FDA Needs Overhaul - NewsGrabs 30 November 2008
Ailing FDA May Need a Major Overhaul, Officials and Groups Say
Alarm about the agency began to spike after a series of highly publicized incidents, including the discovery that the painkiller Vioxx caused heart attacks. That has been followed by other safety issues, including questions about the widely used diabetes medication Avandia and several psychiatric drugs."I'm afraid we're going to see more horrible things happen if we don't get our act together on this," said David Ross, who was a drug reviewer at the agency for 10 years.
The FDA appears to be busy trying to eliminate nutrition as a competition to synthetic medicines. Perhaps they should be re-directed back to actually protecting consumers instead of the profits of pharmaceutical medicine.
FDA latest threat to dietary supplements
The FDA's highly controversial bid to ban interstate trade of food, food ingredients and—dietary supplements—that have been subject to clinical investigation is utter madness. The more effort a company spends in trying to verify the efficacy and benefit of its product, the more likely that it will not be able to trade the product between states!
Cancer Cured For Good
The weekly injection of just 100 billionths of a gram of a harmless glyco-protein (a naturally-produced molecule with a sugar component and a protein component) activates the human immune system and cures cancer for good, according to human studies among breast cancer and colon cancer patients, producing complete remissions lasting 4 and 7 years respectively. This glyco-protein cure is totally without side effect but currently goes unused by cancer doctors.My comment: Fighting tumor formation is a secondary intervention in cancer. Tumors (uncontrolled proliferation of cells) form as a natural consequence of serious changes in the chemistry of cells, where the normal energy mechanism is no longer workable and the cell changes into a different type that survives by forming cell colonies (tumors) rather than by being part of an organism. So the ideal anti-cancer intervention would be to prevent those changes in the cells' chemistry in the first place. But apart from that, the research seems to be a great advance from what we have today.
Doctors aren’t scientists, and medicine isn’t science
Whereas science left alone is universal, medicine left alone — in the unfettered professional hands of doctors — is not universal. What doctors believe to be the best treatment for a given condition varies from country to country, because the understanding of what that condition is, the explanation of that condition, also varies from country to country.Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be radical differences between countries regarding HIV/AIDS theory. On the central mistaken points, that HIV causes AIDS and that HIV is sexually transmitted and that antiretroviral drugs are a good thing, there seems to be trans-national agreement.
Patient-led drug trials defy medical establishment
Dozens of ALS patients are testing treatments on their own without waiting on the slow pace of medical research. They are part of an emerging group of patients willing to share intimate health details on the Web in hopes of making their own medical discoveries.Working online, Karen Felzer and Macedo recruited nearly 200 patients worldwide to take a specific lithium dosage and answer standard surveys to gauge their symptoms. They began running their study through a Web site called PatientsLikeMe.com, using it to attract volunteers and track their progress.
On the site, patients share detailed information about their symptoms and the drugs they are taking. The site focuses on conditions that have stubbornly resisted medical science, such as ALS, Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis.
This is an illustration of the failure of the pharma-for-profit model of current western medicine. Patients must do their own studies while pharma stands by idle. Actually worse than idle, as the most widely sold drugs of pharma - statins - are said to be a possible CAUSE of ALS and similar neurological problems.
Indonesia To Pharma: Build A Factory Or Else
“If they want to get licences (to sell their products) they have to invest here also, not just take advantage of the Indonesian market,” Supari told Dow Jones. “They can’t just operate like a retailer here, with an office size that’s three metres by three and make billions of rupiah. That is not fair.”
FDA Draws Fire Over Chemicals In Baby Formula
"When FDA claims there isn't any reason to worry, that's exactly what the consumer should do," said Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group. "The once-revered public health agency has morphed into a taxpayer-funded public relations arm for the very industries it was created to oversee."
J&J gave money in return for positive drug studies, court documents say
Johnson & Johnson gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to a research center run by an influential child psychiatrist explicitly to generate data to help expand sales of the company's antipsychotic drug Risperdal in children, according to court documents.
Bayer Pays $97.5M To Settle Kickback Charges
According to the Justice Department Bayer allegedly paid Liberty Medical Supply, one of the largest direct-to-patient suppliers, approximately $2.5 million to convert patients to Bayer supplies. The alleged kickbacks were based on the number of patients that Liberty successfully converted to Bayer products and were disguised as payments for advertising. In addition, Bayer allegedly paid kickbacks of approximately $375,000 to 10 other diabetic suppliers to convert patients to Bayer supplies.
