Gary Null PhD and Nancy Ashley VMD, MS - The Flu Vaccine: The Hidden Danger

It is fall and another flu season is upon us.  The CDC’s big marketing claim about the flu vaccine emphasizes repeatedly that “36,000 Americans die of flu each year.”   But is this true?  A 2005 study from the British Medical Journal debunks this figure by revealing two things:  first, the number is not based in counting actual deaths.  It comes from a statistical model which only estimates mortality but doesn’t actually track it.  Second, if anyone questions this large mortality, the CDC inflates the numbers by combining deaths from flu and pneumonia as though they were all flu deaths.  Actually, the annual deaths from pneumonia unrelated to flu are far greater than those from flu.1     

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Science Daily - National Health Care Scorecard: United States Scores 64 out of 100

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111018121836.htm

ScienceDaily (Oct. 18, 2011) — The U.S. health care system scored 64 out of 100 on key measures of performance, according to the third national scorecard report from the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, released October 18. The scorecard finds that -- despite pockets of improvement -- the U.S as a whole failed to improve when compared to best performers in this country, and among other nations. The report also finds significant erosion in access to care and affordability of care, as health care costs rose far faster than family incomes.

At the same time, the scorecard highlights some bright spots for the U.S., with notable gains in quality of care in areas that have been the focus of public reporting or collaborative improvement initiatives. For example, 50 percent of adults with high blood pressure had it under control in 2007-2008, compared with only 31 percent in 1999-2000. In addition, hospital quality indicators for treatment of heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia, and prevention of surgical complications, have improved substantially across the country since hospitals began publicly reporting their quality data through a federal website.

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"Mike Adams" - Media hoax exposed: Recent attack on vitamins a fabricated scare campaign

Mike Adams, NaturalNews.com October 14, 2011

http://www.naturalnews.com/033883_vitamins_mortality_risk.html

(NaturalNews) TIME, USA Today, MSNBC, NPR, CTV, the LA Times and numerous other mainstream media outlets have all been running a juvenile hoax over the last week. Through various misleading headlines, they're all claiming that vitamins might kill you. Here are some of the headlines:

Study links vitamins to higher death rates in women - CTV

Study: Vitamins may increase death risk in older women - USA Today

We've Been Wasting a Ton of Money on Vitamins and Dietary Supplements - TIME

Some common vitamin supplements could increase death risk - MSNBC

Dietary supplements risky for older women, study finds - LA Times

Supplements Look Risky In Study Of Older Women - NPR

Vitamins do more harm than good, new suggest says - News.com.au

Women Who Take Vitamin Supplements May Have Increased Death Risk - Huffington Post

There are literally hundreds of headlines from mainstream news sources that essentially say the same thing.

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"S.L. Baker" - Doctors speak out: healthcare has been reduced to a making money factory

S. L. Baker, NaturalNews.com  October 15, 2011 

http://www.naturalnews.com/033881_health_care_profits.html

(NaturalNews) Two doctors from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard's teaching hospital, have taken an unusual step for the medical profession. These courageous physicians are speaking out about today's healthcare system which emphasizes money over individualized patient care.

In an article just published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Pamela Hartzband, MD, and Jerome Groopman,MD, are blunt about their frustration with a system that has "reduced medicine to economics." In fact, they go so far as to say hospitals have been turned into "factories" that reduce clinical encounters between a patient and doctor into simply "economic transactions."

"Patients are no longer patients, but rather customers or consumers. Doctors and nurses have transmuted into providers," Pamela Hartzband, MD, and Jerome Groopman MD, wrote. "We are in the midst of an economic crisis and efforts to reform the health care system have centered on controlling spiraling costs. To that end, many economists and policy makers have proposed that patient care should be industrialized and standardized. Hospitals and clinics should be run like modern factories and archaic terms like doctor, nurse and patient must therefore be replaced with terminology that fits this new order."

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"William Rivers Pitt"- The Cult of Death

Tuesday 13 September 2011

by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/cult-death/1315937077

Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

- Matthew 25:40 (King James)

Trying to figure out what this whole "Tea Party" phenomenon is all about is a lot like trying to peer into the bottom of a muddy pool. The "mainstream" news media has accepted them as a legitimate, powerful force in American politics, as evidenced by CNN's so-called "Tea Party Debate" for the Republican presidential candidates on Monday night. A group that did not exist three years ago suddenly has enough clout to rate a television banner and a chunk of prime-time coverage.

