Over the past 50 years, the leading pharmaceutical companies in the United States have caused the injuries and deaths of millions of Americans. This troubling reality has reached such widespread acknowledgment that iatrogenic harm—injuries and deaths caused by medical treatment and erroneous diagnoses—now ranks as the third leading cause of death. There is growing consensus that our federal health agencies, which are meant to protect public health, have failed to address this crisis in any meaningful way. In fact, these agencies have often undermined efforts to confront the serious flaws in our healthcare system and in fact enable systemic corruption to thrive within the industry.
Studies over the years have consistently placed iatrogenic deaths as one of the leading causes of mortality with some analyses labeling it the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. However, there is increasing evidence that the actual numbers may be significantly higher than what current estimates suggest, revealing a deep and pervasive crisis within the healthcare system.
The most frequently cited research on iatrogenic deaths comes from a Johns Hopkins study, which estimated that approximately 250,000 Americans die annually due to preventable medical errors. Published in BMJ in 2016, the study highlighted systemic issues such as misdiagnoses, medication errors, and inefficiencies in healthcare systems as major contributors to these deaths.
However, an even more alarming estimate comes from the British Medical Journal and places the figure at 400,000 deaths per year, arguing that the Johns Hopkins study failed to include broader systemic failures and unnecessary medical interventions. Both studies firmly position iatrogenic deaths as a leading cause of mortality, but neither captures the entirety of the problem.
Iatrogenic deaths encompass a wide array of causes; conservative figures include but are by no means limited to:
- Medication Errors: Accounting for an estimated 70,000 deaths annually, these errors range from incorrect prescriptions and dosages to harmful drug interactions.
- Surgical Complications: Surgical errors and postoperative complications lead to 60,000 deaths per year, including issues such as infections and unintended organ damage.
- Diagnostic Errors: Misdiagnoses and delayed diagnoses contribute to 100,000 deaths annually, often preventing timely and effective treatment.
- Nosocomial (Hospital-Acquired) Infections: These infections, often due to resistant bacteria or lapses in hygiene, result in 100,000 deaths per year.
Systemic failures such as inadequate staffing, human error, mistakes in electronic medical records, and communication breakdowns account for another 80,000 deaths annually. These numbers, while staggering, only scratch the surface.
The grim reality is that the true toll of iatrogenic deaths may far exceed even the highest estimates. The current data is largely based on hospital records, which means deaths occurring outside the hospital setting often go unreported. For example, a patient discharged after treatment may succumb to complications caused by medical errors, but such cases rarely make it into official statistics. Similarly, misdiagnoses leading to deaths at home or in long-term care facilities are often not recognized as iatrogenic.
The COVID-19 pandemic added new dimensions to iatrogenic risks. Treatments such as mechanical ventilation, poorly tested experimental vaccines and emergency use drugs like remdesivir have now been proven to cause enormous harm. Overuse of ventilators, for instance, was linked to lung injuries and ventilator-associated pneumonia, contributing to thousands of deaths globally. Remdesivir was associated with higher than expected rates of adverse effects such as kidney and liver damage. Vaccines are implicated in a wide variety of serious adverse events including myocarditis and pericarditis, thrombosis, neurological conditions, encephalomyelitis, transverse myelitis, Bell’s Palsy, exacerbation of autoimmune diseases, miscarriages, and very likely turbo cancers
The silent epidemic of iatrogenic deaths is a stark reminder of the fragility of even the most advanced healthcare systems. Modern medicine is riddled with preventable errors that cost hundreds of thousands of lives each year and private corporate interests exacerbate the problem.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the dysfunction within the pharmaceutical and medical fields was brought into sharp focus. The pandemic revealed the extent to which medical professionals, health organizations, and pharmaceutical companies were willing to go in order to push their interests at the cost of truth and lives. A coordinated effort of disinformation and deception, largely based on shaky and often fabricated scientific evidence, led to outcomes that were disastrous by any measure. At the heart of this crisis was an erosion of trust in the very institutions that are supposed to safeguard public health. Trust, the foundation of all human relationships—personal, professional, and public—was repeatedly broken by the American medical establishment.
Major pharmaceutical companies, particularly Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Pfizer, have long been associated with legal and ethical violations that directly impact the health and well-being of millions of people. These companies have faced lawsuits for everything from misleading marketing and price manipulation to negligent behavior and corporate corruption. While these drug and vaccine giants generate billions in profits annually, the legal consequences they face for their actions often come in the form of minor fines and rarely address any real accountability. Executives seldom face jail time, and companies are rarely forced to pay for the full extent of the damage they cause. The result is a healthcare system driven by profit at the expense of human lives.
