Merck

Lipitor Without a Rx? Pfizer Pushes Ahead With OTC Plans.

Posted by

0


Pfizer, the maker of Lipitor, is pushing forward with efforts to sell its drug to patients without a doctor’s prescription, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The company recently launched a 1200-patient study to investigate whether patients could successfully take over-the-counter (OTC)atorvastatin to lower their LDL-cholesterol levels. Patients in the trial, which is currently recruiting at 35 US pharmacies, would get their own blood tests and would make decisions based on those results.

A positive study would determine whether Pfizer will file for regulatory approval of its OTC medication, according to the Journal.

Simvastatin has been available OTC at the 10-mg dose in the UK for nearly 10 years. Merck has gone before the US Food and Drug Administration three times since 2000, but the agency has turned away its drug, lovastatin (Mevacor) 20 mg, each and every time. Merck sought approval of OTC lovastatin in moderate-risk patients and aimed to market its drug to the “motivated health-conscious consumer.”

Like Merck, Pfizer says an OTC Lipitor would close the gap for people at risk of cardiovascular disease but who are not currently taking the lipid-lowering therapy.

Dr Neil Stone (Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL), the chair of the American College of Cardiology (ACC)/American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines for the treatment of cholesterol, told the Journal the new guidelines do not support OTC use of statins. In fact, the new guidelines don’t recommend treating to LDL targets any longer but instead recommend a moderate- or high-potency statin based on patient’s 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease.

Given that Pfizer is investigating the feasibility of just a 10-mg dose of Lipitor, undertreatment is a concern. “There’s a chance that a lot of people would take less than needed,” Dr Steven Nissen (Cleveland Clinic, OH) told the Journal.

At one stage, Lipitor was the world’s biggest-selling drug, with sales peaking at $13 billion in 2006, but since the patent expired sales have declined to $2.3 billion in 2012, reports the Journal.

HPS2-THRIVE: Niacin therapy not beneficial for vascular disease.

Posted by

0


Niacin, in combination with laropiprant, appears to provide no benefit and may have harmful effects in patients with vascular disease, researchers reported.

The 4-year HPS2-THRIVE study tested a combination of extended-release niacin 2 g plus laropiprant 40 mg (Tredaptive, Merck) compared with placebo in 25,673 patients at risk for CV events. In addition, all patients received simvastatin (Zocor, Merck), with or without ezetimibe (Zetia, Merck).

According to results presented at a late-breaking clinical trials session, the study did not meet the primary endpoint of reducing risk for a major vascular event, defined as a composite of nonfatal MI or CV-related death, stroke, or need for angioplasty or bypass surgery. Patients assigned extended-release niacin/laropiprant had a similar number of major vascular events compared with patients assigned placebo (13.2% vs. 13.7%; P=.29).

The extended-release niacin/laropiprant had increased rates of excess bleeding (2.5% vs. 1.9%) and infections (8% vs. 6.6%). In addition, serious adverse events were more prevalent with combination therapy, including new-onset diabetes (9.1% vs. 7.3%), diabetic complications (11.1% vs. 7.5%), indigestion and diarrhea (4.8% vs. 3.8%) and rashes (0.7% vs. 0.4%).

Data by the HPS2-THRIVE Collaborative Group published in European Heart Journal in early March revealed that by the end of the study 25% of patients assigned combination therapy had stopped treatment compared with 17% of patients assigned placebo.

“A striking finding from the study was a significant excess [in adverse events] among people who were allocated the niacin preparation. The excess represents a 3% absolute excess, which means 30 patients for every 1,000 treated patients had at least one side effect,” Jane Armitage, FFPH, FRCP,professor at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, said at a press conference.

“It was a disappointing result but, nevertheless, these are clear and reliable results from a large study.”

