Archive for the ‘Drugs’ Category
Widespread Ghostwriting of Drug Trials Means
“Scientific” Credibility of Pharmaceutical Industry
is a Sham
http://www.naturalnews.com/023074.html
(NaturalNews) The discovery that drug companies have been ghostwriting scientific studies using in-house writers, then paying (bribing) doctors and high-level academics to pretend they were the author of the article is making shockwaves across conventional medicine. This latest revelation of scientific fraud exposes a massive, widespread system of fraud involving not only the drug companies, but also hundreds of different peer-reviewed, “scientific” medical journals that have published these ghostwritten articles. This scam is the latest embarrassment to conventional medicine; a system built on such a foundation of scientific fraud that the admission of dishonesty no longer surprises anyone. The pharmaceutical industry, it seems, is now supported almost entirely by fraudulent science fabricated by marketing personnel.
Remember, it is these studies — the very ones now discovered to be ghostwritten by Big Pharma’s in-house authors — that the FDA uses to approve these drugs, unleashing them onto the public where potentially hundreds of millions of doses of the drug may be sold in just the first few years of its approval. But what we’re learning now is that the whole system is an elaborate scam. For these studies, there’s no real science involved at all.
To back this up, let me explain how this scam works in seven simple steps:
Step 1: A drug company runs an in-house study (using fraudulent study design from the start) to “prove” that their drug is both safe and effective. If the study produces negative results, it is thrown out. If it produces positive results, proceed to step 2.
Step 2: That same drug company uses in-house writers (“ghost writers”) to write up the results of the study in a favorable light by discarding any data that doesn’t fit the desired outcome. Note that these in-house writers are marketing people, not doctors or scientists, and they are on Big Pharma’s payroll!
Step 3: The drug company contacts a noted doctor or academic and offers to pay them a bribe (a “writing fee”) to put their name on the paper as if they were the original author. In reality, the paper has already been completely written and the doctor needs to write nothing.
Step 4: The paper is submitted to peer-reviewed academic journals (such as JAMA) for publication. Since the paper appears to have been independently written by an outside scientist or doctor, the journal is far more likely to consider it credible. Thus, it gets more easily published. The drug company reveals nothing about the true origins of the paper.
Step 5: The drug company that sponsored all this forwards the peer-reviewed, published study to the FDA, claiming this is now “scientific fact” that proves their drug is both safe and effective. Since the study was published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, it must be true, right?
Step 6: The FDA, which conducts no drug safety studies of its own, automatically believes the conclusions of the study (since it was published in a credible journal, after all), and therefore approves the drug for sale! From there, the FDA claims its decisions are based on the “gold standard of evidence-based medicine!”
Step 7: Once the drug is approved by the FDA, the drug company then claims the drug has been declared safe and effective by an independent government agency, and therefore the drug must indeed be both safe and effective. In other words, even though the drug company fabricated much of the evidence used by the FDA to make their approval decision, the drug company still claims that the FDA’s decision is an independent, science-based approval of their drug! Furthermore, the drug companies are now arguing that FDA approval should immunize them from any lawsuits or claims of harm stemming from their drugs. Amazing, huh?
From here, doctors are medical personnel are taught that the drug is backed by good science and that the FDA has independently reviewed the evidence and approved the drug. Therefore, it’s safe to prescribe to patients. What nobody has been told, however, is that the entire process — from the drug studies to drug approvals — was fabricated!
Or, put another way, as long as ghostwriting is tolerated in conventional medicine, the pharmaceutical industry has lost all credibility and is now clearly based on science fraud and marketing gimmicks, not genuine evidence. And remember, ghostwriting is not a new issue. It’s been going on for decades. The only thing new about this issue is that it has been exposed in once-secret court documents that just happened to come out during a recent Merck trial.
Medical Journals Should Retract All Ghostwritten Articles
NaturalNews is now calling for all peer-reviewed medical journals to determine the true authorship of all scientific articles they’ve published over the last ten years and retract all ghostwritten articles.
That would be quite a list, likely involving tens of thousands of published studies. The medical journals, of course, won’t bother with that process. You know why? Because just like the drug companies, they’d rather sweep their scientific fraud under the rug than admit they’ve been played by Big Pharma or participated in a massive campaign of scientific fraud that now calls into question the credibility of virtually all medical journals (except for PLoS Medicine, of course, which remains independent and honest).
