The goods "drug" and the development of multinational giants

The goods "drug" and the development of multinational giants

The United States and the United Kingdom produce 78% of the worldwide turnover of medicines. Mass production and use of new drugs and vaccines rank pharmaceutical companies in a prominent position, allowing huge profits thanks to rapid growth and sale of their products. Human health is defined as "the investment business more profitable."

In the nineties, the commercialization of gene technology has brought tremendous upheaval in the areas of seeds, agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and the emergence of giants who specialize in "life sciences" such as Monsanto and the pharmaceutical company Novartis. Today, new technologies of synthetic biology are connected to a new wave of mergers, acquisitions and partnerships in the context of the economy of biomass, with the energy giants such as Dow Chemical and DuPont, Shell and Exxon. Chevron and Total have signed strategic alliances with the giants of the seed as Monsanto, Cargill, Bunge, ADM and Weyerhaeuser. At the heart of these alliances are the new businesses of synthetic biology, such as Life Technologies Inc, Amyris, Solazyme and Evolva promoted to play dominant roles in the food, energy, medicines and chemicals.

Financial Data - Profitability

Among the 500 most profitable corporations on the planet, appear in the top positions of the 10 richest pharmaceutical companies. And 'documented that their earnings exceed the sum of the profits of the remaining 490, a figure that reaches 40 billion dollars.

Each year, drug companies spent globally up to 11 billion dollars for the promotion of their products.

Spend each year - especially in so-called developed countries of the Western world - trillions of dollars and euro for new research, methods and applications in medicine that multinationals exploit in the final stages of production and distribution, in order to reap huge profits.

The 10 largest companies in the world in research and development spend about 11-14% of their income, while the distribution of their products and administrative costs amounted to approximately 35%.

The close relationship between doctors and pharmaceutical companies has a direct effect on prescription drugs. Of the 11 billion dollars that are spent every year for the promotion of their products, half is given to doctors by medical representatives. It is estimated that each year is spent an amount between 8,000 and € 13,000 per physician in all countries of the world!

The pharmaceutical companies are overloading the price of raw materials (transport services) usually in Cypriot companies with which divide the price difference.

A British multinational pharmaceutical company, while having its processing centers in India uses these centers and software by charging the same as that of all EU countries. So if a country exchanges information with another country, it will not stand the cost difference though, in many cases, the costs are 3-4 times lower.

The profits of the seven largest pharmaceutical companies in the world in 2011 and the change in profit compared to 2009
  Position in the list of the 500 largest companies in the world percentage change in profits in the period 2009/2011
phizer
104
-4.4%
Novartis
164
16.6%
GSK
194
-70%
Sanofi - Aventis
187
-1.1%
Bayer
178
-8.8%
AZ
281
7.1%
Eli Lilly
423
17.1%
 
  Profit is the sole criterion while they ignored the needs and the right of peoples to medicine

Multinationals medicine are able to control the international health care systems, can prevent the independent production and use of chemical drugs or natural, claiming "intellectual property" and the "patent" of the chemical formulas.

The European Union through the '"Free Trade Agreement" (FTA) proposed in India, seeks to inhibit the Indian generic drug companies from manufacturing drugs at extremely low prices, which aim to meet the needs of the poorest, with the pretext of the patent rights of pharmaceutical companies. The multinational pharmaceutical company Novartis applies pressure to the achievement of '"Free Trade Agreement" which states the intellectual property rights of an anticancer drug changed. A N.Delhi there have been protests against this agreement, but the Western media hide the problem.

In May 2010, thousands of diabetics in Greece were "hostage" of the company Nova Nordisk due to the withdrawal of 17 products, according to the representatives of the company, for the "drastic reduction" in prices. A few months ago, the multinational pharmaceutical companies have refused to supply hospitals with anticancer drugs unless they were paid in cash: Roche Hellas SA has suspended the supply of medicines to hospitals in Greece produced and imported exclusively by her, drugs needed to fight and treat serious diseases such as cancer (Herceptin, Avastin, Xeloda). They justified their decision citing shortcomings in terms of payment and reimbursement by hospitals.

The British company Glaxo Smith Kline and the Swiss company Roche are working with European authorities on emergency plans relating to the supply of specific drugs if Greece returned to the drachma.

Companies such as Bayer Hellas, Leo Pharma Hellas, Hellas Abbot, Novartis and Nycomed Hellas act in parallel: they have unilaterally changed for the worse, their lending policy towards pharmaceutical wholesalers, suspending the credit granted for the payment of invoices and establishing payment in cash or by remittance in advance.

