But we will never have much in the way of hard facts, until criminal charges are pressed, search warrants issued, and a blizzard of subpoenas falls on Pharma world-wide. With Merck, they would not even tell Jim Edwards, of BNet (CBS news) where was it that they had a supply problem - that is "proprietary information" Merck says. And that's the point. GDNF is Amgen's "proprietary" interest. The three billion dollars a year we spend of levodopa and the agonists is immense cash cow for them.

I believe in free entreprise. I believe high profts in Pharma are excellent because it attracts more investment money. But any medical outfit that misbehaves towards us in such blatant ways does not deserve the job. Many of them should be fired. Some of them should be jailed. And before being given control over the needs of suffering and dying people, there should be some evidence that these people have at least some vague awareness of the difference between right and wrong, and they should have some desire to help sick people instead of just blackmailing them out of money. You know, society hesitates to hire child rapists to teach kindergarten. The police generally don't recruit bank robbers. Airlines are not supposed to hand the controls of a 747 with 400 people on board to a pilot who is too drunk to walk.

Scientists, doctors, pharma corps, and "corporate bio-ethicists" who believe that Amgen did the right thing to the 48 Parkinson's volunteers - those people should not be permitted to deal with Parkinson's patients or do Parkinson's research.

And, after half a century of cranking out a drug, suddenly they are incapable of making the drug for 18 months - well if they are not crooked they are most certainly wildly incompetent. I mean, you can't even transfer them to the toothpaste department because they would be no go good there either. So their licence to kill should be revoked. They are fired. They lost the contract. With our $3 billion spent annually on Parkinson's drugs, with the $200 million a year spent on Parkinson's research, we should go out to tenders and find a group that is competent to do the job, and that is not morally corrupt to the bottom of their souls.
I don't want that kind of medical people delivering my wife's baby, or taking my child's temperature. And so I sure don't want them having control over items we need in order to survive.
Pharma flunked. They are going to go down. It may take 30 years, it may take 300 years, but their way of treating sick people cannot last forever, and one day - maybe tomorrow, maybe in generations to come - they will be driven out of the health industry and not permitted back in.

If you have the science but not the human decency, then get the hell out of the health business.