Want to end Mexican drug gang violence? Legalize drugs and the cartels will collapse

Rather than curb their prolific use and propagation around the world, the global “war on drugs” has actually made the drug problem worse. According to the latest statistics, drug use around the world is on the rise in almost every category, despite the numerous anti…

FDA withdraws approval for breast cancer drug Avastin after declaring it medically useless, but says doctors can still prescribe it

(NaturalNews) Several years after declaring it to be not only medically useless but also dangerous, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has officially withdrawn approval for the $100,000 breast cancer drug Avastin. In a statement, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said that Avastin has never been proven to be safe or effective, but also in the same breath noted that doctors can still prescribe the drug if they feel like it. “FDA recognizes how hard it is for patients and their families to cope with metastatic breast cancer and how great a need there is for more effective treatments,” Hamburg is quoted as saying by The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review . “But patients must have confidence that the drugs they take are both safe and effective for their intended use.” After being rapidly approved for use by the FDA back in 2007, Avastin quickly generated more than $1.7 billion for its producer Genentech within the first year. When the FDA finally got around to actually reviewing the drug after approving it, though, the agency discovered that Avastin does not lengthen the lives of breast cancer patients, and that it carries with it severe side effects that include death (http://www.naturalnews.com/023524_drug_avastin_cancer.html). In her 69-page report on Avastin, Hamburg wrote that Avastin’s side effects include high blood pressure, bleeding, heart attack or heart failure, and the development of perforations in the nose, stomach and intestines. In at least one case, a patient taking Avastin has died from infection. But the way the FDA is handling the situation shows how blatantly biased it is towards the drug industry. Avastin was proven dangerous and ineffective several years ago, but the FDA allowed it to remain on the market. Now, it has decided to withdraw approval for Avastin, but is still allowing it to remain on the market. If Avastin had been a dietary supplement in the same predicament, the agency would have immediately withdrawn its approval (if it would have approved it in the first place), and demanded that it be removed from the market. The agency likely would have also shut down Avastin’s manufacturer, as it has done a lot worse to supplement companies that produce safe and effective natural treatments. Sources for this article include: http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=11921&Section=Disease

FDA withdraws approval for breast cancer drug Avastin after declaring it medically useless, but says doctors can still prescribe it

(NaturalNews) Several years after declaring it to be not only medically useless but also dangerous, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has officially withdrawn approval for the $100,000 breast cancer drug Avastin. In a statement, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said that Avastin has never been proven to be safe or effective, but also in the same breath noted that doctors can still prescribe the drug if they feel like it. “FDA recognizes how hard it is for patients and their families to cope with metastatic breast cancer and how great a need there is for more effective treatments,” Hamburg is quoted as saying by The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review . “But patients must have confidence that the drugs they take are both safe and effective for their intended use.” After being rapidly approved for use by the FDA back in 2007, Avastin quickly generated more than $1.7 billion for its producer Genentech within the first year. When the FDA finally got around to actually reviewing the drug after approving it, though, the agency discovered that Avastin does not lengthen the lives of breast cancer patients, and that it carries with it severe side effects that include death (http://www.naturalnews.com/023524_drug_avastin_cancer.html). In her 69-page report on Avastin, Hamburg wrote that Avastin’s side effects include high blood pressure, bleeding, heart attack or heart failure, and the development of perforations in the nose, stomach and intestines. In at least one case, a patient taking Avastin has died from infection. But the way the FDA is handling the situation shows how blatantly biased it is towards the drug industry. Avastin was proven dangerous and ineffective several years ago, but the FDA allowed it to remain on the market. Now, it has decided to withdraw approval for Avastin, but is still allowing it to remain on the market. If Avastin had been a dietary supplement in the same predicament, the agency would have immediately withdrawn its approval (if it would have approved it in the first place), and demanded that it be removed from the market. The agency likely would have also shut down Avastin’s manufacturer, as it has done a lot worse to supplement companies that produce safe and effective natural treatments. Sources for this article include: http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=11921&Section=Disease

