Recently in Pharma Category

Janssen-Cilag, a subsidiary of the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company, has filed an application to get methylphenidate (sold as Ritalin and Concerta) approved for ADHD - Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder ... in adults.

Swedish investigator and publicist Janne Larsson argues that the drug approval Janssen-Cilag is seeking should be denied.

There are a series of grave concerns with the drug's safety, which Larssen has outlined in a letter to the European Medical agencies and the EU Commission. He argues that the pharmaceutical company has not fulfilled its obligations even to keep the drug on the market, much less expand its use to a new indication. The data on usage and side effects if available in Sweden, but Janssen and other manufacturers of methylphenidate drugs are trying to scrape by without actually having to look at or report the facts...

The text of the letter is available in a PDF file and is also copied here below.

The PDF of Janne Larsson's letter is Application-Concerta-Adults.pdf

KARACHI: A toddler died allegedly after being administered expired measles vaccine at a private clinic in Gulberg Town on Thursday.

According to the child’s father, he took his one-and-a-half-year old son Abdullah to a private clinic near his residence in Yousuf Plaza, Block-16, Federal-B Area, for the routine measles vaccine.

However, his son developed high fever after returning home, and he was rushed to a hospital, but he died there during treatment.

The police reached the spot and immediately arrested a doctor named Qamar while two other doctors Ghani and Asad managed to escape.

Adelaide Now

From correspondents in Washington: AFP
July 14, 2010

Glaxo 'covered up diabetes drug's risks, conducted secret research'

BRITISH pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline hid the dangers of its top-selling diabetes drug Avandia and secretly wrote scientific articles about it, two US politicians charged overnight.

The allegations came as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) opened a two-day meeting of experts who will weigh whether to pull Avandia from the market over safety concerns.

In a letter dated on Monday and addressed to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, Senators Max Baucus and Charles Grassley accused Glaxo of covering up scientific studies that found problems with Avandia and of including the drug in a "ghostwriting" program.

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?

© AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, file

In this June 30, 2009 file photo, Tylenol Extra Strength is shown in a medicine cabinet at a home in Palo Alto, Calif. Johnson & Johnson is expanding a recall of over-the-counter drugs Thursday, July 8, 2010, including Tylenol and Motrin IB because of a musty or moldy smell.

Sales of Johnson & Johnson pain relievers are collapsing as a string of recalls appears to have made consumers wary of once-sterling brands such as Tylenol and Benadryl.

An eighth recall, announced Thursday, could worsen consumer reaction. That wariness and the huge amount of products pulled off store shelves together look to be costing J&J tens of millions of dollars a month.

Thursday's recall by Johnson & Johnson's McNeil consumer health care unit covers 21 lots of products, including Children's Tylenol. Those were recalled because of a musty or moldy smell, extending a large Jan. 15 recall tied to a nauseating chemical on shipping pallets.

The company said the new lots were added to the recall as a precaution after an internal review found those lots, shipped and stored before Jan. 15, had been on the same type of wooden pallets.

An April 30 recall of more than 130 million bottles of children's and infants' liquid medicines involved products J&J said "may not meet required quality standards," may contain tiny metal particles or may have too much active ingredient.

The string of recalls is an embarrassment for a company that set the standard on how to do it correctly when it rushed to pull bottles of Tylenol -- deliberately poisoned by someone who was never caught -- off store shelves in the early 1980s.

Sales, Market Share in Internal Analgesics Down Nearly Two-Thirds From a Year Ago

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) -- Tylenol has already come back from a near-death experience once in its life, but now Johnson & Johnson is faced with another possibly mortal blow to the brand with no path to recovery clearly in sight.

J&J's sales and market share in internal analgesics are now down by nearly two-thirds from a year ago through the combined effects of a series of quality-related recalls and a plant shutdown as the company sorts through yet-unresolved quality issues.

For the four weeks ended June 13, J&J's internal-analgesics sales are down 65% from a year ago, with a corresponding decline in market share, according to SymphonyIRI data from Deutsche Bank. The decline rivals the roughly 80% plunge in Tylenol shares following the Chicago-area poisonings in 1982.

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.

The sinister Skeptics group, agents of what used to be CSICOP now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) organised from the US and linked to the major corporate lobby groups, American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) and American and the Australian Council Against Health Fraud (ACAHF) are making ground in Australia.

Supported by authoritarian ideological influences in government and Big Pharma, the Skeptics are running constant attacks on homeopathy, natural cancer treatments, those who question vaccination and those who support any form of alternative medicine.

With the present world fiscal crisis, all those linked to Big Pharma and Science are fighting a bitter battle to preserve drug company competitiveness. But where fascist influences in government and health with most force come together is in attacking anyone who speaks out about freedom of choice and expression in relation to vaccination.

Over the last year the international corporate lobby Skeptics, have been behind a campaign against the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN). In 2009, one of their trolls, a lay person with no standing in medicine or government complained about the web site of the AVN to the office of the State Government funded Health Care Complaints commission (HCCC) an organisation that accepts complaints against groups found be giving out false information about health.

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:

FILE - In this Dec. 22, 2009 file photo, swine flu vaccines are sorted at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. A whopping 40 million doses of swine flu vaccine expired on Wednesday, June 30, and will be destroyed _ an amount that is believed to be a record loss of flu vaccine.(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

ATLANTA — About a quarter of the swine flu vaccine produced for the U.S. public has expired — meaning that a whopping 40 million doses worth about $260 million are being written off as trash.

"It's a lot, by historical standards," said Jerry Weir, who oversees vaccine research and review for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The outdated vaccine, some of which expired Wednesday, will be incinerated. The amount, as much as four times the usual leftover seasonal flu vaccine, likely sets a record. And that's not even all of it.

About 30 million more doses will expire later and may go unused, according to one government estimate. If all that vaccine expires, more than 43 percent of the supply for the U.S. public will have gone to waste.

Threats of a swine flu pandemic were 'vastly over-rated' by the World Health Organisation, an inquiry has concluded.

The Council of Europe last night also accused the UN's health arm of 'grave shortcomings' in the process that led it to declare a pandemic last year.

Plummeting confidence in health advice could prove 'disastrous' in the event of a severe future pandemic, parliamentarians at the Strasbourg-based senate said.

Fears: Swine Flu concerns led to huge public expenditure and even the wearing of masks. (Posed by model)

Medical Voices
Vaccine Information Center
Françoise Berthoud, MD [medical doctor, paediatrician]
June 25, 2010

Once upon a time, in April 2009 to be exact, I was invited to give a speech at a conference on vaccination. I was to talk after two of the best speakers France has to offer on the subject had their turn, journalist Sylvie Simon and biologist Michel Georget. At hearing them speak in the past, it was absolutely clear to me that the best option is to stay as far away from vaccines as possible. I just did not know what to do instead to best assure staying alive and well. As a paediatrician and homeopath qualified to speak on the subject, I decided to setup a conference called The Marvellous Health of Unvaccinated Children along with my friends, Sylvie and Michel. This work would later evolve into a book that analyses various life choices often made by families that do not vaccinate, including home birth, breastfeeding, simple therapies, good food (often vegetarian), a tranquil living environment and trust in the capacity of the body to heal itself.

In my life as a paediatrician, I had spent lots of time in dialogue with the parents who often needed to voice their fears about both disease and vaccines. We worked out together the best route for their children. Some chose not to vaccinate at all. Others held onto fear of disease, especially tetanus. In those cases, we postponed vaccination as much as possible and used a homeopathic protection and "cleansing" called nosode.

I worked in Switzerland where there is no real legal obligation to vaccinate, only great social pressure. In France, just a few kilometres from my office, there were four compulsory vaccinations at the time (BCG was fortunately removed in 2007, and three remain: Di Te Pol).

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:

Handling of the H1N1 pandemic: PACE calls for safeguards against 'undue influence by vested interests'

via Wolfgang Wodarg

Strassburg, 24.06.2010 - At the end of a debate on the handling of the H1N1 pandemic, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) today endorsed the conclusions of its Health Committee, which were published on 4 June last.

Wolfgang Wodarg (left), the initiator
of the action and Paul Flynn,
rapporteur to the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe

According to the Assembly, the handling of the pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), EU health agencies and national governments led to a "waste of large sums of public money, and unjustified scares and fears about the health risks faced by the European public". The adopted text says there was "overwhelming evidence that the seriousness of the pandemic was vastly overrated by WHO", resulting in a distortion of public health priorities.

The parliamentarians identified, as did the rapporteur Paul Flynn (United Kingdom, SOC), "grave shortcomings" in the transparency of decision-making about the outbreak, generating concerns about the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on decisions taken. Plummeting confidence in such advice could prove "disastrous" in the case of a severe future pandemic, they said.

The WHO has been "highly defensive", the adopted text underlines, and unwilling to accept that a change in the definition of a pandemic was made, or to revise its prognosis of the Swine Flu outbreak. The WHO and European health institutions were not willing to publish the names and declarations of interest of the members of the WHO Emergency Committee and relevant European advisory bodies directly involved in recommendations concerning the pandemic.

The Assembly did set out a series of urgent recommendations for greater transparency and better governance in public health, as well as safeguards against what it called "undue influence by vested interests". It called for a public fund to support independent research, trials and expert advice, possibly financed by an obligatory contribution of the pharmaceutical industry. It also called on the media to avoid "sensationalism and scaremongering in the public health domain".

Prescription drugs taken as directed kill 100,000 Americans a year. That's one person every five minutes. How did we get here?

June 25, 2010  | How many people do you know who regularly use a prescription medication? If your social group is like most Americans', the answer is most. Sixty-five percent of the country takes a prescription drug these days. In 2005 alone, we spent $250 billion on them.

I recently caught up with Melody Petersen, author of Our Daily Meds, an in-depth look at the pharmaceutical companies that have taken the reins of our faltering health care system by cleverly hawking every kind of drug imaginable. We discussed how this powerful industry has our health in its hands.

Age of Autism

June 09, 2010

By David M. Burd, June 2, 2010

Canada the last four years totaled sixteen "flu-associated" fatalities for their paediatric age category, defined as everybody under 18, and this included all H1N1 and seasonal cases. Three-quarters of these deaths had severe and chronic underlying health conditions, as did the mortality of a similar percentage of adults over 18.

Thus over the last four years Canada averaged but a single paediatric flu-associated death per year (not having severe chronic health issues) among its paediatric population of 7.86 million, Canada's total population being 33 million (Flu statistics are from The Public Health Agency of Canada's Fluwatch website). Importantly, this has taken place with 60% (or more) of their paediatric group remaining unvaccinated.

By comparison, during the same four-year time span starting the flu season of 2006 - 2007, the identical U.S. pediatric group had 553 flu-associated deaths, with also the same proportion having severe preconditions, resulting in 138 deaths of those otherwise healthy. Flu statistics are from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's FluView.

