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John Oliver Delivers Stunning Rebuke of Pharmaceutical Marketing

Did you know that most Big Pharma companies spend more on marketing than they do on research? Last Week Tonight reveals this and other shocking facts from the world of pharmaceutical marketing. Some language may be inappropriate for all audiences.

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John Oliver Delivers Stunning Rebuke of Pharmaceutical Marketing

Did you know that most Big Pharma companies spend more on marketing than they do on research? Last Week Tonight reveals this and other shocking facts from the world of pharmaceutical marketing. Some language may be inappropriate for all audiences.

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Senator McCaskill Once Again Targets Anti-Aging Supplements

Treating supplements like drugs will do one thing only: eliminate supplements altogether. Action Alert!

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) is a key ally of Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL). Under the auspices of the Special Committee on Aging, where she is the ranking member, Sen. McCaskill sent letters to over a dozen major retailers including Amazon, CVS, Target, the Vitamin Shoppe, GNC, Kroger, Safeway, and Walgreens, asking—in effect, demanding—that the retailers supply information and documents to the committee, with the expectation that it will lead to a Senate hearing. The committee wants to review the retailers’ policies relating to:

• the sale and marketing of supplements;
• the removal of products determined to be adulterated, improperly labeled, or fraudulently marketed;
• the reporting of serious adverse events; and
• how consumers’ complaints regarding supplements are handled.

The letters also ask that the retailers brief the Special Committee on Aging staff regarding the above procedures.

Some of the letters express specific concerns about supplements that are being used to protect against and/or mitigate the effects of Alzheimer’s and dementia.

This is not the first time the senator has tackled this topic. In 2010, the Special Committee on Aging held a hearing, titled “Dietary Supplements: What Seniors Need to Know.” The overall tenor of the hearing was that regulators needed more authority to clamp down on deceptive marketing practices of some dietary supplement manufacturers. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) responded by clarifying that such deceptive marketing practices were already illegal and that the FDA already had the authority to criminally prosecute offenders, making any further regulation redundant. The hearing showed that many in Congress simply do not understand dietary supplement regulation.

In 2014, Sen. McCaskill headed a Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee hearing on false or misleading marketing of weight loss supplements, where she famously grilled Dr. Mehmet Oz for using what she considered sensationalist language to push certain products on his popular television program.

It is interesting that Sen. McCaskill is targeting supplements that may protect against Alzheimer’s and dementia. We’ve written before about the positive results from coconut oil in patients with Alzheimer’s after Big Pharma drugs either failed to improve, or actively worsened, the patients’ condition. Other evidence suggests that high doses of B vitamins limit brain shrinkage, a common precursor to Alzheimer’s. A proper diet and proper supplementation may also improve our memory as we grow older.

The Mediterranean Diet has also been shown to be associated with slower cognitive decline. Well-functioning brains contain high levels of DHA, which can be obtained by a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids found in fatty fish, walnuts, flaxseed, and eggs. Limiting intake of trans-fats common in fried foods and omega-6 fats helps maintain a healthy brain along with getting enough sleep and reducing stress.

There is much more research to be done on these topics, but it is remarkable how much research already has been done, considering that the foods and supplements cannot be patented.

Let’s be clear. Inquiries such as this are often only the first step in a process that culminates in lawmakers calling for supplements to be regulated more like drugs—which, because of what we call the “Catch-22” of drug economics, would likely result in the complete elimination of many important supplements from the market. This is precisely the approach Sen. Durbin has taken in the past—and why it is so very important that we take action now, before it snowballs.

Besides Sens. McCaskill and Durbin, politicians such as Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and former Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) have repeatedly intimated that supplements are unregulated, which is simply untrue. As we’ve written before, supplements are subject to regulation by both the FDA and the FTC, and must adhere to strict current good manufacturing practices to ensure the safety of the supplements consumers buy. Unfortunately, as in most industries, some bad actors will not follow the law, and it is then up to federal regulators to enforce the rules. In one notorious memo from the past, the FDA admitted that it was not doing its job—clearly hoping that some dire result would lead to new legislation against supplements.

It should be remembered that the current system actually works: supplements have a sterling track record of safety. Our friends at ANH-Europe calculated that UK residents were actually more likely to get killed by lightning as to die from taking dietary supplements.

