SO MUCH TRUTH - SPOKEN IN JEST

Since great satire does actually mirror the real world in many instances; I thought I would share this wonderful piece posted over at pharmagossip here on this blog.

"SO MUCH TRUTH, SPOKEN IN JEST"

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Johnny B. Sinister, the American-born boss of global pharmaceutical giant Phoni Pharm. Inc., told the CBI conference that it is not just bankers who need to reform. He said: "If we fail to change things will not be pretty. And if you think you're exempt, you're wrong.”

Mr. Sinister, whose company recently paid a $1.8bn (£1.1bn) fine to the US government in September for misleading sales advice on one of its drugs, said, "People have had enough and the backlash is real."

“The public is tired of huge global companies like us regarding massive corporate malfeasance fines as a cost of business, and then just carrying on breaking the law,” he said.

“They’re also tired of our price gouging. They’ve had enough of our lying about and hiding clinical data, just so we can get drugs of dubious benefit onto the market. They’ve had enough of us buying doctors and politicians to maintain the status quo and crush any chance of healthcare reform. They’ve had enough of executives like me, who are paid seven figure salaries for selling off the first world’s intellectual silverware to the Far East for the short term financial gain of themselves and their backers. And they’re fed up with the massive lay-offs and the resultant social costs that these off-shoring strategies and “slash and burn” mergers and takeovers are causing.”

“But we don’t really care”, Sinister admitted. “The public also knows that we’ll just carry on doing whatever we want anyway, because we are too big to be allowed to fail or to be stopped.”

The next speaker emphasized that the banking world agreed with Mr. Sinister’s perception of public antipathy.

“Greed is good,” said RBS’s Gordon Gecko (no relation), to a cheering audience, as he trousered a $100 million dollar bonus paid for out of public bail-out money...

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One Big Thank You, and full credit goes to pharmagossip for these Laughs, and the earnest continued pursuit of the truth.

The new and unimproved lobotomy unveiled in NYTimes

The new and unimproved lobotomy unveiled in NYTimes

expert academic in the field says: "Because psychiatry is the religion of modern America, and as faith in psychiatry has eroded lately, our thought leaders are dredging up old psychiatric idols that might re-energize the faithful..."

a must read from: Alliance for Human Research Protection
NYTimes Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/health/research/27brain.html
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Psychosurgery Promoted by NYT: Here We Go, Again

Friday, 27 November 2009

"Only 3 patients were in remission without adverse effects at long-term follow-up." True to an ignoble tradition of lending its "authoritative" front page to promote psychiatry's most radical experimental approaches to dealing with patients disabled by mental illness, today's front and center article in The New York Times, "Surgery for Mental Ills Offers Both Hope and Risk," by Benedict Carey, sends an optimistic positive spin on psychiatry's current spade of experimental brain surgeries.

A large photograph--rather than compelling evidence--attempts to lend the story significance.

The article acknowledges that the new surgeries are not backed by new scientific evidence of their benefit to justify the serious risks involved:

"The great promise of neuroscience at the end of the last century was that it would revolutionize the treatment of psychiatric problems. But the first real application of advanced brain science is not novel at all. It is a precise, sophisticated version of an old and controversial approach: psychosurgery, in which doctors operate directly on the brain."

Indeed, Paul Root Wolpe, a medical ethicist at Emory University, acknowledges the high risk experimental procedures that patients are being put through:

“We have this idea — it’s almost a fetish — that progress is its own justification, that if something is promising, then how can we not rush to relieve suffering?”

But, Dr. Wolpe reminds readers, "It was not so long ago, he noted, that doctors considered the frontal lobotomy a major advance — only to learn that the operation left thousands of patients with irreversible brain damage. Many promising medical ideas have run aground, and that’s why we have to move very cautiously.”

Despite "large gaps" in the neurosurgeons' understanding of the brain circuits they are operating on, several surgeries are currently being promoted:
cingulotomy, capsulotomy, brain stimulation (DBS), and radiation (gamma knife surgery)
--all pose high risk for patients with little demonstrable evidence of success.

In cingulotomy, doctors drill into the skull and thread wires into an area of the brain called the anterior cingulate.
"There they pinpoint and destroy pinches of tissue that lie along a circuit in each hemisphere that connects deeper, emotional centers of the brain to areas of the frontal cortex, where conscious planning is centered."

