Paula,
That is not off-topic. That is the topic.
We are dying.
So we get to say.
We get to choose.

We have the right to know what the secret cabals are cooking up for us in our absence. When Merck decided to halt production of an addictive drug we need to function, our needs, the customer's needs, are not represented and not present.
We do not have to whisper and beg.
Pharma took a wrong turn some time ago.
Pharma flunked the litmus test.

We would like to think that the medical industry would learn something from the Amgen GDNF fiasco.
But apparently not.
Strategic error, ongoing, committed by Pharma and abetted by most of the industry.
Pharma shot itself in the foot and keeps sending us the bill for their new shoes.
The monthly scandals in Pharma - the illegal acts, bribing doctors, deliberately falsifying medical research, slipshod clinical trials resulting in unnecessary deaths, advertising that they know is false; pushing drugs into categories of treatment that the drug was never tested for; conducting clinical trials in Third World countries where life is cheap; experiments so down and dirty that they would never be permitted in our countries - but the trials are being done in our name for our benefit. An old worn out example that never got resolved, and that contains all of the horrors of a psychopathic nightmare: the drug that was banned in North America, Europe and Japan as being too dangerous. How did we know it was too dangerous? Well, the clinical trial in Nigeria, to test the drug.... trials for which Pfizer did not get permission... proved that the drug was no good. Because 11 of the NIgerian children died, 200 were injured.
But they had signed waivers. The Nigerian children had signed waivers.
None of this is off-topic.
Pharma, the entire industry, is going to fall off a cliff. It has become a rogue industry, a den of deceivers; anti-health, anti-human, sick-making, nausea inducing, dishonest, corrupt, and yet fossilized at the same time.
I don't really care much anymore as long as they stay out of my life. They cannot be defeated, they will collapse from inside eventually; nothing that works like that can succeed.
Pharma will have to shape up or ship out; and they have no inkling of that at all; they do not see that they missed the turning point and they are speeding madly into oblivion. In their present form. They are old-time pirates, but the day of pirates is over.
Now let's see, what's the Pharma scandal of the month? Good God, there are so many, it's a lot more than one a month. Oh here's a good one.... criminal actions by Pharmacia expected to result in fine of $21 billion...
It's a rogue industry. It will go down. Things that function this way do not survive.