KFC Buckets Now Help Fight Breast Cancer!! Wait… What?

April 23, 2010

WashingtonPost.com

by Jennifer Huget

“Help make the largest single donation to end breast cancer forever,” the campaign urges. The suggestion is that KFC will donate money — its goal is $8.5 million — to the charity at a rate of 50 cents for every special pink bucket of chicken sold over the next month.

But bear in mind that the “F” in KFC stands for “fried.” Here’s a line from the National Cancer Institute’s Web site:

“. . .studies have shown that an increased risk of developing colorectal, pancreatic, and breast cancer is associated with high intakes of well-done, fried, or barbequed meats.”

Beyond that, since obesity raises breast cancer risk, it’s worth looking at some numbers: According to the KFC Web site, an original-recipe fried chicken breast has 320 calories, 15 grams of total fat (including 3.5 grams of saturated fat); a thigh has 220 calories, 15 grams of total fat (4 of them saturated).

So, no, I don’t think that buying fried chicken by the bucket is a good way to fight breast cancer. Even the grilled-chicken option, though less caloric and fat-laden (a breast has 190 calories, 6 grams total fat and 1.5 grams saturated fat; the thigh has 150 calories, 9 grams total fat and 2.5 grams saturated fat), still fits into that “barbequed” category noted above.

So maybe you’re thinking, okay, I want to be supportive, so I’ll buy the bucket and chuck the chicken. No need. The fine print at the foot of the Web page points out that “KFC restaurant operators have contributed 50 cents to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure for each Komen branded bucket purchased by the operators from April 5, 2010-May 9, 2010….Customer purchases of KFC buckets during the promotion will not directly increase the total contribution.” (It’s also noted that KFC has guaranteed the contribution will be at least $1million. Which really is very nice.)

Notice that the promotions are careful not to mention that any purchase is necessary. They simply say that “for every pink bucket” — not the sale of every bucket — fifty cents goes to Komen. So we consumers are off the hook, really.

A 10-piece bucket of KFC fried chicken (including the sides) costs about $20. If you’re really interested in supporting Komen for the Cure’s efforts, why not just mail them a check directly? Then take a moment to vote in today’s poll!

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‘Preventative’ Mastectomy Found to Not Have any Benefits

Chron

By Todd Ackerman

Breast cancer patients are increasingly having preventive surgery to remove the unaffected breast, but a new study suggests it’s not beneficial for the vast majority of women who undergo it.

Researchers at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center on Thursday reported that an analysis of the records of more than 100,000 patients revealed a survival benefit in 6 percent of those who opted to have a double mastectomy. Most who benefited fit a particular profile that doctors can easily identify at diagnosis.

“It’s important for women to understand that, except for one subset of breast cancer patients, they don’t need to do this,” said Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian, an M.D. Anderson professor of surgical oncology and one of the study’s two lead authors. “Hopefully, it’ll reassure patients wondering if they should.”

The observational study, which was published online Thursday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found a double mastectomy offers a slight but real benefit to patients 50 and younger whose cancer is estrogen receptor negative and in the early stages. The study is the first to find such an association between the procedure and survival.

The study found no benefit among patients 60 or older undergoing a double mastectomy and murky results among those aged 50 to 60.

Women diagnosed with breast cancer are known to have an increased risk of developing breast cancer in the opposite breast. But the study found that preventive surgery on the opposite breast had little survival benefit, save for the one subset, either because patients die from the cancer they already have or from other medical conditions, or because the risk isn’t realized in their lifetime.

Surgeries increasing
The number of double mastectomies has grown dramatically in recent years. Many patients who choose that option say they do so because it gives them peace of mind.

Previous studies have found that the number more than doubled from 1998 to 2003, and Bedrosian said based on her experience the trend has seemingly continued to escalate. Statistics from 2003 show 11 percent of women having a mastectomy opted for one in their disease-free breast as well.

The increase is attributed to scans that can detect smaller, earlier cancers; genetic tests that can warn women of the inherited risk they face; and better plastic surgery techniques that make reconstructive surgery more appealing than it once was.

Bedrosian’s team identified 107,106 women in the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results registry who had a mastectomy to treat Stage I to Stage III breast cancer. Among that group, 8,902 women also had their unaffected breast removed.