We’ve long suspected that these attacks from certain politicians have less to do with protecting consumers than with doing the bidding of Big Pharma, which would love any competition from supplements to be eliminated. Just compare the price of drugs to supplements. And compare the safety record of supplements to that of FDA-approved drugs which, even when properly prescribed, cause about 1.9 million hospitalizations and kill about 128,000 Americans every year.

Moreover, the drug industry has yet to produce a drug for Alzheimer’s that really works. Personal testing, food, supplements, and lifestyle—the key elements of integrative medicine—are all we have at the moment to protect our aging brains.

Action Alert! Write to the members of the Special Committee on Aging and urge them to halt this bullying of supplement retailers and maintain consumer access to important supplements. Remind them that federal regulators already have the authority to stop deceitful marketing practices. The FDA and FTC should simply do their job and enforce current law. Please send your message immediately.

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Just How Many Conventional Docs are in the Pocket of Big Pharma? The Evidence Is Disturbing

New government data show drug and medical device makers paid a shocking $6.49 billion to doctors and hospitals in 2014.

It’s no secret that the pharmaceutical industry has an incestuous—and incredibly profitable—relationship with some of the doctors who prescribe their drugs to patients. But a new set of data compiled by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) shows the extent to which some doctors are in the pocket of Big Pharma.

The CMS data was made available through the publicly searchable Open Payments program. The program is meant to increase transparency by requiring drug and device manufacturers to report payments to doctors.

The $6.49 billion in payments included consulting fees and other costs—like travel to exotic locales, lodging in expensive hotels, and big food and beverage tabs. Pharmaceutical companies often offer continuing education courses to doctors in the form of talks and conferences that are little more than promotional opportunities for the latest products Big Pharma is trying to peddle. The CMS report mentions payments to doctors for a training seminar held in the Cayman Islands.

Companies argue that the payments are necessary to conduct research and get input from practicing doctors. Research-related activities accounted for about half of the total payments—but many of the top research payments were related to drugs that have already been on the market for years.

One pediatric geneticist from Illinois collected nearly $447,000 in consulting fees from Pfizer in 2014—the largest single payment to an individual doctor.

Again, the data reveal what regular readers already know: that too many doctors have close ties to Big Pharma, creating a tremendous conflict of interest.

The fact of the matter is that, while Big Pharma often gripes about the cost of researching and developing new drugs, pharmaceutical companies spend about twice as much—$60 billion each year in the US alone—on marketing as they do on R&D. (Read Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Pharma for more details). Much of that is marketing directly to doctors. Why would Big Pharma continue to do this if it wasn’t money well spent?

Fortunately, the pharmaceutical industry’s stranglehold on the practice of conventional medicine is starting to become more widely reported. John Oliver, in his popular HBO show “Last Week Tonight,” devoted a lengthy segment to the issue of pharmaceutical marketing and payments to doctors. The rising cost of drugs is becoming an issue on Capitol Hill as Big Pharma seeks to extend its patent privileges in federal legislation and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks.

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The Grave Dangers of Statin Drugs—and the Surprising Benefits of Cholesterol

Once again the medical establishment gets it completely backward.

NPR recently ran a story that suggests terminally ill patients can safely stop taking cholesterol-reducing statin drugs. The final quote of the article is illuminating: “Most of the studies focus on when to start a medication; there’s been very little focus on when do you stop it.” No surprise there: whether you’re very young or very old, Big Pharma would love you to continue buying statins—for a very long time indeed.

Heart disease, as many of us know, is one of the leading causes of death in the US, killing about 610,000 people each year. Big Pharma—in the belief that cholesterol is the primary factor in heart disease—developed statin drugs that would lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease. The drugs, which have been accompanied by massive marketing campaigns, are huge moneymakers for the drug industry, to the tune of about $29 billion worth of sales in 2013. That’s the kind of outrageous money you make when you convince one in four Americans over the age of 45 to take statins.

Over the years we’ve reported on a wide range of negative health effects that have been linked to these drugs. Here is a survey of some of these findings:

• Statins interfere with the production of coenzyme Q10, which supports the body’s immune and nervous systems, boosts heart and other muscle health, maintains normal blood pressure, and much more.
• Statins weaken the immune system, make it difficult to fight off bacterial infections, and increase the production of cytokines, which trigger and sustain inflammation.
• They make some patients unable to concentrate or remember words, and are linked to muscle and neurological problems, including Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
• Statins inhibit the beneficial effects of omega-3 fatty acids by promoting the metabolism of omega-6 fatty acids, which increases insulin resistance and the risk of developing diabetes.
  
