The drug company Pfizer is best known for Lipitor, a drug that brings cholesterol down and Viagra, a drug that brings other things up.

But the "world's largest research-based pharmaceutical company" which sits between Goldman Sachs and Marathon Oil on the Fortune 500, is also closely associated with a seemingly never-ending series of scandals.

To say Pfizer's been accused of wrongdoing is like saying BP had an oil spill. Other drug companies have a portfolio of products, Pfizer has a portfolio of scandals including, but not limited to, Chantix, Lipitor, Viagra, Geodon, Trovan, Bextra, Celebrex, Lyrica, Zoloft, Halcion and drugs for osteoarthritis, Parkinson's disease, kidney transplants and leukemia.

During one week in June Pfizer 1) agreed to pull its 10-year-old leukemia drug Mylotarg from the market because it caused more, not less patient deaths 2) Suspended pediatric trials of Geodon two months after the FDA said children were being overdosed 3) Suspended trials of tanezumab, an osteoarthritis pain drug, because patients got worse not better, some needing joint replacements (pattern, anyone?) 4) Was investigated by the House for off-label marketing of kidney transplant drug Rapamune and targeting African-Americans 5) Saw a researcher who helped established its Bextra, Celebrex and Lyrica as effective pain meds, Scott S Reuben, MD, trotted off to prison for research fraud 6) was sued by Blue Cross Blue Shield to recoup money it overpaid for Bextra and other drugs 7) received a letter from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) requesting its whistleblower policy and 8) had its appeal to end lawsuits by Nigerian families who accuse it of illegal trials of the antibiotic Trovan in which 11 children died, rejected by the Supreme Court. And how was your week?

Even as it was under the probation of a 5-year Corporate Integrity Agreement (CIA) with Health and Human Services for withholding $20 million in Lipitor rebates owed to Medicaid in 2002, it off-label marketed its seizure drug Neurontin and entered into another CIA in 2004.

Worse, it bought Warner-Lambert in 2000, which made Neurontin, knowing the drug's marketing practices were under criminal investigation. (And knowing its Rezulin had been withdrawn.)

And even as it entered into its 2004 CIA for Neurontin, it was off-label marketing the seizure drug Lyrica, called Son of Neurontin, and three other meds, and had to enter into a third CIA, last year's $2.3 billion Bextra settlement which was the largest health care fraud settlement in US history.

The same day the settlement news broke, Pfizer announced it bought the drug giant Wyeth despite its thicket of Fen-Phen heart valve suits and Prempro cancer suits.

And there was more "bring 'em on" chutzpah.

After Vioxx and Pfizer's Bextra were withdrawn from the market for cardiovascular risks, Pfizer sought FDA approval for its Celebrex, the last legal COX-2 inhibitor, also suspected of cardiovascular risks, for use in children as young as two.

And in June, days before Pfizer suspended development of the osteoarthritis drug tanezumab for worsening joints, it touted the drug as "well-tolerated."

As a company, Pfizer, based in New York City with research headquarters in Groton, CT, looks better from the outside than the inside. Its Pac-Man like acquisition of drug companies, Warner-Lambert, Pharmacia (Searle, Upjohn), SUGEN, Vicuron, Rinat and Wyeth (also creating the world's biggest animal drug company) has created a silo structure in which the company's 90,000 employees in 90 countries feel unconnected to a corporate heartbeat. Loyalty is rare as employees in absorbed companies bought for their products alone fear getting pfired and 14,000 scientists bemoan that the company's biggies like Lipitor, Celebrex, Neurontin, Zithromax, Zyrtec and now Wyeth's Prempro weren't created inhouse.

Despite flying doctors to Caribbean resorts to attend drug pitches (by other paid doctors) and bestowing four figure honorariums on them, and Enron moments like a Bextra sales extravaganza with acrobats, dancers and gigantic "fist" logo, Pfizer's Midtown Manhattan offices consist of unimpressive cubes.

After becoming the world's biggest drug company in 2000, Henry A. McKinnell, former Pfizer CEO and a Bushmate (replaced by less conservative Jeffrey B. Kindler) vowed to make Pfizer the "the world's most valued company to patients, to customers, to business partners, to colleagues, and to communities where we work and live." But thanks to the parade of damaging safety and ethics scandals, Esprit de corps is lacking except in some sales units.

