Pharmaceutical companies behind some of Australia’s best-known brands avoided an estimated $215 million a year in tax in Australia over a three year period - almost four times the $63 million actually paid - Oxfam says.
The report, ‘Prescription for Poverty’ looks at four of the world’s largest global pharmaceutical companies - Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck, Sharpe & Dome (MSD Australia), and Abbott – which in Australia are estimated to have unfairly avoided paying $215 million in taxes a year between 2013 and 2015.
No surprises there but Oxfam's CEO Helen Szoke went on to say, clearly ignorant of the irony:
“To put it in perspective, if this amount were invested in healthcare in these countries, this could pay for 10 million girls to be vaccinated against the HPV virus that causes cervical cancer and kills one woman every two minutes around the world,” Dr Szoke said.
OXFAM IS A SCAM
Pay who? Oh, Merck, the pharmaceutical company that produces the vaccine Gardasil! Of course she also implies that Gardasil would reduce this alleged death rate from cervical cancer. Ah well, she's a doctor so she's bought into the whole vaccination mythology but the irony is that while she criticises the tax avoidance schemes of the pharmaceutical companies, she does not have the slightest hesitation is suggesting that money be given right back to them via one of the most notorious vaccine on the market.
Oxfam of course is one of those sham organisations that purport to be working toward alleviating poverty and improving health in developing countries. This quote from Oxfam's own website gives an insight into what it's really on about:
Vaccines have contributed to some of the greatest public health successes of the past century, averting 2.5 million child deaths every year and millions more bouts of illness and disability. Yet even as the demand for existing, new and planned vaccines grows in developing countries, financing for immunization in poor countries has reached a crisis point, and major problems in the vaccines market mean that access to existing vaccines and development of new vaccines will be impeded and delayed.
That's what Oxfam sees as a way of improving the health of children in developing countries: undermine the already weakened immune systems of malnourished children by subjecting them to a barrage of vaccinations.
It was the headline (Long-tailed macaques invaluable for vaccine development: Expert) that caught my attention in The Jakarta Post. As can be seen the story involves an "expert" and so ought to be believed. Here is the story, dated Wedneday, May 23, 2018:
Long-tailed macaques, also known as crab-eating macaques, have important value for the development of vaccines in Indonesia, the world’s largest vaccine supplier, an expert has said.
Amir Hamidy, member of the Scientific Authority at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Indonesia, said long-tailed macaques were a non-endangered species currently listed in Appendix 2 of the Convention. This means people are permitted to hunt the species but within a quota system.
"First we must see what benefits we can get from long-tailed macaques. Because the pressure from the international community, such as the Animal Welfare Association, on the use of wildlife, especially primates, is quite high. We are not permitted to exploit the species and must also maintain its population and natural habitat,” Amir said on Tuesday.
The scientist was referring to the possible uses of long-tailed macaques for the development of vaccines, produced with the animal's kidney tissue culture.
“We supply the world with vaccines. We export our vaccines to many countries and we can develop polio and TB vaccines by using long-tailed macaques. But the macaques we use must be from a breeding facility to ensure they are clean and healthy,” said Amir.
“The use of long-tailed macaques to develop vaccines is one example of the uses of biodiversity,” he added.
Despite the involvement of a so-called expert, the story is undoubtedly and depressingly true. What surprised me about the story was that Indonesia is the world's largest vaccine supplier and that vaccines are still being developed using mashed-up monkey kidneys as a culture.
It was from another Jakarta Post article (Bio Farma temporarily suspends diphtheria vaccine exports to tackle outbreak) that I learned:
State-owned vaccine manufacturer Bio Farma has temporarily stopped its diphtheria vaccine exports to focus on vaccine distribution to fulfill domestic demand as Indonesia strives to contain an outbreak of the infectious disease.
So Bio Farma is owned by the Indonesian government. The company has a surprisingly long history dating back to 1890. While Indonesia may be the world's largest vaccine supplier, neither Bio Farma or any other Indonesian pharmaceutical company features in the top 50 companies for 2017 (link). Indonesia's largest pharmaceutical company is Kalbe Farma and has featured in the news recently (see article: Indonesia's first biomedicine factory opens) and, to quote from the article:
Apart from vaccines and antisera produced by state-owned Bio Farma, most biopharmaceutical products in Indonesia have been imported. Kalbe aims to break this dependence on biopharmaceutical imports by finally manufacturing its own biogenerics.
