By Liz Pavek
Sept. 2001
We can grant
the manufacturers a certain amount of markup to make up for research,
development, and marketing. Even some for profit. But the following
table shows nothing but PROFITEERING.
Retail Cost of 100 tablets Cost of Ingredients %
Markup
DRUG
Celebrex 100 mg
$130.27 $0.60 21,712%
Claritin 10 mg
$215.17 $0.71 30,306%
Keflex 250 mg $157.39 $1.88 8,372%
Lipitor 20 mg
$272.37 $5.80 4,696%
Norvasc 10 mg
$188.29 $0.14 134,493%
Paxil 20 mg $220.27 $7.60 2,898%
Prevacid 30 mg
$44.77 $1.01 34,136%
Prilosec 20 mg $360.97 $0.52 69,417%
Prozac 20 mg $247.47 $0.11 224,973%
Tenormin 50 mg $104.47 $0.13 80,362%
Vasotec 10 mg $102.37 $0.20 51,185%
Xanax 1mg $136.79 $0.024 569,958%
Zestril 20 mg $89.98 $3.20 2,809%
Zithromax 600mg $1,482.19 $18.78 7,892%
Zocor 40mg $350.27 $8.63 4,059%
Zoloft 50mg
$206.87 $1.75 11,821%
USA Today, July 11, 2006
USA Today, July 11, 2006
(Thanks to Dr. Mercola's email newsletter for
this information)
It's in the financial
best interest of the medical industry to allow the population to remain on the
sick side. They treat a few symptoms, prescribe tons of pills, and make money
hand over fist.
If you read the ingredient
panel of any food processed in the last 15 years or so, you will find at least
two, and sometimes as many as six different forms of sugar, including fruit
juice concentrates and high-fructose corn syrup. (Question: Which food giant
does not produce sugar-loaded gut-bombs? Answer: None. They all
do.)
What space in these lethal
weapons that isn't occupied by sugar and incomprehensible chemical cocktails of
preservatives, coloring agents, softeners, texturizers, flavor enhancers, and
synthetic vitamin supplements is taken up by stripped, bleached flours and
hydrogenated vegetable fats, usually soybean, rapeseed, or corn oil. The food
giants know these hydrogenated fats are toxic, and yet they continue to
add them to the junk they market as if the stuff was good for you.
Now, why do you suppose
ADM, Monsanto, Nestle, and other food/chemical giants like them have so many
subsidiaries in the fields of food manufacturing, oil-grain, sugar-and-syrup,
and pharmaceuticals, as well as their companies that manufacture the chemicals
that fertilize, make pesticides and herbicides; and the seed companies
that provide the grains that the farmers plant? (The farmers are really not
included in this loop. They just grow the grains that provide the sugars and
oils in response to the demands of the market, and have been fed the same line
as the consumers: "Soybeans are GOOD for you! They provide protein and make
cattle fatten faster!") Suppose I told you that most of these giants also
manufacture or market the medications that they want you to take for the
diseases their ersatz "food" induces in all strata of the
population? (Suppose I told you that those that don't are probably owned by the
pharmaceutical giants?)
And, most medical schools
as well as research and teaching hospitals are heavily subsidized by the
food giants and pharmaceutical manufacturers, to the point of being "owned" by
them. Nothing gets revealed or released from these labs and hospitals except
what their sugar-daddies say is all right to release, and the truth is the first
casualty in their race for the largest share of the market.
"The FDA
has routinely hired food industry lawyers to write its policy; and routinely
sends its scientist to work for the industry it was set up to regulate. In fact,
the FDA is a paradigm of the axiom that any agency established to regulate a
segment of the economy will be subverted to support that segment. It is not in
the consumers best interests to trust the FDA, any more than it is in the
consumer’s best interests to trust the miracle claims for soy."
--by
Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, Ph. D.
There are grain and
soybean seeds out and in common use that are resistant to herbicides. Just
think about what that might mean for a farmer who plants something the giants
don't want planted. An unapproved crop? Shoot it with herbicide. Then force
the farmer to plant your own patented, special seeds, or nothing at all.
And, doesn't it make you wonder what happens
to that herbicide that gets sprayed on crop and weeds alike? It gets taken into
the leaves of the plants. That's how it kills the weeds. But just because the
crop plants don't DIE doesn't mean they don't have any herbicide in
them...herbicide that gets stored in the plant, sent to the forming seed, and
harvested in the fall. All those soybeans and corn kernels that go into making
soybean oil, textured vegetable protein, and baby formula; all that corn that
gets turned into high-fructose corn syrup, corn oil, corn meal, and corn flour,
ingredients in almost every single one of those tasty, "new, lite, low-fat,
convenient" foods that fill the shelves of all the grocery stores in the
country. So, enjoy your little banquet of Roundup, folks. You'll probably get
at least three good servings of it a day.
