HealthCare for All's topics - tribe.net

Insurance Company Rules!

2008-07-25T23:52:29Z

http://www.truemajority.org/HealthCareRules/

posted in HealthCare for All - 0 replies

"Detailed analysis of Obama's health care reform"

2008-07-20T01:57:49Z

still not sure what I think of this.. but I think its worth sharing...

http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/the_health_care_blog/2008/03/a-detailed-anal.html

comments?

posted in HealthCare for All - 8 replies

McCain's Healthcare Plan!

2008-07-05T22:37:27Z

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/87318/

posted in HealthCare for All - 4 replies

Teddy Leads the Charge..for HEALTH CARE!

2008-07-05T19:39:29Z

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/07/02/kennedy_leads_renewed_effort_on_universal_healthcare/

check this out...

YOU GO TEDDY...

God..with everything this poor man..is going thru personally... He still ..is a fearless Leader!

posted in HealthCare for All - 1 reply

High Fructose Corn Syrup

2008-07-03T00:53:18Z

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/79/4/537

this was posted in another tribe..but I thought it was important to post here too!

posted in HealthCare for All - 1 reply

The FDA Wants to Stop You

2008-06-17T11:16:54Z

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/the-fda-wants-to-stop-you_b_107162.html

The FDA Wants to Stop You from Protecting Yourself Against Drug Companies
Dr. Peter Breggin
Posted June 14, 2008

Suing a drug company is your only way as an individual citizen of protecting yourself again drug company malfeasance. It's the only way for you or your survivors to get justice or compensation if you have been injured or killed by drug company negligence. It should be a basic right under the law, and right now it is; but the FDA and the drug companies are on the verge of taking it away from you.

Without the right to sue pharmaceutical companies, not only will individuals fail to obtain justice, sealed company data about the harmful effects of drug will remain secret. That can become a public health problem when serious adverse reactions are hidden from view. The Wall Street Journal has released data indicating that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) may have manipulated research in order to hide that its antidepressant Paxil was causing people to attempt suicide. In the weekend edition of June 14-15, 2008, the newspaper described how the drug manipulated its figure to disguise the frequency of Paxil-induced suicide attempts.

I had known for years about GSK manipulating its data and had attempted without success to get the FDA to acknowledge and to examine the problem. I originally discovered the shenanigans eight years ago when I was examining the secret files of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) as a medical expert in a product liability suit against the company. California attorney Don Farber and my assistant Ian Goddard accompanied me.

The suit was brought by the family of a man named Lacuzong who had drowned himself and his two young children in a bathtub a few days after starting to take Paxil. He had no previous history of violence or suicidal thoughts.

As I went through the hundreds of boxes of materials packed into a large room in the GSK company headquarters, I came upon something remarkable. GSK had managed to hide that Paxil was causing an increased rate of suicide attempts compared to placebo. The company jacked up the number of suicide attempts in the placebo group, until it looked more dangerous to take placebo than to take Paxil. In reality, there were more suicide attempts among the patients taking Paxil.

I wrote a lengthy report charging the company with negligence in the development and marketing of Paxil and it was submitted to the court in 2001. Despite attorney Don Farber's best attempts, the court refused to unseal the data, even though it disclosed a public health threat of suicidal behavior induced by an antidepressant drug that was being prescribed to millions of unsuspecting citizens. The case was settled for a substantial amount of money without GSK admitting any negligence, and the smoking-gun files were kept secret. Nonetheless, I wrote about my findings and even told the FDA about the manipulated data when I addressed the agency's panel on two occasions at its 2004 hearings on antidepressant-induced suicide. I invited the FDA to make use of my knowledge about how GSK was fudging its research findings, but the agency ignored my offer and my written reports. This was not unusual. The FDA has always failed to utilize the otherwise unavailable information gathered by medical experts, and yet it will not carry out its own investigations.

A few years later I participated along with attorney Farber in another product liability suit against Paxil and GSK involving suicide. Again the case was settled to the satisfaction of the plaintiffs without GSK admitting any wrongdoing. But this time the new court made public my original Lacuzong report. As a result, in 2006 I was able to write three articles about my findings in the scientific journal, Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, and I put the articles along with the original Lacuzong product liability report on my website, www.breggin.com where they can still be found. The report and the articles describe many ways in which GSK managed to hide the truth that Paxil increases the risk of a person attempting suicide. This is the same information now released by TheWall Street Journal as a result of yet another expert's product liability case report that drew in part upon my original data.

To this day, the FDA continues to act as if drug company data can be trusted, including GSK's invalid manipulation of the Paxil suicide studies. The FDA has also ignored data that I discovered in product liability suits against Prozac and Eli Lilly. Eli Before Prozac went on the market, Lilly knew that patients taking their drug had a hugely increased rate of suicide attempts compared to similar or the same patients taking placebo. Even after the British medical journal BMJ released this data, the FDA has continued to ignore it.

In the meanwhile, I've continued to write about how GSK and Lilly have shamelessly distorted their research findings, and about how Paxil and Prozac cause mayhem, murder and suicide. The most vivid details involving dozens of cases can be found in my new book, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (2008).

Despite the flawed data, the FDA has finally warned that antidepressants like Paxil and Prozac (indeed, all of the newer antidepressants) cause suicidality. But the federal agency continues to serve drug company interests by limiting the risk to children, youth and young adults. That's simply nonsense. There can be no parsing of the data in that manner. If a drug-induced suicide risk shows up in short-term, heavily manipulated clinical trials, it's a serious signal that the drug will be a risk to a person of any age. And besides, the data itself is too flawed to make fine distinctions such as the age of the person at risk.

All of this critical information about drug safety, or the lack thereof, has come from product liability suits in which the courts have forced the drug companies to allow medical experts into their files to carry out an independent investigation. This November the U. S. Supreme Court will consider whether or not these suits should be permitted to continue. The drug companies and the FDA have joined together to argue that, once the FDA approves a drug, the manufacturer cannot be sued for its failures to disclose dangerous drug effects. This is called preemption. It should be called a political sleight of hand. It deprives the individual of his or her legal recourse, prevents physicians and scientists from learning the truth about harmful drug effects, and exposes the unwitting public to harm of potentially epidemic proportions.

Certainly drug companies have done a great deal to improve the health of people around the world. But they also have a bad record for hiding harmful and even lethal side effects of their products. If the Supreme Court supports preemption and hampers or stops product liability suits, it will be a bad day for people who use prescription drugs or prescription devices. That's pretty much all of us. Everybody's health will be put at risk when drug companies can no longer be monitored and scrutinized by product liability litigation.

posted in HealthCare for All - 1 reply

McCain Rated "Worst Senator in Congress for Children" for Voting Against Children's Health Care Bill

2008-06-11T18:32:35Z

The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.

"2007 Children's Defense Fund Action CouncilÂ® Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard," February 2008
http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/PageServer?pagename=act_learn_scorecard2007

For all the coverage of Senator John McCain's background, there are some important things you won't learn about him from the TV networks. His carefully crafted positive image relies on people not knowing this stuff—and you might be surprised by some of it.

For more information on McCain, please visit: http://pol.moveon.org/mccaintruth/

posted in HealthCare for All - 1 reply

Cuba approves free sex-change operations

2008-06-08T22:20:17Z

Cuba approves free sex-change operations

By WILL WEISSERT,
Associated Press Writer

HAVANA - Cuba has authorized sex-change operations and will offer them free for qualifying citizens, an official said Friday. The move is the latest in a series of changes implemented by President Raul Castro since he succeeded his elder brother, Fidel, in February. Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela, heads Cuba's National Center for Sex Education, which strongly backs the new policy.

Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer signed a resolution approving sex-change surgery, said an official at the center who spoke on condition of anonymity because the measure has not been formally published. The resolution will be posted on the Internet on Saturday, the official said.

The procedure would be available to Cubans for free as part of their country's health-care system.

