CLASSIC: Big Pharma: Conspiracies and Cover-ups

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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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, everybody take their soma. Everybody check their their pills,
make sure you're on schedule. Whatever I think of this episode, man,
the first thing I think of is how normalized it
is to have very weird commercials for prescription drugs here
in the US that doesn't happen in like most other
countries except New Zealand. I think I don't often watch

(00:24):
television shows that have commercials in them anymore. But I
happened to be on a popular streaming service watching a
television show you know that aired on TV, and then
they put them on these streaming services, and I sat
through so many pharmaceutical company commercials. I I had no
idea they were going so strong, but so many weird

(00:46):
ass names. I thought the same thing. You're reading my mind, man.
I always I have this strange fascination with those commercials.
Like you, I don't watch a lot of television either.
I just love I love the idea that someone is saying,
how do we tell people that this drug could help

(01:07):
with a very specific condition and possibly have some terrible
side effects? And then someone's like, you know what, we
should have just uh people frolicking in a park? Yeah,
and just say the name of the thing, but don't
say what it does. And the call to action without
fail in every one of these commercials is ask your
doctor if this drug is right for you. That is

(01:30):
so weird to me, followed immediately after by like the
micro machine man going through boboutrain is not allowed for
the left handed the Welsh, you know, like if he
goes on and it goes like you know, it sees
you immediately if you have bouts of mystical revelations, the tingles,
the shingles, the shankles, the cankles man, it seems like

(01:51):
they're taking their cues from Illumination Global. In my opinion,
I feel like I contractually cannot comment on that. But
this episode is all right, let's say, let's take our drugs.
Here we go from UFOs two ghosts and government cover ups.
History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back

(02:12):
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 a slave to the pharmaceutical industry, I think the
big pharmacy is holding back cures for diseases since everyone

(02:35):
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, welcome back to the show. I'm here, I'm

(02:59):
Ben no Ah, you're here here, and most importantly you
are here Sean. Ladies and gentlemen, everybody in the US,
across the world, We're coming semi live. To your ear bles,
ear holes, yeah, to your ear jumps maybe. Uh. And
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.

(03:21):
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. We did a video series on this way

(03:42):
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

(04:02):
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 twenty

(04:24):
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 predatory and

(04:46):
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
pharma has become this umbrella term for the world's largest
multinational pharmaceutical companies. These are the corporate goliaths, the corporate

(05:11):
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,
the pharmaceutical industry spent around two point six billion dollars

(05:32):
just to lobby lawmakers, legislators, and for for some perspective,
if you haven't read that number against other things, that
means that they've spent more than the defense and aerospace sectors. Yeah.
I mean, maybe I'm naive, but I always have a
hard time imagining what day to day lobbying actually looks like.

(05:53):
Can you fill me in and the listeners just a
little bit about specifically what a pharmaceutical lobbyist might do influence. Yeah, well,
that's a great question. We should mention a shout out
to our own Matt the Madman Frederick, who is with us,
who is with us in spirit on his vacation, because
I'm about to talk about one of Matt's favorite shows.

(06:15):
Longtime listeners, you've heard this before. There was a show
called K Street. I believe it was right. Definitely mention
that one. Yeah, and this gives a not completely accurate,
but pretty close to the bone look at how lobbying works.
Lobbying is a legal activity in the US. Technically or theoretically.

(06:39):
Listeners know 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, we could do the following things.
UH take take lawmakers out to lunches is or to

(07:00):
galas 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 and every industry
does this to some degree in there and and countries
do it as well. There are, for example, like the

(07:21):
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 legal drug pie. And this is
not counting the money that drugmakers spend to influence doctors.

(07:43):
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
representatives Jane Nuion of you know, South Wisconsin or something

(08:04):
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 want me to take
you out to a nice, nice lunch. We'll have some

(08:26):
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, then it's most likely
an association called the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. Right.

