Day: 09/15/2013

Most U.S. Toddlers Are Being Vaccinated; Most Measles Cases Occur in Unvaccinated Persons.

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In 2012, vaccination coverage among U.S. children aged 19 to 35 months remained near or above the Healthy People 2020 targets of 90% for polio, hepatitis B, varicella, and measles, mumps, and rubella, according to an analysis of National Immunization Survey data reported in MMWR.

Coverage with four or more doses of diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine, four or more doses of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, and the full series of Haemophilus influenzae type B vaccine were below the 90% goal but remained relatively stable and high (over 80%). Less than 1% of children did not receive any vaccines. Those living in poverty were more likely to be unvaccinated.

A separate article in MMWR details 159 cases of measles reported in 16 states in 2013. Most cases (82%) were in unvaccinated individuals, and nearly all were import-associated. Eight outbreaks in communities with unvaccinated persons accounted for more than three quarters of cases.

Source: MMWR

Algorithm Predicts Diabetes Remission After Gastric Bypass

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A new scoring system could help predict which patients with diabetes will achieve remission after bariatric surgery, according to a study in the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

Researchers developed and validated the DiaRem algorithm using three cohorts of patients with type 2 diabetes who underwent Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. The model relies on four preoperative variables: insulin use, age, HbA1c concentration, and use of sulfonylureas or other insulin-sensitizing agents.

Fourteen months after surgery, 87% of patients with the lowest DiaRem scores (i.e., those who were young, had low HbA1c concentrations, and were not using insulin, sulfonylureas, or other insulin-sensitizing agents besides metformin) had achieved diabetes remission, while only 5% of those with the highest scores achieved remission.

Commentators write that this research could “challenge present guidelines for provision of weight-loss surgery [for diabetes], which mostly depends on BMI.”

Source: Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology 

Help Stop These Thousands Of Genetically Modified Insects From Being Released.

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Thousands of Genetically Modified (GM) insects developed by British scientists are set to be released into fields across Europe as an alternative to chemical pesticides. Granted, pesticides have been responsible for jeopardizing human health, damaging the environment and killing millions of bees and other insects, but is the proper solution manufacturing genetically modified insects?

The idea is to release a large number of GM olive flies that will be used to kill off wild pests that damage the crop. The company responsible for their manufacture and release is Oxitec.  They plan to release GM male olive flies that would naturally mate with the females, ultimately resulting in the death of female offspring at the larvae or maggot stage. The thought is that this would lead to a reduction in the olive fly population, which would allow the trees to produce fruit without the need for chemical sprays.

Oxitec has applied to Spanish regulatory authorities for permission to carry out a netted field trial of its GM insects. If the trial is successful, more trials will be carried out in Greece and Italy- the company also eventually hopes to be able to use the GM insects in British fields as well.

Our approach is aimed not only at controlling the olive fly, but also to avoid harming other species. By using our form of genetic sterility our flies are designed to eliminate the pest and not to stay in the environment. – Oxitec’s Dr Martha Koukidou (1)

In my view the use of GM insects to eradicate this pest is a necessary step towards achieving zero pesticide use. Critics of this technology who warn of danger to health and environment are scaremongering. European agriculture is facing some severe challenges. The burden of agricultural pests is ever present while the number of control approaches is shrinking in the face of insecticide resistance and de-registration of existing chemical treatments. To survive and prosper, European farming will need to evaluate and embrace new solutions and new technologies which are effective, sustainable and safe. If approved, this evaluation will be an important step to brining an exciting new approach to the farmers who need it- Hadyn Parry, Oxitec chief executive  (1)

Supporters of the GM insects, like Oxitec, claim that those who oppose the idea are simply fear mongering. This is currently the same response from the big biotech giants to opposers of genetically modified foods. Recently, we have found out that opponents of genetically modified foods have been correct with their concerns, as multiple studies have surfaced over the past couple of years that indicated GMOs can be very harmful to the environment, as well as pose multiple risks to human health.

It’s no different with these genetically modified insects, mosquitos to be exact, they’ve already been released into the public without a proper risk assessment.

