Two years ago the blood sugar arm of the study had to be halted because it increased the risk of death by 20%.  Now we find that aggressively lowering lipids using a combination of a statin (simvastatin) plus a fenofibrate (a drug called TriCor) is no better than a statin alone (which is of questionable value in the first place).  TriCor is made by Abbott Laboratories.  It raked in 1.3 billion in sales in 2009.  Abbott does not expect this round of bad news to have any affect on TriCor sales.  In other words, Abbott isn’t concerned that in many cases doctors are using a drug that produces no benefit.  Americans should be concerned by the lack of results and the cost.

Likewise, aggressively lowering blood pressure didn’t do any good either.

It is time to rethink the subject of health care starting with Big Pharma and medical doctors who drive up costs prescribing useless medication.  It is time their education was changed so that they start dealing with the person instead of numbers that drive drug sales.  Western medicine has been on a big push in the last decade to give super high doses of drugs for many conditions.  The ACCORD Trial is clear proof that the theory is fatally flawed.

The FDA, which has approved fenofibrate drugs for use in situations that do not help people, once again has mud on its face.  The FDA trying to cover its Big Pharma-friendly image has cost Americans tens of billions of dollars in fraudulent drug sales.  Yes, the FDA will take months to study the data before it figures out how to cover its rear end.

The take-home message of the ACCORD Trial is rather plain:  drugs do not produce health.  Managing numbers aggressively with drugs is pointless, highly risky, and all too often increases the risk of early death.  Until this con game is forced to stop health care costs cannot possibly be controlled.

The use of bisphosphonate drugs to prevent osteoporosis is fraud.  At the center of the fraud is the FDA and their friends in Big Pharma.  Following the ABC exposé  the FDA now says it will look into the matter further – isn’t it interesting what a little public exposure will do.  Regardless, the corrupt FDA looking into the problem is like having a fox checking on the status of a henhouse.  In addition to the FDA and Big Pharma, the medical profession itself is a major perpetrator of this fraud.  The information has been available for decades as to the extreme damage these drugs cause healthy bones.  There is no excuse for the ineptitude of the Western medical profession.  This isn’t a small joke.  These are major crimes against women that cause a serious deterioration of health.  Be clear about who is responsible:  FDA management, Big Pharma, and prescribing physicians.

This is not terribly difficult to figure out.  Insulin is structured like growth hormone and neither is working well in a type II diabetic patient in the first place.  Giving even more insulin not only forced sugar into cells causing toxic overload and potential mutation, but excess insulin readily induces growth hormone abnormalities (IGF-1 problems) leading to cancer risk.  So why do doctors do it?

They do it because they are obsessed with changing numbers like fasting blood sugar or hemoglobin A1C.  They think that if they change a number (called a biomarker) that they have improved health.  There is no data to prove that changing numbers with drugs improves health.  Sure you can lower blood sugar with insulin, however, where is the sugar going?  Chances are it is causing serious health problems in its new location or the insulin itself in abnormal levels is directly causing health problems. 

There is a lot of talk on Capital Hill that health care costs can be reduced by paying physicians to actually get people better.  However, physicians don’t know how to get type II diabetics better.  All physicians do is keep managing numbers, thinking they are doing a good job even if the person in front of them is gaining weight (as long as the numbers are reasonable).  They are not blamed for the cancers they obviously cause as simply being overweight is itself a risk factor for excessive-insulin induced cancer.

The failure of doctors to heal difficult metabolic problems is a simple reflection of the woeful inadequacy of the Big-Pharma drug theory that is the essence of Western medicine.

McCain himself has not yet made any public statements to this effect.  However, a letter from Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT) to McCain has been posted on the McCain senate website and indicates the current bill is dead.

What isn’t dead is the non-stop expansion of regulatory policy by the Obama Administration’s FDA and FTC.  These issues don’t have anything to do with new laws; they have to do with the policy interpretation and consequent implementation of existing laws.  Both the FDA and FTC are in a new highly aggressive anti-supplement strategy that is sending shock waves through the industry and spells grave concern for the future of dietary supplements. 

