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Hilarious Big Pharma Exposé

The ineffable John Oliver slammed into the uber corrupt practices of the ‘Big Pharma’ industry in a 15-minute rant last week that really takes the cake!.

It’s a great video exposes just how deeply invested Big Pharma is in luring MDs to prescribe their drugs to millions of people, regardless of the efficacy. In fact, Oliver reveals, that Big Pharma spends much more on marketing to doctors than it does on research, or to marketing to us in television advertising.

Why? Because we trust our doctors.
And if they say here take this pill, we usually will.

Among the really alarming facts in Oliver’s careful dissection of the issue are some pretty hilarious lines. At one point the Oliver compares drug companies to high school boyfriends: “They’re much more interested in getting inside you than in being effective once they are there.”

There have been tiny glimmers of reform in Big Pharma’s dishonest practices: Pharmaceutical reps are not allowed to take doctors out for lavish meals all the time, now. And the Affordable Care Act has helped set up a website which enables you to look up whose money your doctor is taking.

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Is “Science-Based Medicine” a “Mythology”?

Dr. Larry Dossey, Deepak Chopra and Dr. Rustum Roy, writing in Huffington Post, had some interesting insights on what they call the “Mythology Of Science-Based Medicine.”

The current healthcare debate has brought up basic questions about how medicine should work. On one hand we have the medical establishment with its enormous cadre of M.D.s, medical schools, big pharma, and incredibly expensive hospital care. On the other we have the semi-condoned field of alternative medicine that attracts millions of patients a year and embraces literally thousands of treatment modalities not taught in medical school.

Huffington | January 7, 2010

One side, mainstream medicine, promotes the notion that it alone should be considered “real” medicine, but more and more this claim is being exposed as an officially sanctioned myth. When scientific minds turn to tackling the complex business of healing the sick, they simultaneously warn us that it’s dangerous and foolish to look at integrative medicine, complementary and alternative medicine, or God forbid, indigenous medicine for answers. Because these other modalities are enormously popular, mainstream medicine has made a few grudging concessions to the placebo effect, natural herbal remedies, and acupuncture over the years. But M.D.s are still taught that other approaches are risky and inferior to their own training; they insist, year after year, that all we need are science-based procedures and the huge spectrum of drugs upon which modern medicine depends.

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