At a five-year follow-up, 88.5 percent of those who had the elective mastectomy were alive, compared to 83.7 of those who didn’t.

After controlling for different variables, the M.D. Anderson team found that the younger women with early-stage tumors not fueled by estrogen had a survival benefit of 4.8 percent at five years, meaning for every 100 patients, fewer than five who would have died without the additional surgery were still alive. The prognosis is usually poorer for estrogen receptor-negative patients.

No other group showed a clear benefit.

One expert’s response to the data was to recommend that any woman requesting an elective mastectomy wait a year before having it done.

“In a younger woman with (estrogen receptor)-negative disease, an (elective) mastectomy may be considered,” said Dr. Victor Vogel, national vice president for research at the American Cancer Society. “In the vast majority of women older than 50 with ER-positive disease, prudent waiting is probably the most appropriate.”

Information for patients
One of Bedrosian’s patients was happy to have the data. Diagnosed in December with Stage II estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer, the 33-year-old woman hadn’t thought of a double mastectomy until learning of her particular susceptibility to the disease spreading.

“For me, it was a very matter-of-fact decision,” said Rachel Jackson, an Austin triathlete who has yet to schedule either mastectomy. “I’m planning to live to 70 or 80.”

Nearly 200,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, and 40,000 die of it. The majority do not have mastectomies.

Bedrosian emphasized that the study findings should not be interpreted as “a uniform mandate.”

“This is still a decision to be made by the patient after talking with her doctor,” Bedrosian said. “A younger woman with early-stage ER-negative breast cancer might have good reason not to want a (double) mastectomy, and an older woman — say, with a significant family history — might have good reason to want one.”

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The Positive Effects of Bitter Melon Against Breast Cancer

February 26, 2010

Natural News

By S.L. Baker

A vegetable commonly eaten in India and China called bitter melon (also known by the botanical name Momordica charantia), has been shown in previous studies to have a beneficial impact on blood sugar and cholesterol levels. It turns out that’s not all the health benefits bitter melon offers. A new study by Saint Louis University scientists provides evidence the vegetable triggers a chain of events on a cellular level that stops breast cancer cells from multiplying and also kills them.

Lead researcher Ratna Ray, Ph.D., a professor in the department of pathology at Saint Louis University, noted in a statement to the media that she personally uses bitter melon when she cooks stir fry dishes. She decided to investigate the health effects of bitter melon extract after other researchers discovered how it can lower blood sugar and regulate cholesterol levels. In fact, bitter melon extract has been used by traditional healers in China and India for centuries as a natural treatment for diabetes. But Dr. Ray was surprised to find this vegetable was a powerful inhibitor of breast cancer growth, too.

“To our knowledge, this is the first report describing the effect of bitter melon extract on cancer cells,” Dr. Ray stated. “Our result was encouraging. We have shown that bitter melon extract significantly induced death in breast cancer cells and decreased their growth and spread.”

The research, published in the March 1 edition of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, involved human breast cancer cells exposed to bitter melon extract in the lab. Dr. Ray cautioned that it is too early to jump to conclusions that the extract could help breast cancer patients — but her findings are promising.

“Cancer prevention by the use of naturally occurring dietary substances is considered a practical approach to reduce the ever-increasing incidence of cancer. Studying a high risk breast cancer population where bitter melon is taken as a dietary product will be an important area of future research,” Dr. Ray said in the press statement.

Dr. Ray and colleagues are currently conducting follow-up studies. They are looking at a number of different cancer cell lines in order to investigate how bitter melon halts cancer cell growth. They are also planning to test the vegetable extract in animals to see if it will delay or kill breast cancer cells. If that research goes well, clinical trials in human breast cancer patients could soon follow.

“Breast cancer is a major killer among women around the world, and in that perspective, results from this study are quite significant,” Rajesh Agarwal, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Colorado, Denver School of Pharmacy, and the Cancer Research associate editor for this study, commented in a media release. “This study may provide us with one more agent as an extract that could be used against breast cancer if additional studies hold true.”

Bitter melon is widely grown in Asia, Africa and South America. Extracts of this vegetable are currently included in some dietary supplements in Western countries because bitter melon is known to contain healthful phytochemicals such as carotenoids, flavanoids and polyphenols, as well as vitamin C.

