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from the little-call-flood-for-big-pharma dept.
Addiction to heroin and other opiates is a growing problem in the USA, as Presidential hopefuls have learned from Q&A sessions with voters on the campaign trail (previous SN story here).
Tired of encountering dead bodies, the police department of Gloucester, MA (an old city with a large commercial fishing industry) decided to appeal for the public's help in a rather interesting way, via a department Facebook post:
Gotta go make some calls.....
Top 5 Pharmaceutical CEO Salaries:
5. Eli Lilly - John Lechleiter $14.48 million
jlechleiter@lilly.com 317-276-2000
4. Abbott Labs - Miles D. White $17.7 million
miles.d.white@abbott.com 847-937-6100
3. Merck - Kenneth C. Frazier
$25 million + cool private jet.
ken.frazier@merck.com 908-423-1000
2. Johnson & Johnson - Alex Gorsky $20.38 million
ceo@jnj.com 732-524-0400
1. Pfizer - Ian Read $23.3 million
ian.read@pfizer.com 212-573-2323
They're all on Forbes Top 100 CEO salaries as well.
In 2013 The Huffington Post reported that the 11 largest pharmaceutical companies made $711 BILLION in profits in the last decade while their CEO's made a combined $1.57 BILLION in the same period.
Now...don't get mad. Just politely ask them what they are doing to address the opioid epidemic in the United States and if they realize that the latest data shows almost 80% of addicted persons start with a legally prescribed drug that they make. They can definitely be part of the solution here and I believe they will be....might need a little push.
takyon: A newer Facebook post says that Pfizer is in contact with the Gloucester Police Department.
(Score: 2) by BK on Sunday September 20 2015, @05:01PM
Yep. The incentives are there and they follow them all the time. Just the other day I saw an internet advert that promoted lifting with you back, not your legs, because there's opiates for that. And another on TV recommending unnecessary invasive surgery because opiates. And on the radio last night I heard an offer to "become deaf in style" to escape the honey-do list.
There are drugs that "Big Pharma" has to create markets for. These are not them.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @07:23PM
It isn't about advertisements on tv. Its about seeding doctors with manipulative studies, junkets and free samples. So that not only do they push the opiates, they are disinterested in and often ignorant of treatments that don't depend on opiates or that use them as secondaries rather than primaries.
Guys like you are why I stopped calling myself a libertarian. You think you know everything, but its just teenage logic where you are ignorant of your ignorance.