Click here to access article by Tom Jefferson from The Conversation.
The author tells us how recent scandals perpetrated by large pharmaceutical corporations have caused them to modify some of their more egregious strategies to enhance profits: bribing your family physician and recognized medical authorities to push their drugs. So, have they reformed themselves with their new policies? Or, are they merely covering their asses and figuring out new, more subtle ways to enhance their financial statements. The author invites you to be skeptical.
Some of the more politically aware readers of this article might very well see these Big Pharma practices very similar to the methods used by the ruling capitalist class in general. I am referring to the bribes used to influence members of Congress referred to in polite terms as "lobbying".
However, directors of the ruling class use many other means to establish and influence KOLs (key opinion leaders) in all institutions of society. They start with the youngsters in school with their indoctrination in the virtues of capitalism, then they pave the way for promising and compliant people with numerous perks--scholarships, foundation money for their projects, lucrative job assignments and promotions, insider stock information, stock options, etc. Once their well trained subject assume roles of "key opinion leaders", the ruling class is rewarded by their services in spreading the gospel of neo-capitalism (aka neoliberalism) and neo-imperialism ("defending American values and way of life" and for "humanitarian" purposes).
