Big Pharma’s Big Paydays

By Pat Shannan

I’ve lost a few friends in recent years to chemo-poisoning (masquerading as “therapy”) and have learned that a couple more have succumbed in recent months to the doctor’s “baloney speak” (BS), which now has me preparing to read their obituaries. The Hippocratic Oath* has become the hypocritic deception. My own brother fell for it after his foolish wife gave him so much grief at home for the two years he was on natural therapy and thriving that he began the chemo-poisoning to quiet her big mouth and was dead in a year.

(*A partial translation: “I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture . . .

“I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.”)

On the days of the off-chance that I am watching something interesting on TV, I used to channel surf whenever the commercials came on, but now whenever an ad comes on for some of Big Pharma’s poison, I turn up the volume to hear some of the best comedy of the day. They spend the first 30-40 seconds telling us how this great new drug is going to cure whatever ails us, then the rest of the advertising minute is spent with the sanctifying disclaimers just in case we are dumb enough to swallow this venom and become afflicted with one of a dozen or more of their side effects. These range from “chronic headaches” through a long list to “death.” At the end of one blurb to help people to stop smoking, I heard all the usual warnings of “Be sure to talk to your doctor” (Yeah, right. The guy who will close the sale for them) followed by all the side effects this poison can have upon the naïve patient. Then the one that actually made me laugh out loud was the grand finale: “and should you experience suicidal tendencies, call your doctor!” No wonder most people prefer to keep smoking.

Who is more dangerous in this modern society? The liar or the believer?

As longtime investigative reporter Jon Rappoport so intuitively points out:

“Implicit in ‘Ask your doctor if drug X is right for you,’ is the message: “Go to your doctor.”  That’s the key.  If the ads can put a viewer into the system, he will be diagnosed with something, and he’ll be given a drug for it.

“So, the drug ads are also promotions for doctors, who are the arbiters and the decision makers.  Some kind of medical need (drugs) always exists—and the doctor will tell you what it is.  And all patients should OBEY.  Even if, in the process, they go broke.

“Take the case of Opdivo, a drug that treats squamous non-small cell lung cancer.  Cost? $12,500 a month.  Patients on Medicare will pay $2500 a month out of their own pockets.  And the result?

Wall St, Journal: ‘In the clinical study on which the Opdivo ad bases its claims, the drug extended median patient survival to 9.2 months from the start of treatment…’

“The cancer patient pays $22,500 for nine months of survival, during which the suffering continues, and then he dies.

“The ad isn’t mentioning THAT.

“The ad relies on the doctor to convince the patient to go along with this lunatic program.”

One man almost lost his life from an internal burning reaction after taking a two week round of antibiotics to treat a staph infection. Thirty-eight-year-old Josh Dennis from Colorado suffered severe blisters and burns over 90 percent of his body and was temporarily blinded. He suffered from a side effect called toxic epidermal necrolysis, a debilitating condition where the skin cells, mucus membranes, eyes, and genitals begin to burn and blister indiscriminately.

There’s also the story of 41-year-old Chris Dannelly, who was prescribed a brand name antibiotic called levofloxacin for the flu. After a second dose of the antibiotic, he began to suffer from a syndrome that causes the death of muscle fibers and the release of myoglobin into his bloodstream. He didn’t survive.

The pharmaceutical industry certainly seems to attract more than its fair share of evil people who are totally focused on making money at any cost. In the United States, which has very lax federal regulatory laws in this regard, pharma giants have become infamous for price gouging – jacking the prices of lifesaving medications up astronomically, and virtually overnight.

The latest example of this total lack of empathy for the plight of the people dependent on their medications, is a pharmaceutical manufacturer called Avondale Pharmaceuticals which recently hiked the price of a prescription version of vitamin B3 (niacin), called Niacor, from $32.46 to $295.

Though inexpensive generic versions of this vitamin are available over the counter, doctors often prescribe this specific brand for the treatment of high cholesterol. The company purchased the rights to produce Niacor from a Japanese company called Sawai Pharmaceutical in 2017.

