Breast Cancer. New predictive tool will be another 'game changer'! Or does it miss the most obvious cause of breast cancer?

Conventional medicine is always keen to announce new 'medical breakthroughs' that will be a 'game changer' in the way that one disease or another is dealt with, and the mainstream media is keen to publicise them. I have regularly reported on them in previous blogs.

The most recent is in this BBC article (15 January 2019) stating "Breast cancer risk test 'game changer". The article, which quotes Cancer Research UK (a major promoter of the drugs industry, and largely funded by it) states that experts have developed a potentially "game-changing" test to predict a woman's risk of breast cancer which combines all the known risk factors, such as family history, hundreds of genetic markers, and other factors, such as weight, to give the most comprehensive assessment possible.

The factors used in this new 'game changing' test are discussed in the Nature journal website, and outlined in more detail here. Other factors include age, height, body mass index, age at first birth, menarche and menopause, alcohol intake, and much more.

So what about the many pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that are known to cause cancer? Use of the contraceptive pill, and HRT (hormone replacement therapy) are mentioned. It would have been hard to ignore these two drugs, but nothing else was included.

The Right Diagnosis website provides a long list of pharmaceutical drugs, and combinations of pharmaceutical drugs, that are known to cause breast cancer. None of these drugs have found their way into the new test! And Right Diagnosis confirms that 'this is not a complete list' - as usual, no-one, certainly not doctors or medical scientists, are totally clear about just how carcinogenic ANY of their drugs are.

And remember, this is just a test for breast cancer. It is not a treatment. But conventional medicine's new mantra is that the earlier cancer is detected, the more chance there is of treating it. However, also remember that all conventional medicine's 'treatments' are known to be harmful and unpleasant.

But conventional medicine knows that it is important for them to keep in patient's minds the hope that they are winning the 'battle' against disease. So the publication of these stories are important to them. They want the mainstream media to carry these stories about future medical breakthroughs. And, as in this case, the media is very willing to comply - meekly, unquestioningly. The Sky News coverage is very similar to that of the BBC. And a simple web search reveals at least 20 similar reports, and as far as I can see not one of them questions whether the factors used in the test are comprehensive.

As usual, it is all just slavish reporting of information supplied by the conventional medical establishment. And conventional medicine does not want to to know about the link with drugs!

This is why the war on cancer, all cancers, has been lost, and why the incidence of cancer is increasing, year on year.

          * In the 1940's only 1 in 20 people got cancer.
          * In 1970s this figure has increased to 1 in 16.
          * In 1990s it had grown to 1 in 10.

The latest figure I have seen is that 1 in 3 people can now expect to get cancer during their lifetime. So two lessons need to be learnt.

1. That we need to call a halt to a medical system that declares war on the body whenever it becomes sick with harmful and dangerous drugs and vaccines, and 
2. To recognise that an important cause of cancer, probably one of the most important causes, is the pharmaceutical drugs we are being given to treat other illnesses.

Certainly, one important way we all have to prevent contracting cancer is to say 'No' to pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. Which ones? I have listed some of them here, although the drugs mentioned probably only scratch the surface of the real problem.

Recent medical news indicating that conventional medicine is dangerous. So why is the public never told about any of it?

The history of conventional medicine is full of failures, horrors and patient disasters. In the 19th century it used techniques like blood letting and blistering, and drugs now recognised to be dangerous, like Laudanum, Calomel and Antimony. Many more pharmaceutical drugs followed during the 20th century, passing through Thalidomide, Fen-Phen, Baycol, Tysabri, Effexor, Avandia, Vioxx, and many, many more, listed on this link, but too numerous to mention here.

Past performance is always the best predictor of future performance.

So are today's drugs, the one's doctors are giving us now, any better? Regular readers of this blog will know that they are not. They are causing side effects, adverse reactions, that are generating the rapid increase of serious chronic illness and disease. Conventional medicine is well aware of this but in their pursuit of profit they are prepared to continue prescribing these dangerous drugs up to the point that doctors can no longer keep the truth from us.

The problem is that the harm being caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are never publicised. Our doctors, our national health services, our politicians and governments, and the mainstream media organisations, just don't bother to tell us.

