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Medical Industrial Complex
MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
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Dangerous drugs Big Pharma doesn’t want you to know about
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Pharmaceutical Malaise:
In the first half of the program, pharmacist and nutritionist Benjamin Fuchs discussed the dangers of prescription drugs and what we can do to avoid becoming another tragic statistic. According to Fuchs, there are "millions of adverse reactions, serious ones, every year" due to prescription medications, including paralysis, organ damage, and death. Despite the shocking number of injurious effects of these medications, he lamented, "we have them branded on television as if they were selling Happy Meals." To that end, Fuchs decried such advertising of prescription drugs because it causes the public to lose perspective on the powerful nature of the medications they see nonchalantly promoted in television commercials.
He argued that "the human body is a healing system" and relying on pharmaceutical medications to cure illnesses ignores this critical aspect of improving overall health. As such, Fuchs advocated using foods, nutritional supplements, and emotional as well as mental strategies to better treat diseases. "I think of anything that we can apply to restore the body back to its God-given state of balance as medicine," he declared. Ultimately, Fuchs advised that people should learn to be more attuned to their own bodies so that they can better understand the messages being conveyed and then become proactive in finding natural solutions to improve their wellness without using harmful drugs.
The chaps website is here: http://criticalhealthnews.com/
Be aware he too is selling stuff.

That's what makes it hard to find ultimate truths, David - almost everybody has an agenda. I've discovered there are a lot of falsehoods and unfounded claims being made in the alternative health sector also - especially as natural health is gradually becoming a massive industry that's slowly but surely beginning to rival Big Pharma.

"With more than 4,000 overdose deaths last year alone and a fifth of its residents having received prescriptions for powerful painkillers, the state of Ohio has sued five Big Pharma companies, accusing them of mispresenting opioid drugs’ risks and fueling the medications’ epidemic abuse.
Ohio joins Mississippi in suing makers of increasingly lethal drugs like OxyContin and Percocet, whose addictive nature was hidden and downplayed by Big Pharma, critics say. The abuse of prescription opioids has fueled heroin use, with 33,000 Americans dying last year alone due to overdoses, federal and state health and law enforcement officials have said."

Do not let vested interests shape your child’s or your future.
Should you unquestioningly trust your doctor’s recommendation to use ADHD drugs, in a system where:
• Compromised insurance laws provide financial incentives to psychiatrists for pushing drug treatments (Chapter 5),
• Doctors receive their drug “facts” from the drug manufacturers (Ch. 4),
• The compromised justice system fails to penalize individual drug company executives for the unethical marketing of medications. The courts only require drug companies to pay fines much less than the profits from fraudulent promotional activities (Ch. 4). This has resulted in fines being considered merely the ‘cost of doing business’ in today’s world where promoting misinformation and paying penalties has become the business model in marketing drugs.
This is not a conspiracy theory but a compilation of instantly verifiable facts for the inquiring person. 500 saved electronic references allow readers to immediately validate each statement with a click. Although just launched, this collection of compelling evidence has been called a “hard hitting exposé” by a top Amazon reviewer.
This investigation additionally raises awareness of:
• Influential MDs such as Edward Hallowell claim ADHD drugs are “safer than aspirin,” while doctors such as Peter Breggin, MD insist these drugs put children on “a lifelong road to tragedy.” Find out who to trust as you learn about the paid-off ‘key opinion leaders’ of the medical world (Chapter 3). See how today’s system lets researchers take not only research funding but also personal payments to promote the results of the studies conducted with industry funds. Learn the extent to which this has caused the production and promotion of junk science, as admitted by the editors in chief of two of the world’s highest ranking medical journals (Ch. 7).
• See the results of congressional and reporter investigations which have unearthed the mind blowing corruption of the world’s most influential ADHD researchers such as Dr. Joseph Biederman (Ch. 18).
• Learn the real abuse potential of ADHD drugs and how it causes the DEA to insist on keeping these substances in the same category as cocaine or morphine (Ch. 1, 2).
• See the results of investigations revealing the conflict of interest of influential psychiatric organizations such as APA and NIMH, which have promoted ADHD medications as “safe” despite the absence of long-term studies for decades (Ch. 6, 16, 17).
• Learn how psychiatry has been falsely claiming that ADHD drugs normalize the neurotransmitter levels and brain chemistry of ADHD sufferers, when recent unbiased studies have proven the contrary (Ch. 10, 11, 23). See what the FDA and the NIMH have admitted about the tainted studies responsible for such false claims (Ch. 23). Check out how Adderall’s manufacturer Shire was fined for promoting fraudulent claims in 2014 (Ch. 2).
• Learn about the unadvertised study results revealing that the benefits of ADHD medication last no longer than two years (Chapter 6, 17). Find out that even one year on these drugs leaves the brain 24% less capable of retaining dopamine naturally (Ch. 10).
• ADHD drugs produce alertness by raising the levels of a stress hormone (norepinephrine). Learn the extent to which chronic stress disrupts the health (Ch. 15).
•See the results of the investigations revealing the corruption in the FDA which fails to enforce the laws and place adequate warnings on drug labels (Ch. 22).
• Learn which drug-free alternatives actually work in settling the mind, improving IQ scores and reversing the damages from ADHD drugs. See the clinically documented benefits of these alternatives in real-life school settings (Ch.24).
I now invite you to join my investigation, to help you make decisions based on hard evidence instead of misinformation.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJPKz...
Akathisia is usually a 'side effect' of medication or a 'side effect' of withdrawal from a medication.
More about it here:
http://www.mdedge.com/currentpsychiat...

