Dr Mercola today explains about the drug industry's widespread corruption of scientific research

Dr Mercola today explains the widespread corruption of science: that drug companies invent data, fabricate research, falsify results,cover up adverse effects...

For a new perspective on conflicts of interest with regard to the pharmaceutical industry and health campaigning charities

For a new perspective on conflicts of interest with regard to the pharmaceutical industry and health campaigning charities I invite you to put the name of one such charity and the words "pharmaceutical sponsors" into your favourite search engine's searchbox. - I typed

asthma.org.uk pharmaceutical sponsors

into my searchbox and I was led to a page about a publication by The Stationery Office, viz.

The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry: Fourth Report of Session 2004-05

By Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Health Committee, Health Committee Parliament Great Britain House of Commons.

Whoever the actual people were who wrote this publication, they were clearly aware that the drug industry's sponsorship of charities is not motivated by philanthropy, but by greed, in the hope and expectation of increasing the sales of their drugs, and thereby increasing their profits. You may draw your own conclusions from that, as I do mine. It leads me to conclude that the advice given on the websites and in the literature of some at least of the major health campaigning charities, such as AsthmaUK, DiabetesUK, British Heart Foundation and others, may not really be in the best interests of the patients/sufferers they ostensibly serve. I hold in mind that we are constantly assured that business companies must act in the interests of their share-holders. So if I wanted to help people suffering from asthma, I personally would advise them to cut down on salt and salty food as this would improve their health in many ways. It would reduce excess fluid retention and thereby reduce excess weight, one of the risk factors for asthma, It would reduce high blood pressure if they had high blood pressure. It would reduce breathing problems. - And very importantly, if they had gained a lot of weight from using prescribed steroids for their asthma symptoms, it would speedily reduce that weight gain and the other serious adverse effects of prescribed steroids.(See my webpage about prescribed steroids.) What I would definitely not do is donate to AsthmaUK... - I don't donate to drug company profits.

More about Conflicts of Interest within the Medical Profession

"In 1996, shortly after we began tracking the pharmaceutical industry, we spent time looking at obesity research and the latest diet pills. In doing so, we noticed that a panel that was assembled by the government to develop a guideline for the overweight known as the Body Mass Index. And it was populated by experts, nearly all of whom had a financial tie to a drugmaker selling or developing such pills. The finding, of course, was not all that new, but the practice continues, according to a new study in BMJ, which examined panels responsible for generating clinical practice guidelines on screening and/or treatment for high cholesterol or diabetes in the US and Canada between 2000 and 2010. A good many of the panelists - and panel chairs - had conflicts of interest. But not all were disclosed."
Read article at pharmalot.com
See also Dr Briffa's recent article on conflicts of interest.

Study finds Pay-for-Performance does not benefit patient health

"As news outlets throughout Europe and the U.S. report on the plummeting health of Western adults and children, there is no shortage of culprits. One villain often bandied about is the "fee for service" system of incentives for physicians. Clearly, if doctors are financially rewarded for simply performing more procedures, costs will soar at the expense of patient health."

But, as physorg.com reports, Pay-for-Performance, an emerging movement in which physicians are rewarded not for what they do, but for quality of care and patient outcomes, has also not been found to benefit patients with hypertension, despite enormous administrative costs. - Andrew Lansley: please note!

My take on this is that until the healthcare industry acknowledges and promotes evidence-based facts about the causes of the continued rise in obesity and its related degenerative diseases, patient health can only continue to go from bad to worse. The 'prescribe more and more and more drugs' culture embraced by most doctors is harming patients; the falsely-named 'healthy eating' advice given by healthcare agencies and promoted by the Food Industry and the Dieting Industry that profit by it, the salt-laden processed food that crams the shelves of the supermarkets, are disabling and truncating more and more lives.

We need to revert to eating more natural food, without added salt, free of synthetic added chemicals that do not exist in real food, free of cloying sweetness that perverts the taste: food that is naturally nutritious, not with added this and added that to pretend that it is nutritious. We need to curb the pharmaceutical industry's excesses and put legal limits on what and how much doctors are allowed to prescribe - especially to children.

Good nutrition is the foundation for good health. 'A pill for every ill' is a damaging delusion.

Pfizer and its calamitous drug trials in Nigeria.

Pfizer and its calamitous drug trials in Nigeria.- Justice delayed is justice denied. The Law should serve the afflicted, not the Pfizer pharmaceutical company that harmed them. Read this article and weep for the child victims of Big Pharma and its corrupt associates.

