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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 12326

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: news

Taylor L.
Pharma defender Romney received $260,500 from industry
PharmaTimes 2008 Jan 8
http://www.pharmatimes.com/WorldNews/article.aspx?id=12573&src=EWorldNews


Full text:

After nine months of fund-raising, the Republican candidate for the US presidency who has received the largest amount from the pharmaceuticals and health care industries is former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, with a total of $260,535 from the two industries, according to the website www.opensecrets.org, which bills itself as “Your Guide to the Money in US Elections”.

In the first of two televised debates between the Republican candidates in New Hampshire, just days before voters in that state go to the polls, Mr Romney launched a spirited defence of the pharmaceutical industry after the it came in for strong criticism from other candidates during a discussion on health care costs. Mr Romney urged them not to “turn the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys,” prompting Arizona Senator John McCain to snap back: “well, they are.”

Sen McCain has received $69,300 from the pharmaceutical and health products industries during the nine months, according to opensecrets, which adds that sector has contributed the following amounts to the other candidates who took part in the New Hampshire debate: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani – $138,850; ex-Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson – $26,900; Texas Congressman Ron Paul – $20,568; and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee – $500. The sector has also contributed the following to other Republican candidates; Kansas Senator Sam Brownback – $12,750; California Congressman Duncan Hunter – $4,050; and Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo – $3,250.

Hillary, Obama clash over lobbyist’s pharma links
Mr Romney’s donation from the pharmaceutical/health sector is only slightly below the $261,784 which it has contributed to Democratic hopeful Senator Barak Obama from Illinois, while New York Senator Hillary Clinton has received $269,436 from the companies, the website states. During the Democrat candidates’ public debate in New Hampshire last weekend, Sen Clinton claimed that Jim Demers, one of Sen Obama’s campaign co-chairman in the state of being a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry. Sen Obama replied “that’s not so,” but the website of the New Hampshire Department of State shows that Mr Demers is in fact registered as a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and for Pfizer.

– Other donations to Democratic candidates from the pharmaceuticals/health products industries are: Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd – $84,400; New Mexico governor Bill Richardson – $28,950; former North Carolina Senator John Edwards – $15,000; Senator for Delaware Joseph Biden Jr – $13,425; Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich – $5,100; and former Senator for Alaska Mike Gravel – $2,208.

The candidates are required to present their year-end donation reports to the Federal Election Commission by January 31.

 

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909