Monsanto Developing GMO Soybean That Produces Fake Fish Oil
August 12th, 2011
Natural News
By: Ethan A. Huff
Leave it to Monsanto to take a good thing and corrupt it for financial gain. According to a recent report in Forbes, the multinational biotechnology-slash-agriculture-manipulating monolith has developed a new genetically-modified (GM) soybean that artificially produces stearidonic acid, a type of omega-3 fatty acid — and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to approve the “frankenbean” sometime this year.
Monsanto appears to be introducing the omega-3 enhanced GM soybean oil, called Soymega or “stearidonic acid soybean oil” (SDA oil), at a craftily strategic time when much of the world is still reeling from the Fukushima Daiichi mega-disaster, which left ocean waters ridden with radioactive isotopes. And since omega-3s just happen to be most readily found in fatty ocean fish, the perpetual fear over radioactive and other poisons that may be lurking in such fish could drive many to embrace Monsanto’s fake fish oil instead.
According to an FDA letter responding to Monsanto’s request to have SDA oil approved for use as a food additive and acknowledged as being “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS), the FDA noted that Monsanto intends to use its omega-3-enhanced oil in a variety of food applications. These include baked goods, breakfast cereals, fish products, frozen dairy desserts, cheeses, grains and pastas, gravies, nuts, poultry, fruit juices, processed vegetable products, and soups — yes, basically every processed food product in existence.
Monsanto created its GM soybean oil by injecting two specific enzymes into soybean genes. One came from Primula juliae, a type of flower, and the other from Neurospora crass, a type of red mold that grows on bread. As a result, the beans produce SDA oil and gamma-linolenic acid, two compounds not normally found in soybeans.
In its original request letter, Monsanto claims that its company-funded trials prove that SDA oil is safe for animal and human consumption, and that “no toxicologically significant effects were observed.” However, the data does not specifically highlight the long-term effects of the oil in animals or in humans — it merely alleges that nothing bad was observed during the 16-week trial period, which is hardly enough reassurance that the product is undeniably safe for consumption.
Nevertheless, the FDA has already granted Soymega GRAS status, which means that the agency acknowledges Monsanto’s safety claims, and essentially has no problems with or objections to them. And if the FDA grants full approval for Soymega, you can expect to see it turning up in all sorts of consumer food products.
Have all the ocean disasters in recent years been a catalyst for forcing people over to artificial, patented varieties of omega-3s?
Between BP’s “Deepwater Horizon” oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, and the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility in March 2011, many of the world’s oceans, and corresponding fish stocks, have been severely tainted. Add in perpetual mercury poisoning and other pollution that has been afflicting ocean life for many decades, and seafood appears less and less enticing as a safe and healthy source of omega-3s.
Enter Monsanto. By positing its omega-3 GM soybean variety as a safer, healthier alternative to natural seafood and sea-based fish oils, the company stands to gain an incredible amount of profit while ultimately steering public preference away from natural sources of omega-3s, and towards its own patented varieties of omega-3s.
The same Forbes article that announced the advent of Monsanto’s Soymega also mentions that sea-based fish oils can be contaminated with toxins, and also suggests that fish-derived omega-3s are responsible for depleting fish stocks and damaging the environment. Do you see where this is all going?
It is all too convenient that as omega-3s become more popular than ever, Monsanto, in conjunction with the FDA and the mainstream media, is coordinating a leveraged attack against natural sources of omega-3s in order to brainwash the public into accepting its “safer” variety. And by getting SDA oil laced throughout the food supply, the public will ultimately have little choice in avoiding it., and will probably just accept it as beneficial.
Monsanto is clearly dead set on capturing the omega-3 market through its new soybean oil. After all, soybean oil has become a staple in most American processed foods, and by “enriching” everything from breads and cereals to vegetable dishes and quick dinners with Soymega, the general public will be less prone to purchase fish for its health benefits. And the end result will be more control of the food supply handed over to Monsanto, and less availability of natural omega-3s on the market.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
Pfizer Begins Long-Delayed Payouts Over Nigerian Drug Trial
August 12th, 2011
The Raw Story
By: Agence France Presse
US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer on Thursday began long-awaited compensation payments to families over a 1996 drug trial blamed for the deaths of 11 children and disabilities in dozens of others.
