When It Comes To The Medical-Big Pharma Complex, Nothing Is New

We've recently heard about RFK Jr. and his determination to fix the broken American healthcare system. While we can commend him on bringing to light what many know—that the U.S. has a chronic disease epidemic—this is not a new problem. It's also a problem shared by many other countries, such as Australia, though not to the same extent. 

Should RFK Jr. secure a prominent government position, potentially under a future Trump administration, his actions could significantly impact the healthcare system. However, the formidable power of Big Pharma is not to be underestimated. The medical bureaucratic state, as seen in the first Trump administration, is likely to resist his efforts at every turn.

We can also commend journalist Sharyl Attkisson on her new bestselling book, Follow the Science: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails. In it, she highlights the collusion, lies, and downright nefarious ways of drug companies and their media and governmental allies.

All these modern-day fighters exposing the Medical-Big Pharma Complex are really covering old ground. The correlation between drug use and ill health has been known for many years. A leader in the chiropractic profession used to say, "America is one of the sickest places in the world, not despite the medical profession but because of it." This was back in the 1960s.

Even in 1969, when I entered chiropractic college, we were encouraged to subscribe to a couple of medical journals to stay informed about the latest treatments. However, these journals were not immune from the influence of Big Pharma. The pages were filled with medical ads, a clear indication of the pharmaceutical industry's financial backing. It was common knowledge that these companies were not just funding the journals, but also influencing doctors to prescribe their products. They did this by providing free gifts like pens, shirts, and tie clips, and they even offered free trips, all in the name of selling their products.

Here is an ad from the Journal of the American Medical Association 1971.

Quaaludes are barbiturate-like drugs that are supposed to lower anxiety by depressing the nervous system and helping with sleep issues. However, they tend to hide away in the fine print under the ad, as with all ads, the Contraindications, Warnings, Precautions, and Adverse Reactions.

Here are some of them for Quaaludes (Source: drugs.com): 

dizziness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, fatigue, itching, rashes, sweating, dry mouth, tingling sensation in arms and legs, seizures, reduced heart rate and slowed breathing (respiration)

Dependency can lead to the following:

restlessness, irritability, nausea, vomiting, weakness, headache, insomnia, tremors, mental confusion, seizures.

What I found fascinating when I read the drug ads was the number of side effects of the drugs, which were the same as the symptoms for which the drug was prescribed.

When you look at the history of drug advertising in medical journals, you find that often, these ads were beset with false and misleading statements about their efficacy and safety. Where have we heard that before? The COVID-19 shots, of course.

A couple of years after I graduated, I was introduced to the term Iatrogenesis in the book Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health by Ivan Illich, published in 1975. Iatrogenesis is an illness caused by doctors or their medications. Even then, it was known, though kept hidden away, that the medical profession was the source of much of the ill-health suffered by Americans. In fact, Illich started his book with, "The medical profession has become a major threat to health." 

What was the outcome despite Illich alerting the world to a significant problem? The problem has gotten worse. Since the 1970s, the number of vaccines given to children has exploded onto the market. So, it's no coincidence that putting so many of these products on the market has resulted in a law of diminishing returns, with no beneficial return.

In the 70s, a booklet called Autopsy on the A.M.A. highlighted America's health delivery system. In the 1969 San Francisco Chronicle, it was reported that according to the World Health Organization, the U.S. ranked 18th in infant mortality and 22nd in male life expectancy globally. The U.S. Surgeon General at the time, Dr William Stewart, stated, "Twenty to 40% of all our children suffer one or more chronic medical conditions. One out of every five young men called for military service is rejected because of poor health."

In 1970, Dr Herbert Ley acknowledged that 1.5 million Americans were admitted to hospital every year for adverse reactions to legalized drugs. He also stated, 

"The thing that bugs me is that the people think the F.D.A. is protecting them - it isn't. What the F.D.A. is doing and what the public thinks it's doing are as different as night and day."

Remember, we're talking more than 50 years ago. The situation in 1969 was not much different from today. We think that today's problems are unique, but I have seen, during the course of my career as a chiropractor, that the same principles apply. Medicine diagnoses and treats diseases. Their treatments have created new diseases that need new drugs to treat, and the cycle goes on and on.

The only way to change is to have a health-centered approach to human health instead of a disease treatment model. In emergencies, disease treatment is needed, and medicine usually does a good job of saving someone in a crisis. At the same time, as we saw with COVID-19, it failed miserably and caused unnecessary deaths. 

The problem has been made worse by the corporatization of medical practices. A community-controlled healthcare system must supersede the present structure. This is happening in some places as doctors realize the existing system has failed them and their patients. The moral of the story is to ultimately have health autonomy without coercion so that you, as a consumer, are the final arbiter of what path you want to take.