This is the trailer for a movie called "Side Effects".
If you haven't seen it, rent it!
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Death By Medicine
"Death By Medicine"
This study was conducted between 2003/2004, so it's been around for a while. However, it is sometimes necessary to refresh our memories and also to introduce it to those who haven't seen it.
This study was done by Gary Null, PhD; Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD; and Dorothy Smith, PhD, and Carolyn Dean, MD, ND. It is mind-boggling to say the least, the startling findings from this meticulous study indicate that conventional medicine is “the leading cause of death” in the United States . Over 700,000 Americans die each year at the hands of government-sanctioned medicine, while the FDA and other government agencies pretend to protect the public by harassing those who offer safe alternatives. I suggest reading the entire study, including the foot notes before your next doctor's appointment or surgery.....
From the Abstract of the study;
A definitive review and close reading of medical peer-review journals, and government health statistics shows that American medicine frequently causes more harm than good.
It's simply astounding, follow the link to read more of this study. Be healthy!
This study was conducted between 2003/2004, so it's been around for a while. However, it is sometimes necessary to refresh our memories and also to introduce it to those who haven't seen it.
This study was done by Gary Null, PhD; Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD; and Dorothy Smith, PhD, and Carolyn Dean, MD, ND. It is mind-boggling to say the least, the startling findings from this meticulous study indicate that conventional medicine is “the leading cause of death” in the United States . Over 700,000 Americans die each year at the hands of government-sanctioned medicine, while the FDA and other government agencies pretend to protect the public by harassing those who offer safe alternatives. I suggest reading the entire study, including the foot notes before your next doctor's appointment or surgery.....
From the Abstract of the study;
A definitive review and close reading of medical peer-review journals, and government health statistics shows that American medicine frequently causes more harm than good.
- The number of people having in-hospital, adverse drug reactions (ADR) to prescribed medicine is 2.2 million.
- Dr. Richard Besser, of the CDC, in 1995, said the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections was 20 million. Dr. Besser, in 2003, now refers to tens of millions of unnecessary antibiotics.
- The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million.
- The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million.
- The total number of iatrogenic deaths shown in the following table is 783,936.
It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States. The 2001 heart disease annual death rate is 699,697; the annual cancer death rate, 553,251.
| Condition | Deaths | Cost |
| Adverse Drug Reactions | 106,000 | $12 billion |
| Medical error | 98,000 | $2 billion |
| Bedsores | 115,000 | $55 billion |
| Infection | 88,000 | $5 billion |
| Malnutrition | 108,800 | -------- |
| Outpatients | 199,000 | $77 billion |
| Unnecessary Procedures | 37,136 | $122 billion |
| Surgery-Related | 32,000 | $9 billion |
| TOTAL: | 783,936 | $282 billion |
It's simply astounding, follow the link to read more of this study. Be healthy!
Counterfeit medicines: the pills that kill
It's not just legal drugs we have to worry about. A great many problems are caused by counterfeit ones, too. From Britain's Telegraph.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Who pwns your food?
Fascinating information on "green" food production by corporate giants - some of which also produce chemicals, drugs and other products.
Sometimes, where there are hydrogenated fatty acids, there's smoke, too. Did you know that Kraft Foods was owned by (cough cough) Philip Morris, which they have cleverly disguised by renaming it Altria?
How Greenwashing Works
Farmers are disappearing. What will happen if all food production is corporatized?
And we are also concerned about genetically modified (GM) food - some crops have been designed to produce DRUGS...
Sometimes, where there are hydrogenated fatty acids, there's smoke, too. Did you know that Kraft Foods was owned by (cough cough) Philip Morris, which they have cleverly disguised by renaming it Altria?
How Greenwashing Works
Farmers are disappearing. What will happen if all food production is corporatized?
And we are also concerned about genetically modified (GM) food - some crops have been designed to produce DRUGS...
Pharma Drug Rep Tells All
Ex-Drug Sales Rep Tells All
Former Eli Lilly Rep Says He Wined and Dined Doctors to Make a Sale
By MARCUS BARAM
—
To sell their drugs, pharmaceutical companies hire former cheerleaders and ex-models to wine and dine doctors, exaggerate the drug's benefits and underplay their side-effects, a former sales rep told a Congressional committee this morning.
Shahram Ahari, who spent two years selling Prozac and Zypraxa for Eli Lily, told a Senate Aging Committee chaired by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., that his job involved "rewarding physicians with gifts and attention for their allegiance to your product and company despite what may be ethically appropriate."
Ahari claims that drug companies like hiring former cheerleaders and ex-models, as well as former athletes and members of the military, many of whom have no background in science.
"On my first day of sales class, among 21 trainees and two instructors, I was the only one with any level of college-level science education," Ahari told ABCNews.com on Tuesday.
During their five-week training class, Ahari claims that instructors teach sales tactics, including how to exceed spending limits for important clients, being generous with free samples to leverage sales, using friendships and personal gifts to foster a "quid pro quo" relationship, and how to exploit sexual tension.
"The nature of this business is gift-giving," says Ahari. He claims that he's heard stories about sales reps helping to pay the cost of a doctor's swimming pool and another doctor who was routinely taken to a nightclub where a hostess was paid to keep him company.
Drug reps develop a positive view of their drug and a negative view of the competitors, according to Ahari. "You drink the Kool-Aid. We were taught to minimize the side effects and how to use conversational ploys to minimize it or to change the topic."