You see, all the big players were in on this scam: The drug companies, the medical journals, the FDA, the researchers and even the doctors and academics who accepted as much as $25,000 per study to slap their name on a paper already written by Big Pharma’s in-house marketing writers. I guess credibility is cheap in conventional medicine. The entire reputation of a doctor can be purchased for as little as $10,000. Similarly, the integrity of the entire industry can be bought with Big Pharma’s dollars. There’s nothing in modern pharmaceutical medicine that isn’t for sale… not even scientific credibility.
The FDA Should Retract its Approval of All Drugs Based on Ghostwritten Studies
Think about this: The evidence used by the FDA to approve drugs is now known to be tainted. If this were a state or federal court, that evidence would be thrown out as being “inadmissible.” But at the FDA, there’s no such thing as pro-drug evidence that’s too tainted to accept as fact. (There are truly zero standards for scientific evidence at the FDA, at least with the top decision makers. They can accept any piece of fraudulent evidence as fact, no matter how “poisoned” the evidence might be.)
Based on what we now know, the FDA needs to retract its approval of numerous drugs that were approved based on ghostwritten papers. In other words, if the FDA’s original approval of these drugs was based on scientific fraud, then the FDA needs to rectify the situation and withdraw the approval of those drugs until proper studies can be conducted.
Will the FDA engage in such retractions? Of course not. There’s not motivation to do so. The FDA isn’t interested in good science or protecting the public. It’s only interested in boosting Big Pharma’s profits using whatever methods of collusion, corruption and scientific fraud it can get away with.
I say that if the FDA refuses to retract the approvals of drugs based on ghostwritten studies, the FDA has zero remaining credibility and has abandoned anything resembling “evidence-based medicine.” In other words, the FDA is a willing partner in this widespread campaign of scientific fraud, and even when the fraud is discovered, the FDA does nothing to attempt to reestablish scientific credibility. Real science, it seems, has zero priority at the FDA.
The Pharmaceutical Racket
So now we have Big Pharma, the FDA and the top medical journals all engaged in a massive conspiracy to deceive the public, to win approval for dangerous drugs, and to prop up the pharmaceutical industry with fabricated evidence on drug safety that was actually written by Big Pharma’s in-house marketing writers. This is clearly a grand pharmaceutical racket, operated much like a system of organized crime. Except these criminals, it seems, have not yet been arrested and charged with any crimes. (That day is coming, however…)
Now I ask you this: How stupid are doctors if they still believe in all this fabricated evidence? Because I’ve met a lot of M.D.s who believe so strongly in the “evidence” behind pharmaceuticals that they’ll argue your ears off about the science of pharmaceuticals vs. the “wishful thinking” of nutritional supplements. It makes you wonder just how gullible doctors really are. (In truth, they’re incredibly gullible. All it takes is a visit by a young, bubbly drug rep wearing a push-up bra to radically alter the brand-name drug prescribing habits of a typical M.D.)
And how gullible are patients who believe Big Pharma or the FDA? To believe in this system of fraudulent “junk” science and manipulated clinical trials is downright foolish. And yet hundreds of millions of Americans take pharmaceuticals every single day — drugs that make them no healthier and that, in fact, may harm them or kill them.
Folks, it is time for the United States of America to wake up and realize we’ve all been conned by Big Pharma. We’ve been hoodwinked by a band of clever hucksters sporting academic degrees and authoritative-sounding titles. We’ve been had. Let us now end this foolishness by retracting all published studies based on fraudulent ghostwriting, retracting all FDA-approved drugs based on these fraudulent studies, and prosecuting the top pharmaceutical companies for the widespread fraud they have so cleverly designed and unleashed in pursuit of the almighty dollar. It is time to invoke established federal anti-trust laws and go after these companies, putting them out of business once and for all and thereby saving countless American children, adults and senior citizens from death by dangerous pharmaceuticals.
###
JAY WEAVER AND ALFONSO CHARDY
Miami Herald
March 5, 2008
Bribery. Drug trafficking. Migrant smuggling.
A Customs and Border Protection officer at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport was charged in February with conspiring to assist a New York drug ring under investigation by tapping into sensitive federal databases.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is supposed to stop these types of crimes. Instead, so many of its officers have been charged with committing those crimes themselves that their boss in Washington recently issued an alert about the ”disturbing events” and the “increase in the number of employee arrests.”