So whilst we may be aware of some of the drugs and vaccines that have been banned and withdrawn in the past, few people are aware of the harm present day 'medications' are causing. To demonstrate this, I thought that I would bring together some of the recent news stories, since the recent holiday period, about the dangers that conventional medicine, and pharmaceutical drugs particularly, present to our health, THAT WE ARE JUST NOT TOLD ABOUT.

VACCINE CONTAMINANTS
This article states that there have been hundreds of articles in medical journals that have found stray viruses, aluminum, mercury, etc., in vaccines, and asks whether this happens in error, or is a regular occurrence. It refers to Italian and French researchers who looked at 44 vaccines, and found inorganic contaminants IN EVERY SINGLE ONE!

You will not find this reported anywhere in the mainstream media!

VACCINE BOMBSHELL

This article states that a 'confidential' GlaxoSmithKline document, recently leaked to the press, showed that 36 infants had died in the last two years after having received the "6-in-1" vaccine, Infanrix Hexa.

Leaked to the press? Perhaps, but you will not find this reported in the mainstream media either!

MEDICAL SCIENCE DELIBERATELY HIDING HPV VACCINE DEATHS?
Drug manufacturers & regulators accused of concealing harm done to young girls by vaccine, including death permanent injury, and life threatening reactions

Reported just over a year ago, but hidden, dismissed and minimised

by medical science - and, of course, censored by the mainstream media.

ANTIBIOTICS LINKED TO FATAL HEART CONDITION

The Dr Mercola website has reported this month that Fluoroquinolone antibiotics, prescribed for upper respiratory and urinary tract infections, have been found to increase the risk of aortic dissection, which can lead to death. The article states that these antibiotics have long been associated with 'adverse events' that include psychiatric effects, kidney stones or failure, tendon rupture and retinal detachment leading to blindness.

If you think we might want to know about these dangerous side effects, 

the mainstream media does not agree. They have never mentioned the new evidence.

These are just some of the articles I have come across since the holiday period. I could provide you with many more (check my Tweets (@stevescrutton), my Facebook page, or my Linkedin page, regularly for these. But the main point is that no-one should ever assume that the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that our doctors are giving us today are safe.

If we are not aware of the dangers of today's drugs it is because we are never told about them - until after hundreds, thousands, millions of patients have been seriously harmed by them!

THE NHS. Even more money, allied to the promise of a new plan. A brave new dawn? Or just more of the same?

• The NHS has a new plan that focuses on the prevention and early detection of disease. 
• And it has been given an extra £4 billion more to spend every year.
• Together, the NHS claims, they could save 500,000 lives.

A brave new dawn?

Or just more of the same?

The NHS plan will mean that GPs, mental health and community care will be awarded the biggest funding increases, even though 1 in 11 posts are currently vacant, and there are no explanations about where the new staff is coming from. The plan's aim is to reduce the reliance on hospitals, even though some senior hospital doctors are already warning that they face "a near-on impossible task." The president of the Society of Acute Medicine, Dr Nick Scriven, has said that he is "staggered" by the plan - given the problems facing hospitals, according to a BBC News report.

The NHS, as usual, is struggling. In terms of patient care it is missing all three key waiting time targets (A&E, cancer care and routine operations) - hence the reason for throwing more money at the problem, and coming up with a new plan. 

Financially the NHS is also overspending. Indeed, the media is already being told that the huge increase in funding is sufficient only to plug (i) inflation, and (ii) the yawning gaps that already exist in the NHS's health care provision. So even an additional £4 billion, to add to the £120 billion already being spend, is already spent, and is insufficient to keep up with patient demands!

This sets the agenda for new spending demands by the NHS, demands that will no doubt increase this year, next year, as more patients come through the door. These demands will be met, as always. More money will be found. But never enough to satisfy the bottomless of pit of the conventional medical system.

So perhaps the new plan will help! Unfortunately the new plan is just that, another 'new' plan. It is designed to overcome the inherent problems of the NHS. Whenever there is a new crisis (which is now a regular occurrence) new money is demanded and given, and a new NHS plan arises to justify the new spending, and to explain why it will work - this time.