These companies’ continued ability to operate unhindered is emblematic of the deep dysfunction within the nation’s culture of scientific deceit that has endured for over half a century. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing, including the suppression of crucial information, whistleblowers who dare speak the truth are often silenced or punished. The recent revelations that the Biden administration spent $260 million to suppress information about the pandemic and the mRNA vaccines highlights Big Pharma’s financial and political power over Washington. Those who seek to expose corruption or question the status quo are met with fierce opposition, while the powerful players behind the industry continue to manipulate the narrative to suit their ambitions and goals.
The behavior of J&J, Merck, and Pfizer is not isolated. These companies are representative of a larger issue within the pharmaceutical industry—one that prioritizes profits over patient safety and fosters an environment where corporate greed thrives unchecked. They are part of a culture that consistently puts the interests of pharmaceutical executives and investors above the health and safety of the public, and the results have been catastrophic. Whether it is through the approval of dangerous drugs, misleading marketing practices, price gouging, or a refusal to acknowledge the harm caused by their products, these companies contribute to the growing number of medically induced deaths that plague the nation.
The consequences of these actions cannot be ignored. The medical industry’s failure to address iatrogenic harm should be a wake-up call for the nation. As whistleblowers and medical professionals who challenge the status quo face increasing disingenuous tactics to silence their voices, the truth remains hidden from the public eye. Until these issues are addressed, it is unlikely that meaningful change will come to our broken healthcare system.
This article examines the corruption, crimes, and lawsuits involving these three pharmaceutical behemoths in order to shed light on how their actions are representative of a larger national health crisis. By understanding the role these companies play in shaping public health, we can begin to confront the reality of the broken system they have helped create.
Johnson & Johnson
For decades, according to a Guardian article, “consumers worldwide have named the $347 billion pharmaceutical behemoth Johnson and Johnson (J&J) as one of its most trusted brands.” From its humble beginnings in the 1880s, making cotton gauze dressings and eventually band aids, baby powder and shampoo, J&J has expanded into one of the most powerful multinational pharmaceutical and medical device companies in the world. In 1959, it entered the world of Big Pharma as a leading player after succeeding in getting Tylenol approved as an over-the-counter drug. Shortly thereafter J&J commenced with a flurry of acquisitions to increase its product line, which included Neutrogena, Cordis, DePuy, Janssen Pharmaceutica and Centocor. Today, in most American home medicine cabinets one will find a popular J&J product: Listerine, Tylenol and Benadryl, Neutrogena skin cream, Rogaine, Neosporin antibacterial ointment, or Destin to treat diaper rashes.
Image: Johnson & Johnson Headquarters in New Brunswick, New Jersey, seen 1/2006 by Henry N. Cobb from the Pei Company, built 1983. Original photo by user:ekem, English wikipedia (From the Public Domain)
During the Covid-19 pandemic, people were eager for J&J’s “one shot and you’re done” Covid-19 vaccine despite health officials’ fears it may be less effective than Moderna’s and Pfizer’s mRNA competitors. These original fears are now known to be erroneous and unfounded. J&J’s vaccine was effectively removed in early 2023 due to serious adverse effects, particularly thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS)—a severe blood clotting disorder—and Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS). These risks prompted the CDC and FDA to give high priority to the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) as early as December 2021. After its vaccine’s failure, the company played no critical role in the pandemic aside from providing supply chains for the distribution of other drug companies’ products.
More important, J&J’s reputation needs to be challenged. A 2019 report by the British intelligence firm Alva has noted that J&J’s reputation has sunk dramatically during the past years, from 9th place among 58 major pharmaceutical firms to 57th. Certainly, this is not a company with a clean ethical record.[1]
A review of J&J’s rap sheet over the past three decades presents a dire and contrary image that should lead us to question the company’s claims about its Covid-19 vaccine given the lucrative market the pandemic has created for the most aggressive medical corporations.
Similar to its equally over-sized competitors Glaxo, Merck and Pfizer, J&J too has had to pay out billions of dollars over the decades for civil settlements and criminal activities. Brazil’s Public Prosecution Service conducted an investigation into J&J’s antitrust activities under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) for “possible improper payments in its medical device industry.”[2] This was part of an FBI bribery scheme investigation that included Siemens, General Electric and Philips acting as a larger cartel to illegally payoff government officials in return for securing contracts with Brazil’s national health programs. The charges also include price gouging, inflating prices up to 800 percent the market price to cover bribes.
This was not the first time J&J violated FCPA laws. In 2011, J&J was charged by the Department of Justice with conspiracy for paying off Greek doctors to advance its product sales. The SEC also charged civil complaints. The company had to pay out a $70 million penalty for buying off officials in Greece, Poland and Romania.[3] The previous year, an executive for J&J’s subsidiary DePuy was sentenced to a year in prison for corrupt payments to physicians within the Greek national healthcare system.
