Merck-backed Rick Perry tried to mandate HPV vaccines for all young girls in Texas

(NaturalNews) Texas Governor Rick Perry can try all he wants to mimic the liberty-oriented language of honest presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul, but it will never erase the fact that he signed an executive order in 2007 mandating that all teenage girls in the Lone Star State, starting at age 12, receive the dangerous HPV vaccine. Worse, lobbyist Mike Toomey — Merck and Co., the maker of the Gardasil, hired Toomey back in 2005 to promote the vaccine in Texas — is now running Mr. Perry’s presidential candidacy “super pac.” He wants the public to think, of course, that he supports individual liberty and state’s rights, but Mr. Perry has repeatedly demonstrated that he actually supports the special interests that back him financially and politically, which in this case continues to include Merck and Co., the main purveyor of the HPV vaccine hoax. In case you are unaware, the HPV vaccines Gardasil (Merck) and Cervarix (GlaxoSmithKline) are still being marketed as a prevention method for thwarting the onset of cervical cancer in women. But as we have written about on numerous occasions, the vaccine is both ineffective and highly dangerous, having cost untold thousands of young girls their livelihoods and even their lives (http://www.naturalnews.com/HPV.html). When questioned about the executive order during a recent debate, Mr. Perry tried to sidestep his blatant disregard for the rule of law and parental rights in signing it by claiming that his goal was to “save lives.” He did not, of course, admit that Toomey, his current super pac coordinator, was paid as much as $535,000 in lobbying fees by Merck to promote Gardasil between 2005 and 2010. The Texas state legislature overturned Mr. Perry’s egregious executive order not long after its passage, but the simple fact still remains that its passage was a direct result of lobbying efforts put forth by a multinational drug company. It was also a direct slap in the fact to every single Texan, as it bypassed the normal legislative procedure for passing laws, and essentially dictated that Texas parents had no freedom of vaccine choice. Sources for this story include: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44442051/ns/politics/#.Tm4qdU8-DUJ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63329.html

GlaxoSmithKline pushing dangerous Avandia drug on thousands in new global clinical trial

(NaturalNews) Back in February, I wrote an article about how a Senate Finance Committee report revealed that GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of the diabetes drug Avandia, knew that its drug was dangerous and caused heart attacks; yet GSK went out of its way to hide this important information from the public and kept on selling Avandia . Now, GSK has now decided to launch a global clinical trial of this dangerous drug that could potentially harm thousands of people. Both FDA and GSK scientists have found that Avandia is dangerous and significantly increases the risk of heart attacks, but the drug remains on the market to this day. FDA officials have rejected sound scientific evidence demonstrating the dangers of the drug, including evidence from the FDA’s own scientists. (Read all about the Avandia scandal in my previous article on the subject .) Meanwhile, GSK is moving forward with a global clinical trial that it says will compare the safety of Avandia with other diabetes drugs in its class. In other words, according to press reports, GSK knows Avandia is dangerous, but it’s choosing to go ahead with a trial anyway… a trial that could put the lives of thousands of people at risk. Real scientists say Avandia drug trial is unethical and dangerous Dr. David Juurlink, chief of clinical pharmacology and toxicology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto, and Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of health research for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, have petitioned the FDA to stop the GSK drug trial . Citing concerns that the trial is “unethical” and “dangerous”, the two are doing what the FDA itself should be doing – assessing the evidence and coming to a rational conclusion about risk versus benefit. After all, it was Dr. Juurlink’s 2009 study which already found that Avandia increases the risk of heart failure and death by 30 percent more than another diabetes drug in the same class. Not only has Avandia been proven to be dangerous, it’s been proven to be even more dangerous than the competition. And numerous studies years before