparing them for potential ambushes.” These include GlaxoSmithKline, the second-largest in retail sales. "We have an image problem, not only with Michael Moore, but with the general public," said M.J. Fingland, senior director of communications for the Washington, D.C.-based Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

Dutka noted “rumors” that Moore “has hired actors to portray pharmaceutical salesmen who offer gifts to doctors who promote their products. There's also word that he's offered physicians $50,000 apiece to install secret cameras in their offices in an effort to document alleged corruption.” Reached at home in Michigan, the director denied paying doctors to help him install secret cameras. "I didn't need to,” he said. “So many doctors have offered to help, for free, in an effort to expose the system.” The movie, he added, is only in its early stages "and already people are freaky-deaky."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000741437

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On the other hand they take enormous profits on those drugs. And if we are going to have a healthcare system that works for all Americans instead of the special few, the drug companies will need to be looked at (along with all the other facets of the health care industry.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

Which is a good clue that the drug companies need investigating, but we all knew that here at DU.

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;-)

Those who are will be caught eventually, but if one seems suspicious, it's good to let them know. We can't (and shouldn't) wilfully hunt down all 21 of their posts! But if we see 3 or 4 with a common theme, then I would definitely make a mention of it via Alerting.)

there have been times I wanted to do that, but don't know how

and search by author. ;)

I attended a trade show where the Drugs companies were well represented just after the election. Let me tell you they were elated by the results of the election from all the comments I heard. I hope they all go down. I just kicked them out of my life in favor of so called "alternative medicine"- Never FELT BETTER!

do improve human life - antibiotics, type 1 diabetes medication (injections) - things that cannot be controlled only by proper diet and exercise and alternative medicine.

But, I agree with your premise. My mother has high blood pressure and Type 2 Diabetes, but was on so much medication for this, that and the other thing, that she was taking as many as seven pills a day.

She was forced, because of finances, to cut out all the incidental medications, other than those for her diabetes and high blood pressure, and feels tons better. Her meds were making her sick. And she's a semi-retired nurse!!

I never trusted the mainline medical establishment. This comment is coming from one of the more pro business posters' on this board.

I was agreeing with most of it.

But, just pointing out that it's not always "all" or "nothing." :) As the daughter and granddaughter of two nurses and, get this, niece, of a retired drug company sales representative, I have very few illusions regarding Big Pharma. ;)

BTW, I'm in the South, too. My city went blue in the midst of the red county and state - and we're in one of the most Republican districts: East Tennessee. So, there is a glimmer of hope around here (election fraud, aside). :party:

We now have two Rethug Senators,- oh excuse me we had two Republican Senators since Max Cleland lost and Zell Miller lost his marbles (Believe it or not he was decent Governor, more progressive than most of the long line of Dem Govs before him). GA is becoming so monkey it is sick.

and are paying for some of our medications out of pocket. The rest - well, we do without. We just can't afford them all.

and I know how sad it is for those who have no or bad insurance coverage; it makes me living.

The cost of life in the culture of life is an obscenity in of itself.

can't afford insurance. It was a support of your post.

I'm a bit off this morning. Having to take my meds every other day isn't doing me much good.

All those TV spots are quite expensive.

How much do your drugs cost? Are they covered by an insurance plan?

Pretty soon they will come out with Super Viagra. And Viagra for women. And pretty soon we'll all be working overtime to buy more Super Viagra so we can screw all day and all night.

Something needs to be done about this stupid system we have. We subsidize hospitals to pay for people that don't have insurance and they run them through emergency rooms and weekend medical machine usage to run up the costs. Drug companies will make money even if we do reform our system. The companies just use old scare tactics. I say this even though I own two name brand drug company stocks and a generic company stock.

head spin.

Big pharma is evil - and far worse than most people know. You the consumer exist only to be milked of cash. If they can't milk you, then they milk your healthcare provider, the government, whatever. It is relentless.

I have sat in board room meetings where things were discussed that are so completely coldhearted and profit driven it would curl your hair. I have received insider notices of lobby targets and successful legislative changes that are run like a military campaign.

Your Pfizer holding is profitable because of the games they play. The sad part is that Pfizer could be profitable without playing those games, but it's not part of the corporate mentality to even consider a more business "holistic" approach.

People such as yourself are in position to strike a major blow.

just unethical.

That terminology needs to be positively spun RIGHT NOW.

For example: Many literary minds of the late 1800's began to consider the corruption and exploitation involving large companies. Naturally, they put their talents to work, most often using fiction based on fact, but sometimes writing straight documentaries. The term "Muckrakers" was coined by Theodore Roosevelt in reference to their ability to uncover "dirt."

* Miss Ida Tarbell had been at work for years on her history of the Standard Oil Company, and it began to run in McClure's in November 1902.

* Lincoln Steffen's first novel on municipal corruption, "Tweed Days in St. Louis" appeared in McClure's Oct 1902.

* Henry Demerest Lloyd's Wealth Against Commonwealth, published in 1894, attacked the Standard Oil Company.

* How the Other Half Lives, published in 1890 by Jacob Riis, exposed life in New York's slums.

* John Spargo, an englishman, published The Bitter Cry of the Children, an account of young kids at work in sweatshops.

* Perhaps the most famous Muckraking novel, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, exposed the horrors of the Chicago meat-packing plants and the immigrants who were worked to death in them.

Don't you think that "trust-busting" Teddy Roosevelt is rolling over in his REPUBLICAN grave right now at his former party's bed-hopping with corporations?

