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“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
The muckraking journalist Upton Sinclair wrote those words in 1934. Truer words have never been spoken; I made them the epigraph for The Number, my first book, which came out in 2003, when I worked at The New York Times.
The Number covered Wall Street’s chicanery. But Big Pharma plays even more sinister games, with life-and-death stakes.
It is not that pharmaceutical companies want to make bad drugs. But they face an endless treadmill of patent expirations that over time destroy their sales and profits (even “biologics,” bigger molecules harder for generic companies to manufacture cheaply, face this issue), and so must find — and sell — new drugs to replace those. And finding and selling new drugs is hard.
So drug companies do everything they can to hide a medicine’s side effects and overstate its benefits from its first pivotal trial until the day it goes generic. (After that they care much less.)
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(Welcome to The Jungle)
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Once upon a time The Times and other legacy news outlets knew this truth and aggressively covered the drug industry.
When I worked there, I wrote tough stories about huge-selling drugs from Merck, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Amgen — the industry’s giants. The Times backed me to the hilt, even when the companies complained.
But something has changed.
The investigations have largely ended. Instead reporters spend their time hyping the industry, and its mRNA products in particular, at every turn.
Maybe the industry has actually corrupted mainstream journalism by spending billions of dollars a year on consumer advertising, almost $8 billion last year on American television ads alone. Meanwhile, it funnels money to trade publications like STAT News, which once did excellent work, by buying bulk subscriptions and sponsoring and buying tickets to expensive conferences.
Maybe the politics of drug coverage have gotten hopelessly confused because legacy media reporters lean heavily left. They dislike the Make America Healthy Again movement and outright despise President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
So they instantly turned against the highly qualified doctors and scientists Kennedy and Trump brought in to reform the Food and Drug Administration. Further, they went all-in on the Covid mRNA vaccines (once Joe Biden was elected, of course).
Of course, many reporters just don’t understand clinical trials, data analysis and statistics, and the science underlying new medicines. All of those fields have only become more complex over time. So they may fear embarrassing themselves if they challenge the companies.
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And so the rot has spread far and deep.
The legacy media’s refusal this week to report on the clinical trial showing the deadliness of the flu medicine oseltamivir (Tamiflu) is only the most recent example.
But I do understand the industry. I started writing about it more than two decades ago. I’m not afraid of it, or the science. I am not quite alone — some other folks out there are doing good work too. But I’d like to think I have broken as much news Big Pharma would rather have hidden since 2021 as anyone on this Stack.
And I’m not going to stop. The good news is that the legacy media’s dereliction of duty means I am not going to run out of stories anytime soon.
A reader named Matt — a new subscriber! — emailed this morning after my post about today being the five-year-anniversary of my Twitter ban:
I guess I was one of those “on the fence.” Thanks for the deal! I’ve been reading for a long time. I meant to sign up several times. It is silly, the programming we humans often have in our purchasing decisions. I’ve blown well over $100 on many a crappy meal. Your work and reporting is unmeasurably more valuable. Sorry it took me so long. Keep it up!
Considering you have prevailed against some of the most powerful forces humanity has ever assembled by remaining heard despite it all, I do believe the good lord intends for us to hear you. They say he chooses unlikely folks but in your case I believe you’re about as predictable a choice as one could guess given your ability and adherence to true journalistic principles.
I hope my sub helps sustain you and yours. That being said, given my belief God is watching and guiding you, I consider my subscription fee more of a tithe than individual support.
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Hey, no pressure, right?
But seriously, thank you, Matt.
Thank all of you who have supported Unreported Truths since 2021 and made sure Twitter’s ban didn’t silence me. As I wrote earlier, I work for you, my readers — not Big Pharma or anyone else — and I will do everything I can to honor that trust.
For 30 percent off (for the next three days)!
And if even a discounted subscription is too much commitment, you can try a one-time donation here!
Onward.
Have you watched any TV lately? Over 75% of ad revenue comes from Big Pharma Ads.
You were the first voice of skepticism ( reason) that I found during the aggressive rollout of the vaccines
You helped me stick to my decision not to take the MRNA
Thank you for your relentless courage