Investigative journalists in radio and print in Cologne, Germany have joined forces to explore whether or not Big Pharma has colluded with regulatory authorities to suggest that expensive modern drugs to thin blood are any more effective than cheap aspirin.

Critical questions are sometimes obscured by arguments over the price of drugs.  Are expensive drugs necessary at all.  In the US, pediatricians now prescribe saline solutions for colds and low-grade bronchial coughs.  Salt in water is too easy a solution to a problem for which Big Pharma has come up with expensive solutions.  Many doctors in the US gives tiny doses of peanuts to children with potentially lethal peanut allergies.  Foremost US expert Dr. Hugh Sampson is chief scientific officer of a French company that is developing an expensive patch.  While the patch awaits US regulatory approval, Sampson and others declare peanuts themselves to be unsafe. Are they?  Or are they too cheap?

Now German investigative journalists are exploring blood thinners, which may even harm people.  They are probably no more effective than cheap aspirin.