Medical Journals Complicit in Corruption

"A growing number of prominent physician-scientists, including several former journal editors, and New York Times columnists, have written sobering critiques about the corrupting impact pharmaceutical industry influence has had on medicine. That influence has debased the integrity of medical research, clinical practice and medicine's institutions."
Read article on the website of the Alliance for Human Research Protection (USA)

Medical Journals Also Have Conflicts Of Interest

Much attention has been paid to conflicts of interest relating to the pharmaceutical industry, but where do medical journals fit in this equation? A new study notes that journals also have vested interests that warrant disclosure. Specifically, industry-supported clinical trials can boost a journal’s so-called impact factor by generating greater distribution of reprints that increase citation rates and, of course, revenue. The trials are often supported by drugmakers, which purchase reprints.
Read article at pharmalot.com

IMS Health Forecast of Global Pharmaceutical Market Growth in 2011

IMS Health Forecasts Global Pharmaceutical Market Growth of 5-7 Percent in 2011, Reaching $880 Billion
The value of the global pharmaceutical market is expected to grow 5-7 percent in 2011, to US$880 billion, compared with a 4-5 percent pace this year, according to IMS Health.
Read press release on the IMS Health website
Comment from Dr Rath Foundation with which I completely concur: With the drug industry’s annual global sales now approaching 1 trillion dollars, there can be no doubt that the whole of humanity is being held to ransom. It is worth remembering this the next time someone asks you to donate money to a charity for research into new drug treatments for cancer and other chronic diseases. After all, with astronomical sales figures like these, the pharmaceutical industry is clearly not short of funds for research. To learn the facts about the drug industry – and understand why it constitutes the largest fraud in the history of mankind – click here.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

I reckon The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have increased in number. I see them now as:

The Pharmaceutical Industry (Big Pharma)
The Food Industry and Agribusiness
Oil and Petrochemicals Industry
Corporate and International Lawyers
Arms Dealers
Corrupt Bankers
The Diet Industry

plus their stable-boys: - The EU, the Health Industry, corrupt politicians, the Press, the media...

Who would you add to that list?

Misleading Drug Trial Claims made about Pfizer's antidepressant Reboxetine (Edronax)

See BBC News report. "Doctors and patients are being misled about the effectiveness of some drugs because negative trial results are not published, experts have warned.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, they say that pharmaceutical companies should be forced to publish all data, not just positive findings."

Pharmaceutical companies cannot be trusted. There is systematic manipulation and abuse of scholarly publishing by the pharmaceutical industry and its commercial partners in their attempt to influence the health care decisions of physicians and the general public.

See Public Library of Science webpage: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000156

Quite apart from the criticisms being published about these particular drug trials, it should be recognised that antidepressant drugs work no better than dummy pills anyway and should not be being prescribed. Most antidepressants make you fatter and damage your health in many other ways too, so it's best to avoid these harmful, useless drugs.

MIND, the mental health charity, recommends a walk in the country as being helpful in lifting depression.

Are you on a diet? - Dieting is an often overlooked, but significant cause of depression. Good nutrition is an excellent way to improve your health. Obviously when you are not eating enough for the needs of your body and your brain, you will experience both physical and mental harm. - It is not necessary (or desirable, or effective or even safe) to diet to lose weight. The safe, natural way to lose excess weight is to cut down on salt and salty food. Avoid ready meals and takeaways because these are usually highly salted and offer poor nutrition. They are likely to worsen your feelings of depression.

Good nutrition is the best doctor and the safest medicine.

European Patient Groups, the pharmaceutical industry and funding

Given that patient and consumer groups are increasingly involved in as stakeholders and experts in management and scientific committees at the European Medicines Agency, one activist group decided to survey corporate sponsorship and compliance with disclosure requirements. Health Action International canvassed 23 groups, including those concerned with AIDS, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer and diabetes, to gauge financial ties between 2006 and 2008. Here is the study and this is what was found: Two-thirds of the groups working with the EMA received partial or significant funding from drugmakers or industry associations. All in all, 15 organizations received between 0.2 percent and 99 percent of their annual income from corporate sources, while seven were funded entirely from alternative sources.
Read article at pharmalot.com

Clear thinking about the corruption that links WHO and the pharmaceutical industry

Here's an outspoken, courageous page about the World Health Organisation and the H1N1 scam: http://keithconnectsthedots.com/2010/06/06/who-scandal-exposed-advisors-received-kickbacks-from-h1n1-vaccine-manufacturers.aspx

I warned against the vaccine on my aboutsalt blog last September: http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2009/09/think-before-you-vaccinate.html

The pharmaceutical companies cannot be trusted. Nor, clearly, can the World Health Organisation be trusted.

Good nutrition is the best physician and the safest medicine.

Psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry: an unhealthy symbiosis

I am very impressed by the article I have just been reading online: Psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry: who pays the piper? (Psychiatric Bulletin (2005) 29: 84-85 © 2005 The Royal College of Psychiatrists. As you can see, it was written some years ago, but its message is even more urgent today.

