The Pharmaceutical "Business with Disease"
Up to date news and comment about the "Business with Disease".
February 12, 2012
Whitney Houston found in bath with prescription drugs nearby, latest reports claim
Whitney Houston was found in the bath with prescription drugs nearby, latest reports claim as the death of the singer prompts a worldwide outpouring of grief. Celebrity websites are claiming that the 48-year-old may have drowned in the bath and that while there were no illegal drugs in her room there were pills nearby.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
Comment: As with the deaths of Michael Jackson and Heath Ledger before her, it seems possible that the tragic and untimely passing of Whitney Houston may turn out to be yet another sobering reminder of the life-threatening dangers of patented synthetic drugs. If so, then any subsequent arguments as to whether or not these toxic substances were prescribed by physicians essentially miss the point: Dangerous pharmaceuticals are not made safer just because they might have been obtained via a physician's prescription pad. Moreover, with its total annual global sales now approaching 1 trillion dollars, the grim reality is that the Pharma Cartel has a vested financial interest in users becoming addicted to its products.
February 12, 2012
Glaxo studies traditional Chinese medicine
Scientists from GlaxoSmithKline are to study how traditional Chinese medicine can be applied to modern drugs as part of a revamp of the company’s research and development. Britain’s biggest drug maker last week unveiled the outcome of a review of its 38 groups of scientists, known as Discovery Performance Units (DPU), saying it would close three units and open four. The Sunday Telegraph can reveal the new units will look at traditional Chinese medicines, investigating how their principles can be applied to making new, synthetic, molecules.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
Comment: The near-trillion dollar a year profits of the pharmaceutical industry are based on the patenting of new synthetic molecules. The patents on these chemicals essentially allow drug companies to arbitrarily define their profits. Natural herbal-based medicines, on the other hand – given that they can’t be patented – are of no interest to the pharmaceutical industry. Instead, they are studied with the intention of producing new, synthetic versions of their key constituent molecules and then marketing these as multi-billion dollar patented drugs.
February 9, 2012
'Fen-phen' derived drug responsible for thousands of hospitalizations and deaths in France
A new study published in the journal Pharmacoepidemiology & Drug Safety reveals that benfluorex, a fenfluramine derivative drug used in France under the name Mediator, is likely responsible for thousands of hospitalizations and deaths over a 30 year period.
Read article at medicalxpress.com
February 6, 2012
Brown University, A Paxil Study And Retractions
For the past few years, an effort has been under way by a pair of academics to retract a study about the Paxil antidepressant in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry that concluded the GlaxoSmithKline pill was “generally well tolerated and effective for major depression in adolescents.” Why? Since then, the 2001 paper has been discredited amid charges that primary and secondary outcomes were conflated, selective results were reported and ghostwriting was involved (see this).
Read article at pharmalot.com
February 6, 2012
J&J Hid Risperdal Studies to Boost Drug Sales, Lawyer Says
Johnson & Johnson hid studies showing its Risperdal anti-psychotic drug caused diabetes to protect billions of dollars in sales, a lawyer said in the first personal-injury claim over the medication to go to trial.
Read article at businessweek.com
February 1, 2012
Indigestion drugs taken by millions linked to hip fractures
Common indigestion drugs taken by millions of people may increase the risk of a hip fracture by a third, a study has found.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
January 31, 2012
Why is “Hot Chemo” an Acceptable Cancer Treatment—But IV Vitamin C is “Too Far Out There”?
Patients liken hot chemotherapy to “being filleted, disemboweled, and then bathed in hot poison.” Best patient care, or merely the biggest moneymaker?
According to the New York Times, hot chemotherapy, which couples extensive abdominal surgery with blasts of heated chemotherapy to the abdominal cavity and its organs, was once a niche procedure used mainly against rare cancers of the appendix. Most academic medical centers shunned it. Now it’s being offered to patients to treat more common colorectal or ovarian cancers. Dr. David P. Ryan, clinical director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, says there is little evidence that it really works and “has almost no basis in science.”
Read article on the Alliance for Natural Health (USA) website
Comment: In whatever form it is administered, chemotherapy is extremely toxic. Notably, therefore, what makes its use even worse is the fact that for many types of cancer – including prostate cancer, skin cancer (melanoma), bladder cancer, kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer and others – it is already established that chemotherapy does not prolong the life of cancer patients at all. In short: Patients with these types of cancer who received chemotherapy have essentially been shown to have the same limited life expectancy as those who didn’t. To learn about safe and effective natural health approaches to cancer that have been shown to block ALL key mechanisms that make it a deadly disease, click here.
