Pfizer's Dark History: From Civil War Profits to Deadly Scandals

Right now, somewhere in the world, someone is being brutally murdered by a faceless killer who's far more powerful

than either you or me watching this video. He may have left clues in your drawer, your closet, or even on someone

you know, but that doesn't really matter, at least not right now. The entire world is the crime scene, and yet

we ignore its existence, barely giving it any thought. In this video, I'll tell you how Fizer left a trail of bodies on

its way to success. Or better said, on its way to the shelves of the pharmacy closest to you.

The company as we know it today began in the mind of Charles Fizer. its founder who lived in Ludvigsburg, a small town

in Germany before moving to New York. He came from a respected middle-class family by the standards of the time. His

father owned a grocery store and also worked as a confectioner. This gives us a good idea of what a typical small

business of that era looked like, the one that supported the Fizer family. He and his cousin Carl learned the

confectioner's trade directly from Charles Fizer's father during the afternoons they spent at the shop. For a

long time, the cousins had been dreaming of the American dream before finally deciding to try their luck in Uncle

Sam's land. Even though they had never worked in Germany, they dreamed of opening their own factory in the United

States. While Charles Fizer studied at a typical German school of the time, he also worked as an apprentice to an

apothecary where he [music] had his first hands-on contact with the production and composition of

pharmaceuticals. He also dedicated a lot of time to studying English, US history, and American law, knowledge that would

help him migrate to the United States a few years later. So, the cousins formed a partnership and moved to New York in

the year 1848 to finally make their dream come true. That same year, as newcomers to the US, they opened an

office in New York's German neighborhood, spending months networking with local pharmacists to promote a

factory that didn't actually exist yet. Only after building a network [music] of contacts and creating enough demand did

they ask for a loan of $2,500 from Charles Fiser's father, who remained in Germany with the rest of the

family. Following their progress closely, he sent them the money and with it they opened their first factory in a

brick building in Brooklyn, which became Fizer's headquarters for many years. They were confident the venture would be

a success since the United States was growing rapidly and the American chemical industry was practically

non-existent. At that time, fewer than 1,000 people were involved in the chemical industry across the entire

country. The following year in 1849, Charles Fizer and company as it was then called began selling its very first

medicine, Santonin. Santinine was a vermifuge in tablet form, a drug used to eliminate intestinal worms. That was an

extremely common problem for people living in the 19th century. However, it was recommended that patients take three

doses a day for several weeks until the problem was gone. The problem was the taste. Sanonine was extremely bitter. So

bitter that many people simply stopped taking it all together. Seeing this, the cousins used their confectionary skills,

the ones they had learned from their father, to launch Santonian in a format unlike anything Americans had seen

before. They produced a drug with a caramel flavor and sold it as a candy shaped like a cone. The success was

overwhelming and Fizer sentonin generated an impressive return on investment. In just a few months, the

company was already standing on its own. In those early days, Charles Fizer delivered the Sentonin himself on foot.

Later on, once the business started turning a profit, he began making deliveries on horseback. But despite

Fizer's success with this drug, Charles Fizer was very forwardthinking. He chose not to focus on marketing medicines in

their traditional forms like capsules, tablets, or even candy. He realized there was a much bigger opportunity in

producing chemical components rather than finished products. That's when Fizer stopped following the classic

pharmacy model and began manufacturing only pure chemical components used in the production of medicines and in many

other industries as well. They started producing iodine and its derivatives such as iodform and potassium iodide

which were used in various medicines and as disinfectants for treating wounds like cuts and lacerations. By the year

1860, FISA's product catalog already included borax, boric acid, and campfor. These and other chemical components were

widely used by the medical and pharmaceutical industries at the time and were also utilized by the food and

photographic industries. Borax, for example, was used as both a disinfectant and a food preservative. Potassium

iodide in turn played a key role in processing images captured by 19th century cameras. In that same year of

1860, demand for Fizer's chemical components skyrocketed and was officially recorded. Revenue reached

$700,000, the equivalent of roughly $21 million today. This success turned the two

German immigrant cousins into multi-millionaires in just a few years. A year later in 1861, the American Civil

War broke out, creating an astronomical demand for pharmaceutical goods. This would push Fizer into riding its second

major wave of profits. The armies suffered devastating mortality rates due to war injuries and diseases spreading

among the troops. This skyrocketed the demand for antiseptics, disinfectants, and a long list of medications, most of

which were supplied almost exclusively by Fizer. On top of that, the government of the time had imposed extremely high

import taxes on hospital goods. The tax reached an astonishing 47% of the price of each product. This discouraged

foreign competition and left the domestic market practically wide open for fizer and the few other

pharmaceutical companies of the time even after the ceasefire of the American civil war in 1865.