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Double Mastectomy May Not Improve Survival

February 26, 2010

Business Week

By Kathleen Doheny

Women with breast cancer who choose to have a preventive mastectomy on their disease-free breast do reduce their risk of cancer in that breast, studies have shown.

But now new research finds that the survival benefit from that preventive surgery is small and not equal among all women.

“The survival benefit was limited to a small subset of all breast cancer patients [studied],” said study author Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian, an assistant professor of surgical oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston.

Those most likely to derive a survival benefit, she said, were those younger than 50 who had been diagnosed with early-stage cancers that were estrogen receptor (ER)-negative.

ER-negative tumors don’t require estrogen to grow, as do ER-positive tumors, and the prognosis is poorer for the ER-negative cancers, according to the American Cancer Society.

The study is published online Feb. 25 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

According to Bedrosian and others, experts have long known that women diagnosed with breast cancer have an elevated risk of developing cancer in the opposite breast. Removing that breast as a preventive measure reduces, but does not eliminate, the risk of cancer in that breast.

“But we have never really established the difference it makes in the survival of breast cancer patients,” she said. So, Bedrosian and her colleagues used data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database, evaluating 107,106 women with breast cancer who had undergone mastectomy for that cancer between 1998 and 2003, along with a subset of 8,902 who had the opposite breast removed as a preventive measure.

After a five-year follow-up, 88.5 percent of those who had the opposite breast surgery were alive, versus 83.7 percent of those who did not, a difference of less than 5 percent. The improved survival was clear for a select group, mostly the women aged 18 to 49 with early-stage, ER-negative tumors, the researchers found.

There was no information from the database on whether the women had genetic mutations to boost breast cancer risk, Bedrosian noted.

After five years, what might happen? “We actually would expect that number [the nearly 5 percent benefit] would increase over time,” Bedrosian said.

The findings makes sense to Dr. Allison W. Kurian, an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, Calif., who has published research on the topic.

“These results are consistent with other studies,” she said, including her own research published in 2009 in the same journal, which found that the risk for a breast cancer in the opposite breast is affected by a variety of factors, with those having ER-negative tumors in the original breast cancer having a higher risk of getting second tumors in the opposite breast.

Bedrosian said her research suggests most women diagnosed with breast cancer shouldn’t be concerned about the opposite breast: “We cannot demonstrate for most of them a survival benefit [with preventive mastectomy on the opposite breast].”

However, she said, psychological factors should also be taken into account. “There are some patients who may feel they still want to do this,” she said.

Kurian agreed: “This paper does give more information [about the outlook for various women], but it remains a personal decision for women to discuss with their doctor.”

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Breast Cancer Fears Grow Around Household Cleaners

February 15, 2010

Daily Finance

By Alex Selkever

That fresh clean smell that American’s love may be boosting cases of breast cancer in the U.S.– and possibly even causing breast cancer in young children, let alone their moms.

Doctors and environmental scientists are growing more concerned that chemicals found in many household cleaning supplies, such as floor cleaners and glass cleaners, are behind the ongoing increase in breast cancer cases in the U.S. According to The New York Times, the chances that a 50 year-old white woman will develop breast cancer has increased from 1% in 1975 to 12% today. Anecdotal evidence from some of the latest epidemiological data suggests that younger women (and a growing number of men) are contracting the cancer.

Environmental Factors Outweigh Genetics, Health

Some of this increase likely results from better detection. But many of these problems appear to stem from a person’s surroundings rather than their genetics or health. For example, researchers have found that Asian women living in the U.S. have much higher rates of breast cancer than Asian women living in Asia. This implies that the problem is something environmental.

“It is highly likely that environmental toxins in air, food, dust, soil and drinking water have contributed to increasing rates of cancer in Americans of all ages, including our children,” reported Dr. Philip Landrigan, Director of the Center for Children’s Health and the Environment at New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in testimony before Congress. “The known and suspected causes of childhood cancer include benzene, other solvents, radiation, arsenic, parental smoking, certain pesticides and certain chemicals in the environment that have the potential to disrupt the function of the endocrine system.”