'WASTE OF MONEY': Newport West MP Paul Flynn

A GWENT MP slammed the worldwide health body that declared swine flu a pandemic last year in a report for a European organisation.

Newport West MP Paul Flynn said the World Health Organisation had “cried wolf” over the virus and was in danger of being ignored by the public in future.

In a report written for the Council of Europe and to be presented to it later in the week, Mr Flynn argues governments wasted huge sums of money on vaccines that were not needed.

Tehelka
June 19, 2010

THE RISK TO INDIA’S NEWBORNS

A SLY FUDGING OF FACTS IS PUSHING INDIA INTO BUYING VACCINES BACKED BY THE WHO THAT MAY HAVE KILLED CHILDREN IN OTHER COUNTRIES

BY VIJAY SIMHA

BABIES, THEY say, are a nice way to start people. They are also, it would appear, a nice way to start profit. If the babies are Indian, there’s added allure to the profit because there are so many of them every year. In the days to come, as the denouement of a series of extraordinary events, the Indian government is expected to make a fresh decision on the number of vaccines Indian infants are to be given soon after birth. Much rests on the decision for Indian families and, oddly, the World Health Organisation (WHO), which has made a bizarre push for new vaccines it wants Indian newborns to be given in the country’s public health programme.

Natural News
June 11, 2010
By Mike Adams

(NaturalNews) After weeks of silence on the issue, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally decided to go public with the list of ingredients used to manufacture Corexit, the chemical dispersant used by BP in the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. There are two things about this announcement that deserve our attention: First, the ingredients that have been disclosed are extremely toxic, and second, why did the EPA protect the oil industry's "trade secrets" for so long by refusing to disclose these ingredients until now?

As reported in the New York Times, Brian Turnbaugh, a policy analyst at OMB Watch said, "EPA had the authority to act all along; its decision to now disclose the ingredients demonstrates this. Yet it took a public outcry and weeks of complaints for the agency to act and place the public's interest ahead of corporate interests."

Alliance for Natural health
June 8, 2010

The Vaccine Firestorm

Last Friday's shocking news--the revelation of hidden financial ties and influence-peddling behind the World Health Organization's declaration of a worldwide H1N1 pandemic--is only one of our articles this week on the controversial issue of immunization. We'll tell you about flu vaccine deaths, fetal death and injury from mercury, a high government official formerly in charge of vaccines who now works for a drug and vaccine maker, and yet another tragic miscarriage of justice in the case of a pioneer of autism research.

Although the health issues involved are the most troubling, we show how the truth can be uncovered, as always, by heeding that old adage: "Follow the money."

The WHO's H1N1 (Swine Flu) Vaccine Scandal

Last Friday, two different European groups released reports accusing the World Health Organization (WHO) of exaggerating the threat posed by the H1N1 virus, and of having been influenced by the pharmaceutical industry in its recommendations about how countries should respond.

Age of Autism
June 08, 2010

North Hollywood, California, June 2, 2010 -- If the FDA, the AMA, and the CDC are not to going to ask this question - then TruthAboutGardasil.org (TAG) will keep asking until the families of the injured girls have the answers, the medical attention and vaccine injury compensation they deserve.

On May 11, 2010, an interview with TruthAboutGardasil.org co-founder Rosemary Mathis was aired on NBC affiliate WXII12 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The expose titled: Mom Blames Teen's Illness on HPV Vaccine, (HERE) has been read and the video viewed by thousands of people globally. What was unexpected was the high number of comments from mothers whose daughters have been injured by the vaccines.

Natural News
June 5, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) A stunning new report reveals that top scientists who convinced the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare H1N1 a global pandemic held close financial ties to the drug companies that profited from the sale of those vaccines. This report, published in the British Medical Journal, exposes the hidden ties that drove WHO to declare a pandemic, resulting in billions of dollars in profits for vaccine manufacturers.

Several key advisors who urged WHO to declare a pandemic received direct financial compensation from the very same vaccine manufacturers who received a windfall of profits from the pandemic announcement. During all this, WHO refused to disclose any conflicts of interests between its top advisors and the drug companies who would financially benefit from its decisions.

All the kickbacks, in other words, were swept under the table and kept silent, and WHO somehow didn't think it was important to let the world know that it was receiving policy advice from individuals who stood to make millions of dollars when a pandemic was declared.

Your Vitamins Are Killing You

Link to Original Article

Decades ago, when Linus Pauling and Abram Hoffer first proposed mega-dose vitamin therapy as a serious treatment, mainstream medicine and the press promptly discredited this as quackery. To this day, the media faithfully bombards us with the message that vitamins and minerals are useless, harmful or even killing us.(1-6) When one considers the lowly vitamin pill as an economic rival to drugs, and the dependence of the media on drug company advertising, the motivation to discredit mega-dose vitamins becomes all too obvious. Seemingly oblivious to this negative message, physicians quietly go about their business using megadose vitamin therapy in the intensive care unit with considerable success. Recent reports of this have been appearing in medical journals, finally vindicating Linus Pauling and Abram Hoffer as yes, of course, they were right all along.(7-9)

Left above image:US Military Project Hope Intensive Care Unit courtesy of wikimedia commons.

(NaturalNews) In the midst of runaway economic problem in Greece, the pharmaceutical industry has decided to blackmail the nation and halt shipments of medicines to Greece until it agrees to pay full price for the drugs. In order to cut costs during its severe debt crisis, Greece had announced it would pay drug companies 25 percent less for their products, but this loss of profit was enough to convince several pharmaceutical companies supplying key drugs to the country to initiate their own medical blockade where they simply refuse to deliver any more medicines.

In doing this, Big Pharma shows its true character. When the profits are flowing and the companies are raking in full-price profits, they're you're best friend. But when budgets get tight and everybody is asked to take a cut, Big Pharma betrays your country and its citizens, withholding medicines in a thinly-veiled blackmail attempt to force you to cough up more cash.

In the past few months, the American public has been informed that two infant diarrhea vaccines – GlaxoSmithKline’s Rotarix and Merck’s RotaTeq – are contaminated with pig virus DNA. But there’s a difference between the two vaccines: Rotarix contains parts of a pig virus that does not make pigs sick while Merck’s RotaTeq contains parts of a pig virus that kills baby pigs.

How many mothers know that, when Merck’s diarrhea vaccine is squirted into the mouths of their two month old babies, they are swallowing parts of a pig virus that suppresses the immune systems of baby pigs so badly, they waste away and suffer respiratory, kidney, reproductive and brain damage before dying?

Mercola.com
Posted By Dr. Mercola
June 03, 2010

The earthquake that hit Haiti in January is proving to be a lucky business break for Monsanto. They are offering Haiti's farmers a deadly gift -- 475 metric tons of genetically-modified (GM) seeds, plus associated fertilizer and pesticides.

These GM seeds have been declared dangerous by many countries.

According to Global Research:

"Soon there will be only Monsanto seeds in Haiti. Then it will be goodbye to farmers' independence ... But Haitian farmers wishing to use them for future harvests will have to pay royalties to Monsanto."

Sources:

Global Research May 11, 2010

NewsWithViews.com
By Attorney Jonathan Emord
June 3, 2010

On May 27, 2010, the Honorable Ellen Segal Huvelle of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia held that FDA violated the First Amendment when it variously censored and saddled with lengthy and inaccurate disclaimers ten health claims associating the essential nutrient selenium with a reduction in the risk of certain kinds of cancer. The decision (Alliance for Natural Health v. Sebelius) is momentous. It upsets a plan underway within the Commission to undermine and disavow compliance with the final and binding orders of the United States Court of Appeals in Pearson v. Shalala, a plan fully in accord with the wishes of that dedicated fan of unlimited government, Congressman Henry Waxman.

I have had the privilege of representing the plaintiffs in the Pearson cases, including the present one, Alliance for Natural Health v. Sebelius, holding FDA censorship of selenium claims unconstitutional. In the landmark Pearson v. Shalala case, the FDA's censorship of four nutrient-disease relationship claims (including ones associating antioxidant vitamins with cancer risk reduction; folic acid with neural tube defect risk reduction; fiber with colorectal cancer risk reduction; and omega-3 fatty acids with coronary heart disease risk reduction) was held unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

OpEdNews
May 26, 2010
By Richard Gale

Do you find something seriously wrong with this scenario?

Reports of faulty gas pedals, obstructive floor carpets, and failing breaks in Toyota and Lexus vehicles generated uproar across major media networks. For the 4-year period starting in 2006, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had reported 5 deaths, 17 injuries and 13 crashes, and an additional 29 deaths between 2000 and 2005. There was no hesitation among the networks and federal officials to demonize Toyota for knowingly risking the lives of people solely to empty its dealership lots. Even Congress quickly called for a Congressional investigation, and Toyota took upon itself the responsibility to recall over 8 million vehicles.

During the same four year period while NHTSA was collecting crash data on Toyota's lemons, the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database was gathering casualty data following vaccinations with Merck's human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine, Gardasil. And it was clear that Merck was far ahead and winning its race against Toyota for the Lemon of the Decade Award. Since Gardasil's launch in 2006, the vaccine has been responsible for 66 deaths and over 17,700 medical injuries of young girls, some as young as 11 years old. Six percent of reported events, or 1,100 girls, were serious enough to require emergency hospitalization.

Wellness Resourses
May 23, 2010
Byron Richards, CCN

A new study in women over the age of 45 has shown that long-term, regular use of vitamin E can lower the risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by about 10 percent in both smokers and non-smokers.

“The findings from our study suggest that increasing vitamin E prevents COPD,” said Ms. Agler. “Previous research found that higher intake of vitamin E was associated with a lower risk of COPD, but the studies were not designed to answer the question of whether increasing vitamin E intake would prevent COPD. Using a large, randomized controlled trial to answer this question provided stronger evidence than previous studies.”

Yes, it is studies like this that make the vitamin-hating, Big Pharma-sponsored public health goons heads spin. COPD is the 4th leading cause of death in America and costs the health care system well over 40 billion dollars per year. While they are busy telling everyone there is nothing you can do about it besides take your symptom-alleviating drugs, this new study shows that the vitamin the American Heart Association loves to hate may help this problem immensely. Of course, vitamin E also helps heart health but the AHA doesn’t want you to believe that, as its bad for drug sales.

One-in-four American children are being prescribed adult drugs for chronic adult diseases.

MEDCO Drug Trend report (2010): children who are covered by health insurance are the drug industry's fastest growing market.

In 2009, prescription drug use for U.S. children increased by 5%, while prescription drug spending for children increased 10.8%

According to MEDCO, the growth in prescription drug use among American children was nearly four times higher than the rise seen in the overall population.

"While H1N1 caused a spike in antiviral use among children last year, the far more alarming trend since the beginning of the decade is the increasing use of medications taken by children on a regular basis and in some cases, for conditions that we don't often associate with youth, such as type 2 diabetes," said Dr. Robert S. Epstein, Medco's chief medical officer and president of the Medco Research Institute."