"This circuit appears to be hyperactive in people with severe O.C.D., and imaging studies suggest that the surgery quiets that activity."
The evidence to justify the risks does not exist: neurosurgeons proceed on what "appears" and imaging studies that "suggest" but do not demonstrate.

In capsulotomy, "surgeons go deeper, into an area called the internal capsule, and burn out spots in a circuit also thought to be overactive."

Surgeons who perform DBS, sink wires into the brain but leave them in place. "A pacemaker-like device sends a current to the electrodes, apparently interfering with circuits thought to be hyperactive in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (and also those with severe depression). The current can be turned up, down or off, so deep brain stimulation is adjustable and, to some extent, reversible."

In the technique described in the Times article, called gamma knife surgery.
"Doctors place the patient in an M.R.I.-like machine that sends beams of radiation into the skull. The beams pass through the brain without causing damage, except at the point where they converge. There they burn out spots of brain tissue..."

Underscoring the danger these latest neurosurgical procedures pose, Dr. Darin D. Dougherty, director of the division of neurotherapeutics at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard, put it more bluntly.

" Given the history of failed techniques, like frontal lobotomy, if this effort somehow goes wrong, it’ll shut down this approach for another hundred years.”

The evidence, from a small long-term follow-up study, reported by the respected Swedish Karolinska Institute in the Archives of General Psychiatry, [1] found that 50% of 25 patients treated with any of the commonly used surgeries for OCD, showed that response rates did not differ significantly between surgical methods.

"Only 3 patients were in remission without adverse effects at long-term follow-up."

"One of the 9 patients undergoing radiosurgery (patient 20) developed a right-sided radiation necrosis with subsequent apathy, memory problems, and executive dysfunction. Another (patient 10) developed a brain edema that reached its peak size 1 year after surgery; the patient was hospitalized with symptoms of apathy, incontinence, and seizures. At long-term follow-up, urinary incontinence, apathy, and executive problems persisted. In both cases, complications may have been caused by too high a radiation dose. Another patient who underwent multiple thermocapsulotomies (patient 8) had persistent urinary incontinence at long-term follow-up. Symptoms of apathy and poor self-control for years afterward."

"A mean weight gain of 6 kg was reported in the first postoperative year. Ten patients were considered to have significant problems with executive functioning, apathy, or disinhibition. Six of these 10 patients had received high doses of radiation or had undergone multiple surgical procedures."

Conclusions: "Capsulotomy is effective in reducing OCD symptoms. There is a substantial risk of adverse effects, and the risk may vary between surgical methods. Our findings suggest that smaller lesions are safer and that high radiation doses and multiple procedures should be avoided."

The invariably positive claims made by proponents of neurosurgery are likely explained by the inherent bias of these stakeholders. As Dr. Christian Ruck, the lead author of the Swedish paper, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry correctly notes:

"An inherent problem in most research is that innovation is driven by groups that believe in their method, thus introducing bias that is almost impossible to avoid."

So why, did the New York Times once again, see fit to publicize admittedly high risk, radical surgical procedures that demonstrably cause at least half of the patients serious long-term debilitating adverse effects that undermine their quality of life? [2]

**The answer to that question comes to us from an expert academic in the field:

"Because psychiatry is the religion of modern America, and as faith in psychiatry has eroded lately, our thought leaders are dredging up old psychiatric idols that might re-energize the faithful..."
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Who really needs God or Faith anymore: we have those Second to God Psychiatrist, Pharmaceutical drugs, and Modern Medicine to fill that void.

Philip Dawdy @ Furious Seasons psychosurgery_and_the_problem_of_severe_ocd
Wrote a post related to this NYTimes Article - You might find the conversation in the comment section worth reading on this topic.

Scottish researchers identify faulty gene

Scottish researchers identify brand new faulty gene in almost functional humans

From the NYGoodTimes: NYGoodTimes Health Page

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Nov. 26, 2009
written by APP reporter Dirk Dinkler

Scottish drunken researchers have made a breakthrough as they identified a gene

Scottish drunken researchers have made a breakthrough as they identified a gene that could help explain why they have this strange delusions of discovery which leads them to pee on church walls and claim to have found what may or may not be the gene that might cause people to be assholes, drug reps, or just plain fruit loops.

