The pharmaceutical industry is so worshiped and defended, the medical establishment and media refuse to call its drugs “drugs.” Chemical, body-changing pharmaceuticals are a higher form of “medication,” of course, while the natural cannabis plant is condemned and criminalized.

Amazingly, the article says this about Murphy’s death last year (see if you can spot the contradiction):

An autopsy found no evidence that Murphy abused drugs. Investigators found numerous prescription medications in the actress’ home.

Surely, Hollywood celebrities in their 30s just drop dead of “natural causes” all the time.

Back in 2001, the FDA approved Bextra, but not for its intended purpose: acute, surgical pain. It was approved for other, lesser uses that wouldn’t bring in the mega profits envisioned by company executives. Pfizer resorted to off-label promotion, selling its drug for uses which the FDA did not approve. Pfizer also lied about having the FDA’s recommendation as it pushed the drugs to scores of medical professionals, and it lied about the recommended dosage as well. The story goes that company executives knew nothing about this – it was cowboy salesmen going out and creating their own myths and fraudulently selling the dope. Internal documents appear to show otherwise. The story notes that “By April 2005, when Bextra was taken off the market, more than half of its $1.7 billion in profits had come from prescriptions written for uses the FDA had rejected.” But the feds’ prosecution was not to be.

But when it came to prosecuting Pfizer for its fraudulent marketing, the pharmaceutical giant had a trump card: Just as the giant banks on Wall Street were deemed too big to fail, Pfizer was considered too big to nail.

Why? Because any company convicted of a major health care fraud is automatically excluded from Medicare and Medicaid. Convicting Pfizer on Bextra would prevent the company from billing federal health programs for any of its products. It would be a corporate death sentence.

Prosecutors said that excluding Pfizer would most likely lead to Pfizer’s collapse, with collateral consequences: disrupting the flow of Pfizer products to Medicare and Medicaid recipients, causing the loss of jobs including those of Pfizer employees who were not involved in the fraud, and causing significant losses for Pfizer shareholders.

Thus Pfizer struck a deal with the federal government to charge its subsidiary, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc., with the crime. The subsidiary is a shell company that was set up for sinister purposes – and it never sold a single prescription drug. But it was excluded from Medicare. Tough punishment. Thanks to Mark Fee for the link.

Doctors at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta on Sunday got some surprising news on their first day of sessions. Researchers presented three studies revealing that some of the most widely prescribed medications to reduce the risk of heart disease in Type 2 diabetes patients appeared not to provide much benefit at all.

The pharmaceutical companies, once upon a time, had a semi-honorable quest to cure diseases and improve the quality of life for the very ill. That all went away with the proliferation of the almighty state and the growth of profit-seeking special interests that wished to manipulate political channels to curry favors and serve their own profitability.The revolving doors between Big Government and Big Pharma were built upon a corrupt foundation. Along came the modern Patent State and a ginormous web of governmental health agencies whose purpose was to empower their compadres in the quasi-governmental pharmaceutical industry and make personal health a public-collective issue, with the rules being set by so-called established experts and “trusted” advisors in the medical-pharmaceutical community.

The powerful propaganda machine created by the government-Big Pharma alliance has the job of lying to the citizenry, and making them dependent on their products and services by creating and selling sickness. This grows the governmental public health sector and empowers the public-private sector alliance. The result is political power, profits, and job creation. This consortium of health tyrants re-define the parameters of sickness so that, eventually, we are all a high risk for some potentially disastrous health debacle, and thus we become lifelong patients.

Remember about thirty years ago, when Merck’s CEO Henry Gadsden told Fortune magazine that it was a shame that the company’s products could only be limited to “sick people.” As cited in the book Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients, by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels:

Suggesting he’d rather Merck to be more like chewing gum maker Wrigley’s, Gadsden said it had long been his dream to make drugs for healthy people. Because then, Merck would be able to “sell to everyone.”

“Based on the currently available information, FDA believes it is unlikely that Vytorin or Zetia increase the risk of cancer or cancer-related death, but at this time an association cannot be definitively ruled out,” the agency said in a posting on its Web site Tuesday.