But even as the compensation process began, the company faced further criticism since only four families were paid in the initial disbursements, while some 200 children participated in the trial of meningitis drug Trovan.
Parents of four of the children who died received cheques of $175,000 each at a ceremony in the northern Nigerian city ofKano, where the trial took place.
A dispute over whether DNA testing should be used to verify the identification of victims had held up compensation payments.
Thursday’s payments followed the release of eight results of DNA tests of 546 saliva swabs of claimants, said Abubakar Bashir Wali, who heads the claims verification committee.
“Out of these eight results, four died as a result of their participation in the clinical trial and each is entitled to … $175,000 as full and final settlement of compensation,” Wali said at the ceremony.
The other four claimants suffered deformities and would be paid compensation commensurate with their disabilities, Wali said.
“We are pleased that these four individuals, the first group of qualified claimants…have received compensation,” Pfizer said in a statement it issued from New York.
The statement described the initial payments as a “milestone in the implementation of the settlement agreement reached by Kano state government and Pfizer”.
“The compensation cannot replace my loss, but will only cushion the hardship the drug trial caused me and my family,” Hauwa Umar, who lost a child, said between sobs.
Outside the ceremony, a group of claimants accused the compensation committee of unnecessary delay in the verification and payment of claims.
“It is frustrating that 10 months after taking over 500 swabs for DNA tests only eight results have been released despite assurance that the results would be out within six weeks,” Surajo Hassan said.
Hassan said his nephew suffered deafness from the trial.
“The procedures contained in the settlement agreement are quite cumbersome, and we appeal to all stakeholders to be patient…,” Wali said at the ceremony.
The payments were part of a $75 million out-of-court-settlement reached between Pfizer and Kano state government in July 2009 over the drug trial.
The trial occurred during a meningitis epidemic that, according to Pfizer, killed nearly 12,000 people.
Pfizer says it was given approval from government authorities and about 200 children were involved in the trial, half of whom were treated with Trovan. It has argued that Trovan helped save lives.
But France-based medical charity Doctors Without Borders, which was at the time urgently trying to treat meningitis victims in Nigeria, has harshly criticised Pfizer over the trial.
Click here for the full report from The Raw Story
Debt ‘Supercommittee’ Ready For Action
August 12, 2011 by Andrew
Filed under Government
August 12th, 2011
The Raw Story
By: Agence France Presse
Top US House of Representatives Democrat Nancy Pelosi on Thursday appointed three close allies to a “supercommittee” tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts over ten years.
Pelosi’s naming of Democratic Representatives James Clyburn, Xavier Becerra, and Chris Van Hollen brought to full strength the 12-member panel that will be ground zero for the next wave of angry battles over the swollen US debt.
“The thrust of the committee must be to grow an American prosperity enjoyed by all Americans,” Pelosi said in a statement that urged a “focus on economic growth and job creation that reduces the deficit.”
Pelosi, who has vowed to protect social safety net programs especially dear to Democrats from the cost-cutter’s axe, said the panel should “make decisions regarding investments, cuts and revenues and their timing to stimulate growth while reducing the deficit.”
Top Republicans have vowed to kill any tax increases and said that any boost in revenues from tax code overhauls must be offset by cuts elsewhere, while Democratic leaders have pushed for raising taxes on the rich and corporations if government-backed health care or retirement programs face belt-tightening.
“We must achieve a ‘grand bargain’ that reduces the deficit by addressing our entire budget, while strengthening Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security,” said Pelosi, the House Democratic Minority Leader.
Clyburn, who is black, and Becerra, who is Hispanic, are the only minorities on the panel, while Democratic Senator Patty Murray, its co-chair, is the only woman.
