Saturday, May 22, 2010

Because Sometimes You Need Something More Than A Lab Rat And Less Than A Full Human With Access To A Liability Attorney

Is it possible to become too cynical?

I mean, you would think the obvious answer is yes. Intuition tells you that cynicism, like acid, has its uses,  but should be handled with great caution, as it can rot through your soul the way the HCl I once accidentally poured down the drain of my college's organic chemistry lab rotted its way through the sewer system.

Science has a way of disproving the intuitive however, and it just may be working its magic on my cynicism assumptions as well. From a piece in the April edition of In These Times, a magazine you should subscribe to right now:

“That’s a great question!” said the presenter, setting off the same sincerity alarm a salesman triggers by constantly repeating your first name.
The response came during a webinar on why “Latin America is a rich resource for pharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations (CRO) to develop new drugs at a reduced cost.”
The $175 Drug Information Association (DIA) event touted advantages of outsourcing drug trials to the developing world and of hiring CROs to manage those trials by navigating local regulations, recruiting subjects and reporting test results in a way that will facilitate FDA acceptance.

Not in a way to advance the scientific knowledge of humanity mind you. All we care about here is getting a clinical trial past the FDA while saving a few bucks.

The piece's author, Terry Allen, goes on to quote a congressional report that found in this country, GlaxoSmithKline had been “intimidating scientists, ghostwriting studies for academic researchers, (and) suppressing studies” in the name of building sales for its diabetes med Avandia, and that Avandia was associated with 83,000 excess heart attacks.

“GSK had a duty,” the report concluded, “to sufficiently warn patients and the FDA of its concerns.” But GSK failed to warn, and the FDA has failed to act—beyond advising “concerned” patients to “talk to their healthcare professional.”

Those are the standards Big Pharma evidently feels are so high they are being driven to conduct clinical studies offshore. That and the feeling the third world offers a large number of desperate suffering people eager to enroll in a clinical trial because they see them "as a viable healthcare option to gain free medication”

You always get the best science that way.

The question that was so great!, by the way, was regarding the independent ethical review panels charged with overseeing the rights of  these desperate, suffering, people. How can they be independent, it was asked, when they are paid by the very drug companies conducting the studies?

A great question that's still waiting for an acceptable answer.

Thing is, none of this phased me. I read this article the way you would read one about another killing in your city's most drug infested neighborhood. I took a sip of coffee, got ready to turn the page, and remembered, for a few seconds, what it was like to be under the spell of learning. Of a time when I thought the ultimate goal here was to expand our understanding of the processes that keep us alive.

No. The ultimate goal is to accumulate as many pennies per share as possible for the corporation. And I wonder this night how low my opinion of humanity will be driven in pursuit of it.

3 comments:

pillroller said...

let the bastards go to the third world and when stuff gets screwed up then they can have a massive recall. let's see how much money that will save them and the happy shareholders!

Anonymous said...

I almost forgot why I got into pharmacy for a long while...it's all coming back to me... now that the outrageousness is so blatant...

[Volume up for theme from Camille Saint-Saens' 3rd Symphony]

The naturopaths are getting laughed out of England so they're coming over here to push their imperialist agenda in naturopathy
schools--to graduate quacks as US government-subsidized tax-exempt
'holistic' naturopath 'doctors' to promote the natural foods industry as well as trying to get their
'services' covered in the national healthcare reform plans.

(Eat more mutton and beef, and natural sugars. Drink more whole unpasteurized milk. All soy is bad and causes sterility of Illinois prisoners. Eat more egg yolks. Statins are poison. Bring back laetrile because cisplatin is dangerous. Ship pharmaceutical production operations to factories where the mice poop is hard to see and it's a little more difficult to quantify oversulfated chondroitin sulfate marketed as heparin. Weston A Price is the newest Burroughs-Wellcome or Merck, Sharpe, and Dohme. Remember when we pharmacists could absolutely trust the aqua-blue packaging? Hawthorn University is the new Harvard with its ground-braking course offerings and list of highly-credentialed and research-qualified faculty members. Yep, smoking marijuana is okay, even better if 'medicinally'.
Smoking cigarettes is great for asthma. Promote opiate and CII addiction--Say, the opium wars weren't ALL that bad, were they? Having babies every year is the best thing for women and better if they come in threes, yada yada). [Volume fade]

[Enter the mouse chorus from 'Babe']
Many of us impassioned do-gooders have been rendered nearly ineffective enmired as we are in ridiculosity, the cost of doing business (are we clinicians or clerks) and pleas for occasional bathroom and meal breaks, [Crescendo for mouse chorus and fade interlude] and, it's way past time for pharmacists to raise our arms up against the imbeciles and those attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of the rest. We were trained to do better than this. Are we men or are we mice? [Soaring crescendo] We were tasked to provide objectivity in this madness. Restore our credo--the most respected profession.
[Fade... mouse chorus from 'Babe']

(If not cynacism, maybe nightmares or overdosing thujone in wormwood?

Anonymous said...

You're still there.