Gary Null, Ph.D., and Nancy Ashley, VMD - The Politics of Medicine

THE POLITICS OF MEDICINE

By Gary Null, PhD and Nancy Ashley, VMD

March 5, 2012 

In 2012, America has become the most overmedicated society in history. Indeed, there is a medication for every condition, and we believe these medications will make us happy, slender, full of energy, and attractive like the people in the television ads.  We are even told that we don’t take enough medications as the list of made-up diseases grows longer and longer:  restless leg syndrome, social anxiety disorder, overactive bladder, pre-diabetes, adult ADD.  We never stop to question why we need all these drugs.  We never even notice that they aren’t making us better, or that we can’t get off them once we start taking them.  Why do we refuse to see that despite all these medications we are nevertheless the sickest industrialized nation on earth?

America doesn’t profit from prevention.  There are no preventative programs for cancer, heart disease, arthritis, dementia, Alzheimer’s, or diabetes, for a simple reason:  it would compete with the massive profits of the medical industrial complex.  So instead we have become a nation of gluttons -- we sublimate our anxiety and fears with comfort foods and the government encourages it instead of offering us an honest look at cause and effect.  Protecting the financial interest of the fast food industry, the makers of potato chips, soft drinks, hamburgers, steaks, desserts, genetically engineered corn, and pesticides are a compliant FDA and USDA whose leaders have been hand-picked by the White House to represent the interests of manufacturers. There will be no advocacy from Congress whatsoever to help the health of Americans.  But what is the likely outcome if we continue with our current lifestyles?

We are witnessing a watershed of dysfunction.  The American media has assisted in creating this mythology.  They have not only protected the American medical paradigm and the pharmaceutical industry, but they have actually attacked physicians, scientists, whistle-blowers, and parents groups that have run into the medical bureaucratic juggernaut.  As a nation we have sunk so low as to allow our legislators to create laws based on what they are told by big business through the American Legislative Exchange Committee (ALEC), laws that mandate the Gardasil vaccine for girls and now boys or they can’t go to school, and laws that require that health care workers get the flu vaccine or lose their jobs.  All of this without the major media ever raising a single question:  is this real science, or science for sale?

We have decided to explore the politics of medicine and the consequences of therapies, physicians, scientists, advisors, government agencies, the media, and a vulnerable public who are unaware of how malignant the system has become – how pernicious, widespread, and in fact, endemic, the self-interest, greed and  bad science actually is.   Part I of our in-depth investigative report will show that American medicine is not only broken, but contributes to unnecessary injury and death into the millions of victims per year.  It has morphed into an extension of the pharmaceutical industrial complex – the friendly face with the white coat and the stethoscope.  We will now deconstruct this myth.

Click to read more ...

Gary Null - Let Us Stop The Blame

by Gary Null
Progressive Radio Network, February 13, 2012

One of the most famous examples of journalist integrity, that has served as exemplar of how journalism can correct wrongs and bring justice to bear, is the story of Emile Zola – a French naturalist writer and supporter of political liberalization in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The case involves a Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an artillery officer in the French army who happened to have been Jewish. Following a scandal of French military secrets reaching the German embassy, growing anti-semitism convicted Drefus on charges of treason leading to his imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana.  Although evidence was available to implicate another officer, the right wing French government and media refuted it and continued with its original verdict against Dreyfus. Even the French officer, Lt. Colonel Picquart who uncovered the officer who was the real spy, was sentenced to serve a term in a prison.

Taking up the cause on behalf of Captain Dreyfus, Emile Zola risked his career by composing an article entitled – J’accuse – I accuse – that was printed on the front page of Paris’ daily. His article accused the highest echelons of French military and justice, and even the Church which held consider power in France, of anti-Semitism and corruption in accusing Dreyfus.  For his sense of justice, Zola was convicted for criminal libel, but rather than serving prison time, he had fled to England and didn’t return to France until the right wing French administration fell.  Almost a decade later, Zola was finally pardoned of all charges and became the hero standing up against corruption he rightfully deserved.

Who is our Emile Zola today in mainstream media?  Who is it that holds the facts to accuse those who falsify truth for their own profit, gain, influence and power, who speaks on behalf of citizens against those with the means and control to profit from them?

Before we continue our myth that 99 percent of Americans sleep on the side of angels and the other 1 percent bask with devils, we need to ask ourselves why we constantly blame others for the choices we permit those who we select, listen to, admire in power, to make on our behalf.