"Pfizer is a black hole," Peter Rost, MD, author of The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman and probably Pfizer's most famous former employee told AlterNet. "It is nothing but a maze of cobbled together drug companies that aggressively markets drugs it didn't create in a military-like command structure."

Still, Pfizer's vast product line, its $50 billion a year revenues -- exceeding some states' entire budgets -- and reputation for having the best trained sales reps make it the team to beat for competing salesmen and examples of Pfizer envy dot Cafepharma, the drug industry chatroom considered pharma's washroom wall.

"Glad they did it," wrote a poster about last year's Department of Justice (DOJ) Bextra settlement. "Pfizer is only sticking it to the American person when they perpitrate a fruad (sic) of this magnitude. The rest of you who sat by and said nothing are no better than a bunch of crooks. My father always said, 'you lie, you cheat, you steal; you can't do one without doing them all'. You must be so proud...I would take that name badge off when I walk into an office if I were you."

"If you think that Pfizer is the only drug company that has dealt with off-label promotion issues you are sadley (sic) mistaken," perpitrated the next poster.

"You are so right. All the other companies are doing it, so we did too. Waaah, waaah, waaaaah! (stomping my foot). It's not fair! It made us so much money! Patients don't matter, money does," wrote the next poster. Characterizations about wives and mothers followed.

Patients also resent Pfizer and have sued over Chantix, Lipitor, Celebrex, Bextra, Neurontin, Lyrica, Viagra, Zoloft and other drugs. Pfizer downplayed Lipitor's "serious and irreversible side effects" says Mark Jay Krum, an attorney representing plaintiffs in a class-action suit, and "is willing to promote the drug at any cost." Say that.

Even the DOJ calls Pfizer incorrigible. "...illegal conduct was pervasive throughout the company and stemmed from messages created at high levels within the national marketing team," it wrote in the Bextra sentencing memo. "Employees, including district managers, explained that they did not question their supervisors about the illegal conduct that they were being instructed to carry out, because to do so would be considered a 'CLM' or 'Career Limiting Move.'"

Still the FDA needs to take some blame for waving iffy Pfizer drugs through, especially under the 1992 Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) in which drug companies "buy" accelerated approvals.

Why did the FDA allow Pfizer to make money for ten years on the leukemia drug Mylotarg, which was given an accelerated approval, and allow people to take it as guinea pigs for ten years while "confirmatory" studies establishing its safety and efficacy were still outstanding? Patients who took Mylotarg while on chemotherapy had more deaths than those just on chemotherapy in a clear example of the lethal metrics of rushed through drugs.

Why was Pfizer's pain drug tanezumab, an injected monoclonal antibody made from bio-engineered immune cells, even considered for knee pain except for the profits in such Frakendrugs?

Why was Pfizer allowed to continue clinical trials on children, or anyone, after the FDA found Geodon overdoses in April -- and why is Geodon, rejected once by the FDA and promoted by Richard Borison MD who is in Hancock State Prison for research fraud -- hello -- on the market? Obama appointees Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, MD and principal deputy commissioner Joshua Sharfstein, MD come from public health backgrounds but it will be hard to turn the FDA ship around.

And speaking of dangerous drugs, what's up with Pfizer's anti-smoking drug Chantix?

In 2007, Texas musician Carter Albrecht, who played with Sorta and Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, became a poster boy for Chantix' unpredictable mental effects when he was fatally shot trying to kick in a neighbor's door. In 2008, with 988 adverse effects reported including seizures, heart trouble and suicides, the FDA banned airline pilots and air traffic controllers from taking it. Thanks for that. Last year it gave Chantix a black box warning to "highlight the risk of serious mental health events including changes in behavior, depressed mood, hostility, and suicidal thoughts when taking these drugs."

Most pharma watchers agree that financial penalties, including last year's $2.3 billion Bextra settlement, won't upend Pfizer whose one year budget for R & D alone is in the billions. Yet the DOJ repeatedly lets Pfizer pawn off guilty pleas to the False Claims Act (which include a ban on Medicare, Medicaid and VA eligibility) on its shell companies and keep doing business with the government. Why?

"Pfizer is the largest drug company in the world and if you include its generics unit it makes literally hundreds of different drugs. Getting tough would mean no Lipitor, no Viagra, no Bacitracin, no Cipro, no Zithromax, no Sutent, et cetera," says Jim Edwards, a pharmaceutical reporter on Bnet and former managing editor of Adweek. "The government is not really in a position to be cutting itself off from all that medicine."