January 31, 2012
Takeda Hid Harmful Drug Interactions: Consultant
A former safety consultant to Takeda Pharmaceuticals has accused the drugmaker of deliberately failing to inform physicians that some of its medicines can interact poorly with other drugs and cause serious adverse events.
Read article at pharmalot.com
January 30, 2012
Experts want suicide risk warning on ADHD drug
Children who take a common drug for attention deficit disorder should be warned about the risk of suicidal thoughts, U.S. pediatric health advisers said on Monday. Several members of an advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration asked the agency to change the label for Focalin, an attention deficit medicine made by Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG, to reflect this risk.
Read news report at reuters.com
January 27, 2012
Surprise! James Murdoch Leaves The Glaxo Board
Months after we asked whether James Murdoch should remain on the GlaxoSmithKline board (back story), the embattled scion of the Murdoch media empire has decided not to stand for re-election at the upcoming annual shareholder meeting to be held this May. At least, that is the wording in an official statement released this morning by the drugmaker. His three-year stint as a non-executive director has been under a cloud ever since a scandal erupted over charges that various employees in the Murdoch media empire in the UK hacked into phones belonging to families of murder victims, terror victims, police and politicians.
Read article at pharmalot.com
January 26, 2012
Spain Plans Budget Law as Drug Firms Owed $8.4 Billion by States
Spain pledged to set spending limits for regional governments in a new law tomorrow as the country’s pharmaceutical lobby said the regions owe companies $8.4 billion for drugs.
Read article at bloomberg.com
Comment: Given that Spain had reduced its prescription drugs bill by a record 8.8% during 2011 but still ended up in debt to the Pharma Cartel, this news story illustrates perfectly the way in which indebted European countries are being forced still further into bankruptcy as a result of their national economies being continually drained by the fraudulent “Business with Disease”.
January 24, 2012
Statin Drugs Shown to Increase Risk of Diabetes Significantly—Yet the Media Scramble to Protect the Drugs’ Reputation
Statins are taken by one in four Americans over the age of 45, even though diet can fix high cholesterol quicker and more safely. Here’s new evidence of the drugs’ dangers. A University of Massachusetts Medical School study has found that statins significantly increase risk of type 2 diabetes among postmenopausal women—an increased rate of 48% compared to those not on cholesterol-lowering drugs. The data comes from the massive Women’s Health Initiative, which surveyed 161,808 women.
Read article on the Alliance for Natural Health (USA) website
January 24, 2012
Challenging Medical Ghostwriting in US Courts
Despite growing concern about medical ghostwriting, pharmaceutical companies, universities, medical journals, and communication companies employing ghostwriters have thus far failed to adequately stem the problem. As a result, some commentators have proposed that legal remedies could be sought by patients harmed by drugs publicized in ghostwritten papers.
Read essay by Xavier Bosch et al. at plosmedicine.org
January 23, 2012
Pharma Fights Effort To Dispose Of Unused Meds
For the past few years, a growing effort has been made to safely dispose of unused prescription drugs lingering in medicine cabinets and dresser drawers. Flushing medications down the toilet can cause environmental problems, such as tainting drinking water supplies (see this). And leaving drugs, notably painkillers, around the house can also lead to abuse and overdose by teens and adults, who sometimes sell pills. To combat the problem, a state senator in Washington plans to try - for a fourth time - to introduce legislation that would create a disposal program. And the plan, which is a modeled on a similar effort in Vancouver involving drop-offs at local pharmacies, would require drugmakers to pony up some funds to cover the cost. However, the pharmaceutical industry is, once again, fighting the program, as InvestigateWest reports.
Read article at pharmalot.com
January 23, 2012
J&J Must Face Lawsuits Over OTC Motrin Labeling
In a defeat for Johnson & Johnson, a federal judged ruled the drugmaker will have to defend against lawsuits charging it failed to properly warn that its over-the-counter Motrin pain reliever can cause Stevens-Johnson Syndrome and a deadlier form of the disease known as Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis. The judge refused to dismiss two lawsuits brought by parents who claim their children were harmed.
Read article at pharmalot.com
January 20, 2012
EMA Probes Novartis MS Pill Over Deaths
One month after Novartis initiated an investigation into a death tied to its new Gilenya pill for multiple sclerosis, the European Medicines Agency has now launched its own probe after receiving reports of up to 11 deaths among patients who took the medication.
