"YouTube Clip" - Big Pharma—Define 'Better'

Watch this Music Video Featuring Chill EB - Psycho/pharma spends billions of dollars a year marketing mental 'disorders' & drugs for kids -- yet these drugs are documented by international drug regulatory agencies to cause mania, psychosis, hallucinations, suicide, violence, homicidal ideation, heart attack, stroke and death. What's more, they are being prescribed for psychiatric disorders that are simply a checklist of behaviors. Get the facts here http://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-disorders/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7rACI-WJEw&feature=player_embedded

"Viji Sundaram and Zeina Awad" - Big Pharma Testing Drugs on India’s Poor

By Viji Sundaram and Zeina Awad, New America Media
Posted on August 7, 2011, Printed on August 8, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151934/big_pharma_testing_drugs_on_india%E2%80%99s_poor

U.S. pharmaceutical companies have moved their operations overseas in the past decade, testing their drugs on poor people in such lands as Russia, China, Brazil and Romania. It is a $30 billion business, and today around 105 countries are allowing such large corporations as Merck and AstraZeneca to conduct clinical trials on their soil.

One country that has experienced a boom like no other in this industry is India, with its widely spoken English, an established medical infrastructure and welcoming attitudes towards foreign industry. Most importantly, these pharmaceutical companies are exploiting the country’s vast number of illiterate and poor people who are willing to become guinea pigs.

Zeina Awad, a reporter for Al Jazeera’s “Fault Lines” program, traveled to India to investigate clinical research being conducted there. She explored what role the United States regulatory agencies are playing in overseeing the clinical trials, and whether the testing complies with international ethical standards. 

Her report, “Outsourced: Clinical Trials Overseas,” aired on Al Jazeera English recently. 

New America Media Health Editor Viji Sundaram interviewed Awad about what she found.

Click to read more ...

Alliance for Natural Health: NDI Draft Guidance is a Big, Fat Gift to Big Pharma

Alliance for Natural Health,  August 2, 2011 @ 5:42 pm In Uncategorized | No Comments

http://www.anh-usa.org/ndi-draft-guidance-is-a-big-fat-gift-to-big-pharma/

Want to let the drug industry take your favorite supplements off the market, patent them, and sell them back to you—by doctor’s prescription only—for 10 or 100 (or even more) times what you’re paying now? A follow-up to our recent Action Alert ^[1].

As Big Pharma becomes more desperate to boost flagging profits, the industry will likely use this tactic to find new sources of revenue—and shame on the FDA for so blatantly aiding and abetting it!

This coming year, seven of the world’s twenty bestselling drugs will lose their patent protection and can be sold in generic forms. On this list are the top two money-makers ever created: cholesterol fighting (but overall health-threatening) Lipitor ^[2] and blood thinning (but bone-destroying) Plavix. This wave of expiring drugs patents will have unprecedented and devastating effects on the industry bottom line. One drug recently made available in generic form—Protonix, a medication for severe heartburn ^[3] (again, not a drug we would use, and especially dangerous when used with the blood-thinner mentioned above)—previously cost about $170 per month when it was still under patent; its generic version now costs $16. With seven of the top-selling drugs expected to see similarly drastic drops in prices, the drug industry is in a panic ^[4]—especially considering the fact that there are no new “blockbuster” drugs in the pharmaceutical industry pipeline. Under these circumstances, why not try to turn some supplements into drugs?

Click to read more ...

Monica Young: America conned -- Psycho pharma drug pushing empire under fire

by Monica G. Young
http://www.naturalnews.com/033133_psychoactive_drugs_Big_Pharma.html


(NaturalNews) Is America truly stricken with widespread mental illness? Do tens of millions need mind-altering drugs? A recent flurry of media articles lead readers to a realization that Big Pharma and the "mental health" industry have deceived Americans on a grand scale.

The "New York Review of Books" two-part article by Dr. Marcia Angell, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School and former Editor in Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, summarizes it extremely well. She analyzes three books by authors Irving Kirsch, Robert Whitaker, and Daniel Carlat. Each deconstructs the apparent mental illness epidemic and theory that mental disorders stem from brain chemical imbalances which can be corrected by drugs.

Dr. Angell's review has sparked a host of other journalists to applaud her and fuel the fire. An article in Forbes even concludes, "psychopharma is looking like an idea whose time has passed."

As an overview:

Click to read more ...

James Ridgeway: Mass Psychosis in the US

How Big Pharma got Americans hooked on anti-psychotic drugs

By James Ridgeway

AL JAZEERA, July 22, 2011

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/07/20117313948379987.html

Drug companies like Pfizer are accused of pressuring doctors into over-prescribing medications to patients in order to increase profits [GALLO/GETTY]

Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux.

Once upon a time, antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses - primarily schizophrenia and bipolar disorder - to treat such symptoms as delusions, hallucinations, or formal thought disorder. Today, it seems, everyone is taking antipsychotics. Parents are told that their unruly kids are in fact bipolar, and in need of anti-psychotics, while old people with dementia are dosed, in large numbers, with drugs once reserved largely for schizophrenics. Americans with symptoms ranging from chronic depression to anxiety to insomnia are now being prescribed anti-psychotics at rates that seem to indicate a national mass psychosis.

Click to read more ...

"Drugging of Our Children" Included on list of 100 Best (Free) Science Documentaries

Onlineuniversities.com have listed our acclaimed documentary "The Drugging of Our Children" as one of the best science documentaries. Even better? You can watch it online right now, for free! If you haven't seen the film already, it is a hard, interrogative light shined on an industry and culture of 'medicate first, ask questions later', examining the awful effects of this practice on our children.

The Drugging Of Our Childen

'Death By Medicine' Documentary Wins 'Best of Fest' Award

We're thrilled to announce that our recently completed documentary 'Death By Medicine' has taken the award for 'Best Independent Documentary' at this year's Best of Fest Festival! The award distiguishes DBM as one of the top 5% of over 37,000 Independent films this year. Quite a distinction! - Gary

Antidepressant Medication: Millions Prescribed Have No Psychiatric Diagnosis

Are you taking antidepressants for something like sleep problems or a sour mood? Well according to a recent study in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, you may not be alone. Researchers found that more than a quarter of Americans currently taking antidepressants haven't actually been diagnosed with the conditions that traditionally qualified one for a prescription, like depression or anxiety disorders.

Click to read more ...

Vaccine Seizures: Feds Checking Out Post-Flu-Shot Seizures In Young Kids

Government officials are investigating an apparent increase in fever-related seizures in young children after they got a flu shot.

Click to read more ...

Here Come the Medical Credit Cards -- Future $150 Billion Industry Preys on Need for Easy Money

In Ulysses’ time, the sirens sang hauntingly beautiful songs to lure sailors to their doom. Today we have fiscal sirens. They don’t sing. They simply flash squares of plastic in front of hapless victims, thereby drowning them in red ink.

Click to read more ...