Psychotropic drugs. It’s the story of big money-drugs that fuel a $330 billion psychiatric industry, without a single cure.
The cost in human terms is even greater — these [legal] drugs now kill an estimated 42,000 people every year.
And the death count keeps rising. Containing more than 175 interviews with lawyers, mental health experts, the families of victims and the survivors themselves, this riveting documentary rips the mask off psychotropic drugging and exposes a brutal but well-entrenched money-making machine.
Before these drugs were introduced in the market, people who had these conditions would not have been given any drugs at all.
So it is the branding of a disease and it is the branding of a drug for a treament of a disease that did not exist before the industry made the disease. (Excerpt from cchr.org)
The United Nations recently announced that its Fifth Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee session, scheduled for January 2013, would propose a binding treaty to ban ethylmercury (commonly known as thimerosal) from all medications and vaccines worldwide. That is welcome news. But it has laid bare the battle lines between those government health departments and professional medical organizations who value the health of children and those who favor drug profiteering.
It is no surprise that the pharmaceutical industry and its special interest groups are moving aggressively to oppose a UN treaty ban on mercury. After all, one of Big Pharma’s prime directives is to resist any legislation, domestic or international, that threatens its sales and revenues. But it is a big surprise, indeed, that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)—once a leader in advocating the removal of mercury from all medical products and vaccines—would now suddenly hold hands with Big Pharma to oppose the UN’s proposal.
Why would the AAP join with Big Pharma to oppose the UN mercury ban? Why would it back-pedal away from its earlier confirmation that vaccine mercury is toxic and poses serious health risks? A look at the history of the AAP’s position on mercury will show us why. In its July 2001 issue of Pediatrics, the AAP released its official position on mercury:“Mercury in all its forms is toxic to the fetus and children, and efforts should be made to reduce exposure to the extent possible to pregnant women and children as well as the general population.”[1] Yet in the recent December 17 2012 issue of Pediatrics, former AAP president Louis Cooper writes, “Science clearly documented that we can’t find hazards from thimerosal in vaccines… The preservative plays a critical role in distribution of vaccine to the global community. It was a no-brainer what our position needed to be.”[2]
The AAP’s original warning against thimerosal arrived a year following the illegal secret meeting convened by the CDC at the Simpsonwood retreat center near the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta. At that meeting, federal and international health officials, executives from the vaccine industry, and members of professional medical associations, including the AAP, were informed about the CDC’s analysis of vaccine injury reports in its Vaccine Safety Database (VSD). The study, known as the Verstraeten study after the name of its chief investigator, concluded that there was a direct link between vaccine mercury and the rise in autism. In a letter published in the journal Pediatrics, Dr. Eric Coleman at the FDA wrote, “the fact is, no preclinical or clinical studies were ever conducted to specifically examine the safety of thimerosal at the doses found when used in multiple infant and childhood vaccines. Thus, there is no conclusive evidence because there were no studies.”[3]
The Verstraeten study also led to Congressional hearings. The CDC was reprimanded for negligence, careless scientific oversight, conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry and administrative incompetence regarding decisions to protect children’s health. Eventually policies were enforced to remove thimerosal from vaccines given in the US; although this mandate was never carried out thoroughly to this day.
However, thimerosal reduction and removal only applied to vaccines distributed in the US. Vaccine makers continued to manufacture vaccines containing thimerosal to other countries, particularly in the developing world. American stockpiles of mercury containing vaccines were simply sold and exported overseas.
During a period of several years the CDC further manipulated, massaged, and distorted the original Verstraeten research to hide any data that would suggest possible causality between mercury and autistic disorders. On five separate occasions Dr. Verstraeten slanted data. For example, 25% of reported vaccine injuries were cherry picked and removed to generate statistical confusion. The CDC’s final paper was published in the AAP’s Pediatrics journal and declared vaccine thimerosal safe and does not contribute to neurological damage in infants and children. As a side note, Dr. Verstraeten had already slipped out of the CDC to work for GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine division when his paper was published.
The CDC’s publication in Pediatrics completely altered how vaccines would be manufactured for American children and resurrected the thimerosal-autism debate. But more important it is among the greatest scientific perversions in the history of medical literature. The AAP was complicit in the fraud for having failed to conduct due diligence and proper peer-review before approving it for publication. Instead the Academy sided with Big Pharma’s favorite lobbying group—the CDC.
The story of the secret Simpsonwood meeting, the CDC’s subsequent fraudulent studies, Congressional investigations and the National Institute of Environmental Health Science’s analysis of the CDD’s research is well documented. However, what is less known is the CDC’s attempts to avoid answering many NIEHS and Congress’s complaints. In a letter to Pediatrics, Dr. Ken Stoller, a UCLA pediatrician and a former fellow of the AAP, noted how then CDC Director Dr. Julie Geberding in the final moments under pressure to give account for the CDC’s wide range of errors in its study stated, “CDC concurs that conducting ecologic analysis using VSD administrative data to address potential associations between thimerosal exposure and the risk of autism spectrum disorder is not useful.”[4]
And here is the rub. Every study the pro-vaccine community quotes to discredit a thimerosal-autism association is either an ecologic study (investigating and comparing statistics between one or more populations) or cohort study (looking at risks or illness in the history of a group or population). Both types of studies are inferior to controlled studies looking at medical conditions in vitro or in vivo. Neither do they follow sound scientific protocol in order to draw definitive conclusions. Moreover, the most frequent criticism of ecologic and cohort research is the wide scope of deceptive data manipulation such studies lend themselves to in order to arrive at the researcher’s desired result. For example, in CDC studies, the agency has never compared autism rates in vaccinated children with a population of children who were unvaccinated or had not received mercury laced vaccines. The lack of such a study should have been a no-brainer for the AAP.
Therefore, if the CDC ecologic study was ruled bogus by its own head of the agency, then why should any credibility be given to other ecologic and cohort studies performed, supported by and/or funded by the CDC. And it is only such studies that are repeatedly quoted and referred to by thimerosal-autism deniers.
Not a single study in the vaccine industry’s arsenal is biologic. The federal health agencies refuse to conduct convincing biologic studies to bring the thimerosal-autism debate to closure. The reason is simple: there is not an ounce of evidence that such studies would conclude in their favor, otherwise such research would have been performed during this decades long argument.
Nevertheless, independent biologic studies have shown repeatedly that thimerosal is linked to neurological degeneration, including autism, Asperger’s, ADD and ADHD, tics and seizures, etc. A recent review of all thimerosal research recorded in the National Institutes of Health publication database, PubMed, by the Faculty of Health Sciences at the Universidade de Brasilia in Brazil determined that the biologic data reveals 1) low doses of thimerosal against isolated human and animal brain cells found in all studies characteristic mercury neurotoxicity, 2) there has yet to be studies showing the neurotoxic effects when thimersosal is combined with aluminum, another neurotoxic chemical and common vaccine ingredient, and 3) animal studies show that thimerosal exposure leads to the accumulation of inorganic mercury in the brain.[5]
Dr. Stoller concludes that we now “have a generation of pediatricians, who face perhaps the greatest iatrogenic accident in the history of pediatrics, who actually need to be deprogrammed to understand what the true nature of all neuro-behavioral problems are that they confront without any understanding of etiology or potential interventions.”[6] And the organization mandated to assure America’s pediatricians remain ignorant about the dangers of thimerosal-containing vaccines is the AAP.
A favorite rationale voiced frequently by professional medical associations, such as the AAP and AMA, is since we don’t have conclusive proof to confirm the health risks of a particular vaccine, or chemical found in every day foods and products, or a GM frankenfood, then it is best to side with private industry rather than adopt preventative cautionary measures until such proof is determined. Common sense unveils this distorted logic, which exonerates the drug, food and chemical industries from having to prove their product is safe before entering the market.