(08:52):
So this is basically a trade group that represents forty
eight of the leading biopharmaceutical researchers and biotechnolo g companies um.
Possibly the most notable victory 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,

(09:16):
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. It's also been called Obamacare.
It's a romney mit romney helms program in Massachusetts that
was later taken to a national level by the Obama administration,

(09:39):
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 see articles from the Wall Street Journal
saying that the pharmaceutical companies made a benefit of like

(10:00):
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 first I want to say there's no
question that research by scientists at pharmaceutical companies has led

(10:23):
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, not necessarily cures, but treatments,

(10:44):
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 a conspiracy stuff on all of
those and you'll you'll see episodes that may not make
it to the air for one reason or another or

(11:06):
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, right, the case
of the pharmaceutical startup tycoon. Yeah, the farmer bro. Is

(11:29):
that what they're calling him on Twitter? Oh Man? Uh
Martin Screlly 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 Scado indeed. All right,
So there are critics of big pharma, and they often

(11:50):
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
people believe that pharmaceutical companies have something like secret treatments
or even a secret cure for everything from cancer to lekemia,
HIV other chronic terminal conditions, but have covered up this

(12:13):
knowledge in the interests 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, 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

(12:35):
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 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, the concept

(12:57):
that there is a water powered car, or there is
a even consumer products like a toothpaste you only have
to apply once, or something some serious like Willie 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

(13:21):
at least classify technology several years in advance of what
the public has access to, 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

(13:41):
only a select few of the world's population have access to.
We're gonna look at that in a little more detail.
That's one of the biggest, most consistent classifications of conspiracy
theories we hear about big pharma. This is another one.
If I was going to make up a term for
these folks, know, I would call them the invention theorists,

(14:02):
taking it a step further and arguing that pharmaceutical companies
are not just suppressing cures, but actually inventing new diseases,
either by renaming 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.

(14:25):
I definitely got that got restless leg syndrome right now? Yeah,
I mean after a couple of drinks, I have a
serious case of happy feet for sure. Uh And I'm
under the impression that I could both whip and I
believe that you could really have faith in your ability.

(14:46):
I really feel like it will be a personal failing
on both our parts if I ever get to that position.
And let's hope there's not a camera around. But this,
this idea is this idea will be familiar to a
lot of people in the u US when you'll notice
the prevalence of uh prevalence of vaguely named drugs that

(15:08):
are meant to treat mental or emotional conditions that in
the past would not have would not have been treated.
It might be specific, but without going into that yet,
we'll just say that that's another group. So they are
the people who think things are being suppressed, cures are
being suppressed, and a group of people who think either

(15:29):
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 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

(15:49):
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 truth stories, right. So,
aside from the recent news, history is absolutely filled with
these kinds of shenanigans. Here are some actual examples of illegal, corrupt,

(16:12):
and or unethical things pharmaceutical companies have done in the past.
Oh yeah, let me set you up for this. So,
how does pharma actually influenced legislation? That's a tough one,
but the answer to that question lies partially with the
American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC a l e C. ALEC,

(16:34):
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
desires of the parties involved. Um. Yeah. So defenders of
ALEC say that it provides a forum for legislative and

(16:56):
industrial partnership, but critics say that it's not so much
the case that the public is basically completely cut out
of the entire process. So like a smaller version than
of the t p P. So there, it's true, these
these model bills are not necessarily intended. And I hope

(17:18):
you guys can hear the air quotes I'm laying down
thick over there not necessarily intended. Yeah, figure too to
become the verbatim bill, but 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

(17:41):
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 by the same laws. In fact, ALEX
membership list is secret. And big pharmaceutical associations don't just

(18:03):
keep their spending to the hallowed 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 brand name drugs. Right. Yeah, It's it's funny.
Have you ever been in a hospital knoll or in

(18:24):
the doctor's office when a pharmacy rep comes through with
all their pens and their mouse pads. Yeah, their swag
and they look like models or something. They travel around
convincing various doctors medical professionals that name brand drug X
is superior and should be prescribed for the following conditions

(18:47):
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, Neil,
what kind of doctor are you? I'm a doctor of funk. No,

(19:07):
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,
you agree with us? Right, we're at dinner. Now you

(19:31):
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
that they've already written there, and they say, and we're

(19:51):
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, no,
I know. Ten doctors agree crimberly at the restaurant and
to go is awesome, visa v This drug is awesome, right.

