From the desk of Dr. Lantelme –

Allow me to go on the record saying something I believe to be crucially important.

In every industry, in every sphere of influence and role of power, there happen to exist certain people who use their position or agencyIn for personal gain.

What I discussed in my previous post is how the USDA has allowed the modern agricultural movement to cause people to remain in a progressive a state of sickness.

People might not instantly end up on their death beds because of eating USDA approved food, but they aren’t fully experiencing the kind of health they should be, either.

If you didn’t get a chance to read that article, it can be found here.

Now, as I mentioned in that bit of writing, the USDA is largely responsible for the approval of suspect food types and is the single largest organization to help control food supply.

But the USDA doesn’t act on its own accord, or without considerable deference to another group.

That group would be the FDA. And as the USDA shares relationships with biotech food companies, the FDA shares a relationship with a very large for-profit industry:

The pharmaceutical industry.

Let me help unpack this relationship and show you how it’s helped to bring us down a road where not much good can be found alongside it.

The FDA’s Questionable Role in Drug Supplies

At one point in time, the creation and release of pharmaceuticals was a little bit more unsafe than it is today.  And that’s saying quite a bit.

What the FDA was first tasked with was regulating the adulteration and misbranding of food and drugs on the American market.

Now, they’re in control of regulating roughly $466 billion in food sales, $275 billion in drugs, $60 billion in cosmetics, and $18 billion in vitamin supplements.

As noted above, a chief responsibility of the FDA is to determine what is allowed to be sold as a drug, or a prescription, and it holds considerable power when it comes to the release of drugs.

At one time, the FDA really did exist to help keep people safe. They saw the need for some kind of regulation on what was being produced as being a good thing because they wanted to make sure that the drugs people were taking were actually going to work.

Now it’s questionable if they’re all that interested in keeping Americans safe.

The Alliance for Natural Health wrote on just one of the many failings of the FDA:

A number of drugs contain an incredibly toxic chemical, even though safer alternatives exist. Big Pharma could have, but chose not to, clean this up voluntarily.

In May, we told you how the FDA was asking the pharmaceutical industry to police itself on the use of phthalates—synthetic chemicals used in plastics, lubricants, insect repellents, nail polish, perfumes, and prescription drugs. Phthalates are acknowledged by the FDA to be known endocrine disruptors which cause sterility, birth defects, and developmental delays. Congress banned phthalates from children’s toys but allowed their use in other products, asking industry to voluntarily remove them and use less toxic chemicals.

This week, ANH-USA submitted a legal petition to the FDA to ban phthalates altogether. It would replace the non-binding guidance currently in place that “recommends” safer alternatives, since that guidance has had very little positive impact.

Drugs such as Asacol and diadonisine (sold under the brand name Videx) and at least fifteen others still contain phthalates. In one case, a man taking Asacol for ulcerative colitis had a concentration of phthalate metabolite measuring nearly 17,000 parts per billion. The average phthalate metabolite for the general population is 46.

There is no reason to use phthalates other than to protect Big Pharma’s profit margin. The FDA acknowledges that safer alternatives exist, as one can find in FDA’s inactive ingredient database

And that isn’t to say the FDA isn’t still interested in helping to bring drugs on the market that don’t kill people (outright), but compromises are made so companies can make profits, and sometimes drugs are brought to market before they’ve truly been tested to be effective.

This knowledge isn’t the least bit conspiratorial.

Even Donald W. Light of the School of Public Health, University of Medicine & Dentistry of NJ said the following about these processes:

The forthcoming article in JLME also presents systematic, quantitative evidence that, since the industry started making large contributions to the FDA for reviewing its drugs, as it makes large contributions to Congressmen who have promoted this substitution for publicly-funded regulations, the FDA has sped up the review process with the result that drugs approved are significantly more likely to cause serious harm, hospitalizations, and deaths.

Essentially, what Light says is the FDA is working with pharmaceutical companies to get medications fast-tracked into the mainstream long before they’re ever proven to be safe.

How does this happen?

Truth is, Big Pharma is paying a few congressmen to help sponsor legislation that is favorable for the FDA to remove restrictions on scheduling the release of these drugs.

The FDA allows pharmaceutical companies to provide their own research for trials, and if they like what they see, the medicine is allowed to make it into circulation.

And therein lies the problem.

