Pharma: Are national economies betting on the wrong health paradigm?

[Sepp]

National health authorities support pharmaceutical intervention in public health at every turn, as witnessed by the increase in the number of recommended and sometimes obligatory vaccinations and by schemes to pay for or subsidize pharmaceutical medicines and expensive diagnostic tests.

Legislators, both national and European, have done everything to facilitate western medicine at the expense of nutrition-based prevention and other, non-toxic cures that aren't based on the pharmaceutical paradigm.

Often, the justification for this has been "pharmaceutical manufacturing is an important driver of national (or European) economic success".

But it appears that these economic considerations may not be cutting it any more. People refuse medical intervention because they are afraid to die at the hands of doctors, or from the side effects of medicines. No amount of political or economic support can keep a failing paradigm from collapsing. The writing has been on the wall for a number of years. This article, posted today on the pharmalot site, gives us a glimpse of the gravity of the situation:


Where The Jobs Aren’t: The Latest Layoff Tally

http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/12/where-the-jobs-arent-the-latest-la...

Their assessment of the situation:

C is for contraction. C is also for convulsion. Both describe what pharma is experiencing these days. The trend was under way a few years ago, of course, when Merck began eliminating thousands of jobs. But since early last year, the bloodletting has been particularly severe.

Their list of recent and forthcoming cuts in pharmaceutical employment is revealing, although they stress that it isn't a complete list of job cuts by any means.

1. Pfizer - 10,000 jobs
2. AstraZeneca - 9,000 jobs
3. Merck - 8,400 jobs
4. Bayer - 6,100 jobs
5. Schering-Plough - 5,500 jobs
6. Johnson & Johnson, 5,475 jobs
7. Wyeth - 5,000 jobs
8. Bristol-Myers Squibb - 4,300 jobs
9. Novartis - 4,300 jobs
10. Glaxo - 3,710 jobs
11. Amgen - 2,600 jobs
12. UCB - 2,000 jobs
13. Sanofi-Aventis - 1,980 jobs
14. Eli Lilly - 1,310 jobs
15. Reliant - 600 jobs
16. PDL BioPharma - 600 jobs
17. King - 520 jobs
18. Sepracor - 300 jobs
19. Ligand Pharmaceuticals - 267 jobs
20. West Pharmaceutical - 250 jobs
21. Nycomed - 250 jobs
22. Genentech - 240 jobs
23. Abbott Labs - 200 jobs
24. Bradley Pharmaceuticals - 196 jobs
25. Alkermes - 150 jobs
26. Encysive Pharmaceuticals - 150 jobs
27. CV Therapeutics - 143 jobs
28. Neurocrine Biosciences - 130 jobs
29. Nektar Therapeutics - 110 jobs
30. Mylan Labs - 100 jobs
31. WuXi PharmaTech - 100 jobs
32. NitroMed - 70 jobs
33. Acadia - 65 jobs

(If you know of other cuts that should be included, drop them a line or make a comment on the original article).

Perhaps government health authorities and legislators should also take note. Their preferred economic engine is in trouble, and it isn't for lack of trying.

Adopting natural health options would be better for the economy by creating stable jobs. It would also cut total health spending. People who are into natural options by definition are into prevention. And an ounce of prevention, as the saying goes, is better than a pound of cure...

Many degenerative diseases, for which western medicine can only prescribe expensive palliative pharmaceuticals can be cured by lifestyle changes and nutrition.

[Wilfrid]

Unfortunately your interpretation of these job cuts is wishfull thinking. These reduce costs only and increase profits for shareholders. The share of Big Pharma of the "world health market" is steadily increasing.

Look at South Africa. Manto, the world's ony minister of health who propagated natural alternatives to chemotherapy and ARVs has been fired and replaced by Barbara Hogan who immediately announced "South Africa is now in line with world's opinion......"

Look at Argentina. Previous governments have been bought by Big Pharma to buy masses of radiotherapy equipment. The current president, Christina Kirchner, made this public to help fighting off international law suits. International court decisions force Argentina to pay compensation for cancelling those orders. The only Western media to pick up on this was Der Spiegel in Germany, and only from the point of view of bribery charges, paid by Siemens and investigated by the state attorney - the world's only attorney general with civil courage. Let's see how long he lasts. It will be the end of his career, I guess.

