Pretty much everyone has known for years that various drugs have side effects. You can’t miss that when you see the TV commercials, since there are laws/regulations requiring that side effects be disclosed when advertising drugs. (Keep that in mind with respect to the Corona “vaccines” where there has been no disclosure.) But for the most part, people who did not do any of their own research have believed that the drugs were effectively treating the condition or conditions that the pharma companies said would be helped by using the drugs. So therefore many people have or at least had the impression that the risk of side effects was a worthwhile tradeoff.
If you were doing any of your own research though, you had questions starting years ago with the opioid epidemic. A couple of brief histories of the opioid epidemic are found here and here. The latter of those deflects most of the blame away from big pharma and onto the patients/users. (Debating that topic is for another post, as is the so called “War On Drugs”.) That history with respect to big pharma goes back at least 30 years, and includes Purdue Pharma paying a $634 million fine for lying about how OxyContin was less addictive than other opioids.
So we have a huge admission of big pharma lying, and if you look at the money Purdue, and thus the Sackler family who owned Purdue, made off of Oxy sales versus the fine they paid, you can see their incentive to lie.
Now maybe the thousands of lawsuits against Purdue will ultimately change that financial incentive to lie, but with billions to pay attorneys and engage in every legal trick in the book it’s not very likely.
Indeed, BILLIONS is the word to keep in mind when it comes to looking at big pharma. It really does appear that the old adage of “follow the money” applies perfectly, and big pharma acts almost completely out of greed and pure evil.
If you’re paying attention at all, the latest news is that it turns out that Serotonin levels do NOT control depression, and “sticky plaque” in the brain is NOT the cause of dementia/Alzheimer’s. Therefore Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor drugs (SSRIs) do not work to stop or prevent depression, and “sticky plaque” drugs do not stop or prevent Alzheimer’s. The new evidence won’t stop these drugs from being prescribed anytime soon though, and in fact the claim is that SSRIs still work somehow. Kinda like how Corona “vaccines” and “boosters” are still required and “officials” and left wing media are still claiming that they work.
Here’s another educational article on serotonin. It includes this:
Lacasse and Leo found repeated evidence that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved the marketing of SSRIs with two phrases still heavily in the subjunctive—that depression “may be due to a serotonin deficiency” and that SSRI efficacy, “modestly” outcompeting placebo, was “presumed to be linked to potentiation of serotonergic activity.” However, the research itself could not identify the precise mechanism.
The FDA had accepted aspirational language that the drugs “help to restore the brain’s chemical balance” and “bring serotonin levels closer to normal,” even though both claims were, and remain, scientifically meaningless.
“There is no such thing as a scientifically established correct ‘balance’ of serotonin,” Lacasse and Leo cautioned more than a decade ago, joining numerous other experts then and now. Additionally, both aspirational claims rest on a hypothesis that follow-up studies would end up contradicting repeatedly. In short, both the hypothesis and the expensive marketing that pushed it into American living rooms rested on a hedge: “Scientists believe that it could be linked with an imbalance of a chemical in the brain called serotonin.”
And lots more, including this:
“The popularity of the chemical imbalance idea of depression has coincided with a huge increase in the use of antidepressants,” note Moncrieff and coauthor Mark A. Horowitz in the study’s press release. “Prescriptions for antidepressants have sky-rocketed since the 1990s, going from being rare to a situation now where one in six adults in England and 2 percent of teenagers are prescribed an antidepressant in a given year.”
The practical ramifications of the umbrella review are thus vast and consequential, involving millions of people across multiple countries because the findings are tied to a discredited theory that is still fueling mass prescribing on a global basis.
Invited to extrapolate the review’s findings for Psychology Today, Moncrieff added:
Antidepressant use has reached epidemic proportions across the world and is still rising, especially among young people. Many people who take them suffer side effects and withdrawal problems that can be really severe and debilitating. A major driver of this situation is the false belief that depression is due to a chemical imbalance. It is high time to inform the public that this belief is not grounded in science.
So in short, SSRIs are complete bullshit, and by the way they have some horrible side effects, with one of the worst being patients committing suicide. But there are millions of people taking them in this country alone, to the tune of billions in profits for big pharma.
