The co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine takes exception to Pharma’s portrayal in Sicko:
Mr. Moore could have framed the real problems with pharmaceutical companies by asking the right questions. How can we eliminate marketing practices that unduly influence clinicians by providing unethical incentives? Does direct-to-consumer advertising mislead the public by creating the notion of magic medicines without side effects? Do we benefit from companies developing yet another hair-loss or potency product while diseases with a much smaller market go ignored? Can the federal government become the sole purchaser of drugs without eliminating the profit that drives companies to make them? And does society benefit from the tax that is included in the price of every drug because of massive litigation?But Mr. Moore yielded to the zeitgeist, vilifying companies and their lobbyists in an easy, populist act that failed to educate his viewers.
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Mr. Moore takes to task CEOs and pharm companies because they make, to him, unconscionable amounts of profit, but clearly there is little he won’t do to amass his own fortune. He gulls people with lies, partial truths and misrepresentations. I seriously doubt that he cares one way or the other whether his ‘documentaries’ cause harm to the less powerful. He seems to me a man who is vastly entertained by the havoc he wrecks especially when it brings in lots of money for him.
Nice article! I guess that most of the drugs are having high prices because of R&D and tax not because of manufacturing cost.So government should interfere and try to control the drugs price…
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The article is schitzo. It says the pharmaceuticals do have bad practices but that Moore shouldn’t have vilified big pharma.
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