"So many Medicaid, Medicare and VA drugs come from Pfizer, the government would never convict them," agrees Peter Rost. "It would stop the drug flow."

And then there's lobby power.

Just as former Louisiana Republican representative Billy Tauzin left the House Committee on Energy and Commerce which oversees the drug industry and resurfaced as head of PhRMA, Pfizer recently hired Gregory Simon who served on Obama's transition team and as chief domestic policy advisor to Vice President Gore to head its "global policy effort." Its senior corporate counsel until 2008, Arnold Friede, had an FDA background and Pfizer's former senior vice president for worldwide public affairs, Richard Bagger, has re-emerged as New Jersey Governor Christopher Christie's chief of staff. Hey, you guys look familiar!

Even the Bextra settlement arouses cynicism since $102 million of it went to a doctor and five former Pfizer reps who served as whistleblowers on the case, one getting $51 million.

Isn't making big money off pharma how the trouble started?

Aspartame is the most controversial food additive in history, and its approval for use in food was the most contested in FDA history. In the end, the artificial sweetener was approved, not on scientific grounds, but rather because of strong political and financial pressure. After all, aspartame was previously listed by the Pentagon as a biochemical warfare agent!

It's hard to believe such a chemical would be allowed into the food supply, but it was, and it has been wreaking silent havoc with people's health for the past 30 years.

The truth is, it should never have been released onto the market, and allowing it to remain in the food chain is seriously hurting people -- no matter how many times you rebrand it under fancy new names.

Sold commercially under names like NutraSweet, Canderel and now AminoSweet, aspartame can be found in more than 6,000 foods, including soft drinks, chewing gum, table-top sweeteners, diet and diabetic foods, breakfast cereals, jams, sweets, vitamins, prescription and over-the-counter drugs.

Aspartame producer Ajinomoto chose to rebrand it under the name AminoSweet, to "remind the industry that aspartame tastes just like sugar, and that it's made from amino acids -- the building blocks of protein that are abundant in our diet."

This is deception at its finest: begin with a shred of truth, and then spin it to fit your own agenda.

In this case, the agenda is to make you believe that aspartame is somehow a harmless, natural sweetener made with two amino acids that are essential for health and present in your diet already.

They want you to believe aspartame delivers all the benefits of sugar and none of its drawbacks. But nothing could be further from the truth.

How Aspartame Wreaks Havoc on Your Health

Did you know there have been more reports to the FDA for aspartame reactions than for all other food additives combined?

In fact, there are over 10,000 official complaints, but by the FDA's own admission, less than 1 percent of those who experience a reaction to a product ever report it. So in all likelihood, the toxic effects of aspartame may have affected roughly a million people already.

While a variety of symptoms have been reported, almost two-thirds of them fall into the neurological and behavioral category consisting mostly of headaches, mood alterations, and hallucinations. The remaining third is mostly gastrointestinal symptoms.

This chart will familiarize you with some of the terrifying side-effects and health problems you could encounter if you consume products containing this chemical.

Unfortunately, aspartame toxicity is not well-known by doctors, despite its frequency. Diagnosis is also hampered by the fact that it mimics several other common health conditions, such as:

How Diet Foods and Drinks CAUSE Weight Problems

In recent years, food manufacturers have increasingly focused on developing low-calorie foods and drinks to help you maintain a healthy weight and avoid obesity. Unfortunately, the science behind these products is so flawed, most of these products can actually lead to increased weight gain!

For example, researchers have discovered that drinking diet soda increases your risk of metabolic syndrome, and may double your risk of obesity -- the complete opposite of the stated intention behind these "zero calorie" drinks.

The sad truth is that diet foods and drinks ruin your body's ability to count calories, and in fact stimulate your appetite, thus boosting your inclination to overindulge.

Unfortunately, most public health agencies and nutritionists in the United States recommend these toxic artificial sweeteners as an acceptable alternative to sugar, which is at best confusing and at worst harming the health of those who take their misguided advice.

Even More Toxic Dangers of Aspartame

Truly, there is enough evidence showing the dangers of consuming artificial sweeteners to fill an entire book -- which is exactly why I wrote Sweet Deception. If you or your loved ones drink diet beverages or eat diet foods, this book will explain how you've been deceived about the truth behind artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose -- for greed, for profits, and at the expense of your health.