PharmacyEurope

May 17, 2010

An ongoing trial of GlaxoSmithKline's Avandia puts patients' lives at risk and should be stopped immediately, a US pressure group has claimed.

Public Citizen said the diabetes drug, which has been investigated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the past over allegations it increased the risk of heart attack and chest pain, had an "unfavourable" risk profile and it urged the regulator to bring an end to the test.

theoneclickgroup
Winnipeg Free Press
May 4, 2010
Parents with more education less likely to let their daughters get HPV shots
By Helen Branswell, Medical Reporter, The Canadian Press

TORONTO - It might seem counterintuitive but it also appears to be true: Parents with more education were less likely to get their daughters vaccinated against HPV during the first year of British Columbia's free school-based program, a new study shows.

The finding of the study, published Tuesday in the journal PLoS Medicine, adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests vaccination efforts are being eroded not by people who are under-educated, but by upper-middle class folks with degrees.

"I think it's the combination of people who are used to making decisions, people who believe they can become experts by reading things on the Internet which would trump what public health officials or academics or doctors are saying," vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit said when asked to comment on the study.

"They're used to making choices in their jobs and in their life, one. And two, they make those choices based on information. And the information that one gets here probably is primarily through places like the Internet, which is a source of both good and bad information about vaccines."

The One click group
The Sydney Morning Herald
May 4, 2010
WA launches flu vaccine inquiry
By CORTLAN BENNETT

The West Australian government has launched an inquiry into the flu vaccinations that caused adverse reactions in hundreds of children across the nation.

WA Health Minister Kim Hames said the inquiry would scrutinise systems used to identify public health risks, including vaccine side-effects and disease outbreaks, after criticism of the government's slow response.

Last month, seasonal flu shots caused adverse reactions in 251 children under five in WA, with 55 suffering convulsions and 196 suffering fevers and vomiting.

WA was the first state to suspend the vaccination program, which was put on hold nationally the next day after children in other states and territories reported severe side-effects.

Legal Newsline.com

U.S. Supreme Court

May 03, 2010

BY CHRIS RIZO

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday dealt pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. a major legal blow, rejecting its appeal of a securities lawsuit over its pain medication Celebrex.

Plaintiffs in the case alleged that Pfizer's Pharmacia unit deliberately withheld the conclusions of a study showing that there was no advantage to using Celebrex over similar, less expensive drugs.

Urging dismissal of the lawsuit, Pfizer said investors filed their lawsuit after the two-year statute of limitations expired. For their part, plaintiffs said they did not know Pfizer may have broken the law until an August 2001 story in the Washington Post revealed the possible fraud.

News with Views

By Sarah Foster
May 4, 2010

WASHINGTON - Last week and over the weekend, the Internet was buzzing about a heretofore undetected provision Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., had slipped into the Wall Street financial reform bill that the House passed in December - a provision critics warned could devastate the nutritional supplement industry with excessive regulations, driving up the costs of supplements or removing them from the market altogether.

"The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173) ...includes language going far beyond finance," the Alliance for Natural Health-USA, a D.C.-based health freedom advocacy group, stated in an April 27 report, with the warning: "This language could be used for an end run around the Dietary Supplement Health and Safety Act (DSHEA), the legislation that governs dietary supplement regulation by the FDA."

Opinion by Consumer Advocate Tim Bolen

May 1st, 2010

Things are about to change in the Autism Wars. A new report is going to be released next week. Find out about it below.

Everybody knows that I am a Crisis Management Consultant in the health care industry. I get called into the cases where the quackbuster misinformation group is operating. Not so long ago, I was hired to look at a situation in Austin, Texas where a clinic was attacked by goofbag Stephen Barrett on several fronts - a Texas Medical Board complaint was filed against the doctor (Jesus Caquias MD), all of the health insurance companies stopped paying the clinic for their services, and the FBI raided the clinic last July 2009, claiming in the warrant that they were investigating the clinic for "Insurance Fraud," and "Health Fraud" violations.

But, fear not, for Barrett made some serious mistakes, and if I have my way he'll get criminally indicted in Texas for his actions. Keep reading.

The officially approved treatment, in the US, for Autistic children is to put them in a State mental facility. There, on day one, they yank their pants down to their ankles, bend them over a table, and jab a hypo full of mind numbing drugs into their buttocks. Then they throw them into a ward, keep them doped, where, most likely, they will die in a few years. And, if you read the US Inspection Report on the State of Texas Mental Health Facilities I think you will conclude, as did the Federal Investigators, that they'd be better off dying sooner than later - for the facilities are a hell-hole of problems, including rampant sexual abuse.

Natural News

April 30, 2010

by David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) The World Health Organization (WHO) recently issued a fact sheet warning about the corruption and unethical practices that are endemic to every step of the pharmaceuticals business.

"Corruption in the pharmaceutical sector occurs throughout all stages of the medicine chain, from research and development to dispensing and promotion," the fact sheet reads.

The medicine chain refers to each step involved in getting drugs into the hands of patients, including drug creation, regulation, management and consumption. According to WHO data, unethical practices such as bribery, falsification of evidence, and mismanagement of conflicts of interest are "common throughout the medicine chain."

The fact sheet also highlights other forms of corruption specific to particular steps in the chain. For example, clinical trials may be conducted without proper regulatory approval, royalties may be collected through manipulation or disregard of the patent system, and products may be registered with incorrect or insufficient information. Drugs may be produced through substandard or counterfeit methods, leading to products that are less effective at best, and hazardous at worst. Corruption can also occur during the drug inspection process, allowing such shoddy products to be given a government seal of approval.

Xenophilia

April 29, 2010

Supreme Court justices sounded skeptical Tuesday of a federal court decision blocking US biotech giant Monsanto’s sale of genetically modified alfalfa because some farmers fear their crops will be contaminated.

A federal judge in California in May 2007 ruled in a finding upheld on appeal in 2009 to block the sale of Monsanto’s GM alfalfa seeds.

The ruling also asked the USDA to carry out an environmental impact study which it had not done before giving a green light back in 2004 to the sale of these seeds.

Plaintiffs, who are organic farmers supported by organizations such as the Center for Biological Diversity, worry that genetically modified seeds will contaminate their crops.

AlterNet / By Bruce E. Levine

April 28, 2010

An interview with investigative reporter Robert Whitaker, about the dramatic increase in mental illness disability and its surprising cause.

Whitaker's findings will create a problem for both Big Pharma and establishment psychiatry, but his credentials and his craftsmanship will make it difficult to marginalize him. Whitaker is the author of four books including Mad in America, about the mistreatment of the mentally ill. As a reporter for the Boston Globe, he won a George Polk Award for medical writing, a National Association of Science Writers Award for best magazine article, and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

St. Louis Business Journal
April 23, 2010 | Modified: Sunday, April 25, 2010, 6:00am CDT
St. Louis Business Journal - by Evan Binns

Dr. Robert Belshe traveled throughout rural Missouri and Illinois last year to discuss flu vaccines during the H1N1 scare. Drug companies Merck & Co. Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline helped pick up the tab.

Belshe, head of Saint Louis University’s Center for Vaccine Development, spoke at more than 20 educational forums on behalf of the drug companies, and he was paid roughly $18,000 in speaker’s fees and travel expenses, according to the companies’ financial disclosures.

“Companies come to me because I have a deep background in vaccines and because of my training,” Belshe said. “And if I’m available, they compensate me for that.”

The one click group

April 26, 2010

nzherald.co.nz

llnesses halt vaccine for under-5s

By Martin Johnston

New Zealand's Health Ministry has told doctors
not to give the Fluvax brand of vaccine to
children under 5.

Australian authorities are investigating the death of a Queensland toddler within 12 hours of her receiving a seasonal influenza vaccination.

New Zealand's Health Ministry has told doctors not to give the Fluvax brand of vaccine to children under 5, after the Australian government ordered a halt in that age group because of an unexpectedly high number of cases of fever-related seizures in Western Australia.

The One Click Group

23 April 2010

1 year after swine flu, Mexicans split on response

By MARK STEVENSON (AP)

MEXICO CITY -- When this city of 8.7 million awoke one year ago to confusing news of a new virus, it sent the world on a wild six-month roller-coaster ride of fear and frantic action.

But after swine flu proved far less lethal than feared, opinion has divided on whether the epidemic was a valuable test-run that left the world better prepared to handle a more lethal avian flu pandemic, or an episode that left the public jaded and weary.

Mexicans are bristling after following initial government recommendations that may have been counterproductive, and question the value of late-arriving vaccines.

But the director of Mexico's National Center for Epidemiology and Disease Control insists the nation -- and the world -- are better prepared for another, more deadly flu outbreak.

The One Click group

The Economic Times

April, 23, 2010

Nearly 2,000 doctors named for taking pharma firms' gifts

NEW DELHI: Nearly 2,000 doctors have violated professional ethics by receiving gifts, hospitality, or monetary grants from pharmaceutical companies in the last three years, according to the Medical Council of India (MCI), parliament was informed Friday.

"The Medical Council of India has informed that out of a total of 1,992 complaints received against doctors during the last three years and the current year, 31 doctors have either been warned or their names temporarily removed from the Indian Medical Register," Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad told the Lok Sabha on Friday.

Alternet
By Emily Elert, Environmental Health News
April 22, 2010

Thirty-eight years after DDT was banned, Americans still consume trace amounts of the infamous insecticide every day, along with more than 20 other banned chemicals.

In a photograph from a 1947 newspaper advertisement, a smiling mother leans over her baby's crib. The wall behind her is decorated with rows of flowers and Disney characters. Above the photo, a headline reads "Protect Your Children From Disease Carrying Insects."

The ad, for wallpaper impregnated with DDT, captures a moment of historical ignorance, before the infamous insecticide nearly wiped out many birds and turned up inside the bodies of virtually everyone on Earth.

The story of DDT teaches a lesson about the past. But experts say it also provides a glimpse into the future.

The One Click Group

HPV Vaccine Kills 16-Year-Old Girl Lawsuit Alleges

(PRWEB) April 21, 2010 -- A lawsuit filed in the U.S. Federal Court of Claims this week alleges that the HPV vaccine Gardasil caused the death of a 16-year-old Missouri girl. Gardasil is a vaccine used to prevent the transmission of a sexually transmitted disease called human papillomavirus (HPV). Controversy regarding the safety of Gardasil surrounded the vaccine since its FDA approval in 2006 and continues to be the subject of intense debate.

Safety and efficacy of Gardasil in question

As on December 31, 2008 there were 12,424 reports of injuries related to Gardasil in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) (1). These reports are used by the FDA to monitor the safety of vaccines and it is well known that injuries are underreported (1). Of note, 68% of the 12,424 reports of injury where written employees of Merck (1). While there is risk of injury with every drug, including vaccines, at least one report questions whether or not Gardasil provides enough protection to counterbalance the risk of injury.

