September 25, 2015 • 57 mins
Big Pharma gets a bad name in the press, and the actions of multinational pharmaceutical companies are often the subject of various conspiracies - but are any of the allegations true? Learn more about theories behind political corruption, tainted medicine and more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
writtled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Dear
Ben and Matt, I don't think you guys have covered this,
but I think it is a pretty interesting topic. As
(00:22):
a slave to the pharmaceutical industry, I think the big
pharmacy is holding back cures for diseases. Since everyone worships
the almighty dollar, I feel that it's much more profitable
to keep billing people for treatment rather than finding a
cure for said disease. I would love to see here
you guys cover this topic. Sean oh And, ladies and gentlemen,
(00:50):
welcome back to the show. I'm here, I'm Bennel, You're here,
I'm here, and most importantly, you are here, Shawn. Ladies
and gentlemen, everybody h in the US, across the world.
We're coming semi live to your ear holes. Ear holes, yeah,
to your ear jums maybe uh. And that makes this
(01:13):
stuff they don't want you to know. Today, we're tackling
something that was inspired by a listener mail and that
we have talked about extensively off air before. Just in
our conversations when we hang out after work, right, so
we're talking about big pharma conspiracies. A little bit of background.
(01:33):
We did a video series on this way way back,
and then we also did I don't know why I
did a goat noise there. No, it was good, it
was appropriate. Does it work? Okay, we'll keep it, uh.
And then we also did in January an episode about
the legal drug trade, which will be pharmaceuticals. This episode
we are going to focus on more of the conspiracies
(01:57):
and the conspiracy theories surrounding big pharma. So first things first, well,
we'll look at it this way. As we said before,
legal drugs are a big business. We'd like to give
you some industry statistics. So I m S Health reports
that overall drug spending weighed in at about three and
(02:18):
twenty billion dollars in UM. Through the f d A
and Congress, the US works to ensure access to safe,
effective drugs. At least that's the idea um so, but
at the same time, critics say that quote unquote, big
pharma has paid Congress to turn a blind eye to
(02:39):
predatory and shady dishonest practices like price gouging. So what
is again the big air quote endquote, big pharma exactly right, Um,
other than just a convenient catchphrase, right, So, nowadays big
farma has become this umbrella term for the world's larger
(03:00):
multinational pharmaceutical companies. These are the corporate goliaths, the corporate
behemoths that own patents on life saving name brand proprietary drugs,
and they work to prevent generic knockoffs from replacing these
different markets. So in nineteen from nine to two thousand twelve,
(03:21):
the pharmaceutical industry spent around two point six billion dollars
just to lobby lawmakers, legislators, and for for some perspective,
if you haven't read that number against other things, that
means that they spent more than the defense and aerospace sectors. Yeah.
I mean, maybe I'm naive, but I always have a
(03:42):
hard time imagining what day to day lobbying actually looks like.
Can you film me in and the listeners just a
little bit about specifically what a pharmaceutical lobbyist might do. Yeah, well,
that's a great question. We should mention a shout out
to our own Matt the Madman, Frederick, who is what
(04:03):
is it? Who is with us? In spirit? On his
vacation because I'm about to talk about one of Matt's
favorite shows. Long time listeners, you've heard this before. There
was a show called K Street. I believe it was
right definitely mentioned that one. Yeah, and this gives a
not completely accurate, but pretty close to the bone look
(04:24):
at how lobbying works. Lobbying is a legal activity in
the US. Technically or theoretically, listeners knowl all of us
could get together and we could start you know, the
American Association for stuff they don't want you to know
being known or something like that, Right, and we could go, Uh,
(04:48):
we could do the following things. Uh, take take lawmakers
out to lunches or two gala's two benefits on trips
to persuade them that the case we are making is
the best case for the US in some way. Right. Uh.
And in every industry does this to some degree in
(05:11):
there and and countries do it as well. Uh. There
are for example, like the n r A, you know,
gun lobbyists short, yeah, or oil lobbying groups or the
a r P uh the Association Retired Persons. Uh. And
this this two point six billion dollars is a huge
slice of pie. Uh. There's a huge slice of llegal
(05:32):
drug pie. And this is not counting the money that
drugmakers spend to influence doctors. And again, since lobbying is
not illegal, there's nothing inherently criminal about these actions. It
gets sticky pretty quickly because legally speaking, a lobbyist can't
just go up to uh, Representative Jane Nuion of you know,
(05:57):
South Wisconsin or something and say, Jane, here's eight hundred
thousand dollars, please vote, uh, please vote against f DA
regulation of this thing or something that that is. Legally
can't just give people money and tell them to do that.
But I have said lobbies is like, hey, Jane, you
(06:18):
want me to take you out to a nice, nice lunch.
We'll have some chats over some martinis. Yeah, let's talk
about campaign contributions. Campaign contributions are one of the ways
that money can be donated. Right. So, if there is
a real big pharma, if we want to get past
the umbrella term and talk about what this actually is,
(06:40):
then it's most likely an association called the Pharmaceutical Research
and Manufacturers of America. Right. So, this is basically a
trade group that represents forty eight of the leading biopharmaceutical
researchers and biotechnology companies. Um. Possibly the most notable victory
(07:00):
of pharma was the two thousand six Prescription Deal, which
extended prescription coverage while actually preventing the Medicare program from
collectively bargaining for lower prices. Right, and this stuff. This
stuff changed in the wake of the Affordable Care Act,
which for people outside of the US might sound kind
of arcane, but everyone in the US is familiar with it.
(07:23):
It's also been called Obamacare. It's a Romney mitt Romney
helmed program in Massachusetts that was later taken to a
national level by the Obama administration, and it has a
wealth of critics and a wealth of supporters. I think
it's a story for different show. But the pharmaceutical industry
definitely had input on this, you know. And you can
(07:47):
see articles from the Wall Street Journal saying that the
pharmaceutical companies made a benefit of like thirty five billion
dollars some other astronomical number from the a c A
or Obamacare. There there. There is something that we have
to say at the top, though, because we're gonna talk
about a lot of murky, just diabolical stuff here. So
(08:10):
first I want to say there's no question that research
by scientists at pharmaceutical companies has led to amazing breakthroughs
curing or most often treating conditions that a hundred or
maybe even ten years ago would have been a death sentence.
So let's get that out of the way first. We're
talking about better treatments for cancer, better treatments for sexual diseases,
(08:35):
not necessarily cures, but treatments. And one of the things
that inspired you and I to look at this today
was Shawn's letter and other comments from people on YouTube, Twitter,
and Facebook. I'll go ahead and put the plug in here.
Now you can follow us. We are conspiracy stuff on
(08:55):
all of those and you'll you'll see episodes that may
not make it to the air for one reason or
another or topics so we talked about. You can also
talk with other listeners and you can suggest stuff to
us directly. Anyhow, one of the things that inspired us
to look at this was the recent news report, which
I guess we should mention, but we'll get into later.
(09:16):
Rite the case of the pharmaceutical startup tycoon. Yeah, the
farmer bro is that what they're calling him on Twitter?
Oh man? Uh Martin SCRELLI yeah, and uh I heard
you off air jokingly refer to him as Shrek. Well,
you know, he's a bit of an ogre oh Man
(09:37):
Scado indeed. All right, So there are critics of big pharma,
and they often fall into one of several camps. First,
there are the people that, if we're going to make
up a name for him, I would call them suppression adherents.
These are the people who believe that pharmaceutical companies have
something like secret treatments or even a secret or for
(10:00):
everything from cancer to lekemia, HIV other chronic terminal conditions,
but have covered up this knowledge in the interest of
continuing to make money off halfless consumers. When I was
reading Shawn's letter at the top of the podcast, um,
you know, he obviously mentioned this idea of you know,
(10:20):
drug companies having these secret cures and holding them back,
um because it benefits them more to be able to
continue to treat these existing diseases rather than to cure them.
And it occurred to me that there's an interesting parallel
between that and the idea that, like technology companies already
have a million terabyte hard drive that they have developed
that they're just you know, sitting on because why roll
(10:41):
that out when they can just keep selling us one
terabyte hard drive for you know, two hundred bucks or
something like that, right yeah, Or this also maybe ties
into alternative energy ideas absolutely, the concept that there is
a water powered car, or there is a even consumer
products like a toothpaste will only have to apply once,
(11:01):
or something serious like Willy Wonka stuff, right, yes, uh when,
and I will I will add that this is just
my opinion, but I feel like there's strong circumstantial evidence
that there is on some level at least classify technology
several years in advance of what the public has access to,
(11:23):
especially in the aerospace field, especially in in military applications.
Now does that go all the way down to drugs?
Are there miracle cures that only a select few of
the world's population have access to? We're going to look
at that in a little more detail. That's one of
(11:44):
the biggest, most consistent classifications of conspiracy theories we hear
about big pharma. There is another one. If I was
going to make up a term for these folks, know,
I would call them the invention theorists. Taking it a
step further and arguing that pharmaceutical company are not just
suppressing cures, but actually inventing new diseases, either by renaming
(12:07):
them to make them sound more serious, or by creating
new ones and spreading them through the population. An arguable
example of this is called restless leg syndrome. Got that
got restless leg syndrome right now? Yeah, I mean, after
a couple of drinks, I have a serious case of
(12:28):
happy fate for sure. Uh. And I'm under the impression
that I could both whip and I believe that you could.
I really have faith in your ability. I really feel
like it will be a personal failing on both our
parts if I ever get to that physician. And let's
hope there's not a camera around. But this, this idea
(12:50):
is this idea will be familiar to a lot of
people in the US. We will notice the prevalence of uh,
prevalence of vaguely named drugs that are meant to treat
mental or emotional conditions that in the past would not
have would not have been treated. It might be specific,
(13:13):
but without going into that yet, we'll just say that
that's another group. So there are the people who think
things are being suppressed, cures are being suppressed, and a
group of people who think either fake diseases or being marketed,
or real diseases are being spread. And there's another one,
And Matt, I know you're listening to this man, this
will be your favorite one. The political theories, the idea
(13:34):
that big farm has purchased the conscience and the vote
of allegedly elected representatives, using them to force industry friendly
laws through at the expense of the American public, in
other words, putting profits over people. No, well, those are like,
those are some of the accusations. So let's talk about
some of the true stories. Right, So, aside from the
(13:57):
recent news, history is absolutely filled with these kinds of shenanigans.
Here are some actual examples of illegal, corrupt, and or
unethical things pharmaceutical companies have done in the past. Oh yeah,
let me set you up for this. In So, how
does pharma actually influenced legislation? That's a tough one, but
(14:21):
the answer to that question lies partially with the American
Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC a l e C. ALEC
like Baldwin indeed strong Chin that one. So this secretive
group basically connects private interests and lawmakers to approve what
are called model bills. And these model bills reflect the
(14:41):
desires of the parties involved. Um. Yeah, So defenders of
ALEC say that it provides a forum for legislative and
industrial partnership, but critics say that's not so much the case,
that the public is basically completely cut out of the
entire process, like a smaller version than of the TPP.