But who are these people, really?

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Number of Uninsured Climbs to Highest Figure Since Passage of Medicare, Medicaid

Published on Tuesday, September 13, 2011 by Physicians for a National Health Program

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2011/september/number-of-uninsured-climbs-to-highest-figure-since-passage-of-medicare-medicaid

50 million uninsured shows urgency of enacting single-payer Medicare for all: national doctors group

Official estimates by the Census Bureau showing an increase of about 1 million in the number of Americans without health insurance in 2010 – to a 35-year high of 49.9 million persons, or 16.3 percent of the population, under the bureau’s revised calculation method – underscore the urgency of going beyond the Obama administration’s federal health law and swiftly implementing a single-payer, improved Medicare-for-all program, spokespersons for Physicians for a National Health Program said today.

"Tragically, we know that the new figures of uninsured mean a preventable annual death toll of about 50,000 people -- that's about one death every 10 minutes," said Dr. Garrett Adams, president of PNHP, a nationwide organization of 18,000 physicians. Employment-based coverage continued to decline. The bureau said 55.3 percent of Americans were covered by employment-based plans in 2010, down from 56.1 percent in 2009. It was the eleventh consecutive year of decline, from 64.2 percent in 2000.

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"Mary Agnes Carey and Marilyn Serafini"- Consumer Advocates Fear Health Law Will Favor Business

WASHINGTON — Publicly, consumer and patient advocates continue to cheer wildly for last year's health care law. Behind the scenes, however, some worry that they're losing a few key battles to the insurance and business communities.

They point to a long-sought provision in the law that entitles patients to external reviews if insurers won't pay for a medical service, and they charge that recent regulations limit its effectiveness. One of their biggest gripes? It allows insurers to choose their own "external" reviewers.

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"Ed Silverman"- Is That Plastic Shrink Wrap In Your Merck Vaccine?

By Ed Silverman // July 29th, 2011 // 12:13 pm

As if Merck does not have enough problems with vaccine production, the drugmaker apparently distributed charred bits of plastic shrink wrap in vials of various vaccines - including Gardasil for preventing HPV infection, Varivax for chicken pox, Pneumovax for pneumococcal disease, Zostavax for shingles and MMR II for measles, mumps and rubella, according to Dow Jones.

In 2008, the FDA issued a warning letter about manufacturing problems at Merck’s West Point, Pa., plant (read here). Since then, FDA inspection reports have cited more problems: the presence of metal particles in certain products, cracks in vaccine vials and delays in Merck’s reporting adverse event from products made at the plant to the FDA, Dow Jones writes.

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"Ed Silverman" - NIH Proposal On Conflicts Of Interest Is Gutted

By Ed Silverman // August 2nd, 2011 // 11:15 am

http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/08/nih-proposal-on-conflicts-of-interest-is-gutted/

One year after proposing to strengthen conflicts of interest rules for grant recipients, the National Institutes of Health has apparently gutted a key provision that would require universities to disclose financial ties between academic researchers and industry on publicly accessible web sites, according to Nature.

Specifically, the NIH proposal would require academic researchers who receive agency funding to more thoroughly report any financial conflicts of interest, and also require institutions - such as universities - to do a better job of gathering this information and then forwarding it to the NIH. This would include posting info on a web site.

At the time the proposal was made in May 2010, NIH director Francis Collins (see photo) told a media briefing that “the way in which science is moving forward, in order to be successful, partnerships between NIH funded researchers and industry are essential, they have been and will be, but we need to preserve the public trust” (read here).

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"Stephanie Nebehay" - Going into hospital far riskier than flying: WHO

Thu, Jul 21 2011

By Stephanie Nebehay

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/21/us-safety-idUSTRE76K45R20110721?WT.tsrc=Social%2BMedia&WT.z_smid_dest=Twitter&WT.z_smid=twtr-reuters_health&feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews

GENEVA (Reuters) - Millions of people die each year from medical errors and infections linked to health care and going into hospital is far riskier than flying, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.

"If you were admitted to hospital tomorrow in any country... your chances of being subjected to an error in your care would be something like 1 in 10. Your chances of dying due to an error in health care would be 1 in 300," Liam Donaldson, the WHO's newly appointed envoy for patient safety, told a news briefing.

This compared with a risk of dying in an air crash of about 1 in 10 million passengers, according to Donaldson, formerly England's chief medical officer.

"It shows that health care generally worldwide still has a long way to go," he said.

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