(20:14):
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 there's a lot of stuff they can't say.
How would you describe one of those ads? So it's

(20:36):
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 colors, lots of pastels, there's butterflies everywhere,
the sun is shining. There, maybe children playing in a playground.
There's probably instrumental music. You don't really hear the people talking,

(20:56):
probably like some slow motion reaction shots of happy smiling
face and laughing. Yes, like the vague, vague, vague, vague
voiceover 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 most
out of every day on this planet. And then the
voiceover was shift right over to the name of the drug,

(21:20):
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, something
that our lead sponsor, Illumination Global Unlimited, is legally required

(21:40):
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. They
just slip an envelope under the door. One time that
was volunteering in a nursing home and they just sent
one of the residents of the nursing home to tell

(22:02):
me what our next ad campaign just gonna uh huh.
It turned around and she was gone, yeah, So you know,
que the smalty ultra music, ask your doctor if the
heleometrics is right for you. Side effects may include drowsyness,
business nauseais, chap nation, weird, shoe footedness, wrong headedness, who knows,
one knows, scro double think of brain fever, consumption, sold deaf, squamishness, impertinence,

(22:26):
in continence, offensive punctuality, offensive punctuation, punctuad grammar America. Yeah,
that kind of stuff. Yeah, you know now that, now
that I hear it, that that's spot on. But it
sounds a little silly, 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

(22:46):
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 talk about
let's talk about this idea that there was a propagation
of disease, or that these false diseases were created and marketed. Right,

(23:11):
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, and so millions of dollars
worth of an injectable blood clotting medicine called Factor eight concentrate,
which is intended for hemophiliacs to Asian, Latin, American, and

(23:34):
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?
How did this become tainted? The medicine in question here
was made using combined plasma from large numbers of donors

(23:57):
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 batch right
and reports say that, although the worldwide numbers are difficult
to calculate, in Hong Kong and Taiwan alone, more than
one hemophiliacs contracted HIV after using this medicine, most of

(24:19):
whom have died. But in May of nine five, Dr
Harry M. Meyer Jr. The f d a's blood products official,
called the companies to a meeting, believing that they had
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

(24:42):
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
that is a scary, real life situation. There's a another
book that you may enjoy if you haven't read it before, Believe,

(25:04):
called The River, in which the author details the genesis
of AIDS and how it's spread, and they allege that
they allege that pharmaceutical companies knowingly sold or experimented with
tainted batches of product on populations in sub Saharan Africa,
which sparked the rise of the HIV epidemic. It's it's

(25:29):
important to note that that is not consider the specific
genesis like it's not universally agreed. People are still arguing
over how this, how this happened. But you will often
hear pharmaceutical companies being being accused of this, not not
so much through some sort of purposeful thing, as either

(25:51):
trying as either trying to save money or being you know,
fiscally corrupt or incompetent. How do we know that Bear
knew that the HIV was in the medicine, and yet
they continued 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

(26:13):
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, 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

(26:34):
had the high likelihood of being tainted with with aids.
They knew they could no longer sell 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

(26:57):
to keep the continued sales hidden, UH, so that this
could be solved without alerting Congress, the medical community, and
the public. And these are according to 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

(27:21):
it's between drug companies and the FDA regulators they're supposed
to oversee them, or for example, 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

(27:45):
it does show, you know, how how 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 the case of things like

(28:09):
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 story about

(28:33):
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 are later

(28:54):
being hired to work for the people being watched or
come from that industry, you know, the r human 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 this

(29:15):
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

(29:35):
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

(30:01):
Italian news media we're reporting a lot of this. In
two thousand 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

(30:21):
called the Cutter biological unit of Bear ignored a federal
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 him ophiliacs from bleeding out. So

(30:46):
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 spokesperson said that, however,

(31:08):
the company accepts no responsibility in this case and continues
to insist that has always acted responsibly and ethically. So
coursing is 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 no

(31:30):
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

(31:51):
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

(32:13):
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 on 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

(32:34):
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

(32:58):
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 advantageous 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 be

(33:22):
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,

(33:43):
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

(34:06):
saying that. 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 f d A hoops that if there were
a magical cure, people would sell it. They would sell

(34:28):
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,

(34:50):
maybe chemists is 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 discovered a cure enough to keep it secret. You know,

(35:10):
how would how would you do that? And this this
goes 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.