Click here for the full report from The Raw Story
A National Debt Of $14 Trillion? Try $211 Trillion
August 12, 2011 by Andrew
Filed under Government
August 12th, 2011
NPR
When Standard & Poor’s reduced the nation’s credit rating from AAA to AA-plus, the United States suffered the first downgrade to its credit rating ever. S&P took this action despite the plan Congress passed this past week to raise the debt limit.
The downgrade, S&P said, “reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics.”
It’s those medium- and long-term debt problems that also worry economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, who served as a senior economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. He says the national debt, which the U.S. Treasury has accounted at about $14 trillion, is just the tip of the iceberg.
“We have all these unofficial debts that are massive compared to the official debt,” Kotlikoff tells David Greene, guest host of weekends on All Things Considered. “We’re focused just on the official debt, so we’re trying to balance the wrong books.”
Kotlikoff explains that America’s “unofficial” payment obligations — like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits — jack up the debt figure substantially.
“If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap,” he says. “That’s our true indebtedness.”
We don’t hear more about this enormous number, Kotlikoff says, because politicians have chosen their language carefully to keep most of the problem off the books.
“Why are these guys thinking about balancing the budget?” he says. “They should try and think about our long-term fiscal problems.”
According to Kotlikoff, one of the biggest fiscal problems Congress should focus on is America’s obligation to make Social Security payments to future generations of the elderly.
“We’ve got 78 million baby boomers who are poised to collect, in about 15 to 20 years, about $40,000 per person. Multiply 78 million by $40,000 — you’re talking about more than $3 trillion a year just to give to a portion of the population,” he says. “That’s an enormous bill that’s overhanging our heads, and Congress isn’t focused on it.”
“We’ve consistently done too little too late, looked too short-term, said the future would take care of itself, we’ll deal with that tomorrow,” he says. “Well, guess what? You can’t keep putting off these problems.”
To eliminate the fiscal gap, Kotlikoff says, the U.S. would have to have tax increases and spending reductions far beyond what’s being negotiated right now in Washington.
“What you have to do is either immediately and permanently raise taxes by about two-thirds, or immediately and permanently cut every dollar of spending by 40 percent forever. The [Congressional Budget Office's] numbers say we have an absolutely enormous problem facing us.”
Click here for the full report from NPR
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Large Study Confirms That Omega 3s Produce Healthy Babies
August 11th, 2011
Natural News
By: Jonathan Benson
Consumption of omega-3 fatty acids is crucial for the development and maintenance of the brain and nervous system, especially in young children. And a new study published in the journal Pediatrics adds to this, having found that pregnant women who supplement with Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA) during their pregnancies produce children that are much healthier and less prone to sickness than those born to women who do not supplement with, or otherwise consume enough, DHA.
Dr. Usha Ramakrishnan, associate professor at Emory University’s Hubert Department of Global Health, and her team conducted a randomized, placebo-controlled trial on 1,100 pregnant women and 900 infants from Mexico. Some women received 400 milligrams (mg) of DHA, while others received a placebo, during the 18 to 22 weeks of gestation through childbirth.
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After all the women eventually gave birth, children born to mothers in the DHA group experienced less overall sickness, and shorter duration of sickness. Some of the results are as follows:
-At one month of age, babies from the DHA group were 25 percent less likely to catch a cold or have a cough with phlegm or wheezing.
-At three months of age, babies from the DHA group experienced 14 percent less illness time than those from the placebo group.
-And at six months, DHA babies had less fevers, nasal secretions, breathing problems, and rashes than babies from the control group.
“This is a large scale, robust study that underscores the importance of good nutrition during pregnancy,” remarked Ramakrishnan. “Our findings indicate that pregnant women taking 400 mg of DHA are more likely to deliver healthier infants.”
The form of DHA used in the study was derived from algae, which is not necessarily an ideal form. In some cases, companies are actually using genetically-modified (GM) algae to create omega-3 oils. Monsanto is even working on gaining FDA approval for a GM soybean that artificially produces omega-3s, which is why it is important to know the source of your omega-3s before consuming them.