April 18, 2010

Local Parent Files Lawsuit Against Makers Of Gardasil

Mother Warns Parents Against Vaccine Dangers

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A local mother is suing the makers of Gardasil claiming her daughter suffered from seizures and got brain damage after getting the vaccination.

Gardasil is the vaccine given to women ages 9 to 26 to vaccinate them against HPV, a virus that can cause cervical cancer.

Tracy Wolf showed Action 7 News all her daughters' doctor records after getting the Gardasil vaccine.

Wolf's daughter Alexis has been sick for the past three years with uncontrollable vomiting and seizures which left her brain damaged.

Wolf said her daughter got a series of Gardasil vaccine injections in 2007 and 2008. Shortly after, Alexis reportedly went from being a happy, honor-roll student to a completely different person.

Doctors told Wolf Alexis' condition was behavioral, not medical.

22 April 2010
Governments accused of panicking over swine flu
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor

A boy reacts as he is vaccinated against swine flu

A blizzard of inquiries into the handling of the swine flu pandemic, which began one year ago, have been launched amid allegations that governments around the world over-reacted to the threat.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been accused of crying wolf over its decision last June to declare the H1N1 virus a pandemic, the first for 40 years, which could turn out to be the weakest in history. Up to 15 April there had been 474 deaths from swine flu in Britain, mostly in the age group 15 to 44,

Seasonal flu was driven out last winter by the novel H1N1 pandemic virus, which may therefore end up having saved lives overall from flu in the 2009-10 season.

Early in the pandemic, the Department of Health said it was planning on the basis of a "worst case scenario" of up to 65,000 deaths. That figure was revised down to 1,000 deaths in the autumn, as the virus turned out to be milder and to have spread further than had been thought.

theoneclickgroup  

Pharmalot

April 21st, 2010

FDA Warns Pfizer Over Geodon Trial Overdosing

By Ed Silverman

The drugmaker was cited for failing to properly monitor pediatric clinical trials in which at least 13 children with bipolar disorder experienced overdosing that led to restless legs, tremors, involuntary facial movements and skin petechiae, which results from bleeding under the skin. The FDA cited Pfizer in an April 9 warning letter that noted the problem was originally found during FDA reviews in 2005.

The FDA wrote that "Pfizer failed to properly ensure monitoring of the study referenced above. As a result of inadequate monitoring, widespread overdosing of study subjects at multiple study sites was neither detected nor corrected in a timely manner," according to the letter.

OpEdNews
April 19, 2010
By Evelyn Pringle

Of all the harmful actions of modern psychiatry, "the mass diagnosing and drugging of children is the most appalling with the most serious consequences for the future of individual lives and for society," warns the world-renowned expert, Dr Peter Breggin, often referred to as the "Conscience of Psychiatry."

Dr Nathaniel Lehrman, author of the book, "Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs," believes that giving infants and toddlers "powerful, brain-effecting psychiatric medication is close to criminal activity."

"Giving them these drugs," he says, "has no rationale, and ignores the basic fact that youngsters are very sensitive to their environments, both social and chemical, with the juvenile brain easily damaged by the latter."

OpEdNews
April 19, 2010
By Evelyn Pringle

The United States has become the psychiatric drugging capital of the world for kids with children being medicated at a younger and younger age. Medicaid records in some states show infants less than a year old on drugs for mental disorders.

The use of powerful antipsychotics with privately insured children, aged 2 through 5 in the US, doubled between 1999 and 2007, according to a study of data on more than one million children with private health insurance in the January, 2010, "Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry."

The number of children in this age group diagnosed with bipolar disorder also doubled over the last decade, Reuters reported.

Of antipsychotic-treated children in the 2007 study sample, the most common diagnoses were pervasive developmental disorder or mental retardation (28.2%), ADHD (23.7%), and disruptive behavior disorder (12.9%).

Otago Daily Times
April 17, 2010
10 serious vaccine events
By Elspeth McLean

To the end of last year, 10 serious adverse events following vaccinations with the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil were reported to the national Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring (Carm) in Dunedin.

These include a report of a sudden death occurring six months after the third dose of the vaccination, a report from Carm director Dr Michael Tatley says.

The cause of that death has not been reported and is still under coronial investigation.

There was also one report of a life-threatening event involving tongue-swelling related to severe hypersensitivity.

OpEdNews
April 15, 2010
By Martha Rosenberg

Last month, the New York Times reported that researchers were "puzzled" by the role of bisphosphonate osteoporosis drugs like Fosamax in "rare thighbone fractures."

Patients, on the other hand, are neither puzzled nor do they believe the fractures are rare.

"I broke the left femur (shattered it 2 times in 2006 and 2007)," while on Fosamax writes a 72-year-old patient this week on askapatient.com. "I now walk with a walker and the Dr. says it can never be repaired."

"I twisted my left leg while shopping & broke left femur in two places, requiring surgery, pins and a rod," wrote a 61-year-old patient on the site after taking Fosamax for 13 years. "Then in 2/08 I jarred same side foot coming off a step & developed a stress fracture that won't heal. I now have a stress fracture on the right side femur after walking on the beach."

"After six years of taking Fosamax, I slipped in ice in my driveway and broke my femur (thigh bone). Two years later, still taking Fosamax, I fell in the snow and my other femur snapped before I hit the ground," wrote another woman.

"I did nothing really physical except water therapy, yet I have a break" in the 3rd lumbar vertebrae posts a 67-year-old patient who had been taking Fosamax for 14 months.

AlterNet / By Martha Rosenberg

Sleep sweating? Here are some new ways the pharmaceutical plans to make money.

April 16, 2010 | Since direct-to-consumer drug advertising debuted in 1997, pharma's credo has been When The Medication Is Ready, The Disease (and Patients) Will Appear. Who knew so many people suffered from restless legs?

But pharma's recent plan to move from mass-market molecules into more lucrative vaccines and biologics did not see the anti-vaxer movement coming: millions of Americans saying You Want to Vaccinate Me -- and My Child -- with WHAT?? and condemning vials of H1N1, rotavirus and MMR vaccines to sit, well, way past their expiration dates. Nor were fears of an international vaccine conspiracy helped by former CDC Director Julie Gerberding resurfacing as President of Merck Vaccines in December. (Nice revolving door if you can catch it.)

H1N1 PANDEMIC ALERT - FACT or FICTION or Scare Tactic
Beldeu Singh

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Britain's National Health Service, once you have H1N1 flu, you're immune from future outbreaks of the same virus. The ramifications of this finding are important because:-

1. If you've been diagnosed "probable" or "presumed" 2009 H1N1 or "swine flu" in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn't have H1N1 flu.

2. In fact, you probably didn't have flu at all. That's according to state-by-state test results obtained in a three-month-long CBS News investigation. (Swine Flu Cases Overestimated? CBS News Exclusive: Study of State Results Finds H1N1 Not As Prevalent As Feared).

Is the CDC really serious about this pandemic? The answer may be found in their funny reason on why the CDC advised states to stop testing for H1N1. In late July, the CDC abruptly advised states to stop testing for H1N1 flu, and stopped counting individual cases. The rationale given for the CDC guidance to forego testing and tracking individual cases was: why waste resources testing for H1N1 flu when the government has already confirmed there's an epidemic? (cbsnews.com report on H1N1). If it is a deadly epidemic, why stop the testing and in view of the ramifications as well?

The Hindu

April 9, 2010

Groups write to Azad on HPV vaccine trial

By Aarti Dhar

Efficacy of Gardasil and Cervarix highly suspect; serious side effects were reported

Set up inquiry into death of tribal girls

NEW DELHI: Close to 70 civil society groups, public health organisations, medical professionals, human rights organisations, women's groups and individuals have voiced their opposition to the nature of the HPV (human papilloma virus) vaccination ‘projects' carried out in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat by PATH International, in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the respective State governments.

They urged the Union government to come up with a national policy on this kind of medical “experimentation” and a pro-people vaccine policy based on public health needs.

DNA - Read the world

April 8, 2010

Cancer vaccine programme suspended after 4 girls die

By Vineeta Pandey

New Delhi: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has told Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat to immediately suspend the cervical cancer control vaccination programme for girls. The programme is part of a two-year study to look into the utility of a vaccine in public health programmes and acceptability of Gardasil, the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine made by Merck. Gardasil, available in medical stores across the country, is marketed in India by MSD Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd.

The one click group

HEALTH-CHINA : Wave of Anger Rises Over Vaccine Scandal

By Mitch Moxley

BEIJING, Apr 6, 2010 (IPS) - Shortly after Liu Yan's four-year-old son, Liu Yi, was bitten by a dog, he did what any responsible parent would do: took his child to the hospital for a vaccination. Two weeks later, after the fourth injection, Liu Yi became violently ill.

The next morning, on Aug. 27, 2008, the boy was taken to First People's Hospital in Yangquan city in central China's Shanxi province, where he was diagnosed with viral meningitis. Liu Yi's condition quickly deteriorated and he died later that afternoon.

Liu Yan blamed the rabies vaccination for his son's death, and according to a searing media report last month, he might not be alone.

Alternet
Investigations
By Bruce E. Levine

One in six service members is now taking at least one psychiatric drug, according to the Navy Times, with many soldiers taking "drug cocktail" combinations.

April 5, 2010 |   One in six service members is now taking at least one psychiatric drug, according to the Navy Times, with many soldiers taking "drug cocktail" combinations. Soldiers and military healthcare providers told the Military Times that psychiatric drugs are "being prescribed, consumed, shared and traded in combat zones."

The Navy Times reporters Andrew Tilghman and Brendan McGarry also noted that there has been a large increase in military suicides. From 2001 to 2009, the Army's official suicide rate increased from 9 per 100,000 soldiers to 23 per 100,000. During that same period, the Marine Corps suicide rate increased from 16.7 per 100,000 soldiers to 24 per 100,000.

A Military Times investigation of records obtained from the Defense Logistics Agency revealed that the DLA spent $1.1 billion on psychiatric and pain medications from 2001 to 2009, and that there was a 76 percent increase in psychiatric drugs. DLA records show:

The One Click Group

April 03, 2010
Scientist `deceived' by drugs giant
By Richard Guilliatt

A LEADING Australian medical researcher says the pharmaceutical giant Wyeth duped him into publishing a scientific paper that became part of the company's clandestine campaign to play down the dangers of its drugs for menopausal women.

John Eden, an associate professor at the University of NSW and director of the Sydney Menopause Centre, says he has been shocked to learn that a paper he published in the prestigious American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology was one of more than 40 scientific articles Wyeth orchestrated to try to increase sales of its lucrative hormone-replacement drugs.

The One Click group

Health Advocacy

Pharmacy news

6 April 6, 2010

Mass H1N1 immunisation 'inappropriate'

By Simone Roberts

The mass vaccination program for swine flu has come under fire from an infectious disease expert who says the risk of serious side effects was greater than any potential benefit for half the Australian population.

