You have to give credit to the two federal advisory committees tasked with advising the government on a trial of anthrax vaccine in children. THEY KNOW THE SCORE, whether they acknowledged it, or not. The members knew this was one issue that could really burn them. They understood that this is a dangerous vaccine with…
An excellent piece discusses how turning over aspects of healthcare to private industry led to greater costs without accompanying benefits, and compares the US with other first world countries.
Today’s NY Times’ front page says, “Sales of Guns Soar in U.S. as Nation Weighs Tougher Limits. The Times’ Quotation of the Day is: “If I had 1,000 AR-15’s I could sell them in a week.” The quote is from Jack Smith, a gun dealer in Des Moines, Iowa, referring to a popular style…
CDC posts its latest stats for flu on Fridays. See how, despite the pandemonium over flu, things are improving, and it looks like this season is less severe than 2003-4, 2007-8, and 2009-10. UPDATE #1: January 12: Aetna said this week it has seen a spike in flu cases this year but it is not…
What exactly is a “state of emergency”? According to Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), state declarations “may also identify state rules and regulations that are waived or suspended during the emergency… They can include: Activation of statutory immunities and liability protections for those involved in response activities. Suspension and waiver of rules…
CDC’s weekly flu data with tables and graphs is here. This flu season looks ho-hum, occurring earlier than usual but following a standard trajectory. CDC, why the barrage of disinfo? Can this really be only about the flu, or is it about encroaching on our civil rights and our bodies? Here are even earlier flu seasons…
Puh-Leeze. A State of Emergency? I’d laugh except declaring an emergency gives states new political powers. Powers designed by CDC and Lawrence Gostin. Begun by 1999, before the anthrax letters or comparable public health emergencies existed, CDC “called for strengthening the legal foundation for public health practice.” The Model Emergency Health Powers Act was only…
From UpToDate, the highly regarded online textbook of medicine, on flu vaccine: It has been difficult to demonstrate an improvement in survival after influenza vaccination in elderly patients in randomized controlled trials because mortality is a rare end-point. The systematic review cited above found a significant reduction in death from influenza or pneumonia [46], but…
The May 2012 updated anthrax vaccine package insert (a.k.a. label) provides cause for concern. Would you give this vaccine to your dog, let alone your child? Next week the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues will have their final meeting to discuss giving anthrax vaccine to children. Whose children would be sacrificed? 1….
You can’t make this stuff up. Conflicts of interest abound at the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues with respect to anthrax vaccine. Coincidence or forethought? Before Emergent Biosolutions made anthrax vaccine, the vaccine was made by the Michigan Department of Public Health. Before Michigan, it was made by Merck. Might Merck Vaccine’s President…
Poland served as “faculty” for this little paper, whose goal was to push flu vaccinations beyond the end of flu season, helping to use up the oversupply: Access to influenza vaccination is no longer constrained by problems in supply and distribution, as more manufacturers are providing more influenza vaccine to the US market than ever before….
Poland’s 2005 paper is one of those designed to pay the way to mandatory influenza vaccinations. Back in 2005 Poland did not dare to ask for healthcare worker (HCW) firings, nor to junk philosophical exemptions, as he does now. The paper uses Polandese to make the benefits of vaccination appear much greater than they are….