 

PERSPECTIVE

 

Christie M. Ballantyne

  • We confirmed that using niacin in well-treated patients on statins with low LDL does not have a benefit. That was a very common use for this medicine. The other important point this study nails down is that the adverse effects of niacin in extended release were considerable. If we are going to use the drug in patients with high LDL, we have to think about the modest benefits and risks.
  • Christie M. Ballantyne, MD
  • Professor of Medicine
    Baylor College of Medicine

    • Source: Endocrine Today.

 

Big Pharma criminality no longer a conspiracy theory: Bribery, fraud, price fixing now a matter of public record.

Posted by

1


Those of us who have long been describing the pharmaceutical industry as a “criminal racket” over the last few years have been wholly vindicated by recent news. Drug and vaccine manufacturer Merck was caught red-handed by two of its own scientists faking vaccine efficacy data by spiking blood samples with animal antibodies. GlaxoSmithKline has just been fined a whopping $3 billion for bribing doctors, lying to the FDA, hiding clinical trial data and fraudulent marketing. Pfizer, meanwhile has been sued by the nation’s pharmacy retailers for what is alleged as an “overarching anticompetitive scheme” to keep generic cholesterol drugs off the market and thereby boost its own profits.

The picture that’s emerging is one of a criminal drug industry that has turned to mafia tactics in the absence of any real science that would prove their products to be safe or effective. The emergence of this extraordinary evidence of bribery, scientific fraud, lying to regulators and monopolistic practices that harm consumers is also making all those doctors and “skeptics” who defended Big Pharma and vaccines eat their words.

To defend Big Pharma today is to defend a cabal of criminal corporations that have proven they will do anything — absolutely anything — to keep their profits rolling in. It makes no difference who they have to bribe, what studies they have to falsify, or who has to be threatened into silence. They will stop at nothing to expand their profit base, even if it means harming (or killing) countless innocents.

Let’s take a look at recent revelations:

GlaxoSmithKline pleads guilty to bribery, fraud and other crimes

It what is now the largest criminal fraud settlement ever to come out of the pharmaceutical industry, GlaxoSmithKline has pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $1 billion in criminal fines and $2 billion in civil fines following a nine-year federal investigation into its activities.

According to U.S. federal investigators, GlaxoSmithKline (http://www.naturalnews.com/036416_GlaxoSmithKline_fraud_criminal_char…):

• Routinely bribed doctors with luxury vacations and paid speaking gigs
• Fabricated drug safety data and lied to the FDA
• Defrauded Medicare and Medicaid out of billions
• Deceived regulators about the effectiveness of its drugs
• Relied on its deceptive practices to earn billions of dollars selling potentially dangerous drugs to unsuspecting consumers and medical patients

And this is just the part they got caught doing. GSK doesn’t even deny any of this. The company simply paid the $3 billion fine, apologized to its customers, and continued conducting business as usual.

By the way, in addition to bribing physicians, GSK has plenty of money to spread around bribing celebrities and others who pimps its products. The company reportedly paid $275,000 to the celebrity doctor known as “Dr. Drew,” who promoted Glaxo’s mind-altering antidepressant drug Wellbutrin (http://naturalsociety.com/top-radio-doctor-paid-by-glaxosmithkline-to…).

As the Wall Street Journal reports:

In June 1999, popular radio personality Dr. Drew Pinsky used the airwaves to extol the virtues of GlaxoSmithKline PLC’s antidepressant Wellbutrin, telling listeners he prescribes it and other medications to depressed patients because it “may enhance or at least not suppress sexual arousal” as much as other antidepressants do. But one thing listeners didn’t know was that, two months before the program aired, Dr. Pinsky — who gained fame as “Dr. Drew” during years co-hosting a popular radio sex-advice show “Loveline” — received the second of two payments from Glaxo totaling $275,000 for “services for Wellbutrin.”
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230393340457750503200685…)

Merck falsified vaccine data, spiked blood samples and more, say former employees

According to former Merck virologists Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, the company: (http://www.naturalnews.com/036328_Merck_mumps_vaccine_False_Claims_Ac…)

• “Falsified test data to fabricate a vaccine efficacy rate of 95 percent or higher.”

