The Pharmaceutical Industry. Dishonesty, Corruption and Fraud. Ely Lilly & Prosac - the drug that causes violence & suicide

Prosac, an SSRI antidepressant drug, was once hailed a 'wonder drug', a 'magic bullet', the solution to the problem of depression. Decades later it is still being prescribed, regardless of the horrific 'side effects' it is now known to cause (not to mention its limited ability to treat depression). In its praise one American psychiatrist, Peter Kramer, said in his 1993 book 'Listening to Prozac'  that the drug could make even people without depression “better than well”. The mainstream media, as usual, shared this pharmaceutical enthusiasm, and the sales of antidepressant drugs climbed astronomically; and been steadily increased since that time.

Joseph Wesbecker, from Louisville, Kentucky, USA was prescribed Prozac in 1989, and after taking the drug for about month, shot dead 8 work colleagues, wounded 12 others. and then killed himself. Survivors of the massacre, and relatives of the dead, took Ely Lilly, the drug manufacturer, to court. It was then, and is now, one of countless of mass killings in the USA. So in the early 1990's Dr Breggin was asked to evaluate the scientific basis for the claim that Prozac was causing violence and suicide, and claims the company had been negligent in the development and marketing of Prozac.

Eli Lilly won the case, was exonerated, and absolved of any blame for murders by the jury, which decided that the evaluation and testimony of Dr Breggin had not proven that Prozac was at fault. The judge suspected at the time that the trial had been rigged, and that Eli Willey had withheld damaging evidence from the court. Dr Breggin described this situation in his book, 'Medication Madness', published in 2009. Apparently, for many years after the trial, both plaintiffs and attorneys remained unaware of some the documents Breggin had evaluated. Then, in 2004, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) were sent the documents, anonymously, and they published an article about them.

Even so, it took longer (some 30 years in total) for the full truth to come out. Eli Lilly had secretly paid plaintiffs a total of $20 million to conceal damaging evidence that the company had concealed vital evidence that would have, if made public at the trial, damaged the reputation (and thus the sales) of the drug. The judge and jury knew nothing about this payment. 

What also became clear was that Eli Lilly had, just previous to this trial, pleaded guilty to 25 counts of failure to report adverse reactions to another of its drugs, Oraflex. They feared that the Prozac jury would be more inclined to rule against them if this was known - so they settled out of court to prevent the court from hearing about it. It seems that Eli Lilly has a track record of concealing damning truths about their drugs.

The Judge, John Potter, had suspected that Eli Lilly had bribed both the plaintiffs and their lawyers before the jury verdict. He uncovered evidence of bribery, and fought Eli Lilly for several years after the trial but was unable to obtain proof of the Prozac payoff. So the company succeeded in keeping its criminal action from public view, and were able to continue selling a drug (and have been selling it to this day).

All this information has been gleaned from a variety of sources

• What your doctor might not know about Psychiatric Drug Facts
• Prozac maker Eli Lilly subverted mass murder trial 
• Eli Lilly paid $20 million in  hush money over Prozac mass shooting lawsuit
  

Eli LIlly's victory also sent a powerful message to lawyers and plaintiffs about the odds of winning judgments against powerful drug companies. There seemed little prospect of proving that Prozac was a grave danger.

It is also known now that the original FDA examiner had refused to accept Prozac because he knew that it caused aggression and violence. However, the drug was approved by the regulator, Prozac came to market, and has stayed there ever since. So much for the robustness of the drug regulation system! As Keith Scott-Mumby has stated (in his book, "Psychiatry without Drugs", if Eli Lilly had lost the case it could be the end of the a marvellous gravy train for the industry, stating that 1 in 5 USA citizens are on some form of psychiatric medication.

            "The drug ... was 'exonerated' and now it’s difficult to get the bent psychiatric profession to tolerate the idea that their stupid drugs are causing mass murders. Prozac and other SSRIs KILL people."

Yet the dishonesty, corruption and fraud was not just the mean saving Prozac's reputation. It also meant the link between Prozac, other subsequent SSRI, antipsychotic drugs, and violence also failed to be highlighted. Wesbecker was crazy, that's why he committed the murders. It had nothing to do with the drugs. Yet Wesbecker was not known to have murderous or suicidal tendencies prior to taking Prozac. And he was not the last mass killer on SSRI antidepressants. Since that time hundreds of mass shooters have been done by individuals on psychiatric drugs.
 
Indeed the situation within the conventional medical establishment is now ever worse. As Mumby says, the call is now for more drugs, to drug more 'crazy', patients who psychiatry believe might do harm, and have 'tendency to violence'. They are then put on psychiatric drugs, drugs with 'violence' as a well known side effect, clearly listed on Patient Information Leaflets.

Drugs used to 'treat' a problem - that actually cause the problem.

The pharmaceutical industry is dishonest, corrupt and fraudulent. It gets away with it because it is rich, influential and powerful. And they spend their wealth on ensuring we do not need to hear about the harm they cause to patients, and profit from harming patients, and get richer, more influential and powerful.

It is a vicious circle that can only be broken when we patients put an end to it - by saying 'No' to pharmaceutical medicine.

Dishonesty, Corruption and Fraud in the Pharmaceutical Industry. It's been going on for years

Would you consider buying a second-hand car from these pharmaceutical drug companies? 

If not, why are we still accepting their drugs and vaccines?

If you believe that the pharmaceutical industry is honest enterprise, placing the best interests of its patients at the heart of its business, it is time you looked closely at the history of dishonesty, corruption and fraud it has been found guilty of during the last 20+ years.

Over this time pharmaceutical companies have been subject to a succession criminal cases, court rulings, and the imposition of heavy fines and compensation payments to victims of their drugs and vaccines. Many of these emanate in the USA, but all the drugs mentioned have a world-wide distribution. This is a just brief summary of some of the bigger, recent cases.

Pardue Pharma. 2007
Purdue Pharma was fined $634.5 million for fraudulently selling the painkilling drug, Oxycontin, suggesting it was less addictive, and less likely to be abused than other painkillers. The company was also charged with using misleading sales tactics, minimizing the risks of the drug, and promoting it for uses for which it was not approved.

