Stephen Barrett and Medical McCarthyism

By S.L & R.A

(Concerned that those who engage in uncontested attacks against supporters of alternative health 

would misconstrue me and my co-author as such, we mean to clarify the following: we are not 

advocates of the alternative health movement, rather, we are advocates and supporters of truth. - S.L 

& R.A)

Introduction

Dr. Stephen Barrett is a ubiquitous figure in the world of health and medicine with a unique talent. 

A talent, described by Health and Human Services official, Dr. Thomas R. Eng, as a gift for widely 

"[influencing] behavior change" via interactive media. Elaborating, Eng states that "[Barrett] tailors 

information and interactions to the individual," adding, "In print media, there is some kind of 

vetting. In interactive, anyone or their brother can slap a Web page together."

One assumes that Barrett, in his efforts and opinions, is authoritative and correct, speaking as a 

retired physician / psychiatrist who's been interviewed on innumerable occasions by CNN, The 

New York Times, has testified as an expert before congress, and, in a larger sense, has been 

adopted by mainstream media as the "consumer watchdog" du jour within the field of medicine. 

Well, alternative medicine, more specifically. 

He has authored reports on many of the most accomplished practitioners and experts in the 

alternative health movement and in doing so, has generated a fair amount of controversy and mixed 

media attention. So much, in fact, that the reports on his site have come to dominate web search 

engine results, and in effect, preemptively tainting the reputations of hundreds of legitimate, well 

credentialed alternative health practitioners. Upon discovering this, my curiosity was piqued and I 

felt compelled to conduct some independent research on the matter, and hopefully, reach a 

conclusion as to whether Barrett was, indeed, an expert, or guilty of what Dr. Eng describes as 

"medical McCarthyism".

My focus would be the history and relationship between Barrett and Dr. Gary Null. Null is 

arguably the most respected, prolific advocate and high-profile voice in the alternative heath 

movement, influencing a massively wide spectrum of people throughout a varied host of philanthropic efforts and causes. The purpose of this paper is to not to bring direct challenge to 

Barrett's work or ideology, but rather to present facts and convey reasoned, journalistic 

interrogation into the heart of this debate. To that end, we can look to Null's extensive work and 

research on the negative effects of fluoride, mercury, vaccines, sugar and caffeine, all of which, 

Barrett has called in to question. Research will demonstrate that science firmly supports all of 

Null's conclusions and solutions on these topics. Fact checking and research is the cornerstone of 

the journalistic process, yet, Barrett and those media outlets who would employ his subjective 

opinion as scientific fact, quite simply, have not done their homework here. 

Click to read more ...

BAD TO THE BONE - Fraud IS the Business Plan

by Gary Null, Ph.D. and Nancy Ashley, VMD

Part I – GlaxoSmithKline

You would have thought the way the stock price rose on Monday, July 2, 2012, that good news had been reported about British company GlaxoSmithKline instead of the announcement that the company had agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges and pay a $3 billion criminal settlement to settle the largest case of healthcare fraud in U.S. history. In fact, the settlement was previously disclosed by GSK to its shareholders and was at least $150 million lower than expected. Not only is this a relatively paltry sum for a company which brings in $45 billion a year in revenue, but it essentially allows Glaxo to be absolved of its many crimes, and the injuries and deaths resulting from its dangerous pharmaceuticals over the past decade. It used to be that in most cases, a fraud settlement of more than a billion dollars would destroy a company. But as we have repeatedly seen over the years, this is just a regular cost of doing business for the pharmaceutical industry. Ultimately, this $3 billion fine is just a line item on GSK’s balance sheet.

The settlement, which breaks the previous record of $2.3 billion set by Pfizer in 2009, is nothing new for GlaxoSmithKline. According to a 2010 report by Public Citizen, since 1991 – around the same time as the infamous Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) allowed drug companies to buy approval from the FDA — GSK has had to pay more in fines and settlements to the federal and state governments than any other pharmaceutical company: a total of $4.5 billion not counting this week’s $3 billion.

So what misdemeanors did Glaxo agree to plead guilty to?

Avandia – Failing to disclose safety data: fine $243 million

Glaxo brought Avandia (rostiglitazone) to market in May 1999 amid great fanfare, and it quickly became the best-selling diabetes drug in the world. There were signs early on that Avandia caused a significant increase in heart attacks, however, which were ignored and denied by the company and the FDA. In the settlement, Glaxo was charged with failing to disclose the results of studies between 2001-2007 showing the increased risk of heart attack and death from Avandia. Additionally, Avandia has been linked to stroke, hepatotoxicity, bone fractures, and blindness. Nevertheless, because of aggressive marketing to medical professionals and clients alike, and despite the fact that reports of injury and death were hitting the mainstream media by 2007, sales of Avandia still topped $1.2 billion as late as 2009. The drug was completely taken off the market in Europe in 2010. Senators Grassley and Baucus tried to get the drug taken off the US market starting in 2008, but they were unsuccessful, despite the fact that the report they issued revealed that Avandia caused 500 unnecessary heart attacks a month in the US! The FDA held firm in their support of Avandia and GlaxoSmithKline even in the face of conflict of interest charges in the panel members who voted in favor of it. Currently the use of Avandia in the US is restricted to those already using the drug, and it remains available to them despite the risks and despite the fact that there are dozens of similar drugs available.