One person has been instrumental in creating flu vaccine mandates in the US, and he continues to push them overseas as well: Mayo’s Greg Poland, MD. Poland is a scoundrel. He enjoys throwing punches below the belt, and brags about it. He placed on his Mayo website: “In Dr. Poland’s war, there are no rules…
National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. Call to action: Influenza immunization among health care personnel. Bethesda, MD, 2008. Sponsored by Sanofi. * In the context of this document, the term “health care personnel” extends to all persons working in health care settings, including home health care, who have contact with patients. This includes not only traditionally…
Yet another just-published literature review, this time from Israel, finds mandatory healthcare worker flu vaccinations unsupported by the literature. Int J Family Med. 2012;2012:205464. doi: 10.1155/2012/205464. Epub 2012 Nov 11. What, in Fact, Is the Evidence That Vaccinating Healthcare Workers against Seasonal Influenza Protects Their Patients? A Critical Review. Abramson ZH. Source Department of Family Medicine, Hebrew University-Hadassah…
I did not have to look far to find the source of that meaningless little factoid used by the Goshen hospital spokesperson and the British Columbia chief medical officer: “Influenza is the most frequent cause of death from a vaccine-preventable disease in the United States.” It was the very first sentence in a flu vaccine…
No, the vaccinators don’t write their talking points themselves. They get them from the same playbook. The spokeswoman for Goshen Hospital, which just fired 8 employees, justified forced vaccinations with the identical (meaningless) argument as British Columbia’s Chief Medical Officer: … hospital spokeswoman Melanie McDonald told the Elkhart Truth: “The flu has the highest death rate of…
Professor Ken Flegel, an editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, wrote an editorial last fall supporting mandatory flu shots for healthcare workers. I blogged about his standard for vaccination last November, but did not critique many other problems with the article. Somehow, like Perry Kendall, Dr. Flegel got his citations (and his ideas) all…
British Columbia ‘s chief medical officer pushed mandatory flu shots for healthcare workers, then backed up the policy with specious claims, showing he had not a clue what the science really said. The Cochrane Collaboration’s Tom Jefferson, MD, a flu vaccine expert who had reviewed the world literature and coauthored several Cochrane meta-analyses on the…
Canada’s first mandatory flu shot policy, announced in August 2012 for all healthcare workers, was reversed in early December, following an uproar by nurses and other health workers. The nurses’ union, the HSA and the Hospital Employees’ Union, together representing more than 100,000 health-care workers, objected to their members being forced to have a flu…
The Lancet investigated flu vaccine effects with the following two interesting studies: 1. Simonsen et al. showed that as rates of flu vaccination in the elderly rose in the US from 15% to 65%, there was no corresponding decrease in elder deaths from flu! 2. Carman et al. found that: Vaccination of health-care workers was…
The Cochrane Collaboration, the most respected organization of health professionals to evaluate the evidence behind medical therapies, studied flu vaccine of healthcare workers in 2006 and again in 2010. In 2006 they concluded: There is evidence that vaccinating the elderly has a modest impact on the complications from influenza. There is also high quality evidence…
What is up with firing workers who don’t get vaccinated for flu? Indiana’s Goshen Hospital just fired 8 workers for refusing the shots. Hospital spokeswoman Melanie McDonald told The Elkhart Truth the new requirements came as a recommendation from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Medical Association and other major…
I missed this November article on flu shots from the NY Times blog. Yes, it repeats material I have covered before. But as healthcare workers continue to be fired from their jobs for refusing flu shots, I will continue to post on why their firings make no sense. Here are excerpts: It’s flu-shot season, and…
Medicine has become so replete with financial conflicts of interest, it becomes very hard to sort out what the ethical standards are these days. Yesterday, the NY Times told us that the AMA put out a warning to doctors that doctors’ primary responsibility is to the patient and not to their employer. In other words,…
This piece and the one below need no introduction. The surveillance state is developing/installing its hardware at warp speed.–Meryl Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations, according to documents obtained by a news outlet….