The three writers of the article are psychiatrists, concerned about the increasing grip the pharmaceutical industry has on the training of psychiatrists, on drug trials, on the inventing of new mental illnesses to be treated with psychotropic drugs, on the influencing of prescribing physicians to prescribe certain drugs, etc. It is a short and very clearly written article. I do urge you to read it.

My personal concern focuses mainly on the terrible suffering that psychotropic drugs can and do cause. I have written many times about the side-effect of morbid obesity (plus all its attendant illnesses and disabilities) resulting from many of these drugs.

Thousands upon thousands of children, mainly in America, are subjected to drug treatment for the flimsiest of reasons, and their young lives are blighted almost before they have begun. That is not even counting the effects on their brains themselves, and all the other systems of the body. The problem is compounded in America by the fact that so many of their legislators are in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry and are lobbyists for it.

Children are not the only group who endure unnecessary illness, unhappiness and pain in order to swell the profits of Big Pharma. In my country, the UK, many elderly people in care homes are drugged with psychiatric coshes, bringing frailty, disability, indignities and hastened death, and the doctors who bring about this horrifying suffering incur neither censure nor sanction: EVEN THOUGH THE FACTS ARE WELL KNOWN BY THE GOVERNMENT.

We have had the thalidomide tragedies, the tranquilliser tragedies. We presently have the ever-increasing and reckless prescribing of anti-depressants, which complacent doctors delude themselves into believing 'save lives'. See Anti-depressants are no better than dummy pills and amitriptyline

The 'developed' world, that has nurtured the pharmaceutical industry until it has grown into a multinational malign entity 'too big to be allowed to fail', apparently, will come to rue its failure to nip corruption in the bud long ago.

The public is being conned about the real causes of cancer.

Read this important article in the Huffington Post, which makes clear that a 'cure' for cancer is illusory. The self-serving interests of big business are making the developed world more and more carcinogenic, but cancer prevention captures far less publicity and cash than trying to deal with the cancers when they develop.

I strongly urge you to read the article and thereby arm yourself with information about little-known causes of cancer and the folly of looking to the pharmaceutical industry for a way out of this cancer-ridden society. And why not visit www.preventcancer.com for even more valuable info from a non-profit organisation?

A personal note from me: seriously cutting down on salt and salty food, improving your nutrition and avoiding dieting will all benefit your health immeasurably and make it less likely that you will develop degenerative disease and disability.

Is the pharmaceutical industry corrupting psychiatry?

Read article at pharmalot.com

Interesting article on Wikipedia and the Soros Connection

See Wikipedia and the Soros Connection on the Dr Rath Foundation website.

Paul Flynn MP denounces swine flu drugs lobby

I must apologise. - I read the Walesonline article a week ago and should have posted about it then, but tiredness intervened. Have a look also at this page from Paul Flynn's blog.

A Welsh MP has raised concerns that the swine flu pandemic was exaggerated under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry. Newport West MP Paul Flynn believes the H1N1 pandemic is the latest is a long line of health scares – including Sars and new variant CJD – to be blown out of proportion. He has welcomed a hearing to determine whether the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) pandemic flu declaration in June was based on “objective epidemiological evidence or on pressure from the pharmaceutical lobby”. The left-wing Labour MP, who has tabled two motions in the House of Commons in a bid to expose “the pandemic that never was”, said: “We have had four major scares throughout the world of potential mass-killer pandemics but they have been exaggerated.
Read article at walesonline.co.uk (Wales/UK)

Suppression and Manipulation of Pharmaceutical Drug Research

One of the blessings of the internet is that one comes across blogposts like this one Health Care Renewal post about the suppression and manipulation of pharmaceutical drug research, ghost-writing, institutional conflicts of interest, and attempts to silence a whistle blower.

I urge you to read this well-supported indictment of venal doctors, a corrupt drug industry and the lack of anything approaching an adequate regulatory authority. – The GMC, of course, is notoriously lenient in its treatment of erring doctors and should be abolished as a waste of time and money and a source of further distress to patients who have already been harmed by members of the medical profession.

Systematic manipulation and abuse of scholarly publishing by the pharmaceutical industry and its commercial partners to influence healthcare decisions

There is systematic manipulation and abuse of scholarly publishing by the pharmaceutical industry and its commercial partners in their attempt to influence the health care decisions of physicians and the general public.
Read article on the Public Library of Science (PLoS) website

Anti-Forced-Vaccination Demonstration - Vancouver

On August 28th, 2009, the world's first public demonstration against the threat of forced vaccination, in regard to the (A)H1N1 (Human-Avian-Swine) Flu took place in Vancouver, BC, Canada, in front of the Art Gallery, on one of Vancouver's busiest streets. This event was primarily informational in nature, but also intended to send a message to the federal and provincial governments of Canada, the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) and the Pharmaceutical Industry regarding mass vaccination plans.
Read article at archive.org