Although AAP has taken positive social stands to improve child welfare, it has failed to protect children from their greatest enemy — the pharmaceutical and chemical industrial complex. To its credit the Academy has opposed budget reductions affecting the health and welfare of children in poverty; it supports funding that would increase consumption of fruits and vegetables in school programs, and has supported the removal of school soda vending machines in its fight against obesity. But when addressing the prevention of diseases that directly affect the medical industry, the AAP’s record is dismal. Among its official recommendations favoring corporate profit rather than promoting pediatric health are the following:
Routine HPV Vaccine. AAP officially supports the CDC’s recommendation that all males, starting at age 11, be routinely vaccinated with Merck’s quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine (Gardasil). Earlier the Academy gave its full approval for routine vaccination of all school aged girls. Since then, Drs. Christopher Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic at the University of British Columbia have published a peer-review study of their investigation into brain tissues from two New Zealand teenagers who died after Gardasil vaccinations. In both cases, DNA from the vaccine’s HPV virus was found embedded in the girl’s brain cells, which resulted in the likely cause of death. [7]
Psychiatric Drugs for Four-Year Olds. In 2011, AAP changed their recommendations for prescribing mood-altering psychiatric and psychotropic medications to children. The Academy reduced the age for diagnosing ADHD to 4 years from its prior threshold of 6 years. Its recommendations are that behavioral therapy precede administering drugs, in particular Ritalin. Yet this recommendation will unlikely be followed. Today, less than 20 percent of practicing psychiatrists perform behavioral therapy and prescribing drugs is now the ruling paradigm regardless of age. Ritalin is classified in the same category with cocaine, morphine and opium. Its adverse effects include hallucinations, mania, heart problems and death. But the AAP seems to be fine with that for pre-schoolers. Then again, the AAP’s chairman for ADHD guidelines, Dr. Mark Wolraich, is a consultant for psychotropic drug companies including Shire Pharmaceutical, Eli Lilly, Shinogi and Next Wave Pharmaceuticals.[8]
Statin Drugs for Children. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has investigated AAP’s financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. At the time AAP officially recommended prescribing statin drugs to lower cholesterol for children, it had received over $1.4 million in contributions from major statin makers, including Merck, Abbott and Bristol Myers Squibb.[9] The Academy also had lowered the minimum age for children to take statins from 10 years to 8 years. Among the statins being prescribed, the FDA expanded warning list of adverse effects to include liver injury, memory loss, increased diabetes risk, and muscle damage.[10]
Genetically Modified Food. During the autumn 2012 battle in California to mandate labeling of genetically modified foods, AAP fell on the side of Monsanto, DuPont and other agro-chemical corporations. In the Academy’s official report on its position regarding GM produce, it agrees with the seed industry that GM and organic products are nutritionally equivalent. “Current evidence,’ the report reads, ‘does not support any meaningful nutritional benefits or deficits from eating organic compared to conventionally grown foods, and there are no well-powered human studies that directly demonstrate health benefits or disease protection as a result of consuming an organic diet.”[11] Neither has the Academy come out publicly to favor the urgent need for safety trials to be conducted on GM foods before entering the food supply.
Milk and Dairy. In its GMO statement, the AAP claims there are no significant health benefits from organic milk and downplayed the risks posed from growth hormone and estrogen given to dairy cattle. The reports states, “Ingestion of milk from estrogen-treated cows appears to be safe for children.”[12] Apparently the AAP had a moment of unconsciousness during the time studies flooded journals showing that genetically modified bovine growth factor (rBGH) increased IGF-1, which contribute to prostate, breast, colorectum, gastrointestinal and lung cancers.[13]
Pesticides. The AAP is ambiguous regarding the dangers and health risks of pesticides, although all independent research shows chemical pesticides contribute to serious diseases that are appearing increasing among American children. The Academy’s policy report on GMOs states, “Although chronic pesticide exposure and measurable pesticide metabolites seem undesirable and potentially unhealthy, no studies to date have experimentally examined the causal relationship between exposure to pesticides directly from conventionally grown foods and adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes.”
Water Fluoridation. AAP continues to support the Department of Health and Human Services’ and the Environmental Protection Agency’s commitment to water fluoridation. In 2005, EPA employee unions called for a moratorium on fluoridation programs after a cover-up at Harvard’s School of Dental Medicine leaked and revealed elevated risk of fatal bone cancer in young boys consuming fluoride. However, the US remains one of the few developed countries that continue the barbaric practice of water fluoridation. Throughout most of Europe, 97% of nation populations drink fluoride-free water. The Swedish government health authorities officially state that there is no credible safety data available to support fluoride; Japan’s official policy is that water fluoridation “may cause health problems.” As early as 1977, Germany’s association of water experts rejected fluoridation” because “the so-called optimal fluoride concentration of 1 mg per liter is close to the dose at which long-term damage to the human body is to be expected.”
* * *
We believe there should be an independent Congressional investigation overseen by experts in immunology and public health science to review all existing studies that have been used as a basis for determining the safety and efficacy of schedules for all vaccines. We propose a long-term human study comparing one group of vaccinated people following existing protocols and another group given no vaccines, followed on a three month basis for five years, to determine which group is provided with a statistically significant benefit. However, no one affiliated with the study should have any direct or indirect financial ties to any vaccine industry or pharmaceutical interest nor should anyone be selected who has shown previous bias on the topic.
Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the genomic industry. Dr.Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on nutrition and natural health and a multi-award-winning director of progressive documentary films, including Vaccine Nation and Autism: Made in the USA.
Notes
[1] Levin, Myron “Battle Lines Drawn Over Mercury in Shots” Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2006)
[2] Tavernise, S “Vaccine Rule is Said to Hurt Health Efforts” New York Times, December 17, 2012
[5] Dorea JG. “Integrating Experimental (In Vitro and In Vivo) Neurotoxicity Studies of Low-dose Thimerosal Relevant to Vaccines” Neurochem Res. 2011 Feb 25.
[6] Stoller, K op cit.
[7] Tomljenovic L, Shaw C. “Death after Quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccination: Causal or Coincidental?” Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs,doi.org/10.4172/2167-7689.S12-001
[8] Citizens Commission on Human Rights “American Academy of Pediatrics Promotes Big Pharma Agenda Drugging 4-year-olds” October 17, 2011 http://www.cchrint.org
Well, you probably don’t want to look at more than 60 different documented school shooters and stabbers who were on antidepressant drugs when they attacked innocent children in suicidal, violent outbursts. Not if your mind is already made up that “it’s the guns” and that yet another “gun control” law will suddenly fix things. It won’t. Nor will the congressional testimony of Dr. Peter Breggin on the dangers of SSRIs and the proven links to suicide and violent ideation interest you, as long as there is one factor, and one solution, and this sort of information doesn’t fit into your preconception.
If this latest psycho-killer boy, Adam Lanza, had stolen a car and run over 26 people, would the most glaring problem be not enough car regulations?
Or if he had chosen to run around with a chainsaw instead, would the call now be for more chainsaw control? Or would the focus have turned to just banning the Texas ChainsawMassacre films?
Why do they do it?
More than a little evidence suggests that antidepressant medications, prescribed by psychiatrists – who have a vested stake in the public perception of this issue – are a contributing factor in the majority of such spree massacres. The drug corporations, which produce these medications and which pay for massive advertising campaigns on TV, in newspapers, on the radio and in magazines, certainly want their friendly press outlets to come up with a different culprit. However, the lengthy list of warnings, right on the labels of these drugs, is an indication that the links are real, not very well understood, and potentially catastrophic.
Even Time Magazine reported on links between prescription drugs and violence:
Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq) … 7.9 times more likely to be associated with violence than other drugs.
“Antidepressants cause emotional anesthesia and numbing or sometimes euphoria, providing a fleeting, artificial relief from emotional suffering. … In the long run, all psychiatric drugs tend to disrupt the normal processes of feeling and thinking, rendering the individual less able to deal effectively with personal problems and with life’s challenges. They worsen the individual’s overall mental condition and produce potentially irreversible harm to the brain.”
Breggin provided expert testimony and dire warnings to a congressional committee and cautioned against dispensing antidepressants to military personnel out of a very real fear of resulting violence by well-armed troops.
Even the FDA has had to impose stronger warnings on these “medicines” over the years, in response to the real world data. The 2007 update to the “Black Box” warnings, which are mandatory and included with all antidepressants says:
“Clinical Worsening and Suicide Risk: Patients, their families, and their caregivers should be encouraged to be alert to the emergence of anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia (psychomotor restlessness), hypomania, mania, other unusual changes in behavior, worsening of depression, and suicidal ideation, especially early during antidepressant treatment and when the dose is adjusted up or down. Families and caregivers of patients should be advised to look for the emergence of such symptoms on a day-to-day basis, since changes may be abrupt. … Symptoms such as these may be associated with an increased risk for suicidal thinking and behavior and indicate a need for very close monitoring and possibly changes in the medication.” (FDA, emphasis added)
The United States abandoned its mentally ill citizens back in the 1980s. Now they live under bridges. I see them with their tent city near my favorite Chinese restaurant. The great shining city on the hill doesn’t give a damn who’s living outdoors now. The stigma about mental illness has worked its way through the rest of society, but not in the obvious way.
People don’t reject “treatment” as long as it’s a pill you can take, a brain fix-all. This convenience culture idea of the quick fix is what has lived on, and now psychiatric “treatment” consists primarily of trying various drugs on patients, having them report the way the drugs affected them, and then trying other drugs. Repeat ad infinitum. This guinea pig approach to psychiatry is what I have witnessed for many years, and with a variety of different psychiatrists. They no longer seek out the underlying traumas of patients, as in the old quaint days. It is all about the drugs today, and nothing else is even discussed.
Psychiatrists are corporate America’s drug pushers.
Banning Guns For Citizens?
