FDA The FDA and Pharma: Big Drug's Nicotine War

[Anjaffm]

I have just come across this document:

Big Drug's Nicotine War
http://www.forces.org/evidence/pharma/pdf/fullwork.pdf

very long - and very informative

“I am pleased to announce a new partnership here today. We have just set up a Partnership
Project in our European Region, with the objective of reducing tobacco-related death and disease
among smokers…. Three major pharmaceutical companies have joined this partnership: Glaxo
Wellcome, Novartis, and Pharmacia & Upjohn. They all manufacture treatment products against
tobacco dependence.”


- Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General of the World Health Organization, Speech delivered at The
World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 30, 1999.

“A second and more serious problem is economic ties between NIH [National Institutes of Health]
researchers and big drug companies, which some critics charge amount to payoffs. Earlier this
week, for example, a Times report showed how the agency’s top diabetes researcher was accepting
payments from at least four pharmaceutical companies that stood to gain from NIH research he
directed, a clear ethics violation.


”There are also more subtle conflicts. The NIH’s cliquish ‘peer reviewers’ are often elite
university researchers who may favor studies that, by proving the effectiveness of brand-name
pharmaceutical drugs, bring in loads of drug company grant money for their academic
departments.”


(“Flap Over ‘Public Science’,” Los Angeles Times, 1/30/99)

The CDC’s 1996 “Tobacco Use Prevention Program: At-A-Glance” listed among its “Key Partners” The
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the RWJF-funded National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids. However,
its involvement with the pharmaceutical and addiction industries goes at least as far back as the 1988
Surgeon General’s report, “The Health Consequences of Smoking: Nicotine Addiction,” which changed the
very definition of addiction in order to include tobacco use and which emphasized that smoking was an
addiction to be treated with pharmacological products and counseling.


Though most people are not aware of it, the Surgeon General’s reports on smoking and health are not
actually written by the Surgeon General but by a number of authors, some of whom are employees of the
CDC and some of whom are selected “experts” from the private sector. The 1988 report was prepared under
the general editorship of Ron Davis, who was then Director of the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, but
many others were involved in scientific editing and writing of the report. One of the scientific editors was
Jack Henningfield, who was then at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, but who later became one of the
associates at Pinney Associates and a consultant to Glaxo Wellcome. At least some of the outside “experts”
stood to gain financially from the report. Many of these were in the “addiction” business. One of the writers
was Jed Rose, who had invented the nicotine patch in the early 1980s and had sold marketing and production
rights for the patch to the pharmaceutical industry. Another was C. Tracy Orleans, who would become an
employee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and others, such as Michael Fiore, Saul Shiffman and
Richard Clayton, would parlay their participation into consultantships and research grants from the
pharmaceutical industry, the RWJF, and the federal government.

“[A] recent study by USA Today revealed that more than half of the advisors to the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) have financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies that
have an interest in FDA decisions.”


Catherine DeAngelis, “Conflict of Interest and the Public Trust,” Journal of the American Medical
Association, 284(17), Nov 1, 2000.

“If members of our society were empowered to make their own decisions…then the whole
rationale for the [FDA] would cease to exist.”


David Kessler. Quoted in James Bovard, “First Step To an FDA Cure: Dump Kessler,” The Wall St.
Journal, 12/8/94

.


I admit that I have not read the whole thing yet. But I thought I'd share it with you.

If this is the wrong sub-forum, please move it. I did not know where to put it, to be honest.

 

[DavidOck]

Thanks for posting, Anja.

Why am I not surprised?

 

[philoshop]

When you 'follow the money' in these situations you definitely need to wear your boots.

 

[DrMA]

The close financial ties between Pharmafia and their "regulators", the revolving door policy, cronyism and corruption is well known. However, nobody seems to see this as a problem, rather it's heralded as a model of success for public-private partnership purportedly resulting in huge gains for the public good. For reasons we all know, this mafia-style racket has managed to exclude the actual stakeholders from the discussion by painting them as BT shills. So, whereas Pharma shills are "valuable partners", everyone else, including The Public, must be kept away, lest they discover the putrid corruption that goes thru and thru the entire system.

 

[Nate760]

How far back in history would we have to go to find an FDA policy decision that was detrimental to the interests of Big Pharma?

 

[DrMA]

How far back in history would we have to go to find an FDA policy decision that was detrimental to the interests of Big Pharma?

I'm not even sure there is such a case... In fact, FDA has a history of insisting upon the safety of drugs which had been withdrawn by manufacturers because of safety concerns (google Vioxx).

 

[Kent C]

How far back in history would we have to go to find an FDA policy decision that was detrimental to the interests of Big Pharma?

Pharma, not so big back then, could very well have been their first 'victim'. Then the 'Stockholm syndrome' took effect - similar to what we're seeing with the tobacco companies now.

Wiki:
"Under Harvey Washington Wiley, appointed chief chemist in 1883, the Division began conducting research into the adulteration and misbranding of food and drugs on the American market. Wiley's advocacy came at a time when the public had become aroused to hazards in the marketplace by muckraking journalists like Upton Sinclair, and became part of a general trend for increased federal regulations in matters pertinent to public safety during the Progressive Era."