DHA, as well as the entire gamut of omega-3s that includes arachidonic acid (ARA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), can be found in natural foods like grass-fed meats, salmon, flax, and hemp. They can also be found from high-quality fish and cod liver oils, as well as salmon oil.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
Pediatricians Trying To Obliterate Parent’s Right to Refuse Vaccinations For Children
August 11th, 2011
Natural News
By: PF Louis
Just when you think some progress is being made for allowing exemptions from required vaccination schedules, along comes a threatening policy statement from a group that does most of those vaccinations. The Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS) has issued a position statement opposing secular exemptions from vaccinations.
Already, many pediatricians are refusing healthcare to children of parents, who oppose heavy vaccination schedules.
Pediatricians Are Vaccine Crazy
The vaccination schedule begins at birth with the Hep B shot, which is followed by two more Hep B shots before two years of age. Hepatitis B is transmitted sexually or with hypodermic needles. Even if the mother is not at risk, the Hep B shots are pushed on newborns.
Two other vaccinations come as three different doses in one package. And those are given more than once before age six. They are the MMR (mumps, measles, and rubella) and the DTP (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis) vaccinations.
Including the two inoculations that inject three vaccines, there are a total of fifteen different vaccines inoculated into a child well over 30 times by the age of six. Those shots aren’t cheap, and they are hazardous. The USA requires more infant vaccinations than any other nation, yet it ranks 34th in infant mortality.
So this vaccination nation has more infant deaths than 33 other nations. But the pediatricians want to make sure more are given to protect “herd immunity” and prevent outbreaks. They believe 90% of the population should be vaccinated with the full schedule of vaccines. Hold on a second. Those who are vaccinated shouldn’t be concerned about disease carriers if they are “immunized”, right? The outbreak threat is obviously illogical.
Real Science
It has been documented that the most dangerous disease carriers are those who have been recently vaccinated. The attenuated live viruses used in the vaccine “shed” off the vaccinated child for a few weeks after the shot.
There have been scientific studies that prove SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) is linked to the Hep B and DTP vaccinations. There are also many cases of severe infant vaccine adverse effects reported, but many more are not reported because too many parents do not realize vaccines can have adverse reactions. Of course, the medical people usually deny any connection even if a baby drops dead immediately after a vaccination.
There are two studies linking SIDS to early vaccinations. Dr. Viera Scheibner, the author of one of the studies, concluded that “vaccination is the single most prevalent and most preventable cause of infant deaths.” Dr. William Torch, of the University of Nevada School of Medicine at Reno, discovered that almost 80% of SIDS deaths occurred shortly after the DPT vaccination. There are other similar studies with similar results. (3)
Warning
Pediatricians consider parents, who are concerned about vaccine safety, virtually criminal for not permitting them to vaccinate their children. Their position paper claims vaccines are the medical miracle of modern medicine, but hysterical celebrities and junk science has led many astray from honoring this miracle. Hypocritically, they say this without scientific proof of their own.
If you protest or refuse vaccinations for your child, there is a looming possibility that legal actions could be taken against you. Children could be taken away and foster homed, and parents can be arrested unless they yield to pediatricians’ warped demands. This is where medical fascism is headed as the medical mafia continues their lobbying for more control.
Some parents are avoiding pediatricians and using regular MDs they trust or holistic practitioners for their children to avoid possible confrontations. These are difficult times for raising children safely. So do your research and connect with supportive groups (5), who are really invested in children’s safety instead of vaccine profits.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
Here Are Some Members of the “Super Committee”
August 11, 2011 by Andrew
Filed under Government
August 11th, 2011
The Washington Post
By: Felicia Sonmez
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday announced their picks for the 12-member supercommittee charged with tackling the country’s debt problem.
Of the nine members announced so far, eight voted “yes” on last week’s debt-ceiling deal — a sign that there exists at least the possibility that the panel will be able to reach a bipartisan agreement. The one delegate announced so far who opposed the debt compromise is Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.).