As one of the world’s leading medical device companies, J&J has faced numerous recalls for faulty products including contact lenses and hip implants In 2013, it paid nearly $2.5 billion to compensate 8,000 recipients for its flawed hip implants Again in 2016, another $1 billion was awarded to plaintiffs injured from this device.[4]
One particular dubious activity the company became involved with in 2008 was to launch a “phantom recall.” When its Motrin IB caplets were discovered to not properly dissolve, it hired outside contractors to buy up store supplies in order to avoid making public declarations. No one would have known of this activity and it would have gotten past the eyes of FDA inspectors had the deception not been exposed during a Congressional investigation.
Other major J&J lawsuits and recalls for faulty products include:
2010 – $81 million settlement for misbranding its anti-epileptic drug Topamax to treat psychiatric disorders and hiring outside physicians to join its sales force to promote the drug for unapproved conditions.[5] The following year, J&J paid $85 million for similar charges against its heart drug Natrecor
2011 – Several of its baby products were discovered to contain carcinogenic ingredients
2013 – The US Justice Department charged the company $2.2 billion in criminal fines for marking its autism and anti-psychotic drug Risperdal for unapproved uses. Forty-five states had filed civil lawsuits against J&J in the scandal.[6]
Risperdal is a horrendous drug that contributes to rapid weight gain and a condition known as gynescomastia, irregular enlarged breasts in men. Semmelweis reports that J&J’s subsidiary Janssen also had an aggressive campaign to market its use in children with behavioral challenges. Other serious adverse effects from Risperdal reported by the FDA include diabetes mellitus, hyperprolactinaemia, somnolence, depression, anxiety, psychotic behavior, suicide and death.
The company’s legal problems over Risperdal do not appear to have ended. In October 2019, a Philadelphia jury awarded a man $8 billion in punitive damages for failing to warn that the drug could cause young men to grow breasts. Other recent suits include litigation over its blood thinner Xarelto risks of internal bleeding, and a $775 million settlement to 25,000 plaintiffs.
Image: Johnson’s baby powder made from talc in an old tin with a shaker on top (Licensed under CC0)
2016 – Two women were awarded $127 million in damages for the talc in its J&J Baby Powder causing ovarian cancer. Later, over 1,000 similar cases came forward. During the trial it was discovered that J&J suspected a link between talcum and ovarian cancer back in the 1970s. A Missouri verdict fined the company over $4 billion but it was later reduced to $2.1 billion. A New York Times investigation into internal J&J memos uncovered evidence that the talcum powder may have contained asbestos.[7] These cases continue. In July 2019, J&J made efforts to dismiss 14,000 lawsuits over the talcum-cancer risk.
In more recent years, J&J was in the spotlight for its contribution to the deadly opioid crisis. The company holds the patent for a unique strain of opium poppy commonly named Norman. It is the leading provider of the opioid for Purdue Pharma’s painkiller OxyContin. An Oklahoma court ordered a $465 million fine.[8] This opened the door for other states to follow suit. To fully realize how insane the system is, the half a billion dollar civil fine was good news on Wall Street, which anticipated the verdict would be in the billions of dollars. Consequently, J&J’s stock rose 2 percent after the judge’s ruling. And despite J&J being Purdue’s major supplier, and a major contributor in the US’s opioid epidemic, the latter was forced to file for bankruptcy due to mounting lawsuits for overdose deaths.
In April 2021, J&J again had to payout $5 billion to settle nationwide opioid lawsuits as part of a broader $26 billion settlement involving other manufacturers and distributors. The company manufactured and supplied the active ingredients such as Duragesic (fentanyl) and Nucynta (tapentadol) for which it was busted for misleading marketing downplaying addiction risks, aggressive promotion to healthcare providers, and creating “pseudo-scientific” research to push opioids.
Last year, the company paid out $8.9 billion to settle baby talc powder ovarian cancer claims by tens of thousands of plaintiffs. The product was found contaminated with asbestos that J&J had prior knowledge about but ignored the risks. This case followed an earlier bankruptcy maneuver that was rejected by the courts.
Other major recalls that likely contributed to many injuries for which there is no accurate accounting include J&J’s hernia mesh products for contributing to recurrent hernias and infections; an FDA Class 1 recall on malfunctioning surgicial staples resulting in serious tissue damage and excessive bleeding; microbial contaminated Xarelto leading to uncontrollable bleeding; and, its Neutrogena and Aveeno aerosol sunscreens contaminated with the carcinogen benzene.
There is something more to this story that demands investigation. If the company’s long rap sheet offers any warning, it is that we must be wary of any claims J&J publicly states about the efficacy and safety of its products. Especially when the company’s promise is to increase the profits of its numerous shareholders.