Meanwhile, there have been some interesting developments regarding compulsory vaccinations in Jakarta. This story from The Jakarta Post, dated May 22, 2018 summarises the situation:
Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan has decided to revise a recent circular that was criticised for discouraging immunisation drives in the city.
The circular, which was distributed at the end of April through puskesmas (public health centres), annulled a previous regulation on basic immunisation as an admission requirement for kindergarten and elementary schools.
Anies said he did not mean to discourage immunisation campaigns, but he also did not want it to become an obstacle for children to enrol at schools.
"The circular will be retracted and we'll issue another one, because it has generated various interpretations," the former education minister told reporters on Monday at City Hall.
Anies said the revised circular would ensure that schools provide immunisation access to children who were unvaccinated when they applied to schools.
Health practitioners and parents criticised the Jakarta Education Agency for issuing the new circular that stripped immunisation from admission requirements, saying that communicable diseases still plagued the nation's capital.
The original regulation that made basic immunisation mandatory for school admission was issued by former governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama.
Clearly the Jakarta Governor is trying appease two antagonistic sides. On one side is a lot of citizens who are suspicious of vaccinations, especially following the recent dengue fever vaccination debacle in the Philippines. On the other side is the pharmaceutical and medical industries that makes a lot of money out of vaccinations. These are the same tensions that exist in many countries, although the latter side does not enjoy the same dominance as it does in many Western countries. However, even in the West, the number of citizens who refuse to unconditionally accept the vaccination orthodoxy is growing and becoming better organised.
In Indonesia however, Islam is also being called upon in the fight against Big Pharma, as this article reveals:
One of the leading anti-vax campaigners is Dewi Hestyawati, who calls herself a Holistic Islam Health Activist.
She says diseases like diphtheria and polio can be warded off and treated with diet and alternative therapies.
"The Prophet shows us that immunisation should come from the regular daily consumption of healthy substances : honey, herbs, olive oil; dates and goat's milk. If we don't follow that, we can be easily infected with diseases," she said.
Dewi Hestyawati has a Facebook page and, one thing leading to another of course when going down these rabbit holes, she makes reference to a Doctor Andrew Moulden who died prematurely in 2014 at age 49, under suspicious circumstances. A website has been set up by a friend to keep his ideas alive. Here is a link to a talk he gave in Montreal in 2009.
What particularly struck me about Doctor Moulden's comments was that vaccines can cause reduced blood to nerves connected to the eyes and face, so that eyes can become "turned" in exactly the same way as happened to my brother Tony. I remember when he was pre-school and it was suddenly discovered that he had a turned eye. He needed to wear spectacles with a patch.
I'm wondering if he didn't suffer vaccine reactions which caused not only caused his turned eye but also his acoustic neuroma that doctors said had probably been growing since he was two years of age. Of course, there was no suspicion that vaccines might have caused these two seemingly unrelated problems and perhaps also led to Tony's behavioural problems. No one will ever know now of course but it seems highly likely that he was damaged. Being so much younger than his other two brothers (Peter - born 1953 and myself - born 1949), he would have received different "flavours" of vaccines and probably more of them.
It's interesting to compare the number of recommended vaccines in the late 1940's versus 2010 (source):
Late 1940s | Recommended Vaccines
Smallpox
Diphtheria
Tetanus
Pertussis
I read an interesting article on the BBC website about ECT today, proving that there is occasionally a worthwhile story to be found. The article gives a good account of the early history of the treatment and then looks at reasons for the decline in its popularity. The observation is made that:
ECT was indiscriminately used on people it would never help. In 1946, two psychiatrists from Siena, Italy wrote, “Today there is no mental illness where [ECT] has not been tried.” This included homosexuality, which the first three volumes Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (published between the 1950s and 1980s) categorised as a form of mental illness. Such widespread use – often without the patient’s consent – was a way to control uncontrollable patients. After a session, patients were in a dazed, sleepy, and therefore more manageable, state. It was custodial, not curative.
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest helped reinforce the image of ECT as a brutal and primitive therapeutic tool. The the use of ECT declined after the 1960's:
This was partly due to the rise in prescription drugs – though these were often less effective in severe depression – and partly due to the bad press ECT received in books, films, and the mass media. In the 1970s, historians David Healy and Edward Shorter write in their book Shock Therapy, a growing anti-psychiatry movement spearheaded by the Church of Scientology claimed that ECT ‘destroys minds’.