Thomas S. Winkowski, assistant commissioner of field operations, wrote a memo to more than 20,000 officers nationwide noting that employees must behave professionally at all times — even when not on the job.
”It is our responsibility to uphold the laws, not break the law,” Winkowski wrote in the Nov. 16 memo obtained by The Miami Herald.
Winkowski’s memo cites employee arrests involving domestic violence, DUI and drug possession. But court records show Customs officers and other Department of Homeland Security employees from South Florida to the Mexican border states have been charged with dozens of far more serious offenses.
Among them: A Customs and Border Protection officer at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport was charged in February with conspiring to assist a New York drug ring under investigation by tapping into sensitive federal databases.
Winkowski, a former director of field operations in Miami, called the misconduct ”unacceptable.” He told The Miami Herald that while he wrote the memo because of an uptick in employee arrests last fall, he didn’t believe the problem was pervasive.
”Do I believe this is widespread in our organization? No, I do not,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “Are there examples where we fall short? Yes.”
Two highly controversial issues, illegal immigration and national security, have thrust the Department of Homeland Security into the public eye as it labors to prevent another terrorist attack in the post-9/11 era.
The bureaucratic behemoth grew out of a controversial consolidation five years ago of several agencies, including the U.S. Customs Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Employees of both joined either Customs and Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known for their acronyms CBP and ICE.
CBP handles the border, airports and seaports, while ICE investigates immigration and customs law violators.
”We as an agency are constantly policing ourselves so that the public trust is not diminished as a result of inappropriate activity, whether it’s on the job, off the job, criminal or not criminal,” said Zachary Mann, a special agent and spokesman for Customs and Border Protection in Miami.
Some Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees also have been caught up in episodes of alleged misconduct. But Anthony Mangione, the special agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami, said he was not aware of any increase in criminal or administrative actions “even though we have had a substantial increase in personnel since the merger.”
Friday, February 29th, 2008
After years of insisting there is no evidence to link vaccines with the onset of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the US government has quietly conceded a vaccine-autism case in the Court of Federal Claims.The unprecedented concession was filed on November 9, and sealed to protect the plaintiff’s identify. It was obtained through individuals unrelated to the case.The claim, one of 4,900 autism cases currently pending in Federal “Vaccine Court,” was conceded by US Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and other Justice Department officials, on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, the “defendant” in all Vaccine Court cases.
The child’s claim against the government — that mercury-containing vaccines were the cause of her autism — was supposed to be one of three “test cases” for the thimerosal-autism theory currently under consideration by a three-member panel of Special Masters, the presiding justices in Federal Claims Court.
Keisler wrote that medical personnel at the HHS Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation (DVIC) had reviewed the case and “concluded that compensation is appropriate.”
The doctors conceded that the child was healthy and developing normally until her 18-month well-baby visit, when she received vaccinations against nine different diseases all at once (two contained thimerosal).
Days later, the girl began spiraling downward into a cascade of illnesses and setbacks that, within months, presented as symptoms of autism, including: No response to verbal direction; loss of language skills; no eye contact; loss of “relatedness;” insomnia; incessant screaming; arching; and “watching the florescent lights repeatedly during examination.”
Seven months after vaccination, the patient was diagnosed by Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, a leading neurologist at the Kennedy Krieger Children’s Hospital Neurology Clinic, with “regressive encephalopathy (brain disease) with features consistent with autistic spectrum disorder, following normal development.” The girl also met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) official criteria for autism.
In its written concession, the government said the child had a pre-existing mitochondrial disorder that was “aggravated” by her shots, and which ultimately resulted in an ASD diagnosis.
“The vaccinations received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder,” the concession says, “which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of ASD.”
This statement is good news for the girl and her family, who will now be compensated for the lifetime of care she will require. But its implications for the larger vaccine-autism debate, and for public health policy in general, are not as certain.
In fact, the government’s concession seems to raise more questions than it answers.
Read More Here:
http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/government-concedes-vaccine-autism-case/2568/
Sacramento, CA: The American College of Physicians (ACP), the nation’s largest organization of doctors of internal medicine and the second largest medical association in the country, called for easing the federal prohibition of marijuana in a position paper released Friday, February 15.
The ACP asked the federal government to review the inclusion of marijuana as a Schedule I drug, a classification it shares with drugs such as heroin and LSD. Schedule I substances are declared to have no medical use and a high potential for abuse by the federal government. Since its inclusion as a Schedule I drug in 1970, the scheduling of cannabis has been constantly challenged.