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324478304578171623040640006.html?KEYWORDS=US+Terrorism+Agency+to+Tap+a+Vast+Database+of+Citizens–and+share+with+other+countries 12/12/12 Wall Street Journal page 1 By JULIA ANGWIN Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens—even people suspected of no crime. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a…
Very few countries offer seasonal flu vaccines to their general (not high risk) populations, let alone mandate them for groups of healthy people. With less institutional bias, the international literature usually fails to support mass flu vaccinations, for a variety of reasons. Here are short excerpts from medical literature around the world of which I’ve…
From a public health standpoint, a true pandemic flu–a la 1918–is what might cause really large mortality and morbidity. Seasonal flu causes a few hundred deaths in healthy people, and perhaps a few thousand in the frail elderly in the US each year. (We don’t have a good count of cases, and rely on modeling…
From the Mayo Clinic and Wisconsin Medical Journal comes the following letter from Preventive Medicine specialist William Buchta, M.D., MPH: While the intent of Aurora’s mandatory influenza vaccination1 of health care workers might be noble, ie, patient protection, the research on the subject is lacking. Only 2 studies have tracked hospital-acquired worker-to-patient influenza (a relatively simple infection control…
Many healthcare institutions are imposing mandates on staff for flu vaccinations, with penalties ranging from wearing masks throughout the workday (even for those with no cough or sneeze–which demonstrates the lack of scientific basis for this measure, since merely breathing on someone has never been demonstrated to transmit influenza) to blanket firings of employees who refuse to…
Although I have deep concerns about how government would manage healthcare were it the sole provider of health insurance, there are so many terrible problems with the current system that single payer seems the only way out. Here is an example of why the concept of markets doesn’t work in healthcare: it is impossible to…
Happy Thanksgiving: You’re fired. Donald Trump couldn’t have done it with more aplomb. “Health system TriHealth had a message for 150 employees Wednesday: We really mean it this time. The 150 workers who didn’t get the required flu shots by the Nov. 16 deadline received termination notices the day before Thanksgiving…” On November 20,…
This has been a big week for long articles about the role (read: SCANDAL) of money in the so-called science of medicine. Scientific American has a very worthwhile article with a focus on drugs for osteoporosis. I covered this subject once before. Charles Seife, the author, is an academic who worked very hard to piece…
Spiriva had an unusual marketing strategy when it came out: I was told (while eating a free lunch) it was a great drug, but could take a very long time to show benefit: therefore, give it to patients for 6 months before concluding lack of benefit. A six month trial cost the patient about $1,000….
Another blockbuster article from the BMJ: Medtronic paid hundreds of millions of dollars (most to doctors) to write its own articles on a spinal fusion device and genetically engineered protein to stimulate bone growth: The US medical device company Medtronic was “heavily involved in drafting, editing, and shaping the content of medical journal articles authored…
Dr. Flegel, a professor of medicine and senior associate editor of the CMAJ, last week weighed in to support compulsory flu vaccinations on the basis that the following was met: “… there must be an outbreak of serious illness; immunity levels must be low; the vaccine must be effective, safe and available; and vaccine uptake must be low.”…
Re: Clinical trial data for all drugs in current use 31 October 2012 Dr. Godlee’s editorial (BMJ 2012; 345 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e7304) underscores the importance of the GlaxoSmithKline decision to allow access to anonymized patient level data from its clinical trials. Meta-analysts can now work more efficiently in summarizing knowledge relating to the benefits and risks of…
The courageous BMJ and editor Fiona Godlee have dared to suggest the only way forward through the quicksand of clinical trial data in which we find ourselves. When only the manufacturer knows what is in a drug’s database, and the manufacturer’s primary duty is to shareholders, medicine progresses backwards to a new Dark Age. Simply,…
The Globe updates us on the NECC tragedy/scandal. The outbreak of fungal meningitis due to contaminated drugs from New England Compounding Center brings to mind a 1997 FDA inspection and report of the Lansing, Michigan anthrax vaccine manufacturer, which at that time was a state of Michigan subsidiary: Michigan Biologic Products Institute. Many of the…
Merck’s new vaccine candidate, V710, was designed to prevent post-op staph infections, a frequent and potentially devastating complication that occurs after many types of surgery. However, in a large clinical trial that studied over 3500 patients, not only did the vaccine fail to provide this protection, but there were many initial adverse reactions, and recipients…
Opinion 9.133 Routine Universal Immunization of Physicians (from the AMA Code of Ethics) is very clearly against universal immunization mandates. Here is the language: As professionals committed to promoting the welfare of individual patients and the health of the public and to safeguarding their own and their colleagues’ well-being, physicians have an ethical responsibility to take…
After 50 years of flu shots, governments still cannot demonstrate they save lives. In fact, getting a flu shot in 2008 made you twice as likely to actually get sick from a case of the flu in 2009. But these facts, discussed in earlier blog posts, are ignored as mandates increase for yearly flu inoculations….