(15:04):
So there, it's true, these these model bills are not
necessarily intended and I hope you guys can hear the
air quotes I'm laying down thick over there, not necessarily intended. Yeah,
thank you to h to become the verbatim bill, but
(15:25):
or the verbatim law rather, But several legislatures have introduced
bills that can be traced directly back to meetings of ALEC.
But Pharma, and again that's just our shorthand for pharmaceutical
research and Manufacturers of America does contribute to ALEC, and
it is and we know this because it is legally
bound to disclose this spending. ALEC, however, is not bound
(15:49):
by the same laws. In fact, ALEX membership list is secret,
and big pharmaceutical associations don't just keep their spending to
the hallowed hall halls of Congress right now, not at
all been. Uh. These companies actually interact directly and pretty
extensively with physicians, um, basically incentivizing them to recommend specific
(16:12):
brand name drugs. Right. Yeah, It's it's funny. Have you
ever been in a hospital knoll or in the doctor's
office when a pharmacy rep comes through with all their
pens and their mouse pads and yeah, their swag and
then they look like models or something. They travel around
convincing various doctors medical professionals that name brand drug X
(16:37):
is superior and should be prescribed for the following conditions
aggressively and assertively. So and it goes beyond that too,
because there's a process used called ghostwriting, and ghostwriting is
a really weird thing. So these companies would pay a
doctor and say, hey, let's say you're a doctor. Know
(16:58):
what kind of doctor are you? I'm a doctor of funk. No,
I'm kidding, Um, I'm an oncologist. You're an oncologist. So
they would say, we have this perfect drug coming out
and it's gonna be it's gonna be coming out in
the next six months or it's been out for six months,
and we want to spread the words so Dr Brown, Uh,
(17:22):
you agree with us? Right, we're at dinner. Now you
agree with us that this is a superior treatment. Well,
that depends. Can't I get the Crime Bruley? You can
have Crime Bruley for here and to go. I'm on board.
Sign me up. Great, here's the best thing. We want
you to write a review and we want it to
go like this, at which point they hand the review
(17:44):
that they've already written there and they say, we're just
gonna put Dr Brown according to Dr Brown, lead oncologist
at ex Hospital. And then this glowing review happens, and
we've used your name. Nothing weird about that. Yeah, nine
ten doctors agree crimberly at the restaurant and to go
(18:04):
is awesome. Visa v This drug is awesome. Right. And
you know this might sound strange to some of our
listeners outside of the US, but televised ads for prescription
drugs are a common thing in US channels, US TV channels,
and and we commonly bizarre. Yeah, commonly bizarre because legally
(18:25):
there's a lot of stuff they can't say. How would
you describe one of those ads? So it's sort of
like this weird trippy alice in wonderland vibe where there's
somebody prancing through a meadow, you know, just feeling good,
just just like colors, lots of pastels. There's butterflies everywhere,
the sun is shining. There maybe children playing in a playground.
(18:47):
There's probably instrumental music. You don't really hear the people talking,
probably like some slow motion reaction shots of happy smiling
face and laughing. Yes, like vague, vague, vague vague voice
of or just about just you want to be happy,
right and you want to feel good about yourself and
your loved ones, don't you. You want to get the
(19:07):
most out of every day on this planet. And then
the voiceover was shift right over to the name of
the drug, which would be like heliometrics, and and they'll
they'll say, ask your doctor if heliometrics is right for you,
without really naming a lot of the symptoms till the
very end where there is tiny, tiny fine print, uh
(19:29):
something that our lead sponsor, Illumination Global Unlimited, is legally
required to do them. You know. They they are still around.
They I I don't know they contact us when they
want to contact us. They don't even use email, and
they just slip an envelope under the door. One time
(19:50):
that was volunteering in a nursing home and they just
sent one of the residents of the nursing home to
tell me what our next ad campaign just gonna be
euspurted anywhere. Uh huh. It turned around and she was gone, yeah, yeah,
So you know que the smalty ultra music. Ask your
doctor if heleometrics is right for you. Side effects may
(20:12):
include drowsy, business, nauseaissition on this chap nation, weird shoe footedness,
wrong headedness, two knows, one knows, sprop double think, brain fever,
consumption sold deaf, squamishness, impertinence, in continence, offensive punctuality, offensive punctuation, punctitude,
bad grammar, n America. Yeah, that kind of stuff. Yeah,
you know, no that now that I hear it, that
that's spot on, but it sounds a little silly. Uh,
(20:32):
Ladies and gentlemen. We mentioned this, I think in our
Legal Drugs podcast, But the US accounts for about five
percent in the world's population and also forty two percent
of the money spent on prescription drugs. That statistic can
be a little bit strange because these drugs are often
much more expensive in the US than they are in
other countries. And uh, let's talk about let's talk about
(20:55):
this idea that there was a propagation of disease or
that these false diseases were created and marketed. Right, tell
me more. Oh good, I'd love to so Bear everybody's
familiar with Bear, maybe through aspirin sprint. Yeah, Bear did
sell HIV tainted medicine. They sold millions of dollars worth
(21:18):
of an injectable blood clotting medicine called Factor eight concentrate,
which is intended for hemophiliacs, to Asian, Latin, American, and
European countries in the mid nineteen eighties. The company stopped
selling the drug in the US, but continued selling it
overseas for another year. And so how did this happen?
(21:41):
How did this become tainted? The medicine in question here
was made using combined plasma from large numbers of donors
um so at the time there was absolutely no screening
test for the AIDS virus, so a tiny number of
donors with AIDS could potentially contaminate a large match. Right,
and reports say that although the worldwide numbers are difficult
(22:04):
to calculate, in Hong Kong and Taiwan alone, more than
one hemophiliacs contracted HIV after using this medicine, most of
whom have died. But in May of nine five, Dr
Harry and Meyer Jr. The f d a's blood products official,
called the companies to a meeting, believing that they had
(22:25):
broken an agreement to stop selling the old medicine, and
this according to an article in New York Times. But
Meyer decided to handle the matter quietly instead of letting
the public know. Yeah, I wouldn't want anybody to get
in a panic about a little thing like a lethal disease,
which at the time AIDS was HIV was so that
(22:48):
that is a scary, real life situation. There's another book
that you may enjoy if you haven't read it before,
I believe, called The River, in which the author detail
the genesis of AIDS and how it's spread. And they
alleged that they allege that pharmaceutical companies knowingly sold or
(23:11):
experimented with tainted batches of product on populations in Sub
Saharan Africa, which sparked the rise of the HIV epidemic.
It's it's important to note that that is not consider
the specific genesis like, it's not universally agreed. People are
(23:31):
still arguing over how this, how this happened. But you'll
often hear pharmaceutical companies being being accused of this, not
not so much through some sort of purposeful thing as
either trying as either trying to save money or being
you know, fiscally corrupt or incompetent. How do we know
(23:53):
that bare new that the HIV was in the medicine
and yet they continue to sell it. I just don't
understand how a company of that magnitude A could come
back from a scandal like this and be good Lord.
Must they not have had a cracker jack pr team
that I have never heard of the story prior to
researching this topic, right, I mean when I think of bear,
(24:14):
I just think of a little aspirin from a headache,
you know, That's all I think of. Well, in two
thousand and six, and it's a great question two thousand
and six that were documents that were unearthed showing that
they knew it had the high likelihood of being tainted
with with aids, they knew they could no longer sell
(24:34):
it in the US. Uh. The dangers of the drug
have become well known in the US market, but that
news was slower to reach other parts of the world.
And it does from what we see, it does seem
that FDA regulators did collude to keep the continued sales
hidden so that this could be solved without alerting Congress,
(24:57):
the medical community, and the public. And these are acording
the minutes of a night five meeting between the FDA
and Bear. Yeah, so I mean to me, this occurs
to me as being like an example another example of
two cozy relationships, whether it's between drug companies and the
FDA regulators they're supposed to oversee them, or for example,
(25:20):
you know, large banks and the SEC regulators that are supposedly,
you know, supposed to keep them acting correctly. Um is
is that it's a similar Yeah, that's a very nice
parallel because or it's a disturbing parallel, but possibly accurate.
It's nice because it does show you know, how how
(25:41):
close an industry and the government institution designed to regulate
it will happen. Now. I know we have a lot
of listeners who object to the concept of a large government,
right of whether federal or whether one world. And I
completely I completely understand in many cases in case of
(26:01):
things like the Food and Drug Administration. However, that has
provided in the past, especially much needed food safety things.
You know, food safety regulations are an important thing to
have because if there is not some sort of standard,
then we could easily end up in a situation like
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which is a very gruesome, gruesome
(26:26):
story about I was going to say, gross, yeah, gross,
and grewsome story about the meat packing industry. However, Uh,
the thing about this regulation, and I agree with that
a lot of people object to as well, is the
concept that if the people who work for the watchmen
(26:46):
are later being hired to work for the people being
watched or come from that industry. You know, the argument
is always that a certain level of expertise and experience
should be the deciding factor and it and it may
be true the advocates of this practice argue that you
need to have industry experts. But then the opponents of
(27:08):
this practice will say, well, really, what we're doing is
inventing a revolving door where someone can, as a regulatory power,
make laws that will benefit them, specifically them later when
they enter private industry. And I mean, I'm sure there's
some amount of well, if this person used to work
(27:28):
for the regulatory body and now they work for us,
they can probably give us a little bit of the
scoop on some of the machinations of the regulatory body. Yeah,
that's a good point. You know, how how far does
it go? With a little background on Bear just to say,
you asked specifically about how this occurred, so it wasn't
reported as widely in US media, but French and Italian
(27:55):
news media we're reporting a lot of this. In two
thousand and eleven, Bear just paid, had paid tens of
millions of dollars to end this scandal because here's how
it happened. So two thousand eleven, Bear starts compensating people
they got AIDS because in the nineteen eighties a thing
called the Cutter biological unit of Bear ignored a federal
(28:19):
law against recruiting prisoners, IVY drug users, you know, intravenous
uh and what they call high risk in terms of
sexual activity people as donors of the blood that they
used to make this factor eight uh. And that's the
clotting product that keeps seem ophiliacs from bleeding out. So
(28:39):
they're paying uh. They along with three other labs were
forced to pay tens of millions of euros to people
who could trace the transmission of HIV to this treatment,
so UH Bear and the US company Baxter, the two
main parties to the agreement. A company spokespersons said that, however,
(29:01):
the company accepts no responsibility in this case and continues
to insist that has always acted responsibly and ethically. So
cour seen as something that you can see often occurring
with companies of this magnitude, where they say, okay, we
will pay to we will pay to resolve this case.