Writing in the latest issue of Australian Prescriber, Professor Peter Collignon, director of the Infectious Diseases Unit and Microbiology Department at The Canberra Hospital, said the Government's response to the virus was "inappropriate", fuelled by fears about its spread that were out of proportion to the real threat posed by the disease.

"Overall, swine flu has been associated with fewer deaths than seasonal influenza and is of low virulence," he wrote.

Washington Examiner

By: Barbara Hollingsworth

Local Opinion Editor

March 30, 2010

Cervical cancer accounts for less than 1 percent of all cancer deaths, so it was somewhat surprising when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration fast-tracked approval of Gardasil, a Merck vaccine targeting the human papilloma virus that causes the disease, in 2006.

As of Jan. 31, 2010, 49 unexplained deaths following Gardasil injections have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (http://vaers.hhs.gov/index). By contrast, 52 deaths are attributed to unintended acceleration in Toyotas, which triggered a $2 billion recall.

No recall for Gardasil, which is required for sixth-grade girls in D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and many other states. Parents can opt out, but few know the true risks.

Hägersten 3/29/2010 07:31 PM GMT (TransWorldNews)

The U.S. Department of Justice has sued the pharmaceutical company Forest Labs about the marketing of the antidepressant Celexa for use by children. It’s an affair about bribery, illegal marketing and cover-up of a drug trial with negative results. The company has set aside $170 million to settle the civil aspects of the matter with the government. That does not cover the potential criminal law violations. What has not been told is the important role played by the renowned European Professor of Psychiatry Dr. Anne-Liis von Knorring in this affair. She not only helped the company to cover up the bad results of her clinical trial of Celexa, she also actively misled doctors and the public about it.

Read the full story on http://jannel.se/celexa-cover-up.pdf

Janne Larsson
Reporter - investigating psychiatry
Sweden

Sott.net
Mike Adams
NaturalNews.com
March 30, 2010

The utter worthlessness of Big Pharma's cholesterol drugs was demonstrated recently by a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine which showed that niacin (a low-cost B vitamin) out-performs Merck's drug Zetia for preventing the build-up of arterial plaque, a symptom of cardiovascular disease.

As the study reveals, Zetia failed miserably. Patients taking niacin showed a "significant shrinkage" in artery wall thickness, while those on Zetia showed no such improvement. At the same time, the rate of "cardiovascular events" in the niacin group was only one-fifth that in the Zetia group, demonstrating that niacin is far more effective at preventing heart attacks and other similar events than Zetia.

Sott.net
Ethan Huff
NaturalNews
March 27, 2010

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) is reporting that a Miami psychiatrist has prescribed nearly 14 million pills to Medicaid patients since 2004. According to the report, Fernando Mendez-Villamil wrote about 285,000 prescriptions in just six years with a total taxpayer cost of $43 million.

The astounding find is part of an investigation into the legitimacy of Mendez-Villamil's practice; after all, the numbers suggest that he would have had to prescribe about 4,000 prescriptions a month, or 1,000 a week, in order to achieve the large total.

Mendez-Villamil is already recognized as the most profuse drug prescriber in the state of Florida. Prior to the state's implementation of new computer tracking protocols around 2007, Mendez-Villamil's prescription rate was at its highest; after those measures began taking effect, his prescription rate slowed by almost 33 percent.

The One Click Group

One Click Note: Congratulations and thanks are due to Labour's Paul Flynn MP, working for the best interests of British voters.

**********

guardian.co.uk
28 March 2010

WHO accused of losing public confidence over flu pandemic

Loss of credibility could endanger lives, says vice chair of Council of Europe's health committee

By Sarah Boseley

Incompetent Swine Flu Drug Dealers Flying Pigs Club UK, from left:
Andrew Burnham MP - Health Secretary of State
Fear Marketeer Sir Liam Donaldson - Chief Medical Officer (soon to be ex)
'Vaccines Basil, Professor David Salisbury - UK Government Vaccines Director
Gillian Merron MP - Parliamentary vaccines propagandist
(Caption & Pic Courtesy Of One Click)

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

March 28, 2010

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has been ordered to pay $142 million US in damages for fraudulently marketing gabapentin, an anti-seizure drug marketed under the name Neurontin.

A federal jury in Boston ruled Thursday that Pfizer fraudulently marketed the drug and promoted it for unapproved uses. The jury sided with California-based Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the first to try a gabapentin case against Pfizer.

Sott.net

Jeffrey M. Smith

Dr. Mercola

March 25, 2010

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has called on all physicians to prescribe diets without genetically modified (GM) foods to all patients.[1] They called for a moratorium on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), long-term independent studies, and labeling, stating,

   "Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food, including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system.

   ...There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation..."

The one click group

Reuters

March 22, 2010

Saudi Arabia suspends Glaxo diabetes drug Avandia

By Ben Hirschler

* Saudi move first of its kind, after controversy over drug

* Six-month suspension gives Glaxo chance to put its case

LONDON, March 22 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has suspended GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK.L) diabetes drug Avandia for six months, arguing that potential heart risks outweigh its benefits.

The Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) was the first healthcare regulator to take such action. Its decision means detailing and advertising of Avandia is banned and patients on Avandia will be referred to their doctor for consultation. The SFDA said on its website it was concerned about the safety of Avandia, or rosiglitazone, based on growing evidence from clinical studies indicating serious cardiovascular risks. (link.reuters.com/zab74j)

10 Drugs You Should Never Take!

We’re in the age of “conveyor-belt medicine.” The mainstream medical system is set up to allow your doctor just enough time to give you a quick diagnosis followed by a prescription or a needless procedure. Rarely does it allow you the time to discuss much of anything that could give you a true foundation for good health, such as dietary changes, appropriate exercises and healthy weight-loss goals. Profit-bloated drug companies are at the helm of our healthcare system. They exist to serve their bottom lines—not your health needs. They’re vested in you staying sick.

Offering cutting edge alternatives to health and wellness is what HSI is all about….but even more than that, it’s the right thing to do. Unlike drug companies, whose sole concern is financial gain at the expense of the folks they’re supposed to be helping, our mission is helping you stay as healthy as possible for as long as possible.

Our members come to us at their wits’ end. Their relief is beyond measure when they hear that there are safer alternatives to the drugs they are struggling with—physically and financially.

Now, we’d like to share with you the same advice we give to our members—starting with the 10 drugs you should avoid and the reasons why.

IMVA

International Medical Veritas Association

March 19, 2010

The medical establishment attacks people with sometimes lethal drugs and vaccines and condones dentists who continue to put mercury toxic waste dumps in people's mouths. Death by Medicine is not uncommon these days and the healthcare reform bill in the United States does nothing to address the western medical system seems to butcher more people than it helps.

Ethan Huff

NaturalNews

March 21, 2010

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Commission (EC) have been working on establishing dosage limits on vitamins and supplements within the European Union (EU) using flawed toxicology risk assessment methods to make such determinations. A recent paper published in the journal Toxicology exposes the approach as "fatally flawed," citing the junk science being used to try to limit access to effective doses of nutritional supplements.

Robert Verkerk PhD, lead author of the article and scientific and executive director of the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) International, has been working for years to explain to various European and international authorities the illogic of using toxicologic risk analysis to assess proper nutrient dosages. His paper in Toxicology is his most extensive and thorough critique thus far.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission, created jointly by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations back in 1963 to establish a world food code, established its guidelines for vitamin and mineral supplements back in 2005. Though not technically enforceable, especially in nations like the U.S. where such provisions would be wholly unconstitutional, the guidelines suggest establishing upper safe limits on vitamin and mineral supplements using the same toxicologic risk assessment methods used on dangerous toxins like mercury and lead.

OpEdNews

March 19, 2010

by Jeffrey Dach MD

As if Fosamax didn't have enough problems, another nail was hammered into the coffin at the 2010 AAOS Meeting.

Two separate studies revealed that Fosamax disturbs bone formation, and is implicated in spontaneous mid-femur fractures.

Reports of Spontaneous Mid Femur Fracture on Fosamax

Clarita Odvina MD reported nine cases of spontaneous femur fracture on Fosamax (Alendronate).

Dr. Goh, a doctor in Singapore, identified nine more cases in his 2007 report of subtrochanteric femur fractures with minimal trauma in women on long term Fosamax.

Joseph M Lane MD reported 15 cases of spontaneous femur fracture in women on Fosamax (Alendronate). His report appeared in the New England Journal March 20, 2008.

Lane found that "ten of the 15 patients were found to share a unique radiographic pattern, defined as a simple transverse or oblique (≤30)fracture with beaking of the cortex and diffuse cortical thickening of the proximal femoral shaft."

The entire bisphosphonate class of osteoporosis drugs is implicated. This includes all of the drugs for osteoporosis such as Boniva, Actonel, Reclast, Fosamax,etc.

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 11, Dated March 20, 2010

The Cervical Cancer Bazaar

YOUNG GIRLS ARE BEING GIVEN ANTI-CANCER JABS, WITH DUBIOUS RESULTS, FIND SHANTANU GUHA RAY AND KUNAL MAJUMDER

Photo: VIJAY PANDEY

EACH TIME Nageshwara and Venkatamma are asked about Sarita, the farm labourers point to a framed photograph of their daughter. And then they huddle near the entrance of their one-room house in Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh and weep inconsolably, recounting a tale of death that came home without warning.

NaturalNews.com

March 15, 2010

by: Ethan Huff, citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) With hundreds of thousands of people dying every year from the side effects of pharmaceutical drugs, one would imagine that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would be out in full force pulling these drugs from the market, right? Actually, the agency has recently been spending its time targeting a walnut manufacturer for making legitimate, scientifically-proven health claims about walnuts on its packaging.

Such behavior is nothing new for the rogue agency that spends all of its time ridding the market of natural products, legitimate health claims on food, and other important products and information that actually help people become healthy rather than remain disease-stricken pharmaceutical drug addicts. In the case of walnuts, though, the vast amount of studies concerning the numerous benefits of the nut makes the FDA's mission to stop all purveyance of this information utterly incomprehensible.

OpEdNews.com

By Carolyn Moffa

Published 03/12/10

Corporatism: Say No to G.M.O!

This week I heard a disturbing commercial on the radio which was produced by Monsanto. If you aren't familiar with Monsanto already, they are the corporation who created Roundup weed killer and Agent Orange, the chemical which caused over 400,000 deaths and disabilities during the Vietnam War. Some of Monsanto's most recent controversies are engineering rBST (recombinant Bovine Somatotropin) or rBGH (recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone) and Genetically Modified Organisms or GMO's. These industrialized forms of food have saturated the diet of Americans for years now without consumers even noticing.

