12 replies to this topic

[ajnast4r]

http://www.youtube.c...3mhjt7TrY&eurl=

holy shit...

[Brainbox]

april fool or everytime fool?

This seems far to serious for a "joke".....

[syr_]

"aids virus". The subject is wrong for a start...
AIDS is a syndrome not a virus, the virus is HIV...

Happy 1st april everyone

[opales]

No I don't think this is April's Fools, but I think it is not referring to any recent news but rather to a few years old case. It's about a hemofiliac drug in the 80's.

http://www.cbsnews.c...ain556653.shtml

Anyway, overall the clip seemed a bit sensationalistic.

Here is Bayer's statement to the accusation's:

http://www.biologica...05232003_en.cfm

I was not able to find a more recent document regarding this other than the reports from 2003, has the case fallen in court or has it been settled?

[ajnast4r]

um, i posted this on april 2nd. and its not a joke, its dead serious.

just goes to show how evil and unethical alot of big pharma companies are

[syr_]

I hoped was a joke :(

[opales]

um, i posted this on april 2nd. and its not a joke, its dead serious.

just goes to show how evil and unethical alot of big pharma companies are

As I said the clip was very sensationalistic. The only guy they interviewed was a lawyer, I can only assume it was the plaintiff's lawyer. No comment was asked from the company.

I was absoutely unable to find any recent news of the 2003 lawsuit, which might very well imply it fell in court.

I am not sure what is the truth, but I think it is not insane to believe that the incident was due to bad judgement rather than unethical practises (despite the fact they earlier had settled for 600 mil). Companies get sued constantly over decisions that in hindsight were moronic but at the time of iniation were competely fair. That happened to a lot of companies after the Internet hype. There are law companies that actively seek to iniate class actions at any possibility, and even though most fall, the ones that go through are very profitable and make up for losses of the failed suits. As an example, every time a large publicly traded company misses it's revenue goals, it gets sued by dozen's of class actions for "misrepresentaton" for hunreds of millions of dollars, which just ridiculous and in my view, clear misabuse of the existing judiciary system.

And not to say pharmaceutical companies are innocent or anything, but really, they seem like mother Teresa if you compare them to supplement/herbal/alternative industry as a whole. Those guys get represented as having little financial interest, but in reality, the alternative medicine expenditure is larger than regular pharmaceutical expenditure. Also, altenative industry does very little/no research and most their products don't have near the scientific backing compared to pharmaceuticals (REALLY!) but the companies make up for it plain by lying and expoiting the gullibleness of people and the widespread irrational anti-corporation mentality.

[scottl]

Many hemophiliacs did get AIDS from their meds...but that was like decades ago. The tests for it have been around a long while. I wonder if the incident described here is ancient. and never forget...


"Never explain by malice what can be explained by incompetence"

[opales]

Many hemophiliacs did get AIDS from their meds...but that was like decades ago.  The tests for it have been around a long while.  I wonder if the incident described here is ancient.  and never forget...

"Never explain by malice what can be explained by incompetence"

Yes, as I said, the incident actually happened in the 80's (and as was explained in the link I provided in my first post). Companies have since settled class actions totalling in 600 million dollars, but new lawsuit's keep coming up every now and then and the clip probably referred to one of those.

[ajnast4r]

I am not sure what is the truth, but I think it is not insane to believe that the incident was due to bad judgement rather than unethical practises (despite the fact they earlier had settled for 600 mil).

the drug was released 3 years after the discovery of the aids virus, they werent allowed to sell it in america for exactly that reason... and they went and sold it elsewhere.

i would say that is EXTREMELY unethical, not just a bad judgement call.

And not to say pharmaceutical companies are innocent or anything, but really, they seem like mother Teresa if you compare them to supplement/herbal/alternative industry as a whole. Those guys get represented as having little financial interest, but in reality, the alternative medicine expenditure is larger than regular pharmaceutical expenditure. Also, altenative industry does very little/no research and most their products don't have near the scientific backing compared to pharmaceuticals (REALLY!) but the companies make up for it plain by lying and expoiting the gullibleness of people and the widespread irrational anti-corporation mentality

whens the last time u saw a supplement company knowingly infect hundreds of people with aids? or knowingly hide or destroy information on harmful side effects? or release drugs knowing there was a good chance they would kill a bunch of people?

i dont know how or why you think alt med companies spend more than pharma companies, thats just rediculous. and dont get me started on pharma drugs, and how backwards the whole idea of treating symptoms and ignoring the disease & its root causes is. pharma companies are interested in ONE thing: money. end of story... if they werent they would be educating you on how to prevent and repair disease, not feeding you pills to cover symptoms... dont get me wrong, pharma drugs have their places... those places are just few and far between.


ever since the lifemirage thing you have had such a hard-on for the supplement sections... i assure you no one appriciates it

[opales]

the drug was released 3 years after the discovery of the aids virus, they werent allowed to sell it in america for exactly that reason... and they went and sold it elsewhere.

i would say that is EXTREMELY unethical, not just a bad judgement call.

I don't have further knowledge of the case than the links I provided, and neither do you. Did you bother to look at the statement Bayer made, their story (the new treatment was not approved and was questioned in many countries that still urgently needed blood), while could be false does sounds every bit as plausible as the yapping in the clip? And it's like the minute AIDS-HIV connection was discovered that the whole world embraced upon it (I think the oft cited Joseph Mercola still denies it). Even if clear AVOIDABLE mistakes would have been done, it does not neccessarily mean it was done because of greed but maybe just because of human errors. Large companies foster lots of people so plenty of room for errors.