We will admit no but no direct faults. We admit
(29:23):
no direct fault. The estimated number, even though again it's
difficult to estimate, is about twenty people contracted HIV from this.
It's insane to me, it is it is insane, and
it's uh and again, I mean, like I said, what
what is the most insane to me? As a consumer
of media and as someone who you know, reads up
on this kind of stuff. I just had never heard
(29:44):
of this before, and that this mind blowing to me,
Like how much money you must a company like this
have to be able to pretty successfully sweep something like
this under the rug to the point where you know,
it's just not like the only image that you associate
with this company. Well, yeah, again, they stopped selling this
product in the US, so it was maybe older news
(30:06):
or it was less likely to directly affect people in
the US market. So that is a seed of truth
to these things. When when we hear a lot of
the when we hear a lot of conspiratorial rumors and stuff,
the thing to find is whether there is a seed
of truth, right, whether there is a a shining note
(30:27):
of veracity in the hay stack of bs that so
often is the internet. Uh, And that's not my most
graceful comparison there. But let's go to the idea of
withholding a cure, because Sean, that's exactly what you asked about.
At this point, it's hard to find a specific proven
case of a company completely suppressing a cure. And the
(30:51):
reason it's hard to find that is that we we
see instead, we see a lot of people saying, uh,
that it is more advent tageous to treat the symptoms
of a disease rather than the cause. In many cases,
I know this is a sensitive subject for some people,
but in many cases, the cause of a condition could
(31:14):
be genetic or lifestyle related for instance, like a poor diet. Yeah,
like a poor diet could create diabetes or obesity or
heart conditions. And the best way to combat that is
not through a magic pill. Uh, it's through get off
the couch, right, It's through exercise and changing diet, which
(31:37):
of course no one wants to hear because that is
not an instantaneous cure. But what we did find that
I thought might interest you, Sean, is some statements from
people on Reddit of all places, Uh, if you're familiar
who we're talking about, the talking about the issues here
or the concept of a conspiracy, and we found people
(31:59):
saying at we found people saying that they had had
experience either with drug creation or product creation or in
the higher level marketing stuff. The marketing people are saying
it is so expensive to create a drug and get
through the FDA hoops that if there were a magical cure,
(32:20):
people would sell it. They would sell it for a boatload,
a yacht load of money, one might say. But they
wouldn't want to keep it secret because they would be
walking away from so much money. And then there was
a funny part where the person who was a former
chemists like someone creating these drugs said, maybe chemists is
(32:44):
not the right word. Researcher. Researcher, sure, because we don't
know exactly what this person was involved with. But they said,
they said, here's the thing. It would be very difficult
for the pharmaceutical companies to pay someone who just govern
to cure enough to keep its secret. You know, how
would how would you do that? And this this goes
(33:07):
into some darker territory when we hear allegations of you know,
people being disappeared or something like that. But in this case,
so far, just because of the amount of people that
would be required to keep this secret, it's we we
haven't found we haven't found a case yet. I'd love
to hear more from listeners who believe that there is
(33:30):
a case. And and I want to say also that
often you'll hear people saying that an alternative medicine of
some sort is what's being repressed, right, or that there
is some maybe natural cure through a plant or through
a relatively simply made derivation of a plant that pharmaceutical
(33:56):
companies are instead trying to monetize. And that part, that
last part is pretty believable because we're seeing that now with.
I'm not going to claim marijuana is some sort of
panacea that cures everything. It's certainly kept Taco Bell and business.
That's that's one magic power has. But but it is
true that pharmaceutical companies have worked diligently to isolate you know,
(34:22):
functional chemicals, the the active you know, tetrac cannoboids and stuff,
the th HC too, make it a pill form instead
of something that a person would you know, smoke or
I guess ingest other ways. Yeah, it reminds me of
something I think I brought up in we were talking
about monetizing the treatment of drug addiction. I think the
(34:44):
episode was just on drug addictions that it was, and
I was talking about how, you know, privatizing privatization of
methodone clinics for oh yeah, yeah right, and so obviously
that ties into big pharma. I mean, you know, somebody's
got to manufacture the methodone or whatever. Sure version of
that is just being prescribed, you know, for the treatment
of opiate addiction. UM. There's a lot of articles out
(35:05):
there about UM. The most recent when I saw was
on a device. There is a a natural supplement you
can call it UM. It's a leaf from Thailand originally
believe it's called cretum and it it produces an effect
very similar to an opiate or like methodone for example,
but um. And it is legal technically right now in
the US. But it is clearly, according to a lot
(35:27):
of the things that I've been reading, very much uh controversial,
and it's you know, probably not going to be legal
for long, yeah, more or less. But um it is
apparently a very good analog to methodone and not nearly
as uh not doesn't carry nearly as many side effects,
(35:49):
so so it can be used to treat um people
have opium addiction absolutely according to all you know, some
of these sources, and we could maybe find a few
links and first them on social um. But I think
it's just a good example of like a longstanding natural
product that has been around. Apparently this that used to
(36:10):
be so popular um in um in Thailand that they
had to be banned because it was actually interfering with
the opium trade because people were it was easier to get,
people could grow it, you know, it grew naturally even
and it was actually interfering with the opium trade. So
(36:30):
you know, and this is you know, decades and decades
and decades ago. This is a very interesting story when
I haven't heard and I'd like to follow up on it. So,
and I'm not saying that this suppression of a miracle
drug has never occurred. I'm saying that I've had this point.
I've had difficulty finding a proven case suppression that later
(36:52):
came out. One thing that could be similar would be
not related so much to pharmaceutical companies at the Tuskegee
experiments where the US government withheld treatment for syphilis. Uh.
But that again, that would be Uncle Sam. That would
not necessarily be like a viser or a bear. So
(37:13):
if you are listening to this show, first, thank you
so much. And if you have knowledge of something like that,
if you want to be anonymous, that's fine. We won't
reveal your identity, but we would love to hear more
about this suppression of cures. We've looked at the propagation
(37:34):
of diseases and at least one example that is a
true story. We have looked at some corruption, which is
numerous examples, and we have looked into the idea of
suppressing a treatment. There that's such a big term. There
are a number of ways we can look at it,
(37:54):
but We want to know what you think, so right
to us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or we're
conspiracy stuff at both. You can even check out our
live show that we do once a week ish. Oh,
which reminds me, Nold, are you gonna do you want
to be on that? Okay? So yeah, yeah, So in
the WiFi game, Yeah yeah, we're getting our WiFi game back.
(38:15):
It's it's it's much better. And speaking of what you think,
let's pause for a second and do some listener mail.
All right, So our first letter comes to us from Matt,
not Matt Frederick, not the not our co host, but
(38:36):
Matt a listener, and Matt's writing and regarding our episode
on modern slavery. The statistics on sex trafficking are very problematic,
and jurisdictions have a political interest in it. I was
trafficed air quotes can be a get out of jail
card for prostitute to get arrested. Maggie McNeil has written
a fairly thorough analysis of how questionable the widely popular
(38:59):
I sex trafficking statistics actually are, and then that goes
on to say also there was a distinct attitude that
no right thinking woman would ever want to do sex
work on your show, and just isn't true. Again, quite
a number of women are in the business because they
choose to, not because of his survival work. First time
I've seen such an obvious bias on your show. Well, Matt,
(39:21):
thanks for writing. I noticed that you say distinct attitude,
most likely because we never directly said that no one
would ever willingly be involved in sex work. However, I
do agree that I do agree completely that sex trafficking
statistics can be very very problematic. Uh. Statistics for forced
labor in general are very problematic, and I can't remember
(39:47):
if we address this on air, but I hope we did.
You have to also question the agendas of widely inflated numbers,
you know, question the source of where those numbers come from.
So it is it clearly isn't true that no one
would ever want to do sex work. But if we
(40:07):
say quite a number of women are in the business
because they choose to, quite a number is also a
slippery number in itself, and regardless of the ratio. Uh,
it is true that now use the same word the
same phrase, quite a number of people are in sex
trafficking or forced labor of any sort against their will.
(40:31):
And with with that being said, I really appreciate this email, Matt,
because you're you're making an excellent point about how dangerous
it can be to paint with a broad brush, and
that's something that I wanted. Uh, I wanted the rest
of the listeners to hear your take on and thank
you for the recommendation of Maggie McNeil. For people who
(40:52):
haven't checked out our Modern Slavery podcast, uh, please do
you learn some interesting facts and you'll see some as
Matt has pointed out questionable statistics. One of the interesting
pieces of trivia is that, according to most estimates we read,
the vast majority of forced labor or human trafficking forced
(41:14):
modern slavery is manual labor, so things like brick building, right,
like construction work, agriculture, rather than the lurid tales that
seem to get the most popular media attention. So again,
thanks so much for writing that, and I appreciate your point.
It was well uh well written, well presented. Again check
(41:37):
out the book by Maggie McNeil. I guess that's the
interesting thing about statistics. I mean, this idea of reducing
a human being to a statistic and they inherently have
very little context, so it's hard to know the motivation
specifically behind a statistic. M hm, I yeah, a personal level,
I'm sure, yeah, I completely agree, And statistics can be
(42:00):
easily skewed by something as small as the framing of
a question in a poll. Right. Uh. So, for instance, uh,
if there if there was something like a pole regarding recess, right,
and if you if you were trying to get something
that said, uh, the majority of people agree that children
(42:22):
should have some sort of recess, right, then or if
you want you would say, you would say, um, do
you believe that children should be forced to stay inside
all day during school despite the numerous studies showing that
sitting constantly has legitimate and long lasting health effects. Then
(42:43):
of course people will be like, no, I don't want
children to have a sitting disease. And if you wanted
more people to say that they disagree with recess, then
you would say, I do you believe that children should
be forced outside? Uh? And to stand in the elements
given given the given the recent statistics on pollution and
(43:07):
the long lasting detrimental health effects that can occur just
from being outside for an hour. Oh and by the way,
we're making this show in a state where recess has
consistently dwindled. I think it's like ten minutes a day now,
which is just enough time to get kids to run
outside and then run back in. Did I ever tell
(43:28):
you that they kicked me out of kindergarten? They kicked
you out because I don't play? Oh no, come on now,
all right, So well, let's go to a second piece
of listener mail. Okay, um, so here is a nice letter.
