Former Pharma Scientists Speaks Out

[Guest guest]

.. . .very interesting article below about the pharmaceutical

companies:

 

" The People's Chemist " <service

My Interview with Dr. Al Sears MD

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:37:39 UT

 

Ex-Pharmaceutical Chemist Brazenly Exposes Prescription Drug Industry

Lies

 

The People's Chemist Interview with Dr. Al Sears M.D.

 

http://www.thepeopleschemist.com/foundation.html

 

You have full permission to forward as long as all bylines are

included at bottom of interview. . .

 

Dr. Sears: What prompted you to leave the pharmaceutical industry?

Shane: I worked for Array Biopharma designing TamoxifenTM derivatives

for Eli Lilly. Because TamoxifenTM was shown to ignite higher cancer

rates among women, Eli Lilly hoped to replace it by developing a

new " chemical cousin. " To illustrate its danger:

" Incidence of endometrial cancer (cancer of the womb lining) almost

doubled for those taking the drug [TAMOXIFEN] for one to two years.

Taking it over a five-year period: Cases quadrupled. " - American

Academy of Family Physicians

We were unsuccessful in our attempts of curbing the cancer effects of

Tamoxifen. Despite its known danger, TamoxifenTM remained on the

market - as the gold standard in treating cancer! A huge medical

paradox, I noticed that doctors and drug ads for TamoxifenTM

continually insisted that it might decrease cancer risk.

" Tamoxifen (Nolvadex) - has been officially approved by the Food and

Drug Administration (FDA) to help protect high-risk women from

getting breast cancer. It's generally taken for five years. " - Mayo

Clinic

This was the exact opposite of what we and other biochemists found in

the lab and reported. This paradox was the catalyst for my

investigation into health myths. Ultimately, it resulted in my

resignation from corporate drug making.

Dr. Sears: Did you ever feel you were misleading doctors?

 

Shane: As a medicinal chemist, I had zero contact with doctors.

Therefore, I wasn't directly misleading doctors. Instead, drug reps,

who have absolutely ZERO background in science, are the ones who have

contact with medical doctors. And their only job is to mislead

doctors: hype drug benefits while concealing negative side-effects.

They do this by memorizing what is " spoon fed " to them by the

company. It's not exactly Hollywood, but the whole charade sells

lots of dangerous drugs. And because they don't have backgrounds in

science, drug reps are totally unaware of their deplorable actions -

for the most part.

Dr. Sears: Do drug companies sell drugs that cure disease?

Shane: No. The drug company business model is based

on " sustainability. " Rather than find a cause and cure, patients are

simply sustained. There is not a single prescription drug that offers

a " cure " to any ailment. People are becoming aware of this fact:

" ...The system encourages people to get sick and then people get paid

to treat them. " - Dr. Matthew Fink Beth Israel, New York Times 2006

Some would argue that antibiotics cure infection. This is almost

true. Antibiotics make us feel better. Inevitably though, their use

leads to other infections, side effects. Therefore, in the long run,

man-made antibiotics act as a growth medium for producing stronger

and deadlier bacteria. This is hardly a cure, especially when Chinese

and Ayurvedic medicine has successfully and inexpensively cured

bacterial and viral infections for thousands of years

with " adaptogens " like andrographis.

Dr. Sears: If drug companies don't design drugs to cure disease then

how does drug design work?

Shane: Drug design is based on identifying measurable symptoms of a

disease and making a molecule in the lab to offset those symptoms.

Typically, the design of such a molecule is derived from plants or

other natural sources. They are " copy-cats " of Mother Nature.

Unfortunately, because they are slightly altered, they carry large

amounts of risk due to fast absorption into the bloodstream and

toxicity.

Curing a disease versus treating its symptoms does not make " business

sense " to drug companies. Just like government can only profit from

criminals, the drug industry only makes money from sick people - sick

people with insurance. Consider the recent quote in The New York

Times:

" Real profit [in medicine] is made not by controlling chronic

diseases...but by treating their many complications. " - The New York

Times, 2006

This business model is extremely profitable. It enables drug

companies to secure dependency among users. The profits derived from

this dependency allows drug companies to pay for Direct-to-Consumer

(DTC) advertising, drug trials, university research, government

lobbying, and " ghost writers. " Combined, these strategies are used to

deceive the general public as well as medical doctors. Marketing

hype always supersedes science.

Dr. Sears: What inspired you to write Health Myths Exposed

(http://www.thepeopleschemist.com/foundation.html)?

 

Shane: Health myths are the single biggest threat to our health and

nobody is talking about them - with the exception of a few

professionals like you (i.e. via your book The Doctors Heart Cure).

To further increase profits, drug companies invent disease and

subsequently, offer a solution. Herein lays the origin of deadly

health myths. Such myths include, but are surely not limited to, that

of high cholesterol being the culprit of heart disease, type II

diabetes being incurable, high-blood pressure being a death sentence

and that AIDS, rather than starvation, is killing Africans.