The FDA is working with one of the largest grossing industries in the nation so that industry can make more money. And these companies are left to their own devices to make sure their drugs look good on paper to increase their bottom line.

Even if the real effects of the drugs are far worse than they had ever even hinted to, they can get their products to market with some slight-of-hand and some hand-shaking.

And it’s not like the drugs coming in are always more effective or any safer.

Light notes, “90% of FDA approved drugs of the last 30 years are no more effective than existing drugs.”

So essentially, drugs are being created, not in the name of scientific breakthrough, but in the name of profit.

With these drugs, the adverse side-effects and reactions listed are often greatly under-reported; and there’s a great deal of anecdotal evidence to support the claim Big Pharma is working to keep people from speaking truth about their experiences with these drugs.

Again, this isn’t uniformly true of how Big Pharma and the FDA work together, but when you read the next bit of information you’ll see how it is allowed to happen.

In fact, sometimes the payments for the drug to be passed end up seeing the drug being denied approval.

And yet, it’s how the system works right now, and you can rest assured there’s quite a bit more to it than I even hinted to here.

Which brings me to the next point.

The Real Problem With Pharmaceuticals You Should Be Worried About

At the end of the day, it’s the pharmaceutical companies who are seeing the biggest paydays and profiting the most.

That’s because pharmaceutical companies are generally publicly held companies who must answer to stockholders.

Earnings are at the top of the chart of interests for these companies. And, while some involved in the company are very likely to be the progenitors for significant medical breakthrough at some point in their careers, stock holders care more about money than they do health.

It’s sad but true.

The truth is, pharmaceutical companies have been shown over and over again to be anything but trustworthy.

They craft clever advertisements and hire smooth salesman that normalize a dependence on pharmaceuticals which in many cases are not truly needed in the first place.

Naturally, I’d love to explain, and I promise I will in later articles.

Fortunately, Big Pharma don’t always get away with what they do.

Take one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world and the recent judgments issued against them.

GlaxoSmithKline, makers of Abreva, Advair, Ceftin, and hundreds of other prescriptions, was found guilty of bribery, fraud, and numerous other criminal charges after a 9-year investigation.

Natural News reported reported U.S. federal investigators found GlaxoSmithKline to be guilty of:

• Routinely bribing doctors with luxury vacations and paid speaking gigs
• Fabricating drug safety data and lying to the FDA
• Defrauding Medicare and Medicaid out of billions of dollars
• Deceiving regulators about the effectiveness of its drugs
• Relying on its deceptive practices to earn billions of dollars selling potentially dangerous drugs

They ended up having to settle for over $3 billion dollars for their misdeeds.

And they’re just like many other companies. Too big to fail, and too important to go anywhere.

The fact is, pharmaceuticals can be dangerous, and the drug companies know this.

But, they still need to make money.

It seems very simple, but it isn’t.

While I sit here and write this out, you must understand that I am merely scratching the surface of what happens to be a much larger problem.

What I’m attempting to do is drive home a point.

Between the FDA and pharmaceutical companies there exists a relatively cozy relationship where a certain group of people is able to benefit from willful deceit and as people much lower down the totem pole pay the consequences.

People who are on the middle-rungs might believe they’re playing a significant role in helping to bring people to full health.

However, when the ultimate decisions for what’s being done for health is made in a boardroom by decision-makers who see a bottom line as the most important metric, morals and ethics can be easily lost.

I saw this all the time in my own experience.

What most people want is a pill or a silver bullet to cure what ails them.

The pharmaceutical age has led people to believe that’s all it takes. And they market their drugs as cure-alls when they truly aren’t.

In reality, changing aspects of your lifestyle including diet, sleeping patterns, exercise routines etc. can be the real mechanisms to true health.

Are all pharmaceuticals bad?

I wouldn’t say that.

I believe God gave us sound minds that are able to create products that contribute to better health.

There are an assortment of drugs I believe to be absolutely critical in administering quality care to patients.

But, I’m also not of the opinion that anything and everything should be fixed with a prescription.

Ultimately, I believe you need to take responsibility for yourself and do as much as you can to work for better health.

When that doesn’t work then it’s time to turn to a doctor and, in some circumstances, take up a course of prescriptions to get better.

I also want to make it clear there are people out there who want to make life better for themselves, even if it comes at your expense.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you learned something.