The business model for bringing lucrative new pharmaceutical drugs to market includes very robust marketing budgets, and 9 out of 10 pharmaceutical companies spend more on advertising than they do on research. And why not? Americans spend an average of $1000 per person, per year on pharmaceutical drugs, and the effort to capture these dollars is leading more companies to fast track or even fabricate the research involved in bringing a new drug to market.
Here’s a look at how much the largest pharmaceutical companies spent on marketing vs. expenditures on research and development in 2013:
The push to push drugs on the American people is heavily dependent on the ability to produce favorable research that backs any and all claims that marketing departments wish to make about the drug in order for it to stand out in the competitive field of retail drug sales. Thanks to the admissions of some of the most influential people in this industry, we are now discovering that much of the research being presented in support of many new drugs, vaccines and procedures is fake, and even leading medical journals are agreeing that big pharma manipulates medical research at the expense of public health.Consider the following statements and admissions by very important people who are close enough to the inner workings of the industry to know for sure just how bad the public is being deceived.
In 2015, the editor of one of the world’s most respected medical journals, The Lancet, went public with his admission that research fraud was rampant in the field of medical clinical research:
The following clip is from the documentary ‘One More Girl,’ about the startlingly damaging effects of the Gardasil vaccine. In the clip, former Pfizer Vice President, Dr. Peter Rost candidly discusses the truth about the influence of money in the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Rost wrote the book, The Whistleblower, Confessions of a Healthcare Hitmanto contribute to the growing body of evidence that blows the whistle on corporate fraud within the medical establishment.
Dependence on so-called clinical research to support the claims made by pharmaceutical marketing departments is proving to be dangerously misled. Can the public trust the medical establishment to bring effective and safe medicines to market? Increasingly, the evidence is suggesting that it is not.
The floodgates are open for more genetically modified animals—possibly even humans.
Last week saw the approval of another genetically modified animal—
this time a chicken genetically altered to produce a drug in its eggs.
The drug is designed to replace a faulty enzyme in people with a rare
genetic condition that prevents the body from breaking down fatty
molecules in cells.
The genetically engineered (GE) chicken is not
approved for human consumption, but it is the third so-called
“farmaceutical” approved in the US market. Preceding the chicken was a
GE goat that produces antithrombin, an anticoagulant, in its milk. Last
year the FDA also approved a drug for treating hereditary angioedema
that is produced by transgenic (GE) rabbits.
Humans
who have had their DNA genetically modified could exist within two
years after a private biotech company announced plans to start the first
trials into a ground-breaking new technique.
Editas
Medicine, which is based in the US, said it plans to become the first
lab in the world to ‘genetically edit’ the DNA of patients suffering
from a genetic condition – in this case the blinding disorder ‘leber
congenital amaurosis’.
The disorder
prevents normal function of the retina; the light-sensitive layer of
cells at the back of the eye. It appears at birth or in the first months
of life and eventually sufferers can go completely blind.
“Hereditary eye disease in an obvious place to start given that there is already precedent in classical gene therapy"
Professor Darren Griffin, University of Kent
The rare inherited disease is caused by defects in a gene which instructs the creation of a protein that is essential to vision.
But
scientists at Editas Medicine in the US believe they can fix the
mutated DNA using the ground-breaking gene-editing technology Crispr.
Katrine Bosley, the chief executive of Editas Medicine, told a conference in the US that the company hopes to start trialling the technology on blind patients in 2017.
It
would be the first time the technology has been used on humans. Gene
editing is currently banned in the US, so the company would need special
permission from health regulators.
“It feels fast, but we are going at the pace science allows,” Bosley told the EmTech conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Thursday, October 15, 2015 by: Jennifer Lea Reynolds
(NaturalNews)
In a refreshing change of pace, an established doctor has shed light on
the fact that many mainstream medical approaches designed to improve
health aren't what they're cracked up to be. In fact, they're downright
ineffective.