The conflict between federal law and the twelve states where medical cannabis statutes have been enacted have made many doctors avoid recommending medical cannabis as a treatment. Dr. David Dale, president of the ACP, said that contributed to the ACP’s action: “We felt the time had come to speak up about this. …We’d like to clear up the uncertainty and anxiety of patients and physicians over this drug.”
Officials at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy panned the ACP’s move. “What this would do is drag us back to 14th century medicine,” said Bertha Madras, the ONDCP deputy director for demand reduction.
“With the ACP now supporting rescheduling, the ONDCP can no longer claim that medical cannabis is not supported by science or the practitioners of modern medicine,” NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said in response.
With this action, the ACP joins the American Nurses Association, the American Public Health Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and many other medical associations calling for cannabis to be made a legal medicine.
For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at: allen@norml.org. Full text of the ACP policy papers is available in PDF format at: http://www.acponline.org/advocacy/where_we_stand/other_issues/medmarijuana.pdf
In Lies We Trust: The CIA, Hollywood & Bioterrorism to learn why your life is entrusted to Manchurian candidates who don’t even know how and why they aim to kill you.
Horowitz brilliantly critiques the government’s new 24-hour television network and feature documentary, History of Bioterrorism, which is now broadcasting daily over the Dish Network.
September is “National Preparedness Month.” Officials say you must prepare for the worst bioterrorist attacks, yet they use fear and gross inaccuracies (propaganda) examined by Horowitz for your edutainment and informed choice.
Your generous donation(s) for this monumental production, in support of more works like it, are requested and greatly appreciated.
Call 1-888-508-4787 to make your contribution and order your free copies of In Lies We Trust available in late September. Or simply secure it online at www.healthyworldstore.com
2 hr 12 min 0 sec – Nov 20, 2007
www.KickThemAllOut.com
Dr. Horowitz generously donated this life-saving DVD for widespread free public distribution without copyright restrictions. Every American should watch this film to prepare for forced injections, mass quarantines, and official predictions of disasters.
This full version was built by The Kick Them All Out Project: http://www.KickThemAllOut.com from the 16 pieces posted on YouTube so you can watch the entire film in one piece. After watching this film, please join the revolution at the Kick Them All Out Project and help put an end to this insanity once and for all by taking control of our government away from these megalomaniacs!
by Richard Jones
In waging the Drug War we are arresting and imprisoning the adult sons and daughters that the Drug War is supposed to be protecting, and in the process we are creating legions of socially dysfunctional outcasts whom we will have to deal with in the future.
Most Christians believe the future holds a kingdom ruled by God, a theocracy where the holy will of God is the law of the land and the desire of peoples’ hearts. But how are Christians to live in the meantime? We want people to live rightly and in harmony with each another, but can we, or better yet, should we use force of law to compel everyone to live according to God’s standards? While we should personally live by God’s standards and share His love with others, we cannot and should not compel everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike to live according to Christian principles. Jesus did not force others to follow His ways. He did as He wants us to do — live our beliefs.
Whose Dogma Would We Use?
Even if we were to impose a Christian moral standard for living in America today, whose doctrine would we apply? By some Christians’ standards eating pork would be illegal. With some persuasions grape juice is OK, but wine is wrong; with certain churches women in pants would be a crime. With some sects even electricity is off limits. So to what moral standard do we look? Since the Kingdom of God does not yet rule on earth with Christ Himself to show us the way, we must allow our earthly government to be the foundation of our law. That raises the questions by what moral authority do we the people allow the government to rule? and how should our government rule?. Our founding fathers recognized man as Gods highest creation and as such they set the standard in our United States Constitution, an instrument of maximum personal freedom with restrictions intended to prevent government’s undue interference in its citizens’ lives. The government standard of morality then is one of personal freedom with protection from others who may wish to restrict our freedom or cause us harm.
Our government should allow us the freedom to achieve success in our personal and professional lives, and prevent disruption of our lives by those who may hamper our quest for fulfillment, or who thrive by taking our means of livelihood. In other words, we should be free to live our lives according to our own standards, free from others who want to hurt us or steal or destroy our property. In that way we can live our lives as Christians, and allow others to live as they see fit — as long as they don’t limit our life, liberty or pursuit of happiness.