• Spiked the blood test with animal antibodies in order to artificially inflate the appearance of immune system antibodies.

• Pressured the two virologists to “participate in the fraud and subsequent cover-up.”

• Used the falsified trial results to swindle the U.S. government out of “hundreds of millions of dollars for a vaccine that does not provide adequate immunization.”

• Intimidated the scientists, threatening them with going to jail unless they stayed silent.

This is all documented in a 2010 False Claims Act which NaturalNews has acquired and posted here:
http://www.naturalnews.com/gallery/documents/Merck-False-Claims-Act.p…

Millions of children put at risk by Merck

In that document the two virologists say they, “witnessed firsthand the improper testing and data falsification in which Merck engaged to artificially inflate the vaccine’s efficacy findings.”

They also claim that because of the faked vaccine results, “the United States has over the last decade paid Merck hundreds of millions of dollars for a vaccine that does not provide adequate immunization… The United States is by far the largest financial victim of Merck’s fraud.”

They go on to point out that children are the real victims, however:

“But the ultimate victims here are the millions of children who every year are being injected with a mumps vaccine that is not providing them with an adequate level of protection. …The failure in Merck’s vaccine has allowed this disease to linger with significant outbreaks continuing to occur.”

Merck’s mumps viral strain is 45 years old!

According to the complaint, Merck has been using the same mumps strain — weakened from generations of being “passaged” — for the last 45 years! The complaint reads:

“For more than thirty years, Merck has had an exclusive license from the FDA to manufacture and sell a mumps vaccine in the U.S. The FDA first approved the vaccine in 1967. It was developed by Dr. Maurice Hilleman, at Merck’s West Point research facility, from the mumps virus that infected his five year-old daughter Jeryl Lynn. Merck continues to use this ‘Jeryl Lynn’ strain of the virus for its vaccine today.”

A complete medical farce

This information appears to show Merck’s mumps vaccine to be a complete medical farce. Those who blindly backed Merck’s vaccines — the science bloggers, “skeptics,” doctors, CDC and even the FDA — have been shown to be utter fools who have now destroyed their reputations by siding with an industry now known to be dominated by scientific fraud and unbounded criminality.

That’s the really hilarious part in all this: After decades of doctors, scientists and government authorities blindly and brainlessly repeating the mantra of “95% effectiveness,” it all turns out to be total quackery hogwash. Utterly fabricated. Quackety-quack quack. And all those hundreds of millions of Americans who lined up to be injected with MMR vaccines were all repeatedly and utterly conned into potentially harming themselves while receiving no medical benefit.

Intelligent, informed NaturalNews readers, home school parents, and “awakened” people who said “No!” to vaccines are now emerging as the victors in all this. By refusing to be injected with Merck’s vaccines, they avoided being assaulted with a fraudulent cocktail of adjuvant chemicals and all-but-useless mumps strains over four decades old. They protected their time, money and health. Those who refuse to be physically violated by vaccines are, once again, turning out to be the smartest people in society. No wonder they also tend to be healthier than the clueless fools who line up to get vaccinated every year.

Merck fraudulently misrepresented the efficacy of its vaccine and contributed to the spread of infectious disease, says lawsuit

The faked vaccine efficacy numbers aren’t the only troubles Merck is now facing. Shortly after the above False Claims Act was made public, Chatom Primary Care filed suit against Merck. That document is available from NaturalNews at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/gallery/documents/Chatom-Lawsuit-Merck-Mum…

It alleges that:

• [Merck engaged in] …a decade-long scheme to falsify and misrepresent the true efficacy of its vaccine.

• Merck fraudulently represented and continues to falsely represent in its labeling and elsewhere that its Mumps Vaccine has an efficacy rate of 95 percent of higher.

• Merck knows and has taken affirmative steps to conceal — by using improper testing techniques and falsifying test data — that its Mumps Vaccine is, and has been since at least 1999, far less than 95 percent effective.