Merck & Co.
It may be surprising to some that the world’s second largest vaccine maker Merck was missing from the Covid vaccine cash cow. Along with the other two of the top three global vaccine makers, Glaxo and Sanofi, Merck exited the Covid vaccine arena after its candidates failed to generate sufficient neutralizing antibodies in early Phase 1 trials. Instead the company shuffled its resources to develop two new novel drugs to target SARS-CoV2 infections.[9]
Image: The offices of Merck, located in Upper Gwynedd Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)
Merck’s legacy of lawsuits for crimes and misdemeanors goes back at least to the 1960s. In 1975, it was busted by the SEC for illegal payments to foreign government officials from “approximately” 36 nations. The scam was orchestrated through personal bank accounts with the sole purpose of advancing drug approvals through foreign nations’ regulatory medical agencies.[10]
One of the largest scandals in modern medical history was the company’s anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx that resulted in fines above $4.8 billion for causing over a minimum 60,000 deaths from sudden heart attacks and over 120,000 serious medical injuries.[11] At its height, Vioxx was earning over $2 billion in revenues annually and it is estimated that 25 million patients were prescribed the medication. The securities class action suit against Merck alone reached $1 billion, which at the time placed it in the top 15 securities lawsuits in US corporate history. The main criminal charge was Merck’s intentional withholding of scientific data about the drug’s adverse cardiovascular side effects.
Years after the settlement, Ron Unz, the publisher of The American Conservative, undertook his own investigation to revalidate Vioxx’s death toll. Analyzing the drug’s adverse effects over a longer time period, Unz estimated Merck may have been responsible for nearly half a million premature deaths in elderly patients, the drug’s primary target group.[12] That is roughly the same number of total civilian, military and terrorist deaths from the US’s military escapades in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan combined.
Merck’s settlement of 47,000 pending lawsuits for personal injuries and 265 class action cases was a small pittance for the harm Vioxx left in its wake. Merck executives were never properly punished for willingly concealing the drug’s dangers in order to assure FDA approval.
In Australia, Merck’s efforts to increase Vioxx profits employed other forms of malfeasance. The Australian government launched a class action suit against the drug maker on charges that employees allegedly schemed a fake scientific paper that was ghostwritten for a medical journal in order to put Vioxx into a positive light. Testimonies during the trial stated data was completely based upon “wishful thinking.”[13] Merck had also founded the very same peer-reviewed journal to publish its paper, Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine. The journal was a fraud; it was not properly peer-reviewed and its primary purpose was to promote Vioxx on the Australian continent.
Moreover, the class action lawsuit contained Merck emails accessed by Australian officials. The company’s internal communications allegedly ordered select employees to draft up a hit list of physicians who were critical of Vioxx. According to the documents, these physicians were targeted to be “neutralized” or “discredited.” Some, including Dr. James Fries at Sanford University’s medical school, were clinical investigators who happened to speak out about the drug’s shortcomings. One email stated, “We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live…”[14]
But Merck’s troubles with the dangers of its products, falsifying data about drugs’ efficacy and safety and exaggeration of medical claims go back sixty years. In the 1960s, the FDA discovered that the drug maker’s arthritis medication Indocin had not been properly tested for efficacy and its adverse effects were completely ignored.[15] In the 1970s, Merck’s drug dietheylstilbestrol (DES) prescribed for the prevention of miscarriages caused a flurry of vaginal cancer cases and other gynecological disorders. Merck had all along known that DES was carcinogenic based upon its own animal clinical trials. In 2007, its cholesterol drug Zetia was shown to increase liver disease. Again Merck had known about Zetia’s liver risks but withheld the clinical trial’s damning results.[16]
It would appear that Merck has managed to hijack US courts. This includes an early 2019 ruling by Trump’s corporate-friendly US Supreme Court to side with the drug maker and squash hundreds of lawsuits for failing to issue warnings that its osteoporosis drug Fosamax may contribute to debilitating bone fractures.[17] A federal court in California found that Merck committed perjury for lying in a patent infringement case against Gilead Sciences over the latter’s blockbuster Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi. The judge ruled that Merck carried out a “systematic and outrageous deception in conjunction with unethical business practices and litigation misconduct.” It turned out that Merck’s patent claims were a sham and orchestrated by its legal division.[18]
Besides pushing through the FDA dangerous medications onto the market, the company has also found itself in the courtroom on many occasions for allegedly price-fixing, routinely defrauding and overbilling states’ Medicare and Medicaid programs, and violating the Anti-Kickback Statute. In 2006, the IRS went after Merck for owing almost $2 billion in back taxes. According to the Wall Street Journal, Merck partnered with a British bank to create an offshore subsidiary in tax-friendly Bermuda to divert taxable revenue on its bestselling cholesterol drugs Zocor and Mevacor through a patent scheme. The company ran the operation for ten years before the FDA uncovered the racket.[19]
Merck is America’s leading vaccine manufacturer. Despite public perception and the ruse that vaccines are somehow safer and more effective than pharmaceutical drugs in general, it is the same industry and corporate culture that manufactures such claims. Currently Merck markets vaccines for Haemophilus B, Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B (individually and in combination), human papillomavirus (Gardasil), Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR), pneumococcal, rotavirus, varicella (chickenpox) and Zoster virus (for shingles).