What would happen if we stopped blaming the Clinton administration and Phil Graham for eviscerating the Glass-Steagall Act, altering the Commodity Futures Trading act and neutering the SEC to assure Wall Street that no one among the banking elite would be subject to scandals leading to legal actions? Nor should we therefore blame Wall Street for its holding 100 trillion in credit default swaps and derivatives to continue their casino gambling.  

So let us stop blaming the attorney generals from all states for penalizing hundreds of banks and thousands of individuals, who engaged in criminal behavior – such as liar loans and robo-signing – with miniscule fines.  

Let us not blame the Federal Reserve for dishing out $16 trillion of taxpayer guaranteed loans with toxic valued assets and collateral at 0.25 interest across 20,000 transactions to domestic and foreign banks, hedge funds, and major corporations

Let us stop blaming Barack Obama and his administration for hiring only former Washington insiders from both the Clinton and Bush administrations to continue the entrenchment of corporate power in our policy decision making.

We must also stop blaming credit card companies who receive government loans at 0.25 percent and are permitted to debit cardholders at 29 percent or more for mispayments.
Let us not blame Walmart and major corporations from important cheap, toxic products manufactured with slave labor.

Let us not blame the economic experts who to this day paint a distorted picture of our recovery and growing economy.

Let us not blame the love-fests of the global elite at DAVOS and the Business Roundtable who believe their power, wealth and class status permit them to devise and direct our domestic and international policies.

Let us not blame the president and congress failing to implement a moratorium on home foreclosures and providing small businesses that qualify with no-interest loans, which could provide employment to millions of Americans.  

Let us forgive corporate America’s celebration of financial profits from off shoring jobs while having closed down over 50,000 factories in the US during the past dozen years and at the same time importing HB-1 foreign workers to replace 8.4 million educated American workers for lesser pay.
Neither should we blame Barack Obama for exonerating all the crimes of Bush-Cheney and their accomplices for knowingly creating secret intelligence offices in the Vice President office, which bypassed our national security apparatus, in order to divine a rationale for going to war in the Middle East.
As a constitutional scholar, let us not blame Obama for undermining our constitutional liberties by supporting the Patriot act, the Homeland Security act, FISA and the new National Defense Authorization Act that consolidates more power over Americans within the White House.  

Let us not blame the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC for manipulating state legislators to support bills and policies that would overturn and alter existing laws for financial gain to the ruling elite and the political campaigns of those who support them.  

Let us not blame the lobbyists, private consultants and experts, many of whom are former members of Congress or government agencies, who draft legislation that benefits their industries at the cost of the public good.

Let us not blame the military industrial intelligence-gathering industry for its massive financial fraud and redundant operations amounting to approximately $1.3 trillion annually when only $250 billion is necessary to keep Americans safe.  

Let us not blame the Bush and Obama administrations for neglecting 12 million hungry American children, the over 50 million citizens in deep poverty and the other 50 million working poor. And in the meantime, lets forgive the government for intentionally manipulating unemployment figures for political gain.

Let us not blame the House , Senate and the White House for supporting off shore oil drilling and billions of dollars in subsidies for clean coal, nuclear and hydrofracking natural gas while ignoring the cleaner more efficient geothermal and wave energy technologies.

Let us not blame any of the last five administrations for encouraging the FDA and the USDA to denounce complementary approaches for the prevention and treatment of disease while aligning federal health policies with the greed of Big Pharma and private insurance carriers who virtually write our healthcare programs, including Medicare, and prevents government from purchasing inexpensive generic drugs in order to reap an additional $1 trillion in profits.

Let us not blame our Surgeon General and our Secretary of Health and Human Services failing to offer alternative healthcare choices nationwide.  Rather, we should forgive the FDA its attacks on the natural and supplement industries, even preventing those who grow cherries and walnuts from suggesting these foods can actually prevent certain illnesses.

And while we are at it, let us forgive the FDA for permitting known pharmaceutical drugs that have maimed and killed thousands of patients to continue to be advertized and prescribed to patients.
Let us not blame American medicine for being the number one cause of death in the US while ignoring any criticism about its methodologies, drug’s evidence for efficacy and safety, and the regulatory approval processes.

Let us not blame the psychiatric industry for creating non-existent mental disorders, such as Oppositional Defiance Disorder, in order to increase medication rates and drug sale profits.  
Let us not blame the mental health centers in our inner cities for spearheading community programs to diagnose upward to 80 percent of children and young adults through erroneous test batteries such as Teen Screen to increase positive medical diagnoses.  

Let us not blame mainstream media for offering products that promote disease such as obesity and diabetes in children and adults.

Let us not blame the five past administrations for pushing neoliberal free-market globalization practices in their for globalization. Nor should we blame the IMF for the consequences of its draconian rules and structural readjustments opening markets in poor nations for foreign economic colonization.