The sex education center has said previously that 28 transsexual Cubans have asked to undergo the surgery and that Cuban doctors have trained with physicians from Belgium to prepare for the procedures.

According to the center, a clinic for transsexual health will be created to perform the procedures, but it was not clear when it will start operating.

posted in HealthCare for All - 1 reply

Complementary and Alternative Medicine

2008-06-06T22:53:25Z

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH NIH News
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) <
http://www.nccam.nih.gov>
For Immediate Release: Friday, June 6, 2008

CONTACT: NCCAM Press Office, 301-496-7790, <e-mail:nccampress@mail.nih.gov>

TIME TO TALK ABOUT CAM:
Health Care Providers and Patients Need To Ask and Tell

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM),
part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has launched Time to Talk,
an educational campaign to encourage patients -- particularly those age 50
or older -- and their health care providers to openly discuss the use of
complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). CAM is a group of diverse
medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not
presently considered to be part of conventional medicine, such as herbal
supplements, meditation, naturopathy, and acupuncture.

According to a national consumer survey conducted by NCCAM and AARP, almost
two-thirds of people age 50 or older are using some form of CAM, yet less
than one-third of these CAM users talk about it with their providers. The
NCCAM/AARP survey revealed some reasons why this doctor-patient dialogue
about CAM does not occur. The most common reasons survey respondents cited
were

-- That the physician never asked
-- They did not know they should discuss CAM
-- There was not enough time during the office visit.

More than one-half of respondents who had talked about CAM with their
physician said they (not their physician) initiated the CAM discussion. The
telephone survey was administered to a nationally representative group of
1,559 people age 50 or older.

"In an era of genomics and personalized medicine, we need to remember that
a key ingredient to good health care is the dialogue you, as a patient,
have with your providers," said Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., NIH Director. "And
talking about what CAM therapies you use is an important part of that
discussion. This is important for people of all ages."

The Time to Talk campaign is aimed at addressing the need for this dialogue
to help ensure safe, coordinated care among all conventional and CAM
therapies. Talking not only allows integrated care, it also minimizes risks
of interactions with a patient's conventional treatments. When patients
tell their providers about their CAM use, they can more effectively manage
their health. When providers ask their patients about CAM use, they can
ensure that they are fully informed and can help patients make wise health
care decisions.

"As frequent users of CAM, people 50 and older need to understand the
importance of discussing CAM use with their providers to ensure
coordinated, safe care. Simply put, it's time to talk," said Josephine P.
Briggs, M.D., NCCAM Director. "Giving your health care providers a full
picture of what you do to manage your health helps you stay in control."

NCCAM's Time to Talk campaign encourages patients to tell their providers
about CAM use and providers to ask about it by offering tools and resources
-- such as wallet cards, posters, and tip sheets -- all of which are
available for free on the NCCAM Web site <nccam.nih.gov> or can be ordered
from NCCAM's information Clearinghouse (1-888-644-6226). NCCAM is reaching
out to professional associations and consumer organizations to help educate
their members about the importance of this dialogue and the availability of
NCCAM's campaign materials. As the Federal government's lead agency for
scientific research on CAM, NCCAM is committed to educating both consumers
and health care providers about the importance of discussing CAM and
providing evidence-based information to help with health care decision
making.

PATIENT TIPS FOR DISCUSSING CAM WITH PROVIDERS

-- When completing patient history forms, be sure to include all therapies
and treatments you use. Make a list in advance.
-- Tell your health care providers about all therapies or treatments --
including over-the-counter and prescription medicines, as well as herbal
and dietary supplements.
-- Take control. Don't wait for your providers to ask about your CAM use.
-- If you are considering a new CAM therapy, ask your health care providers
about its safety, effectiveness, and possible interactions with medicines
(both prescription and over-the-counter).

PROVIDER TIPS FOR DISCUSSING CAM WITH PATIENTS

-- Include a question about CAM use on medical history forms.
-- Ask your patients to bring a list of all therapies they use, including
prescription, over-the-counter, herbal therapies, and other CAM practices.
-- Have your medical staff initiate the conversation.

For more information on Time to Talk, to order or download materials, or to
read the full NCCAM/AARP report on CAM use communication, please visit
<nccam.nih.gov/timetotalk/>.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine's mission is
to explore complementary and alternative medical practices in the context
of rigorous science, train CAM researchers, and disseminate authoritative
information to the public and professionals. For additional information,
call NCCAM's Clearinghouse toll-free at 1-888-644-6226, or visit
<nccam.nih.gov>.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) -- The Nation's Medical Research
Agency -- includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency
for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical
research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both
common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs,
visit <www.nih.gov>.

##

This NIH News Release is available online at:
<http://www.nih.gov/news/health/jun2008/nccam-06.htm>.

posted in HealthCare for All - 0 replies

We NEED 60 VOTES

2008-06-04T21:37:38Z

If health insurance were cheap, we could all buy it. If universal health care could get 60 votes in the Senate, we'd all have it. But these two imperatives -- the need to control costs and the need to attract the 60 Senate votes required to overcome a filibuster -- point in opposite directions. This is the central paradox of health reform.

The most intractable policy problem is not, fundamentally, the 47 million uninsured or the fact that insurers have a business model right out of Dickens. It's cost. In 2006, the average family policy cost $13,600. This is why one out of six Americans are uninsured; they can't afford the premiums. An October 2007 Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that more Americans were "very worried" about being priced out of their health insurance than feared losing their job, their house, or being in a terrorist attack. And with good reason: Premiums have gone up 98 percent since 2000. Wages have not.

Corporate America's outlook is similarly grim. Better Health Care Together, a health-reform coalition that includes Intel, Wal-Mart, and General Mills, recently issued a report, Health-Cost Crossroad: Why American Businesses Urgently Need Health Care Reform. The paper warns that "health care cost growth threatens businesses, workers, and the overall health of the American economy," and frets that "if trends continue, health benefit costs will exceed profits in Fortune 500 companies in 2008."

Likewise government. Absent reform, government health spending would be 37 percent of gross domestic product by 2050. (The entire federal government now consumes about 20 percent of GDP.) David Walker, the U.S comptroller general, warns that "we have been diagnosed with fiscal cancer, and we need to start treating it." At the Congressional Budget Office, the normally staid Peter Orszag gives an Al Gore-esque slideshow on the looming threat of health costs that risk bankrupting government finances.

cont'd http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/85947/

posted in HealthCare for All - 3 replies

Disaboom - online resource

2008-06-02T23:27:05Z

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977359847

Living Forward with Disaboom

By J. Glen House, M.D.

Recently I was asked to explain how I came up with the name for "Disaboom," an online resource that combines medical information, lifestyle articles, resources, and community for people with disabilities and those whose lives are touched by disability. (And yes, it's true, I've been asked that question roughly 5,000 times since we launched last summer!) http://www.disaboom.com/

My idea was that for many of us, disability changes everything we had thought we knew about our lives pre-disability. Who we were, what we would do in our lives, the nature of our relationships with those we love and who love us, what we could expect our bodies to do. In a way, a disabling illness or injury "blew up" our previous assumptions, and challenged us to create a new set of expectations: of ourselves, our friends and family, our communities. Thus the "boom" of disability.

But I also believe in the "boom" of positive energy that can accompany change, and wanted to incorporate that idea of explosive energy in our name to signify my belief in the importance of living forward in any way, in any moment, that we can.

As someone who sustained a C-7 spinal cord injury while skiing in my twenties, I know what it feels like to have that bomb go off in your life, blowing up everything that defined who you thought you were. And I know the effort and energy it takes to choose to live forward: going through medical school in a wheelchair was one of the most difficult things I could have chosen to do.