These tax rates were kept in place by the government. This allowed Fizer to maintain its market share without

worrying much about competition other than domestic. Besides dominating and feeling secure at home, Fizer saw a

chance to break the European monopoly on tartar. Tartar is the byproduct, basically the residue that settles at

the bottom of barrels used to ferment wine. Wineries at the time considered it worthless, but Fizer saw it as a

valuable raw material for a wide range of chemicals it wanted to produce. Just to name a few, there were tartaric acid,

cream of tartar, and Rochelle salt. These chemicals were widely used in industry as flavor enhancers and food

preservatives and also in the production of baking powder for baked goods. They were also used in medicine and mirror

production at the time. So imagine yourself in Charles Fiser's shoes. The United States blocks foreign competition

and increases demand for your products because of a civil war. On top of that, your factory produces everything other

industries of the time need. And as a bonus, you managed to disrupt the European market by importing almost all

the raw materials from Tarta. FISA was in the right place at the right time and countless opportunities simply fell into

its lap. It was practically untouchable. That's why Fizer has been a market leader since the day it was founded.

Later in 1880, Fizer started producing citric acid. Many of you probably know it well since it's widely used in the

food industry, especially in the booming soft drink market of that era. In fact, one of FISA's clients back then was none

other than Coca-Cola. As a side note, there's a video on this channel about Coca-Cola's failure in India. Watch this

video until the end. When you get there, the thumbnail will pop up on the end screen so you can click and watch it.

But back to the story. [music] Producing citric acid at that time was still complicated because it was obtained by

isolating it from fruits like lemons and limes. Fizer imported these fruits from Europe, specifically Italy and Sicily

along with tartar. A few years later, World War I caused a shortage in the import of these fruits. This practically

forced Fizer to find new [music] ways to keep supplying its growing customer base. As demand for citric acid surged,

the company needed a more efficient solution. That's when James Curry, a food [music] chemist, entered the

picture. He was hired to find a better, more efficient way to produce citric acid. He knew it was possible to produce

citric acid without relying on lemons or limes, which would make the traditional fruitbased method obsolete. James

discovered that by exposing the fungus aspergillis niger to sugar, it would ferment and turn into the highly sought

after citric acid, [music] you probably have an onion in your kitchen and there's a good chance it has some black

spots. Those spots are most likely aspergillus niger. At first, producing citric acid this way wasn't easy.

Fermentation was done on flat surfaces, literally metal trays. But it was a very unstable process because many variables

were nearly impossible to control. For example, the quality of the fungus spores, the purity of the cultures,

contamination from the air or the medium, humidity, temperature, and so on. All these factors made [music] the

process extremely frustrating for Fizer's chemists. Even so, the method kept improving and in 1919, Fizer

launched the SUIAC program, a research and development project aimed at producing citric acid.

It turned out to be a huge success. [music] By the 1920s, the price of 1 kilo of citric acid dropped from $2.55

to just 40. And you can probably imagine how Coca-Cola and other companies reacted when they heard that news.

Thanks to the SUIAC research program, Fizer eventually began using tanks to carry out fermentation for this and

other product like gluconic acid, ascorbic acid, the famous vitamin C, and several other compounds in high demand.

In the 1940s, these advances in tank fermentation technology proved to be crucial during

World War II. That was when the United States government challenged the American pharmaceutical industry to

mass-roduce penicellin to support the troops. Although penicellin had been discovered roughly a decade earlier in

1928 by Dr. Alexander Fleming in England, it was little more than a laboratory curiosity at the time. There

was no method to massroduce or commercialize it. and England weakened by the war couldn't manufacture it in

the 1940s either. So this task was assigned by Winston Churchill to the Allied nations and in

the end the United States accepted the mission responding to Churchill's appeal. Each company at the time

developed its own method to try to produce penicellin on a large scale and Fizer in turn chose fermentation. This

was the very method the company had been studying and perfecting for [music] at least 20 years. Building on the SUIAC

program for citric acid, the penicellin research team led by Jasper Kaine initially used metal trays, the same

kind used during the early citric acid experiments. However, this method wasn't efficient

for large-scale production and suffered from the same lack of consistency as before. Contamination also became a

frequent problem during penicellin production. So, Jasper suggested a different approach, one Fiser already

knew well, fermenting in tanks just as they had tested and perfected in citric acid production. This represented a huge

risk for Fizer in the context of World War II. Raw materials were scarce, which [music] meant the company couldn't

simply buy new tanks since they were made of metals reserved for the war industry. On top of that, so little was

known about penicellin at the time that the media and laboratories called it the miracle drug. Industrial monument to the

miracle drug. Mass production penicellin plant at Terry Hoot, Indiana. One of many where this life-saving medicine is

now being produced. >> Abandoning citric acid production, the very product that kept Fizer profitable.

