Health Stores, Antipsychotics and FDA's Ties to Big Pharma - NewsGrabs 17 June 2007
Health Supreme's News Grabs are a weekly selection of links to articles, alternative health news and related bits of information. Follow these trends with me as they first appear - watch out for NewsGrabs ... every weekend.
In this issue:
Cod liver oil 'treats depression' - EU Supplements Directive could close health stores - Antipsychotic Marketing - FDA Big Pharma Collaboration - FDA Safety Scientist Quits - FDA 'cozy' with drugmakers - The FDA as a Drug Company - Pharma Cash for Oncologists - US: Autism test cases - Cancer industry disses Vitamin D research - Radiation Killing the Bees - AIDS: Where Does 60 Billion Go? - AIDS dissidents asking the right questions? - Disappearing Common Birds - Terrorism, Global Warming and Fear - Fined for alternative fuels- - -
Cod liver oil 'treats depression'
In a study of almost 22,000 people aged over 40, those who regularly took the oil were less likely to suffer depression than those who did not. The study in the Journal of Affective Disorders also suggested the longer one took it, the less depressed one became. The oil is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids which are linked to various benefits. Children's brains are said to be boosted by Omega-3s, which have also been claimed to reduce the risk of stroke, heart attack and cancer, although some studies have cast doubt on this.
EU Directive could close 700 health stores
The NAHS says its survey confirms that in the worst-case scenario — in which maximum permitted levels (MPLs) are pegged to very low levels across Europe — the UK market would be “decimated” and that “millions of consumers would be denied products of their choice as many higher dose specialist supplements are removed from sale”.
FDA giving Green Light to Expand Antipsychotic Marketing
the FDA granted "priority review" of Abilify on the basis of a single six-week study of 302 adolescents, ages 13 to 17. The priniciple author of the study is Robert L. Findling, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University and Director of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at University Hospitals of Cleveland. Dr. Findling has disclosed (to Medscape in 2005) that he has received grants for clinical research from Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celltech-Medeva, Forest, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, New River, Novartis, Otsuka, Pfizer, Shire, Solvay, and Wyeth. Dr. Findling has also disclosed that he has served as a consultant for Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celltech-Medeva, Forest, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, New River, Novartis, Otsuka, Pfizer, Sanofi-Synthelabo, Shire, Solvay, and Wyeth. He has also disclosed that he has served on the speakers' bureau for Shire.
FDA COLLABORATION WITH BIG PHARMA RAISES EYEBROWS
Plainly stated, the FDA is set on becoming a drug company involved in every aspect of drug development for the next century. This pipe dream involves using sophisticated FDA software and related technologies to set the standards for the future of medicine, which will soon require your DNA in an FDA-owned supercomputer if you would like medical care. The FDA will help design all drugs from the ground up. The FDA, through the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA, will control all patents and licensing arrangements regarding the drugs that are developed.
FDA Safety Scientist Quits After Avandia Reprimand
... the culture at the F.D.A. shifted toward valuing speed over safety. The 1992 deal required annual reports to Congress listing review times, but no such reports were demanded of the agency’s assessments of the safety of drugs already on the market. Managers are now largely judged on how quickly their employees make a decision on new drug applications, safety officials say. Questions about the safety of already-marketed drugs are increasingly seen as sand in the gears, they say." Dr. Rosemary Johann-Liang who signed off on the recommendation for Black Box warning about Avanida's increased cardiac risk, is but the latest FDA drug safety scientist to incur the wrath of FDA's administrators at the Center for Drug Evaluation (CDER) earning a reprimand for doing their job to protect the public health.
FDA called 'cozy' with drugmakers
"The FDA has essentially become the government affairs office of the pharmaceutical industry," Hinchey said in a statement, which called the relationship between the agency and industry "far too cozy and inappropriate."
HOW THE FDA IS BECOMING A DRUG COMPANY
Part I
The Bush administration figured out that the fastest way to get the FDA out of the way of Big Pharma’s profits was to appoint FDA critics to key positions, thereby changing the FDA from within. This began in August of 2001 when Bush appointed Daniel Troy as chief counsel of the FDA, a man best known for defending tobacco companies.
Part II
Not a single Senator raised one concern about the significant safety issues inherent in the Critical Path Initiative/Reagan-Udall Foundation or conflicts of interest when Big Pharma and the FDA work side by side to develop, patent, and license drugs. The entire history of von Eschenbach’s relationship with Big Pharma, Big Biotech, and C-Change has been conveniently ignored.
Pharma Cash Incentives to Oncologists
Pharmaceutical companies calculated to the penny the profits that doctors could make from their drugs. Sales representatives shared those profit estimates with doctors and their staffs, the documents show. "company representatives brought spreadsheets to oncologists' offices to show doctors how much money they could make by moving chemo therapy to patients in their office. Cancer doctors knew the profits they could make and in some cases would change treatment regimens or offer unnecessary care to make extra money. As the use and price of cancer drugs skyrocketed during the 1990s, the profits that doctors could make by prescribing drugs went from a minor source of income to the major driver of incomes for oncologists. A Bristol-Myers document from 2001 shows that oncologists made about 65 percent of their revenue, and a similar percentage of their net income, on drug profits. The profits helped drive a vast increase in the amounts doctors billed Medicare for injectable drugs, which soared to $10.9 billion by 2004 from $2.9 billion in 1997.