The War On People Who Use Drugs
The US Government’s War on Drugs started with good intentions, namely: to save people, particularly our children, from the damage that can be caused by the misuse of some drugs. While that is a noble cause, the ends don’t justify the means — in fact the means don’t even achieve the desired ends. More damage and death are caused by the war waged on people, in the name of the War on Drugs, than could ever be caused by the use or abuse of drugs alone.
Many families are broken and lives destroyed not because of the effects of drug use, but because of harsh laws attempting to govern possession of banned drugs, and the unintended outcomes that result from those laws. The laws against drugs are founded on the erroneous assumption that all drug use is harmful. In fact cannabis has been found to be extremely safe. In 1988 after two years of exhaustive hearings into scientific research the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s own administrative law judge, Francis Young, found that marijuana is one of the safest therapeutic substances known to man. Even aspirin kills people, yet there is no known lethal dose of cannabis for humans. Researchers have found cannabis to be less addictive than caffeine, if considered addictive at all. This is not to say that people cant have problems with drug abuse, but why compound their problems by creating artificial consequences? As Dr. Andrew Weil put it, “There are no good or bad drugs; there are only good or bad relationships with drugs.”
Even if we take all the rhetoric over drugs’ dangers at face value, the adults who use cannabis are committing a consensual act and are at worst harming only themselves, not society at large, and should be held accountable for their actions (as everyone should be), but otherwise left alone. People who abuse drugs may have or cause domestic troubles, social dilemmas and/or health problems, but we should reach out with solutions — as we now do for people who have problems with alcohol — we should not create legal obstacles for them to contend with as well. In waging the Drug War we are arresting and imprisoning the adult sons and daughters that the Drug War is supposed to be protecting, and in the process we are creating legions of socially dysfunctional outcasts whom we will have to deal with in the future.
The Price We Pay
The Drug War has cost Americans the erosion of their Constitutional rights, almost one trillion tax dollars, over 100 million man-years wasted in the free world’s largest prison system, and has corrupted law enforcement (which used to be called peace keeping) by creating outrageous profits to tempt bad cops on the one hand, and by providing a financial incentive to keep the Drug War an ongoing, never-ending effort by swelling police budgets with asset forfeiture on the other hand — with nothing to show in return. Today drugs are cheaper, purer and easier to get than at any time in history. Teenagers comprise the fastest growing heroin population in America today, and in a recent survey high-school students revealed that it was easier for them to get cannabis than alcohol.
Taking Control
Under the current Controlled Substances Act we actually have little or no control of prohibited drugs. We have in effect turned over control to the completely unregulated black market, an underground enterprise with no safety codes or age restrictions, whose operators disregard all laws except survival of the strongest. We could drive much of the black market out of business almost overnight if we would regulate cannabis, imposing strict controls as we now do with alcohol. That would remove the financial incentive from the street dealers and place it into the hands of licensed business people, who would strive to stay within the law to remain in business. One requirement of the law would be that cannabis retailers could not sell cocaine or heroin, something we cannot presently prevent. The market would then move above ground and assume at least as much respectability as the alcohol industry — and as we don’t have the Jack Daniels distillery eliminating the competition with guns and bombs or Anheuser-Busch recruiting teens to actively market its products to our kids, that would be a vast improvement. We will actually gain control as well as gain a source of revenue to fund constructive programs if we regulate and tax cannabis.
The Rights Of A Free People
Modern American drug policy has not been a deterrent to drug use, but it has been counterproductive and hypocritical in many ways and millions of people are simply refusing to obey the drug laws. There are legal principles that support those who ignore drug laws. The decision in Maybury vs. Madison (1803) is clear enough. Chief Justice Marshall wrote: “All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.” Also, according to 16 Am Jur 2d, Sec 177 & 178: “An unconstitutional statute, having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void and ineffective for any purpose… No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional statute and no courts are bound to enforce it… .
Although you will not hear it in any courtroom today Americans have the right, even the duty, to acquit a person even if he acted as charged, if the underlying law is unconstitutional. Our founding fathers knew this. In fact the constitutions of early states such as Maryland specifically mention that jurors must be allowed to decide the law as well as the facts of the case before them. Our freedom of the press was established in just such a case. We have inalienable rights that no court should attempt to violate.