Through " junk science " and " ghost writing, " the general public and

some of the world's most respected health experts have fallen victim

to these myths. The end result is, " Asking the doctor if a drug is

right for you. "

Inventing disease is not a " far out " conspiracy theory. It is a

simple matter of finding ailments that naturally occur due to poor

lifestyle habits and/or aging and labeling them as a disease.

Once " big-pharma " steals jurisdiction over the general public's

common sense, they convince them of the necessity of their drugs.

Dr. Sears: Are we taking more prescription drugs than we used to?

Shane: Oh yes. The promotion of health myths by the drug industry

has essentially lodged a pharmaceutical bullet into the heads of

American's. It has totally skewed their thinking, which usually goes

like this:

" I'll ignore proper nutrition, suck down diet soda, and sit my arse

in a cubicle all day. I'll relinquish my health responsibility to my

doctor by following his orders. Never mind drug side-effects, my

expanding waist line, afternoon lethargy and the inability to

exercise or make love to my spouse. To procure health I'll just eat

drugs: The cholesterol and blood-pressure lowering kind. After all,

my corporate drug-eating insurance plan will pay for them. "

The outcome has been an exponential increase in prescription drug

use. Spending on prescription drugs quadrupled between 1990 and 2002

to more than 162.4 billion. Today Americans spend $200 billion.

Medical doctors in the U.S. write an average of fourteen

prescriptions per person, annually! Spending is predicted to top

$446 billion per year by the year 2012.

Dr. Sears: Does FDA approval mean that a drug is safe?

Shane: No. Consumers are essentially unwitting test subjects. FDA

insiders have admitted this:

" The agency [the FDA] neglects safety in its rush to speed the drug-

approval process because current laws and policies let the drug

industry influence the FDA. "

- Paul Stolley, MD, MPH, former senior consultant to the FDA

If our drugs were safe and effective then we would be much healthier

as a nation. Despite the prescription drug feeding frenzy, the U.S.

ranks 12 among the top 13 countries in the health of its citizens.

At least eighty percent of seniors have one chronic disease and fifty

percent have at least two. And JAMA estimates that one in three

children born in the year 2000 will suffer from type II diabetes!

They will lose an estimated 11 to 20 years from their lifespan!

Prescription drugs kill an estimated 105,000 people per year. That

equates to one individual dying about every five minutes from

an " approved " drug â " € almost three hundred deaths every day â " € that

is, twice as many fatalities in a single year from " approved drugs "

as the total number of U.S. deaths [58,000] from the Vietnam War.

This does not include the 98,000 killed every year by hospital

medical error. And let us no forget the 2.2 million who are injured

from using prescription drugs as prescribed...

How can this be? More than half of the top FDA scientists have

financial conflicts of interest with respect to the drugs that come

under their scrutiny. These ties are often in the form of stock

options. Such conflicts are commonly waived and hidden from the

general public. Allowing these conflicts of interest is a result of

lobbying by drug companies.

Lobbying has led to the passing of laws that are advantageous to drug

companies and dangerous to the public. For example, in 1997, the U.S

government passed the Food and Drug Modernization Act (FDAMA). This

allows for a new drugs approval based on only one favorable clinical

trial - despite the fact that 25 might show negative results! The

results have been, and will continue to be, disastrous. VioxxTM is a

great example. However, dozens more exist and are outlined in my

book Health Myths Exposed. In fact, unlike VioxxTM many approved

drugs that were proven to lack efficacy and be harmful still remain

on the market!

Dr. Sears: What is direct-to-consumer advertising and how has it

influenced medicine?

Shane: Direct -to-Consumer (DTC) advertising is relatively new and

was previously illegal. It was thought by the FDA that DTC

advertising would promote health awareness amongst consumers.

Therefore, in an outrageous conflict of interest, the FDA granted

this responsibility to the drug companies.

Supporters of DTC advertising say that it bridges the gap between

doctors and patients. This is only true if DTC advertising were

honest. Sadly, we find drug companies are in clear violation of the

law due to making false and exaggerated claims about effectiveness

and safety.

To better illustrate this, we can look to Pfizer. Pfizer falsely

advertised that a condition known as rhabdomyolysis (muscle pain)

occurred at a much lower rate among LipitorTM users relative to their

competitor's drug. Consequently, millions of patients were prescribed

LipitorTM at dosages higher than recommended in an effort to plummet

cholesterol levels faster. The result was disastrous, thousands

suffered unnecessarily from rhabdomyolysis.

The pain killer, OxyContinTM, is another example of false

advertising. Makers of the drug, Purdue Pharma L.P., falsely

advertised that the addiction rate among the opium-based drug was a

mere 1%. Approved only as a " last resort " drug for cancer patients,

naïve medical doctors began to prescribe the drug as a " first

resort " . Prescriptions for Oxycontin rose from 300,000 to nearly 6

million. At the same time, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reported

that deaths from OxyContinTM rose 400%.