On the same day President Trump declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency, the co-founder of a prominent opioid medication manufacturer has been arrested on fraud and racketeering charges. John Kapoor, former CEO of Insys Therapeutics, has been charged with conspiring to push the company's signature drug for unacceptable uses through a series of bribes and kickbacks.
Subsys, as the drug is known, transmits the extremely powerful narcotic fentanyl in spray form, allowing it to be placed beneath the tongue for fast, potent pain relief. It is meant only for treating cancer patients suffering from severe pain.
But according to prosecutors, Kapoor and several other former high-ranking executives at the company conspired to bribe doctors to write "large numbers of prescriptions for the patients, most of whom were not diagnosed with cancer." They also allegedly "conspired to mislead and defraud health insurance providers who were reluctant to approve payment for the drug when it was prescribed for non-cancer patients."
Read full article here: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-wa...

“Califf previously came under fire for helping to establish the Duke Clinical Research Institute, which is funded primarily by pharmaceutical companies. According to a 2014 “Conflict of Interest Disclosure,” Califf admitted his close connection to the industry. As TIME summarized, his income is “contractually underwritten in part by several large pharmaceutical companies, including Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Novartis. He also receives as much as $100,000 a year in consulting fees from some of those companies, and from others.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/he...

Big Pharma spends $250 million a year lobbying lawmakers in Congress.
To put that in perspective, gun makers spend about $10.5 million a year lobbying Congress.
This is why the DEA was blocked by Big Pharma from putting limitations on pharmacy opioid sales even after they discovered a pharmacy in a small town in West Virginia with a population of 30k had ordered 9 million opioid pills in the last year.
https://chriskresser.com/three-step-p...

For example, did you guys know that a virus may cause breast cancer in as many as 40 percent of cases? Instead of throwing drugs and chemotherapy at patients, doctors and scientists could create a vaccine that targets this virus and actually prevents breast cancer.
Check out this link to learn more about the virus: http://www.breasthealthandhealing.org...
And if you want to read a book about it, click here: https://www.amazon.com/End-Breast-Can...

The Shocking Truth in America! (2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chcUv...
And here's a Huffington Post article on the same subject: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...

Opiate Epidemic STOPPNow 12/19/17 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTNdg...


