Comments

1. Patient

   • February 28th, 2008
   • 11:36 am
   • Link to this comment

   This is an unfortunate event for kidney cancer sufferes everywhere. The reason being now is that with this fantastic game of smoke and mirrors - which is by the way, the only thing Novartis really excels in, the one thing Kidney cancer patients can be sure of is all research into finding a cure for this disease will now be halted.

   Novartis strategy is to find a “targeted” drug for many types of cancers that are cost prohibition in every sense of the word. They latch into patient groups and through fear mongering (you are so affraid of dying and we have a “magical” elixir….) The patient groups are mobilized against governments forcing them to pick up the tab for the expensive drugs. This signifanctly reduces money available for research into a cure. Novartis grows a monopoly and “controls” that market segment. Evenutally they “buy” up drugs from biotechs - at enormously high prices making the biotech people fat cats and who’s going to complain? The competitive drugs then don’t work at all (but Novartis spent 500 million to buy a dud? - not likely, unless they just don’t know how to properly conduct “due dilligence”).

   Novartis then gives out lots of money to the kidney cancer fund. They get hired to do a study that says - kidney cancer patients are happy on drugs - therefore we just need educational programs to teach us how to live with a “chronic” disease. The drug price never goes down, it miracously (well after all they are the miracle drug company) keeps going up. In the mean time, the primary investigators get 100’sK of $$$ to conduct bogus studies and never see the raw data. Patient group leaders are paid off with trips to exotic places and bribed to convince other patients to go along with it.

   Meanwhile back at the patient population. Side effects abound, quality of life suffers. Patients are not being treated by their doctors anymore. If you don’t take the pill you are being non compliant and you are labelled a difficult patient - asked if you need to see a physciatrist. In the meantime your doc is accepting free trips to Greece and other lovely locations (after all you cannot learn anything unless you go to an exoctic place) to create bogus guidelines that further puts the patinet in the box. Patients, it turns out, are a means to an end. The docs are happy, the guidelines say that if you take the pill everyday you will live, if you don’t I don’t care. I can treat hundreds of patients and make a sh*t load of money and go on more trips and accept more speaking engagements and get more honorariums and graft - so what’s wrong with this?

   The best part is when you get told that you are not going to die of your disease. HA HA - you are going to die of a side effect of the drug, but that will never get recorded - afterall we wouldn’t want to hurt the “pristine” image of the drug.

   Anyway, this particular study compares the new drug to a placebo. Look at all the hype over a drug versus a placebo.

   Share holders beware - This is the same hype that happened with Tasigna - what a fiasco that drug is…

   Stay tuned