Regular readers of this blog will know my explanation of this circuitous, never-ending NHS problem. It applies to every national health care service in the world that is dominated by conventional medicine. 

• The NHS is dominated by conventional medicine, which itself is dominated by the use of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. 
• Drugs and vaccines do not work, and they have never worked. The best they have ever done is to ameliorate illness, and this does not decrease the number of patients walking through the door of the NHS.
• Indeed, drugs and vaccines make matters worse, through their side effect and adverse reactions. The illness and disease caused by drugs only increase the number of patients walking through the door of the NHS
• So the more money spent on the same kind of medical intervention will only increase patient demand for yet more treatment.

So is the new NHS 'prevention' plan likely to work?

Let's look closely at what conventional doctors (GP's) are likely do in their new (?) and enhanced preventative role. How are they going to spend the new resources being made available to them.

• When a patient is in pain (s)he will be given painkillers. These may temporarily reduce pain but without doing anything to relieve the source of the pain.
• When a patient has an infection (s)he will be given antibiotic drugs, if there any that still work in killing bacteria - both 'good' and so-called 'bad' bacteria.
• When a patient is found to have high blood pressure (s)he will be given an antihypertensive drugs.
• When a patient is thought to have a risk of heart disease, or stroke, (s)he will be given Statin drugs.
• When a patient is depressed (s)he will be given antidepressant, and antipsychotic drugs.
• And to prevent deadly (?) diseases like Mumps, Measles, Rubella, and most anything else, our children will be vaccinated, .

In other words, the plan will ensure, and the additional money will enable, more to be spent on the same old, failed treatments. After all, conventional medicine has nothing else to offer. If it had anything safer or more effective it would be offering it to patients now! And the drugs mentioned above are just a few of the drugs that are causing serious patient harm, through their side effects that are really serious new illnesses and diseases.

• So the new NHS money is being spent to hide medical failure. It will further increase sickness levels, and patient demand for more health care. It will fuel more demands for more government spending on the NHS.
• The new NHS plan will give conventional doctors responsibility for preventing illness and disease, but the only tools they will have at their disposal are the same tools that have caused the crisis.

I will be writing about these new and increased demands for more NHS spending in a few years time, when this prediction is fulfilled, as all my others have been!

Unless, of course, between now and then, there is a 'eureka' moment - that conventional medicine is failing - and that spending more on it will prove to be no more a self-fulfilling, guaranteed route to more failure. That we need to start looking for alternatives to this non-ending saga.

ANTIBIOTIC DRUGS. More problems for these wonder drugs, on which conventional medicine depends so heavily

The reputation of conventional medicine depends largely on the success of antibiotic drugs during the last 70 years. I am old enough to remember them being described as 'wonder drugs', and that they were also 'completely safe'. It is the kind of rhetoric, and false promise, on which conventional medicine has based its apparent success.

I wrote about it back in 2012 that "Antibiotics. The failure of conventional medicine's wonder drug", and in 2013 that "Antibiotics - not such a wonder drug?"

The ongoing failure of antibiotics has been described as "an antibiotic apocalypse" - the drug is considered to be that important to the viability of conventional medicine. The problem with antibiotics, as presented in the mainstream media, has focused mainly on bacterial resistance. Doctors have few antibiotics that actually work now, and the lifespan of the remaining drugs is time-limited.

Yet, as I said back in 2015, "Antibiotics. Not as safe as we have been told", resistance is only one part of the problem. As the blog outlined, the drugs are, and always have been, harmful to patient health - more harmful than has ever been admitted.

Now there is further news about the harm they cause. It has come from MIMS in October 2018 which reported that the EMA, the European Drugs Agency, has said that the use of quinolone antibiotics should be restricted "owing to disabling and potentially long-lasting adverse effects reported with their use". This is what it said

              "The EMA's Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee made its recommendations following a review of serious adverse effects reported with the use of quinolone antibiotics given orally, parenterally or by inhalation. Such effects have been reported very rarely and mainly involve muscles, tendons and bones, and the nervous system."

