2002: combined profits of top 10 drug companies EXCEEDED combined profits of other 490 Fortune 500 companies

How Scientific Is Modern Medicine? | By Dana Ullman, North Atlantic Books | Posted on December 3, 2007, Printed on December 30, 2007 | http://www.alternet.org/story/68065/

The following is an excerpt from The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy, by Dana Ullman.
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In 2002, the combined profits ($35.9 billion) of the ten largest drug companies in the Fortune 500 were more than the combined profits ($33.7 billion) of the remaining 490 companies together (Angell, 2004, 11).1 The only reason these drug companies did not maintain this shocking financial advantage is that the oil companies' profits have increased considerably with the Iraq War, thus raising the 490 non-drug companies' profits slightly higher. But then again, one would assume that the profits of 490 of the largest companies in the world would be substantially more than just ten companies in one commercial field. This economic information is important, even essential, because learning how to separate the "science" of medicine from the business of medicine has never been more difficult. The combined efforts of the drug companies and the medical profession, which together may be called the "medicalindustrial complex," have been wonderfully effective in convincing consumers worldwide that modern medicine is the most scientific discipline that has ever existed. Before discussing homeopathy, it is important, if not necessary, to raise basic questions about what "scientific"medicine is -- and is not.

Physicians today rarely run drug companies. Instead, businessmen run them. It is, therefore, not surprising that Marcia Angell,MD, a Harvard professor of medicine and former editor of the famed New England Journal of Medicine , wrote:

Over the past two decades the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. ... Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the U.S. Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself. (Levi, 2006)

There is big big money to be made in drug sales, and brilliant marketing has led too many of us to ignore or excuse this bully side of medicine.
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Sadly and strangely, physicians do not see that there is something fundamentally wrong with the present medical model. Instead, once an old drug is found to be ineffective or dangerous, doctors and drug companies simply assert the "scientifically proven" efficacy of a new drug. Despite this recurrent pattern, doctors are prescribing drugs at record-breaking rates:

• In 2005 the volume of prescription drugs sold in the U.S. was equal to 12.3 drugs for every man, woman, and child in that year alone (compared to 1994, when 7.9 prescription drugs per year were on average purchased by every American). (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2006)
• According to a 2005 study, 44 percent of all Americans take at least one prescription drug and 17 percent take three or more prescription drugs (This number increased 40 percent between 1994 and 2000). ( Medscape , 2005)

The extremely high numbers listed above are considerably higher if one adds in the over-the-counter drugs that doctors recommend or that patients take on their own.
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