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The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging (Documentary)
This video provides the facts about psychotropic drugs and the huge profits they create for the pharmaceutical industry. These drugs are not safe and have not been on the market long enough to provide sufficient long term studies regarding their effects. These drugs do cause addiction, however most "doctors" would call this dependence because you do not have to take an increasing dose over time. They are completely fine with you being addicted to the same amount of any given drug on a daily basis. Over half of the people that commit suicide in the United States are prescribed to psychotropic drugs. (Ex: Paxil (Paroxetine), Zoloft (Sertraline), Prozac, Wellbutrin (Bupropion), Effexor, Seroquil, Ultram (Tramadol), etc.)
November 29th 2011
Evidence Big Pharma Owns The U.S. Government
July 11th 2011
Pharma Not in Business of Health, Healing, Cures, Wellness
Ex-Pharma Sales Reps Speaks Out - Pharma Not in Business of Health, Healing, Cures, Wellness.
Gwen Olsen spent fifteen years as a pharmaceutical sales rep working for such healthcare giants as Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Abbott Laboratories. She enjoyed a successful, fast-paced career until several conscious-altering experiences began awakening her to the dangers lurking in every American medicine cabinet. Her most poignant lessons, however, came as both victim and survivor of life-threatening adverse drug reactions. After leaving pharmaceutical sales in 2000, Gwen worked in the natural foods industry first as an Account Manager for Nature's Way, and then as a Regional Sales Manager for Gaia Herbs. She is currently a writer, speaker, and natural health consultant.
 (NaturalNews) The highly controversial and potentially lethal anthrax vaccine may be tested on US children if the federal government gets its way. Although adverse event reports related to the vaccine among adult test subjects have included hospitalization, disability and even death, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is exploring the possibility of testing the vaccine on children.
Nicole Lurie, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the DHHS, recently requested that the National Biodefense Science Board submit an evaluation of safety issues related to testing the anthrax vaccine on children. The DHHS frames the possible testing as an issue of biodefense preparedness. However, the possibility of pediatric testing of the vaccine both ignores the vaccine's dangers, and raises the specter of class- and/or race-based selection of medical test subjects which has haunted US health agencies for over a century.
May 24th 2011
FBI Performs Damage Control for Big Pharma
The FBI is being called in to do damage control for Big Pharma, by carting out the Unabomber, and the media is happily complying. What you are about to learn will never be told on Network News.
 Soaring numbers of hyperactive children are being given controversial drugs to control their behaviour.
Prescriptions for Ritalin and similar medications for ADHD have risen by 70 per cent in the past five years, with more than 12,000 written out each week.
But some doctors fear that parents are simply using the drugs to sedate unruly children without knowing enough about the potential risks.
The drugs, nicknamed ‘chemical coshes’, can cause nausea, fatigue and mood swings and have also been linked to suicides.
Department of Health figures show last year 661,500 prescriptions were written out for Ritalin and similar drugs such as Concerta – up from 382,000 in 2005.
Most will have been handed out to those under the age of 19 diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder, with symptoms including an inability to concentrate and restless or impulsive behaviour.
May 21th 2011
WHY would doctors want this New York health advert banned ?
May 10th 2011
U.S. Supreme Court Gives Total Liability Shield to Big Pharma
 A U.S. Supreme Court decision has just given drug companies total liability protection for injuries and deaths caused by government mandated vaccines. The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) called the decision a "betrayal" of the American consumer.
In a 6-2 decision, the Court majority voted to reject substantial evidence that current law was fully intended to protect an American's right to sue a pharmaceutical corporation for injuries that could have been prevented if the company had elected to make a safer vaccine.
The court decision leaves parents with no way to hold vaccine makers accountable and no feasible way to get compensation for the injuries suffered by their children; furthermore, the decision removes all financial incentive for multi-national drug companies to make vaccines as safe as they can be
March 24th 2011
How Does the Drug Industry Get Away with Broadcasting Those Deceptive Ads?
The U.S. is one of only two countries in the world that allows Big Pharma to advertise directly to consumers. How did we get here?
 We’ve all seen them in newspapers and magazines, on TV and the Internet -- cheerful people in glossy, picturesque ads claiming that by taking a little magic prescription pill their lives were immeasurably improved.
As the TV ad fades, a cautionary voice quietly recites a host of “risk factors,” potentially catastrophic consequences that could result from taking the magical pill. One can’t but wonder if the cure is worse than the ailment.
