How to fix our failing disease care system? Start over. Stop subsidizing this corrupted societal suicide. Modern Western medicine is now the leading cause of death in the U.S. Congress needs to stop its cozy arrangement with the medical monopoly and create a level playing field for the other healing arts like naturopathic, chiropractic, Eastern medicine, acupuncture, herbal and homeopathic medicines.
A landmark paper on homeopathy and cancer has appeared in the February 2010 issue of the International Journal of Oncology. Scientists at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, led by Moshe Frenkel, MD, have confirmed the ability of four incredibly diluted homeopathic remedies to induce apoptosis (programmed cell death) in breast cancer cell lines in the laboratory.
Our insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies use insurance codes to become functional medical cartels and have ‘captured’ the government regulatory agencies meant to monitor them. The fox has been guarding the henhouse for a long time.
Big pharma has repeatedly been caught giving secret payments to prestigious doctors to dishonestly promote expanding uses of their drugs based on faked statistics or disingenuous interpretations of the evidence. Drug companies pay plush honorariums at prestigious medical conferences and advertise heavily in peer-reviewed journals. Cartel money secretly supports various medical association pronouncements and funnels proceeds of many non-profit and charitable organizations to its own ends.
State courts regularly and successfully sue pharmaceutical corporations for costs of hidden long-term side effects of medications (subsequently found to be inappropriately approved and prescribed) in various state-supported ‘health’ programs (designed to help the disadvantaged) but co-opted by the medical mafia.
The nonmedical use or abuse of prescription drugs is a serious and growing public health problem in this country. The elderly are among those most vulnerable to prescription drug abuse or misuse because they are prescribed more medications than their younger counterparts. Most people take prescription medications responsibly; however, about 48 million people (ages 12 and older) have used prescription drugs for nonmedical reasons (20% of the U.S. population).
Also alarming is the fact that the 2004 National Institute on Drug Abuse's (NIDA's) Monitoring the Future survey found that 9.3% of 12th-graders used Vicodin without a prescription in the past year, and 5.0% reported using OxyContin-making these medications among the most commonly abused prescription drugs by adolescents. “NIDA hopes to decrease the prevalence of this problem by increasing awareness and promoting additional research on prescription drug abuse,” said Nora D. Volkow, M.D., Director.
John Virapen retired after working more than 30 years in the pharma industry internationally. He guiltily now presents "damning evidence" exposing Eli Lilly bribing the regulatory board in Sweden to attain marketing approval for Prozac. (Once Sweden approves something, it is much easier to get it approved in the U.S.)
Prozac is one of the very popular SSRIs that within about two months dull the very receptors to the serotonin they supposedly increase, making it difficult it stop buying the drug. SSRIs often reduce the serotonin effect, worsening the very depression they are trumpeted to lift, sometimes leading to suicide. The danger of induced suicide or suicidal acts seems to occur at any dose transition with SSRIs, particularly in the first weeks of starting the drug, when changing dose mid treatment, or when trying to stop after long use.
It has been known by Pharma since1985 and now sadly by many thousands of victims, that every person, healthy or depressed, adult or child, who starts an SSRI, faces a finite risk of drug induced suicide and other harm in the first weeks of use. (Teicher and Cole, 1993) Since 1988, 68 million Americans have used Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft. Using a most conservative excess suicide rate, at least 21,000 avoidable suicides may have been induced, without any warnings to the victims or their families.
Whistleblower Dr. David Graham, testifying before the US Senate, estimated 88,000-to 139,000 Americans experienced heart attacks as a side effect from Merck’s Vioxx, and 30- 40% of these died. That would be between 27,000-55,000 preventable deaths attributed to Vioxx.
In 2007, when the NEJM published new data, the FDA came under harsh new criticism over Avandia’s death and heart attack risk. Pooled results of many studies on nearly 28,000 people showed a 43% higher risk of heart attack when taking Avandia compared to those taking other diabetes drugs or no diabetes medication. The FDA was aware of Avandia’s risks as early as 2000. Still, Glaxo was allowed to continue marketing (and reaping megabucks) from sales of Avandia.
Using Medicare claims to compare Actos and Avandia, researchers found that Avandia side effects carried a 13% greater chance of heart failure and a 15% higher rate of death. Avandia has a competitor drug sold as Actos by Takeda Pharmaceuticals (probably the motivation behind the comparative study). Besides the increased risk of heart attacks, congestive heart failure and death, studies also link Avandia to increased risk of liver failure, bone fractures and vision loss due to macular edema.
Evidence shows that Glaxo knew about the dangers, including heart attack and death, associated with its blockbuster drug (six million takers worldwide, one million at $90-$170 per month in the U.S.). According to attorneys, because the company sacrificed safety to profits, it may be held liable for damages suffered by those harmed by Avandia. GlaxoSmithKline, PLC, the drug’s maker, continues to defend Avandia and fights to keep it on the market despite its serious and potentially fatal side effects.
Our current government leaders must recognize the enormity of the problem, stop being so personally greedy, take their winnings (maybe they won’t get re-elected) and provide some real leadership. The rules need to be changed. People need to be more important than corporations.