Genetically Modified Organisms are created through changing the DNA of a plant. Biotech engineers execute this by finding bacteria from the soil that is Roundup resistant and splicing its genes. They then create gaps in E. coli bacteria and mix it with the Roundup resistant DNA. After that, the mixed gene is injected into the original plant cell. When this happens, they are able to create the desired result of a "Roundup Ready" seed. After the DNA of a seed has been altered, it will kill any pest that eats the plant. Damaging health affects have been found in rodents that genetically modified foods have been tested on and animals all around the world have died after eating BT crops for only one day.

Natural News

March 17, 2010

by: David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) A Philadelphia jury has found drug giant Pfizer Inc. guilty of deliberately ignoring evidence that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) drug Prempro increased women's risk of breast cancer, ordering it to pay unspecified damages to defendant Connie Barton.

Millions of women used Prempro and other HRT drugs up until 2002, when the groundbreaking Women's Health Initiative study found that taking the drugs significantly increased women's risk of breast cancer and death from cardiovascular disease. The risk was so striking that researchers called an early halt to the study out of concern for participants' lives. The drugs were -- and still are -- marketed to relieve the symptoms of menopause, such as hot flashes, mood swings and night sweats.

More recent research suggests that HRT drugs also increase women's risk of dying from lung cancer.

The Michigan Messenger

March 16, 2010

State denies transparency on H1N1 spending

By Todd A. Heywood

MDCH invokes terrorism to refuse FOIA request

LANSING — The state of Michigan passed out millions of dollars in federal funds to private and public groups during the H1N1 crisis in 2009, but where that money actually went appears to be a closely guarded secret.

A Michigan Messenger investigation has found that the state used much of the $42 million from the federal government to fund activities at various health agencies, hospitals, clinics and pharmacies, but the Michigan Department of Community Health refuses to release the identities of those organizations receiving money — and they base that refusal on Michigan’s anti-terrorism laws.

Age of Autism

March 15, 2010

Coalition for Vaccine Safety Asks Parents to Contact Media

Managing Editor's note: The Coalition for Vaccine Safety has issued the following request:

We are asking parents who have a child who was injured by vaccines or who had a case the Omnibus Autism Proceedings to please contact their local media outlets and tell them your story and how these decisions impact your family in an effort to get this story out to the public. Feel free to use the talking points provided below. Please report back to AOA the responses you receive and stories published by leaving a comment this post. Should you need any assistance in your efforts please contact the Coalition for Vaccine Safety.

March 15, 2010

State changes vaccination requirements for school children

By Sean Dreher

For the first time in more than a decade, the state is changing what vaccines are required for children before they can head to school.

Most of the changes take effect in July, but not everyone plans to rush to their doctor's office.

With a business devoted to providing for children and triplets of her own at home, Sunny Hall has experience with kids. She also has experience with vaccines.

"I never questioned it," she said.

After the birth of her children, Hall followed the advice of experts.

"We were all fine until six months. We went in and got their shots and when we got home my son just wasn't right," she said.

Hartford Courant

March 14, 2010

Ex-Pfizer Worker Cites Genetically Engineered Virus In Lawsuit Over Firing

By Edmund H. Mahony

Medical experts will be watching closely Monday when a scientist who says she has been intermittently paralyzed by a virus designed at the Pfizer laboratory where she worked in Groton opens a much anticipated trial that could raise questions about safety practices in the dynamic field of genetic engineering.

Organizations involved in workplace safety and responsible genetic research already have seized on the federal lawsuit by molecular biologist Becky McClain as an example of what they claim is evidence that risks caused by cutting-edge genetic manipulation have outstripped more slowly evolving government regulation of laboratories.

Timesonline

March 15, 2010

Vitamin D better than vaccines at preventing flu, report claims

By Oliver Gillie

Vitamin D could cut the risk of flu infection in children by half, the report claims

(Richard Cannon/The Times)

The risk of children suffering from flu can be halved if they take vitamin D, doctors in Japan have found. The finding has implications for flu epidemics since vitamin D, which is naturally produced by the human body when exposed to direct sunlight, has no significant side effects, costs little and can be several times more effective than anti-viral drugs or vaccine.

Only one in ten children, aged six to 15 years, taking the sunshine vitamin in a clinical trial came down with flu compared with one in five given a dummy tablet. Mitsuyoshi Urashima, the Japanese doctor who led the trial, told The Times that vitamin D was more effective than vaccines in preventing flu.

The One Click Group

Digital Journal
14 March 2010
By R. C. Camphausen

A nurse administers an intramuscular vaccination

Those who suspected a money and greed driven conspiracy behind the 2009 swine flu outbreak, declared a pandemic by overzealous WHO officials and their advisers from within the industry, are being proven right by recent revelations.

The article Reconstruction of a Mass Hysteria - The Swine Flu Panic of 2009 in Spiegel Online of March 12 will hopefully not be the last one to show that the so-called pandemic of 2009 was engineered, but it does provide ample information to show that the so-called 'conspiracy theorist' were far from being nutty or plain crazy. Instead, so it emerges now, they had their finger right on the pulse of what had been happening.

NaturalNews.com

March 12, 2010

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) There is an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency sweeping across our modern world, and it's an epidemic of such depth and seriousness that it makes the H1N1 swine flu epidemic look like a case of the sniffles by comparison. Vitamin D deficiency is not only alarmingly widespread, it's also a root cause of many other serious diseases such as cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and heart disease.

A new study published in the March, 2010 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that a jaw-dropping 59 percent of the population is vitamin D deficient. In addition, nearly 25 percent of the study subjects were found to have extremely low levels of vitamin D.

Lead author of the study, Dr. Richard Kremer at the McGill University Health Center, said "Abnormal levels of vitamin D are associated with a whole spectrum of diseases, including cancer, osteoporosis, and diabetes, as well as cardiovascular and autoimmune disorders."

This new study also documents a clear link between vitamin D deficiency and stored body fat. This supports a theory I've espoused here on NaturalNews for many years: That sunshine actually promote body fat loss. Vitamin D may be the hormonal mechanism by which this fat loss phenomenon operates.

National Post

March 11, 2010

Flu shots futile: study

By Tom Blackwell

Nursing Home Test: 'Didn't find' proof immunization stops virus

Study co-author Dr. Tom Jefferson says he
"can't see any reason" for vaccinating anyone
against flu -- arguing the shots did nothing to
save lives -- and that most influenza-vaccine
studies are "rubbish."

A new Canadian-led study has added to a simmering scientific dispute over flu-shot campaigns, concluding that immunizing nursing-home workers does nothing to cut the number of confirmed influenza cases among the homes' elderly residents.

Coming at the end of the largest flu-vaccination campaign in Canadian history, the review of previous studies calls for stepped-up research into alternative, lower-tech ways to combat the virus, such as improved hand washing.

"What troubled us is that [shots] had no effect on laboratory-confirmed influenza," said Dr. Roger Thomas of the University of Calgary, lead author of the paper published by the respected Cochrane Library.

Sott.net

David Cronin

IPS News

March 5, 2010

Brussels - Genetically modified (GM) foods appear to be back on the European Union's political menu - thanks to a potato.

Manufactured by the German chemical firm BASF, a potato named Amflora became the first GM crop to be authorized for cultivation by the EU's executive arm, the European Commission, in 12 years Mar. 2.

It is unlikely that the same length of time will elapse before the next such approval is granted by Brussels officials. Files relating to 17 other GM crops - including varieties of maize, oilseed rape and more potatoes - are on those officials' desk and awaiting a formal rubber-stamp.

Although many of the EU's governments are opposed to the introduction of GM foods, the Commission's most powerful representatives have long been eager to resume the approval of new varieties. Last year, it sought unsuccessfully to force France and Greece to ditch moratoriam they had placed on the planting of Mon-810, a corn variety developed by the American multinational Monsanto.

Age of Autism

March 11, 2010

Flee-5001 Age of Autism has been covering the story of Dr. Poul Thorsen, architect of the "Danish study" that exonerated vaccines as a cause of autism, see: Poul Thorsen's Mutating Resume and First Fraud: Dr. Poul Thorsen and the original “Danish Study” and Danish Scientist Absconds with $2 million, Poul Thorsen "Proved" Vaccines Don't Cause Autism

Jayne Watson of 11alive.com Atlanta had this story last night.

ATLANTA -- A Danish scientist who was a lead researcher in two studies that purport to show that mercury used in vaccines do not cause autism is believed to have used forged documents to steal $2 million from Aarhus University in Denmark.

Dr. Poul Thorsen was also a research professor at Emory University from 2003 until June of 2009. Emory University officials gave no reason for Thorsen's departure.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funded research conducted by Thorsen and his colleagues at Aarhus University.

The CDC asked the researchers to conduct studies to determine whether thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative and adjuvant used in vaccines, played ay role in causing autism.

AlterNet

By Sara Novak, TreeHugger

March 10, 2010

After a 13-year battle, the largest chemical company in the world, BASF won approval from the European Commission to begin commercially growing a genetically modified potato for industrial use. Many onlookers were more than a little surprised by the decision considering the Commission's formerly skeptical approach to GMOs. The decision has incited fury amongst harsh critics which included Italy and Austria who fear a health disaster.

A decision by the European Commission to allow the commercial growing of Amflora, a genetically modified starchy potato, is causing deep seated anger from a part of the world traditionally whole heartedly opposed to GMOs. The potatoes will be grown in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. Amflora is currently only approved for starch production, not human consumption, but the leftover skins will be fed to cattle. It will used for industrial purposes like paper and yarn production and making spray concrete. Currently, Europe has the strictest labeling policies in the world with regards to identifying genetically modified foods, compared to the US, which has little to no GMO labeling.

Opednews

AlterNet / By Martha Rosenberg

A potentially deadly drug manufactured by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has been linked to the deaths of soldiers returning from war. Yet the FDA continues to approve it.

March 6, 2010 | Sgt. Eric Layne's death was not pretty.

A few months after starting a drug regimen combining the antidepressant Paxil, the mood stabilizer Klonopin and a controversial anti-psychotic drug manufactured by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, Seroquel, the Iraq war veteran was "suffering from incontinence, severe depression [and] continuous headaches," according to his widow, Janette Layne.

Soon he had tremors. " … [H]is breathing was labored [and] he had developed sleep apnea," Layne said.

By Dr. Renee Tocco

February 18, 2010

NewsWithViews.com

Thanks to very ambitious pharmaceutical companies, with the help of pediatricians, the American government and schools across the country, the USA has produced the most highly vaccinated infants in the world. We give American babies up to three times the vaccines as other first-world countries. While we have earned a "blue ribbon" for our vaccine rates, we are close to earning the "booby prize" in another category that should devastate every parent in the country. Since implementation of the CDC mass vaccine program we have gone from about 2-3 to about 41-42 on the international infant mortality list. Yes, this means that a high rate of American infants never live to see toddler hood.

Western scientific medicine has been dominated for almost a century by a strong industrial interest group, the pharmaceutical manufacturers. This domination and the commercial interest behind it, prevent any real reform even in the face of evidence that some natural treatment method works better than the pharma-based method of choice.

