Mike Barrett - New Bill to Mandate Flu Vaccine for New Jersey Health Care Workers

Thanks to a new bill currently going through New Jersey legislature, employees working at health care facilities such as general or special hospitals, nursing homes, or home health care agencies may be ‘mandatorily’ required to receive the flu vaccine. The bill, recently approved by the Assembly Health and Senior Services Committee, may be voted on this week.

New Bill to Mandate Flu Vaccine for New Jersey Health Care Workers

Needless to say, this bill is not the first to call for mandatory flu vaccines. Previously, a federal advisory committee has called on hospitals and healthcare clinics to make the seasonal flu shot mandatory for all employees. What the advisory committee fails to mention is that there is a shocking lack of evidence supporting the effectiveness of the flu vaccine — especially regarding certain healthcare workers in particular. The Cochrane Database Review, the gold standard within the evidence-based medical model for deciding the potency of common medical interventions, does not lend clear scientific support to the theory that flu vaccines are safe or effective.

Read More:

http://naturalsociety.com/new-bill-to-mandate-flu-vaccine-for-new-jersey-health-care-workers/

Fifty Medical Doctors for Single Payer Urge Supreme Court to Strike Down Individual Mandate

Fifty medical doctors who favor a single payer health insurance system today urged the US Supreme Court to strike down the individual mandate.

In a brief filed with the Court, the fifty doctors and two non-profit groups – Single Payer Action and It’s Our Economy – said that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate is unconstitutional.

The individual mandate is the provision of the ACA that requires Americans to purchase health insurance from private insurance companies if they do not otherwise have coverage.

The doctors are challenging the government’s claim that the individual mandate is necessary to reach Congress’ goal of universal coverage.

Read More:

http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=3178

Gary Null, Ph.D., and Nancy Ashley, VMD - GARDASIL: CHILD ABUSE BY BIG PHARMA

By Gary Null, PhD and Nancy Ashley, VMD

January 9, 2012

In 1987, I was asked to debate a group of 6 scientists about the very promising AIDS drug, AZT.  Signs around NYU Medical School exhorted everyone to “Put Time on Your Side”, and the vast majority of activists, including ACT UP, were pushing the government to allocate all available funds to get this drug into as many people as possible who had been diagnosed with AIDS.  I was the only one who was dissenting and there was a simple reason:  I had spoken with John Lauritsen.

Lauritsen, an investigative journalist who wrote for the New York Native in the 1980s and 1990s, knew that AZT was a fraud.  Originally a chemotherapy drug that was rejected due to excessive toxicity, AZT was resurrected for use as an AIDS treatment and fast tracked by the FDA for approval in just six months.  Lauritsen looked closely at the one single study used as a basis for this approval, and found:  “the description of methodology was incomplete and incoherent.  Not a single table was acceptable according to statistical standards – indeed, not a single table made sense.  In particular, the first report, on “efficacy” was marred by contradictions, ill-logic, and special pleading.”  Lauritsen discovered that this poor-quality study was unblinded early, allowing both doctors and patients to know whether AZT or the placebo was being taken, thus completely invalidating the study.  Then the study itself was terminated early, ostensibly so that all participants would be able to take AZT, which appeared so effective at preventing death from AIDS.  The real-life follow up, however, at no time repeated the stunning results of this mangled study.  Instead, according to Lauritsen, “More than 96% of all “AIDS” deaths in the U.S. occurred after AZT was approved for marketing in 1987. Those deaths were not caused by a virus, but by AZT. “

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Bruce E. Levine - 7 Reasons America's Mental Health Industry Is a Threat to Our Sanity

Why do some of us become dissident mental health professionals?

The majority of psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals “go along to get along” and maintain a status quo that includes drug company corruption, pseudoscientific research and a “standard of care” that is routinely damaging and occasionally kills young children. If that sounds hyperbolic, then you probably have not heard of Rebecca Riley, and how the highest levels of psychiatry described her treatment as “appropriate and within responsible professional standards.”