Bristol-Myers Squibb. 2007
Bristol-Myers Squibb were fined $515 for illegally promoting its antipsychotic drug, Abilify, to children and older people, despite a 'black box' warning about possible fatal side effects. The company was also fined for giving payments, and offering expensive presents and vacations to doctors and pharmacists who dispensed the drugs.

Eli Lilly. January 2009
Eli Lilly was fined $1.42 billion following government investigation into its promotion of the antipsychotic drug, Zyprexa. Zyprexa had been approved for the treatment of certain psychotic disorders, but Lilly admitted to promoting the drug to older people to treat dementia. The government also proved that Eli Lilly had targeted primary care physicians to promote Zyprexa for unapproved uses, and had trained a sales force specifically to disregard the law. They were also found to have failed to divulge important side effect information. Zyprexa was marketed as a sleeping aid for older people because one of its side effects is sedation, even though the drug also increased the risk of death!

Pfizer. September 2009
The drug company, Pfizer, was fined $2.3 billion, at the time the largest health care fraud settlement, and the largest criminal fine ever imposed in the USA. Pfizer pleaded guilty to misbranding the painkilling drug, Bextra, with the intent to mislead and defraud, and promoting the drug to treat acute pain at dosages the drug regulator, the FDA, had previously deemed dangerous. In 2005 Bextra was banned due to safety concerns. It was also found that Pfizer had promoted three other drugs illegally, the antipsychotic Geodon, an antibiotic Zyvox, and the anti-epileptic drug, Lyrica.

AstraZenica. April 2010
AstraZeneca was fined $520 million following allegations that it llegally promoted the antipsychotic drug, Seroquel. The drug was approved for treating schizophrenia and bipolar mania, but AstraZeneca had promoted Seroquel for a variety of unapproved uses, such as weight loss, aggression, sleeplessness, ADHD, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, depression, and dementia. AstraZeneca denied the charges, but nonetheless agreed to pay the fine to end the government investigation! During the hearings it was found that the company promoted the drug for weight loss by highlighting one favourable study but burying others that linked it to substantial weight gain!

GlaxoSmithKiline and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 2010
In February 2010, the USA Senate Finance Committee, in a 334 page report, found that the diabetes drug Avandia was linked with tens of thousands of heart attacks, and that the drug company, GlaxoSmithKline had known about this for many years but kept them from the public. The report also criticised the FDA. It found that although members of staff expressed concerns, the drug regulator (sic) connived with the drug company to 'overlook' and 'overrode'  patient safety concerns.

Bristol-Wyers Squibb. 2010
This story has been taken from the magazine 'What Doctors Don't Tell You", May 2019, in an article "Institutes face $1 billion lawsuit for wartime experiment, indicating the dishonesty and fraud is not a recent development as far as the pharmaceutical industry is concerned.

         "John Hopkins University, the drug giant Bristol-Myers Squibb and the Rockafeller Foundation face a £1 billion lawsuite for their part in a US government experiment that infected hundreds of Guatamalans with syphilis in the 1940's. The experiment was set up to text the newly developed drug penicillin as a therapy against sexually transmitted diseases. It remained secret until 2010.... since when the three institutions have been fighting legal action... The complaint cites that several John Hopkins and Rockefeller Foundation doctors were involved in the experiement, along with four executives from Bristol Laboratories and the Squuibb Institute... John Hopking University has apologised for its involvement in the experiment, but the Rockefeller Foundation .... denies any wrongoiding. The drug company has refused to comment".

Merck. November 2011
The drug company, Merck, was involved in a huge scandal over its dangerous painkilling drug, Vioxx. It was fined for selling the drug to treat rheumatoid arthritis, for which it had not been tested, over decade earlier. Indeed, they were found to have illegally promoted Vioxx for three years, even after they were reprimanded for doing so in September 2001 by the USA drug regulator, the Food and Drug Administration. In the following year, Merck was fined a further $321 million in Boston, USA.

GlaxoSmithKline. 2011
In December 2011, GSK were ordered to pay $3 billion "to settle United States government civil and criminal investigations into its sales practices for numerous drugs". This involved a variety of illegal activities, including illegally marketing drugs, paying off doctors to promote dangerous drugs, and manipulating scientific data to get dangerous drugs approved.

GlaxoSmithKline, January 2012
In January 2012, in Argentina, GSK was fined 400,00 pesos when 14 babies died in an illegal vaccine trial. It was stated that the doctors took advantage of the many illiterate parents who took their children for treatment by pressuring and forcing them into signing 28-page consent forms, and getting them involved in the trials. In Europe and the USA laboratories are not allowed to conduct such experiment, so it was done in third-world countries instead.

Abbott. February 2012
A Colombian court ruled that Abbott Laboratories had overcharged the Ministry of Health for drugs, "maintaining the price of an HIV medicine above the reference price" and "flouting a government order". The court’s decision was described as a groundbreaking condemnation of pricing abuses by pharmaceutical companies".

Abbott. May 2012
Abbott was fined $1.5 billion for its illegal promotion of the antipsychotic drug, Depakote. Abbott admitted it had trained a special sales team to target nursing homes, promoting the drug for the control of aggression and agitation for dementia patients. Depakote had not been approved for this purpose, and Abbott could not demonstrate evidence that the drug was safe or effective for this purpose. The company had also promoted Depakote to treat schizophrenia, again with evidence of its efficacy in treating this condition.

GlaxoSmithKline. July 2012
GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $3 billion in civil and criminal liabilities following its promotion of several drugs, as well as its failure to report negative safety data, and making unsupported safety claims, in particular 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 seven years! During this time the drug was prescribed to patients, who were unaware that GSK were intentionally putting their lives at risk in order to sell the drug. 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!