Now I’m going to get a lot of hostile responses for bucking the knee-jerk hysteria about banning assault rifles that’s going around. It seems to me like this issue was custom-tailored to distract the nation from the “fiscal cliff” backroom betrayals currently gutting your Social Security and Medicare inside the centers of power. There are numerous massacres, unfortunately. The media volume generated by this particular one is like a tsunami and changes the top story away from the machinations of the White House and Congress, where their long-planned deal-making could potentially kill many, many more people than the occasional shooting spree. They actually do kill many, many more children in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere… but that’s a different article.
I see no problem clamping down on high-capacity assault rifles. But I don’t for a second believe that’s going to change anything. What exactly can you do with an assault rifle, that you can’t do with a thousand other different kinds of guns? Reloading isn’t really that time-consuming or difficult. Multiple weapons are easy to obtain, especially if one is motivated enough and doesn’t care if they make it out alive. So how does that solve the problem?
Similarly, the “background checks” don’t catch spree shooters who don’t have criminal records and just one day snap. There’s nothing to check, and future-crime has not been wiped out yet.
Ah, the nuclear option – ban all the guns. That’s next.
There’s an interesting idea. With 300,000,000 guns in America, it should be no problem to just collect them all. Criminals would be first to line up at the weapon depository and rape scan center. Once the criminals are disarmed, things will go smoothly.
Some suggest that the population doesn’t need to be armed, as an armed rebellion against a tyrannical regime is futile. That’s a selective reading of history (and of the Bill of Rights), but even granted it was true, weapons are useful for self-defense from whomever. They can be indispensable in times of chaos or collapse. We do retain the right to defend ourselves, but apparently a lot of liberal/left types would make that technically impossible, by forcibly disarming everyone who complies.
Oh, no doubt, you could be re-armed by enlisting in some civilian human-drone force, as Obama first proposed back in 2008. Selective service in some organized policing force or military unit in order to graduate from high school was a wet dream proposal of the current president’s. There explains the “450 million rounds of 40 caliber” hollow-point ammunition that the Department of Homeland Security just ordered. Perhaps forced teenage DHS police labor can replace professional local police forces, which can be laid off in order to enact even more budget cuts around the nation. There’s a great idea.
But guns are here to stay. They aren’t going anywhere. America is an “armed madhouse” as Greg Palast phrased it, so perhaps it’s time to take a closer look at the “mad” part of the equation.
Furious though it may be, the current debate over health care in the US is largely irrelevant to charting a path for poor countries of Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific Islands. That is because the US squanders perhaps 10 to 20 times what is needed for a good, affordable medical system. The waste is far more than 30% overhead by private insurance companies. It includes an enormous amount of over-treatment, making the poor sicker by refusing them treatment, creation of illnesses, exposure to contagion through over-hospitalization, and disease-focused instead of prevention-focused research. [1]
Poor countries simply cannot afford such a health system. Well over 100 countries are looking to the example of Cuba, which has the same 78-year life expectancy of the US while spending 4% per person annually of what the US does. [2]
The most revolutionary idea of the Cuban system is doctors living in the neighborhoods they serve. A doctor-nurse team is part of the community and know their patients well because they live at (or near) the consultorio (doctors’ office) where they work. Consultorios are backed up by policlínicos which provide services during off-hours and offer a wide variety of specialists. Policlínicos coordinate community health delivery and link nationally designed health initiatives with their local implementation.
Cubans call their system medicina general integral (MGI, comprehensive general medicine). Its programs focus on preventing people from getting diseases rather than curing them after they are sick
This has made Cuba extremely effective in control of everyday health issues. Having doctors’ offices in every neighborhood has brought the Cuban infant mortality rate below that of the US and less than half that of US Blacks. [3] Cuba has a record unmatched in dealing with chronic and infectious diseases with amazingly limited resources. These include (with date eradicated): polio (1962), malaria (1967), neonatal tetanus (1972), diphtheria (1979), congenital rubella syndrome (1989), post-mumps meningitis (1989), measles (1993), rubella (1995), and TB meningitis (1997). [4]
The MGI integration of neighborhood doctors’ offices with area clinics and a national hospital system also means the country responds well to emergencies. It has the ability to evacuate entire cities during a hurricane largely because consultorio staff know everyone in their neighborhood and who to call for help getting disabled residents out of harms way. At the same time New York City (roughly the same population as Cuba) had 43,000 cases of AIDS, Cuba had 200 AIDS patients. [5] More recent emergencies such as outbreaks of dengue fever are quickly followed by national mobilizations. [6]
Perhaps the most amazing aspect of Cuban medicine is that, despite its being a poor country itself, Cuba has sent over 124,000 health care professionals to provide care to 154 countries. [7] In addition to providing preventive medicine Cuba sends response teams following emergencies (such as earthquakes and hurricanes) and has over 20,000 students from other countries studying to be doctors at its Latin American School of Medicine in Havana (ELAM, Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina). [8]
In a recent Monthly Review article, I gave in-depth descriptions of ELAM students participating in Cuban medical efforts in Haiti, Ghana and Peru. [9] What follows are 10 generalizations from Cuba’s extensive experience in developing medical science and sharing its approach with poor countries throughout the world. The concepts form the basis of the New Global Medicine and summarize what many authors have observed in dozens of articles and books.
First, it is not necessary to focus on expensive technology as the initial approach to medical care. Cuban doctors use machines that are available, but they have an amazing ability to treat disaster victims with field surgery. They are very aware that most lives are saved through preventive medicine such as nutrition and hygiene and that traditional cultures have their own healing wisdom. This is in direct contrast to Western medicine, especially as is dominant in the US, which uses costly diagnostic and treatment techniques as the first approach and is contemptuous of natural and alternative approaches.
Second, doctors must be part of the communities where they are working. This could mean living in the same neighborhood as a Peruvian consultorio. It could mean living in a Venezuelan community that is much more violent than a Cuban one. Or it could mean living in emergency tents adjacent to where victims are housed as Cuban medical brigades did after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Or staying in a village guesthouse in Ghana. Cuban-trained doctors know their patients by knowing their patients’ communities. This differs sharply from US doctors, who receive zero training on how to assess homes of their patients.
Third, the MGI model outlines relationships between people that go beyond a set of facts. Instead of memorizing mountains of information unlikely to be used in community health, which US students must do to pass medical board exams, Cuban students learn what is necessary to relate to people in consultorios, polyclínicos, field hospitals and remote villages. Far from being nuisance courses, studies in how people are bio-psycho-social beings are critical for the everyday practice of Cuban medicine.
Fourth, the MGI model is not static but is evolving and unique for each community. Western medicine searches for the correct pill for a given disease. In its rigid approach, a major reason for research is to discover a new pill after “side effects” of the first pill surface. Since traditional medicine is based on the culture where it has existed for centuries, the MGI model avoids the futility of seeking to impose a Western mindset on other societies.
Fifth, it is necessary to adapt medical aid to the political climate of the host country. This means using whatever resources the host government is able and willing to offer and living with restrictions. Those hosting a Cuban medical brigade may be friendly as in Venezuela and Ghana, hostile as is the Brazilian Medical Association, become increasingly hostile as occurred after the 2009 coup in Honduras, or change from hostile to friendly as occurred in Peru with the 2011 election of Ollanta Humala. This is quite different from US medical aide which, like its food aide, is part of an overall effort to dominate the receiving country and push it into adopting a Western model.
Sixth, the MGI model creates the basis for dramatic health effects. Preventive community health training, a desire to understand traditional healers, the ability to respond quickly to emergencies, and an appreciation of political limitations give Cuban medical teams astounding success. During the first 18 months of Cuba’s work in Honduras following Hurricane Mitch, infant mortality dropped from 80.3 to 30.9 per 1000 live births. When Cuban health professionals intervened in Gambia, malaria decreased from 600,000 cases in 2002 to 200,000 two years later. And Cuban/Venezuelan collaboration resulted in 1.5 million vision corrections by 2009. Kirk and Erisman conclude that “almost 2 million people throughout the world … owe their very lives to the availability of Cuban medical services.” [7]
Seventh, the New Global Medicine can become reality only if medical staff put healing above personal wealth. In Cuba, being a doctor, nurse or support staff and going on a mission to another country is one of the most fulfilling activities a person can do. The program continues to find an increasing number of volunteers despite the low salaries that Cuban health professionals earn. There is definitely a minority of US doctors who focus their practice in low income communities which have the greatest need. But there is no political leadership which makes a concerted effort to get physicians to do anything other than follow the money.
Eighth, dedication to the New Global Medicine is now being transferred to the next generation. When students at Cuban schools learn to be doctors, dentists or nurses their instructors tell them of their own participation in health brigades in Angola, Peru, Haiti, Honduras and dozens of other countries. Venezuela has already developed its own approach of MIC (medicina integral communitaria, comprehensive community medicine) which builds upon but is distinct from Cuban MGI. [10] Many ELAM students who work in Ghana as the Yaa Asantewaa Brigade are from the US. They learn approaches of traditional healers so they can compliment Ghanaian techniques with Cuban medical knowledge.