Dr Helen Wallace, director of GeneWatch UK, warned:

Releasing Oxite’s GM fruit flies is a deeply flawed approach to reducing numbers of these pests, because large numbers of their offspring will die as maggots in the fruit. Not only does this fail to protect the crop, millions of GM fruit fly maggots will enter the food chain where they could pose risks to human health and the environment. Oxitec’s experiments should not go ahead until rules for safety testing and plans for labelling and segregation of contaminated fruits have been thoroughly debated and assessed. If these issues are ignored, growers could suffer serious impacts on the market for their crops.(1)

So what does this mean for animals that eat these flies as part of their routine diet? Or what about the humans that then eat these animals? Plans to commercialize GM insects would result in millions of GM insects being released onto field crops, including olives, tomatoes, citrus fruits, cabbages and cotton. Millions of GMO mosquitoes have already been released in experiments intended to reduce transmission of the tropical disease dengue fever, did you know about this? The release of GM insects are covered by laws and regulations that cover the release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), however, there is no specific regulatory process for GM insects anywhere in the world. (2) (3)

Regulatory decisions on GM insects in Europe and around the world are being biased by corporate interests as the UK biotech company Oxitec has infiltrated decision-making processes around the world. The company has close links to the multinational pesticide and seed company, Syngenta. Oxitec has already made large-scale open releases of GM mosquitoes in the Cayman Islands, Malaysia and Brazil and is developing GM agricultural pests, jointly with Syngenta. (2)(3)

The public will be shocked to learn that GM insects can be released into the environment without any proper oversight. Conflicts of interest should be removed from all decision making processes to ensure the public have a proper say about these plans – Dr Helen Wallace, Director of GeneWatch UK (4)

The use of GM technologies is controversial. Some organizations such as GeneWatch UK and EcoNexus fear that reliance on high-tech solutions like genetic modification detracts from more effective but poorly deployed measures to combat the harm caused by insects. These are the companies we need to hear more about because they are the ones that directly monitor the use of genetic technologies. Environmental NGOs like Greenpeace suggest that GM insects could have unintended and wide ranging impacts on the environment and human health due to the complexity of ecosystems and the high number of unknown factors which make risk assessment difficult. These companies have raised a number of concerns which include (2):

·         New insects or diseases may fill ecological niche left by the insects suppressed or replaced, possibly resulting in new public health or agricultural problems

·         The new genes engineered into the insects may jump into other species, a process called horizontal transfer, causing unintended consequences to the ecosystem

·         Releases would be impossible to monitor and irreversible, as would any damage done to the environment

A briefing done by these organizations also shows that Oxitec is trying to influence regulatory processes for GM insects, that they (3):

·         Don’t want to be liable for any complications

·         Try to avoid any regulation of GM agricultural pests on crops appearing in the food chain

·         Excludes important issues from risk assessments, like the impact on human health

·         Release of large amounts of GM insects prior to regulations

·         Undermining the requirement to obtain informed consent for experiments involving insect species which transmit disease

The list of concerns go on and on. This is something that you don’t hear in corporate media, despite the importance of dialogue, it seems developments within this field are sneaking by very quietly. Should we not discuss this? Should there not be a proper risk assessment done? Concerning ourselves with our food, health and our environment is something we need to take very seriously. Developments that should attract a great deal of concern are happening without anybody knowing about them. These are some of the most important issues that our world faces today and some of the most important issues that will contribute in shaping the near future of our planet and the path we choose to take.

Sources:

 

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/09/10/thousands-of-genetically-modified-insects-are-set-for-release/

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=genetically-engineered-mosquitoes

http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v29/n11/full/nbt.2019.html

(3)http://www.testbiotech.de/sites/default/files/Briefing%20genetically%20engineered%20Insects.pdf

(2)http://www.inasp.info/uploads/filer_public/2013/04/03/3_handout_1.pdf

(1)http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2410484/Scientists-launch-thousands-GM-insects-fields-alternative-chemicals.html

(4)http://farmwars.info/?p=9457

Chicken to be Exported to China, Processed, then Imported Back to the US.

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Catching up to this news, which dropped quietly just before the holiday weekend: In a first, the US Department of Agriculture has given permission for chicken products processed in the People’s Republic of China to be sold in the United States without labeling that would indicate where the chicken products came from.

 

The news was broken by Politico, whose writers obtained USDA documents before the agency released them, and then followed up by the New York Times, with some no-holds-barred analysis by Bloomberg Businessweek.