While this hardly comes as a surprise when you
consider the plethora of side effects that come with pharmaceuticals,
and that they alter the minds of those who take them, what is surprising
is that a medical professional has boldly dared to come forward to
publicly expose a medical scam.
Dr. Dwight Lundell, a heart
surgeon and retired Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Banner Heart
Hospital in Mesa, Arizona, has made no qualms about pharmaceuticals'
ineffectiveness and the need to let go of commonly held medical beliefs.
In particular, he's put statins in the spotlight, saying that the
cholesterol-lowering drugs wreak havoc on health.(1)
Heart surgeon: Current heart health methods and recommendations "not working"
His comment deserves reading: As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience... today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.
I
trained for many years with other prominent physicians labeled "opinion
makers." Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending
education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted
from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol. The only accepted
therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that
severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would
lower cholesterol and heart
disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy
and could quite possibly result in malpractice. It Is Not Working!
These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible.(1)
His
thought-provoking statements reinforce what many have believed all
along: The conventional medical system is not working. Yet ties to deep
pockets and behind-the-scenes ulterior business motives – which are
common in the mainstream medical world – keep the industry going. The
business of sickness is a profitable one.
For example, statin drugs
recently came under even more scrutiny than normal after scientists at
Tulane University in New Orleans produced more evidence that they are
far from healthy. It was determined that they accelerate the aging
process, render many of the body's cells unable to carry out essential
functions and can lead to liver dysfunction, memory loss, cataracts and
diabetes.(2)
Lying for profit: Telling healthy people they are anything but
Heart
health and the pharmaceutical inadequacies surrounding it aren't the
only medical issues coming under fire. When it comes to cancer,
chemotherapy-for-profit scams abound. Sadly, there are many bad apples
in the medical bunch who think it's acceptable to tell healthy people
that they have cancer when they don't, even going so far as to
administer treatments.
One such doctor is Michigan oncologist Dr.
Farid Fata, who pleaded guilty to 16 counts of healthcare fraud and
misdiagnosing patients. He repeatedly misinformed patients that they
needed chemotherapy when they did not. Some family members of his
patients even noted a sense of desperation; one son recalls the time his
father was met by Dr. Fata's staff curbside, at which point they
proceeded to give his deteriorating father treatments as he sat in his
car in a parking garage.(3)
Not so pretty in pink: Cancer scams also a disgrace
The
cancer scams have long-been a disgrace to society, with the Susan G.
Komen for the Cure foundation at the forefront of such deceit and
wrongdoing. As reported by alternative media sites,
their partnerships with mammogram manufacturers and pharma companies
mean – guess what – it's not really your health, but the financial
partnerships they've forged, that truly matter. All of that, tied up in a
neat little pink bow and perhaps a matching pink shirt to match, to
make you feel good about donating to a cause.(4)
Then
there's the whole debacle with mammograms. While women flock to them in
droves based on the ingrained (brainwashed?) belief that they're
life-saving devices, the reality is that many times the method fails to
properly differentiate between invasive and non-invasive cancers. As
such, many women undergo energy-zapping, drawn-out procedures that
forever alter their health, or even lead to their death.(5)
So, kudos to Dr. Dwight Lundell for speaking up.
Everyone deserves good health, not false promises and scams that create the opposite effect. Sources for this article include:
The
NaturalNews Network is a non-profit collection of public education
websites covering topics that empower individuals to make positive
changes in their health, environmental sensitivity, consumer choices and
informed skepticism. The NaturalNews Network is owned and operated by
Truth Publishing International, Ltd., a Taiwan corporation. It is not
recognized as a 501(c)3 non-profit in the United States, but it
operates without a profit incentive, and its key writer, Mike Adams,
receives absolutely no payment for his time, articles or books other
than reimbursement for items purchased in order to conduct product
reviews.
The vast majority of our content is freely given away at
no charge. We offer thousands of articles and dozens of downloadable
reports and guides (like the Honest Food Guide)
that are designed to educate and empower individuals, families and
communities so that they may experience improved health, awareness and
life fulfillment.