Read article at pharmalot.com
January 19, 2012
Merck to settle Canada Vioxx suits for up to C$37M
Merck makes deal to settle Canadian Vioxx lawsuits for up to C$37 million, admits no liability
Drugmaker Merck & Co. said Thursday that it has reached a deal to settle all lawsuits in Canada over its recalled painkiller Vioxx, for up to 36.9 million Canadian dollars ($36.5 million).
Read Associated Press news report at yahoo.com
January 19, 2012
J&J Pays $158M To Settle Risperdal Lawsuit In Texas
Just one week after a closely watched trial began in an Austin, Texas, courtroom, Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay $158 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the state attorney general, who charged the Janssen pharmaceutical unit orchestrated a controversial program that was allegedly designed to boost the use of the Risperdal antipsychotic in the public sector throughout the country. A whistleblower lawsuit filed in 2004 described how J&J surreptitiously created and funded TMAP, or the Texas Medication Algorithm Project. TMAP relied on various state officials and academics to develop and sell the program as a policy tool, according to the lawsuit, which was joined in 2006 by the Texas state attorney general Greg Abbott
Read article at pharmalot.com
January 18, 2012
Effects of Tamiflu still uncertain, warn experts, as Roche continues to withhold key trial data
Two years after pharmaceutical giant Roche promised the BMJ it would release key Tamiflu trial data for independent scrutiny, the safety and effectiveness of this anti-influenza drug remains uncertain, warn experts today. A new report by the Cochrane Collaboration says Roche's refusal to provide full access to all its data leaves critical questions about how well the drug works unresolved. A BMJ investigation, published to coincide with today's report, also raises serious concerns about access to drug data, the use of ghost writers in drug trials, and the drug approval process.
Read article at medicalxpress.com
Comment: Studies with Tamiflu conducted in children and the elderly have shown a reduction in the length of illness of only 1 day, with its reported side-effects including nausea; vomiting; headaches; diarrhoea; abdominal pain and dangerous psychiatric side effects. Notably, therefore, the official World Health Organization guidance on Tamiflu issued in 2004, which urged governments to stockpile the drug, was authored by scientists who had previously received payment from its manufacturer, Roche.
January 18, 2012
Cancer Drugs Could Cause Tumours To Spread, Rather Than Preventing Them, Warns Study
Cancer drugs that are designed to shrink tumours by cutting off the supply to their blood may be doing the opposite and helping them spread to other parts of the body, a study has warned.
Read article in the Huffington Post
Comment: Through the formation of new blood vessels – a process known as angiogenesis – tumours are able to feed and expand. A key mechanism of cancer development, drug companies are currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars to find synthetic inhibitors of this process that they can patent and market as drugs. Significantly, therefore, unlike drugs, micronutrients can decrease the formation of new tumour blood vessels safely, effectively and naturally. To learn more, read chapter III of Dr. Rath and Dr. Niedzwiecki’s new book, “Victory Over Cancer!”.
January 17, 2012
Prescription medication 'increases falls in all ages'
People who take two or more prescription drugs could be twice as likely to take a serious fall regardless of their age, research suggests.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
January 17, 2012
New 'smart' pill tells patients when drugs dose due
A new “intelligent” pill that tells patients how to better follow doctors' orders and take medication properly is to go on sale in Britain within months, it has been announced. The tiny edible microchip records precise details of medication programmes through a monitoring “receiver” patch attached to patients' shoulder or arm.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
Comment: The pharmaceutical industry portrays itself as an industry fighting to prevent and eliminate diseases but, behind the pretext of this noble cause, it is demanding blind obedience from hundreds of millions of patients. As with the breath-monitoring device developed by researchers at the University of Florida and Xhale, therefore, some might argue that one of the long-term goals behind the approval of so-called “smart pills” could possibly be to force patients into taking patented chemical drug medicines by nullifying their medical and/or life insurance if it is discovered they have discontinued them.
January 16, 2012
U.S. to Force Drug Firms to Report Money Paid to Doctors
WASHINGTON – To head off medical conflicts of interest, the Obama administration is poised to require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
January 13, 2012
Nurses' miscarriages linked to chemicals at work
Nurses who worked with chemotherapy drugs or sterilizing chemicals were twice as likely to have a miscarriage as their colleagues who didn't handle these materials, in a new study.
Read news report at reuters.com
Comment: Many people are simply not aware that the chemicals used in so-called chemotherapy are toxic and dangerous not just to the patients to whom they are administered, but also to the people they come in contact with. As these chemicals are excreted through the chemotherapy patient's skin, urine, stool, tears, semen and vaginal fluid, the people at risk of contamination include family members, caregivers and literally anyone touching him/her. To read shocking extracts from the "patient information leaflets" of these drugs, as published by the drug manufacturers themselves, click here.