Nurses see so much, at times even more than doctors perhaps, so your observations are important.

is an intimate look at the origin of the prescription opiate epidemic that is plaguing our nation. Broward County Florida where the author resides is the epicenter of the opiate epidemic. Much of the corruption and greed and fraudulent activity is detailed in the book. The book has only been published a few months ago but has a 5 star rating by all that have read it.

Enriched Enrollment was used to fast track approval of dangerous opiates by the FDA. It is fraud.
Some of this is detailed in the book amazon.com/author/janet_colbert.stoppnow

ER visits for opioid overdose up 30%, CDC study finds
Also, check out my 5-star review for STOPPNow: (Stop the Organized Pill Pushers) Now (written by Janet Colbert a retired neonatal intensive care nurse who is bringing attention to this opiate epidemic): https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...



UNDERGROUND KNOWLEDGE #7: Janet Colbert (The Opiate Epidemic) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXnzY...

I started researching the drug opana even before my sons death and I can tell you that if someone came to me 10 years ago and told me what I now know to be factual I would have a hard time believing it. The corruption runs deep and the United States Federal Government should be ashamed for creating this epidemic and letting it continue! We have lost too many lives due to greed :(

Thanks Emily and very sorry to hear about the loss of your son. Glad that you are however working to make sure other parents don't lose their children to this crisis.
This article is 6 months old, but still relevant I suspect...
Pharma Billionaire Arrested On Charges of Bribing Doctors to Prescribe Opioid Painkillers http://fortune.com/2017/10/26/john-ka...
The same day President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a nationwide public health emergency, the federal government said it arrested a wealthy pharmaceutical company executive on charges of bribing doctors to needlessly prescribe his firm’s opioid painkiller.
The Department of Justice arrested Insys Therapeutics founder John Kapoor, 74, in Phoenix, it said Thursday. Kapoor was charged with using bribes and fraud to prop up sales of a pain medication called Subsys, a fentanyl spray typically used to treat cancer patients suffering excruciating pain.
Full article: http://fortune.com/2017/10/26/john-ka...



https://www.cbsnews.com/video/60-minu..." It is also in the book STOPPNow.


https://www.cbsnews.com/video/60-minu..." It is also in the book STO..."
Swines! Hard to win isn't it?


The New York Post reports that Canadian clinical psychologist and author Jordan Peterson has checked into rehab following his wife’s cancer diagnosis. He is reportedly seeking help to get off the anti-anxiety drug clonazepam, brand name Klonopin, which he began taking to cope with his wife’s cancer battle amid other health problems.
Although Peterson tried to quit the drug cold-turkey after his wife recovered miraculously from kidney surgery complications, his daughter, Mikhaila, claims that the horrific physical withdrawal — which is notoriously dangerous and can lead to seizures and even death — was too much to handle on his own.