Statins may be used by even more people, and big pharma has been working to lower “safe” cholesterol levels so that even more people can get on their drugs via prescription. But guess what?? There’s no evidence statins work to prevent heasrt disease and stroke either.
Meanwhile, statins also have horrible side effects.
“The researchers used coronary CT angiography to visualize coronary atherosclerotic plaque, and found that the statin groups had a higher number of coronary segments with calcified plaques – along with a corresponding higher prevalence of obstructive coronary artery disease,” sources report.
While some have tried to spin this finding as a “positive,” with newer research declaring arterial plaque calcification is a “protective” benefit of statins, research has consistently shown this is simply untrue. Calcification of the arteries is associated with increased arterial stiffness, which in turn increases the risk of having a cardiovascular event (like a heart attack or stroke).
Taking a wider look, things get even worse for big pharma and the drugs they peddle. Only about 10% of medical treatments are backed by high quality evidence.
The Epoch Times article above is mentioned with further discussion here.
My final mention today is the elephant Godzilla in the room world for the past 20 plus months, the Corona “vaccines”. The latest news is educational on the extreme dangers of the jabs, as well as how the “fact checkers'“ have been lying through their teeth and putting out the actual “misinformation” and “disinformation”. The CDC is now admitting that prior reports of heart problems were correct.
While rates from the latest CDC study are “3-5 times higher for young men than what the CDC was reporting this time last year,” other health experts, whom the media discredited, were ahead of the curve. Data from a study conducted by Tracy Hoeg, MD, Ph.D., and others in 2021 aligns with the latest CDC numbers from 2022.
The doctors reported a rate of 94 cases of “cardiac adverse events” per million for 16-17-year-old males and 162 per million for 12-15-year-old males. While this is compatible with the latest CDC study, the corporate media and its fact-checkers labeled it misinformation when it was published last year.
Following the Hoeg study’s publication, the British Medical Journal claimed critics called the study “deeply flawed” and said it delivered “an antivaccine message.” PolitiFact reported that posts about myocarditis risk on Facebook “were flagged as part” of the platform’s “efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed.” Big Tech used these so-called fact-checks to censor good-faith Americans, dissenting medical experts, and even lawmakers who questioned the CDC’s vaccinations-for-all narrative.
For example, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., was labeled “fundamentally dangerous” in his efforts to let Americans discuss adverse reactions they experienced after receiving Covid shots. The Wisconsin senator’s YouTube channel was also temporarily suspended in November 2021 — for the fifth time — after posting “a video of a panel on vaccine-related injuries” that was deemed “Covid misinformation.” Yet adverse effects do occur, as even the CDC has acknowledged, including the aforementioned vaccine-associated myocarditis.
So again, for young healthy people the risks of the "vaccines” far outweighed even the claimed benefits. Young healthy people are far more likely to have serious health problems or die from the jabs than from Corona. We don’t even need to get to how the benefits, if any, are gone within months or even weeks, and then those “vaccinated” have weaker immune systems long term. Nor do we need to add in other long term harms being observed. It was brain dead to jab healthy young people from the get go, and it was only pushed to pour more billions into the pockets of big pharma and their army of accomplices.
So ultimately I’m not sure what the rule of thumb should be with respect to believing claims from big pharma about the efficacy of their latest miracle product, other than maybe the more complex the disease or condition or the drug, the more likely the drug doesn’t really work. This is already a long post so I’m not going to delve into the massive conflicts of interest between the FDA and the drug companies that contributes to drugs getting approved with no real evidence of effectiveness. Nor how much money big pharma pours into politics to buy politicians to help their business along. Nor how much more than ever the claim of “vaccines don’t cause autism” looks like a huge lie.
Just make sure you do plenty of research from non left wing and non mainstream media sources before opting for any drug. Big Pharma has got to keep those billions rolling in, your health be damned.
https://basedunderground.com/2022/09/10/comprehensive-study-irrefutable-proof-that-mrna-vaccines-cause-major-vascular-and-organ-damage/
https://openvaers.com/