Online database lets you research the side effects of common psychiatric drugs

(NaturalNews) If you have ever seen a commercial for a pharmaceutical drug, you are probably familiar with the long list of dangerous side effects that are rattled off in the last five seconds of the advertisement, just after viewers are told how Drug “X” is going to save their lives, improve their memories or give them unlimited energy. What was that? Did he just say that pill might cause bleeding out of my eyes? Drug companies do a great job – and spend a lot of money – to ensure that most consumers aren’t aware of the harmful side effects of common drugs prescribed for conditions like depression, heart disease, arthritis, ADHD or high blood pressure. Unfortunately, the result of this has created a society where the average person with a health problem is captivated by the promises delivered in clever advertising. There is a drug for everything? All I have to do is talk to my doctor? How convenient. But what if there was a way to take back control of our lives and our health? What if, despite talking to your doctor, you still have questions or concerns about the safety of a drug? The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR) has a database that allows you to do just that. It’s called the Psychiatric Drug Database, and it allows consumers to research the potential side effects of common psychiatric drugs, such as Ritalin or Wellbutrin. While the database is limited to psychiatric drugs, this type of public information portal represents a significant step in the right direction to help patients find unbiased information and make informed decisions about their health. The database allows you to search by drug and will retrieve information about adverse reactions reported by patients who have taken the drug, international warnings and studies that have been done on the drug and what side effects different age groups or genders have experienced. For example, a search of the effects of Ritalin on 18-30 year old women retrieved 89 reported cases of adverse side effects. These effects including anxiety, fatigue, hypertension, tremors, chest discomfort, nausea, panic attacks, cardiac murmurs, aggression, suicide attempts and completed suicides. The results are broken down by case and list specific symptoms and reactions caused by the drug in each reported case. Another search of Zoloft and its effects on young children included cases of cerebral disorders, upper respiratory tract infections, sleep disorders, vertigo, hallucinations, psychomotor hyperactivity and suicidal ideation. The database only includes information on cases that were actually reported to the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System between 2004 and 2008. Based on the FDA’s own estimates, only about 1 to 10 percent of adverse drug side effects are even reported to the FDA. The CCHR’s database, therefore, represents only a small margin of the population that has been affected by adverse side effects of pharmaceutical psychiatric drugs. Visitors to the site will also notice an interesting anecdote that describes how the definition of poison – a substance that causes death or harm when consumed by a living organism – clearly characterizes the drugs listed in the database. Consumers are encouraged to research potential problems of a drug before agreeing with their doctors to start a course of therapy. To find more information about a particular drug, visit www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers Sources for this article include http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/

Former TSA agent pleads guilty to assisting criminals in smuggling cash, drugs through security

(NaturalNews) A 43-year-old former US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent who was arrested back in March on charges of aiding a drug smuggling ring has pleaded guilty, according to reports. Minetta Walker says she knowingly assisted criminals in evading airport security, and helped them sneak drug money onto flights. Walker worked as a TSA “behavioral detection officer” at Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BNIA) until March 1, 2011, when she was arrested on suspected drug activity. As a behavioral detection officer, Walker was in charge of monitoring the airport and looking for suspicious activity, and was allowed unrestricted access to all areas of the airport (http://www.naturalnews.com/031614_TSA_drug_smuggling.html). As it turns out, Walker was the embodiment of the very criminal activity that she was tasked with monitoring, having admitted in a federal court that she assisted 30-year-old Derek Frank in avoiding naked body scanners, pat downs, and other airport security protocols that might have exposed his drug activities. According to a recent report in the UK’s Daily Mail , Frank has been accused of regularly flying from Buffalo to Arizona to purchase marijuana, where he sent it back to Buffalo to be sold. While traveling, he carried with him large sums of drug money. However, Frank has pleaded not guilty to these charges. The only reason Walker’s participation in such illegal activities was even brought to light in the first place was due to a drug monitoring program that had been established a year earlier, which effectively traced the movements and mobile phone activities of the drug ring back to Walker’s airport shenanigans. Reports indicate that Walker has been charged with conspiring to defraud the United States and evading airport security requirements. She could face up to five years in prison if convicted, and Frank could face 20 years to life if convicted. Sources for this story include: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2031282/Female-TSA-agent-repeatedly-helped-drug-dealer-sneak-security.html

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg pushing to eliminate conflict of interest laws, allow paid drug company shills to fill advisory positions

