Naeem's Blog

I have long questioned the role of major pharmaceutical companies in misdirecting and corrupting healthcare. They carry too much power in influencing the type of care many doctors give to their patients.

For example, here in Riyadh, it's all too common for a doctor to prescribe a litany of drugs for any and all ailments. I can't even begin to count the number of times that we took Humza to his pediatrician with allergy-like symptoms and returned with 6 to 7 different medicines.

There is big money to be made in this business of selling drugs.

This documentary from Al-Jazeera sheds some light on the "pervasive fraud, fatal side effects, and huge kick-backs paid to doctors" that plagues Big Pharma.

Also, these articles (here, here, and here) will provide some background on how the unimaginable greed displayed by these multi-billion dollar corporations is placing our lives at risk.

The latest finding is this Newsweek article that questions the foundation of many medical studies, which center around drugs and their supposed benefits.

"A study might ask whether coffee raises the risk of joint pain, or headaches, or gallbladder disease, or hundreds of other ills. “When you do thousands of tests, statistics says you’ll have some false winners,” says Ioannidis. Drug companies make a mint on such dicey statistics. By testing an approved drug for other uses, they get hits by chance, “and doctors use that as the basis to prescribe the drug for this new use. I think that’s wrong.” Even when a claim is disproved, it hangs around like a deadbeat renter you can’t evict. Years after the claim that vitamin E prevents heart disease had been overturned, half the scientific papers mentioning it cast it as true, Ioannidis found in 2007...

Of course, not all conventional health wisdom is wrong. Smoking kills, being morbidly obese or severely underweight makes you more likely to die before your time, processed meat raises the risk of some cancers, and controlling blood pressure reduces the risk of stroke. The upshot for consumers: medical wisdom that has stood the test of time—and large, randomized, controlled trials—is more likely to be right than the latest news flash about a single food or drug."

And finally, here is a nice article on the corporate dollar corrupting medical research.

Yes, let us keep believing that capitalism is but a minor inconvenience in these troubling times. While so many Muslims have convinced themselves that theological teachings, political participation, or spiritual purification are the various roads to true reform, this economic juggernaut of free-market capitalism is getting a free-pass while wreaking unbelievable havoc throughout the world.