As ever, with all dangerous pharmaceutical drugs, these antibiotics have NOT been withdrawn or banned. Instead, doctors have been asked to use them "with caution", and not to prescribe them for certain conditions.

• Have you read about this, then? No! Well, not a surprise as the mainstream media has not bothered to mention it, as far as I can see. Clearly they don't think we should know about drugs that cause "disabling and potentially long-last adverse effects".
• So is this the conventional medical establishment acting, in a timely way, to protect patients? Hardly, doctors have been prescribing quinolone antibiotics since the early 1960's, so they have been causing patient harm for over 50 years!
• Perhaps, then, it is just that doctors haven't noticed (or haven't accepted, or haven't reported) that they cause patient harm. Well, this does not stand scrutiny either - serious side effects have been known about for a long time. "The FDA first added a Boxed Warning to fluoroquinolones in July 2008 for the increased risk of tendinitis and tendon rupture."

The reality is that all pharmaceutical drugs are harmful, and that the conventional medical establishment just does not give a damn! 

Conventional medicine reacts to patient harm only when it can no longer continue to deny that they are causing patient harm!

And then, routinely, through censorship, or perhaps sheer embarrassment, patients are not told that they have been taking drugs that may have harmed them!

This is just one more example that demonstrates that the future of medicine does NOT lay with pharmaceutical drugs. They are all proving to be largely ineffective. They are all, without exception, dangerous. And drug companies are not even pretending, these days, to suggest they have new drugs coming through the pipeline.

Conventional Medicine - RIP - Quickly please

"You have Diabetes!" The diagnosis is a shock. The consequences are alarming. But then your doctor gives you a drug. So all is well?

So the doctor tells you - you have diabetes. The diagnosis is a shock. It's a lifetime condition, the doctor says. And it's not just the illness, he says, it's what can arise from the illness, including vision loss and blindness, kidney failure, cardiovascular disease, stroke, nerve damage leading to peripheral neuropathy, and even limb amputation.

Never mind, though. At least the doctor says that diabetes is treatable. You've been given lots of good advice about diet and exercise. And then there is this drug, canaglifozin, taken orally for the rest of your life, which helps control blood sugar levels. So it all sounds just fine. The drug will help the kidneys get rid of glucose from the bloodstream. Conventional medicine has it all in control!

Nothing to worry about, then (?)

Canaglifozin, marketed as Invokana, Invokamet and Invokamet XR, is a new drug, approved by the USA's drug regulator, the FDA, in March 2013. So it's effective, it does what it says, and it's safe. This must be so, that's the only basis that drug regulators approve a drug.

So roll on 4 years, to May 2017. The FDA now concludes that canaglifozen increases the risk of leg and foot amputations. The evidence, it says, is based on new data from two large clinical trials.

Damn! The drug will now be withdrawn, perhaps even banned. After all, conventional medicine states that its primary principle is "First, do no harm". And the precautionary principle will surely mean that the drug will no longer be available for used.

But no, hold on! The drug isn't being banned. The FDA is recommending a 'Black Box' warning to the labelling. You can still continue taking it. So how will you be protected? Will you be safe?

               "Patients taking canagliflozin should notify your health care professionals right away if you develop new pain or tenderness, sores or ulcers, or infections in your legs or feet. Talk to your health care professional if you have questions or concerns. Do not stop taking your diabetes medicine without first talking to your health care professional."

Okay! But it seems strange that you take a drug because you have diabetes, and the drug gives you an increased risk of suffering one of the worst consequences of having diabetes. This is not what your doctor told you. So what has your doctors got to do, how will they protect you?

               "Health care professionals should, before starting canagliflozin, consider factors that may predispose patients to the need for amputations. These factors include a history of prior amputation, peripheral vascular disease, neuropathy, and diabetic foot ulcers. Monitor patients receiving canagliflozin for the signs and symptoms described above and discontinue canagliflozin if these complications occur."

Okay! Well, you can always have a word with your doctor next time you see him.

Except that, in actual fact, you don't even know about the increased risk of amputation! The threat may have been published on the FDA website, by Reuters, and by health websites like Health Watch, but whoever reads them. Why should you? Everyone else tells us that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are safe. Why on earth should we question what everyone tells us? And anyway, if you look carefully at the FDA's instructions, no-one has been asked or instructed to contact you, and inform you about the risk.