Companies/people get criticised constantly over desicision of the past, usually with complete misunderstading of the original situation. They may even have to pay money due unpredictable unfortunate incidents, let alone plain human errors, because the public needs to have someone responsible to keep their simplistic world views intact.

You seem to assume guilt when intepreting evidence so naturally you draw the consclusion of them being guilty of all the charges put forward (not that I don't say it's possible, but really I don't know and neither do you).

whens the last time u saw a supplement company knowingly infect hundreds of people with aids? or knowingly hide or destroy information on harmful side effects? or release drugs knowing there was a good chance they would kill a bunch of people?

i dont know how or why you think alt med companies spend more than pharma companies, thats just rediculous. and dont get me started on pharma drugs, and how backwards the whole idea of treating symptoms and ignoring the disease & its root causes is. pharma companies are interested in ONE thing: money. end of story... if they werent they would be educating you on how to prevent and repair disease, not feeding you pills to cover symptoms... dont get me wrong, pharma drugs have their places... those places are just few and far between.

I made my comments on the deliberate AIDS infections above. Re:hiding and destroying evidence of harmful side-effects is pretty strong claim, don't know how much you have backing, but I am sure even that happens sometimes. More plausible claim I have heard that drug researchers rarely hide or destroy evidence, put rather draw somewhat optimistic conclusions of the data. This happens in EVERY field of research, altough possibly not as much in medical research (due to higher stakes as opposed to personal glory). The negative effect of that is reduced as there has to be multiple trials providing the needed evidence for a drug-approval. And letting deadly drugs to the public, well, yet again I don't know if you have actual evidence of such behavior.

My claim that alternative treatment expenditure (36-47 billion dollars in 1997 in the US and growing, that includes everything) is larger than spending to pharmaceuticals (around 250 billion dollars) was admittedly wrong, still the share is quite large for huge profits as alternative treament companies hardly participate in research, unlike pharmaceutical companies whose largest expenditure is research. The spending on alternative treatment is staggering given the lack of actual evidence of efficacy or safety or sometimes even abundance of evidence of non-efficacy or non-safety.

http://www.ncbi.nlm....st_uids=9820257

The fact is that hardly any supplement/herb has gone through near the testing that virtually any drug-approved pharmeceutical has. Not only that, pharmaceutical drugs are under constant follow-up scrunity due to legal regulations (that requires pharmaceutical companies follow-up on reported side-effects), and because treating physicians are aware of their usage (unlike with supplements). This enables to catch questionable drugs like Vioxx even after they have been approved. Most trials showing effectiveness or safety of supplements are crappy in methology, small in size and short in duration (lets not even go to completely questionable treatments like homeopathy) and there is no systems to follow-up on their usage so real catastrophes can be raging for years possibly decades without no one ever realizing, let alone the waste of money.

More often than when comparing drugs to supplements/herbs you trade the hard data on actual effectiveness and safety to wishful extrapolations of insufficient data. Go to any supplement company website (even AOR which I consider the few somewhat trustworthy supplement companies), and witness DOZENs of products being marketed to do most amazing things from very little data, most often tweaking the little existing to the most optimistic interpretation you can possibly draw. Frequently it does not stay at optimistic interpretation but goes to plain misrepresentation or even lying. Consequences range from mere money loss to death.

It is true some orthomolecules might be promising paths for drug development but do not go there because of patent laws etc. But what lose in promising research paths, you make up in sheer amount of evidence that companies have to provide to get their products to the market.

The claim that pharmaceutical drugs "treat only symptoms" is completely unsubstantiated. Sure the companies (nor do supplement companies) don't necessarily emphasize preventative measures say proper nutrition or exercise but that is really not their job, there are other instances doing that. But I can assure you, whether preventing or treating diseases, drug approved "big pharma" substances fare quite well on safety/efficacy compared to even most promising supplements/herbs out there on ANY given condition.

ever since the lifemirage thing you have had such a hard-on for the supplement sections... i assure you no one appriciates it

Too bad for me, but someone needs to say it.

I see some of extremely researched and effective drugs like statins or aspirin being trashed here everyday while providing nil evidence (most likely because lack of it), while at the same breath heralding some little researched therapies/supplements/herbs with mixed or poor or incomplete results or even large theoretically implausibilities. I am sorry but life-extension is going to be achieved through sticking to rigorous scientific agenda, not through WISHFUL THINKING.

[FunkOdyssey]

ever since the lifemirage thing you have had such a hard-on for the supplement sections... i assure you no one appriciates it

I appreciate it, even when I don't agree with him. Critical thinking is sorely needed in the supplement-using community, and opales brings plenty of that to the table.

I find that when he seems especially frustrating or irritating to me, its because he just debunked a long standing belief I had with some good research. [lol]

[scottl]

Opales brings a useful....counterbalance to the place and makes one think on what one does know.

OTOH besides depleting co-Q-10, the true effect on cognition/memory of statins will probably not come out for many years (there is someone at my institution collecting the data, but it is mostly being ignored). Suffice to say statins are likely anti-nootropes.

THe benefits of asprin on e.g. CRP are documented, and if there is no other efffective way to reduce it, so be it. OTOH I"m not willing to risk my kidneys on the even small risk of low dose asprin. CRP is easily testable and reducable with fish oil, adn other supps.