Truth and insight - Pharmaceutical industry (Me as an ex-employee)
I started to work in the pharmaceutical industry when I was a regular college student so I did all kind of jobs there at first. (in majority it was general labor) My first real job there was that of an laboratory worker.
What do laboratory workers do?
Think of me as a chemist of some sort. We mixed ingredients to get a medicament that our company produced. Just to warn you, I will be writing about good and the bad things of pharmaceutical industry from my point of view, and I think I am competent to do so, as an ex-employee. So, please, be open minded about the subject, as it will probably hurt some feelings, here and there.
Company I was working for was mostly dealing in generic drugs production. Meaning, that when a patent expires, you take it freely, register, and redistribute. And don't jump to conclusions thinking that it is recycling. Not actually, more like going the path that was already explored by others. It employed more than 1000 people from all branches. (scientists to legal advisers)
As time passed I was curious regarding the thing that most pharmaceutical workers actually don't use meds. It was very strange to me, because I always thought people are going to advertise product that makes them money. (I mean regular workers) Let's say I was manufacturing any type of electronics, it would be weird for me not to use them, or should I say strange. And the story just started to unravel here.
Throughout production, I was noticing that we use many dangerous substances to produce a medicament that is known to help people surpass a disease of some kind. So, you feel awkward when you are looking at a barrel with a skull pictured on the label, but it is only for the good cause. (or is it?)
To make myself even more clearer, there is not a huge conspiracy going on, it is just capitalism at it's best. Revenues get higher and higher every day as we get even more populated, so there are always going to be more and more, should I say "sick" people. So pharmaceutical companies go by economical dogmas that are presented to us in early history of civilizations; if someone needs something , give it to them...for a sum of money of course. In that case, usage of highly poisonous, mostly cheap materials are not generally bad, if they save someone's life.
And, here comes the guilt. When working there, you can feel guilt just getting bigger and bigger, until you explode and start asking questions. Pharmaceutical technicians are all robots actually, you ask them why do we do this, and they all answer on the same pattern, that was indoctrinated by the company!
Great, and what are the good sides of it?
I could probably name a few but that wouldn't seem constructive. So, I will take the other approach. I will ask you; Did you ever used meds and did they help you in any way? If the answer is yes, than you know what I am thinking of. If the answer is no, then I am really sorry that didn't happen, even though I think majority of people had a good impact from meds.
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What am I trying to say here?Am I for or against the pharmaceutical industry?
Honestly, neither. I am for pharmaceuticals that are produced organically in controlled environment not led by capitalism and money. So, yes, in this case I probably am talking about utopian society, about a self-sustaining production company. From the beginning of time we were taught that health-care should be free, but you all know it is far from truth. Health care is actually capitalized, as are more and more pores of our society.
To conclude on this subject I will ask you to read a great quote:
“It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions, but hard to get one single remedy.”
Chinese Proverb
Looking forward to your content :)
Thank you my friend :)
Another interesting post. Pharma is such a complicated subjected. It's nice to see an insider perspective, especially one that is not fully pro or con but more balanced.
Wow, it is a nice point of view. Actually, it is good to know how it is working. There is huge money behind this companies, but not everything they are doing is wrong.
Feel free to visit my profile for some med and science-related content :)
I didn't say that everything is wrong, I just stated that everything is profit-driven. ;)
May I ask what do you think of this article of mine? https://steemit.com/life/@greenmask9/how-capitalism-holds-back-medical-and-food-industry
Or basicly, do you agree that many companies probably prefer people to be ill and pay for medicaments rather than be healthy?
To be honest I think they prefer people being ill. (Meaning that they don't provide cures that fully cure people suffering from a disease)
My words. It can't be generalized to all companies, but most of them seem not to do the best for patients.
You don't write like someone who has actually worked for pharma, at least not as a scientist. You sound like someone who doesn't understand anything at all about what is being done by the researchers there.
What a fearmongering, and stupid sentence.
I do know what I am writing of. And I am talking based on things I saw working there. The Chinese counter-part of active ingredient for some liquid-form drugs was cheap and proved toxic by our health federation. And if you are accusing me of lying (that I worked in pharma), I could prove it to you somewhere more private.
No I'm accusing you of not understanding how chemistry works. Because it's clear you don't have a clue.
I did have to know some chemistry to get the job done actually. :D
And I also told you that I have worked as a laboratory worker there, not a researcher. I got the ingredients and the recipe,and I mixed it using machines specialized to do so. I don't know where did you think of me as a researcher. And yes, I do know prices of active and passive ingredients, and they are very cheap regarding the price of the drug itself.
Drug pricing has nothing to do with the cost of the materials, and everything to do with supply and demand (for generics). For non generic drugs the costs are high as companies must recoup the insane costs for research and clinical trials (tens to hundreds of millions for clinical trials alone).
You are absolutely right. And as I wrote in the post, it is not a conspiracy, that we sometimes use toxic materials to produce drugs that could save our lives. So once again I don't know what did I say wrong
Your ending views, echo mine...thanks for the post. Regards @angryman Have a happy day.
Thank you :)