(NaturalNews) At a time when drug industry corruption is reaching a pinnacle of public exposure, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is actually proposing eliminating one of the few pseudo-effective measures in place that restricts the agency from becoming a full-blown Big Pharma “rubber stamp” consultant. In a recent announcement, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg stated that the agency may next year loosen certain conflict of interest restrictions that prevent scientists with financial ties to the drug industry from becoming members of FDA advisory panels. There are 45 different FDA advisory committees that, according to the FDA’s own website, are supposed to obtain “independent expert advice on scientific, technical, and policy matters.” In other words, these panels are purportedly to be composed of objective, unbiased individuals that do not have financial or other ties to the very companies about which they are advising. Makes sense, right? Well, in the eyes of Commissioner Hamburg, these common sense restrictions, which at least give the illusion that the FDA conducts honest regulatory work on behalf of the people, are unreasonable and must be eliminated. Hamburg apparently believes that drug industry-funded “scientists” are vital to the FDA’s work, having stated publicly that allowing Big Pharma shills to serve on advisory committees is essential if the agency is to get the information it needs to make decisions. “We have to be sure that FDA has subject-matter experts that we need for our important decision making,” stated Hamburg. But expecting to receive “independent expert advice” from industry-sponsored consultants posing as scientists rather than actual independent scientists, however, is the epitome of inane — and this is precisely what Hamburg is suggesting as a correct form of FDA policy. Does the FDA have the power to change its own regulatory restrictions? Aside from Hamburg’s senseless and illogical opinions about how best to obtain crucial decision-making information, the other glaring elephant in the room is the fact that the FDA can apparently change its own regulatory restrictions at will. What is the point of an agency having conflict of interest restrictions placed on it when that very same agency can simply change them when they are no longer convenient? Last time we checked, Congress was still in charge of creating and passing laws, not the FDA. But Commissioner Hamburg seems quite sure of herself, presumably because of expressed congressional support, that the FDA’s conflict of interest laws will soon be history. And it appears, based on the FDA’s released draft guidance, that the FDA is actually the one in charge of amending its own policies (http://www.fda.gov/RegulatoryInformation/Guidances/ucm126832.htm). The FDA claims that it needs to loosen or eliminate the conflict of interest policies from its advisory committee procedures because it is unable to find enough members to serve on its committees. According to a recent Bloomberg report, only 77 percent of FDA advisory committee positions were filled as of March 2011, which leaves 138 vacant positions out of 608 total. But if the FDA is having a hard time filling these positions, perhaps it would do best to begin looking for eligible candidates in other places. And Robert Weissman, president of the non-profit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, agrees, having stated that the rules should not change because the FDA is unable, or unwilling, to find independent scientists to fill its ranks. “We need strong protection rather than less,” state Weissman, following Hamburg’s statements to his group about needed to relax or change the law. A study published back in March by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine discredits the FDA’s claim, having found that about 44 percent of cardiologists have no ties to the drug industry. Eric Campbell, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard University and one of the study’s authors, stated that the study “flat out dismisses this idea that there are no experts who don’t have relationships,” a claim being made by the FDA in support of its proposed new guidelines (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/01/us-fda-bias-idUSTRE7703R320110801). “There are lots of people out there who are smart and who don’t have conflicts of interest,” said Sid Wolfe, also with Public Citizen. “It just takes much more work for the FDA to find them. But the result is you have much less tainting of the panel discussion.” Tell the FDA to do its job, not tailor laws to suit the agenda of special interests According to the FDA’s draft guidance, the agency published a final rule on February 2, 1998, requiring clinical investigators who submit marketing applications for drugs or medical devices to also disclose whether or not they have financial ties to the companies who make the products they reviewed. Current guidelines also limit who can serve on advisory committee positions. Both of these policies can work, at least as long as the FDA is willing to put in the work necessary to find qualified individuals who are not on the payrolls of drug and medical device companies. But the agency is demonstrating a pure unwillingness to do this, and instead is planning to cave to the drug industry and to certain lawmakers who are pushing to have the law amended instead. Though the official comment period for the FDA’s proposed new guidance for financial disclosure by clinical investigators ended on July 25, it is still crucial to contact the FDA and tell it to stop catering to special interests, and to leave be the conflict of interest policies that help preserve what little integrity remains in the agency’s advisory committee process. You can contact the FDA to oppose the new draft guidance by writing to: Dockets Management Branch (HFA-305) Food and Drug Administration 5630 Fishers Lane, Room 10-61 Rockville, MD 20857 Or calling: (888) 463-6332 Be sure to reference Docket No. FDA-1999-D-0792 To contact FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg directly, you can call her: (301) 796-5000 Or email her: Office: Margaret.Hamburg@fda.hhs.gov Personal: margaretahamburg@aol.com You can also contact your representatives by visiting: http://www.congress.org Sources for this story include: http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2011/05/24/2011-12623/draft-guidance-for-clinical-investigators-industry-and-fda-staff-financial-disclosure-by-clinical http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-25/conflict-of-interest-rules-may-be-relaxed-in-2012-hamburg-says.html