January 13, 2012
Roche Faces First Trial of Claims Over Raptiva Infections
Roche Holding AG (ROG)'s Genentech Inc. is facing the first trial of patients' claims that its withdrawn Raptiva psoriasis drug spawned fatal infections in some users.
Read article at Bloomberg.com
January 12, 2012
UK survey finds science misconduct “alive and well”
More than one in 10 British-based scientists or doctors have witnessed colleagues intentionally altering or fabricating data during their research, according to a survey by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on Thursday.
Read article in the Baltimore Sun (Maryland/US)
January 12, 2012
A Texas Official On The Johnson & Johnson Payroll
Earlier this week, a widely anticipated trial began in an Austin, Texas courtroom, where Johnson & Johnson is accused of orchestrating a controversial program that was allegedly designed to boost the use of the Risperdal antipsychotic in the public sector. A whistleblower lawsuit filed in 2004 described how J&J surreptitiously created and funded TMAP, or the Texas Medication Algorithm Project.
Read article and watch video at pharmalot.com
January 11, 2012
Move by former agency boss 'damaging' public trust in EU
New evidence alleges that the former head of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) set up his own consultancy business to advise pharmaceutical industry clients while he was still employed as the head of EMA. It is said this is “damaging the trust that European citizens should place in officials appointed to protect public health”.
Read article at theparliament.com
Comment: Revealing though this news is, it could be argued that public trust in the 'Brussels EU' could hardly be damaged any further than it already is. Anyone aware of the facts regarding the ongoing attempts by the 'Brussels EU' to curtail the spread of lifesaving natural health information will long ago have lost complete trust in the officials supposedly appointed by it to “protect public health.” As a result, awareness is growing worldwide that dismantling the 'Brussels EU' is now a precondition for global natural health freedom.
January 11, 2012
Statins Could Aggravate Diabetes Risk in Women: Study
Diabetes could be an added risk for women taking the cholesterol-lowering drug, more popularly touted as statins. The research, published in the Jan. 9 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, states that postmenopausal women on statins have a higher risk of developing diabetes.
Read on the website of the International Business Times
January 11, 2012
Pradaxa Side Effect Reports Were Hemorrhaging
Just when you thought the clouds hovering the Pradaxa bloodthinner could not get any darker, yet another report underscores concern about the Boehringer Ingelheim drug. The latest missive shows there were 505 cases of hemorrhaging reported to the FDA in the first quarter of 2011, shortly after the med was approved for preventing stroke and blood clots in people with atrial fibrillation. The cases resulted in death, disability, hospitalization or some other serious outcome, and the median age of the patients was 80, suggesting that the oldest and most vulnerable patients were hemorrhaging due to a drug overdose, according to the Quarter Watch reported from the Institute for Safe Medicine Practices, a non-profit.
Read article at pharmalot.com
January 11, 2011
GlaxoSmithKline fined over trials on the babies of Argentinian poor
GlaxoSmithKline, Britain's biggest drug firm, has been fined by an Argentine court over clinical trials of a pneumonia vaccine which was tested on thousands of babies from poor families. The firm failed to get proper consent from the children's parents before injecting Synflorix, one of its bestselling vaccines, according to a judge in Buenos Aires. GSK was also criticised for keeping inadequate records of the children's ages, medical histories and previous jabs.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
January 10, 2011
Deadly peril in an aspirin
Healthy people who take aspirin to prevent heart attacks and strokes are putting themselves in greater danger of life-threatening internal bleeding. They are increasing the risks by as much as a third, scientists are warning.
Read article in the Daily Express (UK)
Comment: Additional research suggests that regular use of aspirin also increases the risk of developing Crohn's disease; irregular heart rhythm; erectile dysfunction; hearing loss; and blindness.
January 6, 2011
Pfizer Must Pay $45 Million in Prempro Cases, Court Rules
Pfizer Inc. must pay more than $45 million in damages to two women who blamed the company's menopause drugs for their breast cancers, an appeals court ruled.
Read article at businessweek.com
January 5, 2011
Parents sue Pfizer over birth defects allegedly caused by Zoloft
A group of parents who claim their children suffered severe birth defects because of Zoloft has filed a lawsuit against the drug's manufacturer.
Read article in the Madison/St. Clair Record (USA)
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