The GOP picks have scored mixed reviews from budget experts, many of whom are hoping the new committee can produce far greater savings than the roughly $1.5 trillion the panel has been asked to identify.
Steve Bell, the head of the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former Republican Senate staffer, said that overall he has been “pleasantly surprised” by the selections because almost all of them are senior lawmakers with a history of legislating, sometimes across the aisle. “The truth is, you’ve got a lot of IQ points.”
Boehner has tapped House Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling (Texas), House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to serve on the bipartisan panel.
Both Hensarling and Camp had been viewed as frontrunners for the committee. Hensarling is a junior member of the House Republican leadership team and has a close relationship with Boehner’s deputy, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), while Camp heads the House panel that oversees tax and entitlement policy. Upton is also a top committee chairman.
Hensarling will co-chair the bipartisan committee along with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), whose appointment was announced Tuesday by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Reid also selected Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the Senate Finance Committee Chairman, and John Kerry (D-Mass.).
“The lawmakers I have appointed to serve on this joint committee are proven leaders who have earned the trust and confidence of their colleagues and constituents,” Boehner said in a statement. “They understand the gravity of our debt crisis and I appreciate their willingness to serve on this panel.”
In a statement issued shortly after Boehner’s, McConnell announced that he has tapped Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) to serve on the committee.
Kyl and Portman had both been rumored to be among McConnell’s top picks. Kyl is the Senate’s number-two Republican and was McConnell’s delegate to the debt-reduction talks led by Vice President Biden this spring. Portman is a former director of the White House Office of Management and Budget and also served as U.S. trade representative; a freshman considered a rising star among Senate Republicans, he developed a close working relationship with McConnell throughout the negotiations on raising the country’s debt ceiling.
Toomey, like Portman, is a freshman and is the only member of the panel to vote against the debt compromise reached right before the Aug. 2 deadline. A former Wall Street executive, his selection represents a nod by McConnell to the tea-party movement; he was a leader of the group of House and Senate conservatives who argued that the country would not default on its obligations if the debt ceiling was not raised.
“My main criteria for selecting members was to identify serious, constructive senators who are interested in achieving a result that helps to get our nation’s fiscal house in order,” McConnell said. “That means reforming entitlement programs that are the biggest drivers of our debt, and reforming the tax code in a way that makes us more competitive and leads to more American jobs. The goal is to achieve a result that convinces Americans and the world that we’re committed as a nation to prosperity for all our citizens.”
Baucus and Camp have already been at work, along with Treasury officials, on bipartisan tax reform issues. Upton is a bona fide moderate who had to beat back a “down with Upton” campaign from a tea party-affiliated group in order to claim the committee chairmanship.
And Portman, as a House member a decade ago, forged alliances with some Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee to approve pension reform plans.
However, the panel’s leaders, Murray and Hensarling, hail from the more partisan wings of their respective party caucuses, and, according to former Hill aide Bell, most experts only rate a “25 percent chance” that the group can forge a bipartisan deal that can win approval because of the entrenched partisan atmosphere in the Capitol.
“You’re not part of the team. You’re not part of the tribe,” Bell said, explaining the pressure that will come to bear on the committee members.
Wednesday’s announcements were also noteworthy for who was not selected to serve on the panel. Boehner did not choose House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who has been among his party’s top voices on fiscal issues and was the leader behind House Republicans’ fiscal year 2012 budget.
Ryan said in a statement that he had asked Boehner not to consider him for the panel, as “only the Budget Committee can write legislation to reform the budget process.”
“As Budget Committee chairman, my plan has long been to work on this critical issue throughout the fall,” Ryan said. “This past year has shown that the federal budget process is more broken than ever and needs to be reformed. If we are truly going to put the country’s fiscal house in order, it will not be enough to temporarily reduce what Washington spends. We must permanently reform the process by which working Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars are spent.”
He added that Boehner had selected “three excellent Republican members” for the panel.