Flu vaccines would be fine for everyone to take each year if the benefit exceeded the risk plus cost. The cost in a drug store to be vaccinated is about $25. No benefit can be demonstrated in those over 65 or in younger children, where 90% of flu deaths occur. (See several posts from earlier…
From the September 2012 European ECDC report titled, “Narcolepsy in association with pandemic influenza vaccination” commissioned by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, but produced by the Brighton Collaboration: (page 149) Finland’s Squalene — ASO3 blockbuster: “Contrary to previous studies, studies at THL suggest that squalene (AS03) produces an antibody response. Preliminary studies suggest that…
From Helsiningin Sanomat: Report delayed on correlation between swine flu vaccinations and various illnesses print this The (Finnish) National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) report on the correlation between swine flu vaccinations and incidences of various illnesses will be delayed, writes the Oulu-based daily Kaleva. Originally, results were meant to be available already during the…
From AFP/ Raw Story: … In Finland, 79 children aged four to 19 developed narcolepsy after receiving the Pandemrix vaccine in 2009 and 2010, while in Sweden the number was close to 200, according to figures in the two countries. Both countries recommended their populations, of around five and 10 million respectively, to take part…
From yesterday’s Scientific American: Despite government recommendations, there is little evidence that flu vaccines help individuals older than 65 or younger than two. Every year around this time, 120 million Americans roll up their sleeves to get their annual flu shots. Since 2010, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended yearly jabs…
The entire article from the Calgary Post is below, as it is important. The article cites well known flu experts Danuta Skowronsky and Michael Osterholm (who is first author of a report that forms the basis of the piece) acknowledging the vaccine just doesn’t work all that well as has been claimed. The report “… suggests…
It seems we have been hearing about the “new” swine flu over and over again. Why should we care? Only 290 cases throughout the US have been identified this season. There have been either no or next-to-no cases of human to human transmission. CDC thinks there may have been 3 people (1%) who caught the…
Not a single doctor or paramedic of the 2,000 working at public hospitals in Pune, India have accepted free flu shots offered to them by state government, according to the Times of India. Yet hospitals in the US increasingly force their employees to receive these inoculations, although they have not been shown to reduce infections…
Oops! Copyright Cops Return Seized RojaDirecta Domain Names – 19 Months Later From Wired: So you thought your passwords were memorized and totally secure? Think again. Do you really want to bank online? These discoveries and devices are gamechangers, and the game is life as we know it. | Edit <img class=”size-full wp-image-47189″ title=”eeg_headset” src=”http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/08/eeg_headset.jpg” alt=””…
From the article “Reform Driving Physicians Out of Private Practice to Reduce Costs” a few issues are raised about rapid and dramatic changes occurring in health care, about which consumers have little knowledge. Health care conglomerates are being forcibly created due to the new payment structure, which can only increase costs considerably in the short…
Just another example of the crazy billing environment for medicine in the US. From the WSJ: “After David Hubbard underwent a routine echocardiogram at his cardiologist’s office last year, he was surprised to learn that the heart scan cost his insurer $1,605. That was more than four times the $373 it paid when the 61-year-old…
I was glad to see this piece, which explains that public horror at “Total Information Awareness” caused it to be cancelled in 2003–only to have a much grander, insidious and dangerous NSA program grow up in its place. The current program lacks two critical pieces, including a way to track and record who accesses data…
Pauline Chen, MD blogs at the NY Times about what it feels like to be a doctor today. Here she discusses a new survey of 7,000 practicing doctors, 48% of whom experienced at least one symptom of “burnout.” Excerpts from her article follow: …Research over the last 10 years has shown that burnout –…
Interesting comments were made at the last meeting of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, reported on the Commission blog. They include the following: Anita Allen, J.D., Ph.D., Commission member and Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania: “Military families are subject to extraordinary pressures on the need…