But I was determined to achieve my new goal, which was to become an expert medical practitioner working with rehab patients, and to find ways to help others live forward despite (or even because of) the disabilities they lived with. I love the work I do, and my "disability" has enabled me to contribute to the world in ways I never would have considered before I headed down that ski slope. So "Disaboom" is my way of acknowledging all of the ways a disability can both blow up and energize our lives.

What is Disaboom? I think of it as the resource I wish I'd had when I suffered that spinal cord injury 18 years ago. I was lucky enough to have a loving family and a great group of friends that assisted me in my recovery. However, my most invaluable resource was not healthcare officials or counselors, but two men with a condition similar to mine that I met by chance at my apartment complex. While we sat around the pool shooting the breeze, these men taught me the 'real' information I needed to know; such as what kind of wheelchairs were best, how to travel comfortably, the adjustments I'd need to make to have a family, and much, much, more.

Now that I've gone on to become a doctor, I have all the medical knowledge of the world at my fingertips. But, I still find I learn most from the everyday experiences of those with disabilities. Luckily, at disaboom.com, you don't have to choose between medical advice and real world advice, because the Disaboom team works hard every day to provide the best of both worlds.

In our Health section, you'll find comprehensive overviews of a wide variety of conditions. In our Living section, you can read stories about Paralympians, actors, musicians, and others who have refused to let their disabilities prevent them from achieving their dreams, as well as articles about disability-related legislation, caregiving, education issues, and much more. Lastly, in our Community section, members create content and conversation with the messages that mean the most to them. Our members include a broad range of nationalities, professions, and ages. But we also find that many of our most passionate members don't, in fact, have a disability themselves – they are instead caregivers, doctors, and friends or relatives who want to understand and support those they care about.

Bottom line for me: The word 'disability' may apply to us, but it will never define us. We decide who we are, and what lives we will create. My goal with disaboom.com has been to provide the information, community, and connection that will enable people to choose the life path that supports their new goals and dreams – and determine in what way they will choose to live forward.

posted in HealthCare for All - 0 replies

Depression on PBS

2008-06-01T02:55:42Z

Have you seen the documentary on Depression currently being aired on PBS? I watched last night and was appalled. Their first line of defense against cognitive/behavioral issues was these dangerous drugs, which they admitted they don't really understand but just experiment patient by patient taking advantage of confusion and misery. They even touted electroshock. Yet, when we saw the results in the lives of the people whose stories they were following, the best result was for a young black man who refused to take drugs and transformed his life by engaging with an older woman activist and working for a community support group, along with talk therapy to work out his early life traumas and resultant ptsd. The white well-off parents of depressed teens talked about how they hated to send their kids away for treatment and now the kids are back home and doing better on daily drug cocktails, but you can see what was destroying these kids was lack of intimacy in their lives so they always felt they had to play a role to be acceptable. Nothing at all was mentioned about complementary or alternative therapies, such as expressive therapies, though it was pointed out that regular exercise helps keep depression at bay. What they did keep emphasizing: "This is a disease and therefore treatable." I may have it wrong, but I didn't know there was treatement for every disease, even postulating these basically faulty software issues to be "disease", but I digress. Of course, the major point was that poppa Psychiatric Association knows best, and what we know is you gotta take your medicines, no matter what the ill-effects, because we have more medicines for those.

posted in HealthCare for All - 2 replies

Our Daily Meds

2008-05-17T22:39:21Z

go to site for transcript and video

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05162008/watch2.html

Melody Petersen talks with Bill Moyers about her new book OUR DAILY MEDS, and how drug companies market medication.

May 16, 2008

Pharmaceutical companies were given a stern reprimand on May 8th in a hearing before U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce investigative panel. Rep. Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, criticized what he considers misleading television commercials and suggested that Congress should consider restricting direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising to protect consumers.
DTC advertising is a method Melody Petersen knows well. In her newest book, OUR DAILY MEDS: HOW THE PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES TRANSFORMED THEMSELVES INTO SLICK MARKETING MACHINES AND HOOKED THE NATION ON PRESCRIPTION DRUGS, she describes drugmakers as an industry whose core drive is profit, and one that has insinuated itself, through money, into every level of drug research.

It is a view she came to gradually, reporting for four years on the pharmaceutical companies for THE NEW YORK TIMES. As she tells Bill Moyers:

I actually thought that they were a lot about science. That's what they tell the public. They are all about science and discovering new drugs. But as I started to follow their daily activities and talk to executives, I learned that really it was marketing that drove them.
According to Petersen, the rewards have been large. America has become the top consumer of prescription drugs in the world, with nearly 65% of the population on physician-prescribed medication. In 2005, Americans spent $250 billion dollars on such drugs. This consumption made pharmaceuticals the most profitable business sector in America from 1995-2002.

>>Read a brief history of drug advertising.

Petersen argues in OUR DAILY MEDS that drugmakers have, for the most part, not plowed these profits back into life-saving drugs, but rather into influencing the science of medicine:

With their hoards of cash, the companies have readily handed money to patient groups, hospitals, universities, medical schools, physician societies, government agencies, and just about any organization they want on their side. [...] The industry's cash-filled coffers have given it a stranglehold on medical science.
The problem, according to Petersen, is not that medicine is bad, it's that the drug industry has lost its way.

We've come to a time when decisions on how to treat a disease have as great a chance of being hatched in a corporate marketing department as by a group of independent doctors working to improve the public's health. In too many, cases, whether a medicine helps or harms a patient has become secondary to how much it will bring shareholders in profits.
>>Learn how to be drug smart

Melody Petersen
Melody Petersen wrote about the pharmaceutical industry for four years as a reporter for THE NEW YORK TIMES. She won a Gerald Loeb Award in 1997, one of the highest awards for business journalism.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/03/AR2008040303377_pf.html
Big Pharma's Golden Eggs
Marketing, not research, is now the core of the drug industry.

Reviewed by Shannon Brownlee
Sunday, April 6, 2008; BW03

OUR DAILY MEDS

How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs

By Melody Petersen

Farrar Straus Giroux. 432 pp. $26

Once upon a time there was an industry called pharma that was interested in doing well and doing good. Run by doctors and chemists, drug companies employed battalions of researchers whose scientific efforts resulted by mid-century in a flood of life-saving drugs, including antibiotics, vaccines, tranquilizers, antihistamines and steroids. As George Merck, president of the company founded by his father, put it in 1950, "We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow. . . ."

And how. Today, of course, drug companies are hugely profitable enterprises and the darlings of both Wall Street and K Street, having spent more on lobbying than any other industry between 1998 and 2004. Their transformation from small chemical manufacturers to marketing machines with sidelines in drug development is owed in large measure to blockbuster drugs. This is the term for any medication that generates more than $1 billion in sales annually. Such drugs as Nexium, Celebrex, Claritin and, of course, Viagra, whose brand names are household words, became blockbusters not because they save lives, or even because they are necessarily more effective than other remedies, but because their manufacturers employ some of the cleverest marketing on the planet.

Take the selling of Zantac, an anti-ulcer drug that came on the market in 1983 and paved the way for the blockbuster drugs that followed. First, Glaxo priced its new drug above its competitor, Tagamet -- a bold move, Melody Petersen writes in Our Daily Meds, that "like an underweight boxer trying to fool the prizefighter with his swagger . . . implied that Zantac was better." In reality, Zantac was a "me-too" drug, chemically almost identical to Tagamet and no more effective.

But it was the second half of Glaxo's strategy that was truly dazzling. Rather than plowing the revenue from Zantac back into R&D, as was then customary in the drug business, the company decided to invest in marketing the daylights out of its drug. Glaxo funded studies intended to show Zantac's superiority. It hired a battalion of sales reps, who flogged the drug relentlessly to doctors. Most brilliant of all, the company pioneered a ploy now used routinely in pharmaceutical marketing: It "condition branded" Zantac.