The international team of whacked out and inebriated scientists, led by experts at Edenburgh University, discovered the gene ABCEasyAs123 that may help create recreational drugs to restore verbal vulgarity and some missing balls in patients with gene research expertise and major pharmaceutical drug rep. histories.

Lead researcher Doublas Peckerwood, Professor of Drunken Genetics at Edenburgh University found that the gene was faulty more frequently in patients with Science Research backgrounds and with drug company representatives when compared to normal healthy people.

"This is an exciting step forward in our misunderstanding of the underlying causes of some common misconception of these social misfits and known assholes. These risk genes could signpost new directions for treatments such as neutering/castration, massive electric shock, and water boarding," the Drunken Scotsman quoted him as saying.

Dr Benover Prick, part of the Edenburgh team, now of Clydesdale riding Academy and University, also said: "This study is the first to identify multiple points of DNA damage within a single gene that are linked with greedy soul-less bastards such as the aforementioned.

"It strongly suggests that this gene may regulate an important part of the arse thinking tissue that is linked with these devastating disorders spanning decades of research and marketing sales achievements."

He continued: "There are several very interesting things that come from this work. The first is that we have got a gene and not an friggin inkling about what it might do. So let’s pour another drink and make up something that will make news headlines damn it.

"It seems to be irresponsible for transporting vile lies, debaucheries of thought, and sleazy sales tactics – in various types of fat-ass molecules – around and we suppose that if it fails to transport one particular type of totally useless information, it could have a jack-off affect on a particular aspect of ghost writing functions or the way that cells excommunication with one another when meeting unscrupulous grant apprehension and marketing goals.

"The second thing is the fact that we find these mutations in this gene cropping up in people with ingrown toe nails, doctor white lab coats, horned rimmed glasses, knock off Armani Suits , and some cheer-leading experience."

The research, published in the American Journal of Human Drinking Songs, was led by Edenburgh University in collaboration with drunken scientists at Labrador, Queenspan and North Jakarta Universities.

(All research in this article is directly or indirectly funded and skewed toward making phenomenal profits off of bogus science by and for Asstra Benica, Fyser, GSQ, and J&J&J Pharmaceutical Corporations)

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I invited over a couple of good friends to help prepare the turkey this Thanks Giving

I invited over a couple of good friends to help prepare the turkey this Thanks Giving!

I would have invited you all over to join us for dinner; but as you see, my kitchen appears to be a little crowded at the moment. lol..............




I will assume there is much bountiful abundance to be thankful for afterall in each of our lives; even though we may have some great challenges, heavy burdens, and monumental obstacles standing before us that must be overcome.

The Greedy Foxes are invited into the White Hen House - Health Care Reform Corporate Style

The Greedy Foxes are invited into the White Hen House - We End Up With Health Care Reform Corporate Style

Why should the following story concern you, and come as a huge red flag warning to every American.

Is "Health Care Reform" really about reform and providing the American People with better and more affordable health care; or is it all about the corporations that have their wallets open and unfettered access to the White House.

From everything I have been able to grapple from reading sections of this so called "Health Care Reform"; it is far more about an already greedy and out of control industry "pharma and health insurance giants" gaining even more power and profit through forcing 100% participation, with built in uncontrolled profits ceilings; without all the nasty business of proper oversight and regulations in place to secure not only the safety, but legal recourse against these entities.

If words like "PREEMPTION" and "TORT REFORM" doesn't ring any warning bells with you; its the way our government is removing all legal recourse from your hands when a drug company poisons you or your loved one with their latest quick fix gimmick, or when some medical corporation commits blatant medical malpractice and injury.

As you skim through this list of lobbyist and corporate power brokers who have have helped shaped this massive 2000 page "Health Care Reform"; you might want to ask our government directly; "who they are really representing and working for now a days?"

You want to look at "Reform" government style; just ask any injured worker in California how great reform is after the Government "FIXED" the Workers Comp System so Insurance Companies raked in profit and Injured Workers were forced into suffering poverty and many times out of thier homes and state by one of the most industry driven corrupt systems in a America. If Nancy Pelosi could turn her back on California Injured Workers and Voters; Can anyone trust her with National Health Care Reform.