Below is my recent letter to the Chair of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, preceding the Commission’s meeting last week. The Commission’s blog mentions some of what was discussed. The Commission will report its views to the DHHS Secretary by year’s end. Meryl Nass, MD Board Certified in Internal Medicine Mount…
I have to give the WHO editors kudos for being brave enough to commission commentaries on WHO’s pandemic planning. Peter Doshi wrote about WHO’s waffling over the definition of pandemic, which morphed into a meaningless definition that allowed even the common cold to be called a pandemic, since severity was missing from the definition. Bonneux…
Remember the 2009 Swine Flu Pandemic? There were going to be a huge number of illnesses and deaths, but then it turned out the flu virus caused less severe disease than usual. Since then, the H1N1 swine flu virus has remained in circulation, and we have continued to have fewer reported flu deaths in the…
From MedicalNewsToday comes the following misleading information on the dramatic benefits of flu vaccine for kids: The UK is set to become the first country in the world to provide all children free of charge with a comprehensive flu vaccination program… Once the program is up and running, it will cost the government over £100 million annually,…
Canberra, Australia’s capital, has about 365,000 people and has a medical school. Its health staff totals 5,122 people. Only 48% were vaccinated against the flu this year, down from 60% during the swine flu pandemic of 2009. But is this a problem? ACT Health said there have been fewer than five deaths a year for…
As has been noted previously, vaccination is a black art, basically a trial and error process of discovery, which has the potential to either prevent or enhance disease, and therefore must be studied carefully before vaccines are administered to large populations, despite issues of expediency. Vet Pathol. 2012 Mar 28. Kinetics of Lung Lesion Development…
Ellen Nakashima at the Post reports that Charles Grassley has evidence the Office of General Counsel at FDA authorized extensive spy probe of disgruntled employeess, Congressional offices and media. This suggests authorization came from the highest levels at FDA: “Congressional investigators said Monday that the chief counsel’s office at the Food and Drug Administration authorized wide-ranging…
One CDC high-containment lab (BSL-3, the level of containment required to study anthrax) fails to contain air efflux. And it was discovered because visitors touring the facility saw a puff of air exit through a slot in a door window. How long had this been going on? USAToday points out that the BSL-3 lab doors…
The FDA, reprising the Justice Department, had its own criminal enterprise going. Using commercial $99.95 spy software, it was able to illegally read emails of its employees, members of Congress and their staffs, and journalists, and much more. Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane of the NY Times report, although who authorized the illegal surveillance and who…
The FBI crime lab seems to have been run as an illegal enterprise to support desired convictions–evidence be damned–for decades. Maybe justice will now be served for some of those convicted as a result of FBI criminality. This story didn’t just come out. There was a Justice Department review years ago… which let the original…
From Wired and ScienceNOW comes this very worrisome piece about how two different, attenuated live virus vaccines for infectious laryngotracheitis in chickens recombined to form a virus twice as deadly as the disease the vaccines were intended to prevent. (The death rate in chickens increased from 8% to 17%.) Chickens in multiple parts of Australia were…
According to Reuters, the US ranks close to the bottom on a number of healthcare indices, compared to the 33 other countries in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). Of course, the US ranks at the top in terms of cost: 17.9% of GDP is spent on healthcare in the US. There is…
From the NY Times: In the largest settlement involving a pharmaceutical company, the British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges and pay $3 billion in fines for promoting its best-selling antidepressants for unapproved uses and failing to report safety data about a top diabetes drug, federal prosecutors announced Monday. The agreement also…
From Eric Lichtblau at the NY Times: WASHINGTON — In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations. The cellphone carriers’ reports,…