A full account of the dishonesty and fraud perpetrated in this case is contained in the book "Children of the Cure", written by David Healy, Joanna LeNoury and Julie Wood,

AstraZenica. July 2012
A USA federal judge found that AstraZenica had attempted to block the FDA's approval of generic versions of its antipsychotic drug, Seroquel. Its patent had expired in March.

Pfizer. August 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'.

Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals. October 2012
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals agreed to pay $95 million after it had promoted several drugs for non-medically accepted uses. These drugs included the stroke-prevention drug, Aggrenox, the lung disease drugs, Atrovent and Combivent, and also the high blood pressure drug ,Micardis. The FDA said that Boehringer had improperly marketed the drugs and "caused false claims to be submitted to government health care programs."

Sanofi-Aventis. December 2012
Sanofi-Aventis paid a fine of $109 million after it was found that the company gave doctors free units of the drug Hyalgan (an injection to relieve knee pain) to encourage those doctors to buy their product. Sanofi lowered the effective price by promising doctors free samples, although it continued to charge government programmes high prices by submitting false price reports.

Amgen. December 2012
Amgen paid $762 million after criminal and civil charges that the company had illegally introduced and promoted several drugs including the anaemia drug, Aranesp. The company pleaded guilty to illegally selling Aranesp at doses the FDA had explicitly rejected, and for an off-label treatment that did not have FDA approval.

Wyeth. August 2013
Wyeth paid $500,000 when charged with illegal marketing of their immunosupressant drug, Rapamune. One comment made about this case said that "Wyeth's conduct put profits ahead of the health and safety of a highly vulnerable patient population dependent on life-sustaining therapy,"

Johnson and Johnson. November 2013
Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay a $2.2 billion fine following criminal and civil charges relating to three of its drugs, Risperdal, Invega and Natrecor. The drug company had promoted these drugs for uses that had not been approved  by the FDA as safe and effective. They had also spent large sums promoting the drugs to dementia patients in nursing homes, and paid bribes to doctors and pharmacies. Johnson & Johnson also admitted it had promoted Risperdal for the treatment of psychotic symptoms in non-schizophrenic patients, for which the drug was not approved.

Endo Health Solutions. February 2014
Endo Health Solutions, and its subsidiary, Endon Pharmaceuticals, paid $192.7 million to resolve criminal and civil charges arising from Endo's marketing of the drug, Lidoderm. The company admitted that it promoted Lidoderm for uses for which it was unapproved.

Novartis and Roche. March 2014
Italian medical authorities fined two Swiss pharmaceutical companies, Novartis and Roche Holdings, a total of $250 million for colluding to keep doctors from prescribing a relatively inexpensive eye treatment in favour of a more expensive drug.

Takeda and Eli Lilly. March 2014
These two drug companies were fined $9 billion in Louisianna, USA, after they concealed evidence of a link between their diabetes drug, Actos, and bladder cancer. They were subject to thousands of lawsuits after the drug regulator, the FDA, issued a warning in 2011 that the drug might increase the risk of bladder cancer, and the drug companies denied any link. As well as bladder cancer the drug has also been linked to cognitive heart failure.

GlaxoSmithKline. June 2014
GlaxoSmithKline 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.

Johnson and Johnson, Pardue Pharma and the Opioid Scandel (2019)
Opioids were involved in almost 400,000 overdose deaths in the USA between 1999 and 2017. In Oklahoma alone, since 2000, some 6,000 people died from opioid overdose, and many more suffered from dependence and addiction. Earlier in 2019 Oklahoma State had settled with Purdue Pharma ($270m) and Teva Pharmaceutical ($85m), but Johnson & Johnson continued to deny 'wrong-doing'. However in August they were fined $572m (£468m) for its part in fuelling Oklahoma's opioid addiction crisis. The case was the first to go to trial  but there are about 2,000 opiode lawsuits filed against other opioid makers and distributors around the USA.

Johnson & Johnson paid for a marketing campaign that minimised the addictive quality of painkillers, minimised their risks, and promoted their benefits. They were said to be the opioid "kingpin" in an industry-wide campaign to profit was these drugs, and the judge said that the company had contributed to a "public nuisance" in its deceptive promotion of highly addictive prescription painkillers.

For more information on the Opioid Scandel visit this Mercola website, which begins with this statement. "Opioid overdoses kill more than 130 people in the U.S. daily1 in an unprecedented crisis that continues to spiral out of control."

AND SO IT GOES ON.........
The list of fraud and dishonesty practised by the pharmaceutical companies is a long one, and an ongoing 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.

(This information was first published in my "The Failure of Conventional Medicine" website)

No one can examine this plethora of cases without realising that pharmaceutical companies are not open, honest and trustworthy businesses; nor can anyone believe that they place patient safety before corporate profit.

Nor should anyone believe that any drug they produce are safe, or even effective. Most of the drugs mentioned in the above list of criminal cases are still being used by conventional medicine with patients.

And hopefully no one who knows anything about this long history of dishonesty, corruption and fraud will be tempted to take any pharmaceutical drug or vaccine in the future.

 

THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY. Greed, corruption, fraud, dishonesty. Would you buy a 2nd hand car from them? Leave along drugs that can seriously damage your health?

Conventional medicine, what we invariably get when we see our doctor, or visit a hospital is dominated by the pharmaceutical industry. And the pharmaceutical industry is dominated by greed, corruption, fraud, and dishonesty.

This is not a new claim. Nor is it one from which the drugs industry can defend itself. It has form, a history that demonstrates that it will go to any lengths to sell us drugs and vaccines, quite regardless of the damage they do to our health.

The pharmaceutical industry has been involved in a large number of legal cases over the years, cases that have demonstrated the lack of ethics that drives the industry. I have highlighted some of them, those from 2007 to the present day, here - it makes sobering, frightening reading.

My question is this. Each of these legal uses illustrates the extreme lengths drug companies will take in order to sell us dangerous drugs. So can they be trusted? Is any drug or vaccine peddled by these companies, for profit, safe for us even to consider taking? Can we, should we believe anything pharmaceutical drug companies tell us?

Especially when drug company executives in the past have told us that judicial fines are 'merely another cost of doing business"? An amount to little more than 'pocket money'?