What we think we know about the BRCA (Breast Cancer Susceptibility Associated)
genes causing cancer is patently false, according to a new
meta-analysis on the extant literature on the subject of these gene
variations on breast cancer survival prognosis.
A groundbreaking new meta-analysis published in PLoS titled,"Worse Breast Cancer Prognosis of BRCA1/BRCA2 Mutation Carriers: What's the Evidence? A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis",
calls into question the value of using BRCA1/2 gene status to determine
breast cancer survival prognosis, as is common practice today. This
implications of this research may have wide-ranging effects as the
present climate, following Angelina Jolie's high profile decision to
have prophylactic breast, ovary and fallopian tube removed due to her
perceived "genetic inheritance," is to equate BRCA status with bona fide
and mathematically calculable disease risk certainty.
Jolie's decision to subject herself to multiple prophylactic organ removal
was based on the premise that her BRCA mutations would result in an 87
percent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer and up to 54 percent
chance of ovarian cancer, as prognosticated by her doctors. The notion
that BRCA genes have full or near full penetrance (the ability of a
mutation to cause clinically identifiable disease) has profound
implications for the health of millions of women who rely on these
predictions to make life and death medical decisions.
Because
of a wide range of conflicting conclusions on the subject of BRCA's
role in determining cancer risk and prognosis, researchers in the new
study attempted a systematic and quantitative synthesis of evidence
using the following method:
"Eligible
publications were observational studies assessing the survival of breast
cancer patients carrying a BRCA1/2 mutation compared to non-carriers or
the general breast cancer population. We performed meta-analyses and
best-evidence syntheses for survival outcomes taking into account study
quality assessed by selection bias, misclassification bias and
confounding."
They summarized their findings:
"Our
review shows that, in contrast to currently held beliefs of many
oncologists and despite 66 published studies, it is not yet possible to
draw evidence-based conclusions about the association between BRCA1
and/or BRCA2 mutation carriership and breast cancer prognosis. We only
found sufficient evidence for a 10% worse unadjusted recurrence-free
survival for BRCA1 mutation carriers. For all the other outcomes the
evidence was judged to be indecisive."
In their concluding remarks, the researchers state, "In contrast to currently held beliefs of some oncologists, current evidence does not support worse breast cancer survival of BRCA1/2 mutation carriers in the adjuvant setting; differences if any are likely to be small. More well-designed studies are awaited."
Thursday, October 15, 2015 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews)
Remember the Ebola outbreak of 2014 when nurses infected with Ebola
were proclaimed "cured" through the intervention of pharmaceutical
medicine? Like everything else the MSM broadcast about Ebola, we now
know it was all a sinister fabrication.
Texas nurse Nina
Pham was widely celebrated as a hero by the mainstream media for her
role in treating an infected Ebola patient that started an outbreak in a
Dallas hospital. What the media didn't tell you is that Nina Pham was nearly killed by the Ebola "treatment" medicines
administered by the hospital. "Nina Pham, the first known case of an
individual contracting Ebola within the U.S., is now suing the parent
corporation of her former employer, which she says violated her personal
privacy and left her chronically ill by exploiting and neglecting her
during the outbreak," Natural News reported earlier this year.
"The
26-year-old nurse says she now suffers from constant nightmares, body
aches and insomnia due to the experimental medications that were forced
upon her while in isolation."
Pharmaceutical interventions, in other words, caused serious organ damage to nurse Pham,
and that damage is permanent. Naturally, the CDC-controlled media
exploited Pham for P.R. purposes, but once the news had passed, they
left her permanently damaged and abandoned by the system.
A second nurse is also in serious health trouble due to toxic Ebola treatments
Now reported in The Independent (UK):
"A British nurse who was apparently cured of Ebola earlier this year is
now in a critical condition, doctors have said, with experts expressing
astonishment at the deterioration of her condition."