If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ll know that food safety in China is well below US standards. So it may be a surprise to hear that birds grown and slaughtered outside that country, but cooked and made into products in it, would be acceptable for sale here. Especially since the plants that USDA has approved for sales into the US market will not have USDA inspectors on site.

Here is the USDA notice, in the form of an audit issued by the Food Safety and Inspection Service.

This development fascinates me; it touches so many issues that have been percolating through food production and food safety.

First, there’s the decade of maneuvering between the US and China over meat exports in both directions. China, along with a number of other Asian nations, blocked US beef imports in 2003 after a Washington state cow tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalopathy,  “mad cow” disease. Then in 2004, avian influenza flared in Asia; the US blocked imports of Chinese poultry, and in 2009 China brought a restraint-of-trade action against the US in front of the World Trade Organization. It won in 2010 — at about the same time that it accused the US of dumping chicken parts at below-market prices and slapped American poultry with tariffs of more than 100 percent.

 

The audit process that approved the Chinese plants began after the WTO decision; the USDA inspected, asked for corrective actions, inspected again, and finally approved the deal on Aug. 30. The audit allows China to sell back to the US only poultry that was raised and slaughtered in the US, or (as the audit documents say) a country “that FSIS determined to have a poultry slaughter inspection system equivalent to the US system.” But the magazine World Poultry notes: “Experts suggest that this could be the first step towards allowing China to export its own domestic chickens to the US.”

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Second, there are the most recent moves around ensuring that imported food is safe. Most of the food consumed in the US is overseen not by USDA but by the Food and Drug Administration, which has been struggling for years with guaranteeing the safety of imports. Reports by the Government Accountability Office, the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Pew Charitable Trusts and Center for Science in the Public Interest all found that the FDA could not keep up with the task; estimating that its inspectors were able to lay hands on no more than 2 percent of imported foods. The massive Food Safety Modernization Act tried to revamp the system for policing imports, which make up about 15 percent of the US diet; last July the FDA proposed regulations under that new law which said the best way forward was for companies handling imports to police their foreign suppliers themselves. The FDA rule is not final, but the USDA China audit seems to be following a similar pattern.

 

Third, there’s the already-contentious topic, “country of origin labeling,” known as COOL for short. The USDA has been implementing COOL for the past few years, requiring that retailers label meats, fish and shellfish, fruits and vegetables, and some nuts if they originated outside the US. Much of the US meat industry has been fighting COOL in court; the most recent hearing (covered by Food Safety News) was Aug. 27. Yet according to the USDA, the Chinese processing allowed under the new audit elides COOL requirements, because — no matter what is done in processing — the chicken meat originated in the US.

 

Last, there’s how neatly this spotlights the global nature of food production, especially the way that inexpensive transport has changed how food is raised and made. Just to reiterate what’s going to be allowed: chickens raised in the US (or “equivalent” countries), and slaughtered in the country where they were grown, are going to be shipped across the globe to be turned into processed products, and then shipped back to be sold. Developing-world labor, and containerized shipping (so well explained by Rose George in the new book Ninety Percent of Everything), are both so inexpensive that it is cheaper to send a chicken nugget around the world to be ground, formed and breaded than to do all that in the place where the chicken was raised.

 

Source:

www.wired.com

10 Symptoms of Gluten Intolerance.

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More than 55 diseases have been linked to gluten, the protein found in wheat, rye, and barley. It’s estimated that 99% of the people who have either gluten intolerance or celiac disease are never diagnosed. It is also estimated that as much as 15% of the US population is gluten intolerant. Could you be one of them? If you have any of the following symptoms it could be a sign that you have gluten intolerance:


1.) Digestive issues such as gas, bloating, diarrhea and even constipation. I see the constipation particularly in children after eating gluten.

2.) Keratosis Pilaris, (also known as ‘chicken skin’ on the back of your arms). This tends be as a result of a fatty acid deficiency and vitamin A deficiency secondary to fat-malabsorption caused by gluten damaging the gut.

3.) Fatigue, brain fog or feeling tired after eating a meal that contains gluten.

4.) Diagnosis of an autoimmune disease such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Rheumatoid arthritis, Ulcerative colitis, Lupus, Psoriasis, Scleroderma or Multiple sclerosis.

5.) Neurologic symptoms such as dizziness or feeling of being off balance.