I just wanted to write in to let you know
(43:48):
how much I enjoy the podcast. I've only been listening
for a couple of months now, but it's one of
the podcasts I listened to that I anticipate the most
every week, thinking it would be an Alex Jones type
conspiracy circle old jerk, love that image. I was very
timid about listening. The level of skepticism you show every week, though,
is very refreshing when it comes to these topics. I
am very interested in conspiracy theories as a topic, but
(44:11):
it is so hard to find level headed conversation about
it from the outside. I just finished this week's episode
and thought I chime in with some support. Keep up
the awesome work and that comes to us from Ryan
and Ryan, thanks so much. We sure appreciate it. We
have uh. We you know, we get a lot of
email here and this show. You know, you might be
(44:31):
a regular listener, and you might have friends who say, oh, no,
will make up a name of a person, Stephen Mecklenburg. Okay,
And let's say you're Stephen Mecklenburg and you're a regular
listener in this show. You might have people who going, ah, Steve,
I can't believe you listen to that tin foil hat
(44:51):
bologney right, that bologna and uh and malarkey right. And
if if you have friends who are like that, who
would be hesitant to check out a show because of
the topics it addresses, uh, then please let them let
them know that this this show, we will we will
ask any question. We'll entertain any question. As a listener
(45:14):
driven show. We'll ask any question. We'll do our best
to find the answers. Now. As Matt our listener pointed
out in our early in the earlier email, we don't
always get things right. You know, we're we're human. There
are things that we need to clarify. There are some
things that we've just gotten wrong. And we rely on
(45:35):
our listeners to help us keep this show as as
honest as possible. Man. You know from where I said,
you guys do a fantastic job of keeping Ben Matt
and you know, to a less you degree myself honest
about these things that we very much appreciate. That obviously
well so so we appreciate And I would ask you
(45:55):
if you have if you have some friends like that
who um pry themselves on critical thinking, right, but somehow
make the mistake of throwing everything referred to as a
conspiracy theory into the same large bucket, then uh, let
them let them know about our show or tell them, Oh,
(46:16):
I I heard a good one that is not what
what what's that phrase? A conspiracy circle jerk? Can we
even say that on the air. There's a there's a
band called the circle Jerks. Okay, all right, yes, so guys,
if our boss is asked, that's what we were talking about,
all right, back us up, uh, and now we are
going to head out. We would like to hear from you.
So if you want to take a page from that
(46:37):
list whoa wait, do you hear that sound cute? Yeah?
You do, because you're you're playing it Yeah, No, I
have a thing, Ben, I have a thing. So I
kind of want to use today's moment to revisit our boys.
Screlly Martin Screlly, Um, this is a story. It's fascinating
(46:58):
to me on a couple of levels, but one it
really shows the power of the internet. First in that
this story kind of came and then was more or
less resolved in a day's time. I'm using the term
resolved pretty loosely. But a little backstory, UM, many of you,
I'm sure we're following this along with me. Um. Martin
Screlly is a thirty two I believe thirty two year
(47:21):
old former hedge fund manager, so just you know, up
there in the financial world, and was topiary. Yeah, I
don't know what either one of those. I thought. It's
like a landscaping thing, manage hedges. Yeah, I have that.
You know that it might as well be, for all
I know about what hedge fund actually is. It seems
like to me it's one of those things where you
only really know what it is, and if that's what
you do for a living, I'm gonna walk away from
(47:42):
a terrible landscaping joke. I don't you don't have to
I know, let's go all right, I'll go with you.
So Martin screlly Um, thirty two year old financial whiz
I guess you could call him, Uh, used to manage
a hedge fund, so left the hedge fund and was
part of a pharmaceutical company called Retrofin. Is that right back, Yeah,
(48:05):
Retrofin and Retrofin acquired the rights to sell a drug
called Fiola. Fiola is used to treat cystinuria. That's a rare,
incurable condition which gives you persistent kidney stones. That's right.
So that's a that's a pain in the kidney. Right.
So we're burying the lead here a little bit. But
(48:25):
the reason we bring that up is this was sort
of the first example of this guy screlly Um doing
some pretty egregious price gouging. Yeah, he said that Fiolo,
which sold for four thousand a year per patient, would
be priced closer to a rival drug called Pencilla meane,
which sold for eighty thousand, hundred forty thousand a year
(48:48):
per patient. So good little backstory there. But the lead
that we're burying is the news of the day is, Uh,
Martin screlly has a pharmaceutical startup called Turing Pharmaceuticals UM
and and just the idea to me when I first
heard this of a pharmaceutical startup, I mean, I think
of a startup is like building an app, you know,
(49:09):
like something. I don't really think of it as like
I mean, I guess all companies have to start somewhere,
But this is the idea of a pharmaceutical startups sort
of like made me scratch my head a little bit.
But one of the first things he did, um when
he started this company was purchased the rights to a
very old drug called dry Prim and uh. Dry prim
(49:30):
has actually been used for years to treat toxoplasmosis, which
is is a pretty common condition, but it's not particularly
um detrimental to most people who have it, who have regular,
you know, functioning consistence. Where it comes where it becomes
(49:50):
a real problem though, is with immuno deficient individuals UM
suffering from you know, say HIV, AIDS or cancer. And
what this drug does is it'say an anti parasite, anti
parasitic drug. And for years, I believe it's sold in
the neighborhood of a dollar a pill, and then it
went up to about thirteen dollars at pill. Well, when
(50:10):
our boys Screlly bought it, he decided it would be
a good idea to up the price from thirteen change too.
I believe seven dred and fifty dollars a pill. Yeah,
I believe that's correct. Yeah, And when questioned about it
on CBS UH this morning, I believe it was there
before yesterday. He argued that, you know, they're only about
two thousand people that used this drug actively. It's was
(50:33):
not profitable for our company UM to sell it at
that price. And honestly, what we're doing by raising the
price here is actually very altruistic because it means that
we can take this money and invest it back into
research and development to find a better drug UM with
(50:53):
fewer side effects. Yeah. And also there's the question of
the enormous cost of our inde. That's something that people
would bring up to also, just just to throw this
in there, apparently it costs in the neighborhood of a
dollar or less to actually produce to manufacturer manufacturer one
is that is that counting the sonke and cost of
the of you know, the the overhead to research and
(51:16):
create it. Well, I guess that's a good point because
I mean, if you spend fifty million dollars to acquire it,
I guess you have to figure that into it when
you know you're talking about what would be profitable to
sell the drug force. So I didn't know this. So
the plan was to take that money and make a
another thing. But that's the point that I guess that's
the reason I'm bringing this up is that would probably
be the argument that any pharmaceutical company would make as
(51:37):
to why their quote unquote price gouging. They say, oh, well,
our you know, biggest stakeholders are are the patients. You know,
that is who we're looking after the most. If we're
doing anything, it is so we can funnel this money
back into research and development, which admittedly is very expensive
and you know, time consuming to to do. No, there
was there was another piece of big news though, right yeah,
(51:59):
um so bay Sically, what happened is this news came out,
the Internet proceeded to go bananas like it tends to do,
and it just became a collective lynch mob for this guy,
Martin Screlly just Twitter just you know, calling him hitler,
calling him the worst thing since pol Pot, you know,
I mean, just just really demonizing this guy, and you know,
he didn't do himself very many favors because he is
(52:22):
also an active Twitter user and tended to respond to
Internet criticisms by quoting Wou Tang clan lyrics saying that
he ain't nothing to blank with and um, you know
things like that, and posting pictures of himself on one
of those uh those the new answer to the segue
the little roly things. You know that whiz Khalifa got
(52:43):
arrested with of l A X or something that yeah,
deep cut there, um, but yeah, and he's kind of
this kind of smirky little face and this you know,
kind of hipster haircut and just just you know, very
easy to demonize a guy like that who just has
no self awareness when it comes of these things. And
so I guess, um, I'm I'm going off on a
bit of a tangent here. But the thing that was
(53:04):
most fascinating to me about this is here is a
quote unquote pharmaceutical startup making this incredibly contentious decision, and
the Internet reacted and in real time you could see
this guy like defending himself in the worst way possible.
You can see all the criticisms being lobbied against them.
(53:25):
You do not get to see that when it comes
to these large companies. This this is like a like
a look behind the curtain, because of the size of
this organization, because of who this guy is, the fact
that he's a millennial and he's tweeting out everything and
he has absolutely no filter. So I just think it
was really interesting. I learned so much about what price
gouging is, what kinds of act, what kinds of deals
(53:46):
are going on behind closed doors when it comes to
these pharmaceutical companies. But it was all on this really
interesting kind of micro level. So it was a really
interesting glimpse into what likely is happening on a larger scale,
but in real time in the span of a day. Yeah,
and the price is gonna drop. It's gonna drop. Internet
shamed him into rowing back the price, right, we'll see well.
(54:10):
And also we don't know if that was the determining factor,
but people, you know, it seems like it. He said
it was more or less I mean he I think,
I don't know what the quote was exactly, but he
more or less said, um, it was sort of a
sorry not sorry kind of where he was like, you
know what, I feel like my decision to do this
in the first place wasn't wrong, but clearly this is
(54:33):
bad for me, so I'm not gonna do it. So
that's you know, that's an interesting story. And we have
to wonder what what effects this is going to have
on the future, right on other pharmaceutical companies on the
on the ongoing fight. Sure, well, you know, Hillary Clinton
when this happened, tweeted out, this is exactly the kind
(54:54):
of ridiculous price gouging that we're trying to prevent in
big pharma. You know, I am going to roll out
a plan, you know, to cap uh drug manufacturing or
drug sales at some set rate above what it costs
to produce, et cetera. Like our plan did come out.
But I mean this created a very large reaction, again
(55:16):
because of the echo chamber that is Twitter in the Internet. Like,
so the whole thing was really interesting to see UH
go down in real time. And is this sincere on
the Clinton campaign's part or simply opportunistic? Probably both? Yeah,
I think that. But but but then this goes into
the larger fight, for instance, between generic drug manufacturers in
(55:37):
India who are making things that would cost on the
order of a dollar or a pill, a dollar or
three dollars a pill against the pharmaceutical companies, often in
the West, who say, we did all the legwork to
manufacture or discover this, to create it at great expense,
and now you are counterfeiting or stealing our intellectual property,
(55:57):
which goes back again to a t p P, which
we don't have too much time to talk about now.
So uh, we're gonna We're gonna head out, and as always,
we hope that you enjoyed this episode. We hope that
you will follow us on Facebook and Twitter. But more
importantly than just following us or liking us, which is
(56:19):
something that always makes us a little bit less close
to getting fired. Uh. There there is the most important,
most singular thing you do, which is right to us.
Let us know what you think. Uh, tell tell your
friends if you feel like telling your friends. Uh. And
let's you know what, what would you like people to
write to us with? Well, I mean obviously, ideas for
(56:39):
things to research, ideas for episodes. Um, let us know
what you think about how we're doing. Let us know
ways that we can use you know, Knowle's corner to
better effect. Um. I just redubbed it Miles Corner, Noel's Corner.