The "paradise" union of multinational medicine

In May 2010, the multinational pharmaceutical companies in Greece have fired 25% of their workers. On the other hand is not paid any reduction in drug prices and no significant change in the Memorandum. Staff cuts have been made at the international level (Pfizer, Roche).

The multinational Bristol-Myers Squibb has proceeded to the dismissal of 55 workers this summer and at the same time closed the field of medicine in the greek market.

L '"humanism" and the "sensitivity"

In 1984, in Bhopal in India, toxic methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide factory U.S. employing local labor at low cost. 20,000 people were killed and an unknown number suffer from back then. In October of 2011, we learned that the victims who survived and who were supposed to be treated at the hospital and the research center of the Bhopal Memorial, have become unwitting "guinea pigs" on which the multinational pharmaceutical companies a sleeper their new drugs, Astra particular zeneka. His representative has publicly admitted that in diplomatic tone: "In this region of India has not been taken adequately the consent of patients." Of course, this whole process was done in exchange for money received from the hospital at the expense of unsuspecting patients. This hospital built as compensation from Union Carbide and that was supposed to give specialized assistance to victims and survivors of Bhopal for research on the long-term consequences of the accident, has conducted clinical drug trials on 215 patients unwitting victims of the disaster of 1984. According to data collected by the competent Indian authorities civil organizations: 3 patients died as a result of the test Fondaparinux (cardiology), Tigicycline (gastrointestinal surgery) and Televansin (anesthesia).

In 2008, the United Nations has "highlighted", without doing anything, the fact that multinational companies have shifted the majority of clinical trials in India for drugs for the European and American market. The powerful Union of Chambers of Commerce of India said that the country has received more than $ 1 billion in 2010, through drug trials on people compared to 200 million in 2009.

Last year, the official government of Nigeria has filed a lawsuit against the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, asking for a compensation of $ 7 billion for the testing of experimental drugs that the company has conducted 11 years ago on approximately 200 children who suffered of meningitis. The intermediaries were "Doctors Without Borders". The majority of children treated with the experimental antibiotic Trovan, presented a number of serious side effects such as deafness, blindness, paralysis, severe brain damage, and some have died.

Competition and profitability are detrimental to the quality of medicine and health. What does "economic medicine" when everything is in the hands of multinational corporations?

Five foreign companies of generic drugs, the Icelandic Actavis, Mylan and Watson the U.S., Israel's Teva and India Randaxy await the decision on the "prescription of the active principle" and the choice of the drug cheaper to enter the market generic in Greece and get a slice of the pie.

Teva is specialized in the production of drugs very cheap. It is significant that produces active ingredients at its factories in India, China, Israel, Puerto Rico and Mexico. The Israeli society itself has repeatedly expressed concerns about the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which noted in a number of cases impure substances in its factories! Inadequate controls, impurity, black particles of unknown origin, the elimination of tests with negative results and replacing them with more "convenient", inadequate scientific studies, pollution and disruption during the production of medicines, inadequate cleaning of equipment: these are just some of the results of the inspections by the FDA in the factories of Teva. In fact, the seriousness of the findings was that the U.S. authorities have proceeded with the closure of the company in Missouri, United States of America!

The improper corruption in medicine, as a result of operational activities of multinational

A senior executive of the pharmaceutical company DePuy International, a subsidiary of U.S. giant Johnson and Johnson, has admitted before a British court had "given" more than 5 million Euros to the leaders of the Greek hospitals as an "incentive" to prefer his company for orthopedic supplies. According to the same report, sales in Greece were made ​​through the company Medec SpA and payments of bribes made ​​to the offshore account controlled by the Madison Management Ltd. The "commission" average was 23% of the actual value of the product, but in some cases has reached 100%. As he witnessed the senior executive of the company, who was convicted in 2002 of the knee prosthesis that now proposed, costing € 4,400 to the state greek compared to 2,200 Euros for other countries of Europe.

According to the report of the newspaper "Proto Thema", the Under Secretary for Health, indicated by the Democratic Left (DIMAR) requested in its letter of 24 August 2012 to proceed "immediately" with the order of reagents for the control unit blood for WNV virus. The strange thing about this job is not only the size, reach the impressive amount of € 1.2 million, but according to the report of "Proto Thema", even more than the fact that the Under Secretary asks to assign the order to a particular multinational when there is no real reason for this provision, as the action of the Deputy Secretary had already secured 20,000 free checks from another company!