The newest boogyman of the corporate fascists.
GO Michael! Stay off of small planes.
:toast:

And actualy said that if he goes after drug companies and HMOs Michael Moore has fertile ground with which to work.

(sigh)

Why do some people seem to harbor the illusion that alternative medicine is run by mom-and-pop operations contentedly curing us solely for the betterment of humanity?

The alternative medicine business is a huge, multi-billion dollar racket. It is un-regulated and un-monitored. Why? Because someone spent a lot of lobbying money to see that "nutritional supplements" were exempt from regulation.

Whenever someone extols the virtues of alternative medicine's freedom to innovate, they are buying into the Republican's anti-regulatory propaganda.

You can thank Rep. Bill Richardson and Sen. Orrin Hatch, who wrote the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, for the "freedom" of Alternative Medicine.

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The Braid of the 'Alternative Medicine' Movement
Wallace I. Sampson, MD, FACP

There has always been a fringe of healers, doctor wannabes, willing to dispense information for a price, or just for the self-satisfaction of appearing to be real scientists and physicians. Their seeming reason for existence is to supply methods rejected by scientific biomedicine. Others make and sell products with debatable or no effects, competing with effective pharmaceuticals. All have succeeded in winning over a minority of the public that now has firm belief in the power of supplements, antioxidants, athletic fuel, brain food, and special diets. Bookstore sales on health, nutrition, and medicine are high, and magazine racks overflow. The competition for space is fierce. There has always been good grazing along the fringes of medicine.

But now wannabes are taking shark bites out of medicine's flesh. They have perfected techniques of sales, propaganda, legal maneuvering, and political contributing and have reached significant levels of influence. The supplement industry, of course, influenced Rep. Bill Richardson and Sen. Orrin Hatch, who wrote the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. The bill liberalized marketing of supplements and removed the Food and Drug Administration's preemptive control over unsafe products. Companies now market products without proof of effectiveness and flood the marketplace with unstandardized, sometimes toxic, herbs and supplements.

Organized chiropractic and other occupational guilds repeatedly seek increased scope of practice, claiming to be able to diagnose and treat as physicians. Political contributions from fringe practitioner guilds regularly retool legislatures.

Private foundations fund many "AM" activities and may be the largest source of "AM" funding. The $300-million Fetzer Foundation funded the Bill Moyers PBS TV series Cancer and the Mind and the 1993 Eisenberg New England Journal of Medicine "AM" study. It still funds the Beth Israel/Harvard and other medical school courses, postgraduate physician education courses, departments, and research projects. The Laing Foundation (>$1 million) funded the University of Maryland acupuncture (pain) program and other activities. The Rosenthal Foundation funds Columbia University's "AM" program to at least $750,000. The Templeton Foundation gives annual awards, funds research, and supports other nonprofit organizations for millions of dollars for support of spirituality and religion in medicine. Ten million dollars went to the University of California this year from the Osher Foundation for an "altmed" service. Endowments are in the hundreds of millions of dollars, with annual funding exceeding the $14-20 million per year of the Federal Office of Alternative Medicine.

These foundations are products of wealthy entrepreneurs with private ideologies they would like to see adopted by society. Financially strapped universities and medical schools accept these funds under conditions not acceptable a decade ago. A few years ago, Yale University declined a contribution from a conservative donor on ideological grounds, and was hailed by the academic community.

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/altbraid.html
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See also:
Quackwatch.org
"Health Freedom"
William T. Jarvis, Ph.D.
Stephen Barrett, M.D.
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/hfreedom.html

The National Council against Health Fraud
http://www.ncahf.org/


Magical Thinking in Complementary and Alternative Medicine
http://www.csicop.org/si/2001-11/alternative.html

Did everybody see the list of most annoying people of 2004??? Michael Moore made number10! O'Reilly was number 9!

britney spears/paris hilton tied for number 1.

http://www.teenhollywood.com/d.asp?r=86903&cat=1027

I'm sure that when they chose Michael Moore, they thought they were voting for Roger Moore. Teens love Pierce Brosnan.

It was in the star and only adults voted.

this morning.

Star. Not a teen paper. Just a tabloid!

it is what first came up when i googled the topic.

Published on Sunday, December 26, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times

Big Pharma's Dirty Little Secret

by Peter Rost


The American healthcare system is the best in the world. Or so we are often told. But is it really true?

It is certainly the best system for drug companies, which can charge the highest prices in the world to some U.S. consumers. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that average prices for patented drugs in 25 other top industrialized nations were 35% to 55% lower than in the United States.

And it is a pretty good system for hospitals, insurance companies and others that deliver healthcare services. Americans spend about twice as much per person for healthcare as do Canadians, Japanese or Europeans, according to the World Health Organization.

But it's not a good system for American citizens. The U.S. has shorter life expectancies and higher infant and child mortality rates than Canada, Japan and all of Western Europe except Portugal, according to the WHO.

I'm a drug company executive who has spent 20 years marketing pharmaceuticals. And I'm troubled. I'm most troubled by the fact that we stick it to the people who can afford it the least.

For instance, elderly people who use a Medicare discount card and have to pay $1,299 annually for a drug that the Department of Veterans Affairs purchases for $322, according to a comparison by Families USA. Or middle-class families that lose health insurance and have to pay $29,500 for an overnight hospital stay, when Medicaid would have paid only $6,000, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It just doesn't make any sense. And, not surprisingly, the companies with the biggest profits — those in the drug industry — have been fighting hardest to maintain the status quo. --- http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1226-29.htm

Peter Rost is a vice president of marketing at Pfizer. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect those of his employer.