6.) Hormone imbalances such as PMS, PCOS or unexplained infertility.

7.) Migraine headaches.

8.) Diagnosis of chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia. These diagnoses simply indicate your conventional doctor cannot pin point the cause of your fatigue or pain.

9.) Inflammation, swelling or pain in your joints such as fingers, knees or hips.

10.) Mood issues such as anxiety, depression, mood swings and ADD.

Source: Eat Local Grown

5 Foods That Could Save Your Life.

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 While they do not lend themselves to being patented, nor will multi-billion dollar human clinical trials ever be funded to prove them efficacious, they have been used since time immemorial to both nourish our bodies, and to prevent and treat disease. So valued were these in ancient times that they were worth their weight in gold, and entire civilizations either rose to great power or collapsed as a result of their relationship to them.

 What is even more amazing is that many of these “plant allies” are found growing in our backyards, and often sitting there in our refrigerators and spice racks, neglected and under appreciated. In fact, many of us use these daily unaware that this is why we don’t get sick as often as those who do not incorporate them into their diet. Let’s look at a few examples….

Though Mother Nature’s formulas are proprietary, she does not grant patents. ~Sayer Ji


1) Garlic – with the increasing prevalence of multi-drug resistant bacteria and the failure of the conventional, drug-based model to develop effective solutions against them (nor accepting responsibility for creating them), spices have regained their once universal reign as broad spectrum infection-fighters with sometimes life-saving power.

Garlic, in fact, has several hundred therapeutic properties, confirmed by a growing body of scientific research, which you can view directly on GreenMedInfo.com.[i] One quick example of garlic’s power, is in killing multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which the mainstream media has termed the “white plague,” roiling the masses with a fear of drug-resistant (but not plant-extract resistant) they are made to believe they are defenseless against.

 

Last year an article was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal showing that garlic was capable of inhibiting a wide range of multiple drug resistant tuberculosis strains.[ii] The authors concluded “The use of garlic against MDR-TB may be of great importance regarding public health.” Garlic’s anti-infective properties do not end with MDR-TB, as it has been demonstrated to inhibit the following pathogens as well:

 

·         Amoeba Entamoeba histolytica (parasite)

·         Cholera

·         Clostridium

·         Cytomegalovirus

·         Dermatophytoses (a type of topical fungal infection)

·         Haemophilus Influenzae

·         Helicobacter Pylori

·         Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1

·         Herpes Simplex Virus Type 2

·         Klebsiella

·         Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus A. (MRSA)

·         Parainfluenza Virus

·         Peridontal Infection

·         Pneumococcal Infections

·         Pseudomonas aeruginosa

·         Streptococcus Mutans

·         Streptococcus Infections: Group A

·         Streptococcus Infections: Group B

·         Streptococcus pyrogenes

·         Thrush (oral fungal infection)

This amazing list underscores how important it is to keep a supply of garlic close by!

 

2) Honey – bees produce a wide range of therapeutic substances beyond honey, e.g. propolis, bee venom, royal jelly, beeswax, bee pollen, etc., but this sweet, sticky stuff that we all love to dip our paw into occasionally, is the most well-known and most copiously consumed of them all – and for good reason, it tastes great!

But did you know that this sweet treat is one of nature’s most powerful healing agents, as well? Here is just a smattering of some of honey’s more scientifically researched health benefits and/or applications:

 

·         Aspirin-Induced Gastrointestinal Toxicity (honey coats the delicate linings of the stomach, preventing aspirin-induced lesions and bleeding)

·         Bacterial Infections

·         Burns

·         Candida infection (despite the fact that honey contains sugar, it demonstrates anti-fungal properties)

·         Conjunctivitis

·         Dental plaque (a recent study showed that Manuka honey was a viable alternative to chemical mouthwash in dissolving dental plaque)[iii]

·         Dermatitis

·         Diabetic Ulcer

·         Herpes-related ulcers

·         MRSA (especially for Manuka honey)

·          

There are many more uses for honey than covered here. Needless to say, replacing synthetic sweeteners or highly processed sugars or high fructose corn syrup with a moderate amount of honey may be a great preventative health step to take.

 

3) Apples – an apple a day does in fact keep the doctor away, especially cancer specialists it would seem.