Ninth, the Cuban model is remaking medicine across the globe. Though best-known for its successes in Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean, Cuba has also provided assistance in Asia and the Pacific Islands. Cuba provided relief to the Ukraine after the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown, Sri Lanka following the 2004 tsunami, and Pakistan after its 2005 earthquake. Many of the countries hosting Cuban medical brigades are eager for them to help redesign their own health care systems. Rather than attempting to make expensive Western techniques available to everyone, the Cuban MGI model helps re-conceptualize how healing systems can meet the needs of a country’s poor.
Tenth, the new global medicine is a microcosm of how a few thousand revolutionaries can change the world. They do not need vast riches, expensive technology, or a massive increase in personal possessions to improve the quality of people’s lives. If dedicated to helping people while learning from those they help, they can prefigure a new world by carefully utilizing the resources in front of them. […]
Discussions of global health in the West typically bemoan the indisputable fact that poor countries still suffer from chronic and infectious diseases that rich countries have controlled for decades. International health organizations wring their hands over the high infant mortality rates and lack of resources to cope with natural disasters in much of the world. [3]
But they ignore the one health system that actually functions in a poor country, providing health care to all of its citizens as well as millions of others around the world. The conspiracy of silence surrounding the resounding success of Cuba’s health system proves the absolute unconcern by those who piously claim to be the most concerned.
How should progressives respond to this feigned ignorance of a meaningful solution to global health problems? A rational response must begin with spreading the word of Cuba’s New Global Medicine through every source of alternative media available. The message needs to be: Good health care is not more expensive — revolutionary medicine is far more cost effective than corporate controlled medicine.
Notes
1. Fitz, D. (December 9, 2010). Eight reasons US healthcare costs 96% more
than Cuba’s—With the same results. http://www.alternet.org/health/149090/eight_reasons_us_healthcare_costs_96%25_more_than_cuba%27s–with_the_same_results
2. Dresang, L.T., Brebick, L., Murray, D., Shallue, A. & Sullivan-Vedder, L. (July-August, 2005). Family medicine in Cuba: Community-Oriented Primary Care and Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine 18 no. 4: 297-303.
3. Cooper, R.S., Kennelly, J.F. & Orduñez-Garcia, P. (2006). Health in Cuba, International Journal of Epidemiology, 35: 817–824.
4. Pérez, J. (May 15, 2012). Gender and HIV Prevention. Slide presentation at the Pedro Kouri Institute of Topical Medicine, Havana, Cuba.
5. Whiteford, L.M. & Branch, L.G. (2008). Primary Health Care in Cuba: The Other Revolution. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
6. Fitz, D. (February 14, 2012). Med School Classes Cancelled in Havana. http://blackagendareport.com/content/med-school-classes-cancelled-havana
7. Kirk, J.M. & Erisman, M.H. (2009). Cuban Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution and Goals. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
8. Fitz, D. (March, 2011). The Latin American School of Medicine Today: ELAM. Monthly Review 62 no. 10: 50–62.
9. Fitz, D. (September, 2012). Cuba: The New Global Medicine. Monthly Review 64 no. 4: 37–46.
10. Brouwer, S. (2011). Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba are Changing the World’s Conceptualization of Health Care. New York, Monthly Review Press.
The year 1999 was a good one for the drug company Merck. In its 64 page annual report, it predicted that the arthritis medicine Vioxx (“Our Biggest, Fastest, and Best Launch Ever!”) would also prevent Alzheimer’s disease and colon cancer. It announced it was seeking approval to market the asthma drug Singulair to two-year-olds. And it forecast that 40 million women would take its new osteoporosis drug, Fosamax, as Merck continued to “help educate both doctors and patients” about the bone disease.
It turned out Merck spoke too soon. Vioxx was withdrawn in 2004 for doubling stroke and heart attacks in long-term users; Singulair now carries FDA warnings about “neuropsychiatric events” and Fosamax is suspected of doubling the risk of esophageal cancer, causing bone fractures instead of preventing them and causing heart problems, intractable pain and jawbone death. Oops!
There’s plenty of ka-ching in selling “strong bones” products for the same reason there was plenty of ka-ching in selling “hormone replacement” products: one-half the population is female, and no one wants to look old. Of course, “avoiding hot flashes” really means “still looking hot” in hormone marketing terminology, and “avoiding fractures” really means “still looking hot” in bone product marketing lingo. That’s why attractive women like Meredith Vieira from the Today show and former Charlie’s Angel Cheryl Ladd and actress Sally Field push bone drugs, just as model Lauren Hutton pushed hormone replacement therapy.
To cash in on Fosamax, the first in the bisphosphonate bone drug class, Merck decided to market the dangers of osteoporosis “far beyond ailing old ladies.” It hired researcher Jeremy Allen to whip up fears of “osteopenia,” the risk of osteoporosis, as a health epidemic to sell bone drugs and planted bone scan machines in medical offices across the country, says National Public Radio. Allen created the faux “Bone Measurement Institute” which also maneuvered Medicare reimbursement for the scans. By 1999, there were 10,000 bone scan machines in medical offices, said the Associated Press, when there had been only 750 before Fosamax.
Like its trouble-laden drug Vioxx, Merck’s Fosamax flew out of the FDA. It received only a six month review before its 1995 FDA approval. (The government also helped its promotion with the HHS secretary herself, Donna Shalala, participating in a 1998 rally kicking off free bone density screenings to be offered in 100 cities.)
But the wheels soon came flying off the bone drug. Patients experienced esophageal “irritation” and the warning to stay upright for one full hour after taking Fosamax, eating or drinking nothing was added after approval. One woman who took Fosamax but remained upright for only 30 minutes, not 60, had to be admitted to the Mayo Clinic with “severe ulcerative esophagitis affecting the entire length of the esophagus” and had to be fed intravenously, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
Next, dentists and oral surgeons discovered after simple tooth extractions and other in-office dental work, the jawbone tissue of patients on bisphosphonates would sometimes not heal but become necrotic and die — a condition called osteonecrosis of the jaw(ONJ), The necrotic condition did not take long to manifest “even short-term oral use of alendronate [Fosamax] led to ONJ in a subset of patients” — wrote a dental journal, but it somehow slipped through Fosamax’s two, three-year clinical trials on which its FDA approval was based. Doctors, dentists, and pharmacists were enraged at what looked like deliberate obfuscation by Merck.
And there were second, third and fourth opinions about Fosamax! According to an FDA epidemiologist writing in New England Journal of Medicine in 2009 there were 23 incidences of Fosamax-associated esophageal cancer in the US and eight deaths and 27 incidences of cancer in Europe and Japan and six deaths.
Next reports in medical journals linked bisphosphonates to the risk of developing atrial fibrillation, or a chronically irregular heartbeat and to severe bone, joint or muscle pain. “In the most serious cases, the pain was so severe that patients could not continue their normal activities,” wrote the FDA in a press release. “Some patients have complete relief of symptoms after they stop taking the drug, while others have reported slow or incomplete resolution.” Clearly, the FDA was trying hard to avoid the word irreversible.
Finally, in a development that suggests tremendous medical ineptitude if not duplicity, bisphosphonates were found to sometimes cause the very fractures they were supposed to prevent. The thigh bones of patients on bisphosphonates have “simply snapped while they were walking or standing,” after “weeks or months of unexplained aching,” reported the New York Times in an article called “Drugs to Build Bones May Weaken Them.”
It should be embarrassing to the medical establishment that a prominent drug company and the FDA “discovered” severe side effects after years of patient use and that bone scans are still merchandised though they are of no value to 90 percent of women, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. It should be further embarrassing that Merck was allowed to make $3 billion a year off a drug that many say would not have been approved had clinical trials lasted longer. Its patent expired in 2008.
Now Merck is about to launch a new drug for osteoporosis called odanacatib which has already intrigued the money men on Wall Street. “Odanacatib may be a viable alternative for patients who need continued therapy and who want benefits beyond what they received from bisphosphonates,” a senior Merck research executive told Reuters without a hint of irony.
How has Big Pharma managed to get so many children on expensive drug cocktails for “mental illness”? Drugs that they may not even need?
Big Pharma has spent millions on public relations campaigns that tell parents, teachers and clinicians to dose children at the first sign of problems. It knows if parents treat their kids early they will never know if the kids needed the drugs in the first place and whether residual problems are “mental illness” or drug side effects. The kids will also probably be life long customers because parents will be afraid to take them off the drugs. No wonder Pharma tells parents not to wait for “excessive energy” or “mood swings” to go away in the awareness campaigns. Ka-ching.
One “prescribe early” campaign for the atypical antipsychotic Risperdal uses a macabre abandoned wallet, a teddy bear, and keys on a barren street “to reposition a drug that was being used too late to achieve its maximum benefits,” said its advertising agency, Torre Lazur McCann. Brand managers for Seroquel, a competing antipsychotic, even considered creating Winnie-the-Pooh characters like Tigger (bipolar) and Eeyore (depressed) to sell Seroquel, according to published reports, at an AstraZeneca sales meeting. Parents say they have seen toys emblazoned with Seroquel logos.