Let us not blame the FBI, CIA and Homeland Securities for the militarization of our domestic police forces and their intrusion into our lives without warrant or due-process, including their punishing the dissent of peaceful environmental and social protesters who find themselves on enemy terrorist FBI watch lists.  
And lets forgive the dismal failures behind our government’s sanctioned domestic wars – the war on drugs, the war on cancer, the war against poverty, the war on terrorism – that serve only the high and mighty who profit from their bankrupt agendas.

Let us stop blaming the immense profits to private corporations running our prisons and the hidden agendas to incarcerate more Americans for minor misdemeanors and increase class warfare and renew Jim Crow racism with new forms of segregation.

Let us stop blaming teachers for graduating illiterate students and their curriculums designed by private corporations that never challenge students to have the intellectual skills to be independent, creative thinking human beings.  

Let us not blame the American media for failing to look honestly at economic  bubbles – equity partnerships, hedge funds, subprime and commercial market - -and then warning citizens in advance.
Let us not blame the producers within the entertainment industry who inundate us with vulgar, mind-numbing, violent programs and movies carries American culture to the bottom of etiquette, manners, decency and the ethics.

We must also forgive the agro-industrial complex -- the Monsantos and Duponts of the world -- who seek the monopolization of the global food supply and manipulate its control through genetic engineering of seeds.  

We must forgive all corporations who contribute to the pollution and destruction of our environment.
Let us cease blaming the corporate Democrats and the corporate Republicans and their mouthpieces in the media promulgating rigid ideologies that only serve the interests of those in power and not the common people.

Let us stop blaming the US military for causing the permanent disability and death of countless elderly, parents and children in the Middle East and forgive our media’s refusal to acknowledge their suffering.
Finally let us forgive all the administrations from JFK forward who expanded the military industrial complex for a global imperial outreach, sugar coated in the rhetoric of freedom and democracy, while simultaneously supporting dictators and despots around the world.

Let us also not blame the Republicans for claiming to represent smaller, efficient government while supporting the largest social welfare system in history for large banks and major corporations in the form of grotesque bailouts and subsidies.

When we cease to blame government, banks, corporations, the media and influential policy makers and opinion leaders for the choices we have made, then we must ask what personal and collective responsibilities are there for the plight and crises the nation is in?  Since our current system of governance is beyond reform from within the system itself, are we then capable of dissociating ourselves from it?

And we should pay attention to those who accept the torch of Emile Zola’s courage to speak truth to power and accuse those who deny freedom and democracy throughout the nation.  We do have our Zola’s in the voices of Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Engelhardt, Alan Grayson, Chris Hedges, Michael Hudson, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Ralph Nader, Greg Palast, Dylan Ratigan, Robert Reich, Rebecca Solnit, David Swanson, and others.

At this present moment, individuals identifying themselves as progressives and independents represent 41 percent of the population. If you are among this group, you are in the majority exceeding official Democrats and Republicans.  Therefore it is for us to decide, individually and collectively, what standards of ethically based policies and democratic structures should be fought for as we move forward.

Otherwise, just continue to watch Fox and the major networks in order to perpetuate the Manichaean myth of 99 versus 1 so the blame-game can live on. 

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. “

Click to read more ...

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.

Click to read more ...

Gary Null, PhD and Nancy Ashley, VMD, MS - DEADLY INJECTION: THE HIDDEN INGREDIENTS IN VACCINES

DEADLY INJECTION:  THE HIDDEN INGREDIENTS IN VACCINES

By Gary Null, PhD and Nancy Ashley, VMD, MS

For more than 100 years, Americans have lined up to take their vaccines.   We have never questioned the safety and efficacy of these vaccines, and why should we?  Vaccines are backed by the full faith and confidence of the entire scientific community, including the FDA, the CDC, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, and virtually all of the esteemed medical journals, including the British Medical Journal, the Lancet, and the Journal of the American Medical Association, have given their unconditional support to vaccines. Therefore, in fact, if any physician, scientist, journalist, or health activist ever challenges either the safety or efficacy of vaccines, they are immediately assaulted.  The normal arguments are:

1. There are dozens of gold standard studies proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the safety and efficacy of every vaccine and every combination of vaccines.
2. There is an independent group of scientists at the FDA and the CDC that examines the childhood vaccine schedule to make sure it is appropriate.
3. There is no scientific proof that vaccines are dangerous.
4. On rare occasions, when someone does have an adverse reaction, it in no way affects the safety and efficacy for anyone else.
5. Virtually all major scourges -- polio, smallpox, and measles -- were eliminated by our vaccine program.

Click to read more ...

Gary Null PhD and Nancy Ashley VMD, MS - Gardasil: Does it Heal or Does it Kill?

The Gardasil vaccine against human papillomavirus has been much profiled in the news recently and the news isn’t good.  Despite continued incidents of serious, life-altering adverse reactions, including paralysis and death, and despite questionable efficacy and safety studies that allowed this vaccine to come to market in the first place, the push to force the Gardasil vaccine on our children has been relentless and seems to be picking up speed.   The following is a review of the more significant and far reaching stories that surfaced, mostly under the radar of the general public, during the past four weeks.

Click to read more ...

Gary Null, Jeremy Stillman and Nancy Ashley - Vaccine Conspiracy: The CDC Caught Lying Again

A bombshell revelation coming out of an investigation by the drug safety group Coalition for Mercury-free Drugs (CoMeD) has rocked the foundation of a belief widely held by mainstream medicine – the idea that vaccines do not cause autism.  In a news release last Tuesday, CoMeD exposed a cover-up by authorities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and vaccine researchers who deliberately omitted critical data from a 2003 article on mercury and autism that was carried out in Denmark.  The conclusion of the article denied any causal relationship between the mercury-laden vaccine ingredient Thimerosal and autism.  However, documents obtained by CoMeD indicate that the authors of the article, with the full approval of the CDC, decided to leave out large quantities of data which, in fact, supported a strong link between Thimerosal and the incidence of autism.

The documents, which were acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), reveal correspondences between individuals at the CDC and scientists working on the Danish article which examined rates of autism in the country after a nationwide phasing out of all Thimerosal-containing vaccines in 1992.  The unearthed communications prove that the data collected during the study actually reflected an overall decrease in the incidence of autism since the phase-out was implemented.  However, the article’s authors chose to use only select data which bolstered the conclusion that rates of autism in Denmark had risen since 1992.  This decision was deemed entirely acceptable by officials at the CDC.

Click to read more ...

Gary Null PhD and Nancy Ashley VMD, MS - All Vaccines Are Dangerous

In one of the most significant and far-reaching vaccine injury cases in recent years, the Supreme Court ruled in February 2011, that persons injured by vaccines are not allowed to sue the manufacturer for damages.¹ Should we be worried by this decision?  We in America believe in vaccines.  We have an image of researchers and scientists working diligently to monitor the safety of vaccines in close cooperation with officials, communities, immunization registries, and health care professionals to ensure that Americans get only the finest, safest products.  We could never imagine that a pharmaceutical company would use anything in a vaccine that they knew was harmful, or that the government would require us to inject a substance into our bodies that could mortgage our long-term health.  Are we being too naïve?  Of all the vaccines we and our children are expected to get, what is the truth about the potential for harm?  In Part III of our original investigative report we will take an in-depth look at the risks involved in childhood and adult vaccines.

The Fallacy of the Safety Study

Click to read more ...

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     

Click to read more ...

Gary Null, PhD and Jeremy Stillman - Prescription for Disaster: The Dirty Dozen FDA-Approved Pharmaceutical Drugs

The Food and Drug Administration is mandated with the responsibility to ensure that our foods and medications are safe and effective. Hence, when a physician, primary health care provider or pharmacist provides a consumer with these medications, there is a fundamental belief that these work and will do minimal harm.  Then we meet reality. The FDA has not only allowed extraordinarily inefficient, extremely toxic drugs onto the market, but then has ran interference on behalf of pharmaceutical companies and other special interests to protect their profits instead of immediately withdrawing their drugs from the market.

The consequence of eating at a restaurant you don’t like is that you won’t go back again. The consequence of taking a toxic drug is injury or death.  The FDA has a long history of allowing deadly drugs to be promoted and marketed.  The FDA has not sought prosecution when prima facie evidence proves that the manufacturers and their scientists, boards of directors and marketers knew all along that these drugs did not work as claimed or had dangerous side effects that they withheld from the FDA . These companies have engaged in overtly criminal activities and instead of ending up in prison or bankrupt, no one is held accountable.  Bonuses are given and the value of their corporate holdings goes up- it’s all part of the cost of doing business today.
This article is to show you clear and exact examples of lethal and harmful drugs that should never have been marketed – some of which are still available to consumers.  They are drugs that an honest and diligent FDA would never have allowed to be released on the market.  Cumulatively, tens of thousands of Americans have died and hundreds of thousands more have been injured.  And the standard penalty meted out for such criminality?  Pay a fine. Smile. You got out of jail free.

Click to read more ...