(35:33):
I'd love to hear more from listeners who believe that
there is 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

(35:55):
or through a relatively simply made derivation of a plant,
that pharmaceutical 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

(36:18):
Bell in business. That's that's one magic power has. But
but it is true that pharmaceutical companies have worked diligently
to isolate you know, functional chemicals, the the active you know,
tetracannaboids and stuff, the th HC too, make it a
pill form instead of something that a person would you know,

(36:40):
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 episode was just on drug addictions, that it was,
and I was talking about how, you know, privatizing, privatization
of methodone clinics force, Oh yeah, yeah, right, and so
obviously ties into big pharma. I mean, you know, somebody's

(37:02):
got to manufacturer the methodone or whatever short version of
that is just being prescribed, you know, for the treatment
of opiate addiction. UM. There's a lot of articles out
there about UM. I think the most recent when I
saw I was on 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

(37:24):
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 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

(37:45):
UM it is apparently a very good analog to methodone.
And not nearly as uh not doesn't carry nearly as
many side effects, so so it can be used to
treat um people have be in addiction. Absolutely okay, according
to you know, some of these sources, and we could
maybe find a few links and pirst them on social um.

(38:07):
But I think it's just a good example of like
a longstanding natural product that has been around. Apparently, this
that used to be so popular um in um in
Thailand that they it had to be banned because it
was actually interfering with the opium trade because people were

(38:30):
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 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

(38:52):
saying that I've had this point. I've had difficulty finding
a proven case suppression that later came out. One thing
that could be similar would be not related so much
to pharmaceutical companies, but the Tuskegee experiments where the US
government withheld treatment for syphilis. But that again, that would

(39:15):
be Uncle Sam. That would not necessarily be like a
viser or a bear. So 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.

(39:38):
We've looked at the propagation 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

(39:58):
such a big term. There are number of ways we
can look at it, but we want to know what
you think. So write to us on Facebook, follow us
on Twitter. 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

(40:21):
WiFi game back. 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

(40:43):
not our co host, but 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 traffic to air quotes
can be a get out of jail card for prostitute
to get arrested. Maggie McNeil has written a fairly thorough

(41:06):
analysis of how questionable the widely popularized 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

(41:27):
obvious bias on your show. Well, Matt, 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

(41:52):
are very problematic. And I can't remember 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

(42:12):
ever want to do sex work. But if we 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,

(42:33):
quite a number of people are in sex trafficking or
forced labor of any sort against their will. 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

(42:55):
of the listeners to hear your take on And thank
you for the recommendation of Maggie McNeil. For people who
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,

(43:17):
the vast majority of forced labor or human trafficking forced
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,

(43:40):
thanks so much for writing, Matt, and I appreciate your point.
It was well uh, well written, well presented. Again check
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 motivations
typically behind a statistic. M hm I yeah, I personal level,

(44:05):
I'm sure, Yeah, I completely agree. And statistics can be
so 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

(44:26):
that said, uh, the majority of people agree that children
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

(44:47):
sitting constantly has legitimate and long lasting health effects. Then
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,

(45:11):
given given the given the recent statistics on pollution, and
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
uh consistently dwindled. I think it's like ten minutes a

(45:31):
day now, which is just enough time to get kids
to run outside and then run back in. Did I
ever tell 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

(45:54):
is a nice letter. I just wanted to write in
to let you know 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 jerk. I love that image.
I was very timid about listening. The level of skepticism
you show every week, though, is very refreshing when it

(46:16):
comes to these topics. I am very interested in conspiracy
theories as a topic, but 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.

(46:38):
You know, you might be a regular listener, and you
might have friends who say, oh no, we'll make up
a name of a person, Stephen Mecklenburg. Okay, And let's
say you're Steven 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 tinfoil hat bologney

(47:01):
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 driven show,

(47:24):
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 our listeners

(47:45):
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 if you have if

(48:05):
you have some friends like that who um pride 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 I I heard

(48:26):
a good one that is not what what? What's that phrase?
A conspiracy circle jerk? Do we even say that on
the air. There's a there's a band called the circle Jerks. Okay, alright, 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 list. Whoa wait, do you hear

(48:48):
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 to day's moment to
revisit our boys. Screlly, Martin Screlly. Um. This is a story.
It's fascinating to me on a couple of levels, but
one it really shows the power of the internet. First