Only one child in ten thousand has pediatric schizophrenia—some say one in thirty thousand—but that doesn’t stop Gabriele Masi, MD, with the Stella Maris Institute for Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry at the University of Pisa in Italy from portraying it as a public health problem. In an article titled “Children with Schizophrenia: Clinical Picture and Pharmacological Treatment,” in the journal CNS Drugs, Masi writes, “Awareness of childhood- onset schizophrenia is rapidly increasing, with a more precise definition now available of the clinical picture and early signs, the outcome and the treatment strategies.”
Symptoms of childhood schizophrenia include “social deficits” and “delusions . . . related to childhood themes,” writes Masi. What child doesn’t have “social deficits”? Do delusions include imaginary playmates? Masi lambastes the “hesitancy on the part of clinicians to make a diagnosis of schizophrenia,” instead of prescribing early. Masi has received research funding from Eli Lilly, served as an advisor for Shire and been on speakers bureaus for Sanofi Aventis, AstraZeneca, GSK, and Janssen, all of which manufacture many of the leading psychiatric drugs for children, according to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
It’s tempting to ridicule Pharma funded doctors who find mental illness and even relapses and “treatment resistance” in people who have been on the planet for forty months. But pathologizing three-year-olds isn’t funny. Both four-year-old Rebecca Riley of Hull, Massachusetts, and three-year- old Destiny Hager of Council Grove, Kansas, died in 2006 from psychiatric drugs that included Geodon and Seroquel to treat their “bipolar disorders.” And in 2009, seven-year-old Gabriel Myers of Broward County, Florida, a child in a state facility, hung himself while on Symbyax, a pill that combines Zyprexa and Prozac. If it weren’t for Big Pharma’s prescribe early campaigns, these children, and others, might still be alive.
The conclusion of a report of a Japanese parliamentary panel issued last week that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster was rooted in government-industry “collusion” and thus was “man-made” is mirrored throughout the world. The “regulatory capture” cited by the panel is the pattern among nuclear agencies right up to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“The Fukushima nuclear power plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and Tepco [Tokyo Electric Power Company, the owner of the six Fukushima plants] and the lack of governance by said parties,” said the 641-page report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission released on July 5.
“They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents. Therefore, we conclude that the accident was clearly ‘man-made,’” said the report of the panel established by the National Diet or parliament of Japan.
“We believe the root causes were the organizational and regulatory system that supported faulty rationales for decisions and actions,” it went on. “Across the board, the commission found ignorance and arrogance unforgivable for anyone or any organization that deals with nuclear power.” It said nuclear regulators in Japan and Tepco “all failed to correctly develop the most basic safety requirements.”
The chairman of the 10-member panel, Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a medical doctor, declared in the report’s introduction: “It was a profoundly man-made disaster—that could and should have been foreseen and prevented.”
He also placed blame on cultural traits in Japan. “What must be admitted—very painfully,” wrote Dr. Kurokawa, “is that this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan.’ Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture; our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the programme’; our groupism; and our insularity.”
In fact, the nuclear regulatory situation in Japan is the rule globally.
In the United States, for example, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its predecessor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, never denied a construction or operating license for a nuclear power plant anywhere, anytime. The NRC has been busy in recent times not only giving the go-ahead to new nuclear power plant construction in the U.S. but extending the operating licenses of most of the 104 existing plants from 40 to 60 years—although they were only designed to run for 40 years. That’s because radioactivity embrittles their metal components and degrades other parts after 40 years making the plants unsafe to operate. And the NRC is now considering extending their licenses for 80 years.
Moreover, the NRC’s chairman, Gregory Jaczko, recently resigned in the face of an assault on him by the nuclear industry and his four fellow NRC members led by William D. Magwood, IV. Magwood is typical of most NRC and AEC commissioners through the decades—a zealous promoter of nuclear power. He came to the NRC after running Advanced Energy Strategies through which he served as a consultant to various companies involved with nuclear power including many in Japan—among them Tepco.
Before that, Magwood served as director of nuclear energy for the U.S. Department of Energy. He “led the creation,” according to his NRC biography, of DOE programs pushing nuclear power, “Nuclear Power 2010” and “Generation IV.” Prior to that, he worked for the Edison Electric Institute and Westinghouse, a major nuclear power plant manufacturer.
Jaczko, although a supporter of nuclear power, with a Ph.D. in physics, repeatedly called for the NRC to apply “lessons learned” from the Fukushima disaster to its rules and actions—upsetting the industry and the other four NRC commissioners. As Jaczko declared in February as the other four NRC commissioners first approved the construction of new nuclear plants since Fukushima, giving the go-ahead to two plants in Georgia: “I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima had never happened.”
The NRC was set up to be an independent regulator of nuclear power to replace the AEC which was established by Congress under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. The AEC was given the dual missions of promoting and regulating nuclear power—a conflict of interest, Congress realized in 1974, so it eliminated the AEC and created the NRC as regulator and, later, the Department of Energy as promoter of nuclear power. But both the NRC and DOE have ended up pushing nuclear power with revolving doors between them and the government’s national nuclear laboratories—and the nuclear industry.
The International Atomic Energy Agency was established as an international version of the AEC by the United Nations after a speech made at it by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 in which he espoused “Atoms for Peace.” Its dual missions are serving as a monitor of nuclear technology globally while also seeking “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world.”
Its first director general was Sterling Cole who as a U.S. congressman was a big booster of nuclear power. Later came Hans Blix after he led a move in his native Sweden against an effort to close nuclear plants there. Blix was outspoken in seeking to spread nuclear power internationally calling for “resolute response by government, acting individually or together as in the [IAE] Agency.”
Blix’s long-time IAEA second-in command was Morris Rosen—formerly of the AEC and before that the nuclear division of General Electric (which manufactured the Fukushima plants)—who said after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster: “There is very little doubt that nuclear power is a rather benign industrial enterprise and we may have to expect catastrophic accidents from time to time.”
Mohamed ElBaradei of Egypt followed Blix, and as he told an “International Conference on Nuclear Power for the 21st Century” organized by the IAEA in 2005: “There is clearly a sense of rising expectations for nuclear power.”
The current IAEA director general is Yukiya Amano of Japan. In Vienna at the heaquarters of the IAEA, marking the first anniversary of the Fukushima disaster in March, Amano said: “Nuclear power is now safer than it was a year ago.”
Really?
Shuya Nomura, a member of the Japanese investigation commission and a professor at the Chuo Law School, was quoted in the New York Times as saying that the panel’s report tried to “shed light on Japan’s wider structural problems, on the pus that pervades Japanese society.” And, noted the Times, he added, “This report contains hints on how Japanese society needs to change.”
Those “wider structural problems” are far wider than Japan—they are global. The “regulatory capture” cited in the Japanese panel’s report has occurred all over the world—with the nuclear industry and those promoting nuclear power in governments making sure that the nuclear foxes are in charge of the nuclear hen houses. The “pus that pervades Japanese society” is international. With some very important exceptions, people have not adequately taken on the nuclear authorities. And we all must. The nuclear promoters have set up a corrupt system to enable them to get their way with their deadly technology. They have lied, they have connived, they have distorted governments. The nuclear industry is thus allowed to do whatever it wants. The nuclear pushers must be firmly challenged and they and nuclear power must be stopped.
The U.S. government is going out of its way to downplay radiation hazards in the aftermath of one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents.
Last month, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) heralded an Energy Department-funded study indicating that evacuation zones around nuclear power stations might not be needed after a major nuclear accident. The study, which exposed mice to radiation levels comparable to those near the Fukushima nuclear disaster, found no evidence of genetic harm. “There are no data that say that’s a dangerous level,” says Jacquelyn Yanch, a leader of the study.
“Current U.S. regulations require that residents of any area that reaches radiation levels eight times higher than background should be evacuated,” according to MIT’s press release. “However, the financial and emotional cost of such relocation may not be worthwhile, the researchers say.”
It’s quite a leap to claim that evacuation zones around nuclear power plants might not be needed based on the chromosomes of 112 irradiated mice.
In a devastating critique, blogger Ian Goddard points out that the MIT study excluded extensive evidence of genetic damage to humans living in a radiation-contaminated environment. Although doses in a peer-reviewed study of 19 groups of children living near Chernobyl were consistently lower than the MIT mouse study, most showed lasting genetic damage. “MIT’s presentation of its study as the first scientific examination of the genetic risks of living in a nuclear disaster zone is pure science fiction, not fact,” Goddard concludes.
Even more troubling, the Obama administration reduced emergency preparedness in case of a major nuclear accident in a quiet announcement made six months ago, right before Christmas — virtually guaranteeing minimal media attention. Given that the number of people living near nuclear stations has grown four-and-a-half times larger since 1980, a move in the opposite direction would make more sense.
What’s going on? The United States remains a major pillar of nuclear support here and around the world. About 70 percent of the Energy Department’s $26.3-billion budget covers nuclear activities — and that’s not including $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for new reactors that are slated for construction in South Carolina and Georgia. Japan’s failing nuclear industry is supposed to build them.
