THE CONGRESS & BIG PHARMA VS. THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD 8/8/01 (427 wd)

   THE CONGRESS & BIG PHARMA VS. THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES

  by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD  8/8/01 (427 wd)

  [July 23, 2001 Public Citizen Report Exposes Drug Industry’s 625
Washington Lobbyists and  Spending Blitz to Keep Prices and Profits High
WASHINGTON, D.C.]

Worried that a benefit would lead to discounted prices in the senior
citizen market, Big Pharma (the drug industry) spent a record $262
million on political influence in the 1999-2000 election cycle.  With
it’s 625 DC lobbyists, the industry spent $177 million on lobbying, $65
million on issue ads and $20 million on  campaign contributions – more
than any other industry.  Might this be why Congress sells us out—does
their bidding, not ours?

The drug industry claims to work for consumers while it uses profits
from sales to buy  access to lawmakers and defeat pro-consumer
legislation.

Their 625 lobbyists last year was more than one for every member of
Congress at a cost of  $92.3 million per year.  More than half of these
were former members of Congress (21) or worked in Congress or other
federal agencies (295); 33 were chiefs of staff to members of Congress,
32 had worked in the White House and 11
had worked for the House Ways and Means Committee.

The industry’s $20 million in campaign contributions and millions more
in issue ads attacking candidates opposed by the drug industry aided its
army of lobbyists in gaining access to congressional representatives.

The width and breadth of this invasion of the government is decidedly
cancer-like.  When they pass mental health parity legislation, calling
millions of normal Americans "diseased"/"abnormal"/ "patients" in need
of/ requiring (increasingly by court order) forced   "treatment," drugs,
incarceration, electro-shock, psychosurgery, we are Americans no longer.

Think of it, the *Surgeon General of the US, the nation’s # 1 physician,
lying through his teeth for Big Pharma and all of their
bought-and-paid-for friends in government, telling us psychiatric
disorders are diseases, when none--not a single one--are, telling us we
need "chemical balancers"—pills, for our "chemical imbalances" of the
brain.  In turn, Congress passes "parity" legislation, legitimizing
these "diseases"  in law, something medicine and science has never done,
will never do.

*David Satcher, MD, Surgeon General of the US, went to medical school,
knows psychiatry is entirely subjective; knows he lied to the people of
the US, when, in his report on mental health in December, 1999, he
claimed all mental disorders were diseases  like diabetes, cancer, all
real, medical, diseases.  He should have resigned on the spot. He no
doubt continues in office at the pleasure of Big Pharma.