Glaxo's novel idea was to link its drug to the relief of a common but minor condition, then make consumers and doctors worry that the condition was a sign of a more worrisome disease. In this case, the minor condition was old-fashioned heartburn. Glaxo warned that heartburn was a sign of chronic reflux, which the company dubbed Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease, or GERD. Soon, millions of Americans were saying goodbye plop plop, fizz fizz, hello Zantac, an expensive prescription drug they started taking every day to ward off GERD, even though most episodes of reflux go away without treatment, and most heartburn can be relieved with an over-the-counter remedy.

Glaxo's strategy has become standard operating procedure in the pharmaceutical industry. Companies now routinely condition brand their drugs not only by linking minor symptoms to real diseases but sometimes by making up diseases out of whole cloth. Pharmacia marketed a drug named Detrol for a previously unknown condition dubbed "overactive bladder." Forrest Laboratories ran a study to see if its antidepressant Celexa could be used to treat "compulsive shopping disorder," a mental illness that has yet to be recognized by psychiatrists, but that some husbands and wives undoubtedly would like to invoke when confronted with a maxed out credit card.

Drug makers also have flooded the market with me-too drugs. We don't have just one anti-cholesterol medication, we have more than 10 to choose from. Nearly a dozen antidepressants act on the same neurotransmitters in the brain, and three different drugs target erectile dysfunction. That's not to say that multiple versions of a drug are necessarily a bad thing. Having several drugs does introduce some price competition, though not much, and certain drugs often work better for some people than for others. But as Petersen argues, there's a downside to this business model.

For one thing, in pursuing blockbusters, drug makers are neglecting research that could help people with less profitable diseases. Malaria continues to be a scourge of the third world, but patients with diseases that are rare in the United States get short shrift from the drug industry. Even antibiotics are in short supply in the industry's development pipelines, largely because no amount of creative marketing can lift an antibiotic to blockbuster status. An antibiotic might well save your life, but unlike Zantac or Lipitor or Claritin, it doesn't need to be taken for years on end, day in, day out. Even more troubling, the flow of truly innovative drugs has slowed to a trickle, at least in part because companies that were once science-driven now spend twice as much on marketing existing drugs as they do on developing new ones.

Worst of all, the marketing has had a demonstrably negative effect on many patients. Merck's painkiller Vioxx, which was heavily advertised for a wide variety of ailments, is estimated to have killed as many as 60,000 people before the company withdrew it from sale in 2004. "It's a Vietnam," the sister of one deceased Vioxx user told Petersen. Unnecessary drugs and dangerous interactions between drugs are a mounting problem, as one in six Americans now takes three or more drugs per day; many patients find themselves adding prescriptions to combat the side effects of other prescriptions. Petersen tells the story of a 5-year-old who was put on the stimulant Ritalin, which triggered seizures. His doctors were considering brain surgery until he was taken off the drug and the seizures stopped.

For those who know the history of drug marketing, much of this book will be familiar. Petersen draws on her years as a crackerjack business reporter at the New York Times, where her enterprising stories were eagerly awaited by those who follow the drug makers. She occasionally appears to forget that for all their hype and hucksterism, drug companies also produce many truly beneficial products. And in places, Our Daily Meds reads like MTV on paper, with too many jump-cuts and abrupt transitions from anecdote to anecdote without enough critical analysis. But for general readers, this is a fascinating introduction to one of the most powerful industries of our time.

It's hard to imagine what the endgame will be for the era of the blockbuster drug. Having built up Wall Street's thirst for the profits that blockbusters bring, drug makers are now in a sticky spot. Without investing more in R&D, companies don't have much hope of finding new blockbusters. But no company can abandon its marketing strategy and put its money back into research without jeopardizing the sales of its current drugs. Some drug company analysts foresee a day when the federal government will fund the clinical research that's necessary to get drugs approved, and companies will be reduced to manufacturing and selling them.

That might or might not be a good idea, but until pharma kicks its marketing habit, Petersen offers patients useful suggestions for avoiding harm. She recommends that before we head to the pharmacy, we ask our doctors if there is valid evidence that patients like us will benefit from taking a particular medication. We should always inquire about side effects. Better yet, we ought to be looking for ways to improve our health without a prescription. Â·

Shannon Brownlee is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of "Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer."

posted in HealthCare for All - 0 replies

Antipsychotic Set For Approval For Depression, Anxiety Has Big Problems

2008-05-13T18:49:33Z

http://www.furiousseasons.com/

Antipsychotic Set For Approval For Depression, Anxiety Has Big Problems

Most of you are well aware that AstraZeneca has been trotting out data--not especially impressive data BTW--touting its antipsychotic Seroquel as a treatment for depression and generalized anxiety disorder. The drug is already approved for treating schizophrenia, mania in bipolar disorder and bipolar depression. It is widely used off label for treating sleep problems, agitation, anxiety, depression, public speaking anxiety (bring back Toastmasters!), ADHD and so on. It rings up about $4 billion a year in sales and AZ is determined to wring every nickel possible out of this molecule, especially since it's not a particularly good performer in treating schizophrenia as the 2005 CATIE study showed.

What strikes me as strange is how the media has largely given the drug's many well-known problems a free pass and has instead largely parroted AZ's press spin in announcing the depression and anxiety data the company presented at the APA on Monday. Here's an example from WebMD.com wherein the "reporter" (or would that be copywriter?) details the new data on the drug and ignores its propensity to induce rapid weight gain in patients and cause diabetes and all sorts of fun extra pyramidal symptoms as well as daytime somnolence. Instead, she sticks to the AZ script.

Why does that piss me off? First, a lot of people read WebMD.com. It is the number 34 website in the world, according to quantcast.com, as it's read by an estimated 19 million unique readers a month. Regardless of what one thinks of websites like WebMD (I think it largely blows), it's clear that the public is paying attention to the site's prose. The public certainly deserves more complete information about any drug the site writes about. Second, the Seroquel article on WebMD was allegedly reviewed by a doctor. One has to wonder precisely what kind of doctor would let pass an article that doesn't even offer the most basic set of information about the drug, especially since Seroquel's problems are well documented. Third, you also have to wonder what kind of media ethics and editorial oversight are in use at the company if that's the kind of prose they feel compelled to offer the public.

In short, WebMD is not being fair to the experiences of the many millions of people who have taken this drug and run into problems on it. And, fairness much less objectivity is supposed to be the hallmark of the mainstream media and WebMD clearly flunks that test. You can read my own writing about this drug here. While I don't always acknowledge that some people do derive benefits from the drug, no one really expects me to since blogs are supposed to be the metaphorical equivalent of an old school newspaper column and they are not required to be as fair-seeming.

What blows my little mind is that WebMD makes no mention of the fact that AZ faces a large class action lawsuit in federal court in Florida over its handling of the drug and that the drug is sometimes converted into a drug of abuse by crushing it and snorting it or by melting it down with cocaine and shooting it (a Q-ball). The drug already has some catchy street names such as Susie Q and Quell and is a favorite of prisoners. For WebMD to pretend that such information wouldn't be important to the casual reader looking for information on the drug is galling. This is basic stuff that most any responsible journalist would find a way to slide into an article on the drug, pro or con.

And it's websites like WebMD that have helped drive thousands of journalists out of their jobs. Keep that in mind every time you read its prose. These are the clowns driving hardworking people out of their jobs and they are doing a bad job of replacing them. Personally, I trust WebMD about as much as I'd trust adders fanged, to steal from Shakespeare. The article doesn't even mention that the "studies" it cites are in fact unpublished (meaning the data has technically not passed peer review yet) and that the data it pimped at the APA is little more than averages of each arm of the placebo controlled studies, not a report of what percentage of patients in which arm saw how much benefit from the drug. That's just lame.

The sad fact is that I get dozens of hits to this site each week from readers searching for information on "shooting seroquel," "snorting seroquel," "Susie Q" and the like. Teens have been arrested around the country for dealing the drug.