Dangerous Doses: How Counterfeiters Are Contaminating America's Drug Supply



Books mentioned in this topic
Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom (other topics)Dangerous Doses: How Counterfeiters Are Contaminating America's Drug Supply (other topics)
Pharmageddon (other topics)
The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth (other topics)
STOPP (Stop the Organized Pill Pushers) Now (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Janet Colbert (other topics)Janet Colbert (other topics)
J.A. Carter-Winward (other topics)
Asli Theobald (other topics)
Lance Morcan (other topics)
More...
“So, if we're to make any sense of the mess that the pharmaceutical industry – and my profession – has made of the academic literature, then we need an amnesty: we need a full and clear declaration of all the distortions, on missing data, ghostwriting, and all the other activity…to prevent the ongoing harm that they still cause.” –Ben Goldacre, British physician, academic and science writer
Sadly, the path the drug companies have followed, and continue to follow, is a long, rocky one littered with mistakes – mistakes that have been fatal for some; mistakes Big Pharma’s critics have labeled criminal; mistakes some claim are all too often more deliberate than accidental and therefore can hardly be referred to as mistakes.
Certainly the history of court cases involving Big Pharma is equally long and rocky with fines against the industry’s major players totaling many, many billions of dollars.
Our research has turned up numerous case studies that highlight just how “mistake-prone” this industry is and how often drug companies have ended up on the wrong side of the law. We include just a few of these in this chapter.
The first headline to catch our eye was this one on the front page of the Daily Mail’s edition of July 2, 2012: ‘GlaxoSmithKline to pay $3billion fine after pleading guilty to healthcare fraud – the biggest in U.S. History.’
The report reads in part: “GlaxoSmithKline paid U.S. medics to prescribe potentially dangerous medicines to adults and children. It handed out cash as well as everything from Madonna concert tickets to pheasant-hunting trips. Authorities branded GSK as ‘cheaters who thought they could make an easy profit at the expense of public safety, taxpayers, and millions of Americans.’
“The enormous settlement – believed to be the largest ever for a drugs firm – covers offences relating to some of GSK’s best-selling drugs between 1997 and 2004.
“It bribed doctors to prescribe Paxil to children even though the authorities had not approved its use for under-18s. The controversial depression drug has been linked to a higher risk of suicide both in the US and here, where it is known as Seroxat.
“The main charges also relate to Wellbutrin, another drug for treating depression, and Avandia, a diabetes treatment…”
The Daily Mail report advises readers that GSK, which is based in West London, is Britain’s fifth biggest public company with a market valuation of $113 billion and a roster of household names that includes Lucozade, Aquafresh, Ribena and Horlicks. “It accounts for almost 5 per cent of the benchmark FTSE 100 index and is a favourite investment for pension fund managers”.
According to the report, GSK agreed to pay a fine of around $1 billion to the US authorities and a further payment of around $2 billion in civil settlements to state and federal authorities.
“The company’s marketeers promoted Wellbutrin as a weight loss treatment when it was approved only for treating depression…
“Carmen Ortiz, the US attorney for Massachusetts, said: ‘GSK’s sales force bribed physicians to prescribe GSK products using every imaginable form of high priced entertainment, from Hawaiian vacations to paying doctors millions of dollars to go on speaking tours, to a European pheasant hunt, to tickets to Madonna concerts’. ”
We think that last statement attributed to Carmen Ortiz is interesting as it mirrors our theory that at least some of the blame can be attributed to doctors in our critique of the Medical Industrial Complex.
Many others news stories and independent assessments of medical corruption also match this belief.
For example, on September 2, 2009, The Guardian ran this article (abridged) from Andrew Clark in New York:
“Pfizer, the world's largest drugs company, has been hit with the biggest criminal fine in US history as part of a $2.3bn settlement with federal prosecutors for mispromoting medicines and for paying kickbacks to compliant doctors.
“In a blow to its reputation in the eyes of doctors and patients, Pfizer pleaded guilty to misbranding the painkiller Bextra, withdrawn from the market in 2004, by promoting the drug for uses that were not approved by medical regulators.”
The NY-based pharmaceutical company also settled civil allegations regarding under-the-table payments to doctors who prescribed other drug products – even though the company itself has continued to deny this ever occurred at the time of writing.
The Guardian article continues, “Under an out-of-court deal with the US department of justice, a Pfizer subsidiary, Pharmacia & Upjohn, is paying a criminal fine of $1.3bn (nearly £800m), a record in American judicial history. Pfizer is also paying $1bn in civil settlements to Medicare, Medicaid and other government health insurance schemes to reimburse improper prescriptions.