(49:12):
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 old former hedge fund manager, so just you know,

(49:33):
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 that's what you
do for a living. I'm gonna walk away from a
terrible landscaping joke. I don't. You don't have to, I know,

(49:55):
let's go all right, I'll go with you. So Martin Screlly,
um for two year old financial whiz I guess you
could call him. Uh, used to manage a hedge fund.
So left the hedge fund and it was part of
a pharmaceutical company called Retrofin. Is that right? Yeah, Retrofin
and Retrofin acquired the rights to sell a drug called

(50:18):
fiola fiolas 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. Yeah,
So we're burying the lead here a little bit. But
the reason we bring that up is this was sort
of the first example of this guy Screlly um doing

(50:40):
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
per patient. So good little backstory there. But the lead

(51:01):
that we're bearing 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,
like something. I don't really think of it as like,
I mean, I guess all companies have to start somewhere,

(51:23):
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
has actually been used for years to treat toxoplasmosis, which

(51:45):
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 system. Where it comes where it
becomes a real problem is with immunodeficient individuals UM suffering
from you know, say HIV, AIDS or cancer. And what

(52:06):
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 our boys
Screlly bought it, he decided it would be a good
idea to up the price from thirteen change to I
believe seven hundred and fifty dollars a pill. Yeah, I

(52:29):
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 use this drug actively it's was not profitable
for our company UM to sell it at that price.
And honestly, what we're doing by raising the price here

(52:51):
is actually very altruistic because it means that we can
take this money and invest it back into research and development,
you find a better drug UM with viewer 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,

(53:11):
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 soaken cost of the of you know, the the
overhead to research and create it. Well, I guess that's
a good point, because I mean, if you'd spend fifty
million dollars to acquire it, I guess you have to
figure that into it when you know you're talking about

(53:32):
what would be profitable to sell the drug for. 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 to why they're quote unquote
price gouging, They say, oh, well, our you know, biggest
stakeholders are are the patients. You know, that is who

(53:53):
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. You know, there was there
was another piece of big news though, right yeah, Um,
so basically what happened is this news came out, the
Internet proceeded to go bananas like it tends to do,

(54:15):
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
also an active Twitter user and tended to respond to
Internet criticisms by quoting Wu Tang clan lyrics saying that

(54:40):
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
arrested b of l a X or something like that.
Ye had deep cut there, um, But yeah, and he's
kind of this kind of smirky little face this you know,

(55:00):
kind of hipster haircut and just just you know, very
easy to demonize a guy like that who just does
no self awareness when it comes to 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
most fascinating to me about this is here is a
quote unquote pharmaceutical startup making this incredibly contentious decision, and

(55:23):
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. 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

(55:44):
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 are going on
behind closed doors when it comes to these pharmaceutical companies.
But it was all in this really interesting of micro level.
So it was a really interesting glimpse into what likely

(56:04):
is happening on a larger scale, but in real time
in the span of a day. Yeah, and the price
is gonna drop. He's gonna drop. Internet shamed him into
rowing back the price, right, we'll see. Well, and also
we don't know if that was the determining factor, but people,
you know, it seems like it. He said, it was

(56:25):
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 bad for me,
so I'm not gonna do it. So that's, you know,

(56:46):
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 and when this happened, tweeted out, this
is exactly the kind of ridiculous price gouging that we're
trying to prevent in big pharma. You know, I am

(57:08):
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 because of the echo chamber that
is Twitter in the Internet. Like, so the whole thing

(57:29):
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's it. But
but but then this goes into the larger fight, for instance,
between generic drug manufacturers in India who are making things
that would cost on the order of a dollar or

(57:49):
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, which goes back again to
the t p P, which we don't have too much

(58:11):
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 something that always makes
us a little bit less close to getting fired. Uh.

(58:33):
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 things to research, ideas for episodes. Um, let us
know what you think about how we're doing. Let us

(58:54):
know ways that we can use you know, Noble's corner
to better effect. Um, I just readubbed at Millis Quarters Quarter.
Um now we just we we loved. We always love
to hear what you guys think because as been and
that always say, this is your show. And that's the
end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts
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(59:18):
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(59:39):
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