It appears it's more about big fat lobby checks, reelection campaign funding, and power brokering among the elite.

Think about it! When was the last time the federal government really was looking out for you and your best interest?

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Updated November 25, 2009

Lobbyists Find Door Open
At Obama White House

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/25/obamas-aides-met-health-care-lobbyists/

Obama's Top Aides Met Often With Health Care Lobbyists

AP

President Obama's top aides met frequently with lobbyists and health care industry heavyweights as his administration pieced together a national health care overhaul, according to White House visitor records obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.

President Obama's top aides met frequently with lobbyists and health care industry heavyweights as his administration pieced together a national health care overhaul, according to White House visitor records obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.

The records disclose visits by a broad cross-section of the people most involved in the health care debate, weighted heavily toward those who want to overhaul the system.

The list includes George Halvorson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Health Plans; Scott Serota, president and CEO of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association; Kenneth Kies, a Washington lobbyist who represents Blue Cross/Blue Shield, among other clients; Billy Tauzin, head of PhRMA, the drug industry lobby; Richard Umbdenstock, chief of the American Hospital Association, and numerous lobbyists.

The AP in early August asked the White House to produce records identifying communications that top Obama aides -- including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, senior advisers David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett and Pete Rouse, and 18 others -- had with outside interests on health care. The AP in late September narrowed its request to White House visitor records for those officials on the topic of health care.

The White House on Wednesday provided 575 visitor records covering the period from Jan. 20, when Obama was inaugurated, through August. The records give the name of each visitor to the White House complex to see people on AP's list, the date of the visit, the White House staffer they were supposed to see and, in some cases, the purpose of the visit. The records do not identify the visitors' employers, say on whose behalf they were there or give any specifics of what was discussed.

The records list the kinds of people usually involved in Washington policymaking: business, union and trade association executives, lobbyists and political strategists. Wednesday's disclosure was significant because of Obama's campaign promise to change business as usual in Washington, and because he voluntarily released records showing the access of special interests as the administration crafted national health care policy.

Earlier this year, the White House announced agreements under which hospitals and the drug industry promised cost savings in return for the overhaul's expected expansion in the number of insured patients. The arrangements were hammered out in private meetings, drawing comparisons to Vice President Dick Cheney's secret talks with the energy industry as he helped President George W. Bush draft a national energy policy. In that case the Bush White House steadfastly fought efforts to have visitor records released.

Obama recently began releasing visitor information on a rolling basis, and the White House put out another batch Wednesday afternoon apart from AP's request. The president "vowed to run the most transparent and ethical administration in our history, and our release of this records underscores our commitment to following through on that," said White House spokesman Reid Cherlin. He added that the list demonstrates how the president is listening to voices from across the health care spectrum.

Several lobbyists for powerful health care interests, including insurers, drug companies and large employers, visited the White House complex, the records show:

-- Laird Burnett, a top lobbyist for insurer Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., and a former Senate aide. Kaiser has spent some $1.7 million lobbying Congress over the past two years.

-- Joshua Ackil, a lobbyist whose clients include Intel, U.S. Oncology Inc., and Knoa Software Inc., all of which have reported lobbying on the health care overhaul. Ackil met with Dan Turton, the White House's deputy legislative affairs director who works with the House, in August.

-- Peter Orszag, Obama's budget chief, met in late March with representatives for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, including chief executive Serota, in-house lobbyists Alissa Fox and Kris Haltmeyer, and Kies, one of its outside lobbyists and a former top GOP congressional tax aide.

-- Amador "Dean" Aguillen, a former aide to Nancy Pelosi but now with Ogilvy Government Relations, appears to have attended the same Aug. 21 meeting with Turton that Ackil did. At Ogilvy, Aguillen works on behalf of clients including pharmaceutical companies SanofiPasteur and Takeda Pharmaceuticals America, Pfizer Inc., and Amgen USA Inc., all of which reported lobbying on health care issues this year.

-- Joel Johnson, a lobbyist with close ties to Rahm Emanuel, appears to have met with his friend one-on-one in May, according to the logs. Johnson, a partner at the Glover Park Group, lobbies for several health interests including United Healthcare Services Inc. and Kinetic Concepts Inc., a medical products maker.

-- Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health care ethicist, special White House adviser on health care and brother to Rahm Emanuel, met in late March with lobbyists and executives from the pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. Inc. The meeting included the company's chief executive, Richard Clark, and a vice president, Richard Pasternak, as well as in-house lobbyist Jane Horvath. Also attending was Jonathan Hoganson, a lobbyist at an outside firm who represents Merck as well as PhRMA, the drug industry's major trade association, and several other of its large members including AstraZeneca and Abbott Labs.

-- Rahm Emanuel had an early July meeting with two labor leaders, John Sweeney, then the president of the AFL-CIO, and Gerald McEntee of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and their top lobbyists, Bill Samuel and Chuck Loveless. Sweeney and the AFL-CIO's Samuel also had a visit with Emanuel in March.

The logs show a late-July meeting between Nancy-Ann DeParle, the director of Obama's Office of Health Reform, and lobbyists from the Business Roundtable, the association representing chief executives of major U.S. firms. The group has spent $9.3 million lobbying over the past two years and is keenly interested in the outcome of the health overhaul debate. Among the attendees were the group's top lobbyist, John Castellani, and Antonio Perez, the CEO of Eastman Kodak Company.

White House officials met repeatedly with the American Medical Association, which has pushed hard -- over the objections of some physicians -- for the health overhaul and a corresponding pay hike for doctors. Ezekiel Emanuel included Dr. J. James Rohack, the AMA's president, in a large meeting in March. DeParle met in August with the association's top lobbyist, Richard Deem. That same day, she also huddled with Richard Trachtman, who lobbies for the American College of Physician Services Inc., which represents internists.

Ezekiel Emanuel met in March with executives and lobbyists from Trinity Health, a Michigan-based company that bills itself as the country's fourth-largest Catholic health system. Listed as attending the meeting were Joseph Swedish, the company's chief executive, and Paul Conlon, another top executive, as well as in-house lobbyists and two from the Washington firm Alston & Bird LLP. The lobbying firm is professional home to several former senior health officials in Congress and past administrations, as well as former Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle, who served as majority leader and was Obama's original pick as health and human services secretary.

Representatives of the seniors lobby AARP also met repeatedly with White House officials, the records show. Obama's senior adviser Valerie Jarrett met in June with Barry Rand, the group's chief executive, and two of his top lobbyists, John Rother and Nancy LeaMond. Rother and LeaMond were back the following month with a third lobbyist, David Sloane, to meet with Orszag.

AARP in early November endorsed the House Democratic health care bill, giving the legislation a major boost.

The broader White House disclosures Wednesday -- beyond the health care discussions -- showed just over 2,000 visits from the time of Obama's inauguration until the end of August, for all purposes.

They show the expected, eclectic parade of administration officials, economists, consultants, dignitaries and guests to special functions. Oprah Winfrey's two visits are logged. Reflecting the tenor of the times, the most frequent visitor was Lee Sachs, the Treasury Department's point man on the financial crisis, who came to the White House more than 60 times.

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Update March 2010

sprinkled within the sands of time - thankfulness

sprinkled within the sands of time - a measure of thankfulness

If life were measured as grains of sand slipping through our ever clutching grasps

Then surely it would be the simplest of things we would truly treasure

A grove of old growth forest covered gently in blankets of freshly fallen snow

A mother white tail with fawn still silence, frozen grace as we meet upon this worn path.

A brisk wind tossing about our moistened locks
reddened cheeks sculpted with chiseled grin reflecting brightly,
swirling vapors of hot coco dance in fragrant folly

A warm touch of another hand entwined in yours
the words not spoken, but felt deeply within the soul nourished full.

This is but one grain of sand, one solitary moment locked in time
let us take pause and be thankful

Pharmaceutical Corporations - The Mystery Unlocked - It's all about the MONEY Stupid

Pharmaceutical Corporations - The Mystery Unlocked - It's all about the MONEY Stupid

Yes folks, when you have pharmaceutical corporate entities involves in so called "Health Care Reform" while being one of the largest lobby powers in Washington DC (including direct access to the White House); It's not Rocket Science to see what's this is all about in the end game. Pharma wants a bigger piece of the money pie.


It's not enough to corrupt, control, and skew the FDA with pill after worthless pill coming to market for that manipulative famous "Quick fix" approach to your Health . Pharma wants to make sure they have all the major political players in their pocket as well.