David Willman does another deft job with the story of BioWatch, hopefully in time to influence the upcoming purchase of BioWatch’s next generation of detectors. None have yet worked as billed. The “detectors” are simply air samplers: filters attached to vacuum tubes. The filters have to be collected, then tested elsewhere using PCR devices specific…
From the Irish Times: In a final vote of no confidence, Ireland’s ill-fated e-voting machines are finally headed to the scrap heap. From the June 29 Independent: THE Government has sold the infamous €54m e-voting machines for scrap — for €9.30 each. [Sold as scrap for about 15 cents per ten dollars spent on their…
The Gang who Couldn’t Shoot Strait at Emergent BioSolutions gain more largesse from the USG. Yet this company cannot do anything right except obtain government contracts, kill off the competition, co-opt watchdog nonprofits and set up their own education agencies. See “Anthrax Vaccine: to the Victor the Spoils” “This award underscores Emergent’s core competencies not only in product…
In her third excellent Scientific American blog post, Infectious Disease doctor Judy Stone has delved into the ethical and regulatory framework under which clinical research must be conducted. Dr. Stone provides a succinct historical overview of the important documents, and how they were enshrined in regulations guiding the conduct of research in humans. For readers…
Unmanned satellite-aircraft devices can now stay in orbit more than a year, then return to earth and make a soft landing at a military base! Just imagine the accuracy and precision of the measurements and analysis needed to achieve this. This accomplishment deserves more than a hat-tip to the scientific method. Yet when it comes…
Very interesting: the Narcolepsy Association discovered that specific lots were involved, after the Swedish Medical Products Agency denied it. Bad lots may mean that the regulators were not doing their job. If this devastating narcolepsy epidemic was caused by bad lots, liability for the injuries might land on the manufacturer, in this case GSK. From…
From infectious disease MD Judith Stone at Scientific American comes this comprehensive look at what is behind the push to keep buying anthrax vaccine and even give it to children: In my last post, we began to play “Follow the Money” to better understand the history of the anthrax vaccine and the current proposal to…
From the University of Pittsburgh Center for Biosecurity comes this short report, a reiteration that the spores in the anthrax letters could not have come directly from those prepared by Bruce Ivins at Fort Detrick, as they lacked two substances contained in the RMR1029 anthrax spore collection. Thanks to Ross Getman for the citation. Additional…
Why are Super PACs different than all other PACs? [No, we are not discussing Passover tonight.] See what the NY Times has to say. But here is a quick summary: Super PACs can accept and spend donations throughout the year, not just during election periods Super PACs have few or maybe only one donor, and…
The federal government has spent $547 million issuing grants to “independent” “health information exchanges” to collect and share citizens’ medical records. Each state and territory has an agency established for this purpose. The federal government has promised up to $27 billion in Medicare/Medicaid incentives for medical practices and hospitals to use electronic medical records, which…
From the Lansing State Journal: The anthrax vaccine manufacturer, with one product and basically one buyer, YOU (your taxes at work) plans to expand. But sorry, there won’t be any new jobs as yet, although Michigan will have to pay its share. How the state will benefit is unknown. …Emergent BioSolutions would fund the…
Thanks to Teresa Binstock for this tip– An exposure to nano-scale copper oxide particles stunted the shoots and roots of radishes and two species of rye grass.
I have treated so many patients with sinusitis in the last several weeks, I decided to review new guidelines that were issued by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) recently on sinusitis. Wow, the changes were BIG and I had missed them. Seems the drugs I used to use don’t work so well any…
From Dr. Stephen Frost, one of the doctors making this request of the Attorney General: I am one of the doctors who have been fighting for an inquest into the suspicious death of Dr David Kelly in July 2003, pointing out that due process of the law has been subverted by four successive UK governments,…
Published on Deccan Chronicle (http://www.deccanchronicle.com) Rise in paralysis cases after polio vaccine Cases of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis, better known as AFP, has sharply increased with the increase in the administration of oral polio vaccination (OPV) in the country under the much-acclaimed polio eradication programme. According to a report by Dr. Neetu Vashisht and Dr….