Vytorin is a single-tablet combination of the drugs simvastatin and Zetia, which are both touted as cholesterol lowering drugs. Of course, these drugs are always claimed to lower “bad cholesterol,” which should be a pretty hilarious claim to anyone with a drop of common sense. These powerful drugs lower total cholesterol, which is why so many people who stay on them suffer bizarre and serious consequences in the long term. Side effects of Vytorin are inflammation, joint pain, muscle pain, memory loss and depression (thanks to the lowering of cholesterol), headaches, weakness, and liver problems.  ***

The second story of note is Pharmaceutical Daily’s brief story on Cephalon, an international biopharmaceutical company. Cephalon has applied for approval for its new drug Nuvigil, which it claims reduces the effects of jet lag. Yes, jet lag. That irreversible, painful, and sometimes deadly disease that needs an immediate cure, otherwise we will all live nasty, brutish, and short lives. Indeed, jet lag can be very counter-productive and unpleasant, but it’s not the end of the world, and in fact there is much you can do to minimize its effects without submitting to another phony wonder drug that works against all of your body’s natural instincts. Once again, I will follow the money. From the story:

Nuvigil and another Cephalon drug, Provigil, are both approved to “improve wakefulness” in people with certain sleep problems. The drugs work in a similar way, though Nuvigil has longer-lasting effects. Cephalon has been raising the price of Provigil — which could face generic competition in 2012 — in what looks like an effort to get people to switch to Nuvigil, which has patent protection through 2023.

So Cephalon is pulling a fast one. The game is to get people using its most profitable drugs – those which are under patent protection and thus can be overpriced and bring forth huge revenues and substantial margins.

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*** On a related note, you may want to read Duane Graveline’s book Lipitor: Thief of Memory – Duane is an MD and a former USAF flight surgeon and NASA astronaut who has offered great contributions to the statin debate and links to some fantastic material from members of the medical community who belong to the International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics.

A measure to allow the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada and some other countries fell short in the Senate Tuesday night, but lawmakers were working on other ways to squeeze concessions from the pharmaceutical industry.

If you have read that correctly, you will note that certain members of our Senate body are begging the wealthy and powerful pharmaceutical interests to allow the (formerly) free people of the United States to voluntarily purchase prescription drugs from other countries where the drugs are cheaper and Big Pharma does not influence and run the federal government. Another snippet from the article:

Pharmaceutical makers opposed the measure, saying the U.S. couldn’t ensure the safety of drugs from Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia.

I repeat: “pharmaceutical makers opposed the measure…” Therefore, they have bought an appropriate number of politicians so they can be assured that Americans are not able to freely contract with retailers in other countries who can offer a lower price. The totalitarian American political system (along with those who continue to elect its agents and thereby sanction the current system) allows this racket to continue without a single challenge. No media outlet is ashamed of arrogantly admitting to, and admiring, the clout of America’s omnipotent corporate state giants.

In a related story, Big Pharma giant AstraZeneca has the power of the FDA behind it in its latest attempt to deceive and dope up hapless Americans who have been taken captive by the fear mongering of the tyrannical medical mainstream. The drug maker’s cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor has fallen flat on revenues, and the typical backup plan with these patent-protected drugs that run of steam is to find another use for them that seems necessary and good, and promote it heavily to paid-for politicians, their FDA operatives, and the duped public.

So what is this miracle cure claimed for Crestor that … just … came out of nowhere? Crestor is now “a preventative treatment for cardiovascular disease.” The FDA’s panel of “outside medical experts” voted 12-4 to recommend that the “FDA broaden the indication for Crestor as a preventative treatment for cardiovascular disease.” Yes, these are the same “medical experts” who are paid by the industry and drug makers they recommend. The WSJ article discusses a study called “Jupiter” in which patients on Crestor were compared to patients receiving a placebo or fake pill. The study was the usual dose of logical fallacy whereby correlation proves causation. In fact, the article states that “the study results were so strong that the study was stopped early.” Note that the FDA usually follows the panel’s recommendations.

During the panel meeting, “the FDA said there was a “statistically significant” increase in the number of patients who developed diabetes in the Crestor group compared to the placebo group,” and also, “there were 13 deaths due to gastrointestinal disorders compared to one in the placebo group, but the FDA said a further review of the deaths suggest the “imbalance is a chance finding,” a view with which the panel agreed.” In addition, “18 patients in the Crestor arm of the study reported a “confusional state” compared to four in the placebo group, but the panel also said it wasn’t likely Crestor played a role in the imbalance.” (So, correlation proves causation, but only when convenient – such as when it accommodates the end goals of increased patent protection and billions of dollars in profits.) How advantageous is it to pay the salaries of the “experts” who influence whether or not your drug is deemed the next patented miracle cure for a whole host of diseases?