Johnson & Johnson is a drug company that (in the words of Bloomberg News) has taken some costly beatings in USA courts this year. "And it could get worse."

In October 2019 J&J were ordered by a jury to pay $8 billion for wrongfully pushing doctors to prescribe the anti-psychotic drug, Risperdal. As Bloomberg outlines, this came on the heels of many $billions paid out for damage claims involving opioid painkillers, artificial hips, and even their renowned baby powder.

               "The health-care giant still faces at least 100,000 lawsuits alleging injuries from those products and others, including vaginal-mesh devices and the diabetes drug Invokana....... Analysts say the cost of resolving those cases may reach $20 billion, and J&J’s handling of the various litigations is likely to spark questions when the company reports results on Tuesday."

This is the problem, as highlighted by Bloomberg. Not so much a concern for the damage J&J has done to patients, but the implications for the financial viability of the company. Shares of J&J were down 12% "partly because there’s no end in sight for liability costs".

I am not concerned with the shareholders! They have profited greatly from these drug companies for many decades. "Investors are tired or it", Bloomberg tell us. Well, I am more concerned about the patients who have used and taken, quite innocently, these profitable J&J products for personal health reasons, only to find that their health was damaged. A business ethics professor, Michael Santoro, at California’s Santa Clara University, gets closer to my concerns.

               “J&J used to be the gold standard of ethical behavior in the pharmaceutical industry. They just seem incapable of properly managing their ethical behavior at this point. They’ve lost their way.”

Indeed they have certainly lost their way! The Bloomberg article outlines the enormity of their current problems.

Opioids. J&J face 2,000 pending cases, with an estimated cost of $5 billion

Baby Powder. J&J face 15,5000 pending cases, with an estimated cost of $5 billion

Risperdal. J&J face 13,000 pending cases, with an estimated cost of $800 billion

Vaginal Mesh. J&J face 2,000 pending cases, with unknown costs

Artificial Hips (Pinnacle, ASR). J&J face 12,000 pending cases, with an estimated cost of $4 billion

Xarelto. J&J face 31,700 pending cases, with an estimated cost of $775 billion

Invokana. J&J face 1,000 pending case, with unknown costs

Details of each of these cases is further outlined in the Bloomberg article, who make the point that J&J are not the only pharmaceutical drug company that faces such action, and that "battling in court has become routine for many drugmakers, and J&J is no exception." This is absolutely true.

J&J were quoted saying that it has an expansive legal strategy that carefully evaluates all claims to determine when to settle and when to fight, that they were operating within a very litigious environment, and that they must at times be willing to go to trial when necessary. They also said that they remained open to resolving cases through settlement when and where that was appropriate. 

               "We have a proven track record of being able to successfully and appropriately manage this balance.”

I have no doubt that they do! But there was no mention (there rarely is) about their track record for keeping patients safe from dangerous drugs and medical devices. And that's probably because making such a case is more difficult - given their track record - and the track record of most other pharmaceutical companies.

What we must remember is that each one of the cases listed above represent people, and their families, who have been damaged by 'medical' products. Moreover, they represent only a tiny proportion of people and families who would be similarly damaged. And then only people and families living in the USA. The damage cause by J&J, and other drug companies, is much greater than these court cases could ever represent. So the real question for each of us is this.

WOULD YOU BUY A SECOND HAND CAR FROM J&J?

WILL YOU RISK YOUR HEALTH BY BUYING DRUGS FROM THEM?

OR ANY OTHER PHARMACEUTICAL DRUG COMPANY?

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.

The Vaccine - Autism Cover-up

Science has settled the issue! There is no connection between vaccines and the rising plague of autism, a disease once unknown, but now sweeping the world since mass vaccination programmes began. Studies have proven that there is no link. So parents can go ahead and vaccinate their children without fear.

I have written several times about Dr William Thompson since he admitted, in 2014, that his 2004 study (that proved there was no connection between vaccines and autism) was actually fraudulent. (See "the MMR-Autism Controversy, and the dishonesty of Medical 'Science'")

But did you know that another 'scientific' study, that again proved there was no connection between vaccines and autism, has been found to be fraudulant.

The scientist in question, Poul Thorsen, is a fugitive from the U.S. Justice Department, living openly in Denmark. He is is a psychiatrist, who was asked by the CDC to undertake what is now known as the “Danish Study.” It was published in 2003 by the journal Pediatrics. It asserted that autism rates in Denmark rose dramatically after mercury was removed from childhood vaccines in the Netherlands, so proving that there is no association with thimerosal (mercury) in vaccines to autism!

The Danish Study became one of several major studies used by the conventional medical establishment to deny any association between thimerosal in vaccines and autism. Along with Thompson's study, it was part of the evidence used to silence the mainstream media. The Vaccine Insight website has explained the 'frantic efforts' by the CDC to cover up what happened.

               "Poul Thorsen was not indicted by a federal grand jury in Atlanta for his fraudulent study that 'disproves' any connection with thimerosal in vaccines to autism. That will probably never happen in our vaccine propaganda saturated culture. Thorsen, a psychiatrist, was indicted on 13 counts of wire fraud and 9 counts of money laundering involved with embezzling around $2 million of federal money, our tax dollars, while he was involved with misrepresenting studies that are offered as the final 'proof' that vaccines containing thimerasol don’t cause autism. This statement was easily blurred to include all vaccines, by the media, the public, and all governmental agencies including the WHO (World Health Organization)."

Yet even though this happened in 2012 Poul Thorsen continues to live in Amsterdam, openly carrying on his medical research. He has not been extradited, even though there is an extradition treaty between the United States and Denmark. Vaccine Insight considers many reasons why this should be, outlining a dark network of self-interest and vested interests with the USA Department of Justice, Pharmaceutical Companies, and the mainstream media.

• The pharmaceutical industry is a heavy political donor.
• The mainstream media depends heavily on advertising money from the pharmaceutical industry.
• Many top media executives have major stock holdings in the pharmaceutical industry. 
• The CDC actually owns several patents wholly or partially.

