一连串的制药犯罪——第二部分——金钱交易
由拉里·罗曼诺夫，2022年3月10日
译者：珍珠
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
American industry abandoned early on its pretense of making high-quality products, as a natural result of the new mantra of profit maximisation. When American capitalists redefined "long-term" as three months, making a product to last a lifetime became a kind of self-inflicted injury, in that if they manufactured a set of kitchen pots that would last for generations, that purchaser was lost forever as a customer. The natural corollary was that a poor-quality item would require repeated disposal and repurchase, thereby guaranteeing repeat customers and higher profits indefinitely, whereupon our greed-driven captains of industry quickly embarked on a plan to continually degrade product quality and ensure the necessity of continued replacement. By the 1980s, nearly all American multi-nationals and large corporations had joined the race to the bottom.
美国工业很早就放弃了制造高质量产品的借口，这是利润最大化新口号的自然结果。当美国资本家将“长期”重新定义为三个月时，制造一种可以使用一辈子的产品就成了一种自残行为，因为如果他们制造一套可以使用几代人的厨房锅，那么购买者就永远失去了顾客的身份。自然而然的推论是，质量差的产品需要反复处置和回购，从而保证了回头客和无限期的更高利润，于是我们贪婪的行业领袖迅速开始了一项计划，以不断降低产品质量，并确保继续更换的必要性。到了20世纪80年代，几乎所有的美国跨国公司和大公司都加入了到底层的竞争。
This important lesson in the economics of greed wasn't lost on the pharma companies, who realised just as quickly that producing a cure for a disease would have the same result as that from high-quality pots and pans, which is no repeat customers and the death by suicide of their own revenue stream. And that means the major pharma companies are essentially producing what I call 'pain-killer' medications, drugs which fail to address the root cause of an illness but which provide temporary relief by masking the symptoms, thereby creating countless millions of drug-dependent repeat customers. More than a few pharmacists have confirmed documented reports that pharma companies mostly invest research dollars into a search for these "control medications", rather than search for actual cures for an illness. The emphasis is on managing the symptoms while maintaining the disease, very effectively utilising physicians and hospitals as front-line soldiers to convert every patient into a long-term cash stream. (1)
制药公司并没有忘记贪婪经济学中的这一重要教训，他们很快意识到，生产一种治疗疾病的方法，将产生与高质量的锅碗瓢盆相同的结果，而高质量的锅碗瓢盆并不是回头客，而是他们自己的收入流因自杀而死亡。这意味着大型制药公司基本上在生产我所说的“止痛药”，这些药物不能解决疾病的根本原因，但通过掩盖症状提供暂时缓解，从而创造了无数药物依赖的回头客。不止几位药剂师证实了有文献记载的报告，即制药公司大多将研究资金投资于寻找这些“对照药物”，而不是寻找疾病的实际治疗方法。重点是在控制症状的同时维持疾病，非常有效地利用医生和医院作为前线士兵，将每位患者转化为长期现金流。(1)