According to Ahari, the benefits could be lucrative for sales reps, who tended to earn more than researchers. On top of a base salary for starting reps of $50,000, "there were four quarterly bonuses, an annual bonus, stock options, a car, 401K, great health benefits, and a $60,000 expense account."
Read the rest here.
Friday, April 4, 2008
April - Happy Birthday to Spike Milligan!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Milligan
British comedian Spike Milligan was born on April 16th. Without his wonderfully non-neurotypical brain, the world would be a sadder - and much less funny - place.
We miss you, Spike.
A Portland doc flips on big pharma and reveals its “dirty little secret.”
Bitter Pill - A Portland doc flips on big pharma and reveals its “dirty little secret.”
BY PHILIP DAWDY
Ten percent of Americans—children, teens and adults—take antidepressants. Whether it’s Prozac, Paxil, Lexapro, Effexor or Cymbalta, 30 million of us take a pill daily in hopes it will keep dark moods at bay. Antidepressants are the most prescribed family of drugs in America, an $11.9 billion market in the U.S. in 2007.
In January, Erick Turner, a professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University and a clinician at the Portland VA Medical Center, shook up the medical community, provoked the pharmaceutical establishment and, perhaps, disappointed millions of depressed Americans. He published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that revealed antidepressants are not as effective as we’ve been led to believe. For years, he implied, pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer (maker of Zoloft) and Forest Laboratories (Celexa and Lexapro) have vastly exaggerated the performance of their drugs.
Turner calls it the “dirty little secret” of the psychiatric world.
It was a disclosure that was felt ’round the medical world, and for the past two months Turner has fielded press inquiries by the dozens.
Turner’s “is the kind of a paper that makes you wonder why someone didn’t do it a long time ago,” says S. Nassir Ghaemi, an associate professor of psychiatry and public health at Emory University School of Medicine and a leading researcher on bipolar disorder.
“It’s damaging” to the reputation of antidepressants, says Peter Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac and a psychiatry professor at Brown University School of Medicine.
The paper has given Turner not rock-star status, perhaps, but at least a level of notoriety in a profession where physicians typically labor in anonymity. Since the paper’s publication, Turner has become a go-to source for reporters writing about depression and antidepressants.
But more important for Turner is how his work has shaken up the industry and raised questions about the integrity of the pharmaceutical industry and the weakness of the federal regulatory agency that’s supposed to protect the public from drugs that are dangerous or ineffective. It has also had the effect of raising an uncomfortable question: If antidepressants don’t work that well, why are so many Americans taking them?
The great irony of his discovery is that, for 18 months, Turner pimped for antidepressants. He wouldn’t put it that way, of course, as many doctors do the same thing. But starting in 2004, Turner, who is the
medical director of the Mood Disorders Program at the Portland VA and has worked at the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute of Mental Health, became a speaker for Eli Lilly, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.
Read the rest of "Bitter Pill" here
Oh my. Thanks for the tip to author and blogger extraordinaire Philip Dawdy at Furious Seasons.
BY PHILIP DAWDY
Ten percent of Americans—children, teens and adults—take antidepressants. Whether it’s Prozac, Paxil, Lexapro, Effexor or Cymbalta, 30 million of us take a pill daily in hopes it will keep dark moods at bay. Antidepressants are the most prescribed family of drugs in America, an $11.9 billion market in the U.S. in 2007.
In January, Erick Turner, a professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University and a clinician at the Portland VA Medical Center, shook up the medical community, provoked the pharmaceutical establishment and, perhaps, disappointed millions of depressed Americans. He published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that revealed antidepressants are not as effective as we’ve been led to believe. For years, he implied, pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer (maker of Zoloft) and Forest Laboratories (Celexa and Lexapro) have vastly exaggerated the performance of their drugs.
Turner calls it the “dirty little secret” of the psychiatric world.
It was a disclosure that was felt ’round the medical world, and for the past two months Turner has fielded press inquiries by the dozens.
Turner’s “is the kind of a paper that makes you wonder why someone didn’t do it a long time ago,” says S. Nassir Ghaemi, an associate professor of psychiatry and public health at Emory University School of Medicine and a leading researcher on bipolar disorder.
“It’s damaging” to the reputation of antidepressants, says Peter Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac and a psychiatry professor at Brown University School of Medicine.
The paper has given Turner not rock-star status, perhaps, but at least a level of notoriety in a profession where physicians typically labor in anonymity. Since the paper’s publication, Turner has become a go-to source for reporters writing about depression and antidepressants.
But more important for Turner is how his work has shaken up the industry and raised questions about the integrity of the pharmaceutical industry and the weakness of the federal regulatory agency that’s supposed to protect the public from drugs that are dangerous or ineffective. It has also had the effect of raising an uncomfortable question: If antidepressants don’t work that well, why are so many Americans taking them?
The great irony of his discovery is that, for 18 months, Turner pimped for antidepressants. He wouldn’t put it that way, of course, as many doctors do the same thing. But starting in 2004, Turner, who is the
medical director of the Mood Disorders Program at the Portland VA and has worked at the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute of Mental Health, became a speaker for Eli Lilly, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.
Read the rest of "Bitter Pill" here
Oh my. Thanks for the tip to author and blogger extraordinaire Philip Dawdy at Furious Seasons.
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