The Energy Department is also the main source of funding for radiation health research. That’s like having the tobacco industry determine if smoking is bad for your health. And this conflict of interest is nothing new. Several prominent scientists on the nuclear payroll in the 1950s and 60s vigorously claimed that radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons tests was harmless. Some went so far as to claim that fallout might be beneficial because increased radiation-induced genetic mutations could weed out the weak.
This problem was not lost on congressional investigators over the past 35 years. They revealed the government’s suppression of incriminating data, blacklisting of uncooperative researchers, unethical human experiments, and submission of fraudulent research in federal court. By the late 1980s, the agency was forced to move funding for radiation research to public health agencies. This all changed a decade later, when the Republican-controlled Congress restored the Energy Department’s monopoly over radiation health research.
Things have gotten so bad that the agency gave MIT a $1.7-million grant last month to research, among other things, the “difficulties in gaining the broad social acceptance” of nuclear power. MIT also receives millions of dollars from Tokyo Electric Power Co., the company responsible for the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
This conflict of interest has tragic dimensions. The government and nuclear industry still have yet to deal with the costly disposal of enormous amounts of radioactive waste and profoundly contaminated “sacrifice zones” at the Energy Department’s nuclear sites. Or to resolve the issue of the tens of thousands of sick nuclear workers, uranium miners, military veterans, experiment victims, and nuclear test “down-winders,” who are receiving billions of dollars in compensation after being put in harm’s way on behalf of splitting the atom.
This week, Northwestern and the University of Michigan law schools released a National Registry of Exonerations, a new database chronicling the ever-growing number of exonerees from our nation’s criminal justice system. The database includes over 2,000 people who spent time – sometimes decades – in prison after being wrongfully convicted of serious crimes. This includes over 100 wrongfully convicted of capital murder – which means they were awaiting execution before their sentences were reversed. The Death Penalty information Center, which tracks information about the death penalty, has documented 140 cases where inmates were released from death row with evidence of their innocence.
As astounding as the numbers in the database are, the list of the innocent is likely far longer than what is documented in this valuable resource – and not all of them were exonerated in time. Troy Davis, an African-American man in Georgia, Carlos DeLuna, a Latino man in Texas, and Cameron Todd Willingham, a white man in Texas, were all executed despite compelling evidence of innocence. The judicial system failed these men twice: it failed them first by convicting them of crimes of which they were likely innocent, and it failed them again by denying them meaningful opportunities to prove their innocence, in time to save their lives.
The National Registry of Exonerations compiles explanations across cases, helping shed light on just how these wrongful convictions happen. The explanations are themselves deeply troubling: false accusations or perjury played a role in a full half of the cases (51%); official misconduct contributed to a large percentage of the wrongful convictions (42%); and junk science or false or misleading evidence played a role in almost a quarter of the cases (24%). Although the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, along with many others, continue to push for important reforms in the area of junk science, it is hard to be optimistic that the problems of perjury or police misconduct will ever fully be untangled from the criminal justice system. Ending the death penalty will not solve these problems – but it will make sure that no one else pays for these flaws with his or her life.
According to Science Times [1], the Tuesday science section in the New York Times, scientific retractions are on the rise because of a “dysfunctional scientific climate” that has created a “winner-take-all game with perverse incentives that lead scientists to cut corners and, in some cases, commit acts of misconduct.”
But elsewhere, audacious, falsified research stands unretracted–including the work of authors who actually went to prison for fraud!
Richard Borison, MD, former psychiatry chief at the Augusta Veterans Affairs medical center and Medical College of Georgia, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a $10 million clinical trial fraud [2] but his 1996 US Seroquel® Study Group research is unretracted. [3] In fact, it is cited in 173 works and medical textbooks, misleading future medical professionals. [4]
Scott Reuben, MD, the “Bernie Madoff” of medicine who published research on clinical trials that never existed, was sentenced to six months in prison in 2010.[5] But his “research” on popular pain killers like Celebrex and Lyrica is unretracted. [6] If going to prison for research fraud is not enough reason for retraction, what is?
Wayne MacFadden, MD, resigned as US medical director for Seroquel in 2006, after sexual affairs with two coworker women researchers surfaced[7], but the related work is unretracted and was even part of Seroquel’s FDA approval package for bipolar disorder. [8]
More than 50 ghostwritten papers about hormone therapy (HT) written by Pfizer’s marketing firm, Designwrite, ran in medical journals, according to unsealed court documents on the University of California–San Francisco’s Drug Industry Document Archive. [9] Though the papers claimed no link between HT and breast cancer and false cardiac and cognitive benefits and were ghostwritten by marketing professionals not doctors, none has been retracted.
Pfizer/Parke-Davis placed 13 ghostwritten articles[10] in medical journals promoting Neurontin for off label uses, including a supplement to the Cleveland Clinic [11] but only Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews and Protocols has retracted the specious articles. [12]
Nor is the phony science just a product of “Big Pharma.” In 2008, JAMA was forced to print a correction stating that authors of an article arguing for a higher recommended dietary allowance of protein were, in fact, industry operatives. [13] Sharon L. Miller was “formerly employed by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association,” and author Robert R. Wolfe, PhD, received money from the Egg Nutrition Center, the National Dairy Council, the National Pork Board, and the Beef Checkoff through the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said the clarification. Miller’s email address, in fact was smiller@beef.org, which should might have been the JAMA editors’ first tip-off.[14] The article has also not been retracted.
[2] Steve Stecklow and Laura Johannes, “Test Case: Drug Makers Relied on Two Researchers Who Now Await Trial,” Wall Street Journal, August 8, 1997
[3] Richard Borison et al., “ICI 204,636, an Atypical Antipsychotic: Efficacy and Safety in a Multicenter, Placebo-Controlled Trial in Patients with Schizophrenia,” Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology 16, no. 2 (April 1996): 158–69
[4] Alan F. Schatzberg and Charles B. Nemeroff, Textbook of Psychopharmacology (New York: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2009) p. 609
[6] Scott Reuben et al., “The Analgesic Efficacy of Celecoxib, Pregabalin, and Their Combination for Spinal Fusion Surgery,” Anesthesia & Analgesia 103, no. 5 (November 2006): 1271–77.
[12] P. J. Wiffen et al., “WITHDRAWN: Gabapentin for Acute and Chronic Pain,” Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews and Protocols 16, no. 3 (March 16, 2011); P. J. Wiffen et al., “WITHDRAWN: Anticonvulsant Drugs for Acute and Chronic Pain,” Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews and Protocols no. 1 (January 20, 2010);
An Associated Pressarticle by Diaa Hadid, filed from Tel Aviv and published Wednesday, warns of a potential increase in anti-Semitism and possible anti-Jewish violence in Europe if Israel carries out a military assault on Iran. The piece focuses on Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, speaking at Tel Aviv University “after the presentation of an annual report on worldwide anti-Semitic attacks” and in advance of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Kantor said “he feared a minority of angry, extremist European Muslims who live in impoverished neighborhoods might use an Israeli attack [against Iran] as a pretext to hit local Jews, particularly in France and Great Britain.”
The report cited by Kantor was issued by Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry. And yes, the Kantor Center is indeed named after Moshe Kantor himself, who paid for its creation in 2010. Kantor is not only the head of the EJC, he’s also the Chairman of the European Jewish Fund (which he established in 2006) and, with his net worth of $2.3 billion, one of the richest people in the world.
AP quotes Kantor as saying, “If Israel attacks Iran, it will be a dramatic increase of anti-Semitic, very violent attacks against Jews. And the vehicle for the realization of the attacks will be these enclave communities, where the level of hatred is very high and they are prepared to attack enemies inside their countries.” An Israeli assault on Iran would produce, in Kantor’s words, a “tsunami of hate against Jews.”
Note how Kantor worries that an actual, unprovoked violent attack by a nuclear-armed state against a non-nuclear-armed state is called a “pretext” for potential, future anti-Semitism in Europe. So what are Kantor and the EJC doing about this? Well, AP reports that “his group is prodding European governments to take more measures to protect Jewish communities. He said its biggest efforts were focused on combatting anti-Semitism in the radical fringes of European Muslim neighborhoods.” Kantor also described this alleged latent and potential violence emanating from Muslim communities in Europe as “a bomb ready to explode.”
That’s right. Kantor isn’t using his platform in Tel Aviv and position in Europe to warn against an illegal Israeli attack; no, he just wants more protection for European Jews if and when such an attack occurs. Apparently, the ancient community of 25,000 Iranian Jews don’t need similar protection for Israeli missiles and bombs.
But, this type of fear-mongering about the so-called “new anti-Semitism” is old news. While the provocation – “pretext” – is now linked to Iran, in the past it has been focused more on Palestine.
