How would you feel if your doctor were bribed to give you a drug? By Jon Rappoport

"Take this drug.  I've been bribed to prescribe it to you."

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How would you feel if your doctor were bribed to give you a drug?   By Jon Rappoport   Hello, Novartis. The pharmaceutical giant has just been fined $50 million by the government of South Korea for bribing doctors to prescribe the company's drugs.   FiercePharma reports: "Last year, prosecutors in the country [Korea] raided Novartis offices to gather documents and account books. South Korean officials later indicted a half-dozen Novartis execs, as well as more than a dozen doctors and five medical journal heads...The Korea Times says the criminal trial is now underway."   A Novartis spokesperson called the crime "in violation of our policies and inconsistent with our culture..."   Really? There's more.   FiercePharma continues: "Outside of Korea, Novartis faces separate bribery claims in Greece, where an official earlier this month said 'thousands' of people could be implicated."   "The company faced other allegations in Turkey, which it now considers 'unsubstantiated,' and paid $25 million to U.S. authorities last year to settle a bribery investigation in China."   Sounds like bribery might be central to the culture of Novartis.   You walk into a doctor's office. He makes a diagnosis and writes out a prescription for a drug. Unknown to you, he's been paid off to tell you to take the drug.   In the case of Novartis, do law enforcement officials in Korea, Greece, Turkey, and China release the names of the bribed doctors and inform their patients of these crimes? If not, why not? The patients ought to know, and they ought to be able to sue the drug company.   Let's take this whole business out on to a wider stage. Do you think doctors who take money from drug companies (e.g., for speaking fees and consulting) might be prone to altering their prescription habits? If so, consider this nugget from NPR (3/17/16): "Nationwide [in the US], nearly 9 in 10 cardiologists who wrote at least 1,000 prescriptions for Medicare patients received payments from a drug or device company in 2014, while 7 in 10 internists and family practitioners did."   Then there is this bombshell from Business Insider (1/9/15)---wait for the punch line in the last sentence: "Companies pay doctors millions of dollars to promote not their most innovative or effective drugs, but some of their most unremarkable."   "In the last five months of 2013, drug makers spent almost $20 million trying to convince physicians and teaching hospitals to give their freshly-patented drugs to patients, but many of them are near-copies of existing drugs that treat the same conditions."   "A hefty portion are also available as generics, chemically identical copies that work just as well at a fraction of the price. And still others have serious side effects that only became apparent after they were approved by the FDA."   Doctors paid by drug companies. Doctors prescribed those companies' drugs. Some of those drugs have serious side effects.   Medicalbillingandcoding.org (5/25/11) follows the money. According to their analysis, between 2009 and 2011, these drug companies paid doctors the following amounts: Merck, $9.4 million; Johnson & Johnson, $10.6 million; Pfizer, $19.8 million; AstraZeneca, $22.8 million; GlaxoSmithKline, $96.4 million; and Eli Lilly, $144.1 million. For speaking fees, consulting fees, etc., and who knows what else? Does this cast an ominous cloud over the companies and their favorite doctors? Is the Pope Catholic?   Medicalbillingandcoding,org goes on to publish fines that have been levied against drug companies (2007-2010) for engaging in illegal activities with doctors. The fines are, of course, a drop in the bucket, considering the profits of these corporations:   Forest Laboratories, $313 million; Allergan, $600 million; AstraZeneca, $520 million; Cephalon, $425 million; Pfizer, $2.3 billion.   Paying a fine is having to say you're sorry, and then you walk away.   The next time you talk with a doctor, you might apprise him of these matters, just to liven the conversation.

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Jon Rappoport The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.

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