Also missing from the panel will be any lawmakers among the “Gang of Six,” the bipartisan group of senators who for months worked to produce their own comprehensive deficit reduction plan, which they unveiled late last month. Some members of both parties’ bases had viewed the Gang’s proposal with skepticism, as it advocated for a broad approach that included both entitlement cuts and tax increases. But the plan has also been viewed by many members as the most-detailed plan thus far to tackle the country’s debt.
Boehner also did not choose any members from among the 87-member class of House Republican freshmen.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has not yet announced her picks for the supercommittee; leaders have until Aug. 16 to announce their choices.
Click here for the full report from The Washington Post
The Stock Market Crash Of 2011?
August 11th, 2011
The Economic Collapse
How far does the stock market have to go down before we officially call it a crash? The Dow is now down more than 2,000 points in just the last 14 trading days. So can we now call this “The Stock Market Crash of 2011″? Today the Dow was down 519 points. Yesterday, an announcement by the Federal Reserve indicating that the Fed would keep interest rates near zero until mid-2013 helped the Dow surge more than 400 points, but all of those gains were wiped out today. It turns out that the Federal Reserve was only able to stabilize the financial markets for a single day. Fears about the European sovereign debt crisis and the crumbling U.S. economy continue to dominate the marketplace. With each passing day, things are looking more and more like 2008 all over again. So what is going to happen if “The Stock Market Crash of 2011″ pushes the U.S. economy into “The Recession of 2012″?
Just like in 2008, bank stocks are being hit the hardest. That was true once again today. Bank of America was down more than 10 percent, Citigroup was down more than 10 percent, Morgan Stanley was down more than 9 percent and JPMorgan Chase was down more than 5 percent.
Bank of America stock is down almost 50 percent so far this year. Overall, the S&P financial sector is down more than 23 percent in 2011 so far.
How soon will it be before we start hearing of the need for more bailouts? After all, the “too big to fail” banks are even bigger now than they were in 2008.
All of this panic is causing the price of gold to reach unprecedented heights. Today, gold was over $1800 at one point. If the current panic continues for an extended period of time, there is no telling how high the price of gold may go.
In the United States, much of the focus has been on the fact that the U.S. government has lost its AAA credit rating, but the truth is that the European sovereign debt crisis is probably the biggest cause of the instability in world financial markets right now.
The European Central Bank has decided to start purchasing Italian and Spanish debt, and there have been rumors that French debt could be hit with a downgrade. Europe is a total financial basket case right now and unless dramatic action is taken things are going to get progressively worse.
Of course the U.S. is also certainly contributing greatly to this crisis. The federal government is on track to have a budget deficit that is over a trillion dollars for the third year in a row. The U.S national debt is a horrific nightmare, but our politicians keep putting off budget cuts.
The debt ceiling deal that was just reached basically does next to nothing to cut the budget before the next election. Unless the “Super Congress” does something dramatic, the only “budget cuts” we will see before the 2012 election will be 25 billion dollars in “savings” from spending increases that will be cancelled.
The modest spending cuts scheduled to go into effect beginning in 2013 will probably never materialize. Whenever the time comes to actually significantly cut the budget, our politicians always want to put it off for another time.
But in the end, debt is always going to have its day. Our politicians can try to kick the can down the road all they want, but eventually a day of reckoning is going to come.
In fact, if the U.S. and Europe had not piled up so much debt, we would not be facing all of the problems we are dealing with now.
Things could have been so much different.
But here we are.
The truth is that this debt crisis is just beginning. There is no magic potion that is going to make all of this debt suddenly disappear.
Most Americans have no idea how much financial pain is coming. We have been living way beyond our means for decades, and now we are going to start paying for it.
Now that long-term U.S. government debt has been downgraded, huge numbers of other securities are also going to be affected. In fact, according to a recent Bloomberg article, S&P has already been very busy slashing the ratings on hordes of municipal bonds….