Um Now we just we we loved. We always love
to hear what you guys think, because, as Been and
Matt always say, this is your show. Let us know
(57:01):
what you think. We are conspiracy at how stuff works
dot com. For more on this topic another unexplained phenomenon,
visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also
(57:21):
get in touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy
stuff
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
writtled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Dear
Ben and Matt, I don't think you guys have covered this,
but I think it is a pretty interesting topic. As
(00:22):
a slave to the pharmaceutical industry, I think the big
pharmacy is holding back cures for diseases. Since everyone worships
the almighty dollar, I feel that it's much more profitable
to keep billing people for treatment rather than finding a
cure for said disease. I would love to see here
you guys cover this topic. Sean oh And, ladies and gentlemen,
(00:50):
welcome back to the show. I'm here, I'm Bennel, You're here,
I'm here, and most importantly, you are here, Shawn. Ladies
and gentlemen, everybody h in the US, across the world.
We're coming semi live to your ear holes. Ear holes, yeah,
to your ear jums maybe uh. And that makes this
(01:13):
stuff they don't want you to know. Today, we're tackling
something that was inspired by a listener mail and that
we have talked about extensively off air before. Just in
our conversations when we hang out after work, right, so
we're talking about big pharma conspiracies. A little bit of background.
(01:33):
We did a video series on this way way back,
and then we also did I don't know why I
did a goat noise there. No, it was good, it
was appropriate. Does it work? Okay, we'll keep it, uh.
And then we also did in January an episode about
the legal drug trade, which will be pharmaceuticals. This episode
we are going to focus on more of the conspiracies
(01:57):
and the conspiracy theories surrounding big pharma. So first things first, well,
we'll look at it this way. As we said before,
legal drugs are a big business. We'd like to give
you some industry statistics. So I m S Health reports
that overall drug spending weighed in at about three and
(02:18):
twenty billion dollars in UM. Through the f d A
and Congress, the US works to ensure access to safe,
effective drugs. At least that's the idea um so, but
at the same time, critics say that quote unquote, big
pharma has paid Congress to turn a blind eye to
(02:39):
predatory and shady dishonest practices like price gouging. So what
is again the big air quote endquote, big pharma exactly right, Um,
other than just a convenient catchphrase, right, So, nowadays big
farma has become this umbrella term for the world's larger
(03:00):
multinational pharmaceutical companies. These are the corporate goliaths, the corporate
behemoths that own patents on life saving name brand proprietary drugs,
and they work to prevent generic knockoffs from replacing these
different markets. So in nineteen from nine to two thousand twelve,
(03:21):
the pharmaceutical industry spent around two point six billion dollars
just to lobby lawmakers, legislators, and for for some perspective,
if you haven't read that number against other things, that
means that they spent more than the defense and aerospace sectors. Yeah.
I mean, maybe I'm naive, but I always have a
(03:42):
hard time imagining what day to day lobbying actually looks like.
Can you film me in and the listeners just a
little bit about specifically what a pharmaceutical lobbyist might do. Yeah, well,
that's a great question. We should mention a shout out
to our own Matt the Madman, Frederick, who is what
(04:03):
is it? Who is with us? In spirit? On his
vacation because I'm about to talk about one of Matt's
favorite shows. Long time listeners, you've heard this before. There
was a show called K Street. I believe it was
right definitely mentioned that one. Yeah, and this gives a
not completely accurate, but pretty close to the bone look
(04:24):
at how lobbying works. Lobbying is a legal activity in
the US. Technically or theoretically, listeners knowl all of us
could get together and we could start you know, the
American Association for stuff they don't want you to know
being known or something like that, Right, and we could go, Uh,
(04:48):
we could do the following things. Uh, take take lawmakers
out to lunches or two gala's two benefits on trips
to persuade them that the case we are making is
the best case for the US in some way. Right. Uh.
And in every industry does this to some degree in
(05:11):
there and and countries do it as well. Uh. There
are for example, like the n r A, you know,
gun lobbyists short, yeah, or oil lobbying groups or the
a r P uh the Association Retired Persons. Uh. And
this this two point six billion dollars is a huge
slice of pie. Uh. There's a huge slice of llegal
(05:32):
drug pie. And this is not counting the money that
drugmakers spend to influence doctors. And again, since lobbying is
not illegal, there's nothing inherently criminal about these actions. It
gets sticky pretty quickly because legally speaking, a lobbyist can't
just go up to uh, Representative Jane Nuion of you know,
(05:57):
South Wisconsin or something and say, Jane, here's eight hundred
thousand dollars, please vote, uh, please vote against f DA
regulation of this thing or something that that is. Legally
can't just give people money and tell them to do that.
But I have said lobbies is like, hey, Jane, you
(06:18):
want me to take you out to a nice, nice lunch.
We'll have some chats over some martinis. Yeah, let's talk
about campaign contributions. Campaign contributions are one of the ways
that money can be donated. Right. So, if there is
a real big pharma, if we want to get past
the umbrella term and talk about what this actually is,
(06:40):
then it's most likely an association called the Pharmaceutical Research
and Manufacturers of America. Right. So, this is basically a
trade group that represents forty eight of the leading biopharmaceutical
researchers and biotechnology companies. Um. Possibly the most notable victory
(07:00):
of pharma was the two thousand six Prescription Deal, which
extended prescription coverage while actually preventing the Medicare program from
collectively bargaining for lower prices. Right, and this stuff. This
stuff changed in the wake of the Affordable Care Act,
which for people outside of the US might sound kind
of arcane, but everyone in the US is familiar with it.
(07:23):
It's also been called Obamacare. It's a Romney mitt Romney
helmed program in Massachusetts that was later taken to a
national level by the Obama administration, and it has a
wealth of critics and a wealth of supporters. I think
it's a story for different show. But the pharmaceutical industry
definitely had input on this, you know. And you can
(07:47):
see articles from the Wall Street Journal saying that the
pharmaceutical companies made a benefit of like thirty five billion
dollars some other astronomical number from the a c A
or Obamacare. There there. There is something that we have
to say at the top, though, because we're gonna talk
about a lot of murky, just diabolical stuff here. So
(08:10):
first I want to say there's no question that research
by scientists at pharmaceutical companies has led to amazing breakthroughs
curing or most often treating conditions that a hundred or
maybe even ten years ago would have been a death sentence.
So let's get that out of the way first. We're
talking about better treatments for cancer, better treatments for sexual diseases,
(08:35):
not necessarily cures, but treatments. And one of the things
that inspired you and I to look at this today
was Shawn's letter and other comments from people on YouTube, Twitter,
and Facebook. I'll go ahead and put the plug in here.
Now you can follow us. We are conspiracy stuff on
(08:55):
all of those and you'll you'll see episodes that may
not make it to the air for one reason or
another or topics so we talked about. You can also
talk with other listeners and you can suggest stuff to
us directly. Anyhow, one of the things that inspired us
to look at this was the recent news report, which
I guess we should mention, but we'll get into later.
(09:16):
Rite the case of the pharmaceutical startup tycoon. Yeah, the
farmer bro is that what they're calling him on Twitter?
Oh man? Uh Martin SCRELLI yeah, and uh I heard
you off air jokingly refer to him as Shrek. Well,
you know, he's a bit of an ogre oh Man
(09:37):
Scado indeed. All right, So there are critics of big pharma,
and they often fall into one of several camps. First,
there are the people that, if we're going to make
up a name for him, I would call them suppression adherents.
These are the people who believe that pharmaceutical companies have
something like secret treatments or even a secret or for
(10:00):
everything from cancer to lekemia, HIV other chronic terminal conditions,
but have covered up this knowledge in the interest of
continuing to make money off halfless consumers. When I was
reading Shawn's letter at the top of the podcast, um,
you know, he obviously mentioned this idea of you know,
(10:20):
drug companies having these secret cures and holding them back,
um because it benefits them more to be able to
continue to treat these existing diseases rather than to cure them.
And it occurred to me that there's an interesting parallel
between that and the idea that, like technology companies already
have a million terabyte hard drive that they have developed
that they're just you know, sitting on because why roll
(10:41):
that out when they can just keep selling us one
terabyte hard drive for you know, two hundred bucks or
something like that, right yeah, Or this also maybe ties
into alternative energy ideas absolutely, the concept that there is
a water powered car, or there is a even consumer
products like a toothpaste will only have to apply once,
(11:01):
or something serious like Willy Wonka stuff, right, yes, uh when,
and I will I will add that this is just
my opinion, but I feel like there's strong circumstantial evidence
that there is on some level at least classify technology
several years in advance of what the public has access to,
(11:23):
especially in the aerospace field, especially in in military applications.
Now does that go all the way down to drugs?
Are there miracle cures that only a select few of
the world's population have access to? We're going to look
at that in a little more detail. That's one of
(11:44):
the biggest, most consistent classifications of conspiracy theories we hear
about big pharma. There is another one. If I was
going to make up a term for these folks, know,
I would call them the invention theorists. Taking it a
step further and arguing that pharmaceutical company are not just
suppressing cures, but actually inventing new diseases, either by renaming
(12:07):
them to make them sound more serious, or by creating
new ones and spreading them through the population. An arguable
example of this is called restless leg syndrome. Got that
got restless leg syndrome right now? Yeah, I mean, after
a couple of drinks, I have a serious case of
(12:28):
happy fate for sure. Uh. And I'm under the impression
that I could both whip and I believe that you could.
I really have faith in your ability. I really feel
like it will be a personal failing on both our
parts if I ever get to that physician. And let's
hope there's not a camera around. But this, this idea
(12:50):
is this idea will be familiar to a lot of
people in the US. We will notice the prevalence of uh,
prevalence of vaguely named drugs that are meant to treat
mental or emotional conditions that in the past would not
have would not have been treated. It might be specific,
(13:13):
but without going into that yet, we'll just say that
that's another group. So there are the people who think
things are being suppressed, cures are being suppressed, and a
group of people who think either fake diseases or being marketed,
or real diseases are being spread. And there's another one,
And Matt, I know you're listening to this man, this
will be your favorite one. The political theories, the idea
(13:34):
that big farm has purchased the conscience and the vote
of allegedly elected representatives, using them to force industry friendly
laws through at the expense of the American public, in
other words, putting profits over people. No, well, those are like,
those are some of the accusations. So let's talk about
some of the true stories. Right, So, aside from the
(13:57):
recent news, history is absolutely filled with these kinds of shenanigans.
Here are some actual examples of illegal, corrupt, and or
unethical things pharmaceutical companies have done in the past. Oh yeah,
let me set you up for this. In So, how
does pharma actually influenced legislation? That's a tough one, but
(14:21):
the answer to that question lies partially with the American
Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC a l e C. ALEC
like Baldwin indeed strong Chin that one. So this secretive
group basically connects private interests and lawmakers to approve what
are called model bills. And these model bills reflect the
(14:41):
desires of the parties involved. Um. Yeah, So defenders of
ALEC say that it provides a forum for legislative and
industrial partnership, but critics say that's not so much the case,
that the public is basically completely cut out of the
entire process, like a smaller version than of the TPP.
