Imagine a treatment for drug addiction and alcoholism that uses no drugs, requires no trained personnel, resources or insurance and makes no money for anyone. This “people’s program” is the anonymous Twelve Step groups—now at risk of being monetized by Pharma with the help of government agencies like the National Institute on Drug Abuse and Pharma. Increasing, government, working with Pharma, wants to make drug addiction and alcoholism “diseases” to be treated with pills and even vaccines. Ka-ching.
A leader in the government/Pharma scheme is Dr. Nora Volkow, head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), who “believes that all addictions can be eliminated if the brain’s receptors can be controlled” according to an announcement for a 2013 speech she gave. Yes, “all.”
Volkow is credited with promulgating the out-of-the-box thinking that addiction is a real disease not a moral failing and that it is explained by neurobiology. Her theories are far from out-of-the-box or new. Bill Wilson declared alcoholism not a moral problem but a medical one in 1935 when he founded Alcoholics Anonymous. And neurobiology and “chemical imbalances” have been the explanation for depression and other psychiatric conditions ever since Pharma identified money in it.
It’s easy to see why Pharma wants a new revenue stream. Its blockbuster drugs like Lipitor, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Singulair and Concerta have gone off patent and government health programs are balking at paying billions for new brand drugs—even suing for reimbursement in some cases.
Huge fraud settlements in recent years against Abbott, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Merck and others have also taken their toll—making Pharma look both unethical and opportunistic.
So it is no surprise that Pharma is increasingly “partnering” with rehab facilities to reach one of the last demographics not in its franchise—alcoholics and drug addicts. Pharma consultant doctors are now involved with recovery, adding a new “step” to the traditional twelve that is the apogee of drug-free, self-help recovery: asking your doctor if you need a drug. Pharma, which loosened opioid guidelines to cause the opioid addiction epidemic that takes 91 lives a day, also markets the pills to “treat” opioid addiction.
People working at rehab facilities report there is great pressure on doctors to give addicts a mental illness diagnoses along with their drinking or drug problem so the patient can be treated with expensive pills. The prescribed psychiatric drugs often evolve into psychiatric drug cocktails and can take years for patients to titrate off them—if they can at all.
Brave new research
For decades, many have lamented the lack of firewalls between government agencies, government regulators and industry. The new FDA commissioner, for example, has received money from 23 drug companies and the Cures Act is a blank check for Pharma to continue its price gouging. NIDA’s Volklow is also Pharma friendly, co-writing papers with Pharma consultants including research written with four doctors who report a combined total of 57 financial links to Pharma!
Volkow has become a media darling because of an unusual pedigree. She is the great-granddaughter of Leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik leader expelled from the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin, and many of her ancestors perished during the reign of terror, said a SixtyMinutesfeature about her. Still her family’s ordeal doesn’t seem to have left her with increased compassion or sensitivity to suffering—at least in animals. In paper after paper, Volkow and her co-authors subject animals to drug toxicities, especially cocaine and methylphenidate (Ritalin), and invasive, painful experiments. One paper shows a graphic photo of a “pregnant bonnet macaque in transverse position within HR+ PET scanner. For dynamic PET studies, pregnant monkey was positioned so that maternal and fetal organs were within same field of view.” The brilliant conclusion from the research? That maternal cocaine use affects the fetus.
Federal animal research got a big boost when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins (who describes himself as a “serious Christian”) announced the “BRAIN” Initiative in 2014. Lab animals are literally the currency government grants to medical centers and universities are paid in—pork. (At a medical center where I worked, researchers felt they had not “made it” until they were given primates.) The grants, which are under the public’s radar even though the public pays for them, often reflect embarrassingly poor science and yet are repeated year after year.
Volkow’s research adds a Brave New World-like dimension to such research. She wrote in a NIH newsletter, “We have identified many of the biological and environmental factors [of addiction] and are beginning to search for the genetic variations that contribute to the development and progression of the disease.”
Why is this chilling? Already Pharma treats patients before they have diseases—they are “at risk” for heart disease, diabetes, asthma, bone thinning and GERD. Needless to say, people taking drugs for such conditions never know if they would have developed the condition and are afraid to stop. Imagine the abuse as people are increasingly seen as “at risk” of psychiatric diseases they don’t see or feel because of “biological, environmental factors and genetic factors.”
Is someone in your family or a friend an addict? Then you know more about addiction than Volkow who actually thinks a vaccine will “cure” addiction. For years she has floated the idea of such a vaccine as if addicts would voluntarily submit. Has she ever heard of denial? Has she ever contemplated why Antabuse (disulfiram), a drug that someone takes to keep from drinking, fails? How can the head the National Institute on Drug Abuse be so shamelessly ignorant about her very field?
Since 1935, millions have recovered from drug addiction and alcoholism for free with no drugs, no trained personnel and no insurance. Clearly Pharma and NIDA want to put an end to that.
Martha Rosenberg is a nationally recognized investigative health reporter whose food and drug expose, “Born with a Junk Food Deficiency,” won an American Society of Journalists and Authors honorable mention. Rosenberg has appeared on CSPAN, National Public Radio and lectured at the medical school and university levels.
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Getting addiction treatment for free? Big Pharma can fix that!