found that Avandia increases the risk of heart problems and death, prompting the FDA to issue two black-box warnings for the drug back in 2007. But at this point, it doesn’t seem to matter how many people suffer and die from Avandia because the FDA somehow doesn’t believe there is “conclusive evidence” that Avandia is dangerous, so pharmacies everywhere continue to sell it. And even though GSK knows that Avandia is statistically responsible for an increase in deaths, it continues to push this drug on the masses. GSK guilty of negligent deaths? If you really think about it, what GSK is doing amounts to negligent homicide. The company is knowingly and willfully selling a dangerous drug that’s killing people, and now it wants to subject even more people to unnecessary risk of death through a medically unnecessary clinical trial that’s global in scope. I say “medically unnecessary” because there have already been a number of studies verifying that Avandia is dangerous. Why create another trial with 16,000 participants to reveal what we already know? How many more people need to suffer or die before the FDA pulls the drug from the market? The sheer lunacy of what’s taking place here in the name of “medicine” and “science” is shocking — even to those of us who follow the crimes and corruption of Big Pharma on a regular basis. Real scientists and doctors know this behavior by GSK is appalling, and apparently so does much of the public who, according to new reports , are refusing to even participate in the trial. GSK can’t even get Americans to participate in the trial, so it’s moving to third-world countries/h1> Typically when drug companies conduct clinical trials, they pay people a sum of money to act as guinea pigs for a new drug. (Sadly, many people are willing to ingest experimental substances for a couple hundred bucks). However according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, GSK can’t even get Americans to sign up! You see, the average joe has more common sense than the FDA, and a lot of people know that Avandia is dangerous. The Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina, for example, which is one of GSK’s study sites, has “not succeed[ed] in recruiting anybody” in over a year. And this is during a time when a lot of Americans are out of jobs and desperately need the cash. So what does GSK do in response? It opens dozens of new sites in third-world countries where it can prey on innocent poor people who are less informed about the dangers of Avandia. In fact, this is part of the reason why Dr. Juurlink and Dr. Wolfe are urging the FDA to stop the trial. They recognize how evil it is for GSK to exploit ill-informed people from other countries when things aren’t going so well for Avandia back at home. In targeting low-income third-world study subjects, GSK is demonstrating itself to be a ruthless, money-hungry organization that has no qualms about exploiting human lives to achieve its profit goals. The inhumanity of the medical-industrial complex The whole Avandia fiasco is truly indicative of the way the medical-industrial complex operates. You would think that after all the studies and trials proving its dangers, the countless lawsuits and the official government report, that GSK would at least back down from this drug. Not only has GSK continued to deny the obvious truth about Avandia’s risks, but now it is shamelessly pressing forward to expand the market for Avandia around the world. (Remind you of anything? How about Big Tobacco?) It seems obvious that Avandia should be pulled from the market and GSK investigated for its role in pushing a knowingly harmful drug. At the very least, there should be a moratorium on the sale of the drug until GSK can prove the safety of Avandia. But in the real world, this dangerous drug is being treated as safe and its producer is allowed to continue using it on human guinea pigs around the world. If GSK was a person, that person might be classified as a serial killer (and the FDA would be considered its accomplice). Both GSK and the FDA, if they were people, would be pursued for their crimes against society. But because they are two of the key organizational players in the global medical-industrial complex, they continue to perpetrate their crimes without consequence. This may be changing, though, as people wake up to the truth. The fact that GSK can’t get U.S. participants to sign up for its Avandia clinical trials says to me that people are really starting to recognize “the emperor has no clothes.” Big Pharma’s lies can only continue for so long before the truth is exposed.