(15:04):
So there, it's true, these these model bills are not
necessarily intended and I hope you guys can hear the
air quotes I'm laying down thick over there, not necessarily intended. Yeah,
thank you to h to become the verbatim bill, but
(15:25):
or the verbatim law rather, But several legislatures have introduced
bills that can be traced directly back to meetings of ALEC.
But Pharma, and again that's just our shorthand for pharmaceutical
research and Manufacturers of America does contribute to ALEC, and
it is and we know this because it is legally
bound to disclose this spending. ALEC, however, is not bound
(15:49):
by the same laws. In fact, ALEX membership list is secret,
and big pharmaceutical associations don't just keep their spending to
the hallowed hall halls of Congress right now, not at
all been. Uh. These companies actually interact directly and pretty
extensively with physicians, um, basically incentivizing them to recommend specific
(16:12):
brand name drugs. Right. Yeah, It's it's funny. Have you
ever been in a hospital knoll or in the doctor's
office when a pharmacy rep comes through with all their
pens and their mouse pads and yeah, their swag and
then they look like models or something. They travel around
convincing various doctors medical professionals that name brand drug X
(16:37):
is superior and should be prescribed for the following conditions
aggressively and assertively. So and it goes beyond that too,
because there's a process used called ghostwriting, and ghostwriting is
a really weird thing. So these companies would pay a
doctor and say, hey, let's say you're a doctor. Know
(16:58):
what kind of doctor are you? I'm a doctor of funk. No,
I'm kidding, Um, I'm an oncologist. You're an oncologist. So
they would say, we have this perfect drug coming out
and it's gonna be it's gonna be coming out in
the next six months or it's been out for six months,
and we want to spread the words so Dr Brown, Uh,
(17:22):
you agree with us? Right, we're at dinner. Now you
agree with us that this is a superior treatment. Well,
that depends. Can't I get the Crime Bruley? You can
have Crime Bruley for here and to go. I'm on board.
Sign me up. Great, here's the best thing. We want
you to write a review and we want it to
go like this, at which point they hand the review
(17:44):
that they've already written there and they say, we're just
gonna put Dr Brown according to Dr Brown, lead oncologist
at ex Hospital. And then this glowing review happens, and
we've used your name. Nothing weird about that. Yeah, nine
ten doctors agree crimberly at the restaurant and to go
(18:04):
is awesome. Visa v This drug is awesome. Right. And
you know this might sound strange to some of our
listeners outside of the US, but televised ads for prescription
drugs are a common thing in US channels, US TV channels,
and and we commonly bizarre. Yeah, commonly bizarre because legally
(18:25):
there's a lot of stuff they can't say. How would
you describe one of those ads? So it's sort of
like this weird trippy alice in wonderland vibe where there's
somebody prancing through a meadow, you know, just feeling good,
just just like colors, lots of pastels. There's butterflies everywhere,
the sun is shining. There maybe children playing in a playground.
(18:47):
There's probably instrumental music. You don't really hear the people talking,
probably like some slow motion reaction shots of happy smiling
face and laughing. Yes, like vague, vague, vague vague voice
of or just about just you want to be happy,
right and you want to feel good about yourself and
your loved ones, don't you. You want to get the
(19:07):
most out of every day on this planet. And then
the voiceover was shift right over to the name of
the drug, which would be like heliometrics, and and they'll
they'll say, ask your doctor if heliometrics is right for you,
without really naming a lot of the symptoms till the
very end where there is tiny, tiny fine print, uh
(19:29):
something that our lead sponsor, Illumination Global Unlimited, is legally
required to do them. You know. They they are still around.
They I I don't know they contact us when they
want to contact us. They don't even use email, and
they just slip an envelope under the door. One time
(19:50):
that was volunteering in a nursing home and they just
sent one of the residents of the nursing home to
tell me what our next ad campaign just gonna be
euspurted anywhere. Uh huh. It turned around and she was gone, yeah, yeah,
So you know que the smalty ultra music. Ask your
doctor if heleometrics is right for you. Side effects may
(20:12):
include drowsy, business, nauseaissition on this chap nation, weird shoe footedness,
wrong headedness, two knows, one knows, sprop double think, brain fever,
consumption sold deaf, squamishness, impertinence, in continence, offensive punctuality, offensive punctuation, punctitude,
bad grammar, n America. Yeah, that kind of stuff. Yeah,
you know, no that now that I hear it, that
that's spot on, but it sounds a little silly. Uh,
(20:32):
Ladies and gentlemen. We mentioned this, I think in our
Legal Drugs podcast, But the US accounts for about five
percent in the world's population and also forty two percent
of the money spent on prescription drugs. That statistic can
be a little bit strange because these drugs are often
much more expensive in the US than they are in
other countries. And uh, let's talk about let's talk about
(20:55):
this idea that there was a propagation of disease or
that these false diseases were created and marketed. Right, tell
me more. Oh good, I'd love to so Bear everybody's
familiar with Bear, maybe through aspirin sprint. Yeah, Bear did
sell HIV tainted medicine. They sold millions of dollars worth
(21:18):
of an injectable blood clotting medicine called Factor eight concentrate,
which is intended for hemophiliacs, to Asian, Latin, American, and
European countries in the mid nineteen eighties. The company stopped
selling the drug in the US, but continued selling it
overseas for another year. And so how did this happen?
(21:41):
How did this become tainted? The medicine in question here
was made using combined plasma from large numbers of donors
um so at the time there was absolutely no screening
test for the AIDS virus, so a tiny number of
donors with AIDS could potentially contaminate a large match. Right,
and reports say that although the worldwide numbers are difficult
(22:04):
to calculate, in Hong Kong and Taiwan alone, more than
one hemophiliacs contracted HIV after using this medicine, most of
whom have died. But in May of nine five, Dr
Harry and Meyer Jr. The f d a's blood products official,
called the companies to a meeting, believing that they had
(22:25):
broken an agreement to stop selling the old medicine, and
this according to an article in New York Times. But
Meyer decided to handle the matter quietly instead of letting
the public know. Yeah, I wouldn't want anybody to get
in a panic about a little thing like a lethal disease,
which at the time AIDS was HIV was so that
(22:48):
that is a scary, real life situation. There's another book
that you may enjoy if you haven't read it before,
I believe, called The River, in which the author detail
the genesis of AIDS and how it's spread. And they
alleged that they allege that pharmaceutical companies knowingly sold or
(23:11):
experimented with tainted batches of product on populations in Sub
Saharan Africa, which sparked the rise of the HIV epidemic.
It's it's important to note that that is not consider
the specific genesis like, it's not universally agreed. People are
(23:31):
still arguing over how this, how this happened. But you'll
often hear pharmaceutical companies being being accused of this, not
not so much through some sort of purposeful thing as
either trying as either trying to save money or being
you know, fiscally corrupt or incompetent. How do we know
(23:53):
that bare new that the HIV was in the medicine
and yet they continue to sell it. I just don't
understand how a company of that magnitude A could come
back from a scandal like this and be good Lord.
Must they not have had a cracker jack pr team
that I have never heard of the story prior to
researching this topic, right, I mean when I think of bear,
(24:14):
I just think of a little aspirin from a headache,
you know, That's all I think of. Well, in two
thousand and six, and it's a great question two thousand
and six that were documents that were unearthed showing that
they knew it had the high likelihood of being tainted
with with aids, they knew they could no longer sell
(24:34):
it in the US. Uh. The dangers of the drug
have become well known in the US market, but that
news was slower to reach other parts of the world.
And it does from what we see, it does seem
that FDA regulators did collude to keep the continued sales
hidden so that this could be solved without alerting Congress,
(24:57):
the medical community, and the public. And these are acording
the minutes of a night five meeting between the FDA
and Bear. Yeah, so I mean to me, this occurs
to me as being like an example another example of
two cozy relationships, whether it's between drug companies and the
FDA regulators they're supposed to oversee them, or for example,
(25:20):
you know, large banks and the SEC regulators that are supposedly,
you know, supposed to keep them acting correctly. Um is
is that it's a similar Yeah, that's a very nice
parallel because or it's a disturbing parallel, but possibly accurate.
It's nice because it does show you know, how how
(25:41):
close an industry and the government institution designed to regulate
it will happen. Now. I know we have a lot
of listeners who object to the concept of a large government,
right of whether federal or whether one world. And I
completely I completely understand in many cases in case of
(26:01):
things like the Food and Drug Administration. However, that has
provided in the past, especially much needed food safety things.
You know, food safety regulations are an important thing to
have because if there is not some sort of standard,
then we could easily end up in a situation like
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which is a very gruesome, gruesome
(26:26):
story about I was going to say, gross, yeah, gross,
and grewsome story about the meat packing industry. However, Uh,
the thing about this regulation, and I agree with that
a lot of people object to as well, is the
concept that if the people who work for the watchmen
(26:46):
are later being hired to work for the people being
watched or come from that industry. You know, the argument
is always that a certain level of expertise and experience
should be the deciding factor and it and it may
be true the advocates of this practice argue that you
need to have industry experts. But then the opponents of
(27:08):
this practice will say, well, really, what we're doing is
inventing a revolving door where someone can, as a regulatory power,
make laws that will benefit them, specifically them later when
they enter private industry. And I mean, I'm sure there's
some amount of well, if this person used to work
(27:28):
for the regulatory body and now they work for us,
they can probably give us a little bit of the
scoop on some of the machinations of the regulatory body. Yeah,
that's a good point. You know, how how far does
it go? With a little background on Bear just to say,
you asked specifically about how this occurred, so it wasn't
reported as widely in US media, but French and Italian
(27:55):
news media we're reporting a lot of this. In two
thousand and eleven, Bear just paid, had paid tens of
millions of dollars to end this scandal because here's how
it happened. So two thousand eleven, Bear starts compensating people
they got AIDS because in the nineteen eighties a thing
called the Cutter biological unit of Bear ignored a federal
(28:19):
law against recruiting prisoners, IVY drug users, you know, intravenous
uh and what they call high risk in terms of
sexual activity people as donors of the blood that they
used to make this factor eight uh. And that's the
clotting product that keeps seem ophiliacs from bleeding out. So
(28:39):
they're paying uh. They along with three other labs were
forced to pay tens of millions of euros to people
who could trace the transmission of HIV to this treatment,
so UH Bear and the US company Baxter, the two
main parties to the agreement. A company spokespersons said that, however,
(29:01):
the company accepts no responsibility in this case and continues
to insist that has always acted responsibly and ethically. So
cour seen as something that you can see often occurring
with companies of this magnitude, where they say, okay, we
will pay to we will pay to resolve this case.
