Yearly FDA approved drugs kill twice as many people as the total # of U.S. deaths from the Vietnam War

[Guest guest]

FDA ap. proved drugs kill twice as many people as the total

number of U.S. deaths from the Vietnam War

 

How Drug Comapanies Deceive Doctors

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Following doctor’s orders has become synonymous with danger - it doesn’t have to

be that way. Every year, FDA approved drugs kill twice as many people as the

total number of U.S. deaths from the Vietnam War.(1) As the public become

better aware of this atrocity, the death toll will plummet.

 

 

 

Death by medicine flourishes because deceit and greed, not science, governs a

doctor’s prescribing habits. As an ex-drug chemist, I witnessed this firsthand.

 

 

 

This deceit comes in many forms. Medical ghostwriting and checkbook science are

the most prominent. This is a situation that will change when awareness is

greater on the part of the buying public, and that is the reason for this

article of cautionary information.

 

 

 

Doctors rely on peer-reviewed medical journals to learn about prescription

drugs. These journals include the Lancet, British Medical Journal, New England

Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association. Doctors

assume that these professional journals offer the hard science behind any given

drug. This assumption is wrong. Medical journals can’t be trusted, thanks to

medical ghostwriting. Journal publishers need to re-orient their priorities to

those of honesty and objectivity.

 

 

 

Medical ghostwriting is the practice of hiring Ph.D.’s to crank out drug reports

that hype benefits and hide negative side effects. Once complete, drug companies

recruit doctors to put their names on the report as authors. These reports are

then published in the above mentioned medical journals.(2) The carrot for this

deceitful practice is money and prestige. Ghostwriters can receive up to

$20,000 per report. Doctors receive prestige from having been published.

Ultimately, patients get bad drugs disguised as good medicine.

 

 

 

There are no victims. “Patients” need to take fall back on common sense and

embrace lifestyle and nutrition habits that are in their health’s best interest.

 

 

 

As deplorable as medical ghostwriting sounds, it is more common than you think.

Dr. David Healy, of the University of Wales, predicts that 50% of journal drug

reviews are written by ghostwriters.(3)

 

 

 

Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, editor for the New England Journal of Medicine, insists that

he cannot find drug review authors who do not have financial ties to drug

companies. Interestingly, the journal relaxed their conflict-of-interest rules

in 2002.(4)

 

 

 

The editor of the British Journal of Medicine has acknowledged that medical

ghostwriting has become a serious problem for his publication: “We are being

hoodwinked by the drug companies. The articles come in with doctors’ names on

them and we often find some of them have little or no idea about what they have

written. " (5)

 

 

 

Consider the testimony from deputy editor of The Journal of the American Medical

Association: “This [journal articles] is all about bypassing science. Medicine

is becoming a sort of Cloud Cuckoo Land, where doctors don’t know what papers

they can trust in the journals, and the public doesn’t want to believe. " (6)

 

 

 

Other weapons of mass deception exist—checkbook science. As defined by Diana

Zuckerman, Ph.D., checkbook science is research intended not to expand knowledge

or to benefit humanity, but instead to sell drugs. It has touched the very soul

of university research, scientific method, and the patients who serve as human

subjects.(7)

 

 

 

Drug companies use checkbook science to sponsor their own drug research via the

halls of academia and government institutions. Money is used to design their

own studies, interpret the results, and stuff negative data under the drug-rug.

The drug-rug is a behemoth rug. It has to be. A myriad of negative drug data

exists.

 

 

 

Like medical ghostwriting, checkbook science is more common than you think. A

third of academic professors have personal financial ties to drug makers.(8)

Called the “Stealth Merger” by the LA Times, top scientists at the National

Institutes of Health also collect paychecks and stock options from the drug

industry.(9) This has been going on for over 20 years.10 Known as the

Bayh-Dole Act, U.S. law was amended in 1980 to allow for these flagrant

conflicts of interest.

 

 

 

This calculated deceit is scandalous. Hopefully, the line at the pharmaceutical

trough gets shorter as this scandal becomes public. However, drug makers have

an insurance policy for this – direct-to-consumer advertising. The oft repeated

“ask your doctor” is an advertising gimmick planned so that the herd “mentality”

instinctively embraces drugs, drugs and more drugs.

 

 

 

Understanding medical ghost writing and checkbook science explains why medical

doctors have been hypnotized into drug worship—they only see the “positive”

results. It also explains why modern medicine is more deadly and lucrative than

war—the danger has been silenced with the pen and money.

 

 

 

Drug companies do not take responsibility for the wanton prescription drug

deceit. Instead, people harmed have been made invisible -- dehumanized. They

are not recognized as children, or men with significant contribution to society.

Their deaths are simply shrugged off and attributed to sickness or aging.

 

 

 

Those who profit from prescription drugs should hold some sort of record for

having the most reckless disregard for human life. If the deceit continues, the

prescription drug leviathan will silently kill more people than Napalm dropped

on Vietnamese villages.

 

 

 

About the Author

 

 

 

Shane holds a Master's degree in organic chemistry and has first hand experience

in drug design. Abandoning his career as a medicinal chemist, he is dedicated to

stopping prescription drug hype. He is an internationally recognized authority

on therapeutic nutrition and author of Health Myths Exposed and The Hidden Truth

About Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs. His books and FREE offers can be found at

www.healthmyths.net.

 

 

 

References:

 

 

 

1. Approximately 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam. FDA approved drugs kill 106-

125,000 people per year when used as prescribed.

 

2. Source: CBC’s Marketplace. Aired March 25, 2003. Researcher Colman Jones.

 

3. Antony Barnett. Revealed: how drug firms ‘hoodwink’ medical journals.

Pharmaceutical giants hire ghostwriters to produce articles—then put doctors’

names on them. The Observer. Sunday December 7, 2003

 

4. Tufts eNews. Relaxing The Rules. Does the New England Journal of Medicine's

decision to relax its conflict of interest policy strengthen or weaken the

prestigious publication? Boston (06.19.02).

 

5. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/

 

0,6903,1101680,00.html

 

6. Shannon Brownlee. Doctors Without Borders. Why you can’t trust medical

journals anymore. Washington Monthly. April 2003.

 

7. Zuckerman, D. Hype in health reporting: “checkbook science” buys distortion

of medical news. International Journal of Health Services. 2003;33(2).

 

8. Bekelman, J.E., Li, Y. and Gross, C. P. Scope and impact of financial

conflicts of interest in biomedical research. Journal of the American Medical

Association. 289: 454-465.

 

9. Willman D. Stealth merger: drug companies and government medical research.

Los Angeles Times. 2003 Dec 7; A1, A32-3.

 

Author: Shane Ellison M.Sc.

04/11/06

 

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www.healthmyths.net

 

 

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