29 October 2008

Oh, the poor pharmaceutical companies!

Profits at Merck, one of the US-based giants in pharmaceuticals, has seen its third-quarter profits fall by 28 percent.

Pharmaceutical giant Merck is to cut 7,200 jobs, or roughly 12% of its workforce. Around 40% of the cuts will be in the United States, many of them from management as Merck trims the number of senior and mid-level executives by 25%....

These cuts come on top of the axing of 10,400 positions announced in 2005, which Merck says was "substantially complete" as of last month.

...Research and development spending actually rose by 2% if expenses from restructuring efforts and the 2007 acquisition of NovaCardia are taken into account.


Guess people are wising up about prescription drugs, huh?

  • that they often cause worse conditions than they are supposed to treat, and
  • that Big Pharma promotes its drugs to treat non-existent illnesses, such as menopause, grief and poverty.

Yea, poverty. Rather than treat the cause of poverty-induced anxiety, stress and depression, we just turn poor people into 'patients' and then drug 'em. See Elysia's story for an excellent example of that.

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