A well-known ad features Dr. Robert Jarvik, a pioneer in the development of the artificial heart, pitching Pfizer’s cholesterol drug Lipitor. He comes across as a trusted expert with your best interest at heart, but viewers would not know that he is neither a cardiologist, nor licensed to practice medicine. (Lipitor’s 2009 sales were $5.4 billion.)
March 14th 2011
The Idiot Cycle: The Chemical Companies That Cause Cancer Then Profit From Treating Cancer
 Several books, including Seeds of Destruction and Corrupt to the Core, along with the film, The Idiot Cycle, lay out the framework for and evidence of a concerted effort to sicken and then treat humanity, while earning obscene profits. When we factor in other recent actions taken by transnational corporations and lawmakers, the conspiracy adopts a more ominous tone.
Authors William Engdahl and Shiv Chopra appear in Emmanuelle Schick Garcia’s powerful film, The Idiot Cycle: What you aren’t being told about cancer. Both writers provide detailed evidence of a corporate-government conspiracy to adulterate the food and water supply with dangerous substances linked to a host of illnesses. The Case Against Fluoride, a book using hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, provides more evidence. In David Gumpert’s Raw Milk Revolution, we get a peek at the US government’s war on the natural dairy industry.
Looking at six companies, Dow Chemical, BASF, Bayer, Dupont, Astrazeneca (Syngenta),and Monsanto, Idiot Cycle exposes corporate-government collusion in the release of carcinogenic chemicals, but also reveals how some of the same chemical companies then profit from treating cancer. It’s a cycle only an idiot would tolerate. Going further, much of the film then addresses genetically modified food and its potentially disastrous effect on health and the environment
March 13th 2011
Top Ten Legal Drugs Linked to Violence
 When people consider the connections between drugs and violence, what typically comes to mind are illegal drugs like crack cocaine. However, certain medications — most notably, so
me antidepressants like Prozac — have also been linked to increase risk for violent, even homicidal behavior
9. Venlafaxine (Effexor) A drug related to Pristiq in the same class of antidepressants, both are also used to treat anxiety disorders. Effexor is 8.3 times more likely than other drugs to be related to violent behavior. (More on Time.com: Adderall May Not Make You Smarter, But It Makes You Think You Are)
8. Fluvoxamine (Luvox) An antidepressant that affects serotonin (SSRI), Luvox is 8.4 times more likely than other medications to be linked with violence
7. Triazolam (Halcion) A benzodiazepine which can be addictive, used to treat insomnia. Halcion is 8.7 times more likely to be linked with violence than other drugs, according to the study.
6) Atomoxetine (Strattera) Used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Strattera affects the neurotransmitter noradrenaline and is 9 times more likely to be linked with violence compared to the average medication.
5) Mefoquine (Lariam) A treatment for malaria, Lariam has long been linked with reports of bizarre behavior. It is 9.5 times more likely to be linked with violence than other drugs.
4) Amphetamines: (Various) Amphetamines are used to treat ADHD and affect the brain's dopamine and noradrenaline systems. They are 9.6 times more likely to be linked to violence, compared to other drugs.
3) Paroxetine (Paxil) An SSRI antidepressant, Paxil is also linked with more severe withdrawal symptoms and a greater risk of birth defects compared to other medications in that class. It is 10.3 times more likely to be linked with violence compared to other drugs. (More on Time.com: Healthland's Guide to Life 2011)
2) Fluoxetine (Prozac) The first well-known SSRI antidepressant, Prozac is 10.9 times more likely to be linked with violence in comparison with other medications.
1) Varenicline (Chantix) The anti-smoking medication Chantix affects the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, which helps reduce craving for smoking. Unfortunately, it's 18 times more likely to be linked with violence compared to other drugs — by comparison, that number for Xyban is 3.9 and just 1.9 for nicotine replacement. Because Chantix is slightly superior in terms of quit rates in comparison to other drugs, it shouldn't necessarily be ruled out as an option for those trying to quit, however
People & Power - Drug Money
January 1th 2011
 NaturalNews) A new Consumer Reports survey has found that the vast majority of patients on prescription drug medications believe that drug companies have too much influence over their doctors. Roughly half of those interviewed believe that their doctors are so influenced by Big Pharma that they would deliberately write a drug prescription even if a better, safer, non-drug option was available.
Of the nearly 1,200 patients interviewed, nearly half believe that gifts from drug companies influence which drugs their doctorsprescribe. And more than 80 percent believe that drug companies offer incentives to doctors to get them to write more prescriptions.
Other concerns include doctors agreeing to be paid spokespersons for drug companies, speaking at drug industry conference and being "wined and dined" by drug company executives in exchange for favors.