All the Irish papers report on the government’s announcement that Pandemrix swine flu vaccine is associated with many cases of narcolepsy. The Irish Times reported: An official report has concluded that an increase in the sleep disorder narcolepsy among young people since 2009 is associated with the swine flu vaccine Pandemrix. The report, commissioned by…
Having dissected the false claims made for Tamiflu, which the US government stockpiled to the tune of $1.5 Billion dollars, Peter Doshi and Tom Jefferson draw some important conclusions about drug data and regulation in this NY Times Op-ED of April 10: IN the fall of 2009, at the height of fears over swine flu, our…
Today FDA said that YAZ, Yazmine, Beyaz and Safyral (oral contraceptives made by Bayer) cause a higher than usual increase in blood clots in users. Blood clots are increased by all contraceptives and other drugs utilizing female hormones. It is estimated that in the US, 200,000 people die yearly from blood clots that travel to…
With respect to the 44.75 million doses of anthrax vaccine that Emergent BioSolutions (EBS) has announced it is selling to DHHS for the civilian stockpile (for the past several years), comes this curious notice from the Maryland Gazette. Perhaps not all federal bureaucrats are happy about paying a king’s ransom for an unsafe and unproven…
Total information awareness, we can know all about those over here who are plugged in. But those people over there who aren’t, well, they aren’t so easy to know about. So let’s ignore them, and watch the ones we can. Hey, some of us plugged in ones may be financing some of the unplugged and…
Welcome to the 2012 US Homeland. Where’d we mislay that old Constitution? Ours is now the land of extrajudicial killings performed by drones; strip searches for speeding, or for bicycling without an audible bell or having a too-audible muffler; widespread extralegal cell phone surveillance by police, mobile phone companies (for whom it is a new…
Documented flu cases have dropped by 97 percent compared with this time last year. There have been NO flu-related deaths registered in Pennsylvania this year. Why are pharmacies still advertising flu shots? CDC reports only 5 child deaths due to flu, in the entire United States, have occurred this 2011-2012 flu season. The reason for…
On February 9, 2012, I wrote about how Merck manages to evade FDA regulations on advertising by funneling money through third party intermediaries: educational institutions and education/PR companies. These third parties then pay doctors to provide advertising to other professionals in the form of continuing medical education. Merck can then have the doctors speak about…
Bradley Manning spent nearly a year in solitary, being tortured with ploys like forced nakedness (perfected in Iraq as a torture method?). He is unlikely to ever be free. Julian Assange got the honeypot treatment and is likely to spend much of his remaining life incarcerated. Yet we were told those leaked cables had…
One particularly obnoxious quality of mine is that I do not suffer fools gladly. I get mad; I get contemptuous; and I want to get even. So when I read this uneducated paean to VACCINES I was forced to respond. When the newspaper would not publish my response and instead sent a little box that…
Peter Aaby’s group from Statens Serum Institute, Denmark, has been studying the effects of many vaccines in African children for many years. The group has found some similar results in the past. The fact that they continue to see the same effect (huge increases in death rates in young vaccinated female infants, increases not seen…
This story was reported today in Science News, and the scientific publication from which the story was derived also came out today in PLOS. The concept is troubling: toxic materials we encounter in everyday life may seriously scar our progeny generations later. Although this research was performed for the Army, using toxics encountered by military…
One million Americans have received faulty hips, which continue to be promoted by manufacturers according to the British Medical Journal. The cobalt and chromium they release into local and distant tissues destroy muscle and bone and cause so-called genotoxicity, which may translate into cancer. Definitely worth a read of the whole article, but excerpts are…
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