On its website, the FDA assures the public that “Vaccines, as with all products regulated by the FDA, undergo a rigorous review of laboratory and clinical data to ensure the safety, efficacy, purity and potency of these products.” However, not a single Merck vaccine has ever been tested in a scientifically viable double-blinded placebo controlled trial. In each case, the placebo in the control group was not inert, such as a sterile saline. Rather Merck tests its vaccines with the viral component against a faux placebo containing the same ingredients, including aluminum, but minus the virus. Known as a “carrier solution,” the standard scientific protocol does not designate it as a proper placebo for measuring the efficacy and disease risks of a drug. And in the case of Gardasil, the trial was statistical trickery to mask Gardasil’s adverse effects. One placebo group received the company’s proprietary adjuvant amorphous aluminum hydroxyphospate sulfate (AAHS), a known neurotoxin. The adjuvant has yet to be properly tested for safety.[20] One of the more serious risks of aluminum adjuvants is the triggering of an extreme autoimmune response, what Israeli immunologist Yehuda Schoenfeld has called “autoimmue/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants.”
In 2016, the investigators in a Cochrane Database Collaboration analysis of Merck’s Gardasil were so alarmed they filed a complaint against the European Medical Agency for failing to adequately assess the vaccine’s neurological harms.
Image: Gardasil 9 in French packaging (showing the MSD branding) (Licensed under CC0)
Robert Kennedy Jr undertook legal efforts to sue Merck over the Gardasil deception. His in-depth investigations through his Children’s Health Defense organization uncovered evidence that the vaccine increases birth defects in children conceived of HPV-vaccinated moms; miscarriages have increased 2000 percent above normal, and girls are experiencing serious reproductive complications, including infertility, at approximately ten-fold above the normal rate. During an interview on the Progressive Radio Network, Kennedy noted that there was 10 times greater risk of dying from cervical cancer among Gardasil trial participants compared to the general public. There is a 10-fold increase for ovarian failure, and 1 in 37 girls who receive the vaccine will experience an autoimmune disease after 6 months of receiving the series of injections.
Based upon Kennedy’s documents received from Freedom of Information Act filings, during Merck’s own Gardasil clinical trials, 2.3 percent of girls and women between the ages of 9 through 26 developed a serious autoimmune disease and crippling neurological disorders within seven months of vaccination. The most frequent adverse effects were arthritis and arthropathy, autoimmune thyroiditis, celiac disease, hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism, inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, Raynaud’s Phenomenon, rheumatoid arthritis and uveitis. He stated that according to Merck’s own statistics, girls are one hundred times more likely to experience a serious adverse effect from the vaccine than to be protected from cervical cancer.
In an article published in the Journal of Law and Medical Ethics, researchers at the University of British Columbia wrote that ever since Gardasil was approved in 2006, Merck has engaged in an “overly aggressive marketing strategies and lobbying campaigns aimed at promoting Gardasil as a mandatory vaccine.” One strategy Merck has employed is to take advantage of FDA loopholes to fast track its drugs.[21]
Another scandal erupted within Merck’s vaccine business after two whistleblowers gave testimony that the mumps’ component in its Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine was based on fraudulent data about it’s efficacy, and the company knowingly proceeded in order to corner the mumps vaccine market. The two Merck whistleblowers, virologists Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, filed a lawsuit against Merck for being in violation of the False Claims Act. According to the charges, Merck had “falsified its mumps vaccine test results to hit an efficacy rate of 95 percent. The company achieved this by adding “animal antibodies to a blood sample to give the impression of increased antibodies.”[22] This would certainly explain why mumps outbreaks in summer camps and on college campuses are found to occur among those vaccinated. The case was settled out of trial and the plaintiffs received an undisclosed amount from their former employer.