December 27h 2010
 Yesterday we did an HIV-AIDS special for World Aids Day. Our special guests included Joan Shenton, Robert Scott Bell, Jan Irvin, Terry Michael, and Liam Scheff.
You can listen to the full show here.
When i heard Liam tell this horrifying story it really hit me to the point where I have taken it upon myself to do everything in my power to expose this disgusting AIDS Fraud. We are not AIDS deniers, in fact we know that AIDS is REAL, yet it seems almost impossible that this is an infectious disease.
Liam’s article, “The House that Aids Built” was written in 2003 and originally appeared here.
December 3th 2010
 Old style anti-depressant drugs were linked with a 35 per cent increased risk of cardiovascular disease, the study found.
However, newer drugs were not associated with a rise which may signal that the older drugs may be causing the effect rather than the depression itself.
The research conducted by University College London involved nearly 15,000 people in Scotland and the results were published in the European Heart Journal
December 2th 2010
Pharma researchers working on drug to erase your memories
 (NaturalNews) Drug researchers are working on a mind-altering chemical that could erase your memories. It's all being pursued under the umbrella of "mental health" with claims that this could help victims of emotional trauma. The idea that you can "heal" a patient by chemically lobotomizing them is, of course, entirely consistent with the core mythology of modern medicine: If something's wrong, you should poison it, burn it, irradiate it or cut it out... and then pronounce the patient "healed!"
In the case of memory-erasing drugs, scientists are reportedly working on a drug that would remove certain proteins from the brain's "fear center." This is based on the ludicrous idea, by the way, that memories are recorded solely by physical proteins in the brain -- an idea that's obviously based on an entirely outmoded mechanistic model of the human mind and brain.
Ncvember 24th 2010
Big Pharma Censors Ad Warning Women About Cancer Hormone
Last month, when Breast Cancer Action, a non-profit advocacy organization, attempted to rent a billboard in Indianapolis, they got the kibosh by every rental company in the city. The message was simple–the billboards simply read, “Eli Lilly is making us sick.Tell them to stop,” and referred to Lilly's manufacturing of recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), which has been linked to cancer. BCA followed the guidelines of all companies contacted, but Indianapolis is home to Eli Lilly's corporate headquarters, and it seems their ad dollars aren't good there. According to one local company, Lamar Advertising, the billboard was not accepted because BCA cannot prove its claims. According to Lamar Executive Chris Iverson, "We didn't feel [BCA] could stand behind their statement.”
Ncvember 7th 2010
Health Risks of Psychiatric Drugs
 Making a decision about coming off psychiatric drugs means evaluating as best you can the risks and benefits involved, including important information missing or suppressed from most mainstream accounts. Some risks may be worth taking, some risks may not be worth taking, but all risks should be taken into consideration. Because each person is different and drug effects can vary widely, the uncertainty involved should be met with your own best judgment and observations of how your body and mind are responding. This list cannot be comprehensive, and new risks are being uncovered regularly. Check a watchdog group (like www.ahrp.org) for the latest information.
PhysicalHealth Risks
October 27h 2010
Big Pharma to begin microchipping drugs
 (NaturalNews) The age of pharmaceutical microchipping is now upon us. Novartis AG, one of the largest drug companies in the world, has announced a plan to begin embedding microchips in medications to create "smart pill" technology.
The microchip technology is being licensed from Proteus Biomedical of Redwood City, California. Once activated by stomach acid, the embedded microchip begins sensing its environment and broadcasting data to a receiver worn by the patient. This receiver is also a transmitter that can send the data over the internet to a doctor.
The idea behind all this is to create "smart pills" that can sense what's happening in the body and deliver that information to the patient's doctor. Novartis plans to start microchipping its organ transplant anti-rejection drugs and then potentially expand microchipping to other pharmaceuticals in its product lineup. This same technology could soon end up in pills made by other drug companies, too.
Ncvember 12th 2010
Investigation Reveals Doctors on Big Pharma Payrolls Were Quacks
 An investigation by the website ProPublica has found hundreds of doctors on the payrolls of large pharmaceutical companies were accused of professional misconduct, were disciplined by state boards or lacked credentials as researchers or specialists. The misconduct of the big pharma doctors included having sex with patients and inappropriately prescribing drugs. More than 40 received FDA warnings for research misconduct, lost hospital privileges or were convicted of crimes. In one case, the Food and Drug Administration ordered Pennsylvania doctor James McMillen to stop “false or misleading” promotions of the painkiller Celebrex, saying he minimized risks and touted it for unapproved uses. Even so, three leading drug makers paid the rheumatologist $224,000 over 18 months to deliver talks to other physicians about their drugs. The seven big pharma companies Propublica investigated paid $25 million to medical professionals since 2009 for speaking, consulting and other promotions
October 21h 2010
 A vast network of Armenian gangsters and their associates used phantom health care clinics and other means to try to cheat Medicare out of $163 million, the largest fraud by one criminal enterprise in the program's history,U.S. authorities said Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors in New York and elsewhere charged 73 people. Most of the defendants were captured during raids Wednesday morning in New York City and Los Angeles, but there also were arrests in New Mexico, Georgia and Ohio.