When Rebecca Riley was 28 months old, based primarily on the complaints of her mother that she was “hyper” and had difficulty sleeping, psychiatrist Kayoko Kifuji, at the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, diagnosed Rebecca with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Kifuji prescribed clonidine, a hypertensive drug with significant sedating properties, a drug Kifuji also prescribed to Rebecca’s older sister and brother. The goal of the Riley parents—obvious to many in their community and later to juries—was to attain psychiatric diagnoses for their children that would qualify them for disability payments and to sedate their children making them easy to manage.

By the time Rebecca was three years old, again based mainly on parental complaints, Kifuji had given Rebecca an additional diagnosis of bipolar disorder and prescribed two additional heavily sedating drugs, the antipsychotic Seroquel and the anticonvulsant Depakote.

At the age of four, Rebecca was dead.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/153634/7_reasons_america%27s_mental_health_industry_is_a_threat_to_our_sanity

[Video] Meryl Nass, M.D., on Vaccines

Meryl Nass, M.D., Internal Medicine, Anthrax Vaccine, and Gulf War Syndrome Expert speaks out on vaccines.

Philip Caper - Do We Need Health Insurance?

Published on Friday, December 16, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/16-9

by Philip Caper

Do Americans need health insurance? The short answer is no — at least not in the form it currently exists in America.

It is true that in many wealthy countries private insurance companies are used in the financing of universal health care systems. But they are nothing like American companies. They are regulated public utilities and are told by their governments who to insure, what to cover and how much and when to pay. Most are prohibited from making a profit and are required to pay any willing provider. Not exactly the American model.

The purpose of health care financing systems should be — and is in all other wealthy countries — to facilitate the delivery of health care services, to protect individuals and families against huge medical care expenses and to avoid breaking the national bank while they do so. But in America, our private insurance system actually interferes with the delivery of health care and is rapidly becoming too expensive.

Last month I argued for adopting a universal health care system on moral, ethical and economic grounds. It is not only more humane but cheaper to cover everybody. We have moved in fits and starts toward that goal since the enactment of Medicare in 1965.

The recent federal health reform law took a few steps forward. But we are now taking a couple steps back, especially in Maine. Last week Gov. Paul LePage proposed disqualifying 65,000 beneficiaries of MaineCare. Earlier this year, the Legislature enacted PL90 that rolls back regulations intended to spread the financial risks of illness and improve access to health care for those most in need of it.

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Medicine For Sale: Tracing the Shadowy Money Trail that Exploits your Health (Part 1)

By Gary Null, PhD and Jeremy Stillman

Each day, millions of Americans visit a physician. Whether they go to the office of a primary care physician, consult with a specialist or seek medical assistance at an outpatient clinic or hospital emergency room, in all cases, there is an underlying assumption that the quality of care they are given must be the best in the world because we spend nearly twice as much as any other country in the world on individual healthcare.   Also, we are led to believe by our physicians and nurses, the media and the many federal agencies that oversee the medical-industrial complex, including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Cancer Institute (NCI) that everything offered to patients is based upon scientifically proven therapies for safety and efficacy or science-based medicine.  

At the same time, we are told that any approaches to health involving non-science-based medicine is to be rejected; these include homeopathy, ayurvedic medicine, acupuncture, acupressure, massage, aromatherapy, magnet therapy, chiropractic medicine and supplementation with vitamins.  We are told that such modalities have no foundation in science and that they have an almost cult-like following.  Our health authorities make it clear that patients pursuing these alternative therapies have never made any improvements, in any circumstances, simply because they aren’t dealing with science-based medicine.  The medical establishment tells us that anyone who sees improvement in their health using a non-science-based therapy was either misdiagnosed in the first place or improved only because they were treated by some form of science-based medicine that they must have received before.  Hence, all practitioners of alternative medicine must be at best delusional, and at worse, out-and-out frauds and quacks who should be disgraced and imprisoned.  

This has been the existing medical paradigm for nearly a century.  Confronted with this situation, we ask a few basic questions: Is science-based medicine safe and effective?  If so, where is the proof? And if it is not safe and effective, where is the proof?  We also ask are alternative therapies are safe and effective? If they are, where is the proof? If they are not, where is the proof?  These are reasonable questions to ask.