Autism test cases against US begin
Every major study and scientific organization examining this issue has found no link between vaccination and autism, but the parents and their advocates have persisted. Their frustration was evident in the opening statement of the parents' lawyer, Thomas Powers of Portland, Ore. "Numerous obstacles have been placed in the path of the petitioners seeking that fair and generous compensation that they are entitled to," Powers said.Many parents who say that vaccines gave their children autism are deeply suspicious of what they see as the government's role in their children's illness. Most have dismissed the many government-sponsored studies and panels that found no link between vaccination and autism.
The case seems to be causing considerable dismay in the world of official medicine which relies on vaccines as practically the only thing that can be remotely considered "preventive medicine". If they lose vaccines, health authorities will have to consider nutrition as a preventive tool.
New research shows vitamin D slashes risk of cancers by 77 percent; cancer industry refuses to support cancer prevention
Over four year, the group receiving the calcium and vitamin D supplements showed a 60 percent decrease in cancers. Considering just the last three years of the study reveals an impressive 77 percent reduction in cancer due to supplementation.This research on vitamin D is such good news that the American Cancer Society, of course, had to say something against it. An ACS spokesperson, Marji McCullough, strategic director of nutritional epidemiology for the American Cancer Society, flatly stated that nobody should take supplements to prevent cancer.
Dr George Carlo: Radiation Is Killing the Bees
Colony collapse disorder has occurred concurrently on four continents within a very short time frame. If the reason was biological or chemical, there would be a pattern of epidemic spread .... we would be able to trace the spread of bee disappearance or Colony Collapse Disorder from a source similar to the spread of SARS a few years ago. That is not the case. The condition has hit each continent at roughly the same time. That would mean the cause has to have hit the continents at the same time as well. Mobile phones meet that criterion.
AIDS: Where Does 60 Billion Dollars Go?
The Group of Eight rich-and-powerful nations have decided to send $60 billion to “fight Aids, TB and Malaria” in Africa. That will certainly include some anti-TB and -Malaria drugs, but… what about providing sewage reclamation for Soweto, Kampala, and other large cities? Last time I looked, the Uganda Sewerage Corporation provided about 7% of the Kampala region with sewage reclamation.
AIDS dissidents: blinded by pseudoscience or asking the right questions?
It’s seemingly as implausible as if the moon landing had been faked on a Hollywood soundstage. It’s the conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories. Yet a group of highly accredited scientists contends it’s true: that HIV is not the cause of AIDS and that pharmaceutical companies, the World Health Organization, governments and AIDS researchers are all in collusion to suppress the truth and keep the multi-billion-dollar HIV/AIDS gravy train rolling. These “AIDS Denialists,” as the scientific establishment pejoratively refers to the group, include Nobel Prize recipients, Africa historians, chemists, statisticians and virologists. They say that the first U.S. AIDS cases were caused, not by HIV infection spread through unprotected sex, but by illicit drug use, amyl nitrate sniffing and exposure to antibiotics used to combat venereal diseases rampant in the 1970s – a hypothesis that gained some traction in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but that AIDS researchers thought had subsided.
Disappearing Common Birds Send Environmental Wake-up Call
A new analysis by the National Audubon Society reveals that populations of some of America’s most familiar and beloved birds have taken a nosedive over the past forty years, with some down as much as 80 percent. The dramatic declines are attributed to the loss of grasslands, healthy forests and wetlands, and other critical habitats from multiple environmental threats such as sprawl, energy development, and the spread of industrialized agriculture. The study notes that these threats are now compounded by new and broader problems including the escalating effects of global warming.
The story does not mention of the spread of communication-related microwave radiation from cell phone towers and other applications, although these waves have been known to kill birds...
Terrorism, Global Warming and Fear
But the fundamental assertion that CO2 causes temperatures to rise has no scientific basis. A number of prominent scientists, including Prof. Ian Clark, a leading archaeological climatologist from Canada, have pointed to the analysis of ice core samples that go back more than 600,000 years. All ice core records, including those drilled at the Vostok site in Antarctica, show that CO2 increases lag after warming spells by an average of 800 years. This finding suggests that rising temperatures are responsible for the rise of CO2 levels in the atmosphere, not the reverse.
A price to pay for alternative fuels
... last fall the Charlotte musician and guitar instructor spent $1,200 to convert his 1981 diesel Mercedes to run on vegetable oil. He bought soybean oil in 5-gallon jugs at Costco, spending about 30 percent more than diesel would cost. His reward, from a state that heavily promotes alternative fuels: a $1,000 fine last month for not paying motor fuel taxes. He's been told to expect another $1,000 fine from the federal government.
This article shows that the promotion of alternative fuels is little more than hype. Why else would a government fine someone using an alternative fuel?
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday June 17 2007
updated on Tuesday December 7 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2007/06/17/health_stores_antipsychotics_and_fdas_ties_to_big_pharma_newsgrabs_17_june_2007.htm