Pauline
Cafferkey was admitted to the specialist treatment isolation unit at
Royal Free Hospital in London on 9 October. She had been treated for
Ebola at the same hospital earlier this year, and was discharged in good
health in January.
None of us here at Natural News are surprised, of course. We've long known that everything the medical establishment says about Ebola is a deliberate lie, and that includes pharmaceutical Ebola "treatment" promises.
"The
exact nature of Ms Cafferkey’s illness is not known, but experts have
expressed shock at the severity of her condition," reports The
Independent.
Here's what's really going on: In exactly the same way that AIDS
drugs destroy the human immune system and cause symptoms of AIDS, Ebola
drugs also destroy the patient's body and cause critical organ failure.
This fundamental truth about the toxicity of Big Pharma's deadly drugs will never be admitted in the pharma-controlled press.
Same system that pushes toxic pharmaceutical treatments viciously attacks colloidal silver
As
you ponder all this, keep in mind that all holistic treatments for
Ebola were viciously and aggressively attacked by governments and the
media during the Ebola outbreak. Those who offered colloidal silver
treatments or products were threatened by U.S. regulators and mocked by
the media... even though colloidal silver is a non-toxic treatment that cannot cause the kind of organ failure we're witnessing from pharmaceutical interventions.
Non-profits such as Dr. Rima Laibow's Natural Solutions Foundation were even viciously threatened by the IRS
after Dr. Laibow began talking about colloidal silver as a non-toxic
treatment option. (No doubt the CDC pressured the IRS to target the NSF
in the same way the IRS targets liberty-oriented non-profits.)
"The
IRS sent us a warning letter saying that by sharing US Department of
Defense Threat Reduction Agency declassified research on the impact of
our particular Nano Silver 10 PPM on the ability of the Ebola virus to
cause disease we had miraculously turned the substance into a drug," Dr.
Laibow told Natural News. "We responded to them in detail (26 pages, if
I recall properly) and they sent back another letter backing off a bit
but demanding changes in our site."
Meanwhile, companies that sold
high-grade medicinal essential oils such as doTerra were threatened by
government regulators with being put out of business if they didn't
police their independent distributors who were sharing the true news
that many essential oils can kill Ebola.
The medical system, government and media essentially invoked an all-out WAR on natural medicine
while claiming their own pharmaceuticals were the only safe treatments
for Ebola. Now we see just what a farce those claims really were. Much
like chemotherapy, the "treatment" for Ebola may be just as deadly as
Ebola itself.
Meanwhile, all the truly SAFE treatments like
colloidal silver have been intentionally disparaged, marginalized and
pushed to the fringes of alternative medicine. It's no coincidence that colloidal silver can't be patented and is universally available for mere pennies, thereby threatening the more important aspect of Big Pharma's disease pandemic schemes: PROFITS!
Here
at Natural News, our prayers go out to Pauline Cafferkey with the hope
that she won't end up as yet another needless victim of Big Pharma's
toxic treatments and the mainstream media's outrageous lies that misled
medical staff into falsely believing that pharmaceutical treatments for
Ebola are safe. Sources for this article include:
The
NaturalNews Network is a non-profit collection of public education
websites covering topics that empower individuals to make positive
changes in their health, environmental sensitivity, consumer choices and
informed skepticism. The NaturalNews Network is owned and operated by
Truth Publishing International, Ltd., a Taiwan corporation. It is not
recognized as a 501(c)3 non-profit in the United States, but it
operates without a profit incentive, and its key writer, Mike Adams,
receives absolutely no payment for his time, articles or books other
than reimbursement for items purchased in order to conduct product
reviews.
The vast majority of our content is freely given away at
no charge. We offer thousands of articles and dozens of downloadable
reports and guides (like the Honest Food Guide)
that are designed to educate and empower individuals, families and
communities so that they may experience improved health, awareness and
life fulfillment.
