Too Big to Prosecute? - Health Supreme NewsGrabs 11 December 2011

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Merck—Too Big to Prosecute?

There is a surprising reason why the [US] government won’t go after drug companies for serious crimes.

It is because government programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration would then be barred from doing business with them!

In 1999 the FDA approved Vioxx, a drug created by Merck and Co. to treat arthritis. Vioxx was pulled off the market in 2004 because evidence showed it greatly increased the risk of heart attack in the 25 million Americans who had taken the drug. Some 50,000 patients sued, and 27,000 of the plaintiffs received $4.85 billion in settlement of their claims.

Last week the Department of Justice announced that Merck has agreed to pay a $321 million criminal fine and plead guilty to one misdemeanor count of illegally introducing a drug into interstate commerce. Merck also is paying $426 million to the federal government and $202 million to state Medicaid agencies. Those payments will settle civil claims that its marketing caused doctors to prescribe and bill the government for Vioxx they otherwise would not have prescribed.

Please note that these settlements are for rather minor infractions—not for deliberately concealing the danger of a killing drug from patients, the medical community, and their investors. Despite the serious consequences of Merck’s actions, the government won’t prosecute them for any serious charges—because, if they did and won, it would mean they would have to stop doing business with Merck in the future! Federal law makes it illegal for Medicare and Medicaid to do business with “an excluded or debarred entity resulting from serious criminal charges.”

Well with banks too big to fail and pharmaceutical companies too big to prosecute, no wonder small is beautiful!

European Parliament Faces Major Test Over EU Health Claims

A European Commission standing committee agreed to pass a proposal for a regulation to the European Parliament that will, if approved, authorise European food suppliers to use 224 health claims linked to just 70 foods and ingredients, EU-wide. Additionally, around 2,500 other claims that did not receive positive opinions from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), will be banned. The European Parliament will now have 90 days to scrutinise the proposal before making its decision.

Alliance for Natural Health International (ANH-Intl), a non-governmental organisation campaigning for the right to natural health and consumer freedom of choice, believes that the European Parliament should reject the European Commission’s proposal in its present form.

Explaining ANH-Intl’s position, Dr Robert Verkerk, its executive and scientific director, said, “Ensuring consumers are not given false and misleading claims, the key objective of the regulation, is laudable. But removing the majority of claims, some 92% of those evaluated, on the basis of scientific methods that are derived from a pharmaceutical rather than nutritional science model is simply madness.”

Gut Flora, Intestinal Mucosa, Antibiotics and AIDS - Are Antibiotics killing the immune system?

New studies on the effects of today’s antibiotics on the intestinal mucosa – with a surface area of the size of a football pitch and where more than 70% of all immune cells are to be found – have shown that they lead to:

- Lasting changes to the composition of gut flora

- Transformations to the genetic structure of individual bacterial strains

- Increased colonization of fungi (Candida albicans)

- Reduced production of antibodies against foreign bacteria and fungi

- Decrease in production of energy in bacteria and in immune cells

- Reduced production of substances for the protective film on the gut mucosa...

Evidence-Based Medicine: Neither Evidence nor Good Medicine

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is the practice of treating individual patients based on the outcomes of huge medical trials. It is, currently the self-proclaimed gold standard for medical decision-making, and yet it is increasingly unpopular with clinicians. Their reservations reflect an intuitive understanding that something is wrong with its methodology. They are right to think this, for EBM breaks the laws of so many disciplines that it should not even be considered scientific. Indeed, from the viewpoint of a rational patient, the whole edifice is crumbling.

The assumption that EBM is good science is unsound from the start. Decision science and cybernetics (the science of communication and control) highlight the disturbing consequences. EBM fosters marginally effective treatments, based on population averages rather than individual need. Its mega-trials are incapable of finding the causes of disease, even for the most diligent medical researchers, yet they swallow up research funds. Worse, EBM cannot avoid exposing patients to health risks.

Book Review: The World According To Monsanto

Like the Fluoride Deception, The World According to Monsanto is deeply and viscerally disturbing, while if anything the potential for harm being discussed is far greater than that even from water fluoridation.