The scheme's scope and sophistication "puts the traditional Mafia to shame," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said at a Manhattan news conference. "They ran a veritable fraud franchise."
Unlike other cases involving crooked medical clinics bribing people to sign up for unneeded treatments, the operation was "completely notional," Janice Fedarcyk, head of the FBI's New York office, said in a statement. "The whole doctor-patient interaction was a mirage
October 15th 2010
'Big Pharma Scores Big Win: Medicinal Herbs Will Disappear in EU
 It's almost a done deal. We are about to see herbal preparations disappear, and the ability of herbalists to prescribe them will also be lost.
Big Pharma has almost reached the finish line of its decades-long battle to wipe out all competition. As of 1 April 2011—less than eight months from now—virtually all medicinal herbs will become illegal in the European Union. The approach in the United States is a bit different, but it's having the same devastating effect. The people have become nothing more than sinks for whatever swill Big Pharma and Agribusiness choose to send our way, and we have no option but to pay whatever rates they want.
Big Pharma and Agribusiness have almost completed their march to take over every aspect of health, from the food we eat to the way we care for ourselves when we're ill. Have no doubt about it: this takeover will steal what health remains to us.
October 5th 2010|
 FORTUNE -- Avandia has taken some beatings over the years, but it pretty much took a fatal blow yesterday. That's when the Food and Drug Administration ruled to keep the drug on the market in the United States with some serious restrictions.
Those being: GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the drug's manufacturer, can't promote it. Patients currently on the drug will be advised to switch to another similar treatment, if possible. Doctors can't prescribe Avandia to new patients without explaining in detail why it might be more likely to cause a heart attack than other options. The FDA basically mandated everything short of putting a skull and crossbones on the label. But here's the rub: The European Union's European Medicines Agency dispensed with the subtleties and outright banned Avandia from being sold. Why didn't the FDA?
September 25th 2010
The pharmaceutical industry is doing more than selling lemon-drugs that are killing large numbers of people, or working to remove access to supplements crucial for health and life. They are now shifting to drugs and vaccines for healthy people.
"The new paradigm is that people need drugs before they get sick, as a sort of "protection" against sickness. Drugs, in essence, are being positioned as nutrients — things the human body needs in order to be healthy. .... That's why babies are injected with vaccines within minutes after being born."
September 24th 2010
Big Pharma Scores Big Win: Medicinal Herbs Will Disappear in EU
Big Pharma has almost reached the finish line of its decades-long battle to wipe out all competition. As of 1 April 2011—less than eight months from now—virtually all medicinal herbs will become illegal in the European Union. The approach in the United States is a bit different, but it's having the same devastating effect. The people have become nothing more than sinks for whatever swill Big Pharma and Agribusiness choose to send our way, and we have no option but to pay whatever rates they want.
September 20th 2010
US government to spend billions to help Big Pharma produce flu vaccines faster
(NaturalNews) Federal health officials are pushing hard this year to convince everyone to get the flu shot, but according to reports, this will only be possible if drug companies are able to produce the vaccines quicker than they did last year. So in order to make this happen, the government is doling out roughly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to Big Pharma to spur faster vaccine roll-out.
The hysteria over last year's supposed swine flu pandemic led to the development of millions of vaccines that were never used. By the time drug companies finished producing the vaccines, flu season was virtually over, leaving millions of leftover doses to rot in warehouses.
September 7th 2010
Americans drowning in prescription drugs.
(NaturalNews) Nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis according to a CDC report that was just released (1). Nearly a third of Americans use two or more drugs, and more than one in ten use five or more prescription drugs regularly.
The report also revealed that one in five children are being regularly given prescription drugs, and nine out of ten seniors are on drugs.
All these drugs came at a cost of over $234 billion in 2008. The most commonly-used drugs were:
• Statin drugs for older people
• Asthma drugs for children
• Antidepressants for middle-aged people
• Amphetamine stimulants for children
September 6th 2010
Diabetes drug with heart attack link 'should never have been issued'
One of the world's biggest-selling drugs for diabetes should never have been licensed and should now be withdrawn, says the British Medical Journal. It says its investigation into concerns about the drug, Avandia, made by British multinational GlaxoSmithKline, which has been linked with increased heart attacks, are too great to allow its continued use.