As mentioned earlier, almost two-thirds of all documented side effects of aspartame consumption are neurological.

One of the reasons for this side effect, researchers have discovered, is because the phenylalanine in aspartame dissociates from the ester bond. While these amino acids are indeed completely natural and safe, they were never designed to be ingested as isolated amino acids in massive quantities, which in and of itself will cause complications.

Additionally this will also increase dopamine levels in your brain. This can lead to symptoms of depression because it distorts your serotonin/dopamine balance. It can also lead to migraine headaches and brain tumors through a similar mechanism.

The aspartic acid in aspartame is a well-documented excitotoxin. Excitotoxins are usually amino acids, such as glutamate and aspartate. These special amino acids cause particular brain cells to become excessively excited, to the point that they die.

Excitotoxins can also cause a loss of brain synapses and connecting fibers. A review conducted in 2008 by scientists from the University of Pretoria and the University of Limpopo found that consuming a lot of aspartame may inhibit the ability of enzymes in your brain to function normally, and may lead to neurodegeneration.

According to the researchers, consuming a lot of aspartame can disturb:

   * The metabolism of amino acids

   * Protein structure and metabolism

   * The integrity of nucleic acids

   * Neuronal function

   * Endocrine balances

Furthermore, the ester bond in aspartame breaks down to formaldehyde and methanol, which are also toxic in their own right. So it is not surprising that this popular artificial sweetener has also been found to cause cancer.

One truly compelling case study that shows this all too well was done by a private citizen named Victoria Inness-Brown. She decided to perform her own aspartame experiment on 108 rats over a period of 2 years and 8 months.

Daily, she fed some of the rats the equivalent (for their body weight) of two-thirds the aspartame contained in 8-oz of diet soda. Thirty-seven percent of the females fed aspartame developed tumors, some of massive size.

How to Ditch Artificial Sweeteners, and Satiate Your Sweet Tooth

If you suffer from sweet cravings, it's easy to convince yourself you're doing the right thing by opting for a zero-calorie sweetener like aspartame. Please understand that you will do more harm than good to your body this way.

First, it's important to realize that your body craves sweets when you're not giving it the proper fuel it needs.

Finding out your nutritional type will tell you exactly which foods you need to eat to feel full and satisfied. It may sound hard to believe right now, but once you start eating right for your nutritional type, your sweet cravings will significantly lessen and may even disappear.

Meanwhile, be sure you address the emotional component to your food cravings using a tool such as the Meridian Tapping Technique (MTT). More than any traditional or alternative method I have used or researched, MTT works to overcome food cravings and helps you reach dietary success.

And, if diet soda is the culprit for you, be sure to check out Turbo Tapping, which is an extremely effective and simple tool to get rid of your soda addiction in a short period of time.

Non-Acceptable Alternative Sweeteners

I have written a few articles on fructose earlier this year, and I will be writing many more, so please be aware that I am absolutely convinced that fructose ingestion is at the core of our obesity epidemic.

And I'm not only talking about high fructose corn syrup, which is virtually identical to table sugar. The only major difference between the two is HFCS is much cheaper so it has contributed to massive increase in fructose ingestion, far beyond safe or healthy.

Please understand you need to keep your fructose levels BELOW 25 grams per day. The best way to do that is to avoid these "natural" sweeteners as they are loaded with a much higher percentage of fructose than HFCS.

   * Fruit Juice

   * Agave

   * Honey

Please note that avoiding these beyond 25 grams per day is crucial, even if the source is fresh, raw, and organic. It just doesn't matter, fructose is fructose is fructose ...

Acceptable Alternative Sweeteners

For those times when you just want a taste of something sweet, your healthiest alternative is Stevia. It's a natural plant and, unlike aspartame and other artificial sweeteners that have been cited for dangerous toxicities, it is a safe, natural alternative that's ideal if you're watching your weight, or if you're maintaining your health by avoiding sugar.

It is hundreds of times sweeter than sugar and truly has virtually no calories.

I must tell you that I am biased; I prefer Stevia as my sweetener of choice, and I frequently use it. However, like most choices, especially sweeteners, I recommend using Stevia in moderation, just like sugar. In excess it is still far less likely to cause metabolic problems than sugar or any of the artificial sweeteners.