And note. This story has not appeared in any of the newspapers, or the radio and television channels, that most people watch.

So you may be taking a drug that could be harmful to your health, but don't worry about it - you are entirely unaware of it!

• Johnson and Johnson, the manufacturer, knows about it, and they still want to profit by selling the drug. Of course they do!
• The FDA know about it, and they are quite happy for J&J to continue selling it to me. Well, drug regulators are controlled by the drugs industry anyway, so of course they do!

And if you live outside the USA? What then? 

Well, there is no indication that drug regulators in the rest of the world know about it, or else they have decided not to do anything about it anyway. So you will certainly not know about it. So, just as the FDA instructs, please don't stop taking your diabetes medication. It must be doing you good - at least, as far as you are aware!

See also these blogs on the subject of diabetes.

• The Diabetes Epidemic. What the media does not tell us
• Diabetes Drugs. So you think these are helping you?
• Pharmaceutical Drugs know to cause Diabetes

And (it you still have the stomach for it) these are all the known side effects of Canaglifozin

Spina Bifida. A brilliant new operation? Or a drastic intervention for a condition that is often caused by conventional medicine?

Spina Bifida is a condition where the baby's spine and spinal cord fail to develop normally within the womb, causing a gap, called a neural tube defect to form. The neural tube is the structure that forms in early pregnancy, and normally closes about 4 weeks after conception. In spina bifida the closure is incomplete, and this can lead to defects in the spinal cord and vertebrae.

This can lead to weakness or paralysis in the lower limbs, muscle weakness that can affect bone development, causing dislocated or deformed joints, bone fractures, mis-shapen bones, and scoliosis. It can also lead to bladder and bowel problems, including incontinence, urinary track infections, kidney problems, constipation and/or diarrhoea. It can also cause hydrocephalus, and related problems.

Announcing a brilliant new operation?
So spina bifida is not a minor condition. For many years surgery has been used soon after birth to close this gap in the spine, but often the nervous system will already have been damaged by this time. So in more recent years the operation has been carried out several weeks before the baby is born, in the hope that this will improve some of these difficulties, and lead to better long-term health. In December 2018. in Britain, it's been announced that the operation is to become routinely available on the National Health Service (NHS).

So is this another example of a brilliant new surgical technique 

that will help transform our experience of health care?

Maybe - but as usual with surgical breakthroughs of this kind it is not as simple as that. Conventional medicine likes to tell us about their new 'wonder' drugs, and their brilliant new surgical techniques. They do so regularly. But the real situation is usually more complicated - as in this case.

The causes of Spina Bifida
It is thought that Spina Bifida has been with us since time began, although the condition certainly increased during the 20th century, but has since levelled off in more recent years because of earlier detection, and the recognition that prevention is possible by ensuring the mother has sufficient folate acid levels during pregnancy. So what causes spina bifida?

• Conventional medicine tells us that it is a congenital condition, and happens when pregnant mother's have low levels of folate acid during their pregnancy.
• What conventional medicine often does not tell us is that there is another known cause of Spina Bifida (and low folate levels) - pharmaceutical drugs prescribed to pregnant women during pregnancy.

Drugs that cause Spina Bifida?
Surprisingly, and untypically, NHS Choices does admit that "taking certain medications during pregnancy has been linked to an increased risk of having a baby with spina bifida or other birth defects". It specifically mentions epileptic drugs, such as valproate and carbamazepine (which are also used to treat bipolar disorder). Yet amazingly the solution offered is not to stop taking them, it is that "doctors will try to avoid prescribing these medications if there's a chance you could get pregnant while taking them", plus advice to women not to get pregnant whilst taking them! Or to take folic acid supplements!