Over eight years ago, in March 2004, Los Angeles Times staffer Jeffrey Fleischman wrote, “Intolerance toward Jews is changing. Traditional anti-Semitism is coinciding with leftist opposition to Israel’s response to the Palestinian intifada. And attacks on Jewish institutions in France, the Netherlands and elsewhere suggest that a burgeoning population of frustrated Muslim men is transplanting Middle East animosities into Europe.”
Despite describing Europe as “an eloquent testament to constitutions and human rights,” Fleischman claims that, “as Europe reinvents itself, so does the way it hates.” He also quotes Cobi Benatoff, then-president of the European Jewish Congress, as issuing a “warning cry, a warning to Europe,” saying, “Anti-Semitism and prejudice have returned. The monster is with us again. What is of most concern to us, however, is the indifference of our fellow European citizens.”
Naturally, the Palestine connection is made. “The backlash against Jews over the Palestinian struggle to gain statehood is more pronounced in countries with large Muslim populations such as France, where about 700,000 Jews live amid more than 5 million Muslims,” Fleischman reports. “Germany has about 100,000 Jews and 3.5 million Muslims, and Britain has 300,000 Jews and about 2 million Muslims.”
Look at how outnumbered they are! Those poor, potential victims, adrift in a sea of bearded barbarity! How spooky!
But this type of hysteria is nothing new.
In 2006, journalist Jonathan Cook reported that there has been an intense effort on the part of the Israeli government to push the concept and fear of the “new anti-Semitism” dating back decades and reemerging more stridently in 2002. Cook explained that “Israel alerted the world to another wave of anti-Semitism in the early 1980s, just as it came under unprecedented criticism for its invasion and occupation of Lebanon. What distinguished the new anti-Semitism from traditional anti-Jewish racism of the kind that led to Germany’s death camps, said its promoters, was that this time it embraced the progressive Left rather than the far Right.” This narrative was again picked up twenty years later by members of Ariel Sharon’s administration, and championed by a rather familiar character. Cook reports,
Like its precursors, argued Israel’s apologists, the latest wave of anti-Semitism was the responsibility of progressive Western movements – though with a fresh twist. An ever present but largely latent Western anti-Semitism was being stoked into frenzy by the growing political and intellectual influence of extremist Muslim immigrants. The implication was that an unholy alliance had been spawned between the Left and militant Islam.
“In my view, there are many in Europe who oppose anti-Semitism, and many governments and leaders who oppose anti-Semitism, but the strain exists there. It is ignoring reality to say that it is not present. It has now been wedded to and stimulated by the more potent and more overt force of anti-Semitism, which is Islamic anti-Semitism coming from some of the Islamic minorities in European countries. This is often disguised as anti-Zionism.“
The entire Cook article is vital reading on the subject.
The disingenuous association of anti-Semitism with progressive ideology, along with the absurd conflation and equation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, has only been further exploited in the intervening years and the examples are legion.
The American Jewish Committee released a lengthy report in 2002 that declared, “Over the past two years the specter of anti-Semitism has spread over that part of peaceful, democratic, and law-abiding Europe that prides itself on the high degree of safety it affords its inhabitants.” Written by Villanova professor Gordon Murray, the report charged that, due to “the one-sided condemnation of Israel and the failure of [European] governments to condemn atrocities committed against Israelis, along with “their unbalanced, strongly pro-Palestinian line in the Middle East conflict, Western European governments have given a pass to those who wish to play out the intifada on the streets of Paris, Antwerp, Madrid, and Berlin.” Murray also condemned the “left” for its support for the Palestinian cause, in part blaming the “left’s sympathy for Palestinians and antipathy for Israel on, what he deemed, “the left’s congenital anti-Americanism.”
In September 2008, Paul A. Shapiro, Director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. delivered the keynote address at a conference in Bucharest, Romania. In his speech, which warned of the “dangers of resurgent antisemitism” in Europe, Shapiro described the “multiple agents” responsible for the trend, “each capable of being effective with one or more audiences:”
1) Radical and jihadist elements within Islam; (2) right-wing bigots, including neo-Nazis, skinheads, paramilitary militia movements, ultra-nationalists, Holocaust apologists; (3) left-wing ideologues, in particular in the European region, as well as some more mainstream intellectuals, who in the current atmosphere are susceptible to anti-Semitic expression or to the use of code words (e.g., “New York,” “the Israel Lobby”) to express negative views of Jews and protest Jewish “power” and “influence”; (4) extreme anti-Zionists; (5) representatives of a variety of religious denominations who, through their preaching, writing, or speech tap into religious fervor and belief to assault the legitimacy of Judaism and Jews.
Shapiro also stated that this bigotry manifests itself in many ways, not only is physical attacks against Jews or Jewish organizations, but also in the form of “boycotts and divestment efforts against Israel” and “anti-Zionism.” Shapiro continues,
Scholars debate whether anti-Zionism is necessarily and always to be understood as a form of antisemitism. Many argue, I believe correctly, that one can be critical of specific Israeli policies and actions and not be antisemitic. However, what is often called “legitimate criticism of Israel” frequently crosses the line and becomes vilification of the Jewish state as such. This is characterized by demonization, delegitimization, and judging Israel by double standards, i.e., standards not applied to others. Denunciations of Israel as a “Nazi state,” an “apartheid state,” a state guilty of “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” are antisemitic. Demonizing Israel, denying its right to exist, and attributing its perceived faults to its Jewish character crosses the line, encouraging both verbal and physical violence against Israel and against Jews in general.
So how real is this threat? Well, the report cited by European Jewish Congress head Moshe Kantor, while noting “an increase in cases involving harassment and violence against Jews worldwide, singling out western Europe, Australia and Canada as three of the places most affected by the trend, also “found that on average the number of verbal threats and vandalism cases against Jews were down 27% in 2011 with 446 incidents compared to 614 in 2010.” Furthermore, “57% of hate crimes involved vandalism.”
“The decrease was the second year in a row that the research center, which focuses on the study of European Jews, has counted fewer global anti-Semitic attacks,” reportedThe Jerusalem Post.
The Times of Israel was quick to point out that the “Antisemitism Worldwide 2011” study alleged that “[r]adicalization among young Muslims, as well as the growing dissemination of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli propaganda online, contributed significantly to the increase in harassment and incitement throughout the world,” adding that “France led the list of countries where major violent incidents occurred with 114, followed closely by the UK with 104 cases.” The report also claimed that, while “the number of attacks declined in 2011…they were generally more violent than in previous years.”
By contrast, in 2010, the organization Human Rights First reported, “Authorities in France do not report explicitly on violence against Muslims, but their reporting of racist and xenophobic hate crimes offers a window into the problem of anti-Muslim violence, with 33 percent of reported incidents perpetrated against people of North African (Maghreb) origin, who are predominantly Muslim. In 2009, authorities reported 1,026 racist or xenophobic hate crimes, a 219 percent increase from 2008 (467).”
Additionally, a 2009 survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) that reported discrimination against immigrants and minorities in the EU found that “1 in 10 of all Muslims surveyed (11%) was a victim of racially motivated ‘in-person crime’ (assault, threat or serious harassment) at least once in the previous 12 months.”
The research, compiled in 2008 via face-to-face questionnaire interviews of a total of 23,500 immigrant and ethnic minority people in all 27 Member States of the EU, also indicated that, if the data were translated “to the entire Muslim population in the Member States where Muslim respondents were surveyed, the level of victimisation would extend into thousands of cases every year that are not recorded by the police as racist incidents in the majority of Member States.”
The FRA report also stated, “On average 1 in 3 Muslim respondents (34% of men and 26% of women) stated that they had experienced discrimination in the past 12 months. Those Muslim respondents who had been discriminated against stated that they had experienced, on average, 8 incidents of discrimination over a 12 month period.”
The association of Muslims in Europe with both violence and anti-Semitism is also completely disingenuous. Between 2006 and 2008, a mere 0.4% of all terrorist attacks in Europe could be attributed to extremist Muslims. Meanwhile, a recent survey about anti-Semitic sentiment conducted by the Anti-Defamation League in ten European countries and which reportedly found increased levels of bigotry against Jews within some European populations, polled only 500 people in each country and compiled (or at least reported) absolutely no data on the religious identification or political ideology of the respondents.
The exploitation of this “new anti-Semitism” charge as a method of policing speech and terminology, dismissing historical events, marginalizing comparative narratives, and delegitimizing the efforts of those who challenge the inherent racism, colonialism and ethno-religious exclusivism of Zionism is laid bare in a statement by Dr. Roni Stauber, a senior research fellow at the Kantor Center and one of the report’s authors:
“We began compiling these reports in 2001 and while we were very strict at the beginning, about differentiating between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, in recent years it has become virtually impossible.
“The data derived suggests that the propaganda promoted by the world’s radical Left and far Right have meshed together the hatred for Israelis and that of Jews; and have created the perception that all Jews are ‘in cahoots’ with Israel, and therefore anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are the same.”