Paxil and Wellbutrin – Introducing Misbranded Drugs into Interstate Commerce (Marketing antidepressants for unapproved uses): Fine $757 million

Paxil, (paroxetine) a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) made by Glaxo’s predecessor, SmithKline Beecham (SKB), was approved for adult depression in 1992. Shortly thereafter, SKB started a multi-site study of Paxil for use in adolescent major depression. Study 392, which ended in 1997, showed that there was no significant difference between Paxil and placebo on ANY of the eight pre-specified outcome measures.⁷ It showed further that Paxil caused increased risk of suicide, self-harming behavior, and harm to others in the adolescents who took it, even as much as one single dose in certain susceptible individuals. The company, instead of taking any steps to protect consumers, decided to manage the negative results by ignoring unfavorable data and presenting fabricated positive results instead through a ghostwritten article published in 2001 in the prestigious Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. SmithKlineBeecham decided that this was the best strategy to minimize any potential negative commercial impact, according to an internal document. On the strength of selectively reporting the evidence of study 329 in the JAACAP article, doctors began prescribing Paxil widely for adolescents, even though the FDA had never approved the drug for this purpose. It wasn’t long, however, before the drastic increase in suicides among adolescents taking Paxil became obvious. On June 10, 2003, the British medical authorities took decisive action and banned the use of Paxil in adolescents.¹³ Our own FDA, however, was less concerned, and added a black box warning advising of the risk of suicide in adolescents taking Paxil without banning the drug.¹⁴

Click to read more ...

World's Faith in Capitalism Erodes as Financial Crisis Continues: Survey

The financial crisis that has bred unemployment, austerity, and economic pain across the global for nearly fives years is also battering the reputation of the system many believe to be its main cause: "free market" capitalism.

According to a new global poll by Pew Research, only half or fewer -- in 11 of 21 nations surveyed -- now agree with the statement that people are better off in a "free market" economy than in some other kind.

In nine of the 16 countries for which there is trend data since 2007, before the financial crisis began, support for capitalism is down, with the greatest declines in Italy (down 23 percentage points) and Spain (down 20 points).

Support for capitalism is greatest in Brazil, China, Germany and the U.S, says the report. The biggest skeptics of the free market are in Mexico and Japan.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/13?print

French Foreign Minister Accused of Falsifying Reports on Syria "To Provoke a War"

On 19 March 2012, a high French official invited Arab journalists based in Paris to inform them of the internal battle being waged within the French government and, in particular, the Quai d’Orsay [the French Foreign Ministry] regarding Syria. According to this person, the French Ambassador in Damascus, Eric Chevallier, whose embassy had just been shut down and who had returned to Paris, challenged Minister Juppé in front of his colleagues. He accused Alain Juppé of having ignored his embassy reports and of having falsified summaries of them to provoke a war against Syria.

In March 2011, at the beginning of the events currently besetting Syria, the Foreign Ministry hurriedly dispatched fact finders to Deraa to appraise what was happening. Their report, submitted to Paris, indicated that tensions had dissipated following several demonstrations, information that contradicted Al-Jazeera and France 24 reports that the city of Deraa was being violently torn apart. The ambassador requested the mission be extended in order to follow developing events. The Foreign Minister, furious about the first report, telephoned him and demanded that he alter it to state that a bloody repression of the city was occurring. The Ambassador then arranged a teleconference between the Chief of Mission in Deraa and the Minister and had him repeat that no such repression had occurred. The minister then threatened the ambassador and the conversation ended icily.

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31904

Paul Craig Roberts - The Real Libor Scandal

According to news reports, UK banks fixed the London interbank borrowing rate (Libor) with the complicity of the Bank of England (UK central bank) at a low rate in order to obtain a cheap borrowing cost. The way this scandal is playing out is that the banks benefitted from borrowing at these low rates. Whereas this is true, it also strikes us as simplistic and as a diversion from the deeper, darker scandal.

Banks are not the only beneficiaries of lower Libor rates. Debtors (and investors) whose floating or variable rate loans are pegged in some way to Libor also benefit. One could argue that by fixing the rate low, the banks were cheating themselves out of interest income, because the effect of the low Libor rate is to lower the interest rate on customer loans, such as variable rate mortgages that banks possess in their portfolios. But the banks did not fix the Libor rate with their customers in mind. Instead, the fixed Libor rate enabled them to improve their balance sheets, as well as help to perpetuate the regime of low interest rates. The last thing the banks want is a rise in interest rates that would drive down the values of their holdings and reveal large losses masked by rigged interest rates.