Conscience Objectors to the War on Drugs
Christians of course may reject cannabis use for themselves and oppose its use for others. But we should use the same methods of education and social disapproval that has led to a reduction in teen smoking, without our having to resort to arresting any responsible adult smokers.
As a matter of conscience Christians should demand an end to the massively destructive and inhumane Drug War. We should insist on an effective drug strategy. Our nation requires a rational drug policy based on science and compassion rather than one based on hysteria and punishment. We deserve a truthful drug education program to help keep our children from using drugs and limit the damage caused to them if they disregard the warnings — as many kids do — so we can keep them alive until they grow into a better understanding of the consequences of drug use. We need voluntary treatment, available on demand, for drug addicts and those who come to realize they have a drug abuse problem and cannot quit on their own.
If we channel the billions upon billions of dollars we spend on the Drug War each year into constructive programs coupled with practical drug policy we could actually accomplish the goals of reducing the death and destruction caused by the misuse of drugs — and by our current War on Drugs.
From Huffpost’s “off the bus”
James Freedman
Posted January 23, 2008 | 01:43 AM (EST)
Ron Paul’s libertarian ideology is dramatically revealed when you get him started on topics such as the War on Drugs, the FDA and forced immunization that draw on his background in medicine. Paul, a ten-term member of Congress who’s hoping to pick up the Republican nomination for president, feels strongly that the federal government, in most cases, shouldn’t be telling Americans what they can and cannot put into their bodies.
“I don’t think anything should be forced on us by the government, [and] immunization is one thing that we’re pressured and forced into,” he said. “The other thing they’re doing right now is the government’s doing this mental health testing of everybody in school and they’re putting a lot of pressure, in a way forcing kids to be put on psychotropic drugs, which I think are very, very dangerous. So anything medical that is forced on us I think is bad.”
What if a dangerous disease was spreading like wildfire? Would Paul cave and require immunization in such a dire situation?
“No, I wouldn’t do it, because the person who doesn’t take the shot is the one at risk…” he said. “A responsible parent is going to say, ‘Yeah, I want my child to have that,’ [but] when the government makes a mistake, they make it for everybody. You know, that’s what worries me. They don’t always come up with the perfect answer sometimes… and people have had some very, very serious reactions from these immunizations.”
Just as Paul wants to limit what Americans are forced to put in their bodies, he also wants to restrict the federal government’s dictates of what Americans are allowed to consume.
“I want the [federal] government to stay out of it,” he said. “I don’t think the federal government should be enforcing laws against the use of marijuana in states like California, where it’s been legalized for medical use… I just think the states should regulate it.”
Paul compared the War on Drugs to the long-ago repealed Eighteenth Amendment banning the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the United States.
“I think the prohibition of drugs and the War on Drugs has been every bit as detrimental as the prohibition of alcohol,” he said. “We probably have more danger in our prescription drugs and more addiction from those drugs–there’s a great deal of harm.”
He added: “If we accept this notion that the federal government is going to dictate what we can put into our bodies, then it leads to the next step: that the government is going to regulate everything that is supposedly good for us. That’s where they are. They have an FDA that won’t allow somebody who’s dying to use an experimental drug which might speed up the process of finding out which drugs are good and which drugs are bad and the federal government comes in and dictates that they want complete control over vitamins and nutritional products and I just think the whole principal of government telling us what we can take in or not take in is just a dangerous position to take… it’s related to the drug industry because they’d like to control all of this.”
Although he concedes that some regulation is prudent, the situation under a Paul Administration would be vastly different than where things stand today.
“[When] it comes down to… the use of drugs for kids and other things they have a right to regulate it. They regulate alcohol all the time, not very well but at least they can do it,” he said. “[But] I don’t think you need the federal government sending their policemen out to try to enforce a law that’s virtually unenforceable.”
Paul, who ran for president as a Libertarian in 1988, clearly has a strong desire for change, and has done surprisingly well in caucuses and primaries so far — coming in second in Nevada, for instance. Still, most pundits do not think he’ll get the nomination this time around, either. If that turns out to be the case, would he ever consider running for president again in the future?
“Well, I probably wouldn’t want to run again, but I can’t believe any time in my life I would not want to promote these views, because I’m so firmly convinced that it would be beneficial to all of us,” he said.
Washington, DC: The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) is once again sponsoring a series of regional summits to encourage middle-school and high school administrators to enact federally sponsored random student drug testing. The 2008 summits mark the fifth consecutive year that the White House is funding the symposiums, which are scheduled to take place this winter in Jacksonville, Florida (January 29), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (January 31), Albuquerque, New Mexico (February 6), and Indianapolis, Indiana (February 13).