I want to emphasize, that if you have insulin issues, I suggest that you avoid sweeteners altogether, including Stevia, as they all can decrease your sensitivity to insulin.

Lo han is another sweetener like Stevia. It's an African sweet herb that can also be used, but it's a bit more expensive and harder to find.

So if you struggle with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes or extra weight, then you have insulin sensitivity issues and would benefit from avoiding ALL sweeteners.

But for everyone else, if you are going to sweeten your foods and beverages anyway, I strongly encourage you to consider using regular Stevia or Lo han, and toss out all artificial sweeteners and any products that contain them.

If you have experienced an adverse reaction to any aspartame product, call the FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinator in your area.

In 1986, The International Journal of the Addictions published a very important literature review by Richard Scarnati. It was called “An Outline of Hazardous Side Effects of Ritalin (Methylphenidate)” [v.21(7), pp. 837-841].

Scarnati listed a large number of adverse affects of Ritalin and cited published journal articles which reported each of these symptoms.

For every one of the following Ritalin effects, there is at least one confirming source in the medical literature:

• Paranoid psychosis

• Hypomanic and manic symptoms, amphetamine-like psychosis

• Activation of psychotic symptoms

• Toxic psychosis

• Visual hallucinations

• Auditory hallucinations

• Can surpass LSD in producing bizarre experiences

• Effects pathological thought processes

• Extreme withdrawal

• Terrified affect

• Started screaming

• Aggressiveness

• Insomnia

• Since Ritalin is considered an amphetamine-type drug, expect amphetamine-like effects

• Psychic dependence

• High-abuse potential DEA Schedule II Drug

• Decreased REM sleep

• When used with antidepressants one may see dangerous reactions including hypertension, seizures and hypothermia

• Convulsions

• Brain damage may be seen with amphetamine abuse.

Many parents around the country have discovered that Ritalin has become a condition for their children continuing in school. There are even reports, by parents, of threats from social agencies: “If you don't allow us to prescribe Ritalin for your ADHD child, we may decide that you are an unfit parent. We may decide to take your child away.”

This mind-boggling state of affairs is fueled by teachers, principals, and school counselors, none of whom have medical training. Yet even if they did…

The very existence of the “illnesses” for which Ritalin would be prescribed is unproven. It is merely assumed.

In commenting on Dr. Lawrence Diller's book, Running on Ritalin, Dr. William Carey, Director of Behavioral Pediatrics, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, has written, “Dr. Diller has correctly described... the disturbing trend of blaming children's social, behavioral, and academic performance problems entirely on an unproven brain deficit...”

On November 16-18, 1998, the National Institute of Mental Health held the prestigious “NIH Consensus Development Conference on Diagnosis and Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder [ADHD].” The conference was explicitly aimed at ending all debate about the diagnoses of ADD, ADHD, and about the prescription of Ritalin. It was hoped that at the highest levels of medical research and bureaucracy, a clear position would be taken: this is what ADHD is, this is where it comes from, and these are the drugs it should be treated with. That didn't happen, amazingly. Instead, the official panel responsible for drawing conclusions from the conference threw cold water on the whole attempt to reach a comfortable consensus.

Panel member Mark Vonnegut, a Massachusetts pediatrician, said, “The diagnosis [of ADHD] is a mess.”

The quite conventional and orthodox panel essentially said it was not sure ADHD was even a valid diagnosis. In other words, it virtually admitted that ADD and ADHD might be nothing more than attempts to categorize certain children's behaviors---with no organic cause, no clear-cut biological basis, no provable reason for even using the ADD or ADHD labels.

The panel found “no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction [which malfunction had been the whole psychiatric assumption].”

The panel found that Ritalin has not been shown to have long-term benefits. In fact, the panel stated that Ritalin has resulted in “little improvement on academic achievement or social skills.”

Panel chairman, David Kupfer, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, said, “There is no current validated diagnostic test [for ADHD].”

Yet at every level of public education in America, there remains what can only be called a voracious desire to give children Ritalin (or other similar drugs) for so-called ADD or ADHD.

The 1994 Textbook of Psychiatry, published by the American Psychiatric Press, contains this review (Popper and Steingard): “Stimulants [such as Ritalin] do not produce lasting improvements in aggressivity, conduct disorder, criminality, education achievement, job functioning, marital relationships, or long-term adjustment.”