Who is Nina Pham? Meet the Nurse Who Contracted Ebola
byTony Dokoupil
This
undated photo made available by the Antwerp Institute of Tropical
Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, shows the Ebola virus viewed through an
electron microscope. Antwerp Institute of Tropical Me / AP
Nina
Pham is the nurse who contracted the Ebola virus and is being treated
in Dallas, a close family friend has confirmed to NBC News Monday.
Pham
is the first patient to contract the disease while on U.S. soil,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which said
the transmission resulted from an unknown “breach of protocol” in
treating Thomas Eric Duncan when he returned to Texas Presbyterian a
second time. On Monday CDC director Tom Frieden clarified that he in no
way meant to place blame on the stricken nurse.
"This is a very brave person who put herself at risk to do something good for society, and is now ill," he said.
Dallas Nurse with Ebola is Clinically-Stable, says CDC4:38
Pham,
26, is a 2010 graduate of the Bachelors of Science in Nursing program
at Texas Christian University, according to Lisa Albert, a spokesperson
for the school. The four-year program prepares nurses to serve as
“liaisons among doctors, patients and other members of the health care
team,” according to the school website.
There is not a stand-alone
course on infections disease work, but infection prevention strategies
are "woven throughout all clinical coursework," according to Albert.
Precautionary methods are introduced at the start of clinical course
work, reviewed through the curriculum, and students sign an
end-of-semester document attesting to this work.
Pham was
certified by the Texas Board of Nursing in 2010, according to state
records, but she didn’t receive her certificate in Critical Care Nursing
until Aug. 1 — less than two months before Duncan arrived at Texas
Health Presbyterian critically ill with Ebola. Duncan died last week.
Ebola
nurse Nina Pham with her dog Bentley at a Dallas park. Pham filed a
lawsuit Monday against Texas Health Resources, which owns Texas Health
Presbyterian Dallas, alleging that lack of training and lack of proper
protection caused her to get Ebola. She also alleges that THR invaded
her privacy by releasing information to the public about her medical
condition, including by shooting a video of her in her hospital bed.
Nurse
Nina Pham, who contracted Ebola while caring for a patient at Texas
Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, filed a lawsuit Monday in Dallas
County against the hospital’s parent company, Texas Health Resources.
The
lawsuit alleges that while she became the American face of the fight
against the disease, the hospital’s lack of training and proper
equipment and violations of her privacy made her “a symbol of corporate
neglect — a casualty of a hospital system’s failure to prepare for a
known and impending medical crisis.”
Shortly after the lawsuit was
filed, Pham released a brief statement: “I was hoping that THR would be
more open and honest about everything that happened at the hospital,
and the things they didn’t do that led to me getting infected with
Ebola. But that didn’t happen and I felt I was left with no choice but
to turn to the courts for help. The fact is, I’m facing a number of
issues with regard to my health and my career and the lawsuit provides a
way to address them. But more importantly, it will help uncover the
truth of what happened, and educate all health care providers and
administrators about ways to be better prepared for the next public
health emergency. I particularly want to express my continued sympathy
to the family of Mr. Duncan, as it was my privilege to care for him. I
also want to acknowledge my fellow nurses, and the many friends, family
and strangers for their ongoing concern and support.”
Pham told The Dallas Morning News
that Texas Health Resources was negligent because it failed to develop
policies and train its staff for treating Ebola patients. She says Texas
Health Resources did not have proper protective gear for those who
treated Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person in the United State
diagnosed with the disease. He died Oct. 8.
“I wanted to believe that they would have my back and take care of me, but they just haven’t risen to the occasion,” Pham said in the interview.
Nina
Pham claims the extent of her Ebola training was a printout of
guidelines her supervisor found on the web. “The only thing I knew about
Ebola, I learned in nursing school” six years earlier, Pham said.
Nina
Pham claims the extent of her Ebola training was a printout of
guidelines her supervisor found on the web. “The only thing I knew about
Ebola, I learned in nursing school” six years earlier, Pham said.