FDA approved Big Pharma drugs without effectiveness data

(NaturalNews) Consumers constantly are told how complicated it is to get a new drug on the market. After all, researchers have to jump through all sorts of hoops to assure safety before new therapies are approved for the public, right? It turns out they may be missing some of those hoops or not jumping through some of the most important ones. In fact, huge red flags are being raised about how drugs are tested and approved in two new studies, including one just published in the May 4th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association ( JAMA ). A case in point: it turns out that only about half of the new prescription medications pushed onto the market over the last decade had the proper data together for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – yet the FDA approved them anyhow. The information in question is known specifically as comparative effectiveness data . And it is – or should be – a very big deal when it comes to deciding whether a drug should be approved and sold to the public. According to the Institute of Medicine, comparative effectiveness data is defined as the “generation and synthesis of evidence that compares the benefits and harms of alternative methods to prevent, diagnose, treat, and monitor a clinical condition or to improve the delivery of care.” In other words, how does a new drug stack up against other treatments – is it more beneficial, safer, or does it have more potential dangers? Comparative effectiveness information on drugs is especially important when doctors are making decisions about whether to prescribe a med, and to whom, soon after a drug is approved. That’s because when Big Pharma medications first hit the market, physicians are relying on what drug companies and the FDA tell them about a medication. It takes a while for real life reports to come in as people report reactions, side effects (including deaths related to a drug) to become clearer. Also, there are usually not data from large head-to-head trials comparing multiple treatments available when a medication first hits the marketplace. “Comparative effectiveness is taking on an increasingly important role in U.S. health care, yet little is known about the availability of comparative efficacy data for drugs at the time of their approval in the United States,” according to background information in the new JAMA study. It’s not like there’s not money to come up with this information, either. In 2009, Congress allocated $1.1 billion of taxpayers’ money to comparative effectiveness research. For the JAMA study, researcher Nikolas H. Goldberg and colleagues from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, investigated the proportion of recently approved drugs that had comparative efficacy data available at the time they were authorized by the FDA to be sold in the U.S. They also examined the availability of this information over time and by therapeutic indication by checking out approval packages publicly available through the online database of drug products (dubbed new molecular entities, NMEs, for short) approved by FDA between 2000 and 2010. The researchers found that only about half of 197 eligible approved NMEs between 2000 and 2010 had comparative efficacy data available at the time they were approved to be marketed. Meanwhile, another recent study throws needed light on the limited data behind the safety and effectiveness of some Big Pharma drugs. Research led jointly by Alexander Tsai of Harvard University and Nicholas Rosenlicht of the University of California San Francisco just published in PLoS Medicine zeroed in on the medication aripiprazole, which is prescribed treating bipolar disorder. How was this powerful drug deemed safe and effective? Amazingly, the research team found the only evidence for the use of this medication came from a single trial. And, as they described in their paper, the scientists found key limitations of the drug study that clearly skewed the findings so they appear to support the use of aripiprazole for bipolar disorder. Did this stop the FDA from approving the drug? No way. And neither did the fact that this single, poorly designed trial was sponsored by the drug manufacturer who produces aripiprazole. For more information: http://www.plos.org/ http://pubs.ama-assn.org/

Drug injection delays puberty

(NaturalNews) Children with supposed “Gender Identity Disorder” (GID), a rare condition involving sexual confusion, that are having a hard time deciding whether they want to be male or female can now choose to artificially delay puberty while they figure it out. A recent report in The Telegraph explains that a monthly drug injection will prevent sexual development in children to give them more time to make up their minds about having a sex change — and kids as young as 12 are eligible to receive it. Puberty-blocking drugs for young children have been available in the US for several years, but they are just now emerging in the UK for childrenSupporters say the drugs prevent the maturation of sexual organs so that, if a child chooses to undergo a sex change, the surgery will be less involved. But critics say the practice is a horrific to natural childhood development, and that sexual manipulation is an abuse against humanity. Previously, British doctors were prohibited from prescribing the drug to children under age 16. But the UK National Research Ethics Service (NRES), a group that “protects the rights, safety, dignity and well-being of research participants,” has decided to give exclusive approval to one London hospital to perform the procedure on 12-year-olds. The long-term effects of the drug are uncertain. While proponents say the hormone manipulators stop interfering once treatment ends, others worry that deliberately altering hormone levels during the crucial developmental years can cause permanent damage. “Do we know what the impact of such heavy hormonal interference will be on the health of these young people?” asked bioethicist Wesley Smith a few years ago when an international medical organization began pushing the treatment on young children. “If not, doesn’t this border on unethical human experimentation?” Sources for this story include: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8454002/Puberty-blocker-for-children-considering-sex-change.html http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2009/jan/09010509