Have you ever wondered why
the US is the preferred customer for all these manipulated and
deadly products? 1)When Willie "The Actor" Sutton was asked why he robbed
banks, the famous bank-robber said, "Because that's where the MONEY is."
No other country on earth has so much money to spend on fancy, invented
foods, let alone the treatments that invariably follow the chronic consumption
of these chemical time bombs; and 2) No other country places so much trust in
doctors--most of whom are taught the party line in the above-mentioned medical
schools and pass the propaganda on to their unsuspecting patients: "Eat low-fat
foods. Avoid saturated fats. Eat a diet composed of 65% carbohydrate for good
health. Eat at least eleven servings of fruits, vegetables, and grains every
day. Don't eat eggs, butter, beef, or other sources of cholesterol or saturated
fats."
The only reason these
foods are forbidden by your doctor is because that is what he has been taught.
He has no more idea of what composes good, naturally-nutritious eating than his
patients do. He was taught this propaganda in a medical school that is
in the pockets of the chemical/pharmaceutical giants who produce refined sugars
for manufactured foods, and hydrogenated synthetic "food" oils to replace
natural saturated fats. (Is this the reason courses in nutrition are not
emphasized in most medical schools?) It's naturally in their be$t intere$t$
to not only keep you eating their products, but for you to subsequently
use the medical treatments they have for the symptoms these artificial foods
invariably and inevitably produce (...and none, I repeat, none of these
treatments will actually
cure
you of any of these disorders.)
Think the "health food"
stuff is any better for you? Forget it. Just being grown without weed killers
or chemical fertilizers and pesticides doesn't make it all that much better for
your body. There's at least as much sugar in most "health food" cereals and
processed foods as there is in the regular stuff. Maybe even more, since they
take out every last speck of natural fat and replace it with sugar of one kind
or another or more heat-processed oils.
And, what is printed
across the top of the little notepad on the doctor's desk? Nine times out of
ten, it's the name of the latest hormone, antibiotic, tranquilizer, diabetes
treatment, or anti-cholesterol medication. Let's see: hormones to
replace those depleted from a diet stripped of natural saturated fatty acids;
antibiotics to do the work of an immune system crippled by a diet loaded
with sugar and polyunsaturated oils--polyunsaturated oils so good at depressing
the immune system that their fatty acids are given to transplant patients to
prevent rejection; tranquilizers for the psychological and neurological
consequences of insufficient amounts of saturated fats in the diet as well as
chemical flavorings, colors, preservatives and other exitotoxins; diabetes
treatments of assorted kinds to compensate for the hysterical-to-prostrated
pancreases of people who have eaten the Standard American Diet faithfully all
their lives; and anti-cholesterol medication to treat what could
prove to be a non-existent problem with a chemical bomb that kills
people after it strips their body of essential cholesterol (used as
building blocks and hormone components). (link)
(link)
Most doctors are "owned"
by the pharmaceutical companies, HMO's, and megabusinesses who finance their
office space and pay their salaries. They must toe the party line or be
removed. Any doctor who chooses to go against this stream will quickly find
himself ostracized from the medical community.
The medical industry is
cynical. The truth about cholesterol and saturated fats has been common
knowledge among biochemists and scientists for many years. If not precisely
suppressed, it is conveniently ignored by pharmaceutical research groups because
there is a monstrous fortune to be made in the treatment and
medication of sugar/cholesterol-related diseases. (Rhetorical question: Why
should they cure you of Type II diabetes and cardiovascular
disease when they can keep you coming back week after week, year after year, for
more checkups, prescriptions, medications, and treatments until you die from the
complications of a disease that is induced by a refined, trans-fat
loaded, sugar-based diet, which they also most likely--and very conveniently--provide?)
I have spent 25 years researching nutrition
and alternative treatments of various kinds. At 25 (!!), I was a heart patient
on Inderal, Lasix, Propranolol, and other medications for cardiovascular disease. As time
went on, my experiences at the hands of the medical industry became more and
more destructive to me, and more lucrative for them, including amputation of a
breast. Today, no thanks to the medical establishment, and in spite of
all they were able to do to me, I am free of any medications whatsoever.