The Health Prep website is a little more forthcoming, saying that "any time a woman is pregnant, the pills she takes can end up affecting her unborn child", including spina bifida. Again, it mentions anti-seizure drugs, "but some other types of drugs can also cause issues". It goes on to suggest that drugs cause spina bifida "because they alter the body’s ability to absorb certain nutrients" like folic acid. This reminds us that the cause of (rather than an explanation for) spina bifida is NOT a lack of folic acid, but the reason WHY there is a lack of folic acid in the first place. Anti-convulsant drugs, such as Topamax or Depokote, seem to directly affect the ability of the foetus, and the mother, to metabolize folate acid, so they are directly implicated in the reduction of folate levels.

The WebMD website, in an article published in 2010, refers to research published in the BMJ Online First journal, that found babies born to women who have taken the anti-seizure drug Carbamazepine have a more than twofold increased risk of a spina bifida child, but that this was better than another epilepsy drug, Valproic acid (which is marketed under a multiplicity of trade names). The study showed that among nearly 4 million babies born in Europe between 1995 and 2005, including almost 100,000 who had major birth defects, 2,680 were born to mothers who took carbamazepine during the first three months of pregnancy.

Yet it is not just anti-epileptic drugs that are known to cause spina bifida. The Spina Bifida HQ website states clearly that antidepressant drugs are also implicated. It says "... antidepressants that increase the concentration of serotonin available in a woman’s system (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs) seem to especially increase a child’s risk for spina bifida" and that the SSRI's implicated are some of the most common antidepressant drugs prescribed, such as Prozac, Lexapro, Paxil, Zoloft and Celexa "among others". It adds that "the percentage risk of a child having spina bifida if the mother takes an SSRI during pregnancy has not been clearly established." Given the seriousness of this disease it might have been expected that conventional medicine might have done so by now!

Even the USA drug regulator, the FDA, has warned about the link between antidepressants drugs and spina bifida. Several FDA warnings given over the years have been outlined in this Drug Reporter website yet nothing has been done to protect women, and their unborn babies. The conventional medical establishment, whilst recognising the serious dangers of the drugs they use, continue to insist that they are necessary in order to treat other conditions. So dangerous drugs are never withdrawn or banned, and babies continue to be born with spina bifida and other birth defects, and they are dismissed as 'congenital' or a lack of folate acid!

Conventional medicine causes disease, and then produces expensive cures
The human cost of of these pharmaceutical drugs is immense, both to the damaged child, and to his/her family. So anything that can be done to ameliorate the tragedy of spina bifida should be applauded. So what about this new surgical breakthrough.

Yet there is also a huge financial cost too. This arises when conventional medicine knows, full well, that a significant cause of spina bifida is not congenital, but the pharmaceutical drugs doctors continue to give to pregnant women. The condition is caused, in many instances, by a so-called 'side effect' of earlier conventional medical treatment.

If this primary causation was properly admitted by conventional medicine the solution would NOT be a brilliant new operation. It would be to ban the pharmaceutical drugs that have caused the condition in the first place.

As in so many similar situations, if conventional medicine were able to accept the damage to health it is causing through its pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, an easier and simpler solution would be to stop this damage at source. To stop prescribing drugs that caused foetal harm. Coming up with expensive new solutions (however brilliant they might be) is not the best solution to problems conventional medicine has caused in the first place!

In part this explains why is conventional medicine in crisis? It is not under-funding. It is the inability of the conventional medical establishment to recognise that they have to continually invent new treatments to illnesses and diseases that they have created, or added to, in the first place.

GSK & Pfizer to merge their Healthcare Operations. Is this to improve patient health? Or is it Unity in Dishonesty, Fraud and Corruption?

Two of the largest and most influential drug companies, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Pfizer are to merge their healthcare operations, whose combined annual sales will reach nearly £10 billion. The deal still has to be approved by shareholders, but as they are more interested in profit than patient health, this is not likely to be a problem.

Earlier this year, GSK took full control of a previously joint operation with Novartis, paying them over £9 billion for its 36.5% stake in their Consumer Healthcare Business.

The merger deals are about selling drugs, as many drugs as possible, for as much profit as possible. Every industry engages in similar manoeuvres, but the merger between drug companies makes particular sense. They all profit from the sale of drugs and vaccines. They all profit from ongoing sickness and disease. But more importantly, they are all leaders in an industry that is regularly, some would say routinely, engaged in

• dishonesty
• fraud
• corruption

So drug companies fit well together!

