The appalling record of ‘Big Pharma’:

Pharmaceutical companies have a terrible record of corporate crimes.

"A recent study from US Public Citizen found that, since 1991, there have been 239 legal settlements, totaling $30.2 billion in federal and state penalties, levied against US pharmaceutical companies.

There’s a real laundry list of crimes, but defrauding the government, hiding drug safety information, and hawking drugs for purposes beyond which they are approved are the main ones. Drug companies have pledged to change, signed ‘corporate integrity agreements’ and indicated that they want to move on, promising a better future. We can be hopeful, but we also have to be realistic.

Paying huge fines for illegal activity is one thing, but will they be still playing the eminence game? Will they continue to fund their own experts and do research that goes through a selective reporting of ‘the evidence’? Sadly,
that’s probably going to be the case so you must immunise yourself: keep asking questions and
questioning answers."

Recently Forbes magazine concluded that the pharmaceutical industry is ‘addicted to fraud’, whilst Merck is being sued by its own scientists over a raft of frauds relating to its
MMR vaccine. (20) The list of alleged frauds is far-ranging including failing to disclose a reduced efficacy, using ‘improper testing techniques’, manipulation of testing methodologies, falsifying test data, with holding data, and forgery of compliance documents. This kind of
behavior has become entirely common in the pharmaceutical industry.

[link to www.parliament.vic.gov.au (secure)]