“These summits fail to acknowledge the harsh realities of random student drug testing programs,” NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano said. “These programs are humiliating, expensive failures. They fail to deter students from using drugs and alcohol, and they break down trust between teens and educators.”
According to the results of a two-year prospective study published in the Journal of School Health in November, random drug testing programs that target high school athletes do not reduce self-reported drug use and may encourage behaviors associated with “future substance use.”
Last year the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Council on School Health resolved, “There is little evidence of the effectiveness of school-based drug testing,” and warned that students subjected to random testing programs may experience “an increase in known risk factors for drug use.” The Academy also warned that school-based drug testing programs could decrease student involvement in extracurricular activities and undermine trust between pupils and educators. (Full Report)
A 2003 cross-sectional study of national student drug testing programs previously reported, “Drug testing, as practiced in recent years in American secondary schools, does not prevent or inhibit student drug use.”
Since 2005, the US Department of Education has appropriated over $10 million dollars to enact random student drug testing programs in public schools and has sponsored over 20 regional summits.
Free registration to attend any of this year’s summits is available online at:
http://summits.csrincorporated.com/index.cfm.
For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org.
Original Article: http://www.newstarget.com/022502.html
U.S. Hospitals Plagued by Ten Times
More MRSA Superbug Infections than
Previously Thought
Tuesday, January 15, 2008 by: David Gutierrez
(NewsTarget) Nearly five percent of patients in U.S. hospitals may have acquired a particular antibiotic resistant staph infection, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).
Researchers surveyed a total of 1,200 hospitals and other health care facilities from all 50 states, and found 8,000 patients infected or colonized with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) — or 46 out of every 1,000. This suggests that up to 1.2 million hospital patients across the country may be infected every year.
Colonized patients are those who were found to be carrying the bacteria in or on their bodies, but who had not showed any symptoms of disease.
“This rate is between eight and 11 times greater than previous MRSA estimates,” APIC wrote.
The majority of the infections had originated within the medical facility; 67 percent arose in patients being treated for general medical conditions (such as diabetes or pulmonary or cardiovascular problems) and not in intensive care patients.
APIC recommended simple measures, such as hand washing, to prevent the spread of MRSA within medical institutions. A number of studies have shown that many health care workers are not appropriately vigilant about washing their hands consistently.
“Hand hygiene is the most important means of preventing the spread of infection,” said APIC President Denise Murphy.
MRSA is resistant to all forms of penicillin, which has earned it the moniker of “superbug.” Due to its drug resistance, it is twice as fatal as other staph infections.
In 1974, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 2 percent of the staph infections occurring in medical facilities were cases of MRSA; in 2004, the estimate had risen almost to 63 percent.
“Killing MRSA infections is easy,” countered consumer health advocate Mike Adams. “Manuka honey easily kills MRSA infections, as does colloidal silver, tea tree oil and literally thousands of other botanical medicines. While conventional medicine remains baffled by this antibiotic resistant infection, the world of natural medicine has known how to beat such infections for literally thousands of years,” Adams said.
Worldwide, approximately 2.7 percent of S. aureus carriers are estimated to be infected or colonized with MRSA.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 by: Mike Adams
(NewsTarget opinion) The latest round of scientific fraud from Big Pharma arrives in the form of yet more junk science conducted by Merck on its blockbuster cholesterol drug Vytorin. Results of a clinical trial involving the drug were finally released this week, nearly two years after they were known by Merck, and only after Merck attempted to manipulate the data by redefining the outcome of the trial after the fact!
To help explain the degree of scientific fraud happening with this Vytorin clinical trial, I’ve released a sixty-second parody video ad featuring Merck’s Vytorin drug along with a narrative explanation of the fraud surrounding Vytorin. You can watch the video here: http://www.newstarget.com/022501.html
Deliberate Fraud: What Really Happened with Vytorin
Vytorin has been a top-selling cholesterol drug for several years, generating billions of dollars in revenue for Merck and Schering-Plough. Even though the drug was being prescribed to millions of people, nobody really knew if it worked to remove plaque from arteries (which sort of makes you wonder why it was approved in the first place, right?), so Merck launched a clinical trial called ENHANCE to study the effectiveness of the drug.