Household Items May Be at Fault

Other chemicals that scientists suspect of playing a role in the rise of these illnesses include simple bleach, flame retardants (many of which have been banned in Europe) and components of plastics used in packaging for food, canned goods, and, until recently, children’s bottles and sippy cups. The American public may already be sensing the danger as sales of green cleaning products are skyrocketing. Industry, too, is changing its tune. Both Clorox and cleaning products company S.C. Johnson have begun to reveal ingredients lists for their products, although its still hard to ascertain the true impact of the chemicals they list due to the multiple forms these chemicals could take.

The new disclosure policies are clearly due in part to impending green labeling initiatives by retailing giant Wal-Mart (WMT) and to aggressive rating and disclosure policies by GoodGuide, an online product rating site that focuses on environmental and health impacts of household cleaners, cosmetics and health products. Cleaning products company Clorox (CLX) rolled out a green line of cleaners and the entire segment of green cleaning is growing at triple-digit rates, according to product research firm MinTel.

But many of the substances that health care experts are worried about tend to persist in the environment for many years. So even as Americans switch to a greener cleaning regime, the trends in health problems that may be resulting from these more toxic substances may not slow or reverse for decades. In other words, even if Americans can learn to ditch the happy smells, they are hardly ouf of the woods on breast cancer or other potentially deadly ailments.

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Heal Yourself in 15 Days (part 8)

February 12, 2010

Natural News

By Mike Adams

It also seems too simple: In order to achieve lasting health, simply stop making disease. But the concept is foreign to most people: Making disease? Why would I be making disease?

Mainstream consumers, you see, have been trained by the medical industry to believe that disease strikes spontaneously, without any real cause. One day you have nothing wrong with you, and then suddenly the next day you’re diagnosed with a breast cancer tumor. Shazam! It happens just like being struck by lightning… (and it’s not your fault, you’re told — there’s nothing you could have done about it…)

That’s what they want you to believe, anyway. But the truth is very different: All the most common degenerative diseases — cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, etc. — take many years to grow and expand. A cancer tumor can take 10 years (or even more) before it grows to the size that will show up on a mammogram. That means the tumor has been “under construction” for a decade!

During that time, the patient has been “making cancer” on a daily basis.

By the way, I’ve borrowed this concept from Dr. Thomas Lodi, a brilliant cancer doctor who has a presentation called “Stop Making Cancer.” You can check out his clinic in Arizona at http://www.anoasisofhealing.com or watch his speech for yourself on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKH_…

Dr. Lodi’s concept of “stop making cancer” is so powerful and simple that I borrowed it for this article (with credit, of course) and expanded it to all degenerative diseases. If you want to be healthy, stop making disease!

How disease is manufactured
In reading this, the first question you might ask is, “How do I stop making disease?”

To answer that question, though, you need to understand how disease is created in the first place. All disease begins with an imbalance in the mind or the body (it can originate in either place and then spread to the other).

Disease can be set off by a nutritional deficiency (not enough vitamin D, for example), or a dietary excess (too much homogenized milk). It can be caused by an emotional state such as anger or stress that then spreads to the tissues and begins to create dis-ease in the physical body.

Most disease that’s being “manufactured” in the bodies of people today is created through controllable factors: What people eat, what chemicals they expose themselves too, how much exercise they get (or not), their state of mind, what supplements they take (or don’t) and so on.

There’s a recipe for creating each disease. If you want to manufacture type-2 diabetes, for example, the recipe is very simple:

How to manufacture diabetes:

• Drink lots of liquid sugars and high-fructose corn syrup.
• Consume a huge number of empty calories (junk food).
• Avoid all exercise. Live a sedentary lifestyle.
• Live indoors. Avoid sunshine and the natural world.
• Maintain nutritional deficiencies in vitamin D, selenium, zinc and plant-based nutrients.

If you do this for long enough, you will begin manufacturing diabetes. And before long, you’ll be officially diagnosed with it by a doctor who will say something like, “You’re diabetic.” (Which isn’t really true. You are not defined by a disease. You’re just expressing a certain physiology that’s been named a disease.)

If you want to make cancer, there’s a different recipe:

How to make cancer:

• Expose yourself to radiation (mammograms, CT scans, X-rays, etc.).
• Eat cancer-causing foods like bacon, processed meats and foods with chemical preservatives.