And that's just really strange for a drug that is on the verge of being approved to treat depression and anxiety. And it's strange that the mainstream media--online and offline--hasn't noticed. Weirder still: I've recently begun to get stray hits from people searching for information about "snorting Abilify." I kid you not.

Or am I wrong to be bothered by any of this?

Posted by Philip Dawdy

posted in HealthCare for All - 5 replies

Bush's Flawed Health Care Policies

2008-05-13T15:34:16Z

Despite this healthy forecast, HDHPs and HSAs aren't the answer to America's health care problems. As I've noted in the past, consumer-driven health plans require a lot of out-of-pocket spending (even in the Indiana Medicaid/HSA program, the annual deductible is a not-cheap $1,100). Big expenses at the point of service encourage patients to forego necessary care -- including patients with chronic conditions, who often end up needing more costly and extensive catastrophic care down the line. With HDHPs, patients save now, and pay -- a lot -- later.

HDHPs and HSAs also do little for the uninsured, since most families without health insurance are low-income won't be able to afford health coverage that asks them to pay $4,000 out of pocket before their insurance kicks in. (In 2005, $4,000 was the average HDHP deductible for a family). No wonder EBRI found that in 2007 only 7 percent of people enrolled in HDHP with HSAs were uninsured before they got their current plan, and just 15 percent of those in HDHPs without HSAs had no insurance before enrolling.

Asking people to pay more is not the way to expand health insurance to those without it -- especially since the higher out-of-pocket spending of HDHPs is often coupled with increasingly expensive premiums. In April, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported the story of John Gruber, a 63 year-old man who has an HDHP/HSA plan and who has continually seen his health care costs increase. Even though Gruber's medical bills have never exceeded his deductible, his insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield upped his monthly premium from $337.50 a month to $470.50 in 2007, a 39 percent increase. His annual deductible also increased from $3,500 in '04 to $4,100 in '07.

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/85193/?page=entire

posted in HealthCare for All - 3 replies

An Uninsured Doctor in the House

2008-05-13T02:34:49Z

One of the first things U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen (D–Wisc.) did when he took office last year was to nix his congressional health care coverage. The move stunned a human resources staffer, who, the lawmaker says, looked at him as though he were insane.

"I'll respectfully decline until you can make that same offer for all of my constituents," he says he told her, explaining his decision to turn down what many say is the Cadillac of U.S. health plans.

Kagen, 58, is now one of millions of Americans, including at least nine million children, without health insurance. "I have absolutely no health coverage at all," he told ScientificAmerican.com during a recent interview. "I have no health conditions and am pretty darn healthy." And if he gets sick? "I'd be just like the 47 [million] to 50 million American citizens who don't have coverage," he says, "and I'd have to negotiate with hospitals and doctors for the best-priced coverage."

Until he took office, Kagen, a successful allergist with offices in Appleton and Green Bay, was on the other side of such negotiations. He is now one of nine physicians who traded in their stethoscopes for a House seat—and the only member of Congress to refuse coverage.

Kagen's seemingly brazen act was part of his health care reform strategy. In February he introduced the "No Discrimination in Health Insurance Act of 2008" (H.R. 5449), which would bar insurance companies from hiking rates or denying coverage for preexisting medical conditions. "Nowhere in the Constitution does it say you have a protected right to health care," he says. "But the reverse is more important. You can't be discriminated against because of the color of your skin or your sex, nor because of diseases such as hypertension or diabetes."

His goal: to make health insurance affordable for everyone—and make sure that nobody is left out in the cold. He feels it is crucial to have a federal standard on the books to replace the patchwork of state insurance regulations. "Simply put, if you're a citizen, you're in," he says. "We have federal standards in America for everything ... except the one thing we value most, and that is our health."

In an effort to keep a lid on soaring insurance premiums, Kagen's proposal calls for insurance companies to disclose all of their rates. Such a move, he says, would prevent patients from being hit with hidden costs and stir competition that would, theoretically, drive down prices. He says his own analysis shows that the combination of competition and blanket eligibility could cut people's insurance expenses by as much as 20 percent.

But that's still too high a tab for many financially strapped U.S. families. The question is: How are those people going to foot the bill? Not sure, says Kagen, whose legislation does not propose setting aside any federal funds. The key reason, he says, is that there are no reliable stats on such costs.

Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., pushing for affordable health care for all Americans, calls the measure "a step in the right direction," but notes that ultimately the feds need "to extend public programs or provide subsidies, such as refundable tax credits or some other means" to have truly universal health coverage.

But that doesn't mean that the insured will have to swallow the costs, Kagen says. In fact, he insists that his legislation would actually drive down premiums for everyone, noting that a major reason they are so pricey is that hospitals and doctors charge the insured artificially inflated rates to cover the unpaid bills of the uninsured. There is "a hidden health care tax within every product and every service in America, because of today's discriminatory health care system," he says.

Many, from Kagen to insurance groups, say that will change when everyone has access to coverage. America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a Washington, D.C.-based insurance trade group, has proposed another way to make sure that individuals with preexisting conditions are eligible for reasonable rates. Under its plan, insurers would voluntarily commit to offer those who did not qualify for standard insurance policies the option of buying one at a rate no more than one and a half times the price of traditional packages.

The federal government would still have to fork over funds for those unable to come up with the cost of a premium. But AHIP's Mohit Ghose says universal health coverage would save money in the long run. He says AHIP estimates that it currently costs the government and the insured roughly $50 billion annually to make up for the deficits the uninsured. In contrast, he says, it would cost around $30 billion a year—a whopping $20 billion savings—to cover all Americans under its package.

Ghose says that AHIP does not support Kagen's bill, because it has its own proposal it would like to see enacted. But, he says, the group backs the emergence of ideas "so we can dissect them and work together to get more Americans covered."

Kagen's measure has 17 co-sponsors (all Democrats) and, in addition to Families USA, enjoys the backing of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. He acknowledges that it doesn't have a shot at becoming law under the Bush administration, but says he'll boost efforts for passage once the new president takes office in January. Kagen says he hopes that either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton—whoever nabs the Democratic nod—will be that person, noting that they both have "excellent" health care proposals.

In the meantime, he says, "I hope to be the doctor in the House who helps determine what it is that people need"—at least on the health care front.

posted in HealthCare for All - 3 replies

Bush Signs Bill to Take All Newborns' DNA

2008-05-11T05:38:41Z

http://www.infowars.com/?p=1896
Bush Signs Bill To Take All Newborns’ DNA

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Friday, May 2, 2008

President Bush last week signed into law a bill which will see the federal government begin to screen the DNA of all newborn babies in the U.S. within six months, a move critics have described as the first step towards the establishment of a national DNA database.

Described as a "national contingency plan" the justification for the new law S. 1858, known as The Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007, is that it represents preparation for any sort of "public health emergency."

The bill states that the federal government should "continue to carry out, coordinate, and expand research in newborn screening" and "maintain a central clearinghouse of current information on newborn screening… ensuring that the clearinghouse is available on the Internet and is updated at least quarterly".

Sections of the bill also make it clear that DNA may be used in genetic experiments and tests.

Read the full bill here.

One health care expert and prominent critic of DNA screening is Twila Brase, president of the Citizens’ Council on Health Care who has written a detailed analysis (PDF) of the new law in which she warns that it represents the first program of populationwide genetic testing.

Brase states that S.1858 and H.R. 3825, the House version of the bill, will:

• Establish a national list of genetic conditions for which newborns and children are to be tested.

• Establish protocols for the linking and sharing of genetic test results nationwide.

• Build surveillance systems for tracking the health status and health outcomes of individuals diagnosed at birth with a genetic defect or trait.

• Use the newborn screening program as an opportunity for government agencies to identify, list, and study "secondary conditions" of individuals and their families.

• Subject citizens to genetic research without their knowledge or consent.

