Because They Are Fraudulently Tested?
By ~ Robert Ryan, B.Sc.
According to the United States' Food and Drug Administration, 1.5 million Americans were hospitalized in 1978 alone, as a consequence of pharmaceutical drugs administered to "cure" them. It was also found that some 30% of all hospitalized people suffered further damage from the therapy prescribed them. (1) In the 1990s, studies show that 180,000 medically-induced deaths occur each year in the USA. (2) These astronomical figures are in spite of the fact that a large number of drug damages go unreported.
Since 1961, the total number of "safety-tested" medical preparations marketed worldwide has risen to over 205,000. Approximately 15,000 new preparations are marketed each year, while some 12,000 are withdrawn. (3) The United States has the greatest annual sickness-care expenditure of any nation; $912 billion in 1993 alone. (4) If money and medical treatment equals health then one would expect the United States to be the healthiest of nations. However, it only ranks 16th in the world in female life expectancy, 17th in the world in male life expectancy and only 21st in the world in infant mortality. (5)
Of course, a percentage of drug damages are due to the incorrect administration of drugs by physicians and patients. But how are harmful pharmaceutical drugs allowed onto the market in the first place, and why do we have so much faith in them? Pharmaceutical transnationals defy the intent of laws regulating safety of drugs by bribery, false advertising, unsafe manufacturing processes, smuggling and international law evasion strategies. But most of all they make dangerous drugs appear safe through the use of fraudulent and flexible 'safety-tests', the subject of this article.
FRAUD IN CLINICAL TESTS
Drug companies can easily arrange appropriate clinical trials by paying a researcher to produce the desired results that will assist the intended application of the drug. The incentive for researchers to fabricate data is enormous. As much as $1000 per subject is paid by American companies which enables some researchers to earn up to $1 million a year from drug research. (6) And they know all too well that if they don't produce the desired data, the loss of future work is inevitable. Unfortunately, because of secrecy, most fraud in clinical trials is unlikely to be detected.
However, cases of data-fabrication in clinical trials have been uncovered where, for example, "patients who died while on the trial were not reported to the sponsor.... Dead people were listed as subjects of testing... People reported as subjects of testing were not in the hospital at the time of tests..." and where "Patient consent forms bore dates indicating they were signed by the subjects after the subjects had died." (7) Even if data from clinical trials is not falsified, it is often of little worth, because they are not performed appropriately. Trials involve relatively small numbers of people and the subjects taking part usually do not represent those who will use the drug after its approval; so many harmful effects of a new drug appear only when it has been marketed.
FRAUD IN ANIMAL TESTS - VIVISECTION
This problem of inappropriate and flexible testing of drugs and chemicals is even more pronounced with the use of so-called animal 'models'; a practice termed vivisection. For instance, the fact that the animal is relatively healthy before the experiment means that disease and or trauma has to be induced by violent and artificial means. This bears no relation whatsoever, to the spontaneous ways in which humans develop illness, often through a faulty lifestyle and diet. For example, consider the case of osteoarthritis, a human degenerative disease resulting in grotesque and painful deformities of the joints. How do researchers attempt to mimic human lameness in dogs, cats, sheep and pigs? Joints are beaten with hammer blows, injected with irritating liquids, subjected to ionizing radiation and/or dislocated. It is obvious that the resulting fractures, hemorrhages, thromboses, contusions and inflammation bear no relation to human osteoarthritis, "which is a local manifestation of a generalized illness of the collagen." (8) Drugs tested on such artificially diseased non-human animals cannot possibly yield results relevant to a spontaneous, naturally occurring human disease.
Moreover, there is no true correlation between different species. For example, arsenic kills humans but is harmless to guinea-pigs, chickens and monkeys; Digitalis which is used to lower blood pressure in humans dangerously raises the blood pressure of dogs; Penicillin kills guinea-pigs; Chloramphenicol damages the blood-producing bone marrow in humans, but in no other animal: Many common laboratory animals such as dogs, cats, rats, hamsters and mice, do not require dietary intake of vitamin C. This is because their bodies produce it of their own accord. However, if you deprive humans, guinea-pigs and some primates of dietary vitamin C they will die of scurvy. There are enough of these species differences to fill a book. (9) In the words of former animal researcher Professor Piedro Croce, "No substance is toxic in itself, but only according to the species." (10)
Not only are there differences between species, but even individuals of the same species react differently to a substance. For example, research carried out at the University of Bremen, published in a paper titled "Problems of activity threshold in pharmacology and toxicology" found that:
1. In ionizing radiation - young animals react differently from older ones.
2.In reactions to Tranquilizers - again, young and old animals react differently.
3. In the common method of testing pharmaceuticals and chemicals, the Lethal Dose 50% test, it was found that in the experiments carried out in the evening almost all the rats died: in those carried out in the morning all of them survived. In the tests carried out in winter, survival rates were doubled in contrast to those carried out in summer. In tests carried out on mice overcrowded together in cages, nearly all of them died, while those carried out on mice in normal conditions, all the mice survived.
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