• There is evidence that statin use blocks the benefits of exercise. Exercise increases the activity and numbers of mitochondria, cells’ “power plants” that process sugars and fat. The study found that with statin use, mitochondrial activity actually decreases with exercise.
• Statins work by reducing the body’s ability to produce cholesterol, which is essential to brain health—the brain is 2% of the body’s weight, but contains 25% of the entire body’s cholesterol.
• Statin users have a higher incidence of nerve degeneration and pain, memory loss, confusion, depression, and a higher risk of ALS and Parkinson’s, according to Dr. David Williams in his July 2014 Alternatives newsletter. Statins also decrease carotenoid levels. Carotenoids, which are found in fresh fruits and vegetables and act as antioxidants, have a number of benefits, including protecting against cell damage, aging, and chronic diseases.
• Statin drugs may also be driving Americans to overeat: a twelve-year study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that statin users increased their calorie intake by 9%, and fat consumption by 14.4%, over the study period, whereas those who didn’t take statins didn’t significantly change in either measure.
• An animal study linked statin use to muscle damage. Animals that exercised on statins had 226% more muscle damage than those not given statins.
• They affect the quality of sleep.
• Statins increase the risk of prostate and breast cancer.
• Statins are known to cause liver damage by increasing the liver’s production of digestive enzymes.
• Statins also speed aging and lower sex drive.
• Statins have been linked to aggressive and violent behavior in women.

Despite these widely documented risks, the media’s coverage of any adverse side effects is typically followed by the reassurance that the benefits of statins outweigh the risks.

Even when it comes to heart disease prevention, conventional thinking gets it wrong. The American Heart Association, for instance, published a study based on the outdated, simplistic notion that there are two kinds of cholesterol: “bad” (LDL) and “good” (HDL). The AHA’s dietary guidelines are also centered on the debunked notion that “bad” cholesterol causes heart disease, and that since saturated fat may raise “bad” cholesterol levels, it’s the ultimate dietary evildoer. And here’s the kicker: the AHA’s guidelines could lead to 33 million healthy Americans taking statins.

What the AHA does not seem to understand is that cholesterol is vital to human health. We’ve noted in the past that cholesterol isn’t the ticking time bomb most people have been led to think—in fact, the real danger is that our cholesterol levels can get too low as we age! Even “bad” cholesterol is essential.

• Harlan Krumholz of Yale’s Department of Cardiovascular Medicine found thatold people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a heart attack as did old people with high cholesterol.
• A review of nineteen large studies of more than 68,000 deaths by the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota found thatlow cholesterol predicted an increased risk of dying from gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases.
  
• Another study of almost 15,000 patients over 18 years found that those with higher LDL levels and total cholesterol had a lower risk of developing atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rate that causes poor blood flow to the body.
• A review article published in 2005 by a Japanese scientist found that “high total cholesterol is not positively associated with coronary heart disease mortality rates among general populations more than 40–50 years of age,” and therefore there is little benefit to lowering cholesterol levels if you’re older.
• A 2005 study from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons found that people with the lowest cholesterol and LDL levels were twice as likely to die within three years compared to those with the highest levels.

Even government agencies are realizing that cholesterol isn’t the dietary bogeyman it has been made out to be. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, a project of the FDA and USDA that sets government recommendations for a healthy diet, is about to withdraw its longstanding guidelines that recommend avoiding high cholesterol foods.

While it is now clear from the science that cholesterol is not the demon behind heart disease, it’s equally clear that poor eating habits, lack of exercise, and obesity are direct causes. The good news is that heart disease can be entirely reversed through diet! In a recent article, Dr. Joseph Mercola stated that the Paleo diet can be very effective in reducing blood pressure and triglyceride levels—more effective, actually, than any statin drug. In fact, Dr. Mercola recommends a ketogenic diet, which actually increases fat intake, albeit using healthy fats.

These kinds of integrative approaches to health and prevention, however, stand in the way of one of Big Pharma’s largest cash cows, so it’s no wonder we don’t see them (or the scientific studies that show how dangerous statin drugs are) more widely publicized. Watch these pages over the next couple of weeks for our follow-up article on alternatives to statins.

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Senator McCaskill Once Again Targets Anti-Aging Supplements

Treating supplements like drugs will do one thing only: eliminate supplements altogether. Action Alert!

