Anal Leakage and Death Panels

¡Hola! Everybody...
I’m planning to get away this weekend. It’s a late replacement in my “Summer Flings” series necessitated when my latest co-star decided flings were detrimental to her attachment needs. The stand-in is a veteran Summer Flinger, but a dammed good one!

What?

LOL

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-=[ Big Pharma: The Real Death Panels ]=-

I want either less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.

-- Ashleigh Brilliant (1933-) “street” philosopher

Almost no one points out that the insurance industry stands between you and your doctor. And while you might be one of the lucky few who can afford health insurance, you had better be sure that you don’t get sick. Health insurance is about profit, not health and the only insurance in health insurance is that profits will be placed before people -- all the time.

So, yes, Sarah, there is rationing going on at the rate of over 100,000 preventable deaths -- every year. The highest rate among advanced countries.

And yes, there are death panels, my good friends. They’re part of the most profitable industry in the US (and possibly the world), the pharmaceutical industry, or Big Pharma. Imagine, if you can, that you own a company. You sell widgets. Now imagine if the government spent billions of tax dollars innovating your widgets and then gave the patents to those widgets for almost nothing! I mean, that’s some gangsta shit right there. Well, I’ve just described the economic engine that drives the most lucrative business in America, my friends. Yup, Big Pharma capitalizes on government research, takes the fruits of the research, bends you over, and stretches your anal sphincter without so much as a kiss. I mean, you can lay a lot of fucked up shit at my doorstep, but at least I use lube (most of the time) and occasionally yell out “Yee-haw bitch!” while I’m doing it.

Yet, didn’t I just see your cousin from Texas at a town hall meeting advocating for Big Pharma?

::blank stare::

Actually, the shit Big Pharma does is much more heinous than merely robbing us blind. The collusion between the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA, and the congressional oversight committee is downright deadly. I know, I know, you’re saying that the FDA and congressional oversight committees should protect the best interests of you and me, the Joe and Jane Six-pack, as that dimwit calls us. But remember when you voted for less “gub’mint,” as my cousins from Texas call it? Remember the neocon “let the markets solve all our problems, gub’mint is evil” rants? Well, you got it! We have fewer regulations and the rich welfare queens in three-piece suits own the FDA and damn near every congressional oversight committee you ever heard of. Shit, some of these people own your genes, you dumb muthafuckas!

The industry’s aggressive marketing tactics compound this lack of gub’mint oversight. You’ve seen the Claritin and Viagra commercials. They make it seem like these powerful drugs are like just any other consumer product. It’s a perception with deadly consequences. Big Pharma trots out its new drugs in the same way Hollywood opens summer blockbusters. They know how to build interest in a new drug. As a result, new, mostly untested drugs are being given to millions of people as soon as they’re a toothless FDA and the wholly owned prostitutes at congressional oversight committees okay them.

The thing is, when something goes wrong? The reverberations are felt throughout the country. I read somewhere that antidepressants are so widespread, traces of them are found in the drinking water of Texas and other localities. I am not shitting you! It seems like every other month, some new drug is being pulled off the market because heretofore “unknown” side effects (aside from the ubiquitous “anal leakage”) have been discovered. Yeah shit like suicide (as in the case of anti-depressants for children) and liver failure. Yeah, liver failure, you free-market sycophants. Duract, a painkiller that was shown to damage the liver, was prescribed to 2.5 million people in a ten-month period. That’s until Wyeth-Ayerst, Duract’s manufacturer, started yanking it off the shelves when the death totals started racking up. Under pressure from Wyeth-Ayerst, the FDA approved the drug, though there were concerns about its deadly side effects. It approved the drug with the caveat that it would provide a warning to physicians about its toxicity.

Yee-hawww! Bend ovah, muthafuckas!

What about legal consequences, you ask? Well, when you own the FDA, you don’t get punished. GlaxoSmithKline, for example, was “reprimanded” a remarkable fourteen times for misleading consumers about its asthma drugs Flovent and Flonase. I don't know about you, but my mother would only warn me a couple of times. My father had a strict “only two strikes” rule. Pfizer was ‘scolded three times in fourteen months for running deceptive ads hawking Celebrex, their arthritis drug.

There’s no turning back, people. Big Pharma covers its enormous arse by making generous contributions to both sides of the political aisle to the tune of tens of billions of dollars in the last election cycle alone.

And you wonder where they’re getting those goobers to rant and rave at town hall meetings?

Good luck with that...

Love,

Eddie