September 6th 2010
"Brave New World" Psychiatry Pushing Nerve Drugs
Big Pharma has hundreds of psychiatric terms defining victims' psyche and behavior to treat (or poison?) them to adjust, be nice, obey, consume, work, be normal and numb, thus belonging to our "great society." The billions in profits for Pharma-Chem motivates them to diagnose emotional problems with shrink terms that the makers themselves have designed drugs to control. Victims of domestic violence are treated with strong nerve drugs to relax, go to work, to sleep, or to school. Millions of U.S. school kids are drugged to pay attention and to follow class rules to learn subjects for corporate employment in the current U.S. war economy
September 3th 2010
Drugs don't work: Top professor claims five in six new medicines have 'little benefit' to patients
Drug companies have been accused of conning the public by hyping up patented medicines with little new to offer while downplaying their potentially harmful side-effects.
A new study estimates that 85 per cent of new drugs offer few if any new benefits while having the potential to cause serious harm due to toxicity or misuse.
The author of the research delivered a damning attack on 'Big Pharma' at a meeting of sociology experts in the US.
August 21th 2010
WHO list reveals flu advisors with financial ties to pharma, vaccine manufacturers
(NaturalNews) After months of stalling, the World Health Organization (WHO) has finally revealed the names of key pandemic advisors who influenced its decision to declare a phase six pandemic last year -- a decision that resulted in a financial windfall for vaccine manufacturers. As you'll see here, that list includes at least five expert advisors received money from vaccine companies.
August 13th 2010
Pfizer: The Drug Giant That Makes Bank from Drugs That Can Kill You
 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
July 12th, 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.
Most people are familiar with traditional weapons of mass destruction such biological weapons, nuclear weapons and chemical weapons. The point of all such weapons of mass destruction is to inflict a large number of casualties on civilian populations as a way to cripple a nation into political or military submission.
When it comes to actually deploying weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) against civilian populations, no country has murdered more innocent civilians than the United States of America through its bombing of two Japanese cities during World War II. (This isn't rhetoric, it's an historical fact.)
Atomic bombs were very visible WMDs deployed in World War II as a way to force the empire of Japan to surrender to western forces. Since that time, full-scale nuclear weapons have never again been used directly on civilian targets, meaning the United States of America maintains the distinction of being the only nation in the history of human civilization to have dropped atomic weapons on civilian populations.
Big Pharma blackmails Greece; halts medicine supply over cash demands
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
Big Pharma May be Handed Blanket Immunity for All Drug Side Effects, Deaths
The Supreme Court may rule that pharmaceutical companies cannot be sued for dangerous or even deadly side effects from their drugs if those side effects arise from an FDA-approved use.
Under a legal argument known as "pre-emption," the FDA's approval of a drug absolves companies of any responsibility if that drug later turns out to be dangerous, even if information was concealed from the FDA during the approval process. While courts have rejected this argument for decades, the winds appear to be shifting. In February, the Supreme Court ruled that makers of medical devices were indeed immune from state lawsuits if their devices had received FDA approval. But that decision hinged on the specific wording of the law that gives the FDA authority over medical devices, and the laws relating to drug regulation are not worded the same way. Even so, the Bush administration has been actively urging the courts to apply the same principle to drugs. The administration argues that only the FDA is equipped to regulate drugs and decide whether a product is safe, and that judges or juries are not able to make informed decisions on those matters
HOW BIG PHARMA PROFITS FROM FEAR
With Big Pharma raking in billions off swine flu fears, the last thing they need is a government handout. Yet Uncle Sam is busy playing Daddy Warbucks with YOUR lunch money, helping Swiss drugmaker Novartis open a new vaccine plant in North Carolina. You've generously contributed around $700 million to help Novartis build their shiny new drug factory -- $220 million three years ago, and $486 million this year. And I'll bet you didn't even get a thank-you card
GE Attempts to Silence Doctor Who Warned About Dangers
of Medical Imaging Drug
(NaturalNews) GE Healthcare, a British subsidiary of multinational giant General Electric, is suing Henrik Thomsen, a senior radiologist and professor of radiology, for sounding the alarm about the dangers of the company's medical imaging drug, Omniscan. After witnessing kidney patients who had received the drug develop potentially fatal conditions, Thomsen publicly exposed the drug's dangers which caused a firestorm of controversy.