Merck has gained enormous political and social influence over the national perception about vaccines. One example is Merck’s behind the scenes aggression against the film Vaxxed. When the documentary film was officially selected to screen during the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan, we discovered in an earlier report that Merck left its fingerprints on the film’s removal and censorship. The Alfred Sloan Foundation is the festival’s largest sponsor; pro-vaccine advocate Bill Gates is also a notable contributor. One of the leading persons on the Foundation’s board of trustees was Dr. Peter Kim. Kim happens to be the former president of Merck’s Research Laboratories who was directly responsible for the launch of Gardasil and Merck’s other vaccines for the Zoster virus and rotavirus. The film presents a harsh indictment against Dr Julie Gerberding, the former head of the CDC who allegedly coordinated the cover up of data that confirmed thimerosal’s role in the onset of autism. After managing the agency’s operations to mine sweep the data and generate new studies with public funds to suggest thimerosal’s safety, Gerberding accepted her reward from the pharmaceutical industry by becoming the head of Merck’s vaccine division. In addition, according to the whistleblowing of a senior CDC scientist, Dr. William Thompson, Gerberding was allegedly responsible for destroying the CDC’s research that showed African American boys were at a substantially higher risk of becoming autistic from Merck’s MMR vaccine. Fortunately, Dr. Thompson, who was present during the order to shred documents, saved copies which he subsequently turned over to Congressman Bill Posy and an independent biologist Prof. Brian Hooker. Since then, Congress has refused to hold hearings thereby supporting the cover-up.
Merck’s Zostavax, a shingles vaccine, has been subject to thousands of lawsuits due to its association with shingles outbreaks, injuries and autoimmune diseases rather than preventing the illness. Plaintiffs have argued that Merck failed to warn users of Zostavax’s risks. In 2020, a jury awarded $120 million in punitive damages in one case while others remain pending.
Merck has also been involved in the nation’s opioid crisis through its subsidiary Organon, which previously marketed opioid products. In 2021, Organon spun off from Merck, thereby limiting Merck’s direct involvement as compared to litigations against larger opioid producers such as Purdue Pharma and J&J.
Merck has faced accusations of price gouging, particularly over Medicare drug price negotiations introduced by the Inflation Reduction Act. In reversal, Merck sued the Department of Health and Human Services last year claiming that the Act violated its Fifth Amendment privileges by harming its profits and threatening future drug innovation. The case is an example of Big Pharma’s resistance to the government’s attempts to regulate drug prices.
All told, these examples of Merck’s culture of greed, deception, political maneuvering and aggression has collectively injured countless people. Its prime directive is selling drugs; its history of crimes and misdemeanors should indicate the company holds little integrity in its commitment to prevent and treat disease. The full extent of the casualties from Merck’s drugs and vaccines may never be properly calculated. For firms such as Merck, Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson, injuries and deaths are the collateral damage of getting poorly tested products on the market and as fast as possible.
Can we really trust such a company with such a criminal reputation to be forthright about its product’s safety records? Therefore it is crucial to RFK’s efforts to rein drug and vaccine makers such as Merck for the public good. Cleaning the federal health agencies from coercive corporate interests will the entire edifice of vaccine pseudoscience and the public will realize that for decades it has been guinea pigs for extremely lucrative cash cows.
Pfizer
Whenever it is necessary to make an evaluation of the efficacy and safety of conventional drug-based medicine, it is imperative to include the rising rate of iatraogenic injuries and deaths – medical errors – that are now the third leading cause of death in the US after cardiovascular disease and cancer. The majority of these deaths are caused by FDA approved drugs’ adverse effects and when patients are prescribed multiple medications in the absence of thorough clinical research to determine the safety of their synergistic effects. Consequently our health agencies’ oversight and monitoring of drugs on the market is dismal and deadly.
