The Nature of the Pharmaceutical Industry
(Taken from "The Wellness Directory of Minnesota" ~ http://www.mnwelldir.org/docs/editorial/pharm.htm)

One of Ralph Nader's goals when he ran for president, was to stop corporate welfare. He figured if Congress was so thoughtful to cut welfare to mothers and children (less than 3% of the federal budget), then perhaps it was time to eliminate corporate welfare (greater than 17% of the federal budget).

Nader was quick to focus in on corporate welfare to the pharmaceutical industry, because the American people pay for drugs twice: first in funding the research to prove a drug is safe and effective, and then again when their doctor prescribes the drug, you pay at the pharmacy. 

Now there is a lot of talk about conspiracy theories and doctors suppressing therapies and the FDA suppressing therapies, but whether or not there is a conspiracy is a moot point. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy. We have capitalism, a system in which every person has the right to grow up and make money. Every major corporation has the right to make as much money as possible, and for some reason, major corporations get more welfare than little corporations. Thus it must be assumed that large corporations are much more important than small corporations.

The pharmaceutical industry is an example of the worst parts of capitalism, capitalism at its least respectable low and capitalism at its most ludicrous high. 

The following article is reprinted with permission from Dr Matthias Rath's book, Why Animals Don't Get Heart Attacks . . . But People Do!

The purpose and driving force of the pharmaceutical industry is to increase sales of pharmaceutical drugs for ongoing diseases and to find new diseases to market existing drugs. By this very nature, the pharmaceutical industry has no interest in curing diseases. The eradication of any disease inevitably destroys a multi-billion dollar market of prescription drugs. Therefore, pharmaceutical drugs are primarily developed to relieve symptoms, but not to cure. If eradication  therapies for diseases are discovered and developed, the industry has a basic interest to suppress, discredit and obstruct these medical breakthroughs in order to make sure that diseases continue as the very basis for a lucrative prescription drug market. The economic interest of the pharmaceutical industry is the main reason why no medical breakthrough has been made for the control of the most common diseases such as cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, heart failure, diabetes, cancer, and osteoporosis, and why these diseases continue like epidemics on a worldwide scale. For the same economic reasons, the pharmaceutical industry has now formed an international cartel by the code name "Codex Alimentarius" with the aim to outlaw any health information in connection with vitamins and to limit free access to natural therapies on a worldwide scale. At the same time, the pharmaceutical companies withhold public information about the effects and risks of prescription drugs and life-threatening side effects are omitted or openly denied.  In order to assure the status quo of this deceptive scheme, a legion of pharmaceutical lobbyists is employed to influence legislation, control regulatory agencies (e.g., FDA), and manipulate medical research and education. Expensive advertising campaigns and PR agencies are used to deceive the public. Millions of people and patients around the world are defrauded twice: A major portion of their income is used to finance the exploding profits of the pharmaceutical industry. In return, they are offered a medicine that does not even cure.

Keep in mind that the above was written by a medical doctor. Before there were pharmaceutical companies, medicines were made by scientists and doctors to cure illness. Take Dr Paul Erlich, the father of chemotherapy. Today we think of chemotherapy being used for cancer, however, chemotherapy is simply medicine from chemicals. Chemotherapy treats disease with drugs. Dr Erlich wasn't a medical doctor as we define the term today; he was a research scientist who also treated patients. He is the discoverer of the "magic bullet" also known as 606 (because there were 605 failures before it) that cured syphilis. Dr Erlich set out to cure a disease. He did not set out to treat symptoms. He was awarded the Nobel prize for Medicine because of his work with the immune system. 

Today doctors practice medicine and scientists, when they independently come up with a cure or a therapy that seems to work, get harassed. Take Dr Lawrence Burton who demonstrated to scientists and science writers his amazing therapy that wiped out tumors in rats in two hours. He was forced to leave the United States and set up a clinic in the Bahamas. Or take the inventor of 714X, Gaston Naessens was asked to leave France because he was practicing medicine without a license (and curing cancer without a license). He lives in Canada today and still gets harassed by the authorities for helping to cure cancer.

And then there's the story of Royal Rife. 

Pharmaceutical companies insure their profits by supporting medical schools and physicians. The pharmaceutical industry is the single largest supporter of medical schools. Thus, the schools teach the medicine that the pharmaceutical industry wants them to teach. Doctors get kickbacks for prescribing certain drugs.

And then there's the FDA. Former FDA Commissioner Dr Herbert Ley stated: "The thing that bugs me is that people think the FDA is protecting them. It isn't. What the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it's doing are as different as night and day."

For more information on Codex, and this is important to all of us since they've already started to limit the use and sale of vitamins in Germany, here are some links. 

This first one is to a site by the Codex people. If you read everything here, they sound like a bunch of really nice people out to protect you: http://www.fao.org/docrep/w9114e/w9114e00.htm 

This next site has a great description of what/who they are and what they do and what they are setting out to do: http://www.all-natural.com/codex-1.html 

Here you can read about your health freedom, and some strides taken in protecting our health freedom: http://www.lef.org/shop/fda2.htm

And finally, here is a site that talks of Dr Rath, who wrote the above piece, and what he is doing in Europe to fight this organization: http://www.heall.com/medicalfreedom/codexabuse.html