Since public health is deteriorating, reform seems needed.

A recent discussion I have had with some friends on facebook, may serve as an illustration and could perhaps show how reforms may become possible, despite the seemingly overwhelming strength of the pharmaceutical juggernaut.

It started out with a link to a study that shows how ascorbic acid (vitamin C) in pharmacologic concentrations could have an important role in cancer treatment...

Sott.net

NaturalNews

Mike Adams

March 8, 2010

Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein (HVP) is one of most common soy-based food "fillers" used to make literally thousands of processed food products. It's found in veggie burgers, gravy mixes, soups and many other grocery products. Last Thursday, one of the largest producers of HVP in the United States, Las Vegas-based Basic Food Flavors Inc., was the subject of an FDA consumer safety warning announcement. Salmonella had been found contaminating the company's HVP production equipment, the FDA said, and a nationwide recall was initiated that now includes products from Trader Joe's, Safeway, McCormick and many other companies.

See the FDA list of recalled products here.

March 7, 2010
stephentvedten.blogspot.com

Danish Scientist Absconds with $2 million More Info - Key character who "proved" vaccines don't cause autism.

A Danish scientist who was a key researcher in two studies that purport to show that mercury used in vaccines and the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine do not cause autism is believed to have used forged documents to steal $2 million from Aarhus University in Denmark according to reports in the Copenenhagen Post Online and a statement from Aarhus University.

Poul Thorsen, MD PhD, headed up a research unit at Aarhus University that was hired by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prepare a series of studies that would exonerate thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative and adjuvant used in vaccines, and the MMR vaccine from any role in causing autism. The veracity of the three studies he co-authored is now in doubt.

These studies formed the foundation for the conclusions of several Institute of Medicine reports that claimed that it was highly unlikely that thimerosal or MMR were implicated in autism.

OpEdNews

March 4, 2010

By Evelyn Pringle

A month before the first Paxil birth defect trial against GlaxoSmithKline was set to begin, the Associated Press ran the headline, "Glaxo Used Ghostwriting Program to Promote Paxil," in reporting on a program called "CASPPER," which allowed doctors to "take credit for medical journal articles mainly written by company consultants."

"Drug companies frequently hire outside firms to draft a manuscript touting a company's drug, retain a physician to sign off as the author and then find a publisher to unwittingly publish the work," the Associated Press said on August 19, 2009. "Drug company salespeople often present medical journal articles to physicians as independent proof that their drugs are safe and effective."

According to a recent article by Janne Larsson, pharmaceutical companies producing methylphenidate-containing psychiatric drugs are maneuvering to prevent long term safety studies on the effects of those products. The article is

Confidential report reveals: Big Pharma trying to stop long-term safety studies of ADHD drugs (Ritalin, Concerta)

It says, among other things:

...the manufacturers were ordered to submit data how they could do long-term studies of psychiatric adverse effects (e.g. depression, hostility and psychotic reactions) and of cognitive effects (effects on learning, intellectual function) of the drugs. The answer from the pharmaceutical companies was a confidential report Feasibility Assessment of a Study of Long-term Effects of Methylphenidate on Cognition and Psychiatric Outcomes written 30 October 2009 – now made public by a Swedish court. As stated by the manufacturers: “This information is provided on behalf of the following Marketing Authorisation Holders for methylphenidate-containing medicinal products in the EU: Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, Shire, Medice and Laboratorios Rubió (also referred to as the “Consortium”).” The document can only be characterised as an aggressive effort to explain why long-term studies about adverse psychiatric outcomes of methylphenidate treatment could not and should not be done, together with distorted facts about the beneficial long-term outcomes of drug treatment. The intention with the feasibility assessment study is clearly to stop or delay needed safety actions for methylphenidate drugs.

Now Janne Larsson, the Swedish investigator and writer of that article, has asked the European Commission to take decisive action to clarify, once and for all, what are the damaging side effects of these drugs. Here is his letter...

BelfastTelegraph

2 March 2010

Health Minister accused of swine flu ‘overreaction’

By Staff Writer

Michael McGimpsey

Health Minister accused of swine flu ‘overreaction’

Stormont's Health Minister has been accused of overreacting to the swine flu scare after it emerged that a further £16m of emergency funding has gone unspent.

Finance Minister Sammy Wilson said his executive colleague Michael McGimpsey should have scrutinised scientists' advice about the pandemic alert more rigorously before asking for the money from Government coffers.

The DUP representative said some elements of the scientific community had their own agenda for over-stating the scale of certain crises.

“Ministers when they are faced with a crisis should scrutinise any advice they are given as rigorously as possible to make sure that they are not overreacting,” he said.

Aspartame has been renamed and is now being marketed as a natural sweetener
by Ethan Huff, citizen journalist
See all articles by this author
Email this author

(NaturalNews) In response to growing awareness about the dangers of artificial sweeteners, what does the manufacturer of one of the world's most notable artificial sweeteners do? Why, rename it and begin marketing it as natural, of course. This is precisely the strategy of Ajinomoto, maker of aspartame, which hopes to pull the wool over the eyes of the public with its rebranded version of aspartame, called "AminoSweet".

Over 25 years ago, aspartame was first introduced into the European food supply. Today, it is an everyday component of most diet beverages, sugar-free desserts, and chewing gums in countries worldwide. But the tides have been turning as the general public is waking up to the truth about artificial sweeteners like aspartame and the harm they cause to health. The latest aspartame marketing scheme is a desperate effort to indoctrinate the public into accepting the chemical sweetener as natural and safe, despite evidence to the contrary.

Three out of four cancer patients survived an average of five months longer after taking the cocktail of vitamins

Cancer patients with terminal disease who take a daily cocktail of vitamins could extend their lives by two years or even longer, claim researchers.

Three out of four in a pilot study survived an average of five months longer than the expected one year, and some were still alive three years after treatment started.

Dr Bob Lister, co-author of the study by British and Danish researchers, said the results were similar to the survival gains from new drugs and in some cases better.

But the important difference was there were no side effects reported by patients taking vitamins, he said.

- - -

'Most importantly, taking these supplements is extremely safe, and there were no adverse reactions among the patients.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1251286/Cocktail-vitamins-cancer-patients-extra-years.html

Law Project for Psychiatric Rights v. Matsutani, et al.

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is suing individual psychiatrists, their employers, pharmacies, state officials, and a medical education and publishing company for their roles in submitting fraudulent claims to Medicaid.

The Complaint points out the lack of science supporting the practice and the methods used by the pharmaceutical industry to induce psychiatrists to improperly prescribe these drugs.

"Even though the drug companies have been using these methods to induce psychiatrists to prescribe these drugs, it is the psychiatrists' responsibility to base their decisions on the facts, not drug company marketing," said Mr. Gottstein, continuing, "the uncritical acceptance of pharmaceutical company hype represents a massive betrayal of trust by the psychiatrists prescribing these drugs to children and youth."

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is a public interest law firm devoted to the defense of people facing the horrors of forced psychiatric drugging and electroshock. PsychRights is further dedicated to exposing the truth about psychiatric interventions and the courts being misled into ordering people subjected to these brain and body damaging drugs against their will. Extensive information about these dangers, and about the tragic damage caused by electroshock, is available on the PsychRights web site: http://psychrights.org/.

The suit is a whistleblower suit which means, not only is there a chance of putting a stop to psychiatric overprescribing under false premises which, at times, is responsible for tragic deaths, but there is also a good possibility that the growing anti-psychiatry movement will gain some financial means to make its campaign to stop psychiatric abuses more effective.

In the US, a lawsuit can be brought under the federal False Claims Act, which authorizes private parties to bring fraud actions on behalf of the Government. These cases are also called "whistleblower suits" or "qui tam," actions. Those who file them are entitled to a share in the recovery, which means a percentage of court-mandated fines is usually designated to go to those who bring the action.

The Huffington Post
December 14, 2009
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny
Posted: December 8, 2009 04:31 PM

On November 24, 2009, Novartis officially opened its first, large-scale vaccine manufacturing facility in the U.S. Located in Holly Springs, North Carolina. The project is a collaborative effort between Novartis and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which contributed $457M for the design, construction, and licensing of the facility.

For its part in the deal, Novartis is required to provide two commercial-scale lots of "pre-pandemic" vaccine annually for a minimum of three years. In addition, the government has the right to exercise options to purchase influenza vaccine over the next 17 years. (1) Currently, 191 employees work at the plant but that will increase to 350 persons when fully operational, anticipated to be sometime in 2011. The Holly Springs facility will be able to roll out 150 million flu shots per year.

Even though its use has not been approved by U.S. regulators, the plant will be producing MF59 as early as December 2009.(2) MF59 is Novartis' proprietary and controversial adjuvant composed of squalene and a surfactant called Tween80, also known as polysorbate 80. Back in July, 2009, the department of HHS purchased over $343.8M of "oil-in-water" adjuvant from Norvartis.(3) It looks like the government may want to take delivery on its purchase some time soon.

Posted by: Dr. Mercola

December 10 2009 | 6,348 views

Health officials across Canada are being asked to hold back a batch of swine flu vaccine that appears to be causing higher rates of severe allergic reactions.

The vaccine's manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, is asking governments to stop using vaccine doses from one particular lot shipment issued in late October.

Bloomberg reports that Glaxo advised Canadian doctors to hold off on using a batch of the vaccine while the company probes reports of higher-than-expected occurrences of a side effect known as anaphylaxis.

The batch of 172,000 doses of Arepanrix was linked to more cases of acute allergic reactions, including swollen tongues, throats and respiratory distress, than is expected, spokeswoman Gwenan White said.

According to Manitoba health officials, severe allergic reactions from the batch in question was seen in one of 20,000, which is far higher than the typical rate of one in 100,000.

Sources:

CBC News November 19, 2009

Bloomberg November 24, 2009

HealthZone.ca November 20, 2009

ecPulse.com November 25, 2009

AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH
DR. BARBARA STARFIELD:
By Jon Rappoport
www.insolutions.info
www.nomorefakenews.com

On July 26, 2000, the US medical community received a titanic shock to the system, when one of its most respected and honored public-health experts, Dr. Barbara Starfield, revealed her findings on healthcare in America.

The landmark 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:

Every year in the US there are:

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.

by Tom DeWeese
December 1, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

As the battle over government-controlled health care continues, many Americans simply want out of the whole mess. They instead seek a plan of wellness based on healthy eating and natural supplements.

That approach, however, is the opposite of the health care agenda of the American Medical Association and the Pharmaceutical industry. Those forces, which literally control America’s health industry, are based on sickness. The sicker you are, the more drugs you will buy.

In addition, insurance companies, working hand in hand with the AMA and the drug companies, refuse to provide coverage for the wellness approach. Most won’t pay for natural supplements nor will they pay for visits to homeopaths or chiropractors. The only thing most Americans can do when sick (and unable to afford to pay for natural treatment out of their pockets) is to stick with the big pharma/AMA game plan. In short, it is cheaper to be sick than to try to stay well.