I have been a general practice doctor for more than forty years. When I started, doctors were complaining about government and insurance companies. It is very much worse now, with the pharmaceutical cartel running things. The health of its people, both physical and mental, should be the first priority of government. Our government is mistakenly focused on the health of its corporations and that must change if we are to survive (let alone thrive) as a nation.
Our schools need to start educating, rather than ‘training.’ Training programs with excessively demanding schedules that deprive students of sleep and nutritious breakfasts effectively disconnect the new synapses of learning and open the mind for corporate programming. Deprived of health (and no longer even remembering what it felt like), our formerly-bright and previously-caring young doctors and nurses emerge from callous training programs wounded with post traumatic stress syndrome and then act as rapid-fire automatons who can no longer think outside the pharmaceutical box.
The Eastern system of healthcare has been in existence for more than 5,000 years and has stood the test of many regimes. Eastern wisdom says, “Let food be your first medicine.” Western medicine is profit-driven and mostly based on manipulated data about risk factors, rarely taking true health outcomes into account. Some modern medical technology is truly amazing, but only officers of major corporations, rock, movie or TV stars, professional sports players and foreign potentates can afford it.
Medical insurance is guaranteed prepayment to a voracious industry in good times and bad. People in our country who have medical insurance go bankrupt all the time just from their deductible and co-pay, let alone after they reach their maximum. And the real ‘death squads’ exist today. They are faceless private insurance company committees charged to do cost containment.
However, there is another model in plain sight, hidden from our awareness, the Cuban government has aggressively endorsed (by necessity of our embargo) cost-effective medicine provided by herbs, homeopathy and acupuncture.
Cuba now grows fields of organic herbs for their world famous medicine, which is good for the Earth and for the people. Herbs correct ailments by their naturally balancing or amphoteric effect. Herbs are complex and they do not lend themselves to patentable simplistic scientific scrutiny (which is corporate Western medicine’s false standard). It took many years to ‘throw off the shackles’ of my training and to realize that almost any herb practically always provides better patient outcomes than appropriately prescribed pharmaceuticals.
The efforts of the entire government need be behind sustainable agriculture. (Sustainable agriculture is an integrated system in which the farmer or gardener works within natural biological cycles and uses primarily local and naturally occurring resources.) Besides farming our heartlands, a small urban garden can be highly productive, sustainable and the source of a nice income. Cuba proves it is feasible.
According to Food First’s Peter Rosset, there are more than 220 biotech centers in Cuba producing and distributing cutting-edge, non-toxic biofertilizers and pesticides based on local microorganisms. Biological controls, such as Bt, a common organic pesticide, are available in the U.S., but by focusing so much in this arena, Cuba is ahead of the rest of the world.
Current chemical-based and genetically-modified farming practices are too environmentally damaging to be sustainable. Soils are progressively eroded from exposure to the elements, compacted by heavy machinery, salinized by excessive irrigation and sterilized with methyl bromide, and as pests become ever more resistant to pesticides, crop yields decline and aquifers and estuaries become contaminated with agrochemical run-off.
Change is long overdue and truly rational production systems need be instituted. Cuba offers the very first large-scale test of more sustainable alternatives, perhaps the only chance to see what works and what doesn't, before environmental realities mandate the rest of the world embark on a sudden, wholesale switch to organic agriculture.
Obesity and its costly negative downstream effects occur because government allows industry to put hidden addictive flavorings in food (even in organic baby food). Sorry Mrs. Obama, smaller portions and more exercise will not help. These same addictive (and many are natural) substances also act as excitotoxins also helping to fuel the epidemics of attention-deficit, autism and Alzheimer’s (and they have a drug for that). Addictive foods lead to greater profits, but a sicker people. You can destroy a country from within by modifying the foods of nurture.
“The WHO’s ‘false pandemic’ flu campaign is one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century,” said Dr. Wodarg. “The definition of a pandemic must not be under the influence of drug sellers. It is now believed that the drug companies have deliberately mislead governments to the seriousness of Swine flu, to make them stock pile vaccines, this has caused them to buy billions of dollars worth of vaccines pharmaceutical companies including Baxter, Glaxo Smith Kline and Sanofi Pasteur.”
What about the damage that is being directly done to the population by injection of these unnecessary vaccines and the precedent that has been set for the government to institute vaccines for future fake or manufactured pandemics?
We are in crisis! Put the corporate lobbyists out of work! Put us on the PATH to sustainability.
Eileen AJ Connelly, AP Personal Finance Writer from New York on February 21, 2010 noted that a law that President Barack Obama signed last May intended to shield card users from sudden interest rate hikes, excessive fees and other gimmicks that card companies have used to drive up profits. Consumers will save at least $10 billion a year from curbs on interest rate increases alone, according to the Pew Charitable Trust, which tracks credit card issues.
However, during the past nine months, credit card companies jacked up interest rates, created new fees and cut credit lines. They also closed down millions of accounts. So a law hailed as the most sweeping piece of consumer legislation in decades has helped make it more difficult for millions of Americans to get credit, and made that credit more expensive.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. But there was a catch. Card companies had nine months to prepare while certain rules were clarified by the Federal Reserve. They used that time to take actions that ended up hurting the same customers who were supposed to be helped.
Steven Green, DDS, 10261 SW 72 St, #106, Miami, FL, 33173, ddsgreen@bellsouth.net, sngreen.com, February 21, 2010
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