The absurd reason your drugs could be cheaper

Many people question my oft-made charge that patent “medicines” have one purpose: to make money for the pharmaceuticals and their army of “trained practitioners” while funneling money through insurance companies under the false label of “healthcare.” Now new evidence of this comes straight from the pages of the BMJ (British Medical Journal).

The Food and Drug Administration and pharmaceutical companies have a symbiotic relationship that robs the people of their health and their wealth. In a new study published in the BMJ, lead researcher Peter B. Bach and colleagues found that the FDA allows cancer drug manufacturers to earn extra profits by producing single dose vials in quantities that increase drug waste, costing insurance companies, the government and American patients billions. This is true of chemotherapy cancer drugs that are liquid and are administered intravenously.

Bach writes:

Even though reducing waste in healthcare is a top priority, analysts have missed the waste that can be created when expensive infused drugs are packaged containing quantities larger than the amount needed. This is particularly true for drugs for which dosage is based on a patient’s weight or body size and that come in single dose packages. These drugs must be either administered or discarded once open, and because patients’ body sizes are unlikely to match the amount of drug included in the vial, there is nearly always some left over. The leftover drug still has to be paid for, even when discarded, making it possible for drug companies to artificially increase the amount of drug they sell per treated patient by increasing the amount in each single dose vial relative to the typically required dose.

The leftover medications are sometimes administered to other patients, but safety standards mandated by the US Pharmocopeial Convention permit the drug to be held over for only six hours after opening. This means lots of wasted drugs poured down the drain.

The study as published online has an interactive chart that allows the reader to select any one of 20 cancer drugs to see the drug’s typical patient dose, the available vial sizes and the amount wasted from each vial.

One of the most egregious examples of waste is in the myeloma drug bortezomib (Velcade), which comes in a 3.5 mg vial. The typical patient dose is 2.2 mg. The estimated cost of the wasted leftover drug is $308.7 million.

Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) comes in 100 mg dose but typical patient dose is 140 mg. A 50 mg vial once produced by Merk & Co. was discontinued. Estimated waste from the leftover drug is $197.9 million.

The myeloma drug carfilzomib (Kyprolis) is available only in a 60 mg vial but the typical patient dose is only 34 mg. The estimated cost of wasted carfilzomib is $231.4 million.

And it’s not that the pharmaceuticals can’t sell the drugs in various sized vials to reduce waste if they chose to. The leukemia drug Treanda, manufactured by Teva Pharmaceuticals, is packaged in vials sized 25, 45, 100 and 180 milligrams. This better fits the way the drug is administered and Bach estimates that only 1 percent of Treanda is wasted.

“When there are drugs where 30 percent are wasted and drugs with only 1 percent waste, its inconceivable that drug companies don’t know about this,” Bach says. “These are extremely sophisticated businesses. They know everything about the patients getting their drugs, and certainly have the capability to figure out what we’ve described in this paper.”

Patent medicines are one of the greatest deceptions of our time. They are products of advertising—very sophisticated and expensive advertising.

What do patent medicines do for their buyers? They are palliatives that suppress symptoms. They do nothing to “cure” or in any way enhance the immune system.  Nor do they make any claims as such, but the public misses this vital point. And chemo drugs have been found to make cancer worse.

The American people don’t have a dog’s chance in hell against this monstrous and deceptive fraud. What a scam! What a cash cow!

Many cancers —  and most diseases — are caused by malnutrition and can be cured without undergoing cut-and-burn torture by adopting a proper diet of whole foods free of chemicals, genetically modified organisms, antibiotics and growth hormones.

Editor’s note: Dr. Michael Cutler’s guide, Surviving Cancer, is a compendium of natural cancer-fighting resources to help you AVOID cancer at all costs–including alternative therapies, foods, nutrients and supplements you should know about. Click here to get it today!