Clearly there is far more money to be made from a person on antidepressant or antipsychotic medication than from that same person receiving intermittent electric shocks, often at intervals of several months. The former needs to:
purchase the medication on a regular basis (often for the remainder of the person's life)
visit a doctor or psychiatrist to obtain the script for the medication
be tested regularly by pathologists to monitor drug levels in the person's bloodstream
sometimes take additional medication to counter the side-effects of the medication
This is tremendously lucrative to the medical industry (doctors, psychiatrists, pathologists) and the pharmaceutical industry (lifetime dependance) and any person presenting at the local medical centre with symptoms of depression is perceived as having a flashing neon dollar sign above their head. Compare this to the returns to be made from ECT and it's clear why the treatment was targeted and disparaged.
However, as the article observes:
Interest in ECT is returning. According to a recent report, a growing number of people are deciding to undergo the treatment. Between 2015 and 2016 in the UK, 22,600 sessions of ECT were performed, an 11% increase over the previous year. And ECT has been joined by more selective forms of electric therapy such as Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), both of which are growing in support and popularity in the treatment of depression, Parkinson’s disease, and other mental disorders.
The medical and pharmaceutical industries are not interested in a cure for depression and psychosis, just as they are not interested in a cure for cancer. There is too much money to be made in the treatment and absolutely no money to be made in the wake of a cure.
An article appeared in the science section of The Telegraph (21st March 2018) claiming that drugs to vaccinate over-50s against Alzheimer’s could be here in a decade.
New analysis commissioned by Alzheimer’s Research UK found that drugs to halt, slow or reverse the disease could be available in as little as three years with major vaccine and screening programmes possible within a decade.
This would be a huge money-spinner for Big Pharma so my suspicions are immediately aroused and so I sought to find out a little more about Alzheimer's Research UK. Is it just another facade to mask the machinations of the pharmaceutical industry? On it's website it claims:
We believe in the power of research to change the future and we’re funding a unique Research Network of over 700 dementia researchers across 15 Centres in the UK – bringing together the best minds to defeat dementia.
Some funding comes from donations but it would be interesting to see how much comes from Big Pharma. In its 2018 Annual Review it states that:
It’s been a record year. In 2016/17 our income rose to £30.5 million, fuelled by a 44% increase in donations, allowing us to power more dementia research than ever before.
Of course, this still doesn't give us any idea of the relative contributions by individuals and pharmaceutical companies. In the Annual Report for 2017, it states that:
Total income rose strongly to £30.5m, up 38% on 2016 (£22m). This growth was underpinned by donations and legacies delivering £29.1m, an increase of 44% from 2016 (£20.2m). Legacy income delivered an extra £1.7m whilst donations increased by £7.2m from 2016. Investment income performed well, with an increase of 12% to £731,035 (2016: £655,520), and the portfolio remains strong, generating net gains of £787,448 (2016: £1,470,033) in the year. Alzheimer’s Research UK receives no income from government sources for our research.
An increase in funding of 44% is quite a lot and most of it has come from donations. I'm doubtful whether donations from individuals would have increased significantly from 2016 to 2017. The organisation makes it clear that no income is derived from government sources so it would seem that corporate sponsors have been largely responsible for the increase in donations. However, how do we find out who these corporate sponsors are? There's much mention made of the organisation's corporate partners and this is made up of organisations that have made Alzheimer's Research UK their favourite charity and things of this sort. These organisations carry out fund-raising activities and support various initiatives but don't apparently make direct donations.
There is no indication of any support from the pharmaceutical industry. I'm not criticising such support but if there are significant financial contributions from the industry then why is it not transparent? Of relevance here is this news (posted on 8th January 2018) from Alzheimer's Research UK's website that it is:
calling for a recommitment from pharmaceutical companies to continue efforts to fund research into dementia, the leading cause of death in the UK. Recent news that Pfizer will refocus efforts away from dementia research is a reminder of one of the barriers that stands in the way of bringing about the first life-changing treatment for dementia.