"Soon, under this bill, the DNA of all citizens will be housed in government genomic biobanks and considered governmental property for government research," Brase writes. "The DNA taken at birth from every citizen is essentially owned by the government, and every citizen becomes a potential subject of government-sponsored genetic research."

"The public is clueless. S. 1858 imposes a federal agenda of DNA databanking and population-wide genetic research. It does not require consent and there are no requirements to fully inform parents about the warehousing of their child’s DNA for the purpose of genetic research."

In a previous report we outlined the consequences of the already existing DNA warehousing operation in Minnesota, a program that the Citizens’ Council on Health Care has been following closely for a number of years.

Ms. Brase explained in a statement last month that state Health Department officials are now seeking exemption for the so called "DNA Warehouse" from Minnesota privacy law. This would enable state officials to continue to take the DNA of newborn infants without consent, which would also set the precedent for nationwide policy on DNA screening.

DNA of newborns has already been harvested, tested, stored and experimented with nationwide.

The National Conference of State Legislatures lists for all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, the various statutes or regulatory provisions under which newborns’ DNA is already being collected.

In addition, all 50 states are now routinely providing these results to the Department of Homeland Security.

The Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007 merely establishes this practice within the law.

Another vocal critic of bill S. 1858 is Texas Congressman Ron Paul who made the following comments before the U.S. House of Representatives:

"I cannot support legislation, no matter how much I sympathize with the legislation’s stated goals, that exceed the Constitutional limitations on federal power or in any way threatens the liberty of the American people. Since S. 1858 violates the Constitution, and may have untended consequences that will weaken the American health care system and further erode medical privacy, I must oppose it."

Paul, a medical doctor himself continued, "S. 1858 gives the federal bureaucracy the authority to develop a model newborn screening program. Madame Speaker the federal government lacks both the constitutional authority and the competence to develop a newborn screening program adequate for a nation as large and diverse as the United States. …"

"Those of us in the medical profession should be particularly concerned about policies allowing government officials and state-favored interests to access our medical records without our consent … My review of S. 1858 indicates the drafters of the legislation made no effort to ensure these newborn screening programs do not violate the privacy rights of parents and children," Paul continued.

"In fact, by directing federal bureaucrats to create a contingency plan for newborn screening in the event of a ‘public health’ disaster, this bill may lead to further erosions of medical privacy. As recent history so eloquently illustrates, politicians are more than willing to take, and people are more than willing to cede, liberty during times of ‘emergency," he concluded.

© 2008 Alex Jones

posted in HealthCare for All - 1 reply

Divided We Fail...

2008-05-09T16:27:26Z

http://www.aarp.org/issues/dividedwefail/

here is a pretty great website..to get involved in this movement towards..a healthcare system ..for all!

posted in HealthCare for All - 3 replies

American's longevity..erroding..

2008-05-05T22:24:41Z

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/84396/

Life expectancy is a pretty simple concept: it's an estimation of how long the average person lives. Anyone can understand that. So how is this for a compelling data point: if you look at life expectancy in nations around the globe, you'll find that over the past 20 years, the U.S. has sunk from ranking No. 11 to ranking No. 42. In other words, a baby born in 2004 in any one of 41 other countries can expect to live longer than his or her American counterpart.

posted in HealthCare for All - 0 replies

Sick Around the World

2008-04-25T15:29:44Z

I was shocked -- and that's not easy to do.

We know the healthcare systems of industrialized nations leave ours behind. Just how far they leave us behind is a surprise.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/

posted in HealthCare for All - 0 replies

Ernest Madu:1st rate healthcare in 3rd world countries

2008-04-25T15:22:38Z

for 1/10th of the price.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/249

Why can't we do it here?

posted in HealthCare for All - 7 replies

Join the “Cool Earth Party” tribe

2008-04-23T17:49:50Z

Join the “Cool Earth Party” tribe

The Democrats and Republicans are the paid agents of the oil, armament, and insurance industries. Their continued rule of America will assure a future of more imperialist war, a healthcare system that doesn't work, and no meaningful action on global warming (the single biggest threat to the future of humanity and a healthy planet).

The Cool Earth Party is being established on the principles of revolutionary democratic socialism. We call for an end to the dictatorial power of the wealthy through the nationalization of major industries and for the establishment of a planned economy run to meet human and environmental needs. This socialist society must be established within the framework of full democratic freedoms and multi-party proportional democracy. To be truly Democratic all parties running in elections will be legally guaranteed equal time in the media, big campaign spending will be outlawed, and electronic voting machines (which are presently used to rig American elections) will be eliminated.

Upon taking power the Cool Earth Party will establish a system of socialized medicine for the United States, end all U.S. military occupations of other countries, end U.S. military aid to repressive governments, and nationalize the auto and energy industries to carry out immediate emergency measures to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

posted in HealthCare for All - 2 replies

found this on the side bar

2008-04-23T15:10:32Z

thought you folks would be interested

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/

posted in HealthCare for All - 1 reply

Improper "Big Pharma" Influence in Medicine is VERIFIED!

2008-04-18T18:27:46Z

Improper "Big Pharma" Influence in Medicine is VERIFIED!

This is a BIG step in the right direction for health care in the USA! It has been no secret, but no one was talking about it since the monetary benefits that many doctors are receiving from these companies made this unlikely. I mean - if you were the type to only care about money (which is why many become doctors in the first place), wouldn't you want a free trip to Cancun by putting other people on basically unproven and even harmful chemical substances?

Catherine D. De Angelis, MD, MPH and Phil B. Fontanarosa, MD, MBA have submitted this timely (and likely unwelcome) article into the April 16, 2008 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), entitled "Impugning the Integrity of Medical Science - the Adverse Effects of Industry Influence."

What is even more awesome is that this was broadcast on the same day on the morning edition of Talk Radio's "Paul Harvey" show, so this information has come to the attention of many Americans today!

I am happy to see that some doctors do in fact have some integrity. This may also be an opening for safer alternative methods to be approved by the AMA for doctors to use and not feel like they will have their medical licensing taken away if they recommend a proven herbal remedy (as an example) instead of the new designer drugs of the day. I hope this allows them the courage to step forward now that the door has been opened!

We can help by showing this to our medical providers (if you have those) this article, and telling them about this, they can maybe take additional steps as doctors to become more able to practice alternative and natural techniques without risking their careers. Also, tell your friends in any way you can, so that they can demand alternative therapies be implemented or they will go elsewhere now that this article ought to free up other practitioners to use these methods. This also provides some validation for Alternative practitioners who have known about these dangers all along. Health care freedom (and responsibility) is up to all of us - please spread the message!

jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/repri...99/15/1833 (download in case they remove!)
jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/conte...82/17/1609

posted in HealthCare for All - 1 reply

THE DELUSION OF BONE DRUGS

2008-04-17T16:26:00Z

THE DELUSION OF BONE DRUGS

By Byron J. Richards, CCN

January 15, 2008

NewsWithViews.com

Women across the country are being duped to consume billions of dollars worth of bone poisons under the false pretense that if they take them long enough they will not develop osteoporosis. Even the FDA is becoming alarmed by the side effects of these bone drugs – a rather stunning event considering the FDA hardly ever acts to cast suspicion on the propaganda put out by a Big Pharma blockbuster class of drugs being slickly marketed for prevention.

The drugs in question are known as bisphosphonates. The biggest selling drug in this class is called Fosamax, made by Merck – the very same company that killed thousands of Americans with Vioxx while hiding cardiovascular risks from the FDA and patients. Does anyone trust them? Other commonly recognized names are Actonel (Proctor and Gamble) and Boniva (Roche and GlaxoSmithKline). Collectively these drugs had $4.3 billion in U.S. sales during 2006 (27 million prescriptions).

A recent flood of negative information about these drugs is finally coming to light, including an alarming FDA pain warning, the risk for atrial fibrillation, the numerous cases of rotting jaw bones, and a new major study that concludes after 15 years of widespread use there is not enough science to show if the medications are safe or effective. Sure bone health is extremely important; however, taking bisphosphonate bone drugs does not produce stronger or healthier bones – quite to the contrary.