In an effort to muzzle Thomsen, GE Healthcare has already spent more than 380,000 British pounds, or about $610,000, in legal fees pursuing litigation against him. Utilizing loopholes in Britain's libel laws, the company is alleging that Thomsen falsely accused GE of suppressing sensitive information about the drug's risks at an Oxford scientific congress presentation in 2007.
Investigation into these claims has shown that Thomsen accurately described his clinical experience and that no such misrepresentation took place. When questioned about this fact, GE spokesmen had no response other than to suggest that Thomsen indirectly slandered the company through insinuation
Big Pharma kills yet another celebrity: Brittany Murphy on multiple prescriptions at time of death
 NaturalNews) It's not normal todieat age 32 of a heart attack. To make that happen, you normally have to be taking chemical substances of some kind, either recreational drugs or prescription drugs. Actress Brittany Murphy, who died this last weekend from a heart attack, was reportedly taking prescription drugs to treat the symptoms of the flu (not to actually treat the flu itself, mind you, just the symptoms of the flu). She was found collapsed in her shower after her heart gave out.
Pharma paid $500,000 to Chicago psychiatrists who used children as guinea pigs
A federal lawsuit has been filed against pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca for its role in paying Chicago psychiatrist Dr. Michael Reinstein nearly $500,000 over the course of a decade to conduct research and to promote its anti-psychotic drug, Seroquel. Reinstein is being accused of wrongfully preying on thousands of mentally-ill patients in order to rake in profits for AstraZeneca.
Reinstein has a long history of working with AstraZeneca, receiving regular payments for speeches he would make across the country promoting the drug. AstraZeneca was also paying a for-profit research company, Uptown Research Institute, who in turn was paying Reinstein consulting fees for his services.
A memo obtained by the Huffington Post confirms that the White House and the pharmaceutical lobby secretly agreed to precisely the sort of wide-ranging deal that both parties have been denying over the past week. The memo, which according to a knowledgeable health care lobbyist was prepared by a person directly involved in the negotiations, lists exactly what the White House gave up, and what it got in return.
When an industry gets secret concessions in return for a promise to lend its support to a key piece of legislation, we're in big trouble.
How Pharma Giants Are Getting Rich By Calling Our Life Problems 'Medical Disorders'
Some years ago, a friend told me that he had been diagnosed with a major depressive disorder and that his psychiatrist had given him a prescription for Forest Laboratories’ popular SSRI antidepressant Celexa (chemical name, citalopram hydrobromide; $1.5 billion in sales in 2003). Knowing him to be a vociferous critic of the pharmaceutical companies, I asked whether he agreed that the origins of his unhappiness were biological in nature. He replied that he unequivocally did not. “But,” he confided, “now I might be able to get my grades back up.”
Drug Industry to Run Ads Favoring White House Plan
The drug industry has authorized its lobbyists to spend as much as $150 million on television commercials supporting President Obama’s health care overhaul, beginning over the August Congressional recess, people briefed on the plans said Saturday.
The unusually large scale of the industry’s commitment to the cause helps explain some of a contentious back-and-forth playing out in recent days between the odd-couple allies over a deal that the White House struck with the industry in June to secure its support. The terms of the deal were not fully disclosed. Both sides had announced that the drug industry would contribute $80 billion over 10 years to the cost of the health care overhaul without spelling out the details.
Is Big Pharma Trying to Take All the Fun out of Pot?
Pricey pharmaceutical-marketing newsletters have touted cannabis-derived drugs as the next blockbuster for the industry, but the biggest companies are primarily researching drugs whose effect is the opposite of the cannabis herb.
Numerous drug researchers are trying to develop medications that replicate the herb's therapeutic effects without the harm of inhaling smoke and the side effect of getting people high
Pressure is building on Harvard Medical School to better regulate the massive gifts and consulting fees that faculty members regularly receive from drug companies, with increasing attention being drawn to the great potential for conflict of interest in such relationships.
"Before coming here, I had no idea how much influence companies had on medical education," said first-year medical student David Tian. "And it's something that's purposely meant to be under the table, providing information under the guise of education when that information is also presented for marketing purposes."
Big Pharma Bribes Doctors to Hook Your Kids on Drugs
 Americans must start to question the legitimacy of the exploitative pharmaceutical-industrial complex and the predatory people atop them."The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike." –Ralph Waldo Emerson
The wave of evil washes not only the financial-industrial complex, the military-industrial complex, the energy-industrial complex, and predatory executives at AIG, Citibank, Halliburton, Blackwater/Xe, Enron, and Exxon. The pharmaceutical-industrial complex has virtually annexed the mental health profession, whose all-star opportunist team is captained by Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Biederman, the high-profile doctor most responsible for the explosion of kids on psychiatric drugs, first for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and then for bipolar disorder.