Last week the FDA sent warning letters to 17 food companies and issued an open letter to the industry.  While some of the FDA points are logical, the policy details in their warning letters indicate draconian implementation of regulation directed at an industry so as to limit consumer access to valuable health information and products.  In particular, the warning letter sent to Pom Wonderful, while containing a number of valid regulatory points under current law, also contains policy interpretation that is targeted to prevent any company from explaining news and science relating to the ingredients in products they sell.  This is a ludicrous interpretation of law and represents extreme suppression of the 1st Amendment.  However, Pom Wonderful is in such a weak legal position to counter valid FDA points that it is unlikely they will protest this expansion of FDA abuse.  What will the FDA do next??

Similarly, in February the FTC attacked a number of dietary supplement companies for making structure/function claims relating to the clear benefits of DHA for vision and intelligence in children.  The FTC says such claims are fraudulent even though they are backed by an overwhelming body of science and are not making any disease claims – they are simply promoting health benefits that can be made under current FDA law.  It is unclear at this time if any of the companies receiving the warning letters are going to fight the FTC in court, as doing so costs at least $500,000.  However, agreeing with the FTC in a decree enables the FTC to set a new policy precedent that stifles free speech and is itself an extreme disservice to the health of Americans.

There are several points consumers should understand.  Actions of the Obama Administration’s regulatory agencies affecting natural health options are more repressive than at any point in the last decade – this is squarely on the shoulders of the cigarette-smoking Obama.  The backwards-leaning regulation of the dietary supplement industry by the Obama Administration is clearly at odds with science, which has now proven conclusively that nutrition is a primary reason for the prevention and treatment of disease.  The fact that existing laws are at odds with an overwhelming body of science is showing that regulators are little more than stooges and puppets of the pharmaceutical industry (the real source of skyrocketing health care costs in America).  The fact that our government is pushing authoritarian regulation under the false pretense of protecting consumers is a travesty against a free people.  Health freedom is a leading indicator of the overall freedom in any society, as can be demonstrated by numerous historical examples.  Control a population’s health and you control their free will.  Leaders who truly value a free society will do everything in their power to promote health freedom – as they do not fear a population of independent thinkers. 

The McCain bill or any compromise on it with Orin Hatch still needs to be watched closely.  The Obama Administration’s regulators need to get a life.  Health freedom in the United States continues to teeter on the edge of a cliff, as do a number of other basic freedoms we take for granted. 

The study looked at 69 million discharge records between 1998 and 2006.  It identified patients with sepsis (blood infection) or pneumonia following surgery.  20% of the people who became infected died. 

The cause of this problem is two-fold:
1) Poor germ control in hospitals.
2) The rampant overuse of antibiotics for decades that has caused the breeding of deadly super-strain infections.

As I reported back in October of 2009 74,000 Americans are killed each year due to poor quality care in hospitals (a study comparing the best hospitals to the not so good hospitals).

And we have known since the 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine that up to 98,000 people a year are killed by medical mistakes – i.e., stupid incompetence. 

These various reports indicate an extreme problem in the quality of care in America health care – something not even touched on in the current health care reform debate.  How can costs be controlled when care is rampantly incompetent?  While it is next to impossible to accurately determine what the cost is, the FDA estimates it to be 20 – 75 billion per year.

In reality, the FDA is sitting on several dozen of these big-selling-drug time bombs. FDA management refuses to take action in a timely manner to protect Americans.  The logical conclusion as to why the FDA behaves this way is to protect the drug company, in this case GlaxoSmithKline, from a flood of lawsuits.  A second reason is that the FDA management knowingly approved a dangerous drug in the first place and now looks inept (which they are) taking it off the market.  Back in 2006 the FDA management (headed by cancer biotech kingpin Andrew von Eschenbach) forced their own safety expert to retract the black box warning she wanted to place on Avandia for congestive heart failure.  She was then stripped of her power to make such warnings and removed from supervision of the safety of Avandia.