• Merck designed a testing methodology that evaluated its vaccine against a less virulent strain of the mumps virus. After the results failed to yield Merck’s desired efficacy, Merck abandoned the methodology and concealed the study’s findings.

• Merck also engaged in “incorporating the use of animal antibodies to artificially inflate the results… destroying evidence of the falsified data and then lying to an FDA investigator… threatened a virologist in Merck’s vaccine division with jail if he reported the fraud to the FDA.”

• “Merck designed a testing methodology that evaluated its vaccine against a less virulent strain of the mumps virus. After the results failed to yield Merck’s desired efficacy, Merck abandoned the methodology and concealed the study’s findings. [Then] Merck designed even more scientifically flawed methodology, this time incorporating the use of animal antibodies to artificially inflate the results, but it too failed to achieve Merck’s fabricated efficacy rate. Confronted with two failed methodologies, Merck then falsified the test data to guarantee the results it desired. Having achieved the desired, albeit falsified, efficacy threshold, Merck submitted these fraudulent results to the FDA and European Medicines Agency.”

• “Merck took steps to cover up the tracks of its fraudulent testing by destroying evidence of the falsified data and then lying to an FDA investigator… Merck also attempted to buy the silence and cooperation of its staff by offering them financial incentives to follow the direction of Merck personnel overseeing the fraudulent testing process. Merck also threatened… Stephen Krahling, a virologist in Merck’s vaccine division from 1999 to 2001, with jail if he reported fraud to the FDA.”

• “Merck continued to conceal what it knew about the diminished efficacy of its Mumps Vaccine even after significant mumps outbreaks in 2006 and 2009.”

Obama administration has zero interest in actual justice

Another interesting note in all this is that under President Obama, the U.S. Dept. of Justice showed no interest whatsoever in investigating Merck over the False Claims Act filed by two of its former virologists. Despite the convincing evidence of fraud described in detail by insider whistleblowers, the Obama Department of Justice, led by gun-running Attorney General Eric Holder who is already facing serious questions over Operation Fast and Furious, simply chose to ignore the False Claims Act complaint.

When evidence of criminal fraud was brought before the U.S. Department of Justice, in other words, the DoJ looked the other way with a wink and a nod to the medical crimes taking place right under their noses. Who cares if tens of millions of children are being injected year after year with a fraudulent mumps vaccine? There’s money to be made, after all, and exploiting the bodies of little children for profit is just business as usual in a fascist nation dominated by corporate interests.

Pfizer sued by retailers over anticompetitive scheme

Adding to all this, Pfizer has now been sued by five U.S. retailers (pharmacies) who accuse the company of monopolistic market practices. According to the lawsuit, Pfizer conspired to prevent generic versions of its blockbuster cholesterol drug Lipitor from entering the market. This was done to protect billions in profits while making sure patients did not have access to more affordable cholesterol drugs. Pfizer sells nearly $10 billion worth of Lipitor each year.

According to the Reuters report on this lawsuit, Pfizer is being accused of (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/05/us-pfizer-walgreen-lipitor-…):

• Obtaining a fraudulent patent
• Engaging in sham litigation
• Entering a price-fixing agreement to delay cheaper generics
• Entering arrangements with pharmacy benefit managers to force retailers to buy more Lipitor (chemical name is atorvastatin calcium)

No arrests or prosecution of Big Pharma executives

One of the most astonishing realizations in all this is that given all the criminal fraud, bribery, misrepresentation, lying to the FDA, price fixing and other crimes that are going on in the pharmaceutical industry, you’d think somebody somewhere might be arrested and charged with a crime, right?

Nope.

To date, not a single pharmaceutical CEO, marketing employee or drug rep has been charged with anything related to all this fraud. In America, drug company employees are “above the law” just like top mafia bosses of a bygone era.