Posted on January 5, 2017 by Martha Rosenberg
Imagine a treatment for drug addiction and alcoholism that uses no drugs, requires no trained personnel, resources or insurance and makes no money for anyone. This “people’s program” is the anonymous Twelve Step groups—now at risk of being monetized by Pharma with the help of government agencies like the National Institute on Drug Abuse and Pharma. Increasing, government, working with Pharma, wants to make drug addiction and alcoholism “diseases” to be treated with pills and even vaccines. Ka-ching.
A leader in the government/Pharma scheme is Dr. Nora Volkow, head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), who “believes that all addictions can be eliminated if the brain’s receptors can be controlled” according to an announcement for a 2013 speech she gave. Yes, “all.”
Volkow is credited with promulgating the out-of-the-box thinking that addiction is a real disease not a moral failing and that it is explained by neurobiology. Her theories are far from out-of-the-box or new. Bill Wilson declared alcoholism not a moral problem but a medical one in 1935 when he founded Alcoholics Anonymous. And neurobiology and “chemical imbalances” have been the explanation for depression and other psychiatric conditions ever since Pharma identified money in it.
It’s easy to see why Pharma wants a new revenue stream. Its blockbuster drugs like Lipitor, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Singulair and Concerta have gone off patent and government health programs are balking at paying billions for new brand drugs—even suing for reimbursement in some cases.
Huge fraud settlements in recent years against Abbott, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Merck and others have also taken their toll—making Pharma look both unethical and opportunistic.
So it is no surprise that Pharma is increasingly “partnering” with rehab facilities to reach one of the last demographics not in its franchise—alcoholics and drug addicts. Pharma consultant doctors are now involved with recovery, adding a new “step” to the traditional twelve that is the apogee of drug-free, self-help recovery: asking your doctor if you need a drug. Pharma, which loosened opioid guidelines to cause the opioid addiction epidemic that takes 91 lives a day, also markets the pills to “treat” opioid addiction.
People working at rehab facilities report there is great pressure on doctors to give addicts a mental illness diagnoses along with their drinking or drug problem so the patient can be treated with expensive pills. The prescribed psychiatric drugs often evolve into psychiatric drug cocktails and can take years for patients to titrate off them—if they can at all.
Brave new research
For decades, many have lamented the lack of firewalls between government agencies, government regulators and industry. The new FDA commissioner, for example, has received money from 23 drug companies and the Cures Act is a blank check for Pharma to continue its price gouging. NIDA’s Volklow is also Pharma friendly, co-writing papers with Pharma consultants including research written with four doctors who report a combined total of 57 financial links to Pharma!
Volkow has become a media darling because of an unusual pedigree. She is the great-granddaughter of Leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik leader expelled from the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin, and many of her ancestors perished during the reign of terror, said a Sixty Minutes feature about her. Still her family’s ordeal doesn’t seem to have left her with increased compassion or sensitivity to suffering—at least in animals. In paper after paper, Volkow and her co-authors subject animals to drug toxicities, especially cocaine and methylphenidate (Ritalin), and invasive, painful experiments. One paper shows a graphic photo of a “pregnant bonnet macaque in transverse position within HR+ PET scanner. For dynamic PET studies, pregnant monkey was positioned so that maternal and fetal organs were within same field of view.” The brilliant conclusion from the research? That maternal cocaine use affects the fetus.
Federal animal research got a big boost when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins (who describes himself as a “serious Christian”) announced the “BRAIN” Initiative in 2014. Lab animals are literally the currency government grants to medical centers and universities are paid in—pork. (At a medical center where I worked, researchers felt they had not “made it” until they were given primates.) The grants, which are under the public’s radar even though the public pays for them, often reflect embarrassingly poor science and yet are repeated year after year.
Volkow’s research adds a Brave New World-like dimension to such research. She wrote in a NIH newsletter, “We have identified many of the biological and environmental factors [of addiction] and are beginning to search for the genetic variations that contribute to the development and progression of the disease.”
Why is this chilling? Already Pharma treats patients before they have diseases—they are “at risk” for heart disease, diabetes, asthma, bone thinning and GERD. Needless to say, people taking drugs for such conditions never know if they would have developed the condition and are afraid to stop. Imagine the abuse as people are increasingly seen as “at risk” of psychiatric diseases they don’t see or feel because of “biological, environmental factors and genetic factors.”
Is someone in your family or a friend an addict? Then you know more about addiction than Volkow who actually thinks a vaccine will “cure” addiction. For years she has floated the idea of such a vaccine as if addicts would voluntarily submit. Has she ever heard of denial? Has she ever contemplated why Antabuse (disulfiram), a drug that someone takes to keep from drinking, fails? How can the head the National Institute on Drug Abuse be so shamelessly ignorant about her very field?
Since 1935, millions have recovered from drug addiction and alcoholism for free with no drugs, no trained personnel and no insurance. Clearly Pharma and NIDA want to put an end to that.
Martha Rosenberg is a nationally recognized investigative health reporter whose food and drug expose, “Born with a Junk Food Deficiency,” won an American Society of Journalists and Authors honorable mention. Rosenberg has appeared on CSPAN, National Public Radio and lectured at the medical school and university levels.