To begin producing a barely studied drug with a complicated and risky manufacturing process was a real shot in

the dark. That's why when Jasper proposed this to John Smith, the manager of Fizer's

plant, he got one of the most iconic responses in pharmaceutical history. In the context of World War II, the fungus

is temperamental, just like an opera singer. The harvest is poor, isolation is difficult, and extraction is even

worse. Purification is a disaster, and after all that, the final result is unsatisfactory. If a 7,500

L tank gets contaminated, can you imagine the cost of that loss? Besides, John knew the final product was

unstable and its preservation could easily fail. They weren't even sure the drug would reach the battlefields in

good condition. Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge with samples on trays was already considered a huge risk by employees at

the time. The bridge shook a lot and that alone could ruin all their work. Not to mention the risk of the company

burning through millions of dollars if a competitor came up with a more efficient and cheaper way to produce penicellin or

even an entirely different solution. Eventually, Fizer decided to take the risk and in 1943 they bought an ice

factory in Brooklyn that had [music] equipment capable of maintaining the required refrigeration for the process.

Responsibility for this factory was given to John McKeen, a chemical engineer at Fizer. Knowing the

restrictions imposed by the war effort, he managed to recycle boilers, elevators, and most of the industrial

equipment needed to get Fizer's penicellin factory up and running. It was inaugurated on March 1st, 1943, and

it housed 14 tanks of 28,000 L each. Some of the tanks actually came from the production of other Fiser products like

the citric acid [music] and gluconic acid mentioned earlier. All of this was a massive gamble for Fizer. At that

point, it was all or nothing. Employees worked relentlessly to meet the demand. [music]

7 days a week, 16-hour shifts were the norm. Many of them even slept in makeshift beds scattered around the

factory. In the end, Fizer managed to produce more penicellin than any of its competitors. By the end of 1943, more

than 45 million doses had been [music] produced. For comparison, in 1941, just 2 years earlier, laboratories worldwide

had only managed to produce enough doses for 11 people. All this extraordinary effort proved

invaluable on a Tuesday, June 6th, 1944, D-Day, when Allied soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy.

And each of those soldiers carried a dose of penicellin, 90% of which was made by Fizer, doses produced in an old

ice factory in Brooklyn in New York at home. That penicellin not only saved more than two million Allied soldiers

fighting the Axis powers but also saved countless lives worldwide both on and off the battlefield. But even though

Fizer's penicellin practically cured the world, it left Fizer sick. Sick for more profits. Ironically, just like many of

its patients, the company was itching for another dose of the same explosive success penicellin had brought. Just one

more dose. So far, nothing out of the ordinary. We've seen a company founded by two

German immigrants grow over the years, riding multiple favorable wins along the way. Throughout these evolution, its

story was inspiring, even serving as a great example of entrepreneurship for many. By the way, take a look at this

book where they kept the accounting records of raw materials imported from Europe.

[music] Fizer held the world in its hands in 1944, but that dominance slipped away

like sand between its [music] fingers. Just 2 years after D-Day, the price of penicellin, already low for fizer, had

dropped by more than half. This pushed Fizer to search for the next big boom and luckily for them orcin had just been

discovered. Oramyin is an antibiotic that belongs to the Dane clandestine class of tetracycans. Tetracycans are a

group of antibiotics used to treat a wide range of bacterial and fungal infections. They were discovered by

Professor Benjamin Duggar who was 73 years old at the time and had already retired after a long career at the

University of Missouri. Since he was retired, Professor Duggar carried out his research essentially as a hobby. He

was a man of science, passionate about both chemistry and bot. He had even served as president of the Botanical