Image: Entrance to former Pfizer World Headquarters building (1961–2023) (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)
Among the top pharmaceutical companies whose drugs and products have most contributed to the nation’s iatrogenic epidemic is multinational behemoth Pfizer Inc, with a current net worth of $148 billion. Pfizer is one of America’s oldest pharma firms with 300-plus drugs and vaccines commonplace in American doctors’ tool kits: Zoloft, Zantac, Viagra, Enbrel, Flagyl, Lipitor, and several antibiotics. It is also a major player in the generic drug market and more recently dominates the Covid-19 vaccine market with this mRNA gene therapy injections. In the irrational panic to quickly get a vaccine against the SARS virus to market, its Covid-19 vaccine was the first to receive emergency use authorization
Pfizer’s legacy of lawsuits goes back to the late 1950s. According to the Corporate Research Project, it “has been at the center of controversies over its drug pricing for more than 50 years.”[23] Back in 1958 it was charged by the Federal Trade Commission for price fixing and making false statements to dubiously acquire a patent for tetracycline.[24] Two years later the Justice Department filed criminal antitrust charges against Pfizer’s board chairman and president on the matter.[25] Again in 1996, the drug company paid out $408 million to settle another lawsuit for price fixing and gouging pharmacies.[26] In 2002, Pfizer was caught defrauding the federal Medicaid program for over-charging its flagship cholesterol drug Lipitor. Other similar charges include a $784 million settlement for underpaid rebates to Medicaid and $107 million fine for overcharging its epilepsy drug phenytoin sodium.[27]
The company has even stooped so low as to engage in bogus advertising. Shortly after the Second World War, Pfizer created snazzy ads for the Journal of the American Medical Association for its antibiotic line. The ads included named physicians endorsing its drugs. However, according to a Saturday Review investigation, the doctors turned out to be completely fictitious.[28]
In 2022, the company earned $12.8 billion from its Comirnaty Covid-19 vaccine, which declined to $1.7 billion in 2023 because of a huge drop in public demand because of the ever-increasing rise in serious adverse effects and deaths following vaccination. At the same time it is legally battling against hundreds of lawsuits due to its popular heartburn drug, Zantac, being contaminated with the carcinogen N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), an “extremely hazardous” toxin used in rocket fuel and industrial lubricants. Although the FDA erroneously claims that Zantac’s NDMA levels are low, they have still been measured to be between 3,000 and 26,000 times higher than the FDA’s safety cut-off point.[29] Another adverse effect of NDMA is hepatotoxicity leading to liver fibrosis and scarring.
According to the law firm Matthews and Associates, if the mainstream media were to honestly cover the NDMA trial underway and other Pfizer confrontations with the law, perhaps its vaccine would not be receiving such uncritical fanfare. There would be more scrutiny and warranted suspicion to question how Pfizer could have developed a truly safe and effective vaccine in such a short period of time.
After reviewing the criminal records of J&J and Merck, there is nowhere near the depth of demented ethical behavior solely to manipulate its market control as found with Pfizer. It has a reputation to outdo notorious hedge fund vulture capitalists and underworld strategies to bully governments in return for securing supplies of its products. For example, Pfizer demanded that Argentina pay the company compensation for any civil lawsuits filed against it. The government compromised and ruled that Pfizer would only pay fines for any negligence on the company’s behalf with respect to supply and distribution. But that was not agreeable to the vaccine maker. Instead it then demanded that Argentina provide its sovereign assets –bank reserves, military bases and embassy buildings – as collateral to secure vaccine supplies.[30]
In Brazil, Pfizer’s aggressive and malignant efforts failed. It demanded that the Brazilian government turn over a guaranteed fund deposited in a foreign bank account and that the government would waive its sovereign assets abroad. Pfizer also demanded that it not be held legally liable for any injuries or deaths due to its vaccine. Correctly, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro called Pfizer’s demands “abuse” and rejected the deal.[31]
If this gives the impression that Pfizer is a serial predator on poorer foreign nations, Argentina and Brazil are only two examples. In 1996, the company conducted illegal experimental trials with an unapproved experimental antibiotic, Trovan, on Nigerian children without parental knowledge or consent. The case didn’t reach a US federal court until 2001 after thirty Nigerian families sued. After 100 children were given the drug as guinea pigs, “eleven children in the trial died, others suffered brain damage, were partly paralyzed or became deaf.”[31] Nigerian medical experts ruled that Pfizer violated international law and the US federal case was eventually settled a decade later for an undisclosed amount.
Pfizer’s dirty politics and in our opinion mafia-like activity in the Nigeria scandal, reminding us of Monsanto’s sleazy schemes, goes beyond the dangers of an experimental antibiotic. Wikileaks made available State Department cables showing that Pfizer had hired spies to dig up dirt to frame a former Nigerian attorney general in order to get the lawsuit dropped.[32] It also tried to shift the blame of the scandal on Doctors Without Borders by making a false claim that the non-profit charitable group was responsible for dispensing the antibiotic.[33]
Thanks to President Reagan’s naïve Vaccine Injury Compensation Act, vaccine makers are off the hook for being held legally accountable for vaccine adverse effects. Pfizer has demanded that other nations change their laws solely for securing maximum profits from its Covid vaccine. Pfizer’s actions are utterly parasitical.