This will not only ensure they keep those hefty profits rolling in; but that you either remain and become their next life time addict in this greedy and corrupt business scheme.

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From PharmaGossip - attention-usa-milking-has-turned-into

Attention USA - the milking has turned into gouging!

US drugmakers have reacted with fury to two separate calls by Members of Congress for official inquiries into allegations of industry “price gouging” in anticipation of health care reform.

Leaders of two powerful House committees have asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for “an expedited report on recent trends in prescription drug pricing” and a proposal for monitoring pricing practices, after recent studies and a report in the New York Times suggested that drugmakers may be artificially raising prices ahead of the health reform legislation now going through both houses of Congress and which could adversely affect drug price growth.

New analyses suggest that brand-name drug prices rose more than 9% last year and over 35% since 2006, say Democratic Representatives Charles Ranger, Henry Waxman, Pete Stark and John Lewis, in their letter to the GAO. “These price increases cannot be explained by increases in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which fell last year. Pharmaceutical manufacturers used the same tactic before the start of Medicare Part D, raising drug prices dramatically in anticipation of gaining millions of new insured customers,” add the legislators, who lead the House Committees on Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce.

And in the Senate, Democrat Bill Nelson of Florida has written to the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) requesting “an immediate and thorough investigation into drug industry pricing and recent increases, and the extent to which these increases may affect the Medicare and Medicaid programmes.”

“I want to know if there's a back-door move under way by the drugmakers to recover some of the concessions they’ve promised for health care reform,” he said.

The legislators’ demands follow the publication of a report last week by the seniors’ group AARP which claims that manufacturer prices for widely-used branded drugs have increased 9.3% since October 2008, considerably higher than the average 5.8%-8.3% of the past seven years, and against a 1.3% decline in the CPI. 96% of brand-name drugs’ prices have gone up in the last year, it adds.

“The pharmaceutical industry should be embarrassed when it sees its own price increases put side-by-side with the general inflation rate. Even as the cost of most goods and services drops, a person taking just one brand name drug now pays $200 more per year than a year ago,” said AARP executive vice president John Rother.

The NYT article quoted both the AARP study and new research by Credit Suisse analyst Catherine Arnold, who reports that the list prices of drugs made by the USA’s eight biggest drugmakers rose 8.7% on average during the 12 months ending September 30.

These price increases will add more than $10 billion to the US drug bill, which is forecast to surpass $300 billion this year, and at least one analysis puts this as the highest annual rate of drug price inflation since 1992, says the NYT.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America has fired off a number of angry responses these claims, accusing the AARP of “trying to muddy the waters for its own political gain” and of having “a skewed view of the world in which medicines are always looked at as a cost and never seen as a saving.”

“It’s pretty obvious that the calls to hold hearings or involve GAO are based on the misleading use of statistics and sensationalised media reports,” says PhRMA executive vice president Ken Johnson. In fact, he adds, the CPI shows prescription drug prices grew 2.7% in the 12 months to September, not 5.4% as cited by AARP, while prices posted on medicare.gov shows that average annual growth for the products identified by the Association as top-selling was 3.3% over the last three years, less than half the 7.4% annual average cited by AARP.

The group’s conclusions are based on incomplete information because they do not take account of discounts and rebates which can significantly lower the cost of many brand-name drugs, benefiting patients nationwide, “but you wouldn’t know it by looking at pharmacy prices – or reading the New York Times,” he says. The newspaper article “only tells half a story, using selected statistics to make a flawed assumption that an increase in drug prices must somehow be tied to health care reform.”

“Here’s the real truth: financial results for nearly a dozen of our companies show zero revenue growth in the third quarter and -3% year to date. And it doesn’t appear to get much better down the road,” says Mr Johnson.

By Lynne Taylor
PharmaTimes


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Sometimes even the Far Leftest wake up to smell the coffee burning.