GSK study suggests its antidepressant drugs cause suicidal tendencies

(NaturalNews) A new study released by drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) suggests that its very own antidepressant drug Paxil (paroxetine) is linked to an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and tendencies among adult patients. The findings appear to confirm those of previous studies and cases that have linked selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) like Paxil to suicides, suicide attempts, and even murders (http://www.naturalnews.com/019342.html). Published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry , the GSK study reveals a nearly sevenfold increase in suicide attempts among those taking Paxil versus those taking a placebo. In clinical trials, 0.34 percent of participants taking Paxil attempted suicide, while only 0.05 percent of those taking a placebo did. Besides increasing the risk of suicidal tendencies, a GSK study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in early 2010 showed that Paxil does not even appear to work as intended in patients with varying levels depression (http://www.naturalnews.com/027962_Paxil_antidepressants.html). Combine this with the fact that Paxil technically makes depression symptoms worse by causing more suicides and suicide attempts, and you are left asking how or why this drug ended up on the market in the first place. GSK has known since at least 2006 that Paxil is linked to increased suicide risk, and yet the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to allow the ineffective, harmful drug to remain on the market. Sure, the agency has upped its warning labels over the years, but based on the drug’s safety and performance record, is there any legitimate reason for it to even be on the market in the first place? The FDA first modified warning labels for Paxil in 2004 after suicide rates among children taking the drug was found to be twice as high as it was among those not taking Paxil. In 2006, the FDA extended the warning to include adults up to age 25. Today, the drug carries a “black box” warning for everyone that says it may increase risk of suicide. A 2009 study published in the online journal PLoS One revealed that among 832 different drugs, which represent 99 percent of the total suicide-related events reported in the Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS), Paxil was the worst of all. Among the 27,012 adverse events reported for suicide attempts between 2004 and 2008, 1,323, or 4.9 percent, were linked to Paxil (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007312). Sources for this story include: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/31/us-suicidal-thoughts-antidepressants-idUSTRE72U4EW20110331

Join the CFS Virtual Rally for the Right to Know and demand that Congress label GMOs

(NaturalNews) On Saturday, March 26, 2011, the Center for Food Safety (CFS), a human and environmental health advocacy group, held its “Virtual Rally for the Right to Know” campaign. Tens of thousands of Americans rallied together both online and at events nationwide, and sent letters to Congress demanding that it pass legislation to require the labeling of foods containing genetically-modified organisms (GMO). More than 78,000 individuals have sent petition letters so far, and CFS still has an online form letter available that you can use to send a petition of your own right now. As most NaturalNews readers already know, the US is one of the only major countries not to have some sort of law that requires GMOs to be labeled. And the corrupt US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is supposed to be looking out for the interests of the people rather than the drug and biotechnology companies, has blocked every effort at mandating GMO labeling. The agency has even gone so far as to make the insane claim that labeling GMOs would be “false, misleading [and] deceptive” (http://www.naturalnews.com/029168_GMO_foods_labeling.html). Not only has the FDA decided that GMO labeling is out of the question, but it has even stated that food producers are actually the ones responsible for assuring the safety of GMOs, not the agency. Besides representing the utter insanity of the way the FDA thinks, such a statement is clearly nothing more than a lame excuse for the agency to bypass actually having to do its job in regulating the biotechnology companies that produce GMOs. By letting these companies regulate themselves, the FDA can instead spend its time harassing natural vitamin and supplement producers, which conveniently do not receive the same hands-off regulatory treatment that the drug and GMO industries do (http://www.naturalnews.com/the_FDA.html). So it is time to sidestep the FDA and instead put immense pressure on Congress to do the right thing and pass a GMO labeling law. It would represent a first and significant step towards ultimately eliminating GMOs from the marketplace, as informed consumers are more than likely going to choose natural and organic varieties over GMOs if given the choice. Producers will then phase out GMOs because nobody will be buying them. To submit your own petition letter to your Congressmen urging them to support and co-sponsor GMO labeling legislation, visit: https://secure3.convio.net/cfs/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=262 Sources for this story include: http://truefoodnow.org/2011/03/26/join-the-rally-for-the-right-to-know/

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