As Vaccine Insight says, "if any public criminal hearings were to occur with Poul Thorsen, that could become the one card to collapse the whole house. That’s why it won’t happen".

Vaccine Insight goes on to talk about the secret Simpsonwood meeting in 2000 of several key CDC members, some WHO members, and representatives from major vaccine makers to discuss how to deal with the frightening findings discovered by Dr. Tom Verstraeten, a CDC epidemiologist. He had used the CDC’s internal and vast 'Vaccine Safety Datalink database' that contains virtually all medical records involving vaccinated children. Dr. Verstraeten discovered a lot of statistical inconvenient facts implicating thimerosal (mercury) induced neurological damage, including autism. So those at the meeting hatched a plan to tweak his studies, and Dr. Verstraeten went along with it, to make it seem inconclusive and demand the usual “further studies” clause. Dr. Verstraeten, apparently, was rewarded with a lucrative position at vaccine maker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

This is how the conventional medical establishment works. It is an intrigue, a conspiracy, based on a profitable industry that sells dangerous pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that cause serious harm to patients. 

• It has little interest in medical safety (that is, your safety and mine). 
• If it sells a drug or vaccine that is unsafe it can hide this from us, and even (perhaps) from the doctors who prescribe them to us. 
• It has little interest in science. Medical science is something that it can buy with its enormous profits. 
• Any scientist who stands by their science, like Andrew Wakefield, can have their careers destroyed. 
• Any scientist caught lying, like Thomson, Thorsen and Verstraeten can be protected from, and even richly rewarded for, their lies and deceit. 
• It has little to fear from the mainstream media organisations, which can be infiltrated, taken over and bought by pharmaceutical advertising budgets. 
• It does not have to worry about patient safety as it has effectively taken over all the drug regulatory agencies throughout the western world that have been tasked with ensuring patient safety.

The vaccine-autism link is the fraud that receives the most attention. Yet, as this blog regularly outlines, it is by no means the only one. Conventional medicine is a lie, a deceit, it masquerades as a safe and effective medical discipline, but it is nothing of the sort. It is built on a house of cards, which at any time can fall down. As I said in a blog published last month, "Medical Failure and Denial. Who will be first to break cover?", it is a question of which card, which holds up all the others, will fall first, and we witness the destruction of the entire edifice. The sooner the better!

Big Pharma profits at our expense

No, I am no repeating myself. Pulse, the GP magazine, has today (19 December 2016) revealed yet another case of Big Pharma profiteering. I won't spend too much time on it! It has become such a regular occurrence, and the last time I blogged about it was just 3 days ago!

This time, Actavis UK hiked the price of a ‘lifesaving’ hydrocortisone drug by over 12,000%, according to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on 18th December 2016.  The drug, which I believed is called Zenoxone, used to treat eczema, dermatitis and insect bite reactions, cost 70p in April 2008, and £88 by March 2016.

Pulse also tried to estimate the cost to NHS which spent £522,000 a year on hydrocortisone tablets in 2008, £70 million by 2016.

Teva, another drug company that acquired Actavis in August 2016, said that it "intended to ‘defend’ themselves". Drug companies are good at denial. They deny that they are profiteering. The deny that their drugs cause harm to patients.

Meanwhile, the CMA has to be careful. Once again they have challenged the pharmaceutical industry, and must fear that they will trigger legal action from an excessively wealthy industry. So their findings, they say, are only ‘provisional’, and ‘no conclusion' should be drawn yet. Is one possible conclusion that the pharmaceutical industry is riven with fraud and corruption!

I have looked to see if there is any reaction from the NHS. What monitoring of drug prices do the NHS have in place to protect themselves (and the taxpayer) from this kind of situation? What is their response to being fleeced by drug companies? After all, the customer for these drugs is the NHS, who decide whether for pay for them, and how much taxpayer's money to pay for them.

It would be nice to think that the NHS had something to say!

Doxycycline. More Fraud by the Pharmaceutical Industry?

Six more drug companies have been accused of price fixing, and civil law suits have been filed in 20 USA states. Criminal changers are being brought against former executives at one of the accused firms. BBC News reported reported today (16th December 2016) that Heritage Pharmaceuticals were the 'principle architect' of the price fixing fraud. One state Attorney General said that the lawsuit was just 'the tip of the iceberg'.

Well, we should perhaps already realise this. It was just last week that I wrote about a similar situation, see 'Drug Profiteering and Phenytoin. A nasty little epilepsy drug, at a nasty big price!' And just a year ago I wrote this blog, 'Daraprim. A 'for-profit' drug in a monopoly industry' on another similar situation.

Pharmaceutical drug companies appear to be engaged in fraudulent price fixing on a regular basis. National health services are being overcharged by enormous amounts. As far as this situation is concerned, one Democrat Senator has claimed that the price of doxycycline, the antibiotic drug involved, rose in the USA from $20 to $1,849 in seven months.

In contrast, the mainstream media does not appear to ask the real questions. If they are prepared to commit fraud at this level, what else are they prepared to do?

• Are they prepared to lie about the outcome of drug tests?
• Are they prepared to claim that dangerous drugs are safe?
• Are they prepared to claim that ineffective drugs are more effective than they are?
• Are they prepared to underplay the damage their drugs and vaccines do to patients?

Regular readers of this blog will know the answer to all these questions is YES! Readers of the mainstream media will probably says 'SURELY NOT'!

So what about this antibiotic drug, doxycycline? As usual, the known side effects are massive, many of them serious. They can be seen on the Drugs.com website in full, but they include abdominal or stomach tenderness, cramping, bloating, cough, decreased appetite, severe diarrhea, difficulty swallowing, dizziness, fast heartbeat, fever, headache, hives, itching, puffiness or swelling of the eyelids or around the eyes, face, lips, or tongue, inflammation of the joints, joint or muscle pain, nausea and vomiting, severe stomach pain, sore throat, mouth sores, swelling of the feet or lower legs, swollen lymph glands, tightness in the chest, unusual tiredness or weakness, unusual weight loss, and much, much more.