Patients first
“I
was proud of us. We fought in the trenches together, the frontline
health care workers. That’s what nursing is about: putting the patient
first. We did what we had to do,” Pham said.
She remembers
spending hours alone with Duncan cleaning up his bodily fluids,
monitoring his vital signs and reassuring him that everything would be
OK. Pham said Duncan was in a great deal of pain and frightened but
always polite. He told her “he felt very isolated.” She held his hand
and told him she would pray for him.
But when Duncan tested
positive for Ebola, it sent panic and fear throughout Presbyterian — and
the nation. Pham, too, was frightened.
“I was the last person
besides Mr. Duncan to find out he was positive,” she said. “You’d think
the primary nurse would be the first to know. … I broke down and cried,
not because I thought I had it but just because it was a big ‘whoa, this
is really happening’ moment.”
Duncan,
who contracted the disease in his native Liberia, died Oct. 8. A few
days later, Pham tested positive for the disease. She was initially
treated at Presbyterian and then the National Institutes of Health in
Maryland with a series of experimental drugs and plasma from Dr. Kent
Brantly, an Ebola survivor.
She says that Texas Health Resources
violated her privacy while she was a patient at Presbyterian by ignoring
her request that “no information” be released about her. She said a
doctor recorded her on video in her hospital room and released it to the
public without her permission.
Charla Aldous, Pham’s attorney, put it more simply: Texas Health Resources “used Nina as a PR pawn.”
Pham
said she considered not going back to care for Duncan after his
diagnosis. Her colleagues said they wouldn’t blame her for not returning
to her job where normal 12-hour shifts had stretched to 14 or 15. Even
her mother said she didn't care if Pham lost her job.
Pham said that while she did not volunteer to care for Duncan, she felt that she couldn’t say no.
“I had a duty to take care of him,” she said. “It’s not in my nature to refuse.”
Millions
of women undergo them annually, but few are even remotely aware of just
how many dangers they are exposing themselves to in the name of
prevention, not the least of which are misdiagnosis, overdiagnosis and
the promotion of breast cancer itself.
A new study published in the Annals of Family Medicine titled, Long-term psychosocial consequences of false-positive screening mammography,
brings to the forefront a major underreported harm of breast screening
programs: the very real and lasting trauma associated with a
false-positive diagnosis of breast cancer.[1]
The study found that women with false-positive diagnoses of breast cancer, even three years after being declared free of cancer,
"consistently reported greater negative psychosocial consequences
compared with women who had normal findings in all 12 psychosocial
outcomes."
What
is even more concerning is that "[S]ix months after final diagnosis,
women with false-positive findings reported changes in existential
values and inner calmness as great as those reported by women with a diagnosis of breast cancer."
In
other words, even after being "cleared of cancer," the measurable
adverse psychospiritual effects of the trauma of diagnosis were equivalent to actually having breast cancer.
Given
that the cumulative probability of false-positive recall or biopsy
recommendation after 10 years of screening mammography is at least 50%,[2] this is an issue that will affect the health of millions of women undergoing routine breast screening.
Ebola
cases in Sierra Leone could have been cut by 50 percent had the UK had
set up beds in the stricken nation’s treatment centers just one month
earlier, a new report claims.
Researchers
at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) suggest
had British aid efforts been provided sooner, some 7,500 people could
have been prevented from contracting the virus.
During that time
frame the UK installed more than 1,500 treatment beds in community
centers, and a further 1,200 in specialist Ebola centers.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says 13,945 people fell ill between September 2014 and February 2015.
LSHTM
lecturer in infectious diseases Dr Adam Kucharski and his colleagues
say the UK’s involvement saved 40,000 lives. However more deaths could
have been prevented had they intervened sooner.
A
surgeon sitting in front of screens of a Focal One device performs a
robot-assisted prostate tumorectomy. Photograph: Jeff Pachoud/AFP/Getty
Images
Men with prostate cancer are being given false hope by tests that underestimate the aggressiveness of their disease, according to a study.
