Why you can’t trust Big Pharma

Only 12 minutes. Well worth a watch...a bit of an eye-opener for those not already aware.

I watched this a few days ago.

I love the content, but the title is misleading. It should be why you can't trust the FDA/government. Maybe Russell did that on purpose because his title would get some of the people who need to see this, to watch it.

What this video explains is crony capitalism where there is a dangerous relationship between government and business. Sort of a spin on the military industrial complex.

I've always liked Russell Brand, ever since he divorced Katy Perry.  The older he gets, the more he gets into issues like this.  Pharma has shrouded itself with the patina of 'officialdom' with these kinds of connections and associations.  But Brand still appears to expect some sort of honesty and righteousness behind the scenes; get with it...it always, is now and always will be a capitalist motivated operation.

They present themselves as great Research and Development enterprises, when the truth is they are just money operations.  All the real R & D operations are done (and paid for) by research grants to universities, non-profit labs and institutions, by the likes of the Ford Foundation, Jewish Communal Fund, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, the Heinz Endowment, Glasser Foundation and The National Endowment for the Humanities...and many more.  Then, after the real R&D done at universities and research institutions, the Pharmas swoop in and buy up the patent rights for developing drugs (all R&D), telling the principals they will pay them periodic royalties (as Brand says), thus keeping them on the hook, but far less than the real development costs.

The FDA/government is Big Pharma.  The network of cronyism alone assures that agents in agencies (FDA and CDC, etc.), and those who go to work for Big Parma after leaving the agency, speak the same language, and see at the same eye-level.

And let's not even get into big corporate economics invasion of universities and government supported labs and institutions.