Conservative fiscal ideology.

You can trust who you like. Im neither arguing in favour nor against big business in relation to small businesses, Simply saying they are different and small business is not relevant here.

Considering your response to me saying that government should have the role of developing and prescribing drugs was that.

No I was describing a specific case, an actual and documented thing that happened. Where numerous times, even whilst knowingly being investigated for it, a Big Pharma company offered inducements to Doctors (in America) to prescribe a certain drug even if not the best, for off-label uses, that same company has been found to use misleading and cherry picked statistics. That company was fined $3Billion for its actions. In other cases it paid fines for not disclosing information it held regarding drugs which caused heart attacks. $1billion of this fine was not for any civil claim, but criminal culpability.

This isn’t unique to GSK. AStrazeneca, Eli Lilly, and Johnson and Johnson have all billions of dollars in fines for doing the same thing. It is estimated that $2billion dollars have been paid by Big Pharma to individual Dr’s to prescribe drugs for uses they aren’t valid for and just to the top 20 cases in the US have resulted in fines of $20billion. Yet these companies are still profitable.

At least argue a point here, if you've gone one.


But still not saying where the limits are or why you think one size behaves differently to another.


Was it? I've kind of lost track. Was this the thread where you claimed the world economy was zero sum?



Well what evil ers those GPs are. Prescribing the wrong resolution for payment. I wouldn't do it with an IT infrastructure, so to hear doctors are so uncaring is quite a shock.
Should GP practices be considers big or small business?

GPS practices in the US are part of some pretty Fsking huge businesses. Thankfully in the UK state control (in the main) has kept us largely from the evil the free market perpetuated in this industry

The Dr's are indeed wrong to do what they did. But if Microsoft for instance were to offer you $500'000 to recommend their product for a use it didn't advertise was part of its capability, but they promised you it was capable of this and provided reams of documentation to back it up would you do it?

Regardless, the Dr's part of the illegal kickback scheme had nothing to do with Merck for example, withholding their data on Vioxx for five years resulting in up to 140'000 cases of serious heart disease nor was it the Dr's who spent $1b fighting the action.

Let's look at that again just to make sure it sinks in. And just add none of this is now disputed. Big Pharma company Merck developed a drug called Rofecoxib (marketed as vioxx) for 5 years they knew that this drug caused serious heart disease. For 5 years they sold Vioxx knowing it caused serious heart problems. The made about $2.5billion per year from selling a drug they knew caused serious heart disease. Merck made, during that time, $12.5billion from selling a drug they knew caused heart disease. During this time up to 140'000 had a heart attack because of it. It is estimated up to 40% of those were fatal.
Merck has spent $1billion fighting wrongful death cases because it's behaviour. It has set aside $5billion for compensation for the up to 60'000 people who died. They had a list of Dr's who had voiced concern about vioxx they set out to discredit. Merck employees sent e-mails about those Dr's saying "We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live,"www.theaustralian.com.au/news/drug-company-drew-up-doctor-hit-list/story-e6frg6n6-1225693586492

How many more examples would you need to understand that the medicinal market just doesn't work and free market theory is simply not applicable to some industries?

For those on the pseudo-left who prefer to reinvent history and blame Arthur because they didn't have the bollox to stand up and be counted.

WE TOLD ARTHUR - NO SURRENDER

rlhttp://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/paul-routledge-miners-can-stand-3006531rl

I can't do the fancy talk about the big pharma companies but I can comment on experience. I took part in a clinical trial for my RA at Chappell Allerton Hospital in Leeds for 5 years. I did it for a number of reasons, the main reason was because I had run out of drugs to try at Hull and the other important reason was I thought (and still think) that I gave the pharma company valuable information on how their drug works on me and my disease. Its a slow process, apparently it takes at least 15-20 years for a drug to be developed, tried, tested, approved and prescribed.

I was also on Vioxx from being diagnosed for quite a few years, apparently it was the drug of choice for rheumatology patients, but I was taken off it as soon as it became known in this country about the side effects which I didn't suffer any.

There is no known cure for RA but the therapies that have evolved since I was diagnosed is huge. I have tried 6 different drugs known as biologics and each different one has targeted a different area of the immune system and each one coming a step nearer to halting the disease in its tracks rather than treating the symptoms. I believe a cure will be found in my lifetime.

I see the comments by Americans that their Rheumatologist will only prescribe one drug and one drug only as they get a kickback from the pharma company and I just thank my lucky stars that we don't have the same system over here (or not one that gets so blatently banded about in front of the patient anyway).

What all this has to do with Arthur Scargill I have no idea, but just wanted to put my two penn'oth in

Back on topic - very interesting programme on citizen Arthur on inside/out on BBC north last night.

Seems even his own devotees are turning against him. Forging a letter from a dying man that is pretty low ball behaviour.

Some pretty damming accusations against him and his small troika. A massive slush fund from which the top NUM echelon awarded themselves loans, whilst the rank and file batted out a year on strike. His autocratic and secretive decision that he was entitled to a Redundancy package, and without informing, far less obtaining permission from the NUM, writes himself a large cheque in excess of £200k! And what about the hundreds of thousands he's cost the NUM over his antics with that London flat? The very same flat that he tried to buy under Maggie thatcher's Right to Buy legislation, whilst conveniently ignoring the fact it was owned by the NUM!

You have to have a measure of sympathy for the thousands who placed their faith in this guy, and years later find it was their own Union leaders, noses firmly wedged in a Animal Farm stylee in the NUM trough, who royally ed them up the booty.

Maggie must be wetting herself up there......

She wet herself when she got turfed out of No10.
Did you see the blubbering damsel?
Good old Art set the ball rolling.
Even a sacrificial lamb, as such, of the left.

But we got there.

There are side effects to every drug - I take a number for a heart condition and you can hardly get the pills in the packets for the list of side effects. Viagra was a drug discovered from a side effect

The questions about Vioxx:
1. Did the benefits of the drug outweigh the negatives i.e. did it helps millions - given the size of the sale it must have been widely used. There are plenty of drugs out there with some bad side effects.
2. How many of the 140k had heart attacks as a result of taking the drug and how many would have had them anyway?
3. The question must be asked of the licencing authorities as how a drug with such known side-efects got to market plenty fail at that stage - or did the side effects emerge post general use? Did the drug ever get licenced here?

Only one loser in that battle and it wasn't Maggie!!

As long as she's resting peacefully now, that's the main.

The FDA must take some blame here - 80 million people were prescribed this drug 99% of which suffered no side effects and probably enjoyed a much improved standard of 'living' i.e. reduced pain. Merck did hide some the side effects but what cannot be contested the drug did a lot more good than it did harm. If you asked the majority of the patients, knowing the potential side effects and the state of their health, I bet most would still have opted for the treatment.

By someone playing with a stacked deck...