The evidence for such a devastating judgement on the ethics of the pharmaceutical industry is plentiful, although it has not been well publicised by our governments, or by our compliant media, both of whom have studiously failed/refused to publicise the evidence against this powerful and influential industry.

I have written about this before, in some detail, when outlining the ongoing failure of the Conventional Medicine, so here I will do no more than outline some of the details of this activity over the last decade or so, appertaining just to these two companies.

• 2009. Pfizer, was fined $2.3 billion when it pleaded guilty to misbranding the painkiller, Bextra, with the intent to mislead and defraud, and then promoting it to treat acute pain at dosages the drug regulator, FDA, had previously deemed dangerous. Bextra had been banned in 2005 for safety reasons. It was also found that Pfizer had illegally promoted three other drugs, the antipsychotic Geodon, an antibiotic Zyvox, and an anti-epileptic drug, Lyrica.
• 2012 GSK was fined 400,00 pesos when 14 babies died in an illegal vaccine trial. It was found that doctors had taken advantage of illiterate parents who took their children for treatment, but were pressured and forced to sign a 28-page consent form.
• 2012 GSK agreed to pay $3 billion in civil and criminal liabilities following its promotion of several drugs, failure to report negative safety data, and making unsupported safety claims, particularly for its diabetes drug, Avandia. The company was aware that the drug increased the risk of heart attacks, and congestive heart failure but they withheld this information for 7 years! The company also pleaded guilty to promoting the antidepressant drug, Paxil, for patients under 18 although it had never been approved for that age group. GSK were also found guilty of paying bribes to doctors, with one attorney prosecuting the case saying that the company used every imaginable form of high-priced entertainment and paid millions of dollars in bribes to doctors. One doctor is reported as receiving $275,000 to promote just one GSK drug.
• 2012. Pfizer were forced to pay $60 million after bribing European and Asian health officials to dispense their drugs and vaccines. The fraud involved doctors and public health officials in Bulgaria, China, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Kazakhstan, Russia and Serbia. When the company realised they might be caught they apparently attempted to hide the illicit transactions by burying them in accounting records as 'business expenses'.
• 2014. GSK were ordered to pay $105 million to 44 states for providing it sales representatives with financial incentives to make misleading claims and statements to doctors about its drugs Advair, Paxil and Wellbutrin. The company was sued for deceptive trade practices and violations of consumer law.

So the business practices of both these drug companies seem well suited! These are just the criminal cases in which GSK and Pfizer were involved. There are many others, listed on the page referred to, that have been taken against other pharmaceutical companies. In my book I concluded.

               "And so it goes on. The list of fraud and dishonesty practised by the pharmaceutical companies is a long one, and certainly a continuing one. Those mentioned above are just a few selected examples from recent years. They are not isolated incidents. They have become a regular part of the pharmaceutical business. They form a pattern of behaviour that has continued over many decades. And for every case brought to court there are probably hundreds more that never reach that stage, or which go unexamined."

So this merger has little to do with patient health. It is to do with safeguarding the future profitability of the industry. This has become more necessary as more people realise that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are harmful to health, and so resistance to taking them is increasing. The competitors of GSK and Pfizer is no longer each other - it is falling drug sales, the banning and withdrawal of failed drugs, and the failure over many years now to come up with new 'blockbuster' drugs. So the industry is reforming itself to tackle these problems.

Another problem faced by drug companies is the growing realisation that curing illness and disease is actually bad business for the industry! It is better not to cure disease, to keep patients sick, so that they continue to be drug consumers! 

Goldman Sachs have confirmed this in a recent report, admitting that biotech companies have no incentive to cure illnesses. Their analysis was published in a report entitled, “The Genome Revolution” which looked at whether curing patients was a sustainable business model. Their answer was a clear - "No" - it is not sustainable!

But selling drugs that don't work, better still if side effects cause even more illness, is sustainable. But drug companies are realising that to continue selling them they can continue convincing patients that their drugs and vaccines DO make sick people better when in fact they don't! 

So combining their healthcare operations makes a great deal of sense.