For instance, one of the most well-established health benefits of consuming apples is to reduce the risk of colorectal cancer. The more apples you consume, the less likely you are to develop this potentially fatal disease.

To view the 5 studies that reference this relationship, go to the GreenmedInfo.com apple research page where you will also find 50 other health benefits of apple or apple byproducts (e.g. apple vinegar) consumption which include:

·         Aging, Reduce Rate

·         Allergies

·         Allopecia (Hair Loss)

·         Diarrhea

·         Insulin Resistance

·         Liver Cancer

·         Radiation Induced Illness

·         Staphylococcol Infection

·          

4) Sunlight – this one may throw some of you off, but sunlight possesses both energy and information with real, metabolic value and is therefore a source of usable energy for the body – and so, in a very real sense it can be considered a form of food that we consume through our skin by way of its built in, melanin-based “solar panels.”

Not only does adequate sunlight exposure result in the production of vitamin D, a hormone-like substance that regulates over 2,000 genes in the human body — and as a result prevents or ameliorates hundreds of vitamin D deficiency associated health conditions — but sunlight exposure itself has a unique set of health benefits not reducible to simply vitamin D production alone.

 

One of the more interesting studies performed on sunlight exposure, based on data gathered from over 100 countries and published earlier this year in the journal Anticancer Research, showed that there was “a strong inverse correlations with solar UVB for 15 types of cancer,” with weaker, though still significant evidence for the protective role of sunlight in 9 other cancers. Here are some additional benefits of sunlight exposure:

 

·         Alzheimer’s Disease

·         Depression

·         Dopamine Deficiency

·         Dermatitis

·         Influenza

·         Multiple Sclerosis

·         Psoriasis

·          

5) Turmeric – quite possibly the world’s most important herb. Named “Kanchani,” or literally “Golden Goddess,” in the ancient Indian healing tradition, its healing properties have been deeply appreciated, if not revered for countless centuries.

 

Turmeric has been scientifically documented to have over 500 applications in disease prevention and treatment. It also has been shown to modulate over 150 distinct biological and genetic/epigenetic pathways of value in health, demonstrating a complexity as well as gentleness that no drug on the planet has ever been shown to possess.

 

As there are too many health conditions that turmeric may benefit to list, we are listing the top 10 as determined by the GreenMedInfo algorithm which calculates both the evidence quantity (number of articles) and evidence quality (human study valued higher than animal, and so on). Also, the number in parentheses denotes the number of studies on the database demonstrating the beneficial relationship.

 

·         Oxidative Stress (160)

·         Inflammation (51)

·         DNA Damage (48)

·         Lipid Peroxidation (34)

·         Colorectal Cancer (24)

·         Breast Cancer (60)

·         Colon Cancer (52)

·         Chemically-Induced Liver Damage (34)

·         Alzheimer’s Disease (34)

·         Tumors (23)

·          

Source: Green Med Info 

[i] GreenMedInfo.com, Garlic Research Page: http://www.greenmedinfo.com/substance/garlic
[ii] Pak J Pharm Sci. 2011 Jan;24(1):81-5. PMID: 21190924
[iii] Contemp Clin Dent. 2010 Oct ;1(4):214-7. PMID: 22114423

 

 

Statistics prove prescription drugs kill 16,400% more people than terrorists.

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America was rudely awakened to a new kind of danger on September 11, 2001: Terrorism. The attacks that day left 2,996 people dead, including the passengers on the four commercial airliners that were used as weapons. Many feel it was the most tragic day in U.S. history.

Four commercial jets crashed that day. But what if six jumbo jets crashed every day in the United States, claiming the lives of 783,936 people every year? That would certainly qualify as a massive tragedy, wouldn’t it?

Well, forget “what if.” The tragedy is happening right now. Over 750,000 people actually do die in the United States every year, although not from plane crashes. They die from something far more common and rarely perceived by the public as dangerous: modern medicine.

According to the groundbreaking 2003 medical report Death by Medicine, by Drs. Gary Null, Carolyn Dean, Martin Feldman, Debora Rasio and Dorothy Smith, 783,936 people in the United States die every year from conventional medicine mistakes. That’s the equivalent of six jumbo jet crashes a day for an entire year. But where is the media attention for this tragedy? Where is the government support for stopping these medical mistakes before they happen?