In 2003, after it appeared that Congress might pass a bill to permit cheaper prescription drugs in Canada for sale in the US, Pfizer attempted to change the rules of the game and demand Canadian pharmacies to order directly from Pfizer rather than wholesalers in order to dominate the market and interrupt the supply chain.[34]
Pfizer’s track record of fines and lawsuits for violating its drug safety profiles and ethical marketing are equally damning. In 2009, it was fined $2.3 billion for what was then the largest healthcare felony settlement in US pharmaceutical history for illegally promoting its drugs, including its painkiller Bextra. $1.2 billion was just for the criminal fine; at the time, this was the largest ever imposed in the US for any issue.[35] In 2011, Pfizer was found guilty of racketeering charges for illegally marketing its anticonvulsant drug Neurontin and paid $142 million.[36] Three years later Pfizer was fined $430 million to settle criminal charges for bribing doctors to promote and prescribe the same drug.[37]
In early 2024, Pfizer settled a significant antitrust lawsuit for $93 million after being caught conspiring with Ranbaxy Laboratories to delay the market entry of generic versions of its blockbuster cholesterol drug Lipitor. Plaintiffs accused Pfizer of using fraudulent patents and incentivizing Ranbaxy to postpone competition in order to protect Lipitor’s high price.
In other cases it promoted its heartburn medication Protonix for unapproved uses thereby misleading physicians and healthcare providers. The case turned into a Medicaid fraud and cost the company $784 million in fines. In 2021, Pfizer settled a class action suit for $345 million after price gouging its EpiPen, a life-saving allergy treatment by increasing the cost from $100 for a two pack to over $600.
Now that the widespread distribution of Pfizer’s experimental mRNA Covid-19 vaccine has become ubiquitous, reports of injuries and deaths continue to escalate with new adverse reactions and the causes of death mounting in the scientific literature. China suspended the mRNA vaccines after a flurry of deaths among Norwegian elderly. The highly prestigious journal Science reported the concerns over the Pfizer vaccine’s polyethylene glycol nanoparticle and its relationship to the serious allergic reactions and cases of anaphylaxis.[38] And in a briefing released by the CDC’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee gave warning that the Pfizer vaccine trials give indication of unusual and unexpected antibody responses, cytokine storms and pathogenic priming that give rise to critical illness and death.[39]
Therefore there is no evidence whatsoever that Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine can scientifically and consensually be ruled as safe. But as we have observed from Pfizer’s litany of criminal activities above, safety and effectiveness of a drug or product has never been a priority in the company’s executive office.
All told, these examples of Pfizer’s culture of greed, deception, political maneuvering and disingenuous tactics have collectively injured countless people. Pfizer’s prime directive is selling drugs; its history of misdemeanors and crimes should indicate the company holds no integrity or medical ethics with a sincere commitment to prevent and treat disease. For firms such as Pfizer, injuries and deaths are the necessary collateral damage of getting poorly tested products on the market and as fast as possible. In our opinion, a black box warning should be slapped on the Pfizer logo.
Consequently, unless we get a Robert Kennedy Jr to head the HHS, for someone of equal stature, commitment and experience, to call out these crimes of humanity, and hold those individuals and corporations accountable for the nation’s iatrogenic sourge, nothing will change. Rather, it will only worsen as we witnessed during the pandemic.
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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.
Dr. Gary Null is host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow.
They are regular contributors to Global Research.
Notes
2 https://fcpablog.com/2020/07/27/johnson-johnson-discloses-new-fcpa-investigation/
3 https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2011/2011-87.htm
4 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-johnson-johnson-verdict-hipimplants-idUSKBN13Q5XF
7 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/business/baby-powder-asbestos-johnson-johnson.html
8 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/health/opioids-oklahoma-johnson-fine.html
11 https://www.forbes.com/2005/08/19/merck-vioxx-graham_cx_mh_0819graham.html#7279a7325698
12 https://www.theweek.co.uk/us/46535/when-half-million-americans-died-and-nobody-noticed
15 https://www.corp-research.org/merck
16 https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/business/21drug.html?pagewanted=all
17 https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2019/01/09/514370.htm
18 https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-merck-gilead-20160608-snap-story.html
19 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB115940684960776216
20 https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/court-hears-gardasil-science-and-moves-forward/
21 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23061593
23 https://www.corp-research.org/pfizer
25 https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1961/08/18/118047743.html?pageNumber=1
26 https://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/10/business/drug-makers-settle-suit-on-price-fixing.html
28 https://www.corp-research.org/pfizer
29 https://www.dmlawfirm.com/zantac-cancer-lawsuit-lawyer/
30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zoSSHx9QtA
31 Ibid.
32 https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/30/business/families-sue-pfizer-on-test-of-antibiotic.html
32 https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/11/AR2010121102884.html
34 https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/business/pfizer-moves-to-stem-canadian-drug-imports.html
35 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/pfizer-fined-23-billion-illegal-marketing-off-label/story?id=8477617
36 https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/pfizer-to-pay-142m-for-drug-fraud-1.934040
39 https://www.knowingthetruth.com/pathogenic-priming-what-is-it-and-why-your-life-may-depend-on-this/
Featured image: Ancient Greek painting in a vase, showing a physician (iatros) bleeding a patient (From the Public Domain)