How insane is this, exactly? Consider this:

Imagine if YOU, an individual, went around town bribing doctors, falsifying data, selling a fraudulent product to the government, lying to regulators, engaging in anti-trade price-fixing and threatening your employees into silence. What would happen to you?

You’d probably wind up rotting in prison, the subject of an FBI investigation and a DoJ prosecution.

So why is it okay for a multi-billion-dollar corporation to carry out these same crimes and get away with it? Why are the CEOs of top drug companies given a free pass to commit felony crimes and endless fraud?

I’ll tell you why, and you’re not gonna like the answer: Because America has become a nation run by crooks for the benefit of crooks. It’s one big country club, and as comedian George Carlin used to say, “YOU ain’t in it!”

If Big Pharma would falsify data on vaccines, what else would the industry do?

I hope you’re getting the bigger picture in all this, friends. If these drug companies routinely bribe doctors, falsify data, defraud the government and commit felony crimes without remorse, what else would they be willing to do for profit?

Would they:

• Falsify efficacy data on other prescription drugs?
• Exploit children for deadly vaccine trials?
• Invent fictitious diseases to sell more drugs?
• Unleash bioweapons to cause a profitable pandemic?
• Conspire with the CDC to spread fear to promote vaccinations?
• Silence whistleblowers who try to go public with the truth?
• Give people cancer via stealth viruses in vaccines?
• Destroy the careers of medical scientists who question Big Pharma?
• Force a medical monopoly on the entire U.S. population via socialist health care legislation?

But of course they would. In fact, the industry is doing all those things right now. And if you don’t believe me, just remember that five years ago, no one believed me when I said drug companies were engaged in criminal conspiracies to defraud the nation — something that has now been proven over a nine-year investigation.

Source: Nature News

Collusion Between Pharmaceutical Industry and Government Deepens.

Posted by

0


There’s no shortage of stories detailing conflicts of interest—so many in fact that you may be getting sick and tired of hearing of them. However, this is a truly important issue that must be tackled, and one of the ways of doing that is by exposing it to the harsh light of day. As long as people remain unaware, or turn a blind eye, it will continue unabated.

The price we pay for not paying attention is the loss of health, as the information disseminated by grossly compromised health agencies is skewed in favor of various industries, with Big Pharma leading the pack as one of the most powerful political and governmental influences.

Here, I will review two important revolving-door cases, and while neither is recent news, many of you may still be unaware of them.

Former CDC Director Now President of Merck‘s Vaccine Unit

In the summer of 2011, Merck president Julie Gerberding said in a news interview1 that she’s “very bullish on vaccines,” as she recounted the various ways she helps Merck sell its products. What she didn’t divulge was her motivation for leaving her job as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—an agency charged with overseeing vaccines and drug companies—and join Merck in the first place, back in January 2010.

If you don’t see the enormity of the influence her former high-level ties to the CDC can have, just consider the fact that Merck makes 14 of the 17 pediatric vaccines recommended by the CDC, and 9 of the 10 recommended for adults, and while vaccine safety advocates are trying to rein in the number of vaccines given to babies, safety concerns keep falling on deaf ears. The vaccine industry is booming, and it’s become quite clear that profit potential is the driving factor behind it.

One of the reasons for this is because vaccine patents do not expire like drugs do, so each vaccine adopted for widespread use has the potential to make enormous, continuous profits for decades to come. Vaccine makers also enjoy a high degree of immunity against lawsuits—and in the case of pandemic vaccines, absolute immunity—so the financial liability when something goes wrong is very low, compared to drugs.

Gerberding has a Long History of Disregard for Vaccine Safety

Joining a parade of other high-ranking government officials who pass through the revolving doors between government and Big Pharma, Gerberding left a trail of controversy behind her when she left the CDC. While a 2009 article by the Institute for Southern Studies lists a number of them2, I believe they left out the most important ones, namely her misinformation campaign about the pandemic swine flu vaccine, as well as her naive stance on vaccine safety issues in general.