So let us be clear about this fraud.

• We are regularly being massively overcharged for drugs. 
• And we are being massively overcharged by drugs that are harmful to human health, without being told that they are harmful to human health

The focus appears to be on the former. The mainstream media, as usual, show considerable concern for the profitability of the drug companies, and what damage this court case might do to them. BBC News reports that the shares on one company has plunged 22% on the news! Thankfully (sic) the company said that the probe and legal proceedings would "not have a material impact on its future earnings". Well, that's alright then!

Yet the real concern about this, and so many similar situations, is that doctors are prescribing drugs that are harming our health, and that the drug companies are prepared to continue selling drugs that are known to be dangerous.

Pharma companies bribe health staff to prescribe drugs and vaccines?

"Pharmaceutical companies are bribing NHS officials in Britain to use their drugs within the NHS. So reported the Daily Telegraph on 27th July 2015., and discussed in my blog, "Drug Companies bribing NHS officials to sell their drugs".

On 16th February 2016, the Telegraph reported that "Ministers launch urgent inquiry into NHS officials' second jobs at drugs firms". 

          "This newspaper has revealed that more than 130 NHS officials involved in assessing which drugs are given to patients are also acting as paid consultants to pharmaceutical companies. Scores of health service staff, most of whom are managers or other senior officials, are receiving generous fees to sit on “advisory boards” for drugs firms whose products they are responsible for considering on behalf of the NHS."


The Telegraph goes on to report that Alistair Burt, the health minister, stated: 

          “These are very serious allegations – an urgent investigation is under way and action will be taken against any NHS staff attempting to influence purchasing decisions in return for payment, gifts or hospitality."

Such a statement is long overdue from a government minister. It adds yet another strata to the deception and fraud to which the UK's National Health Service (NHS) has been subjected to over the years. The findings of the Telegraph enquiry are quite clear and very specific.

• NHS managers can earn up to £1,250 per day advising pharmaceutical firms on selling their products to the NHS, in addition to flights and hotel costs for “meetings” held abroad.
• Three officials at one CCG, Luton, were flown separately to a German spa town for paid advisory board meetings. In December the industry regulator found that the company, Stirling Anglian, had lavished “unacceptable” levels of hospitality on NHS officials.
• The pharmaceutical industry is spending £30 million a year employing officials and doctors as consultants, and another £10 million sponsoring their attendance at events. In total, 138 officials responsible for advising or making decisions on drugs adopted by the NHS were found to have been receiving payments from pharmaceutical firms, based on financial links that were formally registered.

Initially, these claims were denied by NHS managers, but such was the detail of the information the Telegraph provided, the NHS has now had to agree to investigate the allegations. The Telegraph even mentions on NHS manager by name, and mentioned how he had tried to justify the allegations against him.

So what does this mean for patients of the NHS? During the last 70 years, the NHS has been increasingly dominated by medical treatment based on pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. These drugs and vaccines have long been known to be dangerous, to the extent that it has been estimated that over 500,000 patients die in Europe and the USA every year. This figure itself probably a severe underestimate of the real number of patients routinely killed by conventional medicine every year, and the amount of illness and disease caused by them, and dismissed as 'side effects'. Yet nothing has been done to stop it!

This raises the important question - why this is happening? And why it has been allowed to happen, so consistently, over decades!

The answer to this question is now becoming clearer. 

The conventional medical establishment is based on deception and fraud.

• The government, and the Department of Health, have either been aware of this, and done nothing about it, or they have been asleep on their job. The UK government, of course, have many reasons for supporting the pharmaceutical industry, which is a major investor in Britain. Presumably these broader economic benefits outweigh the harm being done to patients.
• The NHS, as this investigation highlights, is too close to the drug companies. The drug companies are prepared to spend £millions to make sure that NHS managers spend £billions on their drugs and vaccines, regardless of the harm it does to patients.
• The MHRA (the UK's drug regulator) and NICE (which produces guidance on health technology and clinical practice) have both been similarly infiltrated by the pharmaceutical industry to ensure 'compliance' with their financial objectives, rather than the health and well-being of patients.
• Doctors and health practitioners have also been subjected to the same kind of financial 'incentives' by the pharmaceutical companies to ensure that their drugs are used, even when they are known to cause harm, disease and death.

The Telegraph must be congratulated on this investigation. They have filled in one more important part of the comprehensive 'marketing' strategy of the pharmaceutical industry, and they have convinced the government that it needs to investigate these allegations.

Yet, the silence of the media, over the years, has been an important element in the ongoing dominance of the pharmaceutical industry within the NHS. The board directors of pharmaceutical companies, and the board directors of the large media corporations have been interspersed and interwoven! The media industry is in decline, and their dependence on Big Pharma has been used to ensure that only 'good' news is published about their drugs and vaccines.

In all these situations it is the individual patient who has lost out. We have been told to take this drug, or that vaccine, on the basis that they were safe medications that would benefit our health. However, as time goes on

• it is becoming clearer that the biggest beneficiary of this 'medication' is the fraudulent pharmaceutical companies.
• and the biggest losers are the patients who have accepted what they have been told by the conventional medical establishment.

Yet, none of this should come as a complete surprise to anyone in the British government! In July 2005, the House of Commons Health Committee produced a 126 page report on "The influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry". Anyone can read it! The report examined the influence that the pharmaceutical industry upon the practice of medicine and healthcare in the UK. It was ignored at the time, and it continues to be ignored. The consequence of ignoring it is discussed here in this Dr Rath Health Foundation article by Paul Anthony Taylor

His assessment suggests that there are important questions remaining! 

• Have the people who have benefitted from being part of the conventional medical establishment discovered yet that the pharmaceutical game is up? Or can it just be ignored again? 
• Is the corruption and fraud practiced by the drug companies over the years acceptable any longer? Or can this continue to be brushed aside, in the hope that we might forget about it again? 
• Are the deaths, and the epidemics of chronic disease caused by conventional drugs and vaccines, acceptable any longer? Or will they continue because Big Pharma money is just too influential to stop it happening?