Not content to stop there, Avondale also purchased the rights to produce another drug called SSKI, which is used in the treatment of respiratory illnesses, and pushed that drug’s price up from $11.48 to $295.

And I have coupla’ personal stories to which I can attest to the veracity because I was there.

In 2002, my dear wife was diagnosed with colon cancer in Jackson, Mississippi. On the initial visit to the cancer clinic, I accompanied her to meet an arrogant young man named Graham whose name badge had “Dr.” on it and who embraced the exalted title of “Oncologist.” He had the bedside manner of a coroner. We were seated in a very small receiving room when he entered from the rear and went straight to his records without any greeting, just standing there at the table four feet in front of us, punching his computer keys and never even saying “Hello.”

After an uncomfortable two minutes of his searching for the correct file, he looked up and said, “Mrs. Shannan?” and began to ask her a few questions.

Downstairs in the waiting room a few minutes earlier, I had been thumbing through the meal menus for the patients that were hospitalized there and noticed the large array of sugar-laden lunches and desserts – potatoes, carrots and other high-carbohydrate vegetables (which turn to sugar once consumed) and puddings, pies and ice cream. One of the Registered Nurses told me that the idea was to put weight back on the cancer patients because most of them had lost so much weight, which to any logical thinker was about as smart as feeding them the chemo-poison that kills the immune system first.

Now before parting with the doctor upstairs, I stood and asked, “Oh, Dr. Graham, please tell me why your clinic would serve all its meals with so many foods with such a high-sugar content? Everybody knows that sugar feeds cancer.”

No, as I was about find out, everybody does not know that sugar feeds cancer.

He turned to me and said, “That’s not true.” And then, he repeated with even a louder bark, “That’s absolutely not true.”

The man was emphatically sincere with the indignation of How can this normal earthling possibly know more about this than I who went to medical school?

That was nearly twenty years ago and was my first lesson in learning that the largest group of people in the world who do not know that sugar feeds cancer would have to be those graduates of medical school, whose only post-graduate education comes from deceptive AMA periodicals and conversations with Big Pharma’s sales personnel.

In 2014, I had a pesky skin cancer on my chest that I had been holding back for a few years with natural treatments but just couldn’t seem to kill it off. I finally agreed with the dermatologist that cutting it out would be best. It worked. Then a year later, she did a biopsy on a suspected spot on the end of my nose that showed a minor cancer identified as the very common Basal and recommended surgery. I declined and called my favorite naturopathic doctor who had a new therapy that is taken internally and does not scar as would applying salves, etc. topically. In thirty days, the Basal cell carcinoma had disappeared.

Now we come to the great deception. Two years later, the nose problem recurred, and I looked like Rudolph leading Santa’s sleigh. The dermatologist did another biopsy, and a week later I got another call from the surgeon’s nurse saying that this time it had come back positive for the far more serious malignant Melanoma. Once again, she was anxious to book my surgery, but I held off until I could discuss it with a real doctor. He said, “Basal or the more serious ones, we have stopped them all in a matter of a month or less.” I followed his advice, and a month later it had dried up and my dermatologist was amazed.

Sometime later, I was gloating to myself that not only had I beaten the U. S. Attorney in a federal court jury trial without a lawyer (see Miracle in Atlanta) but now I had beaten cancer without a doctor; and I immediately was slapped with a dose of reality. Nobody is gonna believe this, I thought, so I had better retrieve the proof.

I called the dermatology clinic and spoke with the receptionist there asking if I could get a copy of my last biopsy report. “Certainly, sir,” she responded, “those are your records and are available to you at any time. Just come on by.”

A few days later, I picked up the report, and when I returned to my desk I opened the sealed envelope to discover a real shocker. The biopsy said no such anything about any “Melanoma” and reported that another Basal carcinoma had surfaced; and that was what we had knocked out naturally the last time, not a Melanoma.

It was obvious that I had been lied to. Apparently, the surgeon’s son or daughter had some upcoming college tuition fees that needed tending to, and a healthy collection from my insurance company would have taken care of that for another semester or two.

It’s all about money.