Parents should also wake up to the fact that, in the aftermath of the Littleton, Colorado, school-shooting tragedy, pundits and doctors began urging much more extensive “mental health” services for children. Whether you have noticed it or not, this no longer means, for the most part, therapy with a caring professional. It means drugs. Drugs like Ritalin.

In December 1996, the US Drug Enforcement Agency held a conference on ADHD and Ritalin. Surprisingly, it issued a sensible statement about drugs being a bad substitute for the presence of caring parents: “[T]he use of stimulants [such as Ritalin] for the short-term improvement of behavior and underachievement may be thwarting efforts to address the children's real issues, both on an individual and societal level. The lack of long-term positive results with the use of stimulants and the specter of previous and potential stimulant abuse epidemics, give cause to worry about the future. The dramatic increase in the use of methylphenidate [Ritalin] in the 1990s should be viewed as a marker or warning to society about the problems children are having and how we view and address them.”

In his book, Talking Back to Ritalin, Dr. Peter Breggin expands on the drug's effects: “Stimulants such as Ritalin and amphetamine... have grossly harmful impacts on the brain -- reducing overall blood flow, disturbing glucose metabolism, and possibly causing permanent shrinkage or atrophy of the brain.”

In the American press, although many articles have appeared covering “the debate” about Ritalin and ADHD, no newspaper or TV network has taken it upon itself to hammer on all the lies, day after day, month after month. That kind of campaign could turn around the whole nation on this vital subject---but of course, pharmaceutical advertising is a more powerful force.

And one should not forget that Ritalin came out of a Swiss drug giant called Ciba Geigy (now Novartis) fifty years ago. That company once had very close business ties with the infamous Nazi cartel, IG Farben. Farben stood for inhuman experiments on human beings. Read the adverse effects of Ritalin again, and consider that millions of children take those pills every day.

An Exclusive Interview With Barbara Starfield

The American health system, like clockwork, causes a mind-boggling number of deaths every year.

The figures have been known for a decade. The story was covered briefly when a landmark study surfaced, and then it sank like a stone.

The truth was inconvenient for many interests. That has not changed. "Medical coverage for all" is a banner that conceals ugly facts.

On July 26, 2000, the US medical community received a titanic shock to the system, when one of its most respected public-health experts, Dr. Barbara Starfield, revealed her findings on healthcare in America. Starfield was, and still is, associated with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

The Starfield study, "Is US health really the best in the world?", published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, came to the following conclusions:

   12,000 deaths from unnecessary surgeries;

   7,000 deaths from medication errors in hospitals;

   20,000 deaths from other errors in hospitals;

   80,000 deaths from infections acquired in hospitals;

   106,000 deaths from FDA-approved correctly prescribed medicines.

   The total of medically-caused deaths in the US every year is 225,000.

   This makes the medical system the third leading cause of death in the US, behind heart disease and cancer.

The Starfield study is the most disturbing revelation about modern healthcare in America ever published. The credentials of its author and the journal in which it appeared are, within the highest medical circles, impeccable.

On the heels of Starfield's astonishing findings, media reporting was extensive, but it soon dwindled. No major newspaper or television network mounted an ongoing "Medicalgate" investigation. Neither the US Department of Justice nor federal health agencies undertook prolonged remedial action.

All in all, those parties who could have taken effective steps to correct this situation preferred to ignore it.

I interviewed Dr. Starfield by email. This is an edited version of the interview.

In the medical research community, have your medically-caused mortality statistics been debated, or have these figures been accepted, albeit with some degree of shame?

The findings have been accepted by those who study them. There has been only one detractor, a former medical school dean, who has received a lot of attention for claiming that the US health system is the best there is and we need more of it. He has a vested interest in medical schools and teaching hospitals (they are his constituency).

Have health agencies of the federal government consulted with you on ways to mitigate the effects of the US medical system?

NO.

Are you aware of any systematic efforts, since your 2000 JAMA study was published, to remedy the main categories of medically caused deaths in the US?

No systematic efforts; however, there have been a lot of studies. Most of them indicate higher rates [of death] than I calculated.

Can you offer an opinion about how the FDA can be so mortally wrong about so many drugs?

Yes, it cannot divest itself from vested interests. [There is] a large literature about this, mostly unrecognized by the people because the industry-supported media give it no attention.