Society of America and was the author of numerous scientific publications throughout his career. At that point, he

was leading a research team at American Ciameid in a small field laboratory, literally on a farm where he collected

soil samples from the garden that ultimately led to the discovery of the bacterium. And no, I won't risk

pronouncing its name. It's right there on the screen. That bacterium belonged to the same family later used to produce

tetracycans. Knowing this, Fizer set out to make its own discovery. Soil samples from

forests, deserts, mountains, and even oceans were analyzed. And in the end, Fizer chose a soil sample taken just

outside one of its factories in Terraote, Indiana. In that soil, they found streptoyces remosus, which became

the foundation for Terrammy, Fizer's new antibiotic. Terrammy has always been surrounded by controversy. It was the

centerpiece of Fizer's first mass marketing campaign. They spent twice as much promoting the drug as they did

developing it. A drug that Fizer quite literally created from a handful of soil taken from its own backyard. In 1955,

Lloyd Konova, one of Fizer's chemists, succeeded in producing tetracycling synthetically. He realized he could

create multiple variations of the drug, all with essentially the same effects as the original Terrammy. For years, Fizer

flooded the market with these antibiotics, launching marketing campaigns full of promises. But in

reality, the drugs were nearly identical. In this context, Fizer and American Cyanomid went to court to

settle their disputes. The issue at stake was a patent dispute over the rights to Oreo.

and the commercialization of other tetracycans. [music]

But the legal battle didn't last long. Both companies quickly realized there was no point fighting over something

that came from the ground. So instead, they joined forces to further commercialize antibiotics from the

tetracycling class. By then competitors were already crowding in and the market was becoming saturated. This led Fizer

at some point between 1950 and 1960 to hire private detectives to tap the phones of one of its strongest

competitors entering the tetracycling market. Bristol Meyers. Unfortunately for Fizer, Bristol Meyers counter

intelligence uncovered the scheme. But instead of taking the case to court, they simply offered to turn a blind eye.

If Fizer allowed them to share the market without fierce competition, Fizer accepted the deal. Itan gave them

a seat around the monopolies campfire. And so six other major pharmaceutical companies of the time agreed that in

this case, cooperation was far better than confrontation. Everyone stood to benefit from it. [music]

With the cartel formed, a monopoly over tetracycans quickly emerged. But even that wasn't enough for them. Since

antibiotic prices were artificially controlled, they created a kind of puppet market where everyone agreed to

raise prices deliberately while pretending to compete. Eventually, the Federal Trade Commission intervened,

accusing Fizer of patent fraud and violating antitrust laws. And as a bonus, they placed all six companies in

the same basket, breaking the tetracycan monopoly. It became the biggest case ever handled by the Federal Trade

Commission in US history. For a brief moment, Americans felt some relief in their wallets as the monopoly had been

bleeding them dry. about $750 million every year just in the United States. But despite the Federal Trade

Commission's intervention, it couldn't stop the pharmaceutical industry's hunger for power. This was only the

beginning of a series of scandals. With Fizer now firmly in the spotlight, the company liked playing Monopoly and had

no interest in returning to those sober profit margins it experienced after penicellin.

1996. Before the news of her death even spread, her real name had already been

replaced by numbers. Patient 0069. She was 10 years old, weighed only 18 kilos, and was Nigerian. That year she

became another victim of the menitis outbreak which had already taken more than 11,000 lives in northern Nigeria.

In Kano, the bustling capital of Nigeria, her family managed to find a field hospital set up by Doctors Without

Borders. But right next door, another field hospital had been set up. This one belonged to Fizer. Fizer had been there

for less than a week, seizing the opportunity to test its new experimental drug, Trovafluxine,

commercially known as Trova, on children. Clinical trials on adults in the United States had already revealed a

series of side effects, but after that they couldn't find any child volunteers. Meanwhile, at the doctors without

borders camp, the standard treatment was chlorenol tested and approved by the World Health Organization for menitis.

But somehow she ended up in the Fizer camp and never received a single milligram of chlorinol.

Instead, she was subjected to constant doses of trovafluxin from Fizer. A day later, the little girl's strength left

her body. [music] Leaked internal records indicate that one of her eyes became paralyzed. By that point, death

was already hovering over the improvised bed where she was being used as a test subject by a multinational whose name

her family could barely pronounce. 3 days later, patient 0069 was dead. Alongside her, 10 other children died.