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) is a key ally of Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL). Under the auspices of the Special Committee on Aging, where she is the ranking member, Sen. McCaskill sent letters to over a dozen major retailers including Amazon, CVS, Target, the Vitamin Shoppe, GNC, Kroger, Safeway, and Walgreens, asking—in effect, demanding—that the retailers supply information and documents to the committee, with the expectation that it will lead to a Senate hearing. The committee wants to review the retailers’ policies relating to:

• the sale and marketing of supplements;
• the removal of products determined to be adulterated, improperly labeled, or fraudulently marketed;
• the reporting of serious adverse events; and
• how consumers’ complaints regarding supplements are handled.

The letters also ask that the retailers brief the Special Committee on Aging staff regarding the above procedures.

Some of the letters express specific concerns about supplements that are being used to protect against and/or mitigate the effects of Alzheimer’s and dementia.

This is not the first time the senator has tackled this topic. In 2010, the Special Committee on Aging held a hearing, titled “Dietary Supplements: What Seniors Need to Know.” The overall tenor of the hearing was that regulators needed more authority to clamp down on deceptive marketing practices of some dietary supplement manufacturers. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) responded by clarifying that such deceptive marketing practices were already illegal and that the FDA already had the authority to criminally prosecute offenders, making any further regulation redundant. The hearing showed that many in Congress simply do not understand dietary supplement regulation.

In 2014, Sen. McCaskill headed a Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee hearing on false or misleading marketing of weight loss supplements, where she famously grilled Dr. Mehmet Oz for using what she considered sensationalist language to push certain products on his popular television program.

It is interesting that Sen. McCaskill is targeting supplements that may protect against Alzheimer’s and dementia. We’ve written before about the positive results from coconut oil in patients with Alzheimer’s after Big Pharma drugs either failed to improve, or actively worsened, the patients’ condition. Other evidence suggests that high doses of B vitamins limit brain shrinkage, a common precursor to Alzheimer’s. A proper diet and proper supplementation may also improve our memory as we grow older.

The Mediterranean Diet has also been shown to be associated with slower cognitive decline. Well-functioning brains contain high levels of DHA, which can be obtained by a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids found in fatty fish, walnuts, flaxseed, and eggs. Limiting intake of trans-fats common in fried foods and omega-6 fats helps maintain a healthy brain along with getting enough sleep and reducing stress.

There is much more research to be done on these topics, but it is remarkable how much research already has been done, considering that the foods and supplements cannot be patented.

Let’s be clear. Inquiries such as this are often only the first step in a process that culminates in lawmakers calling for supplements to be regulated more like drugs—which, because of what we call the “Catch-22” of drug economics, would likely result in the complete elimination of many important supplements from the market. This is precisely the approach Sen. Durbin has taken in the past—and why it is so very important that we take action now, before it snowballs.

Besides Sens. McCaskill and Durbin, politicians such as Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and former Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) have repeatedly intimated that supplements are unregulated, which is simply untrue. As we’ve written before, supplements are subject to regulation by both the FDA and the FTC, and must adhere to strict current good manufacturing practices to ensure the safety of the supplements consumers buy. Unfortunately, as in most industries, some bad actors will not follow the law, and it is then up to federal regulators to enforce the rules. In one notorious memo from the past, the FDA admitted that it was not doing its job—clearly hoping that some dire result would lead to new legislation against supplements.

It should be remembered that the current system actually works: supplements have a sterling track record of safety. Our friends at ANH-Europe calculated that UK residents were actually more likely to get killed by lightning as to die from taking dietary supplements.

We’ve long suspected that these attacks from certain politicians have less to do with protecting consumers than with doing the bidding of Big Pharma, which would love any competition from supplements to be eliminated. Just compare the price of drugs to supplements. And compare the safety record of supplements to that of FDA-approved drugs which, even when properly prescribed, cause about 1.9 million hospitalizations and kill about 128,000 Americans every year.

Moreover, the drug industry has yet to produce a drug for Alzheimer’s that really works. Personal testing, food, supplements, and lifestyle—the key elements of integrative medicine—are all we have at the moment to protect our aging brains.

Action Alert! Write to the members of the Special Committee on Aging and urge them to halt this bullying of supplement retailers and maintain consumer access to important supplements. Remind them that federal regulators already have the authority to stop deceitful marketing practices. The FDA and FTC should simply do their job and enforce current law. Please send your message immediately.

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