Instead of bridging the gap, DTC advertising forges a belief among

the general public which asserts that drugs - not lifestyle habits

and nutrition - confer health and longevity. And although, in

reality, medicine is only necessary for sick people in times of

emergency, DTC advertising has been wildly successful in convincing

people that being healthy requires a lifetime of prescription drug

use. While it's true that the advertising usually mentions the

potential side effects of drugs, doctors tend to discount them. They

simply regurgitate the pharmaceutical-company line that " the benefits

of a drug outweigh the risks. " Don't believe it.

The outcome of DTC advertising: The number of people who have fallen

victim to FDA approved drugs has skyrocketed. It is hard to decipher

which is more dangerous, the ads or the drugs? To date, no drug

company has EVER been prosecuted for false advertising. The FDA

simply ignores these violations. To avoid the prescription drug trap,

it is important to understand how drug ads are designed to deceive us.

Dr. Sears: Do Americans need nutritional supplements?

Shane: YES! According to the National Center for Health Statistics,

only nine percent of all American adults consume enough healthy foods

to reach their minimum recommended daily intake of nutrients to

assure proper health. To substantiate this we look to Johns Hopkins

Medical School who published the studies of Ames and Wakimoto. These

researches noted that " suboptimal nutrient intake is a widespread

problem. "

 

Lack of nutrients results in a lack of " metabolic harmony " . Metabolic

harmony can be described as the ability of your body to properly

maintain DNA function by minimizing damage to DNA. DNA serves as a

genetic map, continually working to guide your body to proper health.

A deficiency in any ONE nutrient can wreak havoc on DNA and result in

loss of function among many systems of the body. For instance, as

noted by Ames and Wakimoto, a single deficiency can lead to cancer

(pancreatic, bone, prostate, etc), premature aging (aching joints,

low hormone levels, Parkinson's, wrinkled skin, etc) and loss of

mental function (Alzhiemers, etc) due to increased damage to DNA.

Harvard University professor Walter Willett collected dietary data on

more than 250,000 men and women for a period of 25 years. Summing up

his research findings he said " what we know is that the major causes

of diseases in our country -- cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke,

diabetes -- are not genetic factors, as so many people believe and

use as an excuse, but diets and lifestyle factors. We have documented

that unhealthy diet and lifestyle account for more than 80 percent of

heart disease, 90 percent of type II diabetes, and more than 70

percent of stroke and colon cancer. "

Dr. Sears: How can people learn more about living healthy without

prescription drugs?

Shane: Visit my personal site by clicking here and begin with The

People's Chemist Foundational Health Education. The link is:

http://www.thepeopleschemist.com/foundation.html

My passion is learning about insulin resistance (type II diabetes)

and teaching people how to avoid and reverse it naturally. I will be

writing extensively on this topic for the new publication by Agora

Publishing entitled, Total Health Breakthroughs.

Thank you for this opportunity Dr. Sears. It was an honor. For

anyone who is not familiar with your work, I encourage them to visit

your site at http://www.alsearsmd.com/ to learn about The Doctors

Heart Cure and your wildly popular nutritional supplements.

About Shane Ellison, M.Sc.

Shane " The People's Chemist " Ellison has an MS in organic chemistry

and has first hand experience in drug design and synthesis. He is a

two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Research Grant for his studies in physiology and biochemistry. Today,

Shane is an internationally recognized authority on insulin

resistance and type II diabetes. His dedication to natural health

prompted him to write Health Myths Exposed and The Hidden Truth about

Cholesterol Lowering Drugs. He is co-author of 101 Great Ways to

Improve Your Health with Dr. Joseph Mercola and Dr. Julian Whitaker.

A passionate speaker, Shane has been a guest lecturer at major

universities and corporations such as British Petroleum and appeared

in the award-winning documentary by Dr. Gary Null entitled

Prescription for Disaster. Get his Secret Cures eLetter and read the

controversial Stinky Sulfur Awards at www.thepeopleschemist.com and

get his Foundational Health Education by visiting

www.thepeopleschemist.com/foundation.html

About Al Sears, MD

Dr. Al Sears is fast becoming the nation's leading authority on

longevity and heart health. Since the release of his latest book, The

Doctor's Heart Cure, he has been interviewed on over two dozen

nationally syndicated radio programs with an audience of millions. In

just three years, Dr. Sears has published over 325 articles and 3

books in the fields of alternative medicine, anti-aging and

nutritional supplementation - including a monthly subscription

newsletter entitled Health Confidential for Men. His cutting edge

breakthroughs and commanding knowledge of alternative medicine have

been transforming the lives of his patients for over 15 years. Dr.

Sears currently owns and operates a successful integrative medicine

and anti-aging clinic in Wellington, Florida. He is a member of the

American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, a diplomat of the American

Board of Anti-Aging Medicine and is Board Certified in Anti-Aging

Medicine. He is an avid researcher and enthusiastic lecturer in this

exciting new field of medicine.

 

For more information visit

www.alsearsmd.com.

healthmyths.net

3600 Cerrillos Dr. #714C-802

Santa Fe

New Mexico 87507

United States