We will admit no but no direct faults. We admit
(29:23):
no direct fault. The estimated number, even though again it's
difficult to estimate, is about twenty people contracted HIV from this.
It's insane to me, it is it is insane, and
it's uh and again, I mean, like I said, what
what is the most insane to me? As a consumer
of media and as someone who you know, reads up
on this kind of stuff. I just had never heard
(29:44):
of this before, and that this mind blowing to me,
Like how much money you must a company like this
have to be able to pretty successfully sweep something like
this under the rug to the point where you know,
it's just not like the only image that you associate
with this company. Well, yeah, again, they stopped selling this
product in the US, so it was maybe older news
(30:06):
or it was less likely to directly affect people in
the US market. So that is a seed of truth
to these things. When when we hear a lot of
the when we hear a lot of conspiratorial rumors and stuff,
the thing to find is whether there is a seed
of truth, right, whether there is a a shining note
(30:27):
of veracity in the hay stack of bs that so
often is the internet. Uh, And that's not my most
graceful comparison there. But let's go to the idea of
withholding a cure, because Sean, that's exactly what you asked about.
At this point, it's hard to find a specific proven
case of a company completely suppressing a cure. And the
(30:51):
reason it's hard to find that is that we we
see instead, we see a lot of people saying, uh,
that it is more advent tageous to treat the symptoms
of a disease rather than the cause. In many cases,
I know this is a sensitive subject for some people,
but in many cases, the cause of a condition could
(31:14):
be genetic or lifestyle related for instance, like a poor diet. Yeah,
like a poor diet could create diabetes or obesity or
heart conditions. And the best way to combat that is
not through a magic pill. Uh, it's through get off
the couch, right, It's through exercise and changing diet, which
(31:37):
of course no one wants to hear because that is
not an instantaneous cure. But what we did find that
I thought might interest you, Sean, is some statements from
people on Reddit of all places, Uh, if you're familiar
who we're talking about, the talking about the issues here
or the concept of a conspiracy, and we found people
(31:59):
saying at we found people saying that they had had
experience either with drug creation or product creation or in
the higher level marketing stuff. The marketing people are saying
it is so expensive to create a drug and get
through the FDA hoops that if there were a magical cure,
(32:20):
people would sell it. They would sell it for a boatload,
a yacht load of money, one might say. But they
wouldn't want to keep it secret because they would be
walking away from so much money. And then there was
a funny part where the person who was a former
chemists like someone creating these drugs said, maybe chemists is
(32:44):
not the right word. Researcher. Researcher, sure, because we don't
know exactly what this person was involved with. But they said,
they said, here's the thing. It would be very difficult
for the pharmaceutical companies to pay someone who just govern
to cure enough to keep its secret. You know, how
would how would you do that? And this this goes
(33:07):
into some darker territory when we hear allegations of you know,
people being disappeared or something like that. But in this case,
so far, just because of the amount of people that
would be required to keep this secret, it's we we
haven't found we haven't found a case yet. I'd love
to hear more from listeners who believe that there is
(33:30):
a case. And and I want to say also that
often you'll hear people saying that an alternative medicine of
some sort is what's being repressed, right, or that there
is some maybe natural cure through a plant or through
a relatively simply made derivation of a plant that pharmaceutical
(33:56):
companies are instead trying to monetize. And that part, that
last part is pretty believable because we're seeing that now with.
I'm not going to claim marijuana is some sort of
panacea that cures everything. It's certainly kept Taco Bell and business.
That's that's one magic power has. But but it is
true that pharmaceutical companies have worked diligently to isolate you know,
(34:22):
functional chemicals, the the active you know, tetrac cannoboids and stuff,
the th HC too, make it a pill form instead
of something that a person would you know, smoke or
I guess ingest other ways. Yeah, it reminds me of
something I think I brought up in we were talking
about monetizing the treatment of drug addiction. I think the
(34:44):
episode was just on drug addictions that it was, and
I was talking about how, you know, privatizing privatization of
methodone clinics for oh yeah, yeah right, and so obviously
that ties into big pharma. I mean, you know, somebody's
got to manufacture the methodone or whatever. Sure version of
that is just being prescribed, you know, for the treatment
of opiate addiction. UM. There's a lot of articles out
(35:05):
there about UM. The most recent when I saw was
on a device. There is a a natural supplement you
can call it UM. It's a leaf from Thailand originally
believe it's called cretum and it it produces an effect
very similar to an opiate or like methodone for example,
but um. And it is legal technically right now in
the US. But it is clearly, according to a lot
(35:27):
of the things that I've been reading, very much uh controversial,
and it's you know, probably not going to be legal
for long, yeah, more or less. But um it is
apparently a very good analog to methodone and not nearly
as uh not doesn't carry nearly as many side effects,
(35:49):
so so it can be used to treat um people
have opium addiction absolutely according to all you know, some
of these sources, and we could maybe find a few
links and first them on social um. But I think
it's just a good example of like a longstanding natural
product that has been around. Apparently this that used to
(36:10):
be so popular um in um in Thailand that they
had to be banned because it was actually interfering with
the opium trade because people were it was easier to get,
people could grow it, you know, it grew naturally even
and it was actually interfering with the opium trade. So
(36:30):
you know, and this is you know, decades and decades
and decades ago. This is a very interesting story when
I haven't heard and I'd like to follow up on it. So,
and I'm not saying that this suppression of a miracle
drug has never occurred. I'm saying that I've had this point.
I've had difficulty finding a proven case suppression that later
(36:52):
came out. One thing that could be similar would be
not related so much to pharmaceutical companies at the Tuskegee
experiments where the US government withheld treatment for syphilis. Uh.
But that again, that would be Uncle Sam. That would
not necessarily be like a viser or a bear. So
(37:13):
if you are listening to this show, first, thank you
so much. And if you have knowledge of something like that,
if you want to be anonymous, that's fine. We won't
reveal your identity, but we would love to hear more
about this suppression of cures. We've looked at the propagation
(37:34):
of diseases and at least one example that is a
true story. We have looked at some corruption, which is
numerous examples, and we have looked into the idea of
suppressing a treatment. There that's such a big term. There
are a number of ways we can look at it,
(37:54):
but We want to know what you think, so right
to us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or we're
conspiracy stuff at both. You can even check out our
live show that we do once a week ish. Oh,
which reminds me, Nold, are you gonna do you want
to be on that? Okay? So yeah, yeah, So in
the WiFi game, Yeah yeah, we're getting our WiFi game back.
(38:15):
It's it's it's much better. And speaking of what you think,
let's pause for a second and do some listener mail.
All right, So our first letter comes to us from Matt,
not Matt Frederick, not the not our co host, but
(38:36):
Matt a listener, and Matt's writing and regarding our episode
on modern slavery. The statistics on sex trafficking are very problematic,
and jurisdictions have a political interest in it. I was
trafficed air quotes can be a get out of jail
card for prostitute to get arrested. Maggie McNeil has written
a fairly thorough analysis of how questionable the widely popular
(38:59):
I sex trafficking statistics actually are, and then that goes
on to say also there was a distinct attitude that
no right thinking woman would ever want to do sex
work on your show, and just isn't true. Again, quite
a number of women are in the business because they
choose to, not because of his survival work. First time
I've seen such an obvious bias on your show. Well, Matt,
(39:21):
thanks for writing. I noticed that you say distinct attitude,
most likely because we never directly said that no one
would ever willingly be involved in sex work. However, I
do agree that I do agree completely that sex trafficking
statistics can be very very problematic. Uh. Statistics for forced
labor in general are very problematic, and I can't remember
(39:47):
if we address this on air, but I hope we did.
You have to also question the agendas of widely inflated numbers,
you know, question the source of where those numbers come from.
So it is it clearly isn't true that no one
would ever want to do sex work. But if we
(40:07):
say quite a number of women are in the business
because they choose to, quite a number is also a
slippery number in itself, and regardless of the ratio. Uh,
it is true that now use the same word the
same phrase, quite a number of people are in sex
trafficking or forced labor of any sort against their will.
(40:31):
And with with that being said, I really appreciate this email, Matt,
because you're you're making an excellent point about how dangerous
it can be to paint with a broad brush, and
that's something that I wanted. Uh, I wanted the rest
of the listeners to hear your take on and thank
you for the recommendation of Maggie McNeil. For people who
(40:52):
haven't checked out our Modern Slavery podcast, uh, please do
you learn some interesting facts and you'll see some as
Matt has pointed out questionable statistics. One of the interesting
pieces of trivia is that, according to most estimates we read,
the vast majority of forced labor or human trafficking forced
(41:14):
modern slavery is manual labor, so things like brick building, right,
like construction work, agriculture, rather than the lurid tales that
seem to get the most popular media attention. So again,
thanks so much for writing that, and I appreciate your point.
It was well uh well written, well presented. Again check
(41:37):
out the book by Maggie McNeil. I guess that's the
interesting thing about statistics. I mean, this idea of reducing
a human being to a statistic and they inherently have
very little context, so it's hard to know the motivation
specifically behind a statistic. M hm, I yeah, a personal level,
I'm sure, yeah, I completely agree, And statistics can be
(42:00):
easily skewed by something as small as the framing of
a question in a poll. Right. Uh. So, for instance, uh,
if there if there was something like a pole regarding recess, right,
and if you if you were trying to get something
that said, uh, the majority of people agree that children
(42:22):
should have some sort of recess, right, then or if
you want you would say, you would say, um, do
you believe that children should be forced to stay inside
all day during school despite the numerous studies showing that
sitting constantly has legitimate and long lasting health effects. Then
(42:43):
of course people will be like, no, I don't want
children to have a sitting disease. And if you wanted
more people to say that they disagree with recess, then
you would say, I do you believe that children should
be forced outside? Uh? And to stand in the elements
given given the given the recent statistics on pollution and
(43:07):
the long lasting detrimental health effects that can occur just
from being outside for an hour. Oh and by the way,
we're making this show in a state where recess has
consistently dwindled. I think it's like ten minutes a day now,
which is just enough time to get kids to run
outside and then run back in. Did I ever tell
(43:28):
you that they kicked me out of kindergarten? They kicked
you out because I don't play? Oh no, come on now,
all right, So well, let's go to a second piece
of listener mail. Okay, um, so here is a nice letter.