Marketing by Big Pharma is perfect, they do collective marketing that portraits allopathy as the one and only form of medicine. Then they share markets for diabetes, cancer, etc. between them. In any other industry this would be called an illegal cartel, but not in the holy cow of industries.

You can cure breast cancer easily and quickly at very low cost. But 99% opt for Tamoxifen at $5,000.00/month taken for as many months as you are able to survive the drug. As part of their marketing strategy they create "survival rates". They declare every DCIS that will never become breast cancer to be breast cancer. It is easy to cure someone of breast cancer who hasn't got it - perfect marketing.
Due to this marketing strategy one in eight women will get "breast cancer" in their life in the US compared to one in fifty in the third world. They are working hard to improve this rate - you can expect one in tenty in the third world over the next couple of years. European and US grants are available for 3rd orld countries to "reap the benefit of civil use of radiation......" which comes in the the form of mammography equipment and radiotherapy equipment.

Cheers,
Wilfrid
www.infoholix.net

[Charles Weber]

If you really want to put pharmacies out of business, the way to do it is with a tax that should be levied on any food that has known poisons added such as aluminum, aspartame, fluoride (see http://charles_w.tripod.com/fluoride.html ), sulfite, and etc. or essential nutrients subtracted. I am certain this would cause an improvement in our country’s health when processors corrected the situation or, if not, when less of it was purchased. If a tax were placed on food that has had essential nutrients removed the improvement in health would be dramatic. A fringe benefit would be to enable the heavy Medicare tax to be reduced or eliminated. Perhaps you can use your influence to get such a law passed. If everyone is getting good food most diseases would disappear and we could then devote our research to the few remaining.
We talk endlessly about better health insurance. Insurance is a marvelous invention, but there is no excellent substitute for not getting sick in the first place. In any case, if everyone is healthy, the insurance premiums will go away down as a side effect no matter how they are instituted. With the extra money we could then start to pay down that miserable national debt and with the extra time, enjoy ourselves.
Sincerely, Charles Weber

[Sepp]

Wilfrid said,

Unfortunately your interpretation of these job cuts is wishfull thinking. These reduce costs only and increase profits for shareholders.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. If you watch the news, the trend comes out clearly. Here's just one example:

Lilly Is The Latest To Lower Expectations

In its annual briefing for Wall Streeters, the drugmaker offers sobering forecasts for next year and, meanwhile, will post a loss this year thanks to more than $4 billion in charges stemming from its $6.5 billion deal to buy ImClone Systems. “The pharmaceutical industry,” Lilly ceo John Lechleiter reminds the crowd,” continues to face major challenges.”

[Northerntracey]

What a rollercoaster ride. When I read the first bit I was like woop woop!! Then Wilfrid put a damper on things but finally (and I hope it is true) Sepp says they are losing. Please God (and I'm not religious) slay the beast of big pharma!!!!

[Sepp]

I think you can be of good spirits, Tracey.

Here is another indication I just found this morning:

Elan CEO Blinks: Closes Offices Under Pressure

The drugmaker is also cutting 114 jobs amid anger from shareholders who are unhappy about the slowing growth of the Tysabri multiple sclerosis drug, a 64 percent stock decline this year, decentralized management in far-flung offices and accusations of a lax approach to cost cutting and corporate governance.

And so Ireland’s biggest drugmaker is eliminating about 7 percent of its workforce and closing offices in New York and Tokyo in hopes of savings $25 million annually.

... and if I find these things without even trying, there must be many more instances of such trouble around that don't make it onto this page...

[Sepp]

And here another one:

Pfizer Cutting Nearly 1,000 Jobs In Europe

The numbers coming out of France are in dispute. The drugmaker insists that 700 jobs will be lost trhough layoffs or voluntary departures from its Paris headquarters and among its sales force. But unions at Pfizer’s French subsidiary say the drugmaker will, in reality, reduce its workforce by 892 jobs, from 1,771 employees to 879.

Meanwhile, Pfizer has announced the sale of a plant in Ireland that makes active pharmaceutical ingredients to Hovione, a Portuguese drugmaker, and up to 150 jobs will be lost, according to FinFacts.

[Northerntracey]

Music to my ears Sepp!!!