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Big Pharma Once Again Makes Billions off of a Drug That Doesn’t Work
When the government suddenly announces a recall or even talks about pulling a product from the shelves, it’s normal to assume that some unexpected defect has recently been discovered. Maybe the feds have noticed that a car’s airbags don’t deploy during a crash, or that a certain brand of fish tank is prone to spontaneous implosion. Whatever the case, you’re inclined to think that some new information has come to light that necessitates the recall. And in most circumstances that’s true.
But there is one industry — Big Pharma — that has consistently been the exception to this rule. This is an industry that happens to enjoy a lot of special treatment from the federal government, including immunity from lawsuits.
In the pharmaceutical industry, a recall doesn’t necessarily mean that some catastrophic defect has just been identified. Instead, it often means that there’s been a known problem for a very long time — one that’s been deliberately hidden from the public, until finally, it’s impossible to deny any longer. After COVID, most of the country realizes that this kind of thing can happen. What they might not realize, because there’s a mountain of propaganda designed to hide this fact, is how common this is.
Here’s the latest example. Right now the pharmaceutical industry is debating whether to issue one of the biggest recalls in modern history. The recall would affect a wide array of over-the-counter cold medicines, including some products bearing the brand names Mucinex, Tylenol, Sudafed, NyQuil, and Benadryl. The reason? According to the government, these products don’t work. At all.
The Real Data Behind the New COVID Vaccines the White House Is Pushing
What if I told you one in 50 people who took a new medication had a “medically attended adverse event” and the manufacturer refused to disclose what exactly the complication was — would you take it?
And what if the theoretical benefit was only transient, lasting about three months, after which your susceptibility goes back to baseline? And what if we told you the Food and Drug Administration cleared it without any human outcomes data and European regulators are not universally recommending it as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is?
That’s what we know about the new COVID vaccine the Biden administration is firmly recommending for every American 6 months old and up. The push is so hard that former White House COVID coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha and CDC head Mandy Cohen are making unsupported claims the new vaccine reduces hospitalizations, long COVID and the likelihood you will spread COVID.
None of those claims has a shred of scientific support. In fact, if the manufacturers said that, they could be fined for making false marketing claims beyond an FDA-approved indication.
J&J Unit, P&G, Walgreens Misled Consumers About Decongestants, Lawsuits Say
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N), Procter & Gamble (PG.N) and Walgreens (WBA.O) are among several companies accused in lawsuits of deceiving consumers about cold medicines containing an ingredient that a unanimous U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel declared ineffective.
Proposed class actions were filed on Wednesday and Thursday after the panel reviewed several studies and concluded this week that the ingredient phenylephrine marketed as a decongestant was essentially no better than a placebo.
According to an agency presentation, about 242 million products with phenylephrine were sold in the United States last year, generating $1.76 billion in sales and accounting for about four-fifths of the market for oral decongestants.
The first lawsuit appeared to have been filed in Pensacola, Florida, federal court. It said Johnson & Johnson’s consumer health business and Procter & Gamble should have known by 2018 that their marketing claims about products with phenylephrine were “false and deceptive.”
A COVID Vaccine-by-Mouth Could Be on the Way
U.S. News & World Report reported:
An oral vaccine for COVID-19 appears to produce the sort of immune response that could quickly stamp out a developing infection, according to results from a small-scale primate study.
Some monkeys given an experimental COVID vaccine tablet under their tongue developed the type of antibodies that might block the coronavirus as it attempts to infect the body through the mucous membranes of the nose and throat, Japanese researchers reported Sept. 13 in the journal Biology Methods and Protocols.
Infectious disease experts said such an oral vaccine could be a game-changer in aiding the body’s attempts to fight off COVID.
“Think about walking through a senior citizen center with a little pitcher of water, giving people glasses of water and a tablet, one right after the other one, boom boom boom boom boom,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases and preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. “You could vaccinate so many more people so much more quickly and less expensively.”
Big Pharma’s Johnson & Johnson Under Investigation in South Africa Over ‘Excessive’ Drug Prices
U.S.-based pharmaceuticals company Johnson & Johnson is being investigated in South Africa for allegedly charging “excessive” prices for a key tuberculosis drug, the country’s antitrust regulator said Friday.
J&J’s Belgium-based subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals is also under investigation, South Africa’s Competition Commission said.
The commission, which regulates business practices, said it opened the investigation this week based on information that the companies “may have engaged in exclusionary practices and excessive pricing” of the tuberculosis drug bedaquiline, which is sold under the brand name Sirturo.
The Competition Commission said it was confirming the investigation due to heightened media interest, but would not respond to requests for comment or more information about the probe. It comes a week after a health advocacy group released details of South Africa’s COVID-19 vaccine purchase contracts with numerous pharmaceutical companies, including J&J and U.S.-based Pfizer. They were obtained after the group, the Health Justice Initiative, won a freedom of information case in court.
U.S. Pharmacy Chains Gear Up to Administer Updated COVID Shots
U.S. drugstore chains CVS Health (CVS.N) and Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA.O) said on Wednesday that updated COVID-19 vaccines would be available at their stores as soon as this week.
Shots were being delivered in some locations on Wednesday, including at a Northwell Health facility in New York.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director on Tuesday signed off on the broad use of updated COVID-19 vaccines, arming a push to align the next round of shots more closely with the circulating variant of the virus, much like annual flu shots are designed.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved an updated vaccine made by Pfizer (PFE.N) and its German partner BioNTech (22UAy.DE) as well as one by Moderna (MRNA.O) for people ages 12 and above. The agency has also authorized the shots for emergency use in children ages 6 months through 11 years.
Adderall Shortages Could Get Worse. Blame Regulators.
Millions of children with ADHD are starting a new school year without regular access to their medications, known as prescription stimulants, which have been in shortage for almost a year. While there are reasonable concerns about the overuse of such drugs, the lack of supply poses a risk to those who legitimately need them — and misguided government regulations are making things worse.
ADHD is a common neurodevelopmental disorder that’s typically diagnosed in kids and lasts through adulthood. The use of prescription stimulants such as Adderall, which can mitigate ADHD symptoms, rose 46% from 2012 to 2021, partly driven by the pandemic-era surge of telehealth prescribing among adults.
The strain on the supply of stimulants was exacerbated by a worker shortage last summer that forced a large Adderall supplier to halt production, increasing demand for alternatives. Now those stocks are running low, too.
Bristol Myers Plans to Double Experimental Treatments to Expand Research Pipeline
Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY.N) said on Thursday it plans to double the number of treatments it is testing in clinical trials, with a focus on cell therapies, over the next 18 months, as it contends with increasing generic competition for two of its top-selling drugs.
The drugmaker, which currently has six candidates in trials, will advance six more in its research pipeline — including three cell therapies that target immune system disorders and different types of cancer.