There is almost nothing at all that has been peer-reviewed published on the topic and that is the result of very specific regulatory decisions taken concerning GM foods. I will say again, there are hardly a handful of articles in the peer-reviewed literature looking at the health effects of any given GM food, let alone the incredibly complex issue in general.

As noted in the book, this is due to a curious decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulators to declare a-priori, and over the objection of FDA scientists, that GM foods are “substantially equivalent” to non genetically modified foods and thus can be released without any oversight, studies or regulation. The terrible absurdity of this position (and why there are no studies on the health effects of these new organisms) takes a moment to sink in and requires departure from the book review for a brief moment.

Vaccination and Renal Patients: A critical examination of assumed safety and effectiveness

Vaccines are designed to create a state of inflammation, and raise LDL and CRP levels. Why then would we give a vaccine to a patient who already has an inflammatory kidney or heart event? Why wouldn’t it be obvious that vaccination can make these conditions worse? With an understanding of the above and the absence of placebo-controlled, long-term follow up studies, we cannot reassure people that vaccines will not create or exacerbate an autoimmune disease. Vaccine-induced acute autoimmune reactions including Guillain-Barre syndrome, thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, vasculitis and nephritis are well-described in the medical literature and often listed on vaccine package inserts. If patients were followed longer and if doctors took a more accurate vaccine administration history (of the vaccines given before the new medical problems occur), more vaccine-associated damage would become obvious.

Australia: HPV Vaccine Victim Sues Merck

Naomi Snell, a 28-year-old woman in Melbourne, Australia, is leading a class-action civil lawsuit against drug maker Merck after suffering autoimmune and neurological complications following injections with the HPV vaccine, Gardasil.

After receiving the first of three doses of the vaccine, Naomi suffered convulsions, severe back and neck pain, and lost her ability to walk.

New Study Verifies Mercury In Flu Shots Is Toxic

The toxic effects of the mercury, also known in vaccines as Thimerosal, have once again been confirmed, this time by researchers from the University of Brazil. Marking the sixth major study in recent months to condemn the use of mercury in medicine, the new study reveals that mercury causes serious brain damage, and is linked to autism and other developmental diseases in children and Alzheimer’s disease in adults.

Dr. Jose Dorea and his colleagues conducted an extensive, peer-reviewed analysis of various studies and available information in major databases that address the effects of low-dose Thimerosal, or ethylmercury, on neural tissue and behavior. They found conclusively that Thimerosal accumulates in brain tissue, negatively affects brain development, and harms brain cells.

“Mercury is known to cause serious harm, especially to fetuses and children because of their smaller size,” said Lisa Sykes, president of the Coalition for Mercury-free Drugs (CoMeD), a non-profit group dedicated to removing mercury from medicine. “Why remove Thimerosal from pediatric vaccines only to inject it into pregnant women and children with recommended flu shots?

Warning: High Frequency

It’s January 1990, during the pioneer build-out of mobile phone service. A cell tower goes up 800 feet from the house of Alison Rall, in Mansfield, Ohio, where she and her husband run a 160-acre dairy farm. The first thing the Rall family notices is that the ducks on their land lay eggs that don’t hatch. That spring there are no ducklings.

By the fall of 1990, the cattle herd that pastures near the tower is sick. The animals are thin, their ribs are showing, their coats growing rough, and their behavior is weird – they’re agitated, nervous. Soon the cows are miscarrying, and so are the goats. Many of the animals that gestate are born deformed. There are goats with webbed necks, goats with front legs shorter than their rear legs. One calf in the womb has a tumor the size of a basketball, another carries a tumor three feet in diameter, big enough that he won’t pass through the birth canal.

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More information out there...

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Dr Mercola has a good health blog
Mike Adams publishes Natural News.
In the UK we have the One Click Group.
The Dr Rath Foundation campaigns for a New Healthcare System.
Natural health and nutrition on La Leva di Archimede
Food, Agriculture and more on the Organic Consumers Association site.

The individual is supreme and finds the way through intuition

posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday December 11 2011
updated on Sunday January 1 2012

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