Big Pharma

Killing For Profit: Big ‘Pharma’ Out Of Control

October 4, 2015 Jack Rasmus, www.telesurtv.net Educate! Big Finance, Big Pharma, health, Health Care

By Jack Rasmus for TeleSur. The problem with Big Pharma price gouging ‘out of control’ is not just that its companies have been allowed to operate as monopolies due to patent protection. Patent protection has been around for decades, well before the industry began its price gouging and profits at the expense of life practices. A good part of the problem has become the growing ‘financialization’ of the industry by Wall St. and global finance capital in general in recent decades. That takeover has led to new ways to inject price volatility into the prescription drug market in order to manipulate pricing to extract excessive speculative profits. This has transformed, and continues to transform, the pharmaceuticals industry into what is sometimes called a ‘rentier capitalist’ sector.

Truthdiggers: All Who Piled On Martin Shkreli

September 27, 2015 Alexander Reed Kelly, www.truthdig.com Resist! Big Pharma, Capitalism, health, Health Care

By Alexander Reed Kelly in Truthdig. New York, NY - When Martin Shkreli, a 32-year-old pharmaceutical CEO, raised the price of a 62-year-old drug acquired by his company from $13.50 to $750 per tablet, the medical industry and the public exploded in outrage. The former hedge fund manager’s decision threatened to increase the annual cost of treatment for rare, life-threatening parasitic infections sometimes contracted by AIDS and cancer patients to, in some instances, hundreds of thousands of dollars, a change that would drive most patients into deep debt and even bankruptcy. A New York Times article quoted a joint letter to Shkreli’s company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association that called the price increase for Daraprim “unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population” and “unsustainable for the health care system.”

The Teflon Toxin Goes To Court

September 21, 2015 Sharon Lerner, www.theintercept.com Educate! Big Pharma, Law, Public Health, Science

By Sharon Lerner in The Intercept - As The Intercept reported in a three-part series last month, Bartlett’s is the first of some 3,500 personal injury and 37 wrongful death claims stemming from the 2005 settlement of a class-action suit filed on behalf of people who lived near the plant. Another trial over the chemical, which for decades was used in the production of Teflon and many other products, is scheduled for November. Together, the “bellwether” cases, six in all, are expected to give attorneys on both sides a sense of whether the rest of the claims will proceed or settle — and for how much. Bartlett’s attorneys, including Robert Bilott, who has been working on C8 since takingthe case of a West Virginia farmer named Wilbur Tennant in 1999, argue that DuPont is guilty of negligence, battery, and infliction of emotional harm for exposing Bartlett to C8 in her drinking water.

KEI Leaks TPP Text On Intellectual Property

August 4, 2015 James Love, www.keionline.org Resist! Big Pharma, health, Health Care, TPP, Trade

By James Love of Knowledge Ecology International. Washington, DC - Today, August 4, 2015, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) released text from three sections of the 95-page secret negotiating text on the Intellectual Property Chapter being used in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP, sometimes referred to as TPPA) trade negotiations. The negotiating text is dated May 11, 2015, and reflects the state of the text right before the Maui rounds of the negotiation, which ended Friday, July 31, 2015. Analysis and more text to be forthcoming.

Leaked: What’s In Obama’s TPP Trade Deal

July 2, 2015 Michael Grunwald, www.politico.com Educate! Big Pharma, Capitalism, Public Health, TPP

By Michael Grunwald in Politico - A recent draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade deal would give U.S. pharmaceutical firms unprecedented protections against competition from cheaper generic drugs, possibly transcending the patent protections in U.S. law. The draft text includes provisions that could make it extremely tough for generics to challenge brand-name pharmaceuticals abroad. Those provisions could also help block copycats from selling cheaper versions of the expensive cutting-edge drugs known as “biologics” inside the U.S., restricting treatment for American patients while jacking up Medicare and Medicaid costs for American taxpayers. “There’s very little distance between what Pharma wants and what the U.S. is demanding,” said Rohit Malpini, director of policy for Doctors Without Borders.

Leaked Text Shows Big Pharma Using TPP Against Global Health

June 11, 2015 Deirdre Fulton, www.commondreams.org Educate! Big Pharma, Finance and the Economy, Free Trade, Public Health, TPP

By Deirdre Fulton in Common Dreams - Bolstering long-held criticisms from public interest groups, newly leaked sections of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) show how Big Pharma is employing "an aggressive new form of transnational corporatism" to increase profits at the expense of global health. The TPP's "Healthcare Annex"—which seeks to regulate government policies around medicines and medical devices—would give big pharmaceutical companies more power over public access to medicine while crippling public healthcare programs around the world and "tying the hands" of the U.S. Congress in its ability to pursue Medicare reform and lower drug costs. President Barack Obama is trying to gain Fast Track approval from the U.S. House of Representatives as early as tomorrow, having already obtained it from the Senate, which would grant him increased power to push the TPP and other mammoth trade pacts through Congress.

Peruvian Patients Reject TPP: Will Affect Their Access To Medication

October 22, 2014 Rael Mora, www.telesurtv.net Educate! Big Pharma, Finance and the Economy, Peru, TPP

Leaks on the secret trade agreement, the TPP, are worrying social organizations that deal with health issues in Peru. They predict that the adoption of such a treaty will result in many deaths. On Monday, after the release of new information by Wikileaks, social organizations defending the interests of health patients have spoken out against the TPP. Representatives from the Peruvian Network for Patients and Users claim the treaty will allow for pharmaceutical companies to dominate the use of a drug for decades. The Trans Pacific-Partnership agreement (TPP) is a free trade agreement that is being negotiated in secret by 12 countries including Peru. One of the most controversial aspects of the treaty is the one that protects medicine patents, benefiting the interests of large pharmaceutical companies.

Big Ag’s Big Lie: Factory farms, Your Health and the New Politics of Antibiotics

January 13, 2014 Alexander Zaitchik, www.salon.com Educate! Big Pharma, FDA, Food and Agriculture, Monsanto

The new guidelines, known as Final Guidance 213, were officially released two weeks ago, just in time for Christmas. “Two-thirteen is an early holiday gift to industry,” says Avinash Kar, a health attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The FDA has essentially followed a voluntary approach for more than 35 years, but use of these drugs to raise animals has increased. There’s no reason why voluntary recommendations will make a difference now, especially when FDA’s policy covers only some of the many uses of antibiotics on animals that are not sick.”

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