If that isn't enough bad news and evidence; please go read this @ Bloomberg.com broke the law by promoting drugs for unapproved uses

Big-Pharma-offers-savings-but-only-after-increasing-prices

Pretty much every major Pharma corporation is following this exact same behavioral profile and pattern

British National Health Service (NHS) - Stop going after the kids with your propaganda and poisons

Pharma and British National Health Service (NHS) - Stop going after the kids with your poisons and propaganda

I would like to give a Hat Tip to these sites: BonkersInstitute for breaking and running these brochures on their site, and to Furious Seasons for highlighting this news

From OpEdNews - Pediatric-Zyprexa-Brochure-by-Martha-Rosenberg

Pediatric Zyprexa Brochures Embarrass British Health Service

By Martha Rosenberg

opednews.com

For OpEdNews: Martha Rosenberg - Writer"Your medicine is called Olanzapine. Pronounced 'o-lan-za-peen,'" says the lime green kids' brochure for the antipsychotic Zyprexa, published by Britain's National Health Service (NHS). "Many children, teenagers and young people need to take medicines prescribed by doctors to help them stay well and healthy," says the text amid cartoons of happy children skating, roller blading and playing soccer.

Similar brochures educate children about "ris-perry-done" (Risperdal), another antipsychotic and "ato-mox-e-teen" (Strattera), an ADHD drug. But when mental health advocate Ben Hansen tried to "educate" US children further by posting the brochures on his web site bonkersinstitute.org, he got a love letter from the NHS "I have been informed that you are using our leaflets on your web-site," wrote Deputy Chief Pharmacist with the Central and North West London NHS Trust Sue Eccles in an email this month. "Our objective is [sic] provide written materials to support the verbal counselling given by healthcare professionals -- they are not meant to stand alone as sources of information," says Eccles requesting that only the "front page and our contact details," be shown.Unfortunately, the NHS caught Hansen on a day he didn't take his meds. "We posted the NHS leaflets to stimulate public scrutiny of your agency," replied Hansen, who writes under the pseudonym Methodius Isaac Bonkers, MD. "We call upon the NHS to stop promoting harmful psychotropic drugs for children. In a spirit of full disclosure and transparency, we have now posted your letter as well."

No wonder Hansen's four-year-old site, the Bonkers Institute, is considered a leader in sunshine activism. Hansen's zeal for unearthing and posting pharma sleight-of-hand even landed him on the front page of the New York Times two years ago in an article called,

"In Some States, Maker Oversees Use of Its Drug."

Twenty states take advantage of the Pharmacy Quality Improvement Project, a "free" program from Eli Lilly that shows states how to save money on...drugs from Eli Lilly. But Hansen, says the Times "obtained documents through a Freedom of Information request that showed a Lilly account executive had asked to take part in planning sessions and offered to have Lilly representatives brief doctors."

Lilly dropped the program in states daring to require doctors to seek permission to prescribe Zyprexa which at $300 a month is the single biggest drug cost for state Medicaid budgets according to the Times.

Hansen also received FOIA documents from the state of Michigan showing the number of psychiatric drugs prescribed to children under 6 and the number of Medicaid patients on 5 or more psychiatric drugs but they did not name the drugs.

How does pharma vault a drug only indicated for the one percent of the population with schizophrenia and four percent with bipolar disorder to be the biggest line item in the Medicaid budget? As in your tax dollars? Just good off-label marketing--promoting a drug for a non-FDA approved use which is illegal in the US.

And speaking of non-approved uses, how can Britain's National Health Service produce a brochure for kids taking Zyprexa when kids are not supposed to take Zyprexa? "ZYPREXA is not for patients who are under 18 years," says the prescribing information. "Keep out of the reach and sight of children."

Are the healthy, active kids shown in the cartoons "befores" since 30 percent of Zyprexa patients gain 22 pounds or more, 16 percent, 66 pounds or more and some gain over 100 pounds according to Lilly's own published data? Zyprexa "may make you feel like eating more food," says the NHS brochure in what might be considered classic British understatement. "If this happens, try not to eat more than usual and talk to an adult or your doctor about this." Any questions?

And how about Zyprexa's notorious soporific effect or zombie factor? "It is a good [sic] to take olanzapine at bedtime, as it can make some people feel sleepy," says the brochure.

Hansen's war on pharma disease mongering comes from first hand experience. He was misdiagnosed with "bipolar disorder" and denied release in a Michigan hospital after a reaction to the death of his father and a suicide of a friend on the same day. "The psychiatrist refused to treat me without drugs," says Hansen and "I was held in the hospital involuntarily for the next 39 days, totaling a bill of $23,000."