Did your 2000 JAMA study sail through peer review, or was there some opposition to publishing it?

It was rejected by the first journal that I sent it to, on the grounds that 'it would not be interesting to readers'!

Would it be correct to say that, when your JAMA study was published in 2000, it caused a momentary stir and was thereafter ignored by the medical community and by pharmaceutical companies?

Are you sure it was a momentary stir? I still get at least one email a day asking for a reprint---ten years later! The problem is that its message is obscured by those that do not want any change in the US health care system.

Since the FDA approves every medical drug given to the American people, and certifies it as safe and effective, how can that agency remain calm about the fact that these medicines are causing 106,000 deaths per year?

Even though there will always be adverse events that cannot be anticipated, the fact is that more and more unsafe drugs are being approved for use. Many people attribute that to the fact that the pharmaceutical industry is (for the past ten years or so) required to pay the FDA for reviews---which puts the FDA into an untenable position of working for the industry it is regulating. There is a large literature on this.

Aren't your 2000 findings a severe indictment of the FDA and its standard practices?

They are an indictment of the US health care industry: insurance companies, specialty and disease-oriented medical academia, the pharmaceutical and device manufacturing industries, all of which contribute heavily to re-election campaigns of members of Congress. The problem is that we do not have a government that is free of influence of vested interests. Alas, [it] is a general problem of our society--which clearly unbalances democracy.

What was your personal reaction when you reached the conclusion that the US medical system was the third leading cause of death in the US?

I had previously done studies on international comparisons and knew that there were serious deficits in the US health care system, most notably in lack of universal coverage and a very poor primary care infrastructure. So I wasn't surprised.

Do the 106,000 deaths from medical drugs only involve drugs prescribed to patients in hospitals, or does this statistic also cover people prescribed drugs who are not in-patients in hospitals?

I tried to include everything in my estimates. Since the commentary was written, many more dangerous drugs have been added to the marketplace.

INTERVIEWER COMMENTS:

This interview with Dr. Starfield reveals that, even when an author has unassailable credentials within the medical-research establishment, the findings can result in no changes made to the system.

Yes, many persons and organizations within the medical system contribute to the annual death totals of patients, and media silence and public ignorance are certainly major factors, but the FDA is the assigned gatekeeper, when it comes to the safety of medical drugs. The buck stops there. If those drugs the FDA is certifying as safe are killing, like clockwork, 106,000 people a year, the Agency must be held accountable. The American people must understand that.

As for the other 119,000 people killed every year as a result of hospital treatment, this horror has to be laid at the doors of those institutions. Further, to the degree that hospitals are regulated and financed by state and federal governments, the relevant health agencies assume culpability.

It is astounding, as well, that the US Department of Justice has failed to weigh in on Starfield's findings. If 225,000 medically caused deaths per year is not a crime by the Dept. of Justice's standards, then what is?

To my knowledge, not one person in America has been fired from a job or even censured as result of these medically caused deaths.

The pharmaceutical giants stand back and carve up the populace into "promising markets." They seek new disease labels and new profits from more and more toxic drugs. They do whatever they can--legally or illegally--to influence doctors in their prescribing habits. Some drug studies which cast new medicines in a negative light are buried. FDA panels are filled with doctors who have drug-company ties. Legislators are incessantly lobbied and supported with pharma campaign monies.

Nutrition, the cornerstone of good health, is ignored or devalued by most physicians. The FDA continues to attack nutritional supplements, even though the overall safety record of these nutrients is good, whereas, once again, the medical drugs the FDA certifies as safe are killing 106,000 Americans per year.

Physicians are trained to pay exclusive homage to peer-reviewed published drug studies. These doctors unfailingly ignore the fact that, if medical drugs are killing a million Americans per decade, the studies on which those drugs are based must be fraudulent or, at the very least, massively incompetent. In other words, the whole literature is suspect, unreliable, and impenetrable.

Jon Rappoport has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, Jon has published articles on medical fraud, politics, alternative health, and sports in LA Weekly, CBS Healthwatch, Spin, Stern, and other magazines and newspapers in the US and Europe.

He is the is author of several books, including The Secret Behind Secret Societies and The Magic Agent (a novel).

Jon is the author of a new course for home schoolers, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS.

E-Mail: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

Web site, www.nomorefakenews.com