Click here for the full report

New Terrorism: Explosive Breast Implants

February 8, 2010

WND.com

By Joseph Farah

Agents for Britain’s MI5 intelligence service have discovered that Muslim doctors trained at some of Britain’s leading teaching hospitals have returned to their own countries to fit surgical implants filled with explosives, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaida are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery. The lethal explosives – usually PETN (pentaerythritol Tetrabitrate) – are inserted during the operation inside the plastic shapes. The breast is then sewn up.

Similar surgery has been performed on male suicide bombers. In their cases, the explosives are inserted in the appendix area or in a buttock. Both are parts of the body that diabetics use to inject themselves with their prescribed drugs.

The discovery of these methods was made after the London-educated Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came close to blowing up an airliner on Christmas Day with explosives he had stuffed inside his underpants.

Hours after he had failed, GCHQ – Britain’s worldwide eavesdropping “spy in the sky” agency – began to pick up “chatter” emanating from Pakistan and Yemen that alerted MI5 to the creation of the lethal implants.

A hand-picked team was appointed by Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, to investigate the threat. He described it as “one that can circumvent our defense.”

Top surgeons who work in the National Health Service confirmed the feasibility of the explosive implants.

In a report to Evans, one said:

“Properly inserted the implant would be virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines. You would need to subject a suspect to a sophisticated X-ray. Given that the explosive would be inserted in a sealed plastic sachet, and would be a small amount, would make it all the more impossible to spot it with the usual body scanner.”

Explosive experts at Britain’s Porton Down biological and chemical warfare research center told MI5 that a sachet containing as little as five ounces of PETN when activated would blow “a considerable hole” in an airline’s skin which would guarantee it would crash.

Click here for the full report.

Authorities Alarmed by Possible Surgically Placed Explosives

February 1st, 2010

WorldNetDaily

By Joseph Farah

LONDON – Agents for Britain’s MI5 intelligence service have discovered that Muslim doctors trained at some of Britain’s leading teaching hospitals have returned to their own countries to fit surgical implants filled with explosives, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaida are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery. The lethal explosives – usually PETN (pentaerythritol Tetrabitrate) – are inserted during the operation inside the plastic shapes. The breast is then sewn up.

Similar surgery has been performed on male suicide bombers. In their cases, the explosives are inserted in the appendix area or in a buttock. Both are parts of the body that diabetics use to inject themselves with their prescribed drugs.

The discovery of these methods was made after the London-educated Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came close to blowing up an airliner on Christmas Day with explosives he had stuffed inside his underpants.

Keep in touch with the most important breaking news stories about critical developments around the globe with Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence news source edited and published by the founder of WND.

Hours after he had failed, GCHQ – Britain’s worldwide eavesdropping “spy in the sky” agency – began to pick up “chatter” emanating from Pakistan and Yemen that alerted MI5 to the creation of the lethal implants.

A hand-picked team was appointed by Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, to investigate the threat. He described it as “one that can circumvent our defense.”

Top surgeons who work in the National Health Service confirmed the feasibility of the explosive implants.

In a report to Evans, one said:

“Properly inserted the implant would be virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines. You would need to subject a suspect to a sophisticated X-ray. Given that the explosive would be inserted in a sealed plastic sachet, and would be a small amount, would make it all the more impossible to spot it with the usual body scanner.”

Explosive experts at Britain’s Porton Down biological and chemical warfare research center told MI5 that a sachet containing as little as five ounces of PETN when activated would blow “a considerable hole” in an airline’s skin which would guarantee it would crash.

Click here for the full report

Pomegranates Said to Prevent Breast Cancer

January 15, 2010

Natural News

By Mike Adams

Many breast cancers are estrogen-dependent. So a class of drugs called aromatase inhibitors (AI) that block the synthesis of estrogen are used by mainstream medical doctors to attempt to slow the growth of estrogen sensitive breast tumors. Unfortunately, as the Mayo Clinic web site points out, AI drugs — which include anastrozole (Arimidex), letrozole (Femara) and exemestane (Aromasin) — come loaded with side effects including hot flashes, severe joint pain, muscle aches, headache, fatigue, bone fractures and a potential risk of heart disease.

