Drugmaker preys on flu fears to push blockbuster drug with questionable safety and effectiveness
(NaturalHealth365) The makers of Tamiflu and other drugs opportunistically take advantage of the annual flu threat. Yet, you would never know if your media consumption was limited to the square box in your living room. It appears as though the alleged flu antidote might be more harmful than the viral infection itself.
Roche, the corporation behind Tamiflu, capitalizes on consumer fear, some of which is justified during the winter months. However, the relentless peddling of Tamiflu is somewhat unscrupulous as it appears the drug might cause myriad health problems.
Decades-old antiviral drug may cause more harm than good
Medical researchers have determined the use of Tamiflu is tied to health problems ranging from heart rhythm fluctuations to psychiatric disorders, elevated blood sugar, and even renal disorders. If you could travel 20+ years into the past when Roche initially debuted Tamiflu, you would find it was initially lauded as the first-ever neuraminidase inhibitor of the active oral variety. Tamiflu was meant to treat the flu after its onset and prevent influenza A and B.
Tamiflu is not a flu vax, yet it deserves some credence simply because it partially thwarts the critically important neuraminidase protein of the flu virus. Tamiflu medication is provided to those with an elevated risk of the flu’s potentially deadly impact. Of course, as we’ve outlined in many other articles, with a little research one can find safer (non-drug) options to improve immune function and eliminate unwanted flu symptoms.
Roche went as far as employing GSW Worldwide, a global advertising specialist, to tout the supposed merits of Tamiflu through a comprehensive media marketing campaign. However, skeptics rightfully sounded the alarm about the company’s unjustifiable fearmongering. Fast forward a decade after Tamiflu hit the market, and fear-riddled patients were making beelines to hospital emergency rooms assuming their illness required hospitalization.
Roche’s insistence on Tamiflu serving as a flu panacea was somewhat inaccurate and arguably immoral. Some even go as far as insisting the company’s fearmongering induced borderline mass psychosis.
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Selling fear rather than solutions
The problem with money-hungry corporations peddling fear as opposed to successful medical treatment modalities is that such manipulation is egregiously disingenuous. Drug marketing that is fear-based instead of fact-based is a massive net negative for society yet a financial net positive for corporations that have a strict allegiance to money as opposed to the truth and the collective interest of society.
Roche and other companies touting supposedly effective flu treatments used what some describe as misleading advertising to spur demand for overpriced medications that are not nearly as effective as promised.
Is the federal government in cahoots with private industry?
The modern era, characterized as “The End of History” by political scientist Francis Fukuyama, is a form of hyper-capitalism in which corporations serve as the edge of the government knife. Corporate control, in which corporations and state/federal governments work hand-in-hand, is exemplified by the “partnership” between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), big pharma and most news media outlets. Government-funded ads reinforced false fears that prompted consumers to pick up Tamiflu and other supposed “antidotes” for illness without sufficient justification.
Governments purchased Tamiflu and other alleged drugs in unison during the artificially induced mass psychosis, spurring a positive financial outcome for big pharma and nothing but negativity for the gullible masses. Fast forward to 2020, and a whistleblower filed a lawsuit alleging Tamiflu-maker Roche swindled more than a billion dollars out of the federal and state governments through the misrepresentation of medical studies.
In short, it was alleged that Roche illegally claimed Tamiflu successfully treated the flu and mitigated the potential for pandemics such as the Covid-19 pandemic that has socially paralyzed billions of people across the past three years.
The moral of the Tamiflu saga is that we must relentlessly push for the decoupling of big pharma and government “health” agencies by removing soft money from politics, additional regulation, and the election of civic-minded patriots to public office.
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