The alternative will be for our government, the department of health, our NHS, our doctors, and our mainstream media, to start informing us now, honestly and openly, about the damage caused to our health by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, particularly over the last 50-60 years?

Vaccinations: a total hoax, a fraud; is criminal prosecution the answer?

Vaccinations are a total hoax, and Big Pharma drug companies, and Government agencies, are fully integrated into the hoax - which constitutes a fraud - and imposes unnecessary dangers to those persuade to vaccinate themselves, or their children

These are the finding of Lucija Tomljenovic, PhD. in a paper she wrote in 2011. The assertions she makes are powerful, and insightful. Read through each one of them carefully. It encapsulates, brilliantly, what the Conventional Medical Establishment has been doing now for many decades.

In summary, the transcripts of the JCVI/DH meetings from the period from 1983 to 2010 appear to show that:

1. 1)  Instead of reacting appropriately by re-examining existing vaccination policies when safety concerns over specific vaccines were identified by their own investigations, the JCVI either a) took no action, b) skewed or selectively removed unfavourable safety data from public reports and c) made intensive efforts to reassure both the public and the authorities in the safety of respective vaccines;
   
   
2. 2)  Significantly restricted contraindication to vaccination criteria in order to increase vaccination rates despite outstanding and unresolved safety issues;
   
   
3. 3)  On multiple occasions requested from vaccine manufacturers to make specific amendments to their data sheets, when these were in conflict with JCVI’s official advices on immunisations;
   
   
4. 4)  Persistently relied on methodologically dubious studies, while dismissing independent research, to promote vaccine policies;
   
   
5. 5)  Persistently and categorically downplayed safety concerns while over-inflating vaccine benefits;
   
   
6. 6)  Promoted and elaborated a plan for introducing new vaccines of questionable efficacy and safety into the routine paediatric schedule, on the assumption that the licenses would eventually be granted;
   
   
7. 7)  Actively discouraged research on vaccine safety issues;
   
   
8. 8)  Deliberately took advantage of parents’ trust and lack of relevant knowledge on vaccinations in order to promote a scientifically unsupported immunisation program which could put certain children at risk of severe long-term neurological damage;
   

The author notes that all of these actions appear to violate the JCVI’s own Code of Practice. 

Yet these are allegations that have been frequently made in this blog, and many others. We are being misled, and placed in danger, by successive Governments, the Conventional Medical Establishment, and the mainstream media.

The full report should be read as it highlights all the 8 points made above.

A serious question must now be asked  by all of us. 

Are organisations, and individuals, who are recommending dangerous medical treatments, principally pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, not legally responsible for their advice. As these drugs and vaccines are not safe, as they are causing disease and death, should those who promote them not be subject to the full rigours of the law?

At the moment, drug companies are paying paltry financial fines for drugs and vaccines that have damaged and killed hundred's and thousand's of patients. No-one else, implicated in such crimes, would be protected from criminal prosecution for offences such as Actual Bodily Harm, Manslaughter, and Murder.

As yet, no Government, no National Health Service, no Medical Practitioner, and no Media Organisation, has been subject to fines. They clearly deserve to be as they are misleading us all, and subjecting us to unnecessary danger.

There are calls, now, for the prosecution of individuals who have led the Banking industry in criminal activity. Now we should be calling for the prosecution of those who are implicated in encouraging us to consume dangerous Pharmaceutical drugs.

The Conventional Medical Establishment has failed in its duty to protect the public from the dangers of Big Pharma vaccines and drugs. Indeed, it has failed to observe its duty, under the Hippocratic Oath, to 'do no harm'. Quite the contrary, what this report shows is that it has known it is causing harm, but has decided that the public should not know about it.

Fraud and corruption. The Media? Banking? Or Big Pharma? Which is worst?

Everywhere, Big Corporations seem to be under fire for corruption and fraud. 

The mainstream Media, and in particular News International, has been beset with difficulties arising from phone hacking scandals. The Banking industry is facing serious investigations into its business practices. And as a recent blog on this website has indicated, Big Pharma is facing serious problems relating to serious fraud and corruption.

So which is worse?
The Media has intervened in people's lives, and no doubt engaged in illegality in order to do so. The Regulatory Agency is accused of being weak and ineffective. But to my knowledge, no mainstream Media organisation is accused of actually killing anyone, and certainly not with the knowledge and connivance of the Regulator!

The Banking industry has brought the world's economy to the brink of bankruptcy through various nefarious activities designed to produce profit. Financial Regulatory bodies are being heavily criticised for failing to control the activities of Banks, that have led to the virtual bankruptcy of several states, the general destruction of economic activity, and the resulting tarnishing of the lives and livelihoods of countless millions. The stress this has caused has no doubt led to an increase in sickness, death, and suicide. But to my knowledge, no Bank has been accused of actually killing anyone directly, and certainly not with the knowledge and connivance of the Regulators!

The fraud and corruption of Big Pharma industry appears to be an entirely different case - and far, far more serious. It has come to light, in recent years, through many prosecutions in the USA courts.

* Eli Lilly, in January 2009, fined $1.42 billion for mis-selling its drug Zyprexa.

* Pfizer, in September 2009, fined $2.3 billion for defrauding and misleading promotion of its painkilling drug, Bextra (which was later withdrawn from the market for safety reasons).

* Astra Zeneca, in April 2010, fined $520 million for illegally promoting the anti-psychotic drug, Seroquel.

* Merck, in November 2011, fined $950 million for illegally promoting its painkiller, Vioxx, another drug that had to be withdrawn from the market for safety reasons.

* Abbott, in May 2012, fined $1.5 billion for its illegal promotion of its anti-psychotic drug, Depakote.

* GlazoSmithKline, in July 2012, fined $3 billion for its promotion of its drugs, and its failure to report safety data.

So why do these matters, and many, many similar matters, make Big Pharma fraud and corruption more serious than that found in Journalism or Banking?

