Calling the Shots

How long has it been since you watched that movie, "The Fugitive," starring Harrison Ford? That was great wasn't it? The movie came out in '93 so it's 22 years old. Geez, age check! But there was a TV series that came out in 1963! 52 years ago for crying out loud! In the '93 movie a one-armed man, Fredrick Sykes, kills Dr. Richard Kimble's, (Harrison Ford's), wife and Kimble gets blamed for it but on his way to the chair the prison bus goes off the road and then gets hit by a train just as Kimble jumps off of it. We know the ensuing manhunt that results when Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard, (Tommy Lee Jones got the best supporting Oscar for the role), searches every warehouse, penthouse, greenhouse, whorehouse, doghouse, shithouse, etc, etc.

But the part of the movie that is most interesting and topical to today's blog post is the part about Kimble's colleague, Dr. Charles Nichols and the fiendish, murderous plot he devised to allow for the drug "Provasic" to be released by pharmaceutical corporation "Devlin-McGregor." Member that? Dr. Kimble had experimented with Provasic in the past and found conclusively that it lead to liver damage. But the drug stood to make Devlin McGregor, AND the diabolical Dr. Nichols a lot of money. So it turned out that the one-armed man was actually sent to kill Richard Kimble and he showed up late to his own murder leading to his wife's collateral damage death and two hours worth of running, hiding, helping people and not being recognized while getting to the bottom of the whole mess.

Yeah, it was a bit unrealistic, but not the part about the drug company and the evil that an expensive drug can lead to. Or a highly profitable sickness, as it were. I read this article about the world's most expensive drug, Soliris the other day. It's about a drug called Soliris, which is used to fight two very rare diseases, PNH and aHUS, which both cause anemia, organ failure and ultimately death. The drug is not a cure but has shown to be astoundingly effective! Some doctors call it "miraculous." It is suggested in the article that the real cost to make the drug, including research and development, is probably about 1% of the actual price of the drug. Given that it is now as high as 700,000 per person per year in Canada, and the drug then is estimated to have cost 7000 dollars, it is concluded that the price was set by pharmaceutical company Alexion, which makes it and holds a monopoly on its production until 2017, to be simply what the market would bear. And what would a person with anemia and organ failure pay for a miracle drug that fixes his/her condition? What would a parent pay to stop his/her kid from suffering organ failure and anemia? And what kind of scumbag would charge that much?

No doubt the people at Alexion, a corporation, would hide behind the old, familiar, "It is our feduciary responsibility to the shareholders to exact the maximum profit from our product." I read in Forbes online magazine about the Steven Squinto and Leonard Bell, who started Alexion and are regarded as heroes in the article. They and their shareholders are laughing all the way to the bank while Alexion shares are up 600% and the company is outperforming Apple. They are described as unassuming and self-depracating in the Forbes article, but are these guys Jonas Salk or Charles Nichols? Jonas Salk, as you SHOULD know, was the inventor of the Polio vaccine. He, unlike the two shrewd businessmen above, did NOT patent the polio vaccine and it is estimated that he lost a cool 7 billion bucks for being a good human being.

I don't guess I have to tell you that my expectations were more to the Charles Nichols, murderous, sickness profiteer possibility so I admit going into this investigation with a bias. Nonetheless, I think you'll find my results compelling. At least a good illustration as to why Big Pharma should take a little bit more of their fair share of responsibility when it comes to the mistrust people have of drugs, vaccines and doctors and the resulting comebacks of many diseases once eradicated. Including Polio believe it or not! I watched the documentary, "Vaccines: Calling the Shots," and there is a dude in there who, in America, got Polio! Not so long ago!

At any rate, back to Soliris. The drug was released in 2007 and found to be amazing in the treatment of PNH. It was released later as a treatment for aHUS like around 2010ish if I remember correctly. Of course different countries, different drug administrations, different release dates. But when I say, "released," I mean there were doctors ruling on its safety and trusting in its thorough testing and readiness for the safe use by the public. Well a not so funny thing happened in the use as a treatment for aHUS. It was found that Soliris caused the immune system to function less efficiently and lead to a high occurrence of meningococcal virus in its users. This is not a pleasant thing to have. It is a life-threatening virus. Here is a letter from a doctor in the Netherlands written in 2011 about the spectacular results of Soliris but the high incidence of meningococcal virus and to get more technical, the fact that the treatments to combat the meningococcal virus to that point in time were not very effective in combatting the meningococcal B strain. It is a suggestion for the creation of a meningococcal B antigen. A vaccine was required to use in conjunction with Soliris in order to continue getting such amazing results and to stop the incidence, or more accurately the drug CAUSING more meningococcal B in its users. Now this, as I said before, is not just a minor side effect. Read this. 5-10% die despite rapid treatment!!! Also brain and nerve damage, loss of limbs, not nice.

As late as 2014 Soliris was declared unsafe by many countries until, in October of 2014, what a coincidence, ha hah haha... the invention of the extraordinarily timely meningococcal B vaccine! And in November, a huge effort made by Soliris to maintain the massive profits the recommendation to the medical professionals, and they included it on the box, was to give patients the newly developed meningococcal B vaccine 2 weeks prior to the prescription of Soliris. Serogroup B meningococcal vaccines Trumenba, (made by Pfizer) and Bexsero, (made by Novartis), were on the scene saving the multi-billion dollar drug Soliris in the knick of time! And despite being approved only for ages 10 to 25 they are now being used in patients of all ages. In fact babies are being vaccinated with them.

Now, knowing all of this, would you be a tiny bit leary of these vaccinations? I mean the price fixing; the neglect of patients who couldn't afford the most expensive drug in the world; the obvious release of the drug too early to capitalize on the patent Alexion has until 2017; the unknown number of patients who contracted and maybe DIED from meningococcal B virus BECAUSE of Soliris; the INCREDIBLY fast development and distribution of a meningococcal B virus vaccine that previously didn't exist; the INCREDIBLY fast progress of this vaccine from 10-25 year olds into regular baby vax...

Call me a conspiracy theorist but I sure as fuck don't want it! But now the well established, however jeuvenile, ubiquitous defence against all of my research: "ANTI-VAXXER!" You see, society at large, and unbelievably, the scientific and medical communities both have espoused a kind of "If you hate one vaccination, you hate them all" way of pressuring people into getting vaccinated. They completely discount the ability people have to think for themselves, do research, use the internet or even, gasp, read books and assume we need to be bullied into getting vaccinated. I completely understand people who don't trust vaccinations. I will consent that many have been proven effective and should be trusted. Like Polio, Measles, the ones you ALWAYS see in Pro-vax documentaries and/or arguments. But I contend that the medical profession, doctors and drug companies have many many many secrets. How hard is it to get a list of ingredients on your vaccination? The fault is not with people who don't trust vaccinations. Dispicable behaviour by the medical community DEMANDS our mistrust. It also demands more transparency and honesty. Profits be damned, I want anything that goes directly into my blood stream to be well tested, safe and labeled. I believe I have that right. I don't just want some ignorant professional, who may have just come back from a holiday in Tahiti financed by Pfizer to just TELL me to spike up and quit being such a conspiracy theorist. In many cases the doctor or nurse giving you the shot knows just as little as you about what the hell is in it. This has got to change.

In conclusion, don't be fooled by the ever inelegant arguments against questioning the medical profession. They, like all professions, need to be kept honest. Don't just trust your doctor, demand that he/she knows his/her stuff. And for the sake of yourself and your children, do some research on what you pump into your bodies. How can anybody be telling you that's wrong to do unless they're trying to sell you something? Something that may be 99% too expensive!