The FDA Warning – Severe Pain from Bone Drugs

On Monday, January 7, 2008, the FDA issued a warning on bisphosphonate drugs saying that there is a possibility of “severe and sometimes incapacitating bone, joint, and/or muscle (musculoskeletal) pain in patients taking bisphosphonates.” The FDA explained that the pain “may occur within days, months, or years after starting bisphosphonates. Some patients have reported complete relief of symptoms after discontinuing the bisphosphonate, whereas others have reported slow or incomplete resolution.”

Translated to English this means that any woman experiencing any bone, joint, or muscle pain of any kind since starting a bisphosphonate bone drug, even if the pain started several years after first taking the drug, should work with her prescribing physician to immediately discontinue use of the drug to see if the pain stops or gets better. Of course, taking statins to lower cholesterol can also cause severe muscle pain and many women are on both drugs – a double whammy.

Think about it for a minute – how could a drug that is supposed to be good for bones cause incapacitating bone pain in anyone?

Since the FDA has trouble understanding how the drugs it has approved behave in the human body, they had no explanation as to why bone drugs were causing such horrendous pain. Thus, I will be happy to explain the nature of the problem.

Bisphosphonates are Highly Inflammatory Drugs

Bisphosphonates are a caustic chemical. They damage any human tissue they come in contact with. They have been proven to induce inflammation by direct contact with body surfaces and they have been proven to set in motion a chain reaction of inflammatory events. Indeed, one way they work is by poisoning to death a type of bone cell known as an osteoclast. The medical profession thinks it is a good idea to poison osteoclasts because there are too many of them in people with accelerated bone loss. Never do they bother asking why there are too many and treat the source of the problem. Even though osteoclasts are a normal bone cell required for healthy bone metabolism, the pushers of these poisons have come up with an excuse to perform a type of chemotherapy on bone cells, often in the name of preventive health!

It has been proven beyond any doubt that these drugs cause swollen bone due to their highly inflammatory nature. In fact, the unreliable and inaccurate X-Ray-generated pictures doctors claim are better bone density after a person has been taking these drugs for a while are actually pictures of swollen and inflamed bone that is being chaotically disorganized and weakened by these drugs. A sprained ankle looks bigger than a normal ankle, so does a sprained bone.

It is worth noting that in addition to the fact the pictures are of swollen bones, the pictures themselves are never an accurate measure of true bone density in any person. These bone pictures are referred to as Dual energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA). The flaws include a huge variance in human operator skill and the inability of the machine to judge bone depth, thus all pictures are guesses anyway. The best-guess reference charts are easily skewed by tall people, short people, thick-boned people – and the lack of skill of the machine operator. The pictures cannot show bone strength or bone integrity (a convenient shortcoming for bisphosphonate drugs). Because bisphosphonates also glue calcium in an abnormal manner onto bone, the mirage is that there appears to be more density – true smoke and mirrors. Numerous studies with bone biopsy show that bisphosphonate-treated bone is actually swollen, chaotically disorganized, and weaker than healthy bone.

If you would like to understand the details of this issue, as well as basic bone metabolism, you may read for free Chapter 18: The Illusion of Bone Drugs, from my book Fight for Your Health – Exposing the FDA’s Betrayal of America. Also, included in the appendix are numerous references documenting all of the many side effects of these drugs up through 2006.

The FDA is now warning that at some point while taking these drugs there can be intense and even debilitating pain. This is obviously due to the caustic and highly inflammatory nature of these drugs.

Here is a question for the medical profession. Since it is now clearly understood that excessive inflammation is part of the primary cause of every single disease of aging – what makes you think you are helping the overall health of anyone by giving them a highly inflammatory bisphosphonate drug for a number of years?

Of course, doctors may warn their patients to walk around after taking these drugs and not lay down. This is because bisphosphonates are so caustic and inflammatory to the digestive system that they may cause significant damage to the lining of the intestinal tract. In fact, the drug is only 1% absorbed which leaves 99% of the poison to batter the digestive lining. The drug even comes with warnings not to give it to people with digestive problems – a warning that is routinely ignored by many prescribing physicians.

The FDA issued its pain warning because doctors are also ignoring that bisphosphonates are a likely cause of a terrible inflammatory pain which may even start long after first taking the drug. Doctors have been treating this pain with pain killers, the typical style of the drug-dispensing paradigm governing “modern” medicine – give one drug to offset the side effects of another (IQ=70).

If we had to stretch the imagination of these brilliant men of medicine then possibly they might conceive of the notion that once this caustic drug is absorbed and before it arrives at the bones to work its inflammatory damage in the name of “health,” it must go through the circulation and past the heart. Would you like to guess what the drug is doing while it is in the cardiovascular system? Are doctors somehow not aware that filling the arteries with plaque, which leads to heart attacks and strokes, is clearly an inflammatory disease?

Bisphosphonates Increase the Risk for Atrial Fibrillation

Since October 1, 2007 the FDA has also announced that it is reviewing the link between bisphosphonate drugs and atrial fibrillation (a potentially life-threatening heart problem). The FDA updated its posting about this issue on January 7, 2008 when it released its pain warning. In essence, the FDA says it is confused about the issue and trying to study the matter.

This is simply another instance of FDA incompetence and failure to do its job. Back in 1997 it was clear to the FDA that a Merck study showed a 50% increased risk in serious atrial fibrillation from Fosamax. The FDA did not demand that Merck conduct a specific post-marketing safety analysis relating to atrial fibrillation. This was a major failure on the part of the FDA to protect the public. Thus, the only data the FDA can review are studies regarding bisphosphonates that may report atrial fibrillation but are not designed to test for it. The FDA also has its MedWatch program, but most physicians and patients don’t link the two issues so don’t know to report it.

The FDA is only now becoming interested in the issue as a new type of powerful bisphosphonate that involves a once a year intravenous infusion are showing a 150% increased risk for atrial fibrillation. This is obviously a higher potency of the drug in the circulation, giving its highly inflammatory and caustic characteristics more of a chance to weaken the heart in one major “blast attack.” If this therapy catches on with women atrial fibrillation problems will triple.

The FDA says it plans to drag its feet on the issue for another 10 months, at which point it is likely to say it does not have enough data to know for sure one way or the other – great job FDA. It appears that any woman taking bisphosphonates who has a concern about heart health should think twice – considering the FDA has no clue what the real risks are. While the risk of a problem may be only 0.5% to 1% of those taking the drug, that can easily translate to 15,000 – 30,000 cases of serious atrial fibrillation per year based on the large numbers of women on these medications.

Of course, if a patient should develop atrial fibrillation due to a bisphosphonate drug then their doctors will put them on the rat poison called Coumadin (Warfarrin). This drug has been shown to increase the risk of fractures by 25% after one year of use.

Atrial fibrillation is not the only potential cardiovascular risk. Science shows that bisphosphonates activate adhesion molecules which are known to initiate plaque formation in arteries. A mouse study shows that bisphosphonates trigger the rupturing of atherosclerotic plaque – which causes strokes and heart attacks in humans. The FDA is not demanding the makers of these drugs prove they are safe for cardiovascular health and that they do not contribute to plaque formation in the arteries. Once again, the FDA has left the public groping in the dark. We already know that Merck does not disclose heart risks of its drugs to the FDA or the public, as clearly proven by the Vioxx case.

Rotting Jaw Bone

Here is another simple question. How can a drug that rots out someone’s jaw bone possibly be good for the bones of any person?

Rotting jaw bone, otherwise known as osteonecrosis of the jaw, became a hot topic back in the summer of 2005 when it was first widely reported that patients on intravenous bisphosphonates ran the risk of developing this debilitating jaw condition, especially if they needed some dental work done.