“Prosecutors said the payments reflected the ‘size and seriousness’ of Pfizer's infringements. Tom Perrelli, the associate attorney general, said it was a victory for the public over ‘those who seek to earn a profit through fraud’.
“Perrelli said: ‘Every year we lose tens of billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid funds to fraud. Those billions represent healthcare dollars that could be spent on medicine, elder care or emergency room visits but instead are spent on medicines or devices that are simply not effective for patients to whom they are prescribed’.”
Unfortunately, none of these fraudulent activities conducted by drug companies are isolated incidents or particularly out-of-the-norm.
On December 26, 2013, under the heading ‘Ethics: End of the hard sell?,’ the Financial Times reported on a $2.2billion fine pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson was slugged with for promoting drugs not approved as safe.
The article states, “When Johnson & Johnson wanted to boost prescriptions of Natrecor, a heart medicine, it channeled more than $100,000 through a subsidiary company to a sympathetic nurse. In exchange, she spoke favourably about the drug in talks, trained colleagues on how to use it, and put her name on an article in a medical journal to boost sales.
“This ruse, part of an aggressive marketing campaign, was not carried out in the developing world but the US, where J&J paid a $2.2bn fine last month for practices stretching back over a decade. It was only the latest in an escalating series of penalties against the pharmaceutical industry for the way it markets its products.
“Western drug groups have rapidly expanded their sales – and sales tactics – in emerging markets over the past 10 years. Now regulatory scrutiny is catching up, not just in the US but around the world, including in China, where GlaxoSmithKline has been accused of paying up to $500m in bribes to local doctors.”
The Financial Times report continues, “In the US alone, cumulative fines from whistleblower and government prosecutions against the industry reached $20bn in the period 1991-2010, suggesting something is wrong with the system. In less than three years since then, companies have been hit with further penalties totalling more than $13bn.
“Last year, Eli Lilly paid $29m to the US Securities and Exchange Commission after evidence showed it offered discounts to fund bribes to win business in Brazil and Kazakhstan. Pfizer was fined $60m for activities including “incentive trips” to Greece for Bulgarian doctors who agreed to meet prescription targets for its drugs”.
Our filed list of case studies goes on…and on…and on. It’s a depressingly long list. There’s the $1.5bn Xxxxxx (2012) case concerning the illegal promotion of the antipsychotic drug Xxxxxxxx. (Names redacted for legal reasons). There’s also the $1.42bn Xxx Xxx (2009) case for wrongly promoting the antipsychotic drug Xxxxxxx; there’s the $950m Xxxxx (2011) case over illegally promoting painkiller Xxxxx.
Some quick research online will reveal the redacted names (above) of the drugs and drug companies involved.
Need we go on? Okay, we don’t want to depress you any further…
However, it would be remiss of us not to refer you to FoodMatters.tv, an excellent wellness site we stumbled across. Under the heading ‘15 Most Dangerous Drugs Big Pharma Don’t Want You to Know About,’ it lists exactly that – the 15 most dangerous etc. etc.
FoodMatters’ correspondent says, “Drugs are so plagued with safety problems, it is a wonder they’re on the market at all” and “it's a testament to Big Pharma's greed and our poor regulatory processes that they are”.
The correspondent labels the following drugs dangerous: Lipitor and Crestor, Yaz and Yasmin, Lyrica, Topomax and Lamictal, Humira, Prolia and TNF Blockers, Chantix, Ambien, Tamoxifen, Boniva, Prempro and Premarin.
FoodMatters provides an explanation for its opposition to each of the above-named drugs.
For example, in the case of Lipitor, the correspondent asks, “Why is Lipitor the bestselling drug in the world? Because every adult with high LDL (low-density lipoprotein) or fear of high LDL is on it. (And also 2.8 million children, says Consumer Reports.) No one is going to say statins don't prevent heart attack in high-risk patients (though diet and exercise have worked in high-risk groups too). But doctors will say statins are so over-prescribed that more patients get their side effects -- weakness, dizziness, pain and arthritis -- than heart attack prevention. Worse, they think it's old age”.
And in the case of Crestor, the correspondent says, “Crestor is so highly linked to rhabdomyolysis it is doubly criticised: Public Citizen calls it a Do Not Use and the FDA's David Graham named it one of the five most dangerous drugs before Congress”.
So, next time your doctor writes out a prescription, or your local pharmacist hands a prescription to you, or you pop a pill the TV ads insist is “safe” keep all the above in mind. Certainly there are some miracle drugs and even, dare we admit it, some cures out there in Big Pharma Country, but equally there’s some highly dubious and downright dangerous drugs – and we’re not just talking about the illegal or illicit variety!