Take one look at the Bonkers Institute's gallery of vintage psychiatric drug advertising, the Nearly Genuine and Truly Marvelous Mental Medicine Show--one of the best on the web--and you see the roots of today's pediatric bipolar/depression/ADD/ADHD "epidemic" decades ago. Thorazine syrup was given for vomiting in kids, antidepressants for bedwetting and Ritalin for "mischief" and "juvenile pranks." Like the NHS brochures, kids are shown happy and playing with soccer balls.

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These hideous brochures were developed and distributed by the British Health Service "NHS".
They asked the Bonkers Institute to remove them from their site. You can read the email exchange for yourself at the BonkersInstitute.

I have some sobering news for the British Health Service; these brochures are going to be plastered all around the Internet; so everyone can see how a government entity joins hands with Pharma in promoting an outrageous, false, and extremely dangerous drugging modality to Children, and the greater world community at large.

More thoughtful insight on this topic: nhs-goes-after-american-website

BNET - nhs-loses-fight-over-publication-of-antipsychotic-meds-brochures-for-kids

News Blaze - Pediatric Drug Brochures Embarrass British Health Service

Pharmaceutical Corporations May Take the Money and Run? - Stock Holders Beware

Pharmaceutical Corporations May Take the Money and Run - Stock Holders Beware

I hope every one remembers what happened with ENRON, and like Corporations/industries before their prosperous golden bubble burst. Could we be seeing another mortgage crisis pharma style looming upon the horizon?


In the Health Care Reform Package recently presented before Congress, there is a mandated discount being placed upon the Pharmaceutical Industry and drugs prices that could effect their Monstrous Profits in the future. So they have decided to circumvent the process, and started raising drug prices now; while stock piling cash and profits for those supposed coming leaner times. Could this spark the end to the "Greed Bonanza" that Pharma has had going in recent decades?


Maybe as with GM (Government Motors, Banks, AIG), we can just dump a trillion tax dollars Pharma's way when the going gets tough, and call it a "stimulus package"?


This has at least one watchful eye in Washington DC blinking at this preemptive strike by the Big Pharma greed machine.




From Fox News:
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senator-calls-investigation

Updated November 18, 2009

Senator Calls for Investigation Into Report That Drugmakers Sharply Raised Costs

by

FOXNews.com

Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida is urging the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general to investigate reports that prescription drug makers are raising prices ahead of Congress' sweeping health care overhaul.

Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida is urging the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate reports that prescription drug makers are raising prices ahead of Congress' sweeping health care reform bill.

In a letter sent to Health inspector Daniel R. Levinson on Wednesday, Nelson said he is proposing an amendment that would force the country's biggest pharmaceutical companies to offset more of the costs.

Nelson cited a recent AARP study that found that drugmakers have dramatically upped the cost on commonly used brand-name drugs.

"I want to know if there's a back-door move under way by the drugmakers to recover some of the concessions they've promised for health care reform," Nelson said.

The analysis by AARP's Public Policy Institute released Monday found that the price of many prescription drugs used by Medicare beneficiaries rose by 9.3 percent from October 2008 to September 2009 -- a rate that's higher than usual when compared to previous years.

The study reported that prices increased for 96 percent of brand-name drugs over the last year -- despite a negative general inflation rate.

"This report confirms what most older Americans already know: drugmakers are raising their prices and enjoying windfall profits, even as the rest of the economy is suffering," AARP Executive Vice President John Rother said in a press release Monday.

"The pharmaceutical industry should be embarrassed when it sees its own price increases put side by side with the general inflation rate. Even as the cost of most goods and services drops, a person taking just one brand-name drug now pays $200 more per year than a year ago," said Rother.

Nelson called the increase "troubling" and is pressing Levinson to fully investigate AARP's findings.

"As you know, President Obama reached an agreement with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which pledged $80 billion in support of health reform efforts," Nelson wrote in his letter to Levinson.

"A significant portion of this support was in the form of rebates to the Medicaid program and discounts offered to seniors in the Medicare Part D coverage gap," he wrote.

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I guess when the President of America makes Secret White House back room deals with known criminal entities such as so many in the Pharmaceutical Industry; what else would you expect.

After all, it is all about the MONEY; and Very Seldom about Health Care or your quality of life Dear Citizen of the USA.