The CDC disseminated extremely exaggerated data on the 2009 H1N1 “pandemic” and urged almost everyone in the U.S. to take the new, untested vaccines. When questions arose, they blocked CBS’s requests for samples of the swine flu cases and added obstacles to getting information. Despite the many dangers that have since been linked to the hastily developed vaccine—including the confirmed link to narcolepsy—the H1N1 vaccine is now part and parcel of the “regular” seasonal flu vaccine, although most people are completely unaware of this fact. And the CDC is now, for the first time ever, urging the seasonal flu vaccine on everyone in the country, from six months’ of age until death.

Even more disturbing, the CDC withheld data on miscarriages from the H1N1 vaccines under Gerberding’s lead, while insisting that pregnant women be put first in line to receive it. This was a dramatic reversal of its own recommendations. More than 3,500 post-vaccination miscarriages may have simply been ignored by the CDC.

One of Merck’s potentially most dangerous vaccines right now is Gardasil; a vaccine that so far has been linked to thousands of adverse events and at least 49 unexplained deaths. It’s a situation that the FDA and CDC have repeatedly denied, even as the adverse reports mount.

Gerberding’s 2004 report to Congress, ‘Prevention of Genital Human Papillomavirus Infection‘3 likely played a significant role in getting the controversial vaccine approved in the first place. Needless to say, the approval of this questionable vaccine guaranteed her future employer billions of dollars-worth of profits. Gerberding has also been a staunch defender of thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative used in many vaccines, and has consistently denied any links between vaccines and autism.

All in all, Gerberding has repeatedly demonstrated that safety is nowhere on her list of priorities or concerns when it comes to vaccines. It’s easy to see why Merck would want her to head up their vaccine unit. For the rest of us, however, her blatant disregard for proven vaccine safety is bad news indeed.

Former NIH Director Now Heads Sanofi Research Labs

Another former government official who’s switched sides is Elias Zerhouni, former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—one of the world’s foremost medical research centers, and an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services. Zerhouni is now head of Sanofi-Aventis’ research labs4. He also is a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; a member of the Board of Trustees at the Mayo Clinic; and is a senior fellow for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program5.

As pointed out in a recent article by Forbes Magazine6, Zerhouni is no stranger to controversies over conflicts-of-interest.

In the fall of 2003, the NIH with Zerhouni at its head faced grave accusations when it came to light that hundreds of its scientists had financial ties to the medical and pharmaceutical industries. According to a 2004 article in the NIH Record7, over 100 scientists did not get approval for their industry activities, even though the rules were so loose virtually all requests to conduct outside work were approved by the agency, without any limits on compensation or hours worked for outside entities.

In one case, an academic scientist was found to have a financial interest in a therapy that ended up killing a patient. The case served as a potent warning of how dangerous such conflicts of interest can be. While Zerhouni managed to emerge from the 2003 debacle looking like a good crisis manager, the following paragraphs from the NIH Record8 are quite telling. Essentially, Zerhouni dissuaded Congress from doing the right thing, which is ban all outside activities of those working for the NIH, limiting the restrictions for conflicts of interest to upper level management only:

“[Zerhouni] disclosed that “initially, Congress truly wanted to ban [all outside activities], and the members of the committee have been very public about that…I was fortunate to be able to make contact with legislators and to help them understand what happened, how it happened, and why [a draconian response] might not be the right thing to do.”

Zerhouni said that over the course of long discussion, a good consensus emerged that formed the basis of NIH’s approach to the issue: stewards of public funds should never be vulnerable even to the perception that their activities could result in private gain. The top concern, he said, is, “How do you keep a true firewall and separation between the public trust — the money the public has given us in trust — and the activities of those who manage that resource?”

He doesn’t think it was well appreciated outside of NIH that the agency “has a dual nature — number one, we are a granting agency, but number two, we are also one of the most advanced, most capable biomedical research institutions in the world.