But it only happened because I took
responsibility for my own health.
The modern medical line of
defense appears to be not to heal or restore any affected, ill, or
under-performing organ or gland, but to either medicate the symptoms
indefinitely with chemicals or remove the offending body part, which is
frequently done before even attempting to heal said organ, to the financial
benefit of all the medical/pharmaceutical entities involved, but never to the
patient's good.
Yes, I'm skeptical about doctors (and I agree
that there are many wonderful doctors out there who really care about their
patients’ best interests), but most are sold out to the system. If they can get
that all-expense-paid golfing trip to the tropical paradise of their choice for
prescribing X-number of doses of Premarin, Glucophage, Catapress, Lipitor,
Tagamet, Baycol, Zocor, Ritalin, Viagra, Ampicillin, or Zoloft, most will do it
without a qualm. My doctor was a wonderful, caring man, and I trusted him, but
he was never the least bit interested in discovering why I had certain
symptoms, he simply prescribed more pills to treat those symptoms or surgery to
remove them.
Are there doctors out
there who do not bow to the big companies? Undoubtedly. But they are few and
far between, and probably hesitate to speak out for fear of stepping on the toes
of really Big Brother.
In John LeCarre's
book, "The
Constant Gardener," a young scientist is found dead in Africa,
along with her companion, an African doctor. The villain turns out to be a
giant pharmaceutical company using the African tribespeople as guinea pigs in
the testing of a new drug which kills them frequently.
What has that got
to do with this? Only this: The villain in that book was disappointingly
bland and almost benign, and nowhere near sinister enough, and the evil
worked by that fictional company was as nothing compared to the reality that
is in common practice today. The book is only a pale shadow of the truth.
...No doubt the
idea that they might one day have to justify their actions never arises in
their thinking. After all, in their view they are the purveyors of standard,
conventional, accepted medical practice. They act as if their policies against
alternative medicine and its healing innovations are based on science and
therapeutics, but in truth they're based on profits and economics. As you
know, health care today in the U.S. is a $1-trillion-a-year honey pot, and
these agencies and groups want all of it. Your life or death is secondary to
them in this capitalist war to maximize earnings.
--Burton Goldberg,
Alternative Medicine Publishing
It would be nice if, one
day, the pharma/food giants' chickens would all come home to roost, because, in
the immortal words of a famous margarine commercial of a few years ago, "It's
not nice to fool with Mother Nature!" Eyes worldwide might even open as
the facts could no longer be hidden. But it will never happen, because, of
course, if you are big enough, powerful enough, and rich enough, you can hide
just about anything from just about everybody for a long, long time.
*****************
NOTE (Mar.
2002):
It's been about a year since the above was written. Just recently, I came
across the following quote. I do not know Stephen
Ransom or Dr. Rath, and have never seen anything written by them until now, but
here is a quote from "Death by Doctoring"
by Ransom:
In opposition to the incessant drive by big business to
dominate our health choices, Dr Matthias Rath (below left) provides a concise
summary of the primary ethics of the merchant’s
house:
“Throughout
the 20th century, the pharmaceutical industry has been constructed by investors,
the goal being to replace effective but non-patentable natural remedies with
mostly ineffective but patentable and highly profitable pharmaceutical drugs.
The very nature of the pharmaceutical industry is to make money from ongoing
diseases. Like other industries, the pharmaceutical industry tries to expand
their market - that is, to maintain ongoing diseases and to find new diseases
for their drugs. Prevention and cure of diseases damages the pharmaceutical
business and the eradication of common diseases threatens its very existence.
Therefore, the
pharmaceutical industry fights the eradication of any disease at all costs. The
pharmaceutical industry itself is the main obstacle, why today's most widespread
diseases are further expanding including heart attacks, strokes, cancer, high
blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, and many others. Pharmaceutical drugs are not intended to cure
diseases. According to health insurers,
over 24,000 pharmaceutical drugs are currently marketed and prescribed without
any proven therapeutic value (AOKMagazine 4/98). According to medical doctors
associations, the known dangerous side-effects of pharmaceutical drugs have
become the fourth leading cause of death after heart attacks,
cancer and strokes (Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA April 15,
1998 )
Millions of people and patients around the world are
defrauded twice: A major portion of their income is used up to finance the
exploding profits of the pharmaceutical industry. In return, they are offered a
medicine that does not even cure.”
---From
DEATH BY DOCTORING
by Stephen Ransom--Credence Publications
Be warned.