The purpose of the “new anti-Semitism” charge is abundantly clear: it not only serves to fear-monger about Muslims in Europe but also, perhaps more importantly, is a way to demonize and cow into silence critics of Israeli policy and advocates for human rights and international law.
When the paramilitaries of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) arrived in San Onofre in northern Colombia in the late 1990s, they came after dark, dragging people from their homes and disappearing into the night.
Soon, they did not need the cover of darkness. People were executed in public plazas in broad daylight. Women and young girls were openly raped and abused.
Since the demobilisation of the local AUC bloc in 2005, 42 mass graves have been discovered in the municipality. Locals say about 3000 people disappeared and tens of thousands fled their homes and abandoned their land to escape what one survivor called a region of “concentration camps”.
Seven years on from the AUC demobilisation, San Onofre is now the site of thousands of hectares of teak trees belonging to one of Colombia’s five biggest companies, Argos S.A.
In February last year, Argos’ commercial monocrop plantation was approved for the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) carbon trading scheme. This means it can sell carbon credits to industrialised countries trying to meet Kyoto Protocol emission reduction targets.
The company says the plantation will capture 37,000 tones of CO2 a year for 25 years – worth about $12.5 million in the current carbon market. It also plans to use another teak plantation in the nearby municipalities of El Carmen and Ovejas for the CDM.
Argos claims the teak plantation is helping fight climate change and contributing to the sustainable development of a conflict scarred region, but the project has proved controversial.
Survivors from the paramilitary era and land restitution campaigners claim the plantation and its CDM status is not only an attempt to cash in on the lucrative carbon credits market, but also legitimise a mass land grab that followed paramilitary violence, and prevent land restitution to a displaced population.
The municipalities of San Onofre, El Carmen and Ovejas are in the Caribbean region Montes de Maria. A heavy guerilla presence in the area led to the creation of AUC bloc, the “Heroes of Montes de Maria” in 1997. The paramilitaries soon gained complete social and economic control of the region by murdering, torturing and displacing local farmers with the support of local state security forces.
Between 1995 and 2005, 54 massacres were reported in the three municipalities of San Onofre, Ovejas and El Carmen and, says government agency Accion Social, 117,097 people have been displaced there since the paramilitaries first arrived.
The AUC era ended with demobilisation in 2005. However, in 2008 El Espectacor reported a new invasion, of “strange personalities” in bulletproof Hummers.
A land grab ensued, in which desperate, indebted or frightened people were pressured into selling property. Abandoned land was snapped up by speculators.
Next came big business. What had previously been an area of smallholder and subsistence farming rapidly became dominated by large-scale agro-industrial enterprises ― dairy, timber, African palm and teak.
As the land became more concentrated in fewer hands, the landscape of Montes de Maria began to change. Most of Montes de Maria is now owned by just a handful of large businesses, among them Argos, which owns an estimated 12,500 hectares.
Argos claims it bought its land in San Onofre directly from the owners in 2005, after the paramilitaries had left. However, the CDM validation report indicates it first bought land in 2003 and continued to do so until 2008.
Camilo Abello, the vice-president of corporate affairs at Argos, claims the company entered “a completely peaceful zone. The Argos representative who made the purchases was able to go into the zone because there were no paramilitaries, there was no violence.”
“Juan Carlos”, a San Onofre local whose family sold their land to Argos, disagrees.
Juan Carlos’ family owned land close to the El Palmar ranch, headquarters of the infamous local AUC leader known as “Cadena” and site of a mass grave containing 72 tortured and mutilated bodies.
“We had to sell the land because we were in an unbearable situation,” he said, “Our lives were in danger.”
Juan Carlos said his family had to ask Cadena permission to sell to Argos. He said that although he knew of no formal contact between the AUC and Argos, paramilitaries visited the farm while the Argos representative was measuring the land.
Government statistics show that nearly 2000 people were forcibly displaced in San Onofre in 2005, more than in the previous two years. More than 1000 people were also displaced in 2006 and again in 2007.
Murder and displacement rates have dropped sharply since, but government risk reports on San Onofre show a renewed and growing paramilitary presence in the area.
In El Carmen de Bolivar and Ovejas, Argos bought land from the speculators who flooded the region in the wake of the paramilitaries.
One of the main sources was a group of powerful businesspeople and ranchers called the Amigos de Montes de Maria. Locals say they pressured campesinos into selling their land and evicted families from land bought for agro-industrial projects.
Testimonies collected for two NGO reports said that in at least one case Argos bought land acquired by Amigos de Montes de Maria from demobilised AUC members who had displaced its owners.
Residents also report how one alleged demobilised AUC member, Silvio Flores, went to work for the company after it bought the land he managed on behalf of a member of the group. Locals claim Flores then began pressuring other campesinos to sell; abusing and threatening them, killing their animals and burning down houses.
In the report, residents of Ovejas also describe being threatened by heavily armed camouflaged men who claimed to be the company’s security.
Argos denies any involvement in pressuring people to sell or buying from displaced people. “What we did was buy from people who wanted to sell,” said Camilo Abello, “without any coercion or pressure”.
Abello also denied any links to paramilitary groups and claimed the company does not use any type of security at the plantations. According to Abello, the company is helping the region by creating jobs.
“We don’t think that we are taking advantage, on the contrary we are supporting the reconstruction of the fabric of society, we are investing in a post-conflict zone,” he said.
The issue of land ownership in Montes de Maria has been complicated further by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’ new flagship policy ― the Victims and Land Restitution Law.
The law is designed to address the desperate plight of the estimated 3-5 million Colombians forced from their lands into city slums and squatter camps by conflict and violence. Its main focus is the restitution of lands to the displaced.
Critics of Argos claim the company is using the teak plantations and their CDM status to ward off the danger of losing their lands because of the Victims Law. If Argos faces claims on its Montes de Maria land, it can retain the plantations by exploiting a loophole in the restitution process.
The Victims Law says land will not be taken from companies that are using it for agro-industrial enterprises if the company can prove it bought the land in good faith. Instead, the authorities will try to negotiate a financial agreement between company and claimant.
Colombian Congressperson Ivan Cepeda campaigns on land rights and has raised the issue of Montes de Maria land grabs to Congress.
“The operation [Argos] has done in Montes de Maria is a clear example of how the government’s proposed restitution with the Victims Laws is going to work,” he said. “All of this is a big, sophisticated operation to legalise the lands they have robbed from the campesinos.”
Cepeda is scathing of Argos’ claims to have acted in good faith when it bought the lands.
“[Paramilitary violence] did not happen in isolation,” he said. “It is a fact of public knowledge and frankly it is illogical and incomprehensible that these businesses did not know which land they were dealing with and who had lived on that land.”
He added: “[Argos’ project is] a business that it is presenting as clean when in reality it is a business drenched in blood ― the blood of campesinos that were the victims of massacres.”
The company itself says it welcomes the Victims Law and would cooperate fully with any claims on land owned by the company.
In October, Cepeda wrote to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urging him to expel Argos from the CDM program and enforce the UN Global Compact, which commits associated companies to human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption principles.
Ban did not publicly respond, but the CDM board chair Martin Hession said responsibility for the matter lay with the Colombian government.
“Primarily, it is for (them) to resolve issues like this as they certified the sustainable development of the project,” he said in an interview with Point Carbon News.
A spokesperson for the Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development said, “Only the CDM Executive Board can take this decision [to remove Argos’ approval].”
Compared with the horrors of the turn of the century, life for the campesinos of Montes de Maria is quiet. But with growing tensions over landownership and the resurgence of paramilitarism, violence and conflict still lurk beneath the surface.
“We believe that it is not going to stay calm,” said “Andres”, a campesino from Ovejas.
“It is going to continue, we are going to see deaths here, we are going to see pressure, we are going to see evictions and displacement because they are going to try to reclaim the land like a debt and we are not going to let them.”
[The names of the campesinos interviewed for this article have been changed to protect their identities.]
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo has called for the total eradication of nuclear weapons.
Khoshroo reiterated Iran’s call during a UN conference aimed at creating a nuclear weapons ban treaty in New York on Tuesday.
“Iran, as a victim of chemical weapons, strongly feels the danger posed by the existence of weapons of mass destruction and is determined to engage actively in international diplomatic efforts to save humanity from the menace of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Khoshroo stressed that Iran is committed to its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, which include negotiations based on effective nuclear disarmament measures.
He added that several countries continue to ignore international calls and treaties for nuclear disarmament and even continue to increase their nuclear stockpiles. “They do not have political determination to abandon doctrines of nuclear deterrence and nuclear terror,” he went on to say.
Iran’s UN ambassador noted that boycotting the talks by many countries, including the US, shows that the world’s nuclear powers are by no means committed to the eradication of nuclear arms. Britain and France were also among the some 40 countries that did not join the talks.
“We note that prohibition of nuclear weapons must be accompanied by the elimination of such weapons. There can be no doubt that without complete abolition of nuclear weapons, there will be no absolute guarantee against the danger of nuclear war and the use of such weapons,” Khoshroo added.
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