After 9/11, the White House gave rise to the Department of Homeland Security, designed to prevent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Since its inception, billions of dollars have been poured into it. The 2006 budget allots $34.2 billion to the DHS, a number that has come down slightly from the $37.7 billion budget of 2003.

According to the study led by Null, which involved a painstaking review of thousands of medical records, the United States spends $282 billion annually on deaths due to medical mistakes, or iatrogenic deaths. And that’s a conservative estimate; only a fraction of medical errors are reported, according to the study. Actual medical mistakes are likely to be 20 times higher than the reported number because doctors fear retaliation for those mistakes. The American public heads to the doctor’s office or the hospital time and again, oblivious of the alarming danger they’re heading into. The public knows that medical errors occur, but they assume that errors are unusual, isolated events. Unfortunately, by accepting conventional medicine, patients voluntarily continue to walk into the leading cause of death in America.

According to a 1995 U.S. iatrogenic report, “Over a million patients are injured in U.S. hospitals each year, and approximately 280,000 die annually as a result of these injuries. Therefore, the iatrogenic death rate dwarfs the annual automobile accident mortality rate of 45,000 and accounts for more deaths than all other accidents combined.” This report was issued 10 years ago, when America had 34 million fewer citizens and drug company scandals like the Vioxx recall were yet to occur. Today, health care comprises 15.5 percent of the United States’ gross national product, with spending reaching $1.4 trillion in 2004.

Since Americans spend so much money on health care, they should be getting a high quality of care, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Of the 783,936 annual deaths due to conventional medical mistakes, about 106,000 are from prescription drugs, according to Death by Medicine. That also is a conservative number. Some experts estimate it should be more like 200,000 because of underreported cases of adverse drug reactions.

Americans today are used to fixing problems the quick way – even when it comes to their health. Thus, they rely heavily on prescription drugs to fix their diseases. For every conceivable ailment – real or not – chances are there’s a pricey prescription drug to “treat” it. Chances are even better that their drug of choice comes chock full of side effects.

The problem is, prescription drugs don’t treat diseases; they merely cover the symptoms. U.S. physicians provide allopathic health care – that is, they care for disease, not health. So, the over-prescription of drugs and medications is designed to treat disease instead of preventing it. And because there are so many drugs available, unforeseen adverse drug reactions are all too common, which leads to the highly conservative annual prescription drug death rate of 106,000. Keep in mind that these numbers came before the Vioxx scandal, and Cox-2 inhibitor drugs could ultimately end up killing tens of thousands more.

American medical patients are getting the short end of a rather raw deal when it comes to prescription drugs. Medicine is a high-dollar, highly competitive business. But it shouldn’t be. Null’s report cites the five most important aspects of health that modern medicine ignores in favor of the almighty dollar: Stress, lack of exercise, high calorie intake, highly processed foods and environmental toxin exposure. All these things are putting Americans in such poor health that they run to the doctor for treatment. But instead of doctors treating the causes of their poor health, such as putting them on a strict diet and exercise regimen, they stuff them full of prescription drugs to cover their symptoms. Using this inherently faulty system of medical treatment, it’s no wonder so many Americans die from prescription drugs. They’re not getting better; they’re just popping drugs to make their symptoms temporarily go away.

But not all doctors subscribe to this method of “treatment.” In fact, many doctors are just as angry as the public should be, charging that scientific medicine is “for sale” to the highest bidder – which, more often than not, end up being pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical industry is a multi-trillion dollar business. Companies spend billions on advertising and promotions for prescription drugs. Who can remember the last time they watched television and weren’t bombarded with ads for pills treating everything from erectile dysfunction to sleeplessness? And who has ever been to a doctor’s office or hospital and not seen every pen, notepad and post-it bearing the logo of some prescription drug?

Medical experts claim that patients’ requests for certain drugs have no effect on the number of prescriptions written for that drug. Pharmaceutical companies claim their drug ads are “educational” to the public. The public believes the FDA reviews all the ads and only allows the safest and most effective drug ads to reach the public. It’s a clever system: Pharmaceutical companies influence the public to ask for prescription drugs, the public asks their physicians to prescribe them certain drugs, and doctors acquiesce to their patients’ requests. Everyone’s happy, right? Not quite, since the prescription drug death toll continues to rise.