But now comes good news: there appears to be a natural alternative to AIs. Researchers say they’ve found a substance that could prevent the development of hormone-dependent breast cancer and halt the growth of estrogen-driven tumors — pomegranate fruit.

Pomegranates contain phytochemicals known as ellagitannins that work much like aromatase inhibitors, according to results of a study just published in the January issue of Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. And there’s little reason to think any cancer treatment derived from pomegranates would have harmful side effects because the fruit has long been safely consumed as a food.

Shiuan Chen, Ph.D., director of the Division of Tumor Cell Biology and co-leader of the Breast Cancer Research Program at City of Hope in Duarte, California, worked with Lynn Adams, Ph.D., a research fellow at Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope, and other scientists to investigate whether phytochemicals in pomegranates can suppress aromatase and thereby inhibit cancer growth. They screened and analyzed 10 ellagitannin-derived compounds in pomegranates. The results? The research team discovered these natural phytochemicals have the potential to prevent estrogen-dependent breast cancers. One particular substance found in pomegranates dubbed Urolithin B significantly inhibited the growth of cultured breast cancer cells in the lab.

“Phytochemicals suppress estrogen production and that prevents the proliferation of breast cancer cells and the growth of estrogen-responsive tumors,” said Dr. Chen, the principal investigator, in a statement to the media.

Gary Stoner, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at Ohio State University, commented in a statement to the media that additional studies are needed in animals and humans to confirm the ability of Urolithin B to stop hormone-dependent breast cancer. Dr. Stoner, who was not part of the study research team, also recommended additional studies to test pomegranate juice for its effect on estrogen levels, menopausal symptoms and breast density (dense breast tissue is a risk for breast cancer) and to see if it is a cancer preventive agent.

Until then, Stoner said people “might consider consuming more pomegranates to protect against cancer development in the breast and perhaps in other tissues and organs.”

Click here for the full report

More Lawsuits for Pharmaceudical Companies

January 8, 2010

Natural News

By Paul Louis

Donna Kendall was awarded a $6.3 million compensation with $28 million added for punitive damages in her suit against Pfizer this past November. The jury in Philadelphia awarded the punitive penalty after determining that the hormone therapy drugs Premarin, Prempro and Provera caused her breast cancer due to reckless action or inaction by the pharmaceutical companies involved.

Premarin and Prempro were manufactured by Wyeth, which Pfizer purchased recently for $67 billion. In 2003, Pfizer purchased the manufacturer of Provera, Pharmacie & Upjohn. With the help of these acquisitions, Pfizer has become the largest drug manufacturer in the world. According to a Reuters report, Pfizer may have inherited hundreds of more pending cases with those three recently purchased companies.

Before the Kendall case, Wyeth was successfully sued for $79 million in total compensatory and punitive damages. Pfizer seems to take these punches in stride. Of course, they will oppose the decisions and appeal to higher courts. But there was a court decision before these that Pfizer cannot oppose or appeal.

In early September 2009, Pfizer agreed to pay out a total of $2.3 billion, considered a record settlement for a drug company. The civil lawsuits and regulatory fines will be distributed throughout most of the country as a result of a years-long Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation.

But the New York Times considers this a sneeze for Pfizer, mentioning that “While the government said the fine was a record sum, the $2.3 billion fine amounts to less than three weeks of Pfizer’s sales.”

The DOJ was after Pfizer and its subsidiaries for illegal activities and “off label marketing” — the marketing of drugs for uses other than what the FDA approved. The illegally marketed drugs were the pain killers Lyrica and Bextra, the antipsychotic Geodon, and the antibiotic Zyvox. Zyvox was actually marketed for illnesses on which it had no effect.

In addition to seminars for physicians to promote drugs outside of their approved use, kickbacks were offered to physicians for prescribing drugs outside of FDA sanctioned uses. This is the fourth time Pfizer has agreed to a large settlement over fraudulent marketing since 2002. (Salon, source below)

Since 1999, other drug makers such as Eli Lilly and Merck have also incurred huge settlements. But this doesn’t seem to slow Big Pharma down. They just raise prices and create demands for drugs and vaccines even if they harm more than heal.

Click here for the full report

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