Doctor urges fast food restaurants to hand out statin drugs like ketchup packets (opinion)

(NaturalNews) It sounds like an April Fool’s joke, but it isn’t: A doctor from Imperial College London whose study was published in the American Journal of Cardiology has proclaimed that people who eat burgers and milkshakes at fast food restaurants should be given free statin drugs (like ketchup packets) to counteract the cholesterol effects of eating burgers. “Fast food outlets could provide statin drugs free of charge,” says Dr. Darrel Francis, lead author of study, who goes on to complain that statin drugs shouldn’t be prescription drugs at all. People should be able to get them as easily as asking for a packet of ketchup: “It makes sense to make risk-reducing supplements available just as easily as the unhealthy condiments that are provided free of charge,” Francis says, calling statins a “supplement” instead of a drug. Yeah, as if it were a nutrient or something. What Francis doesn’t mention is the disastrous side effects of statin drugs: Extreme muscle pain and weakness, kidney failure, the loss of CoQ10 (a vital nutrient for heart health), liver damage, erectile dysfunction, constipation and much more. I know people who say they were almost killed by statin drugs but who thankfully recognized the symptoms and stopped taking these dangerous chemical medications before things got worse. But this doctor from Imperial College London apparently doesn’t believe such side effects are a big deal. Statin drugs are so safe, he says, that fast food restaurants should just hand them out like candy. Dangerous advice from a doctor The very premise of this argument is extremely dangerous: That you can go ahead and keep eating toxic fast food as long as you “protect” yourself by taking dangerous chemical medications. Gee, could you possibly get any worse health advice? It’s no wonder this advice is coming from a conventional M.D. The idea that you can block the harm from fast food by swallowing a patented chemical medication with your meal is so absurd as to be stupid. Really: It’s just a simplistic, low-I.Q. conclusion from a doctor who obviously knows nothing about nutrition. What’s he going to recommend next? Free chemo pills to counteract the cancer-causing effects of bacon and sausage? Here, kids, chow down on a little chemo before you head off to school. It’s good for ya! Maybe the industry will come up with gummy-shaped chemo bears for kids. (Don’t laugh. I’ve made similarly comical suggestions in the past that turned out to be true…) But here’s the best part of Dr. Francis’ absurd logic: He compares taking statin drugs to the safety of wearing a seat belt while driving! “When people engage in risky behaviors like driving or smoking, they’re encouraged to take measures that minimize their risk, like wearing a seatbelt or choosing cigarettes with filters. Taking a statin is a rational way of lowering some of the risks of eating a fatty meal,” he says. Sure it is — if you enjoy kidney disease, liver disease, muscle weakness, CoQ10 depletion and other side effects. If you’re a foolish consumer who thinks you can counteract the dangerous chemicals in fast food by swallowing another dangerous chemical to “counteract” it, then free statin drugs might sound downright brilliant. But in the real world, where the laws of biochemistry don’t cater to the absurd ideas of drug-pushing researchers, fast food is bad for your health… and so is taking chemical medications. If you combine them, you don’t neutralize your health risk — you increase your total health risk by expanding it into all the areas of statin drug side effects. So now, instead of just destroying your heart and pancreas by wolfing down fast food, you’re also threatening your liver and kidneys with a chemical drug. That a doctor would actually recommend giving out free statin drugs to fast food customers is yet more proof that conventional medical training is a total failure and that mainstream doctors continue to remain clueless about real answers to health. The real answer to health, in this case, is to stop eating fast food hamburgers and milkshakes . And stop taking dangerous chemical medications while you’re at it. If you really want a healthy heart, blend up a superfood smoothie for lunch, or eat some heart-healthy fresh fruits and vegetables. What’s next from medical Loonyville? Now, think about this story. If Imperial College London can actually issue a press release touting this quack research (http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_12-8-2010-11-24-54), and if a high-level researcher like Dr Darrel Francis (http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/people/d.francis/) can genuinely conclude that free medications should be handed out to customers like ketchup packets, then what else might these people come up with? Happy Meals with free antidepressants , of course! Buy a Happy Meal and your kid gets some psychiatric drugs included with the toy. Munch away, kiddies! Or how about free diabetes drugs with every 12-pack of Coca-Cola products . Drink up all that liquid sugar, folks, and just be sure to swallow your diabetes pills that are included! Why not have free chemotherapy pills in every pack of hot dogs? That way, little kids can eat their hot dogs and then experience just enough nausea to vomit the processed meat back up. Problem solved! See, this whole idea that you can just throw more chemical medications at consumers and thereby “protect” them from food-induced diseases is pure medical madness. That someone from the world of conventional medicine would even suggest such a thing speaks poorly about the credibility of the medical industry at large. It’s becoming increasingly obvious to even mainstream consumers that following the health advice of conventional doctors is a very bad idea . Hey, why not just sell statin drug sandwiches where the drugs are baked right into the bread? Don’t laugh: It wasn’t too long ago that doctors in America suggested they drip statin drugs into the water supply because the drugs were so safe and effective that everyone needed them! Yeah, just like fluoride, if you can believe that. You know, I think the bottom line here is that too many medical researchers are taking their own drugs. Because one of the very first side effects from taking daily medications is a loss of cognitive function and impaired ability to reason. And when that goes, there’s no telling what kind of whoppers these people will come up with. Sources for this story: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_12-8-2010-11-24-54

Plant-Based "Eco-Atkins Diet" Boosts Health, Drops Body Fat

(NaturalNews) Researchers have found evidence that it may be possible to use a version of the Atkins diet to improve health, rather than harming it — a vegetarian version dubbed the “Eco-Atkins” diet. The Atkins diet is a form of high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that was popular in 2003 and 2004. Many health professionals blasted the diet as dangerously high in fat, and research indicated that although it lowered levels of blood triglycerides and raised levels of HDL (“good”) cholesterol, it also raised levels of the dangerous LDL (“bad”) cholesterol. In the current study, conducted by researchers from the University of Toronto and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine , researchers fed 22 overweight adults with elevated LDL cholesterol levels a low-carbohydrate diet high in proteins from gluten (wheat), soy, nuts, cereals, vegetable oils, fruits and vegetables. They were compared with 22 people who ate a diet low in fat and high in carbohydrates, with high levels of low-fat dairy and whole grains. All participants were fed only enough good to meet 60 percent of their estimated daily calorie needs, and lost an average of 8.8 pounds. Participants in the “Eco-Atkins” group had lower levels of LDL and blood pressure than those in the control group, however. In an accompanying commentary, Katherine Tuttle and Joan Milton of Washington School of Medicine said that the research might provide a safer way to consume a low-carbohydrate diet, but stopped short of recommending it without larger, long-term studies on the potential risks. High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets can lead to excessive water loss and kidney damage. Dr. Dean Ornish said that the diet used in the study was quite similar to the diet he advocates, although slightly higher in vegetable fat. He objected to calling it a version of the Atkins diet, however, for fear that it might encourage people to eat the more traditional, meat-based version. “People so badly want to believe that Atkins is good for them that they stretch things beyond credibility,” Ornish said. “What it’s going to be is confusing to people, and that’s why I have a problem with it.” Sources for this story include: www.reuters.com; www.abcnews.go.com.