Big Pharma Promoting Highly-Addictive Schedule-III Painkiller Drugs to Little Boys
Big Pharma is promoting Zamicet, a schedule-III painkiller (like a highly-addictive narcotic that would land you in prison if you sold it on the street) to treat young boys. This is the implication of a new ad (see below) in which a young boy in a karate outfit appears in the Zamicet ad. Drug companies, it appears, will sell anything to anyone, including infants, toddlers and young boys. It's not enough to drug them on Ritalin and SSRIs, now they need powerful painkilling narcotics, too!
Drug Companies Using Third-World People as Guinea Pigs
Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly turning to the practice of testing their drugs on Third World populations in order to keep costs down, according to a report by researchers from Duke University, titled Ethical and Scientific Implications of the Globalization of Clinical Research.
The practice has raised concerns over exploitation of vulnerable populations and the accuracy of research conducted in such conditions.
"We don't want to imagine that lower-income countries are the clinical trial mill for higher-income countries," said lead author Kevin A. Schulman.
The Internet has changed the nature of scientific debate
 Someone who writes about hot-button issues such as vaccination, prescription drugs, complementary medicines and “health” foods such as raw milk - as has been known to happen in this column - gets a lot of interesting mail. That people are passionate about health issues is not at all surprising. Hopefully, that will never change. What has changed a lot over the years, however, is the nature of correspondence and the nature of scientific debate more generally.
Prior to the Internet and e-mail - a time not long ago, remarkably - people were sometimes moved to write letters in response to an article. These missives were infrequent, but usually thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Today, quality has largely given way to quantity.
Irked about something you read in the paper or online? You can fire off a vituperative missile by e-mail or in an anonymous posting on the Web.
Then you can post the article and choice comments on a listserv or blog.
Or get in your digs with Twitter tweets and have like-minded people join in on the bashing. All of which is fine: The occasional write-in and phone-in protest campaigns of old have given way to routine flaming and viral e-mail attacks. (One thing that has not changed is that people are almost always moved to put pen to paper or thumbs to keypads when they are angry, not happy.) Feedback, no matter how relentlessly negative, is welcome - or at least it should be. Constructive criticism keeps you honest and forces you to be more precise and hone your arguments.
Sadly, though, there no longer seems to be much place for civilized disagreement, honest scientific-based dissension, on differing analyses of agreed-upon facts. Instead of deconstructing an argument or offering up an alternative philosophy, rebuttals too often take the form of insult and character assassination. Again, this goes with the territory: If you are going to offer up an opinion on health issues, particularly those that people hold sacred, you had better have a thick skin
Government, Big Pharma Push Bill to Drug America’s Mothers
It’s called the Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act and if passed it will turn countless women into lifelong customers for Big Pharma. It was killed in the Senate last year but it was reintroduced in January of this year. Democrat Senator Robert Menendez from New Jersey, home to a large number of drug companies, and Democrat Richard Durbin are the main sponsors of the bill in the Senate (S. 1375).
Big Pharma's Drugs to be Weaponized to Fight "Mind Wars" on Future Battlefields
NaturalNews) Pharmaceutical products could be employed to boost the performance of one army's soldiers while undermining the minds of those on the other, according to a National Research Council report drafted for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
The report, "Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies," addresses the question of how emerging neuroscience technologies and an increased understanding of the mind's functioning will affect police and the military.
"It's way too early to know which - if any - of these technologies is going to be practical," study co-author Jonathan Moreno said. "But it's important for us to get ahead of the curve."
The use of drugs to enhance or undermine battlefield performance features prominently in the report. While the narcolepsy drug modafinil and the attention deficit disorder drug Ritalin are already thought to be widely used by U.S. soldiers trying to stave off combat fatigue, the report says that more powerful and precisely targeted alertness drugs developed in the coming years will be even more effective. Drugs could also be used to enhance physical performance, such as by increasing physical strength or decreasing the perception of pain.
Big Pharma's Latest Insanity? A "PolyPill" Combining Five Different Drugs Into One Pill
NaturalNews) What do you get when you combine cholesterol medication, three different blood pressure drugs and aspirin into a single pharmaceutical pill? If you believe the drug company that funded its own study on this chemical cocktail, you get a wonder drug that has all the "benefits" of five different drugs with no more side effects than a single drug!
That's the story from Bangalore, India, anyway, where 2000 citizens of India were recruited into a clinical trial to test these drugs. The use of low-income citizens in developing nations as guinea pigs is now a common Big Pharma practice, by the way. It's cheaper than using Americans as guinea pigs, and the risk of lawsuits from harm or death is much lower in such countries.