US: Senate Probe Snares Major Bipolar Researcher, "Infinite Mind" Radio Show
Sen. Charles Grassley has caught yet another researcher in his conflict of interest probe. This time out, it's Fred Goodwin - perhaps the most influential researcher and writer in the world of bipolar disorder - and the well-known radio show "The Infinite Mind." As a result of these new revelations, the show is going off the air.
Liam Scheff on HIV Tests: Reduce the Burden - Remove the Stigma
It is morally and ethically wrong to rob someone of their right to live, by informing them, with the full weight and support of society, that they now and forever have been diagnosed with a disease that has “no cure,” and that their only recourse is a lifetime of potent drugging, with drugs which themselves can, do and have caused death.We have robbed citizens not only of their lives, but of their ability to fight for life, to hope for life, to overcome illness, to prove us wrong, to surprise us, to teach us, to correct the errors of our too-sure judgment. Instead we enforce their death through daily reminders - drugs, tests, and the stigmatizing label: “unsafe, and permanently infected.”
State of HIV/AIDS Denial: Carcinogenic HAART
“Cognitive dissonance” is the social scientists’ way of saying, “Not seeing what we don’t wish to see”. “Being in denial” has crept into common usage to describe the same phenomenon. In states of denial, the same unwished-for discovery is made, reported — and then ignored; over and over again.When you have a fundamentally wrong theory, facts become quite difficult to explain, and an endless variety of conundrums are generated — all of them suitable topics for grant proposals, of course.
“This thing is going to be studied long after our time. This is so much greater than the Lysenko Affair [which had set Soviet agriculture and biology back decades]. I’m urging all of my colleagues to save all of their papers and make the historical record as complete as possible. What was the dynamics of the events that led to poisoning people with AZT? Because this is a major historical event that is going to be studied for 100 years — how the United States gave AIDS to the world”.
Bush Administration USDA Rushing Through Dangerous New Rules on Genetically Engineered Foods & Crops
In the waning months of the Bush administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has joined the ranks of federal agencies rushing through new regulations that weaken protections for human health and the environment. USDA has released a proposed rule that would significantly weaken oversight of all genetically engineered crops, and which continue to allow companies to grow food crops engineered to produce drugs and industrial chemicals.
Corrupt to The Core
Health Canada, and I suspect all governmental regulatory bodies, more or less are usurped and essentially owned by the industry. Instead of scientists, Health Canada's upper management is now stacked with industry public relations men. A good account is made of how our science based institutions have been systematically overhauled into industry organs while maintaining the pretence of protecting the public.... Surely, under these circumstances one can never be safe given that the fox is guarding the hens...
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008
If you're into watching corporate shenanigans, here's some food for thought.
- AIG: Money for Nothing
- Cargill: Food Profiteers
- Chevron: "We can't let little countries screw around with big companies"
- Constellation Energy: Nuclear Operators
- CNPC: Fueling Violence in Darfur
- Dole: The Sour Taste of Pineapple
- GE: Creative Accounting
- Imperial Sugar: 13 Dead
- Philip Morris International: Unshackled
- Roche: Saving Lives is Not Our Business
The Transitioner: Free Currencies: the next global currency system
Money is an information system. It's made to measure and balance flows in the real world. Money needs not to be scarce otherwise it turns the world into artificial scarcity, even when it's abundant. Money should be in right supply to account for flows so that every marketplace in the world -- companies, neighborhoods, towns, regions, global communities, etc -- can grow their wealth without constraints.- - -
Got something to say? Have news to share?
- - -More information out there...
There is much I cannot cover but other sources for this kind of information exist and are active.
...
Dr Mercola's health blog and Mike Adams' Natural News have great health information.
The Alternative Medicine Yahoo Group is a place where you can discuss and exchange information on what is happening in the world of natural health.
For the influence of electromagnetic waves from radio, mobile phones and other radio emitting devices, check out the emfrefugee group on Yahoo.
If you are interested in a different take on the news that isn't health centered but is certainly fun, check out Robin Good TV News.
A few sites to keep up to date with the other side of world affairs, the stuff you won't necessarily find on your tv or in the papers:
http://therealnews.com/
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.commondreams.org
http://www.globalresearch.ca/
http://rawstory.com/
http://www.truthout.org/... and remember,
The individual is supreme and finds its way through intuition
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday November 30 2008
updated on Wednesday August 15 2012URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2008/11/30/_fda_needs_overhaul_newsgrabs_30_november_2008.htm