The ENHANCE study was completed in April, 2006, and the results were turned over to Merck. As it turns out, Merck didn’t like the results of the trial, so instead of releasing them to the public (or the FDA), it sat on them, delaying the release of this data while Vytorin sales continued to ring up billions of dollars in sales.
After sitting on the data for over a year, Merck decided it would commit scientific fraud and “redefine” the goal of the study after the fact! This would involve selectively deciding which data points looked the best, and then reshaping the goal of the study to fit the data. (How’s that for “evidence-based medicine?” The deeper you look into the so-called “science” behind Big Pharma’s pill-pushing agenda, the more you realize it’s based on nothing but fraud…)
Full Story: http://www.newstarget.com/022505.html
Friday, December 14, 2007 by: Mike Adams Vaccines and Medical
Experiments on Children,
Minorities, Woman and Inmates
(1845 – 2007)
Think U.S. health authorities have never conducted outrageous medical experiments on children, women, minorities, homosexuals and inmates? Think again: This timeline, originally put together by Dani Veracity (a NewsTarget reporter), has been edited and updated with recent vaccination experimentation programs in Maryland and New Jersey. Here’s what’s really happening in the United States when it comes to exploiting the public for medical experimentation:
(1845 – 1849)
J. Marion Sims, later hailed as the “father of gynecology,” performs medical experiments on enslaved African women without anesthesia. These women would usually die of infection soon after surgery. Based on his belief that the movement of newborns’ skull bones during protracted births causes trismus, he also uses a shoemaker’s awl, a pointed tool shoemakers use to make holes in leather, to practice moving the skull bones of babies born to enslaved mothers (Brinker).
(1895)
New York pediatrician Henry Heiman infects a 4-year-old boy whom he calls “an idiot with chronic epilepsy” with gonorrhea as part of a medical experiment (“Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After”).
(1896)
Dr. Arthur Wentworth turns 29 children at Boston’s Children’s Hospital into human guinea pigs when he performs spinal taps on them, just to test whether the procedure is harmful (Sharav).
(1906)
Harvard professor Dr. Richard Strong infects prisoners in the Philippines with cholera to study the disease; 13 of them die. He compensates survivors with cigars and cigarettes. During the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi doctors cite this study to justify their own medical experiments (Greger, Sharav).
Full Article: http://www.newstarget.com/022383.html
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 by: Mike Adams
(NewsTarget opinion) The latest round of scientific fraud from Big Pharma arrives in the form of yet more junk science conducted by Merck on its blockbuster cholesterol drug Vytorin. Results of a clinical trial involving the drug were finally released this week, nearly two years after they were known by Merck, and only after Merck attempted to manipulate the data by redefining the outcome of the trial after the fact!
To help explain the degree of scientific fraud happening with this Vytorin clinical trial, I’ve released a sixty-second parody video ad featuring Merck’s Vytorin drug along with a narrative explanation of the fraud surrounding Vytorin. You can watch the video here: http://www.newstarget.com/022501.html
Deliberate Fraud: What Really Happened with Vytorin
Vytorin has been a top-selling cholesterol drug for several years, generating billions of dollars in revenue for Merck and Schering-Plough. Even though the drug was being prescribed to millions of people, nobody really knew if it worked to remove plaque from arteries (which sort of makes you wonder why it was approved in the first place, right?), so Merck launched a clinical trial called ENHANCE to study the effectiveness of the drug.
The ENHANCE study was completed in April, 2006, and the results were turned over to Merck. As it turns out, Merck didn’t like the results of the trial, so instead of releasing them to the public (or the FDA), it sat on them, delaying the release of this data while Vytorin sales continued to ring up billions of dollars in sales.
Full Article: http://www.newstarget.com/022505.html
This is a frightening, though not entirely, suprising report
Since World War II, our military has sought and found any number of ways to override the values and belief systems recruits have absorbed from their families, schools, communities and religions. Using the principles of operant conditioning, the military has found ways to reprogram their human software, overriding those characteristics that are inconvenient in a military context, most particularly the inherent resistance human beings have to killing others of their own species. “Modern combat training conditions soldiers to act reflexively to stimuli,” says Lt. Col. Peter Kilner, a professor of philosophy and ethics at West Point, “and this maximizes soldiers’ lethality, but it does so by bypassing their moral autonomy.
For the rest follow this link:
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