Pfizer Plans to Profit From Autism

by Heidi Stevenson

14 October 2009

Pfizer has found a new market for its drugs: autistic children. In a time when it's become apparent that more than one out of a hundred children develop autism, there are finally enough of them to warrant Big Pharma's attention as a profit center.

The timing couldn't be more perfect. The autism lab was started the same month that Pfizer purchased Wyeth, whose Prevnar vaccine (Prevenar in the UK) put it into the vaccination market. That product contains aluminum, a neurotoxin suspected of being tied to the epidemic of autism. So, we have a company that is knowingly entering a business that causes the disease it will then treat—not cure, only treat.

The Current Market and Political Environment for Drugs

This is a time when drug manufacturers are running scared because their blockbuster drug patents are running out, and the truth that they do almost no original research is catching up with them, resulting in almost no profitable drugs coming along. So, new approaches to the drug market need to be found. When it comes to marketing and manipulation of public perception, no business is better equipped than Big Pharma, and it seems that no pharmaceutical manufacturer is cleverer than Pfizer. It has now positioned itself to profit from causing a disease, and then again by selling drugs to treat it.

What a business plan!

At this point, there is one drug approved by the FDA for use, Risperidone, produced by Johnson & Johnson. The FDA approved its use for "infantile autism", but the insanity of those who made such a decision needs to be questioned. Risperidone is an antipsychotic known to cause a host of horrific effects, including mental impairment (one of the most frequent effects), amnesia, abnormal liver function, blood disorders, diabetes, heart stoppage, and tardive dyskinesia—a permanent neurological defect causing pain and uncontrollable movements, and known to affect virtually everyone who takes drugs of this class when taken over a period of time.

Risperidone, with its horrific and common effects, has been approved by the FDA for use on infants! It seems that Pfizer plans to do more of the same.

Drug manufacturers have been given a free ride. If their vaccines cause harm to people, no matter how horrific, how common, or how aware the manufacturer was about those effects, they cannot be touched if their vaccines have been FDA-approved—the same FDA that's financed primarily by pharmaceutical money. Big Pharma gas been given immunity from any harm their vaccines may do. They've been give the green light to cause death, pain, chronic disease, and neurological damage.

And now, Pfizer is planning to profit from the damage vaccines do—from the harm done by their own products—by finding drugs to treat those harms.

Pfizer's Plans

Wrapped in marketing portraying its goals as if they were a charitable initiative, Pfizer plans first to treat symptoms of autism, such as anxiety, agitation, sleep disorders, social deficits, and repetitive behaviors. Anna Villalobos, head of neuroscience research at Pfizer's Groton labs identified these specific symptoms as targets of the first phase of Pfizer's autism unit. According to her, the goal is to focus on medications known to treat these symptoms. In other words, they aren't even trying to create new drugs, only recycle existing ones.

Pfizer plans to find new ways to patent old drugs—ones in which the patents are starting to run out—for use in autistic children. This technique is not original. GlaxoSmithKline managed to find new life for bupropion, which is an SNRI drug originally sold as the antidepressant Wellbutrin, by selling it under the name Zyban to help stop smoking.

Pfizer has a wide array of drugs that might be repatented for use in autistics with any of the symptoms its identified as related to autism. It owns Zoloft, an SSRI antidepressant, which is approved for stress, depression, and panic—any of which might be a symptom of autism. Its Xanax could be used for sleep disorders, anxiety, or agitation, all of which are autism symptoms. Its antipsychotic, Geodon, is similar to risperidone, which has already been approved for use in autism.

Lyrica has already been named as a potential autism drug by one of the Pfizer autism unit's founders, Diane Stephenson. This drug is noted for causing behavioral disorders, edema, gait abnormalities (indicative of neurological problems), suicidal ideation, heart disorders, and many others. Pfizer is aiming at using this drug on innocent children.

The profits to be made by recycling old drugs that have gone out of patent under new names are enormous! The fact that all these drugs have debilitating and life-threatening effects isn't their concern. Along with all other major drug manufacturers, Pfizer has mastered the game of treating deaths and maiming by their products as costs of doing business.

Fragile X

A genetic condition called Fragile X has been associated with only a tiny percentage of autism. FRAXA Research Foundation of Newburyport, Massachusetts funds research on this syndrome. Dr. Michael Tranfaglia, the medical director and chief science officer, has stated, "Presumably, some drugs already developed could be helpful," and that pharmaceutical manufacturers have come to realize they have gold in their old drugs.

Apparently so. Annabella Villalobos, head of neuroscience research at Pfizer's Groton labs, agrees with Tranfaglia, indicating that the interest in treating people with Fragile X Syndrome may treat anyone with autism. Why, though, the interest in treating people defined as having this condition?

The answer can likely be found in the difficulty in testing drugs on children. That practice is still frowned upon. However, there are a sizable number of adults who've been tagged with Fragile X Syndrome, along with many children in the earlier waves of the autism epidemic reaching adulthood. It is now possible to find significant numbers of people with the appropriate diagnoses to use as guinea pigs—yet another reason for the timing of Pfizer's new autism lab.

The Explanation

Tranfaglia, of FRAXA, says, "You can actually normalize development." He then goes on to make a most stunning claim, one based on absolutely no evidence or experience and negated by the entire history of medical drug treatment, "It's entirely reasonable to think you could completely alter the course of the disease."

According to Pfizer's Stephenson, "The sooner you intervene, the better."

This is the evil of Big Pharma at play. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, they're unwilling to do if it might increase their profits. Pfizer is merely the first to set itself up to profit from the damage done by their products. It's an amazing business plan: First, sell a product that destroys the quality of lives at enormous profits, and then sell a product that treats the symptoms the first product has caused. Then, sell both as boons to humanity, as virtually charitable gifts.

Pfizer certainly knows how to manage the downside of its products. Call it good, deny the harm, then treat the second generation of harms with old drugs gussied up with new names. When the harms from generation two become apparent, then do it all over again. Trot out a bunch of old drugs with fancy new monikers to treat generation three's damages. There's no downside. It's profits all the way.