Click here for the full report from The Economic Collapse
Big Pharma’s Crusade to Push Pills On Kids
August 11, 2011 by Andrew
Filed under Government
August 11th, 2011
The Fix
By: Walter Armstrong
In the past decade, America’s pharmaceutical industry has knowingly marketed dozens of dangerous drugs to millions of children, a group that executives apparently view as a lucrative, untapped market for their products. Most kids have no one to look out for their interests except anxious parents who put their trust in doctors. But that trust is often misplaced. Big Pharma spends massive amounts to entertain physicians, send them on luxury vacations, and ply them with an endless supply of free products. As a result, hundreds of thousands of American kids—some as young as three years old—have become dependent on amphetamines like Adderall and a pharmacopeia of other drugs that are meant to treat depression, insomnia, aggression and other mental health disorders.
The fact that none of these powerful mood-altering medications have been approved by the FDA to treat children under 10 has posed no obstacle to the industry’s marketing masterminds. They’ve waved off objections by some some doctors who wonder how these complex drugs will affect the vulnerable brains and bodies of their young patients. Other experts have warned that children exposed to this multi-molecular barrage on their central nervous systems could potentially be at much higher risk of becoming adults who are addicted to chemicals, prescription and otherwise. But thanks to a billion-dollar advertising campaign, millions of kids across the nation are now taking pills to control a long litany of “behavioral problems.”
Luckily, Johnson and Johnson is not getting off scot-free. Last week, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakely announced that the state was suing the world’s biggest pharmaceutical firm, Johnson & Johnson, for illegally promoting Risperdal, an “atypical anti-psychotic”, for off-label treatment of childhood schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder, depression and anxiety, sleep disorders, anger management, mood enhancement or stabilization. As BNet’s Placebo Effect blog recently reported, the list of maladies is grotesquely long. J&J, which prides itself on its high-minded credo of “always putting patients first,” began moving its new drug into this new market as soon as Risperdal won approval in adults—even though the FDA explicitly forbid it from doing so, for the simple reason that the firm had never done a single test of the drug in children who suffered from these or any other conditions.
Though Risperdal was marketed as a less dangerous—if not more effective—alternative to older “typical” anti-psychotics, it quickly became apparent that the drug had many worrisome side effects in adults, including the rapid onset of diabetes and alarming weight gains. But despite a growing weight of evidence about the drugs, J&J only stepped up its promotion of the drug for children—aiming for more conditions and in ever-younger kids—no doubt to squeeze as many profits as possible out of this lemon before the FDA ordered them to stamp a warning on the label or withdraw it from the market altogether.
Not surprisingly, teens and kids soon started developing the same symptoms of drug-induced diabetes and weight gain that were experienced by their adult counterparts. Several also developed a bizarre condition called galactorrhea, in which milk flows spontaneously from the nipples of your breasts—girls and boys alike—a happening that is likely to drive even the most balanced teen around the bend. What may be even more bizarre, when doctors alerted J&J sales reps to this side effect, sales reps relayed the warning to their managers, who advised the sales reps to tell the doctors (in a frankly illegal reversal of medical protocol) that rather than take the kids off Risperdal, they could be treated with yet another drug.
The Massachusetts case is the third of about 10 state lawsuits in which jurors will be asked to pass judgment on whether J&J’s Risperdal promotional practices constitute medical fraud. Class-action suits by patients (or parents) claiming injury are also in the works. The Obama administration has shown some guts in not simply allowing the giant drug makers to settle such lawsuits for giant fees ($2 billion is not unusual, however ho-hum to pharma) but in holding individual company executives personally liable for the criminal activity.
In fact this code of misconduct is what we have come to expect from the pharmaceutical industry: Always put profits first, break the law now, pay the fine years later. Given the high-risk nature of drug development—a novel compound costs close to $1 billion and a decade to get to market—Big Pharma has tried all manner of dark arts to increase its odds. Criminal activity, once largely limited to the sales divisions, has overtaken the entire endeavor. Clinical trials that produce negative data—including health risks—are hidden from the FDA. Early signals of serious side effects are covered up, as are promised follow-up studies upon which approval is conditioned. Like other industries, pharma and its lobbyists have regulators and Congress by the balls.
Click here for the full report from The Fix
