This and the Moral Line

Before we answer “Why is this happening?” or “Should this be allowed?” should the whole question be defined first, or the question of what is “this”? 

If we separate and define what “this” is, examine it by itself and question whether it be good or bad and should ever be allowed, we come up with a line, a rule to judge the second. 

 

If, instead, we define the whole question, outlining a situation that may at the moment seem dire and urgent in its own way, we can ask “is basically anything allowable now that we’ve determined that the situation is a thing that really must be stopped?” 

 

In defining the problem first, with no moral line placed on whatever the solution may be (or the determiners may say the solution is,) then there is no line that couldn’t be crossed. 

That is part of the fight over the Constitution and the Amendments, which defined “this” for several things and said for no reason should “this” be infringed: not even a good and urgent reason. 

If we define “this” as never permissible, we don’t force no solution but better solutions. 

 

If anything is permissible under the right circumstances, then the right circumstances will certainly arrive, and we as a race concede that morality may be erased at any moment if it is For the Greater Good. The Greater Good of whom or what entities can be fuzzy. Lines that can be moved were not lines. A humanity that occasionally gives up its humanity for fear or convenience of uncreative solutions has given up on defining anything - up to and including their own sacrifice - as a line that can’t be crossed. 

A whole world view looks at no one in the face, cares about and remembers no one. It makes everyone into part of a chart of statistics. If those statistics are basically trending good, it will be called good, and your particular harms will be defined as an “acceptable casualty.” 

We must never give up looking at humans as individuals with their own humanity, their own choices and God-given rights to choices. If you would not be okay being an acceptable casualty, or your children, neither should you be okay with someone else or their faceless children being an acceptable casualty for your Greater Good. That, ultimately, is human sacrifice; a practice that never seems to go out of style. 

Therefore, we must define “this” and the acceptability of “this” before we define any pressing circumstances that may infringe upon it. When it does, we hold the line.

Did Pharma lie to drug your child?

Are drug maker deceiving you to get to your children? 

In July of 2012 GlaxoSmithKline settled for a hefty $3 Billion for using a plethora of underhanded tactics to push their drugs. One of the charges against them included proof provided by whistle-blowers that Glaxo had deliberately misreported research in order to push the drugs on children. 

"GlaxoSmithKline employed several tactics aimed at promoting the use of the drug in children, including helping to publish a medical journal article that misreported data from a clinical trial." - NY Times

Let's look at that for a second. Let's hold it up and examine it's many facets and implications. 

1. Glaxo lied to sell a pharmaceutical drug to children.

2. This drug was not actually good for children, or they wouldn't have had to lie. 

3. Glaxo lied to sell a pharmaceutical drug to children. 

4. This knowledge was only brought to light because someone in the company escaped with proof. 

5. Glaxo's unethical practices to make a profit is proof that Glaxo will use your children for money. 

6. Glaxo was able to publish it's falsified research in a medical journal, thereby presenting to the world that it was medical fact. 

7. The medical world and parents everywhere might still think it was fact (and they may still) if this knowledge had not been brought to light by said whistle-blowers. 

8. This is likely neither the first nor the last time that Glaxo has published a blatantly falsified study in a medical journal. 

This leads us to several easy conclusions. Drug companies can, will and do make up or manipulate research to support their cause. Their cause is to make money. It is not to save lives or to make sure little Suzy will make it to adulthood in the healthiest way possible. If it were, they would not have manipulated data in order to sell their unsafe drugs to children. 

In case you think this just implicates Glaxo as being not completely in your child's best interest, Johnson and Johnson recently settled a similar case concerning Risperdal, and Abbot Laboratories settled in a case on Depakote. 

Amongst the accusations was also a list of kickbacks given to doctors to push these drugs on patients who may not understand that they had become pawns in a high stakes, high money game. Not small kickbacks like a coupon for Denny's. We're talking vacations to Jamaica and the Bahamas. So doctors who swore an oath to do no harm and that people trusted their lives and their children's lives with shut their eyes to looking deeper into the health effects of the very drugs they were prescribing, and literally flew off into the sunset. 

What is most disturbing about these cases (as if there aren't several things) is that while some money was settled that to us looks like a major cut, for companies that make hundreds of billions off of these practices, they won't be bleeding. 

$3 billion represents only a portion of what Glaxo made on the drugs. Avandia, for example, racked up $10.4 billion in sales, Paxil brought in $11.6 billion, and Wellbutrin sales were $5.9 billion during the years covered by the settlement, according to IMS Health, a data group that consults for drugmakers.
“…a $3 billion settlement for half a dozen drugs over 10 years can be rationalized as the cost of doing business,” said Patrick Burns, spokesman for the whistle-blower advocacy group Taxpayers Against Fraud. - NY Times

No one person was criminally charged, there was no jail time, no one was implicated in the possible and very likely real physical damages that might have been done to children who took these drugs. No one was fired. And there was no subsequent investigation into what else might be lurking behind the closed doors of big pharma. Glaxo did however agree in the settlement to an unprecedented move: they threatened to take away the bonuses of anyone in the company caught being that naughty again. Ouch. That might mean little Timmy the fourth might have to wait on the new Bends his crooked daddy was going to get him. 

It's like the government pocketed the money, shook their finger and said "Don't let us catch you doing that again!" 

Though, it does seem that government would profit an awful lot if one day they did catch them again. Government, but not the victims. 

On the flip side of this, true victims of say, proven vaccine injury, are not even allowed to sue the pharmaceutical companies according to a 2011 Supreme Court ruling. 

So the take away from this is before you pop that pill into your mouth or the mouth of your child that you would most likely die for, research. Then go back and research again. Question whose research study you're looking at and who funded it. Question the FDA standards (I'm sorry, I can't say "FDA" and "standards" together with a straight face) that let anything through if it's got the right brand logo on it. Question if the doctor who prescribed it to you really did it because they've also researched it and know it's both safe and effective, or if they got a memo that told them to take someone's word for it and "Hey team, let's - push - those - drugs!" 

On my way to college my dad wrote a note to me, mostly in jest but - knowing him - all serious. 

"Trust no one! - except me. :) " 

20 years of hard lessons later, I told him he had been right. No one will advocate, research, or care for your child like you will. 

Read also:
Risperdal and the whistle that no one heard
Vaccine makers immune to lawsuits according to Supreme Court
Glaxo agrees to pay $3 billion in fraud settlement
J&J to pay $158M to settle texas drug case