There is a big difference between the type of person I was talking about in my last post and an honest whistleblower, that that's in the language the person uses. A whistleblower who has something legitimate to expose can deal in specifics, specific people, specific actions and specific results of actions, whereas a toxic, anti-social person will use vague generalities like "they say blah, blah" "everyone does *insert action here*". They keywords here are words like everyone, they, nobody, etc.
These sorts of people can cause major problems like bad service to customers, very costly mistakes, fighting between management and employees, fighting between departments and other very disruptive sorts of havoc.
When this sort of person wrangles into management, look out! Such people will tend to fill in their subordinates with similar sorts of people, and drive out, or into corruption, the honest, hard workers. This will then create that culture of corruption and rot that can spread through an entire company.
oh_brother wrote:Also, companies that focus on profits will tend to do well, whereas those with a social conscience would tend to give lower returns .
It is true that a company focused on profits at any cost can gain some huge short term profits, but the people benefiting from such profits will have to deal with some major personal issues that tend to eventually be their downfall, such as a guilty conscience or the fear of getting caught. Many do get caught too. Look where the hugely profitable executives of Enron and Worldcom are now... that's right, both companies no longer exist and their top management and owners are all in jail. Nice profits there, huh?
Also, that statement assumes you have to choose one or the other. It is possible to be focused on profits, while also getting them by being socially responsible. Many hugely successful companies do this. In fact, I'd say the majority of companies operate this way, going unnoticed because there's nothing glamorous or sexy in reporting about how honest and successful these people are. It seems more glamorous to report on what a durtbag some successful, but unscrupulous person or group is.
Some companies I know of that are hugely successful and also quite ethical include (and correct me if I'm wrong about any of them) RIM, Koodo, Vancity (a savings and credit union in my area), Earthbound Farms, Lundburg Farms, Natural Factors, Herbalife and Burt's Bees to name a few.
I would disagree abut Pfizer being one of the worst companies in America.
There are things pharmaceuticals can do better then anything else, and that is in the area of emergency trauma, something allopathic medicine excels at, but many other areas of health care, like nutrition, long term care of a chronic condition or long term recovery, allopathic medicine fails miserably. Yet other branches of health care excel in these areas, such as naturopathic medicine, homeopathic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, chiropractic care, physiotherapy and many more. Yet big pharma companies like Phizer, Astra Zenica and BMS (Brystol-Myers Squibb), to name a few, have spent billions, upon billions lobbying governments to change laws to make it harder and harder for these "alternative" medicine forms to compete with the big pharma giants. These companies seem to see all other forms of heath care as merely competition to their profits that must be stamped out of existence. I've been seeing many safe, effective natural remedies that are safer and more effective then their pharmaceutical counterparts be banned by government, effectively forcing me towards fewer and fewer options to using these drugs, which often, whenever I research their benefits, risks and side-effects, and personal observations from my own use of them, invariably tend to be less effective and more dangerous then the drugs that replace them. Years ago, I used to use ephidra drops as an asthma remedy, and also used the Barotech inhaler, and found that the ephidra was more effective in controlling my asthma then the drug, Barotech, and the Barotech, I later found out, had as a side effect, making my asthma worse, so I stopped using it. Now it's been over a decade since I last had any sort of asthma attack where I would have needed an asthma medication, but if I ever do need one, I can't use ephidra drops any more, that's now illegal, because a couple of people may have died using the synthetic equivalent, ephedrine, yet, I have never heard of any record of anyone dying from an ephidra overdose. If fact, I've noticed many times when comparing the drug to the natural remedy that the drug ends up having side effects that are the same as the symptoms it's supposed to treat, but the natural remedy ends up having no harmful side effects. I've had some beneficial side effects from them, such as when I was using a mixture of oil of oregano with olive oil as a disinfectant on a badly scraped knee, that knee had also had a rash on it that also went away. Pretty nice side effect I'd say.
When I needed something to treat severely itchy feet, I looked at Tinactin and found out one of the side effects is that it may cause skin irritation and itching. Say what?! it's supposed to treat skin irritation and itching but can cause the very thing it's supposed to treat? What am I using if for then? I went to my naturopath and got a natural remedy (Unda Zalf 270) which had very minor, if any side effects listed and treated the problem in half the time the Tinactin would have taken.
Then there's my sister, who was severely messed up by a bad morning sickness drug, which left here very similar to Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie "Rainman." Another big pharma drug, Pimozide, a psychiatric medication produced by one of the major pharma companies, then made her even worse, to the point where she is now afraid to ride a bus, cross a busy street or do much of anything. So she now mostly just stays in the house under the supervision of our parents playing The Sims 3 and monologuing to herself all day, every day. I'd say that though her body is still alive and moving, her spirit is dead, killed by these drugs, so I have more then a few reasons to say that most of the big pharma companies are among the worst in the world, and Phizer is among the worst of this sordid lot.
Here's an article by ABC, which states: "Drugs now kill more people than motor vehicle accidents in the U.S."
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Drugs/drug ... d=14554903
Another article states drugs as the 4th leading cause of death:
http://healthyalterego.com/index.php/20 ... -of-death/
So, when a company would lobby to deny me the choice of medical treatments, produce shoddy products that do more harm then good, cause so many deaths and attempt cover up the damage their products are doing, I tend to call them one of the worst companies in the world.
Any pharmaceutical companies that would stick with doing what pharma does best, which is providing drugs and supplies for use on emergency trauma treatment, and worst case scenario treatments, such as deadly, communicable diseases, would refuse to sell a dangerous drug and respect people's right to choose healthcare treatments and be quick to warn of hazards, and voluntarily recall anything that does turn out to be dangerous and, in general, respect life and people, would most definitely not be one of the worst companies in the world.
In other words, I have nothing against pharmaceutical drugs when used sparingly for treating what they treat best and being used in cooperation with many other forms of healthcare treatments. The problem is simply their overuse as a cure-all for everything, abusive practices of the companies that make and sell them, releasing harmful products that produce no discernible benefits, lying about it and suppressing a person's right to choose medical treatments that causes the problems.