Researchers
found that more than half of a group of men whose cancers were
initially classified as slow-growing and confined later turned out to
have more dangerous tumours.
The findings, published in the British Journal of Cancer, call into question the ability of experts to grade and stage prostate cancers on the basis of biopsy samples.
It
also casts doubt on the "active surveillance" strategy of avoiding
unnecessary radical treatment for patients with slow-growing prostate
cancer.
Instead, these patients are closely monitored but left alone until tests suggest their condition has worsened.
Urological
surgeon Greg Shaw, from the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute,
said: "Our results show that the severity of up to half of men's
prostate cancers may be underestimated when relying on tests before they
have surgery."
Slow-growing prostate cancers, known as "pussycats", are very different from the more aggressive "tiger" variety.
In
some cases, especially when he is older when diagnosed, a patient can
live to the end of his normal life span before a "pussycat" cancer
becomes a threat.
An aggressive "tiger", on the other hand, may quickly spread if it is not surgically removed or destroyed.
Biopsy
samples examined under a microscope are used to rate prostate tumour
aggressiveness with a score ranging from two to 10. A score of between
two and six is a low-grade "pussycat". A score of seven is intermediate,
while scores of eight to 10 are high-grade "tigers".
Tumours are
also staged according to how far they have spread. A T2 tumour is
contained completely inside the prostate gland, while a T3 tumour has
started to break out, and one classified T4 has spread to other organs
or sites in the pelvic cavity.
The Cambridge scientists compared
the staging and grading of more than 800 men's cancers before and after
they had surgery to remove their prostate.
They found that of 415
patients whose cancer was classified as slow-growing and confined to the
prostate, just over half (209) were found to have a more aggressive
disease than originally thought when assessed after surgery.
Health Impact News Editor Comments
When I read an article in The Atlantic recently with the title: Living Sick and Dying Young in Rich America - Chronic illness is the new first-world problem
– it caught my attention. This is the kind of topic we cover on a
regular basis here at Health Impact News, but seldom do you read about
it in the mainstream media.
There are 3 things that are rather astonishing about the sad state of health in America today:
1. We’re sicker than previous generations, and most of us know it.
2. We don’t seem to care about it too much. It is not headline news.
3. There doesn’t seem to be much motivation to change this fact: it seems to have been accepted as the new “norm.”
Last
year, we reported about a study funded by the government and your tax
dollars which clearly showed that the United States ranks #1 on
healthcare spending, but last in life expectancy among wealthy nations
(See: U.S. Ranks First in Healthcare Spending – Last in Life Expectancy).
The mainstream media barely even covered this story, and even here at
Health Impact News it was probably not even in the top 100 stories read
from everything we published last year.
The sad fact seems to be
that most Americans have adopted an attitude that the current health
situation in the U.S. cannot be changed.
For those few of you who
have not drunk the Kool Aid, and still believe you do have control over
your health and have choices you can make to live a healthier life, then
this article by John Thomas identifying the problems and solutions is
for you.
Please understand that if enough Americans understand
that the healthcare system (which is not really a “healthcare” system at
all but a MEDICAL system) is the primary problem and take measures to
avoid it, that it would absolutely destroy our economy, since so much of
it is dependent on sick people. But maybe our economy is heading for
destruction anyway, so don’t let that threat stop you from making
healthy choices today.
Is it Normal to be Sick?
by John P. Thomas
Is
it normal to be sick? Many people think so, but it hasn’t always been
this way. What was life like before we became dependent on modern
pharmaceutical drugs, major medical centers, and health insurance? If we
turn back the clock a hundred and fifty years, we will hardly find
anything that looks like the modern medical system. Did previous
generations live in the dark ages of medicine, or is the modern age of
chronic degenerative illness and modern pharmaceutical drugs actually a
dark age of medicine?