Indicative of greater deceit and a larger scandal than simply borrowing from one another at lower rates, banks gained far more from the rise in the prices, or higher evaluations of floating rate financial instruments (such as CDOs), that resulted from lower Libor rates. As prices of debt instruments all tend to move in the same direction, and in the opposite direction from interest rates (low interest rates mean high bond prices, and vice versa), the effect of lower Libor rates is to prop up the prices of bonds, asset-backed financial instruments, and other "securities." The end result is that the banks' balance sheets look healthier than they really are.

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Real-Libor-Scandal-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-120714-763.html

Tim Karr - Freedom = Censorship?

Think you have the right to speak freely via cellphones, websites and social media? Well, the companies that provide you with access to the Internet don’t.

The framers drafted the First Amendment as a check on governmentauthority — not corporate power. But whether we’re texting friends, sharing photos on Facebook, or posting updates on Twitter, we’re connecting with each other and the Internet via privately controlled networks.

And the owners of these networks are now twisting the intent of the First Amendment to claim the right to control everyone's online information.

Right before the Fourth of July, Verizon filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that expressed this intent in no uncertain terms. The brief was part of the telecom company’s bid to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s Net Neutrality rules, which prohibit carriers from blocking or discriminating against Internet users’ content.

Read More:

http://mediacitizen.blogspot.com/2012/07/freedom-censorship.html

Mark Vorpahl - Pensions Under Attack in America

On Friday, July 6, President Obama signed into law a bill that would renew transportation programs and extend low interest rates on student loans for one year. While this minimal gesture resulted in, no doubt, sighs of relief from those burdened by student debt, tucked away within the bill's pages was a little-noticed proposal to further erode the funding of workers' pensions. The bill was a brilliant sleight of hand where what it appeared to be giving with one hand distracted the public from what it was taking away with the other. 

Aside from the more publicly known parts of this bill, it also reduced the amount that corporations pay into an already grossly underfunded pension system. The way it achieved this is with a complex equation factoring in interest rates, changes in how businesses calculate what they must contribute to retirement premiums, and how these contributions are tax deductible. The end result of this opaque process of number crunching is that, according to the Society of Actuaries, employer pension contributions will be reduced overall from a mandatory $80 billion to $45 billion this year alone. Next year this amount will be slashed by $73 billion. (1)

Read More:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31895

Lisa Cerda - Monsanto: A Modern Day Plague

Monsanto’s history is one steeped with controversial products, deadly consequences, massive cover ups, political slight of hand, and culminates as a modern day plague on humanity, a plague that is about to peak to biblical proportions. Created in 1901, the company started producing its first form of poison, the artificial sweetener saccharin. The rise in use of saccharin really began 70 years later. Monsanto had plenty of time for a realistic and long term study on the impact of saccharin on human health. Instead, Monsanto learned how to finagle political support and grow its empire despite the growing consensus that saccharin caused cancer.

No surprise then that the company continued on a path of controversy. Here’s a bullet point history.
•    Contributed to the research on uranium, for the Manhattan Project, during WWII.
•    Operated a nuclear facility for the U.S. government until the late 1980s.
•    Top manufacturer of synthetic fibers, plastics and polystyrene (EPA’s 5th ranked chemical production that generates the most hazardous waste).
•    A top 10 US chemical company.
•    Agriculture pesticides producer.
•    Herbicide producer – herbicides 2,4,5-T, Agent Orange, Lasso, and DDT.

•    Agent Orange (used in Vietnam), had the highest levels of dioxin and contaminated more than 3 million civilians and servicemen of which only partial compensation awarded.
•    Nearly 500,000 Vietnamese children were born deformed and never compensated.
•    Lasso was banned in USA, so weed killer “Roundup” is launched in 1976.
•    A major producer of both dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which generated many law suits and environmental cleanups
•    $180 million settlement for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange
•    Fined $1.2 million for concealing the discharge of contaminated waste water
•    Ordered to pay $41.1 million due to hazardous waste dumping
•    Paid $600 million in settlement claims to more than 20,000 Anniston residents in Abernathy v. United States.
•    Produced GM cattle drug, bovine growth hormone (called rBGH or rBST)
•    Acquiring seed companies from the 1990’s and forward.
•    Monsanto Filed 144 lawsuits against struggling farmers and settled out of court with 700 farmers, for reportedly violating seed patents.  A full time staff of 75 Monsanto employees investigates patent infringement. They are dedicated solely to finding farms that have been contaminated by their unwanted seed. As of 2007, Monsanto was awarded in 57 recorded judgments against farmers a total of $21,583,431.99. Monsanto vs. Farmers.

Read More:

http://wakeup-world.com/2012/07/16/monsanto-a-modern-day-plague/