11 deaths in total among the 200 children involved in the experiment. >> [music]

>> Several survivors later developed serious conditions such as complete liver failure, paralysis of the arms and

legs, [music] blindness, seizures, and other complications. But by then, Fizer had already

dismantled its camp and flown back to the United States on a charter Douglas DC9. Their stay in Nigeria didn't even

last 3 weeks, but it was enough to leave a trail of damage. This incident is one of the cases

highlighted by Dr. Peter in his book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime where he compares Fizer and other

pharmaceutical giants to mafia organizations. So the other thing I found out two years

ago was that much of what the drug industry does fulfills the criteria for organized crime under United States law

and they behave in many ways like that. They they corrupt everyone they can. They have bought every type of person

including ministers of health in [music] some countries. Beyond the Nigeria episode, there are

many other examples where pharmaceutical giants have been caught operating in the shadows of vulnerable countries,

carrying out illegal or borderline illegal human experiments, often targeting minorities and people in

extreme social vulnerability. Their selection criteria are systematic, focusing on places and people far from

the world's watchful eyes. And beyond this specific case, Dr. Peter exposes how the pharmaceutical industry has

corrupted health care systems globally. In my country, for example, Denmark, we are regarded as having very little

corruption. But even here, thousands of doctors are on the industry payroll despite there

being only 20,000 doctors in total. Uh this is a very effective kind of corruption. The drug industry buys the

professors first, then the heads of departments, then other senior physicians. They don't bother with

junior doctors. So when several thousand are on the payroll, that's a serious problem.

His [music] reports also reveal how Fizer illegally promoted the drug neurontin in the

United States. In 2004, the company agreed to pay $430 million to settle charges of fraudulent

marketing practices. Fizer paid doctors to allow its sales representatives to stay inside their

offices, often disguised as medical students [music] so patients wouldn't suspect anything.

These reps were paid to recommend Neurontin for a long list of conditions from bipolar disorder to alcohol and

drug addiction treatments. It was even promoted for ordinary pains that could have been treated with nothing more than

paracetamol. Neurontin was promoted for all these conditions even though it was only

approved for epilepsy in treatment resistant patients. Other available treatments were

considered both safer and more effective. According to Dr. Peter, patients didn't always know the medical

students examining them were actually Fizer sales representatives. Not even when some of these patients were

examined during mamogs by these fake students. A company executive once said, open [music] quote, "Dinners, seminars,

consulting, it all works well, but don't forget the one-on-one conversation." That's when we [music] need to be

holding their hand and whispering in their ear. Neurontin for pain, Neurontin for monotherapy, Neurontin for bipolar,

Neurontin for everything. I don't want to hear any of that nonsense about safety." End quote. At some of those

events organized by Fizer, they rewarded not only the speakers but also the attendees offering luxury trips to

Hawaii, Florida, and other paradisal destinations. The goal was simple. Corrupt them so they'd [music] promote

the use of Neurontin. In fact, some doctors were paid to lend their names to scientific articles written by ghost

writers. The goal was to make Neurontin appear effective for conditions for which its use had not been proven, let

alone its effectiveness confirmed. Fizer in effect built a theater around Neurontin. They took advantage of

falsified medical education, forming an army of liars where every participant at every level was corrupted. And once

again, the ones who paid the price were the patients exposed to risks and harm without any guaranteed benefit. Many

died from heart attacks and strokes. Others experienced blindness or permanent neurological damage. For these

reasons and many others involving neurontin, Fizer in addition to the fine was forced to sign an agreement with the

United States Department of Justice. It was essentially probation. All of its activities were placed under the

supervision of the United States government. But in 2009, just 5 years later, Fizer was responsible for the

largest settlement ever paid in US history because it was caught once again doing exactly what it had promised to

stop in its agreement with the United States Department of Justice. a combination civil and criminal

settlement. Fizer agreed to pay $2.3 billion, the largest healthc care fraud settlement in the history of the

Department of Justice. [music] One of its subsidiaries admitted guilt

and confessed to mislabeling with the intent to defraud [music] and deceive patients. These were labels

for four different drugs that Fizer had illegally promoted. $2.3 billion was the amount Fizer agreed

to pay to resolve allegations that it offered kickbacks and hospitality to health care professionals.

All with the goal of encouraging them to prescribe these four drugs. In all of these cases, Fizer practiced off label

use, basically recommending a drug for a condition it doesn't actually treat. But apparently Fizer doesn't really care

about that. And it doesn't mean the company has to keep its most controversial drugs hidden either.