The public seems to genuinely believe that drugs advertised on TV are safe, in spite of the plethora of side effects listed by the commercial’s narrator, ranging from diarrhea to death. Patients feel justified in asking their physicians to prescribe them a particular drug they’ve seen on TV, since it surely must be safe or it wouldn’t have been advertised. Remember all those TV ads heralding the wonders of Vioxx? One might wonder how many lives could have been spared if patients didn’t see the ad on TV and request a prescription from their doctors.

But advertising isn’t the only tool the pharmaceutical industry uses to influence medicine. Null’s study cites an ABC report that said pharmaceutical companies spend over $2 billion sending doctors to more than 314,000 events every year. While doctors are riding the dollar of pharmaceutical companies, enjoying all the many perks of these “events,” how likely are they to question the validity of drug companies or their products?

Admittedly, not all doctors reside in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies. Some are downright angry at the situation, and angry on behalf of an unaware public. Major conflicts of interest exist between the American public, the medical community and the pharmaceutical industry. And although the public suffers the most from this conflict, it is the least informed. The public gets the short end of the stick and they don’t even know it. That is why the pharmaceutical industry remains a multi-trillion dollar business.

Prescription drugs are only a part of the U.S. healthcare system’s miserable failings. In fact, outpatient deaths, bedsore deaths and malnutrition deaths each account for higher death rates than adverse drug reactions. The problems run deep and cannot be remedied without drastic, widespread change in the system’s money and ethics.

The first issue – money – is the main reason the medical industry cannot seem to change. Prescribing more drugs and recommending more surgeries means more profits. Getting more drugs approved by the FDA, regardless of their safety, means more money for the pharmaceutical industry. As the healthcare system stands today, physicians and drug companies can’t seem to pass up earning loads of money, even if a few hundred thousand people lose their lives in the process. Even in drastic cases of deadly drugs, everyone involved has a scapegoat: Drug companies can blame the FDA for approving their product and the doctors for over-prescribing it, and doctors can blame the patients for wanting it and not properly weighing the risks.

What ultimately arises is a question of ethics. In layman’s terms, ethics are the rules or moral guidelines that govern the conduct of people or professions. Some ethics are ingrained from childhood, but some are specifically set forth. For example, nearly all medical schools have their new doctors take a modern form of the Hippocratic Oath. While few versions are identical, none include setting aside proper medical care in favor of money-making practices.

On the research side of the issue, “Death by Medicine” cites an ABC report that says clinical trials funded by pharmaceutical companies show a 90 percent chance that a drug will be perceived as effective, whereas clinical trials not funded by drug companies show only a 50 percent chance that a drug will be perceived as effective. “It appears that money can’t buy you love, but it can buy you any ‘scientific’ result you want,” writes Null and his team of researchers.

The government spends upwards of $30 billion a year on homeland security. Such spending seems important. Since 2001, 2,996 people in the United States have died from terrorism – all as a result of the 9/11 attacks. In that same period of time, 490,000 people have died from prescription drugs, not counting the Vioxx scandal. That means that prescription drugs in this country are at least 16,400 percent deadlier than terrorism. Again, those are the conservative numbers. A more realistic number, which would include deaths from over-the-counter drugs, makes drug consumption 32,000 percent deadlier than terrorism. But the scope of “Death by Medicine” is even wider. Conventional medicine, including unnecessary surgeries, bedsores and medical errors, is 104,700 percent deadlier than terrorism. Yet, our government’s attention and money is not put into reforming health care.

Couldn’t a little chunk of the homeland security money be better spent on overhauling the corrupt U.S. healthcare system, the leading cause of death in America? Couldn’t we forfeit the color-coded threat system in favor of stricter guidelines on medical research and prescription drugs? No one is attempting to say that terrorism in the world is not a problem, especially for a high-profile country like the United States. No one is saying that the people who died on 9/11 didn’t matter or weren’t horribly wronged by the terrorists that day. But there are more dangerous things in the United States being falsely represented as safe and healthy, when, in reality, they are deadly. The corruption in the pharmaceutical industry and in America’s healthcare system poses a far greater threat to the health, safety and welfare of Americans today than terrorism.

If the Bush Administration really wants to save lives — a lot of lives — it needs look no further than the chemical war has been declared on Americans by Big Pharma.

Source: oawhealth.com