First, not many people are aware of what the Pharmaceutical Industry is charged with, or what is happening to them as a result. It is surely quite amazing that when Big Pharma admits to these offences, which have killed people, that nothing beyond fines is done.

Whilst Governments and the Media rail against the Media, and the Banks, it is almost entirely quiet on this particular area of human activity. The reasons for this have often  been mentioned and discussed on this blog.

Second, there is no doubt that Big Pharma has become a major cause of disease and death, and that these outcomes have been directly caused by the products, and in particular the drugs, it sells to us. And it is undeniable that Drug Regulatory agencies, like the FDA, the MHRA, and the EDA, appear to be fully aware of this fact - but are doing little or nothing to prevent it, or to stop it happening, time and time again. See, for instance, this article on the FDA in the USA.

It also has to be questioned why it is that police authorities have never been asked to investigate who is criminally responsible when Big Pharma drugs have been found to have killed people. Is it the drug company, and its Executives who have marketed the drugs? Is it the Drug Regulator who have approved the drugs as being safe? Is it the Government, or the NHS, in passing these drugs to patients? Or is it the GP, who actually prescribed the drug?

So no criminal court has yet been asked to adjudicate on who is responsible for these regular deaths. No one, from Drug Company executives, to Drug Regulators, to the NHS, to the local GP, is being held accountable for their actions in producing, approving and prescribing these killer drugs.

So, as this article asks, are the drug companies literally getting away with murder?

This situation has been described as "The Moral Collapse of Western Medicine", and not without exaggeration. The fraud and corruption of Big Pharma does not just concern an industry bent on making profits, and apparently unaware or unconcerned with the damage it is doing to our health.

The situation surrounding Big Pharma, and drug-based medicine is by far the most serious case of corruption and fraud. And the reasons for this is because the situation also concerns, and implicates, many of the public agencies that are supposed to be advising, protecting, and looking after our best interests.

* It concerns our politicians who do not appear to be looking after our best interests when they allow increasing expenditure on drugs, whilst at the same time failing to offer patients real choice in the medical therapies they can select to use when they are ill.

* It concerns the Regulatory Agencies whose task it is to ensure that the drugs we are given are safe, but who have regularly failed to do this - both before, and often for many years after they have been known to be dangerous.

* It concerns the massive ConMed Establishment, which is apparently intent in increasing our use of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, and maintained drug-based medicine as a monopoly.

* It concerns the NHS, both its bureaucracy, and its front-line doctors and specialists, who advice us about our health, and prescribe medications that cause disease and death.

* It concerns the mainstream Media, and its failure to investigate what is happening to our health within drug-based medical practice.

It would seem that the only way we have to protect ourselves is to refuse drug-based medicine entirely, and look for safe, and more effective alternatives!

BBC News. A sudden conversion to honesty?

The BBC Today programme this morning featured a piece on GlaxoSmithKline's recent $3 billion fine for fraud in the USA.  


So is this a sudden (and welcome) conversion to honesty for the BBC when reporting on health matters? Or was this news just too big for them to ignore, and brush under the carpet? (which is what the BBC normally does when it deal with the Big Pharma industry).

The questioning in two interviews by John Humphrys would have appeared to be direct, and indeed quite critical - for anyone who was not aware of 'the health debate', but as this series of articles explains, journalist's like Humphrys are not really conversant with this debate. Certainly, the interviews he conducted made it clear that he believed, or wanted to believe, this was a 'one-off' situation, and he seemed relatively happy to accept the re-assurances that 'this situation was all in the past'. The interviews certainly failed to to bring out the full seriousness of the fraud that GSK has now admitted too.

Nor did it highlight the several other important court cases in the USA, involving several Big Pharma companies, in recent years. These have all been studiously ignored by our mainstream Media, just as they were this morning by BBC News.

* Eli Lilly, in January 2009, fined $1.42 billion for mis-selling its drug Zyprexa.
* Pfizer, in September 2009, fined $2.3 billion for defrauding and misleading promotion of its painkilling drug, Bextra (which was later withdrawn from the market for safety reasons).
* Astra Zeneca, in April 2010, fined $520 million for illegally promoting the anti-psychotic drug, Seroquel.
* Merck, in November 2011, fined $950 million for illegally promoting its painkiller, Vioxx, another drug that had to be withdrawn from the market for safety reasons.
* Abbott, in May 2012, fined $1.5 billion for its illegal promotion of its anti-psychotic drug, Depakote.

So the GSK incident is only the latest of a number of scandals - all ignored by the BBC, and other Media sources. And these stories are, of course, only the tip of an iceberg of fraud and corruption that have been perpetrated by Big Pharma companies on patients over the last 50-60 years.

Conventional drugs have created disease, in epidemic proportion. And they have caused death, and has done for decades, on an unprecedented scale.

This article, by Child Health Safety, states that Big Pharma drugs are now the 4th biggest killer in the USA (if the British media were honest enough to report these issues, perhaps we would know how it was ranked in the UK). But it should not be the task of small, internet based organisations like this one to inform the public, and patients in particular, about the dangers of Conventional Medicine. Patients should not have to turn to the internet to learn the truth about Big Pharma's drugs.

BBC News, in its public service broadcasting role, should be at the forefront of investigating the dangers of Conventional Medicine. It is not there yet.

But at least this morning's brief flirtation with honesty on the Today Programme might just be a start for BBC News, and if so, it is a welcome, if long-overdue conversion to open reporting on health matters.

We are currently in a time when the morality of large multinational companies is being brought into serious question. The Murdoch press has plumbed the very depths of corruption. The Banking industry is under very serious review. But do Media organisations, or Banks, really cause the same amount of pain, suffering and death to the general public as Big Pharma companies?

* Is phone-hacking worse than causing disease through drug 'side-effects'?
* Does financial impropriety, however corrupt or serious, kill more people that pharmaceutical drugs?

Unlikely! And this is what makes it even more important that BBC News, and other mainstream media organisations, to begin reporting honestly to us about health news issues.