Prescription Thugs Page #9

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Internal documents show that

after this company positively,

absolutely knew

that they had a medication

that was infected with the AIDS

virus, they took the product

off the market in the US,

and then they dumped it

in France, Europe, Asia

and Latin America.

- Hold on, Mike.

- So hold on, hold on.

So you're telling me

that Bayer knew

that this drug was infected

with the AIDS virus,

they yanked it from

the market in America,

and then they dumped it

in markets overseas?

They had to figure out a way,

Joe, to make a profit

on a product that they could

not sell in America.

You know,

these guys are no joke.

They're printing money.

They know what they're doing,

and they're great at it.

And if they can condition

a public, an entire culture

to something that's not true,

they're saving a lot of money.

You know?

And it doesn't help anybody.

It's killing a lot of people.

My niece was... she was

attending Indiana University.

She was a pre-med student,

and she was in a car accident,

and so they started her

on mood stabilizers

and antipsychotics

and antidepressants,

and by the time it was over,

she was on 14 different drugs.

She had to drop out of school.

She wasn't able to work.

She cold turkey-ed off of her

drugs, trying to recuperate,

and that is an absolute no-no.

I mean, you never, ever, ever

want to stop taking a

psychiatric drug cold turkey

because you will go

into an absolute tailspin.

So, out of desperation,

she walked into her

younger sister's room,

took an angel-shaped

oil lantern out of that room

and poured the oil over herself,

and she ignited it,

and she burned herself alive.

And once I had done

my due diligence and

my research on it,

and I realized that the

information had been there,

that these drugs

caused suicidal ideation

from the get-go,

and that it had been

covered up by the pharmaceutical

industry

and by the FDA,

that... I got angry.

I spoke out when

they murdered my niece,

and that's what

happened to my niece.

They murdered your brother;

they murdered my niece,

because they knew

that these things existed,

and they knew that there were

people that were vulnerable

that would be taking them,

and they did not inform us.

The onus is on them.

People ask me all the time,

"Oh, aren't you afraid

the pharmaceutical industry

is going to kill you?"

Hell, no. I'm afraid

they're going to kill you

and you and you

and everybody I know

and everybody I love,

and I'm still going to be

sitting here, screaming

at the top of my lungs.

That's what I'm afraid of.

So, whatever that anybody

can do to add their voice

to this choir,

it's a moral obligation.

So, was Gwen right?

Had Pharma

really killed her niece?

Had they killed my brother?

This is Greg Critser.

He's a journalist who wrote

one of the top books

on America's relationship

to pharmaceuticals

called "Generation Rx."

It seems like we have this

culture of addiction, right?

And we have Big Pharma, who's...

Obviously they're

making these drugs

because there's

a demand for them.

They're also creating a demand.

There's doctors

who are pushing the drugs,

and you have good doctors

and bad doctors.

You have good drugs

and bad drugs.

You have, you know...

Who is the bad guys

and the good guys in all this,

or is there any,

or are they just thugs

on different levels, you know?

Yeah, I mean, as a journalist,

I'm always looking for bad guys,

and I did my book

about prescription drugs,

and some people said,

you know, oh, you know,

"Critser really let them

off the hook, you know.

He didn't condemn them."

And my feeling was,

"I'm just going to show you

what they do,

and you decide

if it's bad or not."

We Americans are pretty quick

to string up a bad guy,

from the commies of the Cold War

to the jihadists

in the War on Terror.

It feels good to point

the finger at someone,

and you can't really ask for

a more deserving bunch of guys

than Big Pharma.

But easy bad guys

are just lazy writing.

Nothing ruins a film

like an easy bad guy.

What about all the good

Pharma has done?

Modern medicine

has beaten diseases

that have ravaged mankind

and killed millions

over the century:

chicken pox, diphtheria,

malaria, measles, polio,

HIV all but eradicated

by pharmaceuticals, and that's

just in the past century,

so maybe Pharma is not

actually the disease

but just another symptom of

America's culture of addiction.

I think, you know,

one of the big problems

is culture, like you're

talking about.

I mean, I don't necessarily

call it an addiction culture.

I call it

a fix-things-quickly

culture.

Why do you think

it's so easy for people

just to go for

the quick, easy fix?

Well, I mean, going for

the quick, easy fix is human.

I mean, we want to minimize

our expenditure of calories.

It's very fundamental.

That's always going to be there.

The question is why does

the system accommodate it?

And I think that's

pure free market capitalism.

It takes one to know one,

as they say.

Maybe the reason

Pharma is so good

at preying

on our addictive natures

is that they're addicts, too.

And what's their addiction?

Profit.

Drug companies

used to think of themselves

as medical science companies.

They were often led by

a scientist or a physician.

If you could get 10% profit

a year, that would be great.

We could roll out

one new drug a year, great.

If you look at the records

of the congressional hearings

in 1983 on prescription

drug advertising,

there's all these letters,

and these letter that go on

and on about what an awful idea

this is, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, they're all

from the presidents

of the major

pharmaceutical companies.

So, those guys changed,

you know?

The next generation

were not doctors.

They were people who were

interested in 15%.

I want ads

in the Boy Scout magazine,

in every college paper,

full-page ads in color.

It seems like the pharma

companies are just, like,

addicted to money.

I mean, they're like addicts

in themselves, in a way.

That's not news.

That's not news.

That's what they do, right?

I mean, they're in it to win it.

I mean, you go to a barber,

you're going to get a haircut.

You go to a bar,

you're going to get a drink.

I like to think

of drug companies

as motion picture makers.

They've decided,

I've got this movie

I'm going to show you guys.

I'm going to show it

to you so often,

that you're going

to internalize it,

and at some point if you get

one of these afflictions,

you're going to say,

"Hmm. I'm going to try that."

I think when you create

a culture in which

the default is the pill,

and not other things

that might make you better,

then you end up with addiction.

The origin of the word

for pharmaceutical is pharmakon,

P-H-A-R-M-A-K-O-N.

It's Greek,

and it has two meanings.

One meaning is cure,

and the other meaning is poison.

It's a very insightful word

because when you think about it

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