Case File Pharmaceutical industry
The pharmaceutical industry makes money from disease which causes companies to be incentivized to promote disease with chronically ill as the most ideal (most profitable) situation.
Magazine KIJK: “The Pills Mafia” – Pharmaceuticals rich by ruining our health. (2009)
Psychiatry (mental health) is the most profitable for the pharmaceutical industry. Antipsychotics are the pharmaceutical industry's most profitable drug type. In America, a psychiatrist earns an average of $ 45,000 a year in extra income through work for the pharmaceutical industry.
(2007) Psychiatrists earn the most The New York Times of June 26, 2007 reports on the money flows from the pharmaceutical industry to doctors. It is mainly psychiatrists who receive a lot. The psychiatrists who receive the most are also the most likely to prescribe atypical antipsychotics to children. This involves risks and is therefore very controversial. Source: Column Professor Ivan N. Wolffers | Book: Top 100 drugs
The pharmaceutical industry annually donates hundreds of millions to psychiatrists and The American Psychiatric Association (APA) relies almost entirely on revenue from the pharmaceutical industry.
(2008) Congress Pummels Establishment Psychiatry The corruption of psychiatry by the pharmaceutical industry is extensive. In June 2008, congressional investigators exposed financial relationships between major drug companies and many high-ranking psychiatrists. And on July 12, 2008, the New York Times reported “Now the psychiatrist profession is under fire at all” as it was exposed that the primary professional organization — the American Psychiatric Association (APA), creator of the psychiatric bible (DSM-IV) ) – is mainly dependent on pharmaceutical funds. Source: The Huffington Post The corruption for financial gain is extensive. The companies deliberately keep serious side effects secret, bribe doctors, selectively publish or publish rogue studies and promote diseases and drugs in children.
(2006) ADHD Parents (Stichting Balans) Are Paid By Pharmacist Eli Lilly Distribute money to patient associations. It's one of the ways pharmaceutical companies try to sell their products. Source: Volkskrant | Marcel Hulspas (Editor-in-Chief Skeptic Magazine)
With antidepressants a fake pill with a side effect (active placebo) that gives users the feeling that something is happening in the body, is proven to be just as effective as antidepressants in patients with a clinical major depression. Despite that, the pharmaceutical industry has managed to create an evidence myth about its effectiveness. Well known professor John P. A. Ioannidis published the following article about it.
(2008) Effectiveness of antidepressants: an evidence myth constructed from a thousand randomized trials? Source: PhilPapers | Professor John P. A. IoannidisSome time ago it was revealed that the publisher of The Lancet (Elsevier) published 6 fake scientific journals for pharmaceutical companies, to mislead scientists and doctors in the financial interest of companies.
Reputational damage for medical publisher Elsevier, which publishes The Lancet, among others. Last week the Dutch-English company admitted that from 2000 to 2005 it had published six fake journals that were issued for scientific journals. In reality, they were marketing magazines paid for by pharmaceutical companies. The papers published in Australia had names such as Australasian Journal of General Practice and Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint Medicine. The magazines look solid, also because the name Elsevier is prominent on the front page and the sponsor's name is not.
Reputational damage for medical publisher Elsevier, which publishes The Lancet, among others. Last week the Dutch-English company admitted that from 2000 to 2005 it had published six fake journals that were issued for scientific journals. In reality, they were marketing magazines paid for by pharmaceutical companies. The papers published in Australia had names such as Australasian Journal of General Practice and Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint Medicine. The magazines look solid, also because the name Elsevier is prominent on the front page and the sponsor's name is not.Deadly side effects of antipsychotics
Pharmaceutical companies have been found to deliberately keep deadly side effects a secret, regularly paying large damages and fines that, while sometimes multibillion-dollar in size, are a mere pat on the back when considering the profits made by antipsychotics.
Pharmaceutical Eli Lilly paid $1.42 billion USD in damages in 2009 for concealing the deadly side effects of the antipsychotic Zyprexa and still made a profit that year, and pharmaceutical AstraZeneca also paid billions of dollars in damages for concealing deadly side effects of the antipsychotic Seroquel.
The following book by the well-known American lawyer Jim Gottstein is about the concealing of deadly side effects of the antipsychotic Zyprexa.
(2009) The Zyprexa Papers Lawyer Jim Gottstein accomplished in 2009 that the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly paid $1.42 billion dollars in damages for concealing deadly side effects of the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa. Source: PsychRights.org | Jim Gottstein | ISBN: 0578627264
Psychiatrists are to blame
After the disclosure of the concealment of deadly side effects and marketing for improper use of the antipsychotic drug Risperdal by the Belgian pharmaceutical company Janssen-Cilag, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, the CEO responded with the following in which he shifts the blame to psychiatrists.
“If that reflects the reality, I can't imagine that the FDA has not taken action against it in recent years,” said Christian De La Porte, medical director at Janssen Pharmaceutica.
He also refers to the psychiatrists who prescribe the product for the responsibility for off-label use. “It's not a medication you can get off that is prescribed. We have no control over whether they prescribe the medication within or outside the approved indications. It seems impossible to me that suddenly all psychiatrists are so influenced by marketing that they all start prescribing in an uncontrolled way to patients who could die from it. If that is the case, there is also a major ethical problem with the psychiatrists.”
TROS Radar undercover at pharmaceutical companies
VPRO/Vara - Argos - Farmaceutical researchers exposed
(2008) Cheating with suicide rates: Miracle pill, fake pill, suicide pill Source: VARA/VPRO NoorderlichtDocumentary: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Philosophical contemplation
Making money on disease creates an incentive to promote disease with chronic disease as the ideal situation.
Humans figuratively speaking started out of a cave and when weighing the potential for natural disaster against not making progress sufficiently fast could be in favor of the latter by definition. From a political perspective it might have been considered that simply enabling pharmaceutical companies to create research capacity sufficiently fast by any means would be in favor of humanity. In the case of a major species threatening event, the capacity of the pharmaceutical industry can be 100% dedicated to solving the problem.
At present times however, an argument could be that humans should evolve and put intelligence before practice.
A repeat of history?
The GMO industry (synthetic biology) originates from the pharmaceutical industry and has been growing fast. The pharmaceutical industry has been funneling their money to GMO (biotech) and in 2019 was already investing more than $1 trillion USD per year in GMO.
(2019) Pharmaceutical industry raises bet on biotech as frontier for growth Biotechnology is already a bigger business than many people realize. Rob Carlson of Bioeconomy Capital, an investment company, calculates that money made from creatures which have been genetically engineered accounted for about 2% of American GDP in 2017. Source: Financial Times (FT.com)
GMO is an unguided (dumb) practice driven primarily by the short term financial self-interest of companies that originate mostly from the pharmaceutical industry that has a history of profound corruption.
Reprogramming nature (synthetic biology) is extremely convoluted, having evolved with no intention or guidance.
The Economist (Redesigning Life, April 6th, 2019)
With their massive often ill gotten funds, the pharmaceutical industry invests into biotechnology to secure further growth, directly affecting billions of plants and animals on earth.
The origin of the GMO industry may be corruption for a large part.
The potential for exponential growth could heighten the risk of letting companies run dumb with a short term profit motive. A mistake can potentially cause a disaster for the human species or even nature on earth.
Looking back in time (history) cannot be a guiding principle for the future. 'Running dumb' as barbarian aggressors with a short term profit motive because history has required such figures to enable humans to escape the darkness of their cave may not be what can enable humans to prosper on the longer term.
For more information, see the article about morality and GMO on 
GMOdebate.org.