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Vaccines as Biological Weapons? Live Avian Flu Virus Placed in Baxter Vaccine Materials Sent to 18 Countries
 There’s a popular medical thriller novel in which a global pandemic is intentionally set off by an evil plot designed to reduce the human population. In the book, a nefarious drug company inserts live avian flu viruses into vaccine materials that are distributed to countries around the world to be injected into patients as “flu shots.” Those patients then become carriers for these highly-virulent strains of avian flu which go on to infect the world population and cause widespread death.
There’s only one problem with this story: It’s not fiction. Or, at least, the part about live avian flu viruses being inserted into vaccine materials isn’t fiction. It’s happening right now.
Deerfield, Illinois-based pharmaceutical company Baxter International Inc. has just been caught shipping live avian flu viruses mixed with vaccine material to medical distributors in 18 countries. The “mistake” (if you can call it that, see below…) was discovered by the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The World Health Organization was alerted and panic spread throughout the vaccine community as health experts asked the obvious question: How could this have happened?
Biotech firm admits flu product contained live bird flu virus
The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses.
And an official of the World Health Organization’s European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International’s research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria.
“At this juncture we are confident in saying that public health and occupational risk is minimal at present,” medical officer Roberta Andraghetti said from Copenhagen, Denmark.
“But what remains unanswered are the circumstances surrounding the incident in the Baxter facility in Orth-Donau.”
The contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabelled H5N1 viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company. The Austrian firm, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then sent portions of it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.
Children's Vitamins No Healthier than Candy
Many children's vitamins contain so few nutrients in such low doses that they are no healthier than candy, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Center for Nutritional Education in conjunction with www.supplementscompared.com.
"Parents need to be aware that a lot of the supplements for children contain only a very small number of vitamins," researcher Kate Neil said. "They look like sweets, taste like sweets and in a sense they are sweets."
Parents would be better off spending money to provide a healthier diet than buying many of the supplements, the researchers said.
Researchers evaluated the nutritional content of 14 vitamin supplements and a number of fish oil and omega-3 capsules available in the United Kingdom. Of the supplements tested, only five contained all 12 essential vitamins. Even supplements that contained a relatively large number of essential vitamins, the researchers found, often contained them in very low doses. Likewise, omega-3 and fish oil capsules often contained such low levels of omega-3 fatty acids that the researchers judged them "unlikely" to affect children's health or cognitive function.
US and Israel Conducted Nazi Style medical Experiments - 100,000 Radiations
On August 14, at 9 PM, Israeli television station, Channel Ten, broke all convention and exposed the ugliest secret of Israel's Labor Zionist founders; the deliberate mass radiation poisoning of nearly all Sephardi youths.
The expose began with the presentation of a documentary film called, 100,000 Radiations, and concluded with a panel discussion moderated by TV host Dan Margalit, surprising because he is infamous for toeing the establishment line
Merck Takeover Fuels Speculation of Drug Industry Merger Wave
Merck & Co.’s $41.1 billion purchase of Schering-Plough Corp. fueled speculation it won’t be the last big drug-industry merger.
The deal, which comes on the heels of Pfizer Inc.’s $68 billion bid for Wyeth in January and Roche Holding AG’s $45.7 billion offer for U.S. partner Genentech Inc. last week, will spur other drugmakers fearful of falling behind into action, said David Moskowitz, an analyst with Caris & Co. in Washington, D.C. Sanofi-Aventis SA may next target Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., which sells the French company’s Plavix blood-thinner and the Avapro hypertension treatment in the U.S. Alternatively, Bristol- Myers may be a potential merger partner for U.K. diabetes drug partner AstraZeneca Plc, said Mirabaud analyst Nick Turner. Johnson & Johnson may make a counter bid for Schering-Plough, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Tim Anderson wrote in a note to clients.
'Memory Pill' That Could Help With Exam Revision Could be AvailableSoon
The medicine has been designed originally to help treat Alzheimer's disease, but could be adapted and licensed for sale in a weaker form within the next few years. One brand of memory-enhancing pill is being developed by the multinational company AstraZeneca in collaboration with Targacept, an American company, while Epix Pharmaceuticals, also from the US, is developing another. Both have "cognitive-enhancing effects" which are aimed at treating patients with age-related memory loss.Steven Ferris, a neurologist and former committee member of the Food and Drug Administration in the US, has predicted that a milder version will be available for healthy consumers as a "lifestyle pill" available over the counter
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