Europe supports GMO, Pharma - NewsGrabs 27 July 2008

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Europe protects, supports GMO, Chemical Industry, Pharma - scoffs at Organic, Natural Healing, Nutrition
... the root-cause motivation behind the recent absurd attacks on organic farming and vitamin supplements is the fact that organic seeds and vitamins cannot be patented and, along with other natural products, therefore threaten the multi-billion euro profits from the sale of GMOs and pharmaceutical drugs.

Paul Taylor's conclusion to the article: A Europe for the people and by the people is urgently needed.

My own view: Somehow we must figure out how to make the EU Commission and related agencies pay heed to what is really needed and wanted, or to show them the door and put in their place an administration that actually works for us.

No sooner had I written this, and I came across an article with exciting news: The architect of the Irish NO-vote to the Lisbon Treaty is intending to campaign for a voice in Europe for the people ...

Irish 'No' vote architect plans Europe-wide 'referendum' on Lisbon Treaty
Declan Ganley was dismissed by Brussels officials, until he humiliated them by securing an emphatic victory in the Irish referendum

The energy and rhetoric of Mr Ganley, a multimillionaire businessman, was widely credited with persuading the Irish to reject the treaty, even though every leading Irish political party apart from Sinn Fein was urging voters to say "Yes".

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Ganley disclosed that he was starting to raise £75 million from online donations to run candidates in all 12 of Britain's European Parliament constituencies, and in seats throughout the EU.

"People across Europe will have the chance to send the same resounding clear message that Brussels cannot continue with this treaty that the Irish people have rejected. For this to provide a meaningful opportunity for this to be a referendum, you'd have to run at least 400 candidates across Europe."

EU Safety Agency Says Cloned Meat May Not Be Safe
"It is clear there are significant animal health and welfare issues for surrogate mothers and clones that can be more frequent and severe than for conventionally bred animals," Vittorio Silano, chair of EFSA's Scientific Committee, told reporters.

"For cattle and pigs, food safety concerns are considered unlikely. But we must acknowledge that the evidence base is still small. We would like to have a broader data base and we need further clarification."

Civil Servant Disobedience: A Critical FDA Site
A new web site called Thoreau-FDA.com has emerged that is highly critical of the agency and, in particular, FDA commish Andy von Eschenbach, who is accused of oppressing FDA employees and preventing them from doing their jobs. The site, which is anonmyously crafted, is allegedly the brainchild of an unknown number of current and former agency employees.

Their goal: “to intensify public scrutiny of FDA upper management’s efforts at ensuring public health protection in an increasingly complex global marketplace…and engage (Andy), his successors and FDA upper managers in a public question and answer dialog … to end the entrenched process flaws in FDA’s pre-approval drug review and post-approval regulatory enforcement systems..."

Way to go guys, with transparency being expected of ourselves as a matter of course, why should public agencies and especially such agencies as impact just about everyone's lives, not be equally called to account and be made to feel the need to open their processes to public scrutiny?

Seems only fair.

Pushing Prescriptions: How the Drug Industry Sells Its Agenda at Your Expense
The drug industry, Washingtons's largest lobby, spent more than $189 million on lobbying last year, a recent investigation from the Center for Public Integrity shows. That's up 32 percent since 2006 and -- get this -- nearly three times the amount they spent on lobbying in 1998.

Congressional Hearing Attacks Price Gouging
“When we have pharmaceutical companies like Ovation or Questcor increasing prices to astronomical levels because of the lack of competition in the market, their actions are able to exploit an extremely vulnerable and captive market,” she said. “These staggeringly high prices, in turn, threaten the financial stability of middle class families relying on these drugs.”

Native Essence Herb Company Sues FTC
A New Mexico herb company says the First Amendment gives it the right to tell customers the historical use of herbs in treating serious diseases. The FTC says this violates its guidelines. Now the issue is headed to court. Native Essence Herb Company, and its owners Mark and Marianne Hershiser, have sued to strike down the FTC's guidelines.

"Herb sellers should be able to tell consumers that an herb has a long historical use to treat a disease," says Jaffe. "The FTC's prohibition of this kind of truthful information is unreasonable and unconstitutional."

New Hampshire legislators demand criminal probe into Antipsychotics use
A group of 17 New Hampshire legislators want the state’s Attorney General to pursue a criminal investigation into several drugmakers that sell antipsychotics after learning the state’s Medicaid program has spent increasingly large amounts on these medications for children.

In a May 6 letter, the legislators wrote that “civil actions merely appear to be write-offs as business expenses to drug manufacturers in cases like Vioxx, OxyContin, Neurontin, Paxil and those mentioned above. A criminal deterrent is needed to protect our children and others placed on powerful medications.” Their letter notes state spending rose from $300,000 in 2000 to $4 million last year.

The Blame Game: Zyprexa Judge Blasts The FDA
“Compared to its peer agencies in other parts of the world, the FDA has arguably failed consumers and physicians by over relying on pharmaceutical companies to provide supporting research for new drug applications; by allowing them, through lax enforcement, to conduct off-label marketing; by acquiescing to industry pressure on drug labels; by not requiring doctors-the main line of defense against misusing prescriptions-to be adequately informed; and by leaving information dispersal and control largely to industry-influenced medical journals and non-governmental associations. The result of such claimed governmental failures arguably causes overuse and overpricing of pharmaceuticals, resulting in mass litigations such as this one for Zyprexa.”

Danger alert on drug used by millions
In some cases, users of statins have suffered a rare form of lung disease. More commonly, patients prescribed statins have suffered depression, sleep disturbance, memory loss and sexual problems.

The article has all the usual disclaimers like: Statins save many lives, don't go off them without talking to your doctor, etc.

What strikes me most though is the absence of even a casual mention of a very prevalent side effect: excruciating muscle pains, as documented in numerous reader comments on - see Lipitor: Side Effects And Natural Remedy

Vytorin: A Setback for Merck and Schering

A second clinical trial on Vytorin not only found no positive effect - an increase in cancers was found as well. But it was immediately downplayed:

"The companies did everything possible to downplay the increase in cancer. On the July 21 conference call announcing the results, they brought in Sir Richard Peto, a noted Oxford University epidemiologist, who had helped pin down the link between tobacco and cancer. Peto spoke about his analysis of the data. He argued that the drug could not be responsible for the increased rate of cancer, for these reasons: The increase didn't go much beyond chance. It included a variety of cancers, which wouldn't be expected if there had been one single cause. Carcinogens don't usually cause cancer that quickly. And there's no known mechanism."

This is the second expert on cancer and smoking of some notoriety, who has VERY close ties to pharma. The other one was Sir Richard Doll, who received a neat $1500 a day on a long term contract to advise Monsanto, while he was publishing scientific papers establishing the link between cancer and smoking.

This, to me, tends to put the cancer-smoking link in a very murky light.

Video: Death in a bottle - Turning depression into violence
Doctors have completely abdicated all responsibility for really understanding the impact of the drugs they prescribe. They accept pharmaceutical industry representations uncritically along with what in any other industry could only be called bribes.

Kids: The New Guinea Pigs of Big Pharma
Popping a