So we’re both sort of an academic, scientific research place, and yet next to that we’re also a government agency with its own rules and regulations…I said, look, we need to build a firewall around those who have fiduciary responsibility relative to the government, and those who do not. And that’s where we came up with these much more stringent rules for directors, deputy directors, and people who have those authorities, versus those who do not.”

Conflicts of Interest Affect Your Life and Well-Being…

When it comes to medicine, mere disclosure of conflict of interest is not nearly enough. Patients need unbiased advice when it comes to making decisions that can impact their very life, and physicians and scientists with financial ties to the drug industry should not be allowed to participate in broad policy and public-health recommendations in the first place. Likewise, while it’s perfectly legal to engage the revolving door and switch jobs from government agencies to private industry and vice-versa, this practice has become so widespread it has undermined the entire system of checks and balances.

Conflict of interest is rampant not only within the field of medicine, but the revolving doors between government and industry has effectively led to a situation where it’s now extremely difficult, if not impossible, to trust conventional health advice from the federal government—which is supposed to be independent due to this massive collusion between government and industry. Here are a few more examples of the many revolving doors between the pharmaceutical industry and the US government:

  • The American Cancer Society has close financial ties to both makers of mammography equipment and cancer drugs. Other conflicts of interest include ties to, and financial support from, the pesticide, petrochemical, biotech, cosmetics, and junk food industries—the very industries whose products are the primary contributors to cancer
  • Drug companies pay seven-figure amounts into FDA coffers to gain approval of their drugs. FDA staff knows that the cash means higher salaries and more perks in the agency budget. (Incidentally, the FDA’s commissioner Margaret Hamburg came straight from the boardroom of America’s largest seller of dental amalgam, Henry Schein, Inc.)
  • Conflicts of interest are also rampant in a mass vaccination infrastructure that has the same people who are regulating and promoting vaccines also evaluating vaccine safety.
  • The vaccine industry gives millions for conferences, grants, and medical education classes sponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The vaccine industry even helped build AAP’s headquarters.
  • President Obama’s nominee at the Department of Homeland Security overseeing bioterrorism defense, Dr. Tara O’Toole, served as a key advisor for a lobbying group funded by a pharmaceutical company that asked the government to spend more money for anthrax vaccines and biodefense research9

There are countless others—so many, in fact, I’m sure you could fill an entire book with examples. These types of blatant conflicts should simply not be tolerated, but they most certainly are. For now the majority still does not understand the pharmaceutical industry’s power and influence over government, and the field of conventional medicine itself, but the tide is beginning to turn, and will continue to do so as more and more people get informed.

What Can You do to Take Control of Your Health?

The good news is that increasing numbers of people are now waking up to these harsh realities, and you, being among those who are informed, can help share this knowledge with others. Remember that the definition of fascism is a government system that has complete power in regimenting all industry and forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism. What we have here is a hybrid—a sort of corporate fascism, where industry has powerful control over government, and forcefully suppresses anything that threatens their monopoly on profits.

Unfortunately, this can be extremely dangerous as it pertains to your health.

Virtually every measurable index indicates that despite the ever-increasing amounts of money invested, if you live in the United States your chance of achieving optimal health through the medical system is only getting worse. While the U.S. spends more than twice the amount on health care as other developed nations, we rank 49th in life expectancy worldwide—far lower than most other developed nations! The time is ripe for you to take control of your health, and this site is full of free comprehensive recommendations that can serve as an excellent, truly independent starting point.

When it comes to your health, you simply cannot accept claims at their face value … you’ve got to dig below the surface and use all the resources available to you, including your own commonsense and reason, true independent experts’ advice and other’s experiences, to determine what medical treatment or advice will be best for you in any given situation. Ultimately, you must come to the realization that YOU are responsible for your, and your family’s health — not me, not your physician, and certainly not any researchers or government health agencies on a drug or vaccine manufacturer’s payroll.

You’ve got to become an active participant in your care and make sure you are making decisions that correspond with your own best judgment, knowledge and experiences.

Source: Dr. Mercola.