Category Archives: In the Money

Greed does not heal – it kills.

The Cancerous Politics and Ideology of the Susan G. Komen Foundation

Run for the Money

February 1, 2012 ~ This week it became clear there are things more important to the Susan G. Komen Foundation – the fundraising giant that each year during breast cancer awareness month virtually swathes the United States in pink, a la Christo–than ensuring women are able to access exams for early detection of breast cancer.

What could be more important to an organization ostensibly dedicated to the elimination of breast cancer? Answer: The politics and personal agendas of the organization’s senior staff and board, both of which have been infiltrated by right-wing ideologues and both of which were instrumental in a decision to deny further support from Komen affiliates to Planned Parenthood clinics that provide breast exams.In fact, it is now clear that Komen has been infiltrated at various levels by anti-choice ideologues willing to sacrifice women to breast cancer to satisfy their own agendas. Continue reading →

A Seven-Step Plan for Ending the Opioid Crisis

More treatment. Stronger oversight. And above all, bolder leadership.

Oxycodone is a narcotic pain reliever, an ingredient of painkillers that have contributed to the current opioid crisis. Photograph: Education Images/UIG via Getty Images

~ Foreword ~
This following article lacks understanding of cause and effect. The government caused the opioid crisis. They made pain the 4th vital sign. Every clinic and hospital was evaluated, surveyed, and rated on whether a pain score was done on each patient and if the pain was helped by the doctor. Ratings and financial rewards were tied to the outcome. ( sounds like the VA scandal doesn’t it? ) Every doctor with a working brain thought this was foolish and would lead to addiction. The Electronic Medical Record has continued this as a performance standard. Babies have their pain score recorded in ER notes. Here is my solution: 1. Dump the pain score. 2. Dump the EMR that depersonalizes medicine. 3. Teach your children that pain during life if normal. 4. Stop pretending that we can prescribe narcotics and they will not be addicting. ~ Rosemary Stein, MD
 Continue reading →

Cancer Drug Price Rises 1,400% With No Generic to Challenge It

Show me de monee!

Since 2013, the price of a 40-year-old, off-patent cancer drug in the U.S. has risen 1,400%, putting the life-extending medicine out of reach for some patients.

Introduced in 1976 to treat brain tumors and Hodgkin lymphoma, lomustine has no generic competition, giving seller NextSource Biotechnology LLC significant pricing power. Continue reading →

The FDA Is Cracking Down on Homeopathic Remedies

Gwyneth, watch out.

On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration announced plans to crack down on so-called “homeopathic remedies”—treatments that due to agency enforcement policy have managed to avoid regulatory oversight.

But no more, says the agency. Many of those products, it said in a statement, aren’t just herbal tea cures for a sore throat. They’re products being marketed as treatments for serious diseases—hope bottled up and sold to desperate people, without any sort of clinical evidence that they might actually work. Continue reading →

A LOST VOICE

Artwork by Talia Goldenberg

After enduring years of painful headaches and injuries, Talia Goldenberg — a lively, uninhibited artist — was ready for surgery to help stabilize her flexible spine.

3:46 p.m. Feb. 10, 2014
Talia Goldenberg emerged from the fog of anesthesia. The 23-year-old wiggled her toes. She wagged her feet. Good signs for a patient coming out of spinal surgery. Continue reading →

Medical tyranny: Woman who rejected breast cancer diagnosis may still be forced undergo surgery without her consent

When a doctor suggests an operation that you don’t feel is necessary, you have the right to decide not to move forward with it – right? If you happen to have any sort of mental illness, it’s something that doctors could use to say you’re not in your right mind to make such decisions and then go ahead and do as they please regardless of your opinion. Continue reading →

Legal drugs kill more people than illegal ones

Research shows prescription drugs are the 3rd leading cause of death

According to Peter C. Gøtzsche, a Danish physician and medical researcher, prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

Based on the findings that Gøtzsche studied, it is possible that “psychiatric drugs alone are also the third major killer,” and this is primarily due to antidepressants causing the deaths of many elderly people through falls. It is apparent that the system we have for “researching, approving, marketing and using drugs” is “totally broken.” Continue reading →

Why Is An Appendectomy In The United States 10 Times More Expensive Than An Appendectomy In Mexico?

This is what can happen when you go to a socialized healthcare system. A lot of people out there believe that the United States has a free market healthcare system, but that is actually not true. The percentage of the population that receives government-subsidized healthcare is rapidly approaching 50 percent, and the healthcare industry may be the most heavily regulated sector of the entire U.S. economy. Every year the rules, red tape and regulations seem to get even worse, and every year health insurance premiums rise much faster than the overall rate of inflation. If we don’t start applying free market principles and start getting healthcare costs under control, our entire healthcare system could very easily implode. Continue reading →

“Worse Than Big Tobacco”: How Big Pharma Fuels the Opioid Epidemic

Once again, an out-of-control industry is threatening public health on a mammoth scale


Over a 40-year career, Philadelphia attorney Daniel Berger has obtained millions in settlements for investors and consumers hurt by a rogues’ gallery of corporate wrongdoers, from Exxon to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. But when it comes to what America’s prescription drug makers have done to drive one of the ghastliest addiction crises in the country’s history, he confesses amazement.

“I used to think that there was nothing more reprehensible than what the tobacco industry did in suppressing what it knew about the adverse effects of an addictive and dangerous product,” says Berger, “but I was wrong. The drug makers are worse than Big Tobacco.” Continue reading →

UN agency to Congress: Drop dead

~ Foreword ~
The UN’s cancer research agency’s battle with other cancer scientists and agencies, as well as the US Congress, has taken some interesting turns recently. Not only is IARC the only agency claiming that the active chemical in the herbicide RoundUp is carcinogenic – the process it used to reach that determination is fraught with manipulated data and science, altered reports, conflicts of interest and collusion with activist groups and predatory class action lawyers.

America’s own National Institutes of Health has also gotten entangled in this mess, because the director of its National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences is closely aligned with IARC and anti-chemical activist groups.

The House Science Committee has been trying for months to investigate and fix these problems, but has been met with stonewalling at every turn. The latest example of this is detailed in below. ~ Paul Driessen
 Continue reading →

CVS to Buy Aetna for $69 Billion

Show me de monee!

December 3, 2017 – CVS Health has agreed to buy Aetna for about $69 billion in cash and stock, a landmark deal that would change the health-care landscape in the country by bringing a large insurer and a big provider of pharmacy services under one roof.

In an agreement that has been months in the making and is likely to be announced later Sunday, Aetna stockholders are to receive $207 per share, $145 in cash and $62 in stock, according to people familiar with the matter. (WSJ)

NOTE: Would it not seem to you to be somewhat Monopolistic? Now a major retailer of prescription drugs will be in control of Aetna Insurance and both will be under the thumbnail of BIG Pharma and the Food and Drug Administration. ~ Ed.

Showdown looms for billion-dollar UN cancer controversy over weed killer

A United Nations-related research agency is claiming that the active ingredient in the world’s most popular herbicide, marketed in the U.S. by Monsanto as Roundup, is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” It (REUTERS)

An important legal showdown is looming for an obscure, United Nations-related research agency that is claiming that the active ingredient in the world’s most popular herbicide, marketed in the U.S. by Monsanto as Roundup, is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” It is the same agency that once claimed that coffee was a possible carcinogen. Continue reading →