I remember overhearing a conversation while
waiting for a table in a restaurant some 25 years ago. A grandmother was
talking to her 10 year old grandson. She must not have seen him for a
while, so she began by asking one of those general types of questions to
get the conversation started. “How are you feeling?” Without
hesitation, her grandson started discussing his various health problems,
which included allergies, asthma, fatigue, etc. In a grandmotherly
voice filled with sympathy and concern, she gave a reply that sticks in
my mind to this day. She said, “I understand — we all have something
wrong with us.” She went on to tell him that we are all sick and we have
to learn to live with it. I don’t know if her words were entirely true
then, but they are most certainly true today! We are sick and getting
sicker, and we are all being taught to live with it.
Here we are
25 years later and despite all the medical and pharmaceutical advances
that have taken place in the United States, we are sicker than ever. How
many people do you know who are not taking one or more prescription
medications? How many people do you know who do not have a medical
diagnosis for some chronic illness? How many people do you know who are
not being treated for some condition that requires periodic trips to the
doctor to monitor disease progression and to adjust medications? How
many people do you know who struggle with paying for medications? If I
count the people I know, who do not fall into the groups I just
mentioned, I can count them on the fingers of one hand. How about the
people you know?
The purpose of this article is to examine how we
respond to our illnesses and to questions whether our pharmaceutical
drugs and system of healthcare is making us sicker than we need to be.
Does the Healthcare System in the United States Lead the World?
We
certainly lead the world in the amount of dollars spent on healthcare.
We spend 2.5 times more per person per year than is spent in any other
country on Earth for healthcare.1
Does the Money we Spend for Healthcare Make Us the Healthiest people in the World?
The New York Times recently revealed how our healthcare system compares to other countries.
“In
the Social Progress Index, the United States excels in access to
advanced education but ranks 70th in health, 69th in ecosystem
sustainability, 39th in basic education, 34th in access to water and
sanitation and 31st in personal safety.”2
The United States is sitting in the 70th
position down from the top of the list for the category of health when
compared to other countries. Let’s look at the details of how we compare
to other wealthy countries.
The Panel on Understanding
Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries, compared
the health of people living in the United States with people living in
other high income countries, which included Australia, Austria, Canada,
Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Portugal,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
They reported:
Over
this time period, we uncovered a strikingly consistent and pervasive
pattern of higher mortality and inferior health in the United States,
beginning at birth: … For many years, Americans have had a shorter life
expectancy than people in almost all of the peer countries. For example,
as of 2007, U.S. males lived 3.7 fewer years than Swiss males and U.S.
females lived 5.2 fewer years than Japanese females.3
We
have the most expensive healthcare system in the world, which should
make us the healthiest people on Earth, but this is not the case.
Scientists worldwide are creating
bizarre human-animal hybrids that could wreak havoc on society. In the
past ten years alone, unforgettable advances in the field of genetic
modifications have left researchers and on-lookers stunned.
Nowadays, it is possible for a couple of university-age
students to concoct new life forms in the comfort of their own
basement. Regrettably so, laws have not been able to keep up with the
pace at which scientists have been toying around with their creations.
In
turn, the entities being created are not at all illegal but by all
means could pose a risk to society by and large. There is no telling
what may happen if these life forms are allowed to mate. Still,
eagerness can be seen in the eyes and minds of scientists on a global
level just waiting to unleash their next creation to the world, that all
seemed liked fantasy just a short time ago.
To give a
concrete example, scientists have made mice with an artificial human
chromosome “in every cell of their bodies”. Such an act is being praised
as a “breakthrough” which may lead to different cures for a wide scope
of disease. As reported by Lifenews.com, University of Wisconsin
researchers have had much success by transferring cells from human
embryos into the brains of mice. These very cells began to grow, and in
time made the mice more intelligent.
The mice showed
that they were able to solve a simple maze and learn conditioning
signals at a more enhanced level than if compared to before their
transformation. Critics are quick to question whether a practice of
injecting parts of humans in animals carries more benefits than risks.
Alex Pietrowski, Staff