To understand the timing of this Crestor news about its new miracle cure, please see related information about AstraZeneca’s patent battles for Crestor. AstraZeneca is losing its grip on Crestor as a revenue machine. Therefore, the company is scrambling to keep the drug alive. Accordingly, an article on Reuters states this:

Gbola Amusa of UBS believes the Jupiter results could expand the overall statin market by 20 percent to 50 percent in volume terms, lifting AstraZeneca’s Crestor sales to some $8 billion in 2012 from $3.6 billion last year.

For related Big Pharma lies and abuses, see:

“Tyranny of the Pharmaceutical-Congressional-Medical Complex.”

Also see “Big Day for Big Pharma.”

Dr. Harper began her remarks by explaining that 70 percent of all HPV infections resolve themselves without treatment within a year. Within two years, the number climbs to 90 percent. Of the remaining 10 percent of HPV infections, only half will develop into cervical cancer, which leaves little need for the vaccine.

She went on to surprise the audience by stating that the incidence of cervical cancer in the U.S. is already so low that “even if we get the vaccine and continue PAP screening, we will not lower the rate of cervical cancer in the US.”

The heroic Dr. Harper then told the audience, “there have been no efficacy trials in girls under 15 years.”

Merck, the manufacturer of Gardasil, studied only a small group of girls under 16 who had been vaccinated, but did not follow them long enough to conclude sufficient presence of effective HPV antibodies.

This is not the first time Dr. Harper revealed the fact that Merck never tested Gardasil for safety in young girls. During a 2007 interview with KPC News.com, she said giving the vaccine to girls as young as 11 years-old “is a great big public health experiment.”

Read the whole story. Thanks to Mark Fee for the link.

Hospitals in the U.S., where hundreds of swine flu patients are being admitted daily, may use BioCryst Pharmaceutical Inc.’s antiviral drug peramivir in some cases under a Food and Drug Administration emergency ruling.

The FDA authorized on Oct. 23 the use of an intravenous version of the medicine, which is in final-stage testing in the U.S., to treat confirmed or suspected swine flu in children and adults who may not benefit from conventional treatments or where an infusion is likely to be more beneficial.

The decision will spur wider use of BioCryst’s unapproved drug and give physicians an alternative to Roche Holding AG’s Tamiflu tablet and GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s inhaled medicine Relenza.

…BioCryst shares have surged more than fivefold to $9.66 since the new H1N1 influenza strain was reported in Mexico and the U.S. in late April and reached a three-year high of $12.80 on Aug. 26.

It turns out that the Department of Health and Human Services has nicely funded the testing of peramivir (shocking!) so it could roll the drug out in time for its pandemic/national emergency. Surely there’s no hanky-panky going on here. I love how the article says, “Investors love federal support, and they quickly boosted BioCryst’s shares by 7 percent in premarket trading.” Like I always say, the Medical-Congressional-Pharmaceutical complex never hides its dirty deeds. The money changes hands very openly, but still I’ll get occasional snide comments from the true believers who like to go along to get along so their security and well-being isn’t interrupted by silly stuff like thinking…

Ah, risk. It is the idea that fuels the anti-vaccine movement — that parents should be allowed to opt out, because it is their right to evaluate risk for their own children. It is also the idea that underlies the CDC’s vaccination schedule — that the risk to public health is too great to allow individuals, one by one, to make decisions that will impact their communities. (The concept of herd immunity is key here: It holds that, in diseases passed from person to person, it is more difficult to maintain a chain of infection when large numbers of a population are immune.)

Wallace’s hero is Paul Offit, a famed vaccination proponent and ‘public intellectual expert’ thought by many to be in the pocket of Big Pharma. He is a guy who is hated by the vaccination deniers, and he is a big believer in the state forcing its mandates on individuals. He says:

“We have seat belt rules,” he says. “Seat belts save lives. There was never a question about that. The data was absolutely clear. But people didn’t use them until they were required to use them.” Furthermore, the decision not to buckle up endangers only you. “Unless you fly through the window and hit somebody else,” he adds. “I believe in mandates. I do.”

This story is like every one I read in that it compares the number of people that die directly from the vaccination to those who actually die from a disease that supposedly would have been prevented by the vaccine. Of course, this makes the vaccination look like a much better risk. But never is there any mention of those who don’t die, but instead suffer from all the various diseases and disorders that destroy their quality of life – whether it’s autism or the numerous and varied (and unexplained) neurological and autoimmune disorders that permeate modern life. Thanks to Matt T. for the article tip.

As a related aside, visit Desiree Jennings, a pretty young girl and bride with her whole, wonderful life ahead of her – before she got a toxic injection referred to as a flu shot.