Fizer learned it could make huge profits by supplying psychiatric drugs. In fact, psychiatry is one of the medical

specialties that receives the most funding from pharmaceutical giants. According to David Hali, a respected

psychiatrist at Bangor University in the United Kingdom, there's likely no other field of medicine where published

research and raw data are so far apart. And it's in this gray zone of doubts and uncertainties that people whether or not

they actually have mental disorders are flooded with drugs claiming efficacy and safety. Highly questionable claims

making [music] psychiatry a paradise for the pharmaceutical industry. This happens because the definitions of

mental disorders are vague and easy to manipulate leading to true absurdities. Isn't there also a movement from the

pharmaceutical industry >> to encourage uh keeping people dependent on the medication?

>> Let me explain how the pharmaceutical industry works to boost its sales. They put pressure on health agencies

especially when it comes to diagnostic criteria. Loosening and expanding these criteria

labels more people as sick who wouldn't be otherwise. For example, remember when I mentioned generalized anxiety

disorder? The diagnostic time frame is 6 months. But what if that criterion is reduced to 2 months?

More people qualify, more people get diagnosed and ultimately more people get medicated.

[music] Homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder until 1974 when psychiatrists

voted to remove it and instead label it egodistonic homosexuality. for those who felt uncomfortable with

society's condemnation of their sexual orientation. Just to give one more absurd example, in 1985, masochistic

personality disorder was introduced to describe women who were physically abused by their husbands but did not

leave the marriage. Some psychiatrists at the time argued the equivalent diagnosis should be macho personality

disorder for violent man. Eventually, they agreed on paranoid doineering personality disorder as a better fit.

And guess what? For all these so-called disorders, there were medications [music] waiting to be prescribed. More

recently, the explosion of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder diagnosis. New in Brazil, but already

well known in the United States, [music] where a quarter of children are prescribed ADHD medication. Since the

90s, the '9s, [music] this absurd reality is the

commercialization of mental illnesses where behind the curtain [music] of medicine, the pharmaceutical industry

pushes new diseases onto the market. Beyond that, it distorts scientific literature so that existing conditions

like depression and anxiety disorders are diagnosed carelessly or with little critical thought. [music] This kind of

commercialization may not yet be a Brazilian reality. But in the United States, 650,000 prescriptions are issued

every single day. Roughly 20% of the population has already been prescribed psychiatric medication. So yes,

Americans and Europeans consume far more psychiatric drugs than Brazilians. These numbers reveal that the real danger

isn't just the diagnosis, it's what comes after when medication is prescribed and many times that can have

catastrophic effects on a person's life. Alprazoleam produced by Fizer under the brand name Xanax is a controlled

substance. It belongs to the class of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors.

SSRIs are used to treat depression and anxiety disorders. Their key function is to inhibit

serotonin reuptake in neurons. This allows larger amounts of the happiness hormone to stay active in the

brain. According to Peter, the number of young people medicated with SSRIs, supposedly for psychiatric disorders,

has resulted in widespread [music] chemical dependence. And many of these medications come with heavy side

effects. Xanax is considered by many to be more addictive than crack cocaine and harder [music] to recover from than

alcohol dependence. While SSRIs can bring short-term benefits for the conditions they target,

the real disaster often comes later as many of these medications are highly addictive. This is reflected in the more

than 300% increase in the number of 18year-olds entering social security programs.

because the dependency caused by these medications can be so debilitating. First, Peter discusses the common

comparison with insulin. If these drugs [music] truly corrected imbalances, then fewer people should need

unemployment benefits after taking them. But the opposite happened. The number of people under 18 who became dependent on

social assistance after the introduction of SSRIs rose by 3,400%. In other words, not 200% or 500 but

3,400%. It's estimated that more than 16,788,05 prescriptions of alprazolum were issued

in the year 2020, making Xanax the 37th most prescribed drug that year. The interesting thing is that the number of

patients using this drug is around 3,600,000 people in the United States alone, which

means many of these patients are likely struggling with addiction. Even more surprising is that ibuprofen is number

38 on the list and aspirin holds number 36. This can be compared to the fictional

company Los Poo Hermanos from the series Breaking Bad, which Gus Fring used as a front. In the series, he was running a

drug empire built on methamphetamine. But in real life, could Fizer be some kind of realworld Los Hermanos? After

all, most people only know the company for its most harmless products just like in the series with fried chicken and

soft drinks. or in Fizer's case, common products like the multivitamin Centrum, which by the way has faced its own share

of controversy. Meanwhile, other people are consuming this B side of the company, which in the series would be

meth, but in real life, it's also the drugs Fizer developed. Is creating a base of addicts really that profitable?

And is that what Fizer is aiming for? What do you think? Tell me in the comments. Take care and see you in the

next video.