However, in spite of a stacked deck in favor of the sickness agenda, more Americans are going for wellness and the natural supplement industry is growing. In response, and to preserve their dominance over health care, big pharma is lobbying hard to get the Food and Drug Administration to make many natural supplements available only by prescriptions issued by AMA licensed doctors. In other efforts, they seek to drastically reduce the dosage of natural supplements sold over the counter, making them useless. Again, only a prescription would allow a workable dosage.

Vaccines Cause Autism, News From Scientific Think Tank States.
Curtiss Lee Linderman Sr
November 20, 2009
American Chronic

Sound and Reproducible Science Implicates Vaccines in the Autism Epidemic

In 2003, The Center for Modeling Optimal Outcomes LLC, began researching the neuroscience of business and how applying this tactic could possibly enhance business practices. What they found during their research has possibly shaken the very foundations of vaccine science and toxicology.

This New Jersey based think tank sent out a press release on the seventeenth of November 2009 that states that their studies, which implicate vaccines as the cause of autism, are "Grounded on a solid foundation of the laws of physics and chemistry." One of the aspects of this research that I find most notable is that this is a non-conflicted think tank that was not even looking into these issues for the purpose of obtaining information regarding the causation of autism. This was, for all intents and purposes, an accident.

By mid 2005, two years into their research, The Center for Modeling Optimal Outcomes LLC had gained great knowledge and made some very substantial findings. They began by researching brain chemicals (neurohormones) that were seemingly involved in logic and emotions. These are of course two areas that have a direct link to productivity in the workplace. With their findings however, they were forced to take two very different paths in the study. One was of course continuing the business model aspect of their research; the other is the reason for this article.

When 210 children die from ordinary flu, it does not hit the mainstream media. When 21 children die from H1N1, it is prime news. When 67 navy crew die within a few days of taking the H1N1 flu shot before leaving a port in the US, it hides in small bylines. Beware the Chameleon in the garb of science and mainstrean media.

ONLY SWINE FLU DEATHS LEAD TO HYSTERIA
Beldeu Singh

The mainstream media has gone nuts and remains in overdrive in whipping up a hysteria relating to swine flu and the need for H1N1 vaccinations. Some governments have been enlightened by the facts surrounding the H1N1 and will not buy it nor force their people to take the shots.

One of the very special facts is that it is a virus with an "odd mixture of genes" from viruses such as the bird flu virus and human influenza virus. It was never found in swine and such a virus could not have evolved or mutated in the swine biological system. Later, health authorities in the US stated on TV that is a laboratory artifact see: VIRUSGATE: http://www.laleva.org/eng/2009/09/virusgate.html

WHO is also a central figure that helped created a scare when, to the amusement of many, raised its alert level from pandemic level 3 to pandemic level 6, its highest pandemic alert level. The politics of disease is never too difficult to understand, if you care to look at the basic facts. So, let's just consider the facts as enumerated below that have been properly highlighted by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor (MANewsEd):-

1. The CDC stopped testing for H1N1 sometime ago as its symptoms are close to a mild seasonal flu, but strangely lumps all cases of flu as H1N1!

2. The CDC now reports that nearly 4,000 Americans have been killed by H1N1 swine flu. This number is supposed to sound big and scary, motivating millions of people to go out and pay good money to be injected with untested, unproven H1N1 vaccines. But let's put the number in perspective: Did you know that more than four times as many people are killed each year by common NSAID painkillers like aspirin? (MANewsEd).

Why is the CDC playing this game together with WHO?

"Conservative calculations estimate that approximately 107,000 patients are hospitalized annually for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)-related gastrointestinal (GI) complications and at least 16,500 NSAID-related deaths occur each year among arthritis patients alone" (Singh Gurkirpal, MD, "Recent Considerations in Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug Gastropathy", The American Journal of Medicine, July 27, 1998, p. 31S)

"So for every person the CDC claims was killed by H1N1 swine flu this year, common painkillers like aspirin have killed four! Yet you don't see the CDC, FDA, WHO or mainstream media running around screaming about the extreme dangers of aspirin, do you? All those deaths apparently don't matter. Only swine flu deaths lead to hysteria" (ref: MANewsEd).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Orthomolecular Medicine News Service,
November 1, 2009
by Dr. Damien Downing

(OMNS, November 1, 2009) 2009 may be the year of the vaccine show-down, the moment when enough of us start questioning all we're being told about vaccines. A survey published in the BMJ in August (http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/339/aug25_2/b3391) reported that less than half of healthcare workers in Hong Kong were willing to accept "pre-pandemic" flu vaccination. And that was before a letter from the Health Protection Agency to 600 United Kingdom neurologists on July 29th warning them to be on the alert for an increase in cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome following the vaccination campaign.

If nurses and doctors start questioning vaccination for themselves, sooner or later we'll have to advise patients to make their own minds up. They seem to be doing so anyway. A poll by Fox News (http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/08/26/think-greater-risk/ ) , often described as a right-wing channel, found that 51% thought taking the H1N1 vaccine carried a greater risk than not being vaccinated.

Yet both in the USA and the UK, this year's swine flu vaccine will be rolled out without adequate safety testing. What's going on? Two things: profits and power.

The Atlantic

Just after 6 p.m. on a warm Friday evening in July, Dr. David Newman is only minutes into a 10-hour shift in the emergency room of New York City’s St. Luke’s Hospital, and already he has assumed responsibility for 11 patients. The young Italian tourist sitting on the bed in front of the doctor has meningitis, and through an interpreter, Newman tells him he almost certainly has the viral form of the disease, which will do nothing more than make him feel ill for a few days. There is a tiny chance, says Newman, that the illness is caused by a bacterium, which can be deadly, but he is almost positive that’s not what the tourist has. He says to his patient, “I can’t tell you with 100 percent certainty that you don’t have it, but if you do, you’ll begin to feel worse and you’ll need to come back.” The tourist, on learning that he might be infected with a potentially lethal disease, looks down at his feet and confesses that he is much more worried about another illness: swine flu. Newman smiles patiently. “It would be nice if you had swine flu,” he says. “Compared to bacterial meningitis, swine flu is safe.”

Late last spring, as headlines and airwaves warned of a possible pandemic, patients like Newman’s began clogging emergency rooms across the country, a sneezing, coughing, infectious tide of humanity more worried than truly sick, but whose mere presence in the emergency room has endangered the lives of others. “Studies show that when there is ER crowding, mortality goes up, because patients who need immediate attention don’t get it,” says Newman, the director of clinical research in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the hospital, which is affiliated with Columbia University. In an average year the ER at St. Luke’s, a sprawling 1,076-bed hospital on 113th Street, takes in 110,000 patients, some 300 a day. At the height of the summer swine flu outbreak, that number doubled. The vast majority of panicky patients who came in the door at St. Luke’s and other emergency departments didn’t actually have the virus, and of those who did, most were not sick enough to need hospitalization. Even so, says Newman, when patients with even mild flu symptoms show up in the hospital, they vastly increase the spread of the virus, simply because they inevitably sneeze and cough in rooms that are jammed with other people.

Image via Wikipedia

03 Oct 2009   

A new study in the leading scientific journal NeuroToxicology lends further credence to parents and scientists concerned about an increasingly aggressive childhood vaccine schedule and toxic vaccine components. A team led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that infant macaque monkeys receiving a single Hepatitis B vaccine containing the mercury-based preservative thimerosal underwent significant delays in developing critical reflexes controlled by the brainstem. The infant macaques that did not receive vaccines developed normally.

Government vaccine guidelines were expanded in 1991 to include a Hepatitis B vaccine for infants within the first few days of life, even though the disease is primarily transmitted sexually or spread through the use of dirty needles. The introduction of the shot was part of a greatly accelerated vaccine schedule that coincides with the drastic increase in autism, which now affects one in 100 American children. Thimerosal was removed from U.S. Hepatitis B vaccines in 2000 but was not recalled from the market and was administered for approximately two more years. It still remains in other vaccines including all multi-dose shots for both the seasonal flu and H1N1.

By Claus Hancke, M.D.

Regarding the threatening or present H1N1 influenza pandemic, I must call for sober-mindedness.

It is a pandemic – which only means that the disease is highly contagious, and that it is spread throughout the World. It does not mean that everyone will die from it.

The word "pandemic" says NOTHING about how dangerous the disease is.

The H1N1 influenza has calmly spread during the past six months, and globally it has not even closely reached the casualty numbers seen with an ordinary, seasonal flu.

Thus we are dealing with a flu of reasonable progress and of relatively low mortality. On average, we are speaking of three days of moderate fever.

The low mortality is probably due to the illness hitting young and middle-aged people. Elderly people are struck to a much milder degree, as they are likely to have developed some immunity from the last time they either had or were exposed to this flu in the pandemic of the late 1950s.

September 9, 2009
Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter # 382
from Russell Blaylock, MD – www.russellblaylockmd.com

An outbreak of swine flu occurred in Mexico this spring that eventually affected 4,910 Mexican citizens and resulted in 85 deaths. By the time it spread to the United States, the virus caused only mild cases of flu-like illness.

Thanks to air travel and the failure of public health officials to control travel from Mexico, the virus spread worldwide. Despite predictions of massive numbers of deaths and the arrival of doomsday, the virus has remained a relatively mild disease, something we know happens each year with flu epidemics.

Worldwide, there have only been 311 deaths out of 70,893 cases of swine flu. In the United States, 27,717 cases have resulted in 127 deaths. Every death is a tragedy, but such a low death rate should not be the basis of a draconian government policy.

Sott.net

Stephen Lendman

stephenlendman.blogspot.com

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:35 UTC

"Swine Flu" - Lab Created

Fact check:

-- no Swine Flu threat exists;

-- reported H1N1 infections and deaths are uncorroborated;

-- WHO predicting a global pandemic affecting "as many as two billion people....over the next two years" is falsified hype unless a diabolical depopulation scheme (by vaccines or other means) plans to create one;

-- vaccines don't protect against diseases they're designed to prevent and often cause them;

-- all vaccines contain harmful toxins, including mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, phenoxyethanol (antifreeze), and squalene adjuvants that weaken and can destroy the human immune system, making it vulnerable to many annoying to life-threatening illnesses; and

Sherri Tenpenny, DO 　

What’s in the regular flu shot?

* Egg proteins: including avian contaminant viruses

* Gelatin: can cause allergic reactions and anaphylaxis are usually associated with sensitivity to egg or gelatin

* Polysorbate 80 (Tween80™): can cause severe allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Also associated with inferility in female mice.

* Formaldehyde: known carcinogen

* Triton X100: a strong detergent

* Sucrose: table sugar

* Resin: known to cause allergic reactions

* Gentamycin: an antibiotic

* Thimerosal: mercury is still in multidose flu shot vials