As the drama unfolded patients taking oral Fosamax began reporting their deteriorating jaw bone problems, now known as Fossie jaw. Merck currently faces a number of lawsuits on the issue.

Individuals who need any kind of significant dental work should think twice before taking a bisphosphonate drug, as their jaw may have trouble healing and teeth may have trouble staying firmly in place. While having one’s jaw rot completely out is a horrendous problem, it is far more likely that many people are experiencing jaw-related stress and wear from these drugs. Any person developing TMJ, jaw pain, or any kind of dental problem after being on a bisphosphonate should be very concerned.

Japanese researchers warned of this problem back in 2000 and the need to be cautious for jaw health in patients taking Fosamax, but the FDA was not paying any attention. In fact, the FDA let millions of American women take this drug to prevent osteoporosis when the drug never even went through a normal approval process for its common uses in today’s world (it was only approved for serious bone disease). This is rather shocking to say the least – but true.

How Bisphosphonate Bone Drugs Work

The bisphosphonate bone drugs work in two main ways:

A) By killing osteoclasts – the carpenter cells in charge of the demolition part of the remodeling process. New healthy bone cannot be built by osteoblasts until old worn bone has been removed by osteoclasts.

B) By gluing calcium onto bone in abnormal ways, providing the appearance of greater bone density. However, this is like nailing a piece of plywood over a hole in the wall. Yes, there is something there, but it is not a normal wall and it does not have the proper strength of a normal wall.

Once bisphosphonates arrive at bone they are stuck there forever, as a completely abnormal substance residing within and on the bone. The human body has no enzyme system that can break them down. Thankfully, after one year the biological activity of the poison is reduced; however, it is still stuck in the bone indefinitely. It is not a trivial issue to give a patient a toxic drug that accumulates in bones and is highly active even after it is stopped, which explains why some of the patients did not get rid of their pain even after discontinuing the drug.

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Such a therapy may have some advantages in a situation of very poor health wherein a person is rapidly losing bone. The idea is that it is better to have some bone, regardless of its true condition, compared to no bone. Indeed, these drugs were first approved for diseases of rapid bone loss, such as Paget’s disease. In such high risk cases it can be demonstrated that the risk of fracture can be reduced. In other words, bones glued together with Fosamax may be better than really weak bones in horrid health.

However, healthy bone has a fairly high activity of osteoclasts (the demo crew) and osteoblasts (bone building carpenter cells), operating in balance. By killing osteoclasts all that happens is old bone is left in place and new bone can’t properly form due to all the clutter in the way – resulting in highly disorganized and abnormal bone matrix. This is a far cry from healthy bones. If a healthy woman does this for 5-10 years in an effort to ward off osteoporosis it is pretty clear that she has been conned – and actually worsened her bone health.

A Comprehensive Review of Bone Drug Effectiveness

A major study was recently conducted in an effort to compare these bone drugs to other drug options to see which drugs or therapies actually produced the best patient outcomes in the real world. The goal of such research is to help prescribing physicians know what options are best based on scientific review. The researchers found that bisphosphonates were no better than anything else – a disturbing finding in and of itself.

The research was reported in a January 2008 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine (full article here). The conclusion of the study states “Although good evidence suggests that many agents are effective in preventing osteoporotic fractures, data are insufficient to determine the relative efficacy or safety of these agents.” This conclusion, worded to be as politically correct as could be contrived in a drug-related journal, is a shocking indictment of the ineptitude of the FDA. How could a drug be in use for 15 years, with billions of dollars of sales per year, and the FDA has never demanded proof that the drug was safe or effective???

The bisphosphonates, as I explain above, work best in people with serious bone health issues wherein bones glued together with bisphosphonates are better than extremely fragile bones. Here we can see a slight reduction in fracture in a difficult patient population, which is a valid use of medicine. Keep in mind that there are not enough people in this high risk group for Big Pharma to make a profit. Big Pharma has to convince low risk people (millions of baby boomers) to take these drugs for 10 years as a prevention tool – a marketing campaign that has been in full swing for a number of years (a low risk population).

When you look deep within this study about the use of Fosamax in this low risk population the study authors state Fosamax in this group “may in fact have had no effect on or even have increased the risk for fracture.” Not exactly a glowing report for a drug that is being crammed down the throats of generally healthy women in the billions of dollars per year. And far different than the fudged conclusion the media is likely to read.

An unbiased conclusion of this study would be “Various drug therapies, including bisphosphonates, may be able to reduce the risk of osteoporotic fractures in some patients in the high risk category – though safety and efficacy is not clear. In the low risk category there is no evidence of long-term benefit, and safety and efficacy is also not clear – there may even be a risk for fracture increase.”

Bone Health is Important

Bone health is very important. There are many dramatic discoveries relating to bones and how to help them, all centered on safe and natural options to improve health. The new science shows that the reason there are too many osteoclasts causing bone loss is because of an underlying inflammatory problem in the bones – part of an overall inflammatory wear and tear trend. When this trend occurs at a normal pace it is considered routine aging. When this inflammatory trend is accelerated then the weakest link in the chain manifests as a disease (heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, etc).

It is shear idiocy to treat an inflammatory bone problem with an inflammatory bone drug, especially for prevention. Numerous nutrients are now proven to directly lower inflammation in bone, thus naturally promoting the healthy balance and function of osteoclasts and osteoblasts. There are no shortcuts or quick fixes for bone health. Stress is highly inflammatory and a major problem. The foundation of a proper plan is a good diet, maintaining proper body weight, consistent exercise that produces fitness, having some fun in life, and dietary supplements that work directly with the gene signals within bones to foster health and build strong bone - naturally. It is time that we as a culture put to rest the barbaric use of toxins that do nothing but bolster the profits of Big Pharma at the expense of human health.

© 2008 Truth in Wellness, LLC - All Rights Reserved

posted in HealthCare for All - 1 reply

Cancer Cure -- too cheap, no interest

2008-04-09T03:49:10Z

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10971-cheap-safe-drug-kills-most-cancers.html

I read a news article on yahoo talking about a cheap, non-patentable medicine that already exists and kills tumors in mice. There's been no human trials. In fact big pharma isn't intersted in manufacturing it or testing it further because it's "too cheap".

Looks like India and China have an opening. I just wonder what lies will be generated in order to keep it off the market here where cancer is HUGE business.

posted in HealthCare for All - 3 replies

Patient turns harsh light on clinics reusing syringes

2008-03-26T18:54:38Z

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-03-25-needles-hepatitis_N.htm
HOW REUSE OF SYRINGES CAN PASS ON INFECTION

One way that a hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection can spread is through reuse of syringes combined with use of single-dose vials for multiple patients undergoing anesthesia. The syringe doesn't have to be used on multiple patients for this to occur.

1. A clean syringe and needle are used to draw a sedative from a new vial.

2. The sedative is then injected into a patient who has a hepatitis C infection. Backflow into the syringe contaminates the syringe with HCV.

3. The needle is replaced, but the syringe is reused to draw additional sedative from the same vial for the same patient, which contaminates the vial with HCV.

4. A clean needle and syringe are used for a second patient, but the contaminated vial is reused. Subsequent patients are now at risk for infection.

Source: The Southern Nevada Health District

THOUSANDS NOTIFIED

In the past year, five incidents of syringe reuse have resulted in patients being notified that they had to be tested for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV.
Where Type of clinic Patients notified
New York City Endoscopy 4,500
Long Island, N.Y. Pain management 10,400
Michigan Dermatologist (fraud investigation) 13,000
Long Island, N.Y. OB/GYN (influenza vaccination) 35
Nevada Endoscopy 40,000

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

posted in HealthCare for All - 0 replies

Whiplash Is Real

2008-03-22T15:00:49Z

My heart goes out to those who suffer from whiplash related injuries.
I know!

posted in HealthCare for All - 1 reply