SUMMARY ON THE SCANDALS
DECEMBER 10, 2003. In the last several days, I have reported
in detail on several huge breaking medical scandals:
The illegal and deceptive ghostwriting of hundreds of
medical-journal articles that review drugs;
The consulting fees paid confidentially to scientists and
execs at the US National Institutes of Health---fees paid by
drug companies;
The admission, by a major honcho at GlaxoSmithKline, that
most medical drugs don’t work on most people.
In a half-sane world, these scandals would break open the
medical monopoly like a watermelon and lay it out, exposed,
for all to see.
The fact that this exposure does not have any real traction
makes sane people think they are crazy. It’s as if they’re
reading, TEN PLANES CRASH KILLING A THOUSAND, and then they
never hear about it again. They think they had a dream. They
think they misread the original reports. They think were on
LSD.
Well, it all does make sense when you plug in the missing
factor: in order for this scandal to go away, an invisible
hand has to be at work smothering the story.
And that is what is going on. Go ahead, go back and re-read
my pieces in the last several days. Get a feel for the scope
of the scandals. They should be juggernauts, steamrollers.
But they are not. Why? Because someone has turned off the
key to the engine.
You may find that hard to believe. You may find it easy to
believe. But either way, the power of the medical cartel to
keep on rolling in the face of these exposures tells you
something about how strong the cartel is.
The cartel faces one problem: the human being. He is the one
who takes the pill out of the bottle and swallows it. Or
not.
There is that place of CHOICE.
Everything finally hinges on that.
And that is where the revolution is occurring.
With no grant monies or phony PR. It is truly grass roots,
and it spreads every day.
To spread, people need to read facts about the cartel. I’m
providing them. I hope you are sending them on, getting them
out there, doing your part in the adventure.
The king has no clothes. He is stark naked in the streets.
Just pull up the shade and look out there.
JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com
A THIRD HUGE MEDICAL SCANDAL
DECEMBER 10, 2003. The LA Times has blown the lid off
conflict of interest at the US National Institutes of Health
(NIH), the single largest medical research facility in the
world. A facility funded by tax dollars and dollars printed
up at will by your federal government.
This is a very big story.
First of all, know that billions and billions of dollars
have been given to NIH over the years---and this year its
budget is $28 billion. The National Cancer Institute is just
one of the many health agencies that exists under the
umbrella of NIH.
Second, know that the federal government points to NIH as
the justification for governmental meddling and involvement
and influence and sponsorship and funding in the area of
medical research. NIH is the shining star. It is “the
cutting edge.”
I can also tell you that NIH scientists and executives tend
to be some of the most arrogant people in the world. For
example, in the late 1980s, I interviewed a White House
analyst named Jim Warner about HIV. Warner had the
misfortune of being schooled in elementary logic, and he had
caught the wave of dissident opinion about HIV. That is,
Warner realized that there was no rational reason to assume
that HIV was the cause of what was being called AIDS.
This was a pretty big situation, because as I say, Warner
worked at the White House, and he was a talkative guy.
Warner called over to the NIH and wanted to talk with HIV
experts there. He wanted some explanations. He wanted a
straight-line account about how HIV had been found to be the
cause of human disease.
It was as if he was asking for all the CIA documents ever
collected on mind control or UFOs. He was treated like a
punk. An uneducated, dismally crippled-in-the-brain punk.
He told me he couldn’t get anything out of NIH at all. They
had their own kingdom over there, and they were so sure of
their federal funding, they felt beholden to NO ONE.
Well, now (December 7), the LA Times has penetrated the
walls of the castle and found, for starters, extreme
conflict of interest: “Stealth Merger: Drug Companies and
Government Medical Research” is the article. The reporter is
David Willman. The Times prints this summary above the text
of the long article: “Some of the National Institutes of
Health’s top scientists are also collecting paychecks and
stock options from biomedical firms. Increasingly, such
deals are kept secret.”
The Times article, so far, has not been picked up widely.
For example, I do not see any analysis or summary of it at
MSNBC.com. I don’t find it prominently displayed at AP. I
have not been hearing about it on local newscasts here in
San Diego. Oh, I’m sure some media outlets around the world
are picking it up, but with how much force---and for how
long? Will this be yet another medical expose that sinks
like a stone in thirteen seconds?
The Times article begins with the death of “subject no. 4”
in an NIH study of a new drug to treat kidney inflammation.
June 14, 1999.
The drug caused the death of this volunteer. It was
manufactured by Schering AG, a German firm.
Right away, the NIH's Dr. Stephen Katz was told. Katz was in
charge of the sub-institute that was running the study of
the drug.
Ah, but that was the rub, because Katz, as it turned out,
was also “a paid consultant to Schering AG.”
Naturally, Schering would not want to shut down the study
and lose its investment in a new drug.
Katz had the option, of course, of closing down the study
right away. He could also have sent out a message to doctors
in the field who were using this drug to treat other
disorders. Katz did not take either action.
Reporter Willman writes that Katz’s “work with the company
[Schering] was approved by NIH leaders.”
They knew. They knew and they okayed Katz’s dual role as
medical administrator at NIH and paid consultant to
Schering.
Willman goes to state, “Interviews and corporate and federal
records obtained by the Los Angeles Times document hundreds
of consulting payments to ranking NIH officials…”
Such as: Katz, head of NIH’s National Institute of Arthritis
and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases; Dr. John Gallin, head
of the NIH Clinical Center, in charge of all medical studies
using human beings; Dr. Richard Eastman, “the NIH’s