Clearly then Pfizer has been helping out financially but is now reducing its investment. However, donations are up 44%. So what's going on? Well, the 2017 corporate donations would been determined late in 2016 and Pfizer's announcement that it is abandoning research to find new drugs aimed at treating Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease was fairly recent (Saturday 6th January 2018). So while the company may have spent money in 2017, it clearly won't be doing so in 2018. Perhaps other big pharmaceutical companies are of a similar mind and so donations may plummet for 2018.
It is important to establish the extent of the financial support from the pharmaceutical industry because then it possible to gauge the degree of control they have over the direction of research. It turns out that Alzheimer's Research UK recently acquired a new director of research. Her career path is described in an article taken from this site (24th May 2017):
My original interest in neuroscience was purely due to a brilliant neuroscience lecturer who taught me during my degree, and so when a PhD advert in neuroscience popped up on a board, I applied. The technology I developed during my PhD then enabled me to take a role in a Pharmaceutical company out in California setting up this technology and supporting the expansion of neuroscience within the company.
After five years in California, I began to miss England and so took a role back in the UK again working in preclinical neuroscience. This led to a role in SmithKline Beecham and it was here that I really took a keen interest in the more translational side of neuroscience, progressing potential new medicines from the lab bench towards patients. After several industry and Biotech positions within translational medicine, I took a slight change in career to join the new Dementia Discovery Fund, a fund focussed around the development of new treatments for dementia, before finally joining Alzheimer’s Research UK. Whilst I remain a strong supporter of the Dementia Discovery Fund, the philanthropic approach of Alzheimer’s research UK, and the focus on basic research and translational medicine are more strongly aligned to my aspirations.
Her allegiance is clearly to the pharmaceutical industry and this is not necessarily a criticism but it does suggest that the direction of any research she approves will be drug-oriented. It's unlikely that she would incline toward research of the following type:
New research from Lund University in Sweden has shown that intestinal bacteria can accelerate the development of Alzheimer's disease. According to the researchers behind the study, the results open up the door to new opportunities for preventing and treating the disease. Source
The reason is there's probably not much money to be made in regulating intestinal bacteria. It might even be possible to do it for free! This leads back to the article cited at the start of this post that goes on to say that the new drugs being trialled could come with a £9 billion price tag. The article continues:
Already 12 Alzheimer’s drugs are in late Phase III trials, the final hurdle before licensing ... the 12 drugs coming through the pharma pipeline could provide a lifeline for patients. Most of the clinical trials involve drugs which target sticky clumps of beta-amyloid, which accumulate in the brain and stop neurones from communicating. Several vaccine-like treatments - which work more like a ‘statin for the brain’ than a traditional jab - are currently at an earlier stage of development, undergoing Phase I and II trials, said the experts. The report estimates that a vaccine could prevent around 70 per cent of Alzheimer’s cases. Speaking at a news briefing in London, report co-author Professor Jonathan Schott, from University College London's Dementia Research Centre, said: "The availability of new treatments for Alzheimer's disease is a when and not an if. "Our patients are desperate for new treatments. When the media reports any hint of a new treatment for Alzheimer's disease our clinics are inundated. “When we have a successful trial, and I say when, this will be headline news around the world and the demand will be instant and huge."
Statins for the brain sounds scary and statins of course are scary drugs (visit this site). It's not clear how the new treatments work but they promise to make a lot of money for the pharmaceutical companies with successful marketing. That's why it's surprising that Pfizer is reducing its involvement, given the tone of the Telegraph article. However, it seems that some of the new drugs that are being trialled are not living up to the hype and are proving disappointing. For example, this article from The Guardian (10th January 2018) reveals:
The quest to develop drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease has experienced a new setback, with a promising medication failing to show benefits in the latest series of clinical trials. Earlier trials had suggested that the drug idalopirdine, from the Danish international pharmaceutical company Lundbeck, might improve cognition in those with Alzheimer’s disease when taken alongside existing drugs – known as cholinesterase inhibitors – acting to improve symptoms rather than stopping the disease from developing. But the latest trials have dashed such hopes.
The Telegraph article seems like an attempt on the part of Alzheimer's Research UK to maintain the marketing hype surrounding these "promising" new drugs in the face of declining interest from Big Pharma. The prospects of Big Pharma defeating Alzheimer's Disease anytime soon seem unlikely and this makes the Telegraph article simply a ploy to stem a likely drying of corporate donations.