"Muckraking journalists" "increased federal regulations", "public safety" and "the Progressive Era" - not that much has changed

 

[Whitewolf2014]

I gleaned over this, reading a few paragraphs here, skipping over a few, reading some more, and ran into this. kind of made me laugh to myself.

"Given the sheer power and wealth of the international pharmaceutical conglomerates and given the political
power and “respectability” of their governmental and non-governmental “partners,” it may very well come to
pass that TV viewers will be subjected to a whole new wrinkle in nicotine marketing:"

“Honey, I forgot to go to the doctor to refill our prescription for cigarettes.” Husband responds: “Well,
luckily for us, there’s a patch vending machine just around the corner.” Hugging her husband, the wife
replies: “You know, maybe we ought to forget about cigarettes. The patch is so much more convenient and
so much less expensive—and we don’t even have to go outside to use it.”

That sounds to much like it was in "Leave it to Beaver" Updated for the times we are living in right now. There's a B&M store just around the corner.

 

[Anjaffm]

So, whereas Pharma shills are "valuable partners", everyone else, including The Public, must be kept away, lest they discover the putrid corruption that goes thru and thru the entire system.

Amen.
Reminds me of the reason why the public - and the press - were excluded from the WHO Tobacco Control Conference in October 2014.

 

[DC2]

I'll just drop this here for a peek into previous information provided by this same website...
FORCES International - News Portal

It's a much shorter version of what is going on and why.
And it should hopefully encourage others to wade through this new longer and more current version.

 

[Kent C]

I'll just drop this here for a peek into previous information provided by this same website...
FORCES International - News Portal

It's a much shorter version of what is going on and why.
And it should hopefully encourage others to wade through this new longer and more current version.

Wow!

"With the exception of one FDA employee and three tobacco industry representatives, every member of the newly created FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee has received direct funding from RWJF." (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for those who don't know.)

 

[WhiteHighlights]

I'll just drop this here for a peek into previous information provided by this same website...
FORCES International - News Portal

It's a much shorter version of what is going on and why.
And it should hopefully encourage others to wade through this new longer and more current version.

Thanks! I knew a bit about how they were intertwined, but this added considerable, and disgusting, background info.

 

[NorthOfAtlanta]

I'll just drop this here for a peek into previous information provided by this same website...
FORCES International - News Portal

It's a much shorter version of what is going on and why.
And it should hopefully encourage others to wade through this new longer and more current version.

If you check the publication dates you'll see that this one is the 10 year update on the one Anja found, Hers is from summer 2001. Both are well worth the time to read.

I knew that the BP/Foundations/FDA/CDC/Alphabet groups were incestuous but did not realize how deep it was.

 

[DrMA]

I'll just drop this here for a peek into previous information provided by this same website...
FORCES International - News Portal

It's a much shorter version of what is going on and why.
And it should hopefully encourage others to wade through this new longer and more current version.

this is extremely important. People need to realize that so-called "public health" NGOs are nothing but Pharmafia shills. All part of a shadowy Orwellian cabal looking to control and defraud the public under the guise of protecting the chillin.

 

[AndriaD]

this is extremely important. People need to realize that so-called "public health" NGOs are nothing but Pharmafia shills. All part of a shadowy Orwellian cabal looking to control and defraud the public under the guise of protecting the chillin.

So, the million-dollar-question is, how do we get rid of them?

Andria

 

[Kent C]

So, the million-dollar-question is, how do we get rid of them?

Andria

Revolution. And even then the chances are 50-50, but that's better than it is right now

 

[DrMA]

I don't quite see how "Revolution" would get rid of corrupt NGOs funded by industry.



I think prosecutions under the RICO Act and/or Sherman (+Clayton) Act would work much better.

 

[AndriaD]

I don't quite see how "Revolution" would get rid of corrupt NGOs funded by industry.



I think prosecutions under the RICO Act and/or Sherman (+Clayton) Act would work much better.

That's what I was thinking too. A lot less bloody... maybe. But it's corruption pure and simple, and should be prosecuted as such.

Andria

 

[Kent C]

I don't quite see how "Revolution" would get rid of corrupt NGOs funded by industry.



I think prosecutions under the RICO Act and/or Sherman (+Clayton) Act would work much better.

That last has an even lower chance of happening in this environment.

The Revolution would include going back to the original constitution and keeping the civil rights amendments 13, 14, 15, women's suffrage 19, term limits for prez 22, and no poll taxes 24. No agencies, no pharmafia and most departments gone - education, energy, ag, commerce, labor, hhs, transportation, homeland security, housing/urban dev., etc. etc. And at this point I'd add term limits for Congress
Oh yeah, no RICO or Sherman/Clayton acts either but that should have been implied by the above.

 

[AndriaD]

The major problem with revolution is that there is no assurance that the saner, more intelligent side would win -- look what happened to the Russians, thanks to the bolsheviks. And though I go around ranting a lot about guillotines and blind french aristocrats, that revolution ended up eating itself, with a lot of bloodshed, mayhem, chaos, and absolute uncertainty, every step of the way, and then they got the Little Corporal turned Emperor. The French have a wonderful saying; I don't know the french words, but it means, the more things change, the more they stay the same. I do think that revolution is probably the only real way to change/fix this mess, but god, talk about being between a rock and a hard place.

Andria