News headlines report drug raids in towns across the country. Drug sales take place in high school parking lots every day. Are we in danger of losing an entire generation to the drug culture? The problem has received wide media coverage, but there is another war on drugs that is under the radar.
There has been a spate of mainstream media (MSM) articles recently revealing the linkage between drugs in the water supplies and altered reproductive organs of fish. Some of these exposés have drawn a correlation between the explosion of fish abnormalities (and mutations) and different types of prescription and over-the-counter drugs found in their aquatic environments.
In a strong and surprising action, the World Health Organization (WHO) made it crystal clear that researchers have an ethical mandate to publish all clinical trial results, regardless of their outcomes. This extends to past trials as well as future, and is the latest move in the battle for full disclosure.
According to its Statement on Public Disclosure of Clinical Trials Results, the WHO is calling for:
Once upon a time—in 1973, to be precise—Peter Singer suggested birth control for free-living animals as part of the “animal liberation” philosophy. Parenthetically at first. Publicly asked whether gazelles should be protected from lions, Singer replied in a letter for the New York Review of Books:
Has your doctor recommended blood work for you? As a recently surfaced Big Pharma punishment shows, it might be totally unnecessary and part of a larger fraud case. Two companies, Richmond, VA-based Health Diagnostics Laboratory Inc (HDL) will pay $47 million to settle a fraud dispute, and Alameda, CA-based Singulex Inc. will pay $1.5 million in fines along with them.
As antibiotic-resistant bacteria continue to sweep the nation, tens of thousands (at least) are expected to suffer from ailments that just can’t be beaten by conventional medicine. In fact, a recent government document states that approximately 80,000 individuals could die if there were a “widespread outbreak” of a blood infection that is resistant to antibiotics.
Dr Paul Offit, who is the multimillionaire darling of BigPharma’s vaccine industry (and who has profited hugely from his alliances with said vaccine industry) has been allowed to take the pulpit over and over again on NPR, MPR and WPR in recent months (also PBS). He is one of the well-paid professional voices of the CDC (major promoters of universal, even forced, vaccinations), the American Academy of Pediatrics and BigPharma’s vaccine industry that has hundreds of new vaccines in the pipeline, which will never be medico-legally liable if they kill or injure the vacinee.
Pharmaceutical companies have been known to discredit natural, cheap solutions that compete with their high-dollar drugs. Now, the British Medical Journal has unraveled new research revealing how the makers of a cancer drug are blocking public access to a cheaper, safe, and effective alternative.
Many adverse side effects and even deaths are occurring due to medical negligence. Specifically, this is due to the irresponsibility of scientists who are not reporting the results of their clinical trials to the public, as required by a 2007 law.
According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the public access website clinicaltrials.gov draws 57,000 visitors a day, including people who are confronting serious diseases and seeking help to treat them with experimental drugs.
Watching “Last week tonight with John Oliver” on HBO got me to thinking anew about the raw deal that Americans get for prescription drugs. In a half hour program, he took up about 17 minutes demonstrating Pharma’s power trip ploys to sell drugs, including its insidious, but often ludicrous, commercials, its endless gifting to doctors and its overpowering sway over us and our culture.