I just wanted to write in to let you know
(43:48):
how much I enjoy the podcast. I've only been listening
for a couple of months now, but it's one of
the podcasts I listened to that I anticipate the most
every week, thinking it would be an Alex Jones type
conspiracy circle old jerk, love that image. I was very
timid about listening. The level of skepticism you show every week, though,
is very refreshing when it comes to these topics. I
am very interested in conspiracy theories as a topic, but
(44:11):
it is so hard to find level headed conversation about
it from the outside. I just finished this week's episode
and thought I chime in with some support. Keep up
the awesome work and that comes to us from Ryan
and Ryan, thanks so much. We sure appreciate it. We
have uh. We you know, we get a lot of
email here and this show. You know, you might be
(44:31):
a regular listener, and you might have friends who say, oh, no,
will make up a name of a person, Stephen Mecklenburg. Okay,
And let's say you're Stephen Mecklenburg and you're a regular
listener in this show. You might have people who going, ah, Steve,
I can't believe you listen to that tin foil hat
(44:51):
bologney right, that bologna and uh and malarkey right. And
if if you have friends who are like that, who
would be hesitant to check out a show because of
the topics it addresses, uh, then please let them let
them know that this this show, we will we will
ask any question. We'll entertain any question. As a listener
(45:14):
driven show. We'll ask any question. We'll do our best
to find the answers. Now. As Matt our listener pointed
out in our early in the earlier email, we don't
always get things right. You know, we're we're human. There
are things that we need to clarify. There are some
things that we've just gotten wrong. And we rely on
(45:35):
our listeners to help us keep this show as as
honest as possible. Man. You know from where I said,
you guys do a fantastic job of keeping Ben Matt
and you know, to a less you degree myself honest
about these things that we very much appreciate. That obviously
well so so we appreciate And I would ask you
(45:55):
if you have if you have some friends like that
who um pry themselves on critical thinking, right, but somehow
make the mistake of throwing everything referred to as a
conspiracy theory into the same large bucket, then uh, let
them let them know about our show or tell them, Oh,
(46:16):
I I heard a good one that is not what
what what's that phrase? A conspiracy circle jerk? Can we
even say that on the air. There's a there's a
band called the circle Jerks. Okay, all right, yes, so guys,
if our boss is asked, that's what we were talking about,
all right, back us up, uh, and now we are
going to head out. We would like to hear from you.
So if you want to take a page from that
(46:37):
list whoa wait, do you hear that sound cute? Yeah?
You do, because you're you're playing it Yeah, No, I
have a thing, Ben, I have a thing. So I
kind of want to use today's moment to revisit our boys.
Screlly Martin Screlly, Um, this is a story. It's fascinating
(46:58):
to me on a couple of levels, but one it
really shows the power of the internet. First in that
this story kind of came and then was more or
less resolved in a day's time. I'm using the term
resolved pretty loosely. But a little backstory, UM, many of you,
I'm sure we're following this along with me. Um. Martin
Screlly is a thirty two I believe thirty two year
(47:21):
old former hedge fund manager, so just you know, up
there in the financial world, and was topiary. Yeah, I
don't know what either one of those. I thought. It's
like a landscaping thing, manage hedges. Yeah, I have that.
You know that it might as well be, for all
I know about what hedge fund actually is. It seems
like to me it's one of those things where you
only really know what it is, and if that's what
you do for a living, I'm gonna walk away from
(47:42):
a terrible landscaping joke. I don't you don't have to
I know, let's go all right, I'll go with you.
So Martin screlly Um, thirty two year old financial whiz
I guess you could call him, Uh, used to manage
a hedge fund, so left the hedge fund and was
part of a pharmaceutical company called Retrofin. Is that right back, Yeah,
(48:05):
Retrofin and Retrofin acquired the rights to sell a drug
called Fiola. Fiola is used to treat cystinuria. That's a rare,
incurable condition which gives you persistent kidney stones. That's right.
So that's a that's a pain in the kidney. Right.
So we're burying the lead here a little bit. But
(48:25):
the reason we bring that up is this was sort
of the first example of this guy screlly Um doing
some pretty egregious price gouging. Yeah, he said that Fiolo,
which sold for four thousand a year per patient, would
be priced closer to a rival drug called Pencilla meane,
which sold for eighty thousand, hundred forty thousand a year
(48:48):
per patient. So good little backstory there. But the lead
that we're burying is the news of the day is, Uh,
Martin screlly has a pharmaceutical startup called Turing Pharmaceuticals UM
and and just the idea to me when I first
heard this of a pharmaceutical startup, I mean, I think
of a startup is like building an app, you know,
(49:09):
like something. I don't really think of it as like
I mean, I guess all companies have to start somewhere,
But this is the idea of a pharmaceutical startups sort
of like made me scratch my head a little bit.
But one of the first things he did, um when
he started this company was purchased the rights to a
very old drug called dry Prim and uh. Dry prim
(49:30):
has actually been used for years to treat toxoplasmosis, which
is is a pretty common condition, but it's not particularly
um detrimental to most people who have it, who have regular,
you know, functioning consistence. Where it comes where it becomes
(49:50):
a real problem though, is with immuno deficient individuals UM
suffering from you know, say HIV, AIDS or cancer. And
what this drug does is it'say an anti parasite, anti
parasitic drug. And for years, I believe it's sold in
the neighborhood of a dollar a pill, and then it
went up to about thirteen dollars at pill. Well, when
(50:10):
our boys Screlly bought it, he decided it would be
a good idea to up the price from thirteen change too.
I believe seven dred and fifty dollars a pill. Yeah,
I believe that's correct. Yeah, And when questioned about it
on CBS UH this morning, I believe it was there
before yesterday. He argued that, you know, they're only about
two thousand people that used this drug actively. It's was
(50:33):
not profitable for our company UM to sell it at
that price. And honestly, what we're doing by raising the
price here is actually very altruistic because it means that
we can take this money and invest it back into
research and development to find a better drug UM with
(50:53):
fewer side effects. Yeah. And also there's the question of
the enormous cost of our inde. That's something that people
would bring up to also, just just to throw this
in there, apparently it costs in the neighborhood of a
dollar or less to actually produce to manufacturer manufacturer one
is that is that counting the sonke and cost of
the of you know, the the overhead to research and
(51:16):
create it. Well, I guess that's a good point because
I mean, if you spend fifty million dollars to acquire it,
I guess you have to figure that into it when
you know you're talking about what would be profitable to
sell the drug force. So I didn't know this. So
the plan was to take that money and make a
another thing. But that's the point that I guess that's
the reason I'm bringing this up is that would probably
be the argument that any pharmaceutical company would make as
(51:37):
to why their quote unquote price gouging. They say, oh, well,
our you know, biggest stakeholders are are the patients. You know,
that is who we're looking after the most. If we're
doing anything, it is so we can funnel this money
back into research and development, which admittedly is very expensive
and you know, time consuming to to do. No, there
was there was another piece of big news though, right yeah,
(51:59):
um so bay Sically, what happened is this news came out,
the Internet proceeded to go bananas like it tends to do,
and it just became a collective lynch mob for this guy,
Martin Screlly just Twitter just you know, calling him hitler,
calling him the worst thing since pol Pot, you know,
I mean, just just really demonizing this guy, and you know,
he didn't do himself very many favors because he is
(52:22):
also an active Twitter user and tended to respond to
Internet criticisms by quoting Wou Tang clan lyrics saying that
he ain't nothing to blank with and um, you know
things like that, and posting pictures of himself on one
of those uh those the new answer to the segue
the little roly things. You know that whiz Khalifa got
(52:43):
arrested with of l A X or something that yeah,
deep cut there, um, but yeah, and he's kind of
this kind of smirky little face and this you know,
kind of hipster haircut and just just you know, very
easy to demonize a guy like that who just has
no self awareness when it comes of these things. And
so I guess, um, I'm I'm going off on a
bit of a tangent here. But the thing that was
(53:04):
most fascinating to me about this is here is a
quote unquote pharmaceutical startup making this incredibly contentious decision, and
the Internet reacted and in real time you could see
this guy like defending himself in the worst way possible.
You can see all the criticisms being lobbied against them.
(53:25):
You do not get to see that when it comes
to these large companies. This this is like a like
a look behind the curtain, because of the size of
this organization, because of who this guy is, the fact
that he's a millennial and he's tweeting out everything and
he has absolutely no filter. So I just think it
was really interesting. I learned so much about what price
gouging is, what kinds of act, what kinds of deals
(53:46):
are going on behind closed doors when it comes to
these pharmaceutical companies. But it was all on this really
interesting kind of micro level. So it was a really
interesting glimpse into what likely is happening on a larger scale,
but in real time in the span of a day. Yeah,
and the price is gonna drop. It's gonna drop. Internet
shamed him into rowing back the price, right, we'll see well.
(54:10):
And also we don't know if that was the determining factor,
but people, you know, it seems like it. He said
it was more or less I mean he I think,
I don't know what the quote was exactly, but he
more or less said, um, it was sort of a
sorry not sorry kind of where he was like, you
know what, I feel like my decision to do this
in the first place wasn't wrong, but clearly this is
(54:33):
bad for me, so I'm not gonna do it. So
that's you know, that's an interesting story. And we have
to wonder what what effects this is going to have
on the future, right on other pharmaceutical companies on the
on the ongoing fight. Sure, well, you know, Hillary Clinton
when this happened, tweeted out, this is exactly the kind
(54:54):
of ridiculous price gouging that we're trying to prevent in
big pharma. You know, I am going to roll out
a plan, you know, to cap uh drug manufacturing or
drug sales at some set rate above what it costs
to produce, et cetera. Like our plan did come out.
But I mean this created a very large reaction, again
(55:16):
because of the echo chamber that is Twitter in the Internet. Like,
so the whole thing was really interesting to see UH
go down in real time. And is this sincere on
the Clinton campaign's part or simply opportunistic? Probably both? Yeah,
I think that. But but but then this goes into
the larger fight, for instance, between generic drug manufacturers in
(55:37):
India who are making things that would cost on the
order of a dollar or a pill, a dollar or
three dollars a pill against the pharmaceutical companies, often in
the West, who say, we did all the legwork to
manufacture or discover this, to create it at great expense,
and now you are counterfeiting or stealing our intellectual property,
(55:57):
which goes back again to a t p P, which
we don't have too much time to talk about now.
So uh, we're gonna We're gonna head out, and as always,
we hope that you enjoyed this episode. We hope that
you will follow us on Facebook and Twitter. But more
importantly than just following us or liking us, which is
(56:19):
something that always makes us a little bit less close
to getting fired. Uh. There there is the most important,
most singular thing you do, which is right to us.
Let us know what you think. Uh, tell tell your
friends if you feel like telling your friends. Uh. And
let's you know what, what would you like people to
write to us with? Well, I mean obviously, ideas for
(56:39):
things to research, ideas for episodes. Um, let us know
what you think about how we're doing. Let us know
ways that we can use you know, Knowle's corner to
better effect. Um. I just redubbed it Miles Corner, Noel's Corner.
Um Now we just we we loved. We always love
to hear what you guys think, because, as Been and
Matt always say, this is your show. Let us know
(57:01):
what you think. We are conspiracy at how stuff works
dot com. For more on this topic another unexplained phenomenon,
visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also
(57:21):
get in touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy
stuff
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