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Medical News Today - High Level Of Waste In Health Spending, Says Medicare And Medicaid Boss

Medical News Today, 05 Dec 2011

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/238654.php

Dr. Donald M. Berwick, head of Medicare and Medicaid until last Thursday, stated that up to 30% of spending on health is wasted with absolutely no benefit to beneficiaries (patients). He added that his agency's cumbersome and archaic regulations are partly to blame. He claims too many resources and too much time is dedicated to things that do not help patients one bit; something doctors are fully aware of too.

In an interview last Thursday, Dr. Berwick said:

"Much is done that does not help patients at all,
and many physicians know it."

During the interview, Berwick talked about the previous 17 months, while he was at the helm as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, his failures, successes and frustrations, and dealing with criticisms from Republican lawmakers.

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Dr. Mercola - How Ghostwritten Medical Articles Can Impact Your Health

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/11/26/medical-journals-using-ghost-writers.aspx?e_cid=20111126_DNL_art_2

Unfortunately, the practice of employing ghostwriters can have very serious ramifications for your health. For example, an August 4, 2009 New York Times article reported how Wyeth Pharmaceutical Company used this ghostwriting practice to successfully peddle hormone replacement therapy in women. Physicians prescribed these drugs based on 26 studies published in the medical literature, affirming the benefits and downplaying the risks of hormone replacement. 
As a result, sales of Premarin and Prempro soared. 
However, all the papers turned out to have been written by ghostwriters hired by Wyeth, and many women have since sued the drug maker for health problems suffered from these drugs. 

• Wyeth-Ayerst—Redux. Wyeth paid $20,000 for an article on the "therapeutic effects" of their diet pill, Redux (dexfenfluramine). As detailed in the book Our Daily Meds, Dr. Richard Atkinson, a professor at the University of Wisconsin was to receive $1,500 in return for putting his name to the finished piece. An excerpt from Our Daily Meds reads:

"When the article was complete, Dr. Atkinson sent a letter to Excerpta, praising the ghostwriter's work. "Let me congratulate you and your writer on an excellent and thorough review of the literature, clearly written," the doctor wrote. "... Perhaps I can get you to write all my papers for me! My only general comment is that this piece may make dexfenfluramine sound better than it really is."

A year later, the drug was pulled from the market as doctors began reporting heart valve injuries in as many as one-third of patients taking the drug. Redux, Pondimin (a similar drug), and fen-phen (of which dexfenfluramine was a part) were later linked to dozens of deaths.

• Parke-Davis (acquired by Pfizer in 2004)—Neurontin. Parke-Davis contracted with a medical education communication company (MECC) to write articles in support of the drug to the tune of $13,000 to $18,000 per article. In turn, MECC paid $1,000 each to friendly physicians and pharmacists to sign off as authors of the articles, making the material appear independent.Last year, Pfizer was found guilty of violating U.S. racketeering laws by illegally promoting off-label uses of Neurontin, and were fined more than $142 million in damages. 
  Merck—Vioxx. This deadly drug, which was eventually blamed for some 60,000+ deaths, was also linked to a number of shameful scandals relating to fraudulent studies and the use of ghostwriters to boost sales. The New England Journal of Medicine admittedly published an erroneous and biased Vioxx study, and the Annals of Internal Medicine found itself in similar hot water when one of the "authors" of a 2003 Vioxx study confessed he had little to do with the research.

Wendell Potter - Does the U.S. Have the World's Best Health Care System? Yes, If You're Talking About the Third World

Published on Tuesday, November 29, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/29-6

by Wendell Potter

A little more than a year ago, on the day after the GOP regained control of the House of Representatives, Speaker-to-be John Boehner said one of the first orders of business after he took charge would be the repeal of health care reform.

"I believe that the health care bill that was enacted by the current Congress will kill jobs in America, ruin the best health care system in the world, and bankrupt our country," Boehner said at a press conference. "That means we have to do everything we can to try to repeal this bill and replace it with common sense reforms to bring down the cost of health care."

Boehner is not the first nor the only Republican to try to make us believe that the U.S. has the world's best health care system and that we're bound to lose that distinction because of Obamacare. I've heard GOP candidates for president say the same thing in recent months, charging that we need to get rid of a President who clearly is trying to fix something that doesn't need fixing, something that isn't broken in the first place.

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