The new FDA commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, doesn’t seem to have a clue.  On Friday evening she said she was going to wait several more months until a new advisory committee (typically industry friendly) offered a new opinion on the issue, adding “Meanwhile, I am reviewing the inquiry made by Senators Baucus and Grassley and I am reaching out to ensure that I have a complete understanding and awareness of all of the data and issues involved.”  Is Dr. Hamburg willing to be personally responsible for all the needless deaths that occur in the meantime?

The Senate investigation showed that FDA safety scientists conducted a report on Avandia and concluded that it should be removed from the market.  Their report was ignored by FDA management, as FDA commissioner Hamburg continues to do.  It is pretty obvious that GlaxoSmithKline aggressively marketed Avandia knowing that it injured and killed, reaching peak sales in 2007 of 3.2 billion.  When cardiovascular concerns began coming to public light worldwide profits fell, and were just over a billion last year.

The Senators think this problem of drug safety can be solved by placing the safety scientists in their own FDA entity, rather than having their findings overruled by managers who approved the drugs in the first place.  While such a change may help, the FDA resists making such a move.  I don’t think it would solve the problem.

The only way this problem is going to get solved is if criminal penalties are given to management at Big Pharma companies who knowingly withhold safety data and then Americans die.  If they were tried for involuntary manslaughter, as they should be, then this nonsense would stop.  FDA managers who overrule safety findings which then result in deaths of Americans should face the same penalty – and then the FDA management, often in a revolving door with the industry it is supposed to be regulating, would stop acting like the best friend of Big Pharma.

Avandia is the tip of the iceberg as far as FDA-approved blockbuster drugs that are injuring and killing Americans.  If not for a few Senators trying to look out for the public this information would not see the light of day.  The FDA is utterly incompetent at doing the job it is supposed to be doing.  It does not need more money to do its job.  It needs a legal and ethics overhaul.  The next question the FDA should be forced to answer is, “How many other drugs have your safety scientists warned should not be on the market?”  And what about the poisoning of our food supply with GMOs - didn’t your scientists warn they were unsafe to eat?

A further New York Times update on this scandal.

This is yet one more example of the FDA miserably failing the public health and protecting the sales of dangerous drugs that are freely advertised on TV. 

“The high levels of sugar in soft drinks may be increasing the level of insulin in the body, which we think contributes to pancreatic cancer cell growth,” said Mark Pereira, Ph.D., senior author on the study and associate professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota.

This new aspect of the great statin fraud is based on the Jupiter study, which actually proves for the first time that Crestor causes diabetes.  This doesn’t seem to bother the industry-friendly FDA.  Through the use of statistical gymnastics the Jupiter study warps data to present the notion that taking Crestor can cut the rate of heart attacks in half in people who have elevated C reactive protein.  As I explained back in November of 2008, “This sounds great, except the original risk in the study group was negligible.  The data actually means that 120 people would need to take Crestor for 2 years to prevent 1 heart attack or stroke.  At a cost of $3.45 a day, that’s $300,000 for Big Pharma to stop one problem.  Excuse me, but the only news here is the potential bilking of taxpayers and insurance companies.”  Many nutrients safely and easily lower C reactive protein better than Crestor, as does aerobic exercise.

Well, the bilking has arrived.  In the face of skyrocketing health care costs that are rooted in no small part by multiple Big Pharma con games (which are often deadly), it is only a matter of time before the Big Pharma bubble bursts – and with it a legion of doctors who have forgotten how to practice medicine or never really knew how in the first place. 

Mental health drugs, including the ultra-expensive atypical anti-psychotics that are used for the off-label purpose of controlling behavior, should not receive any government money – especially in children-related health spending.  It is blatant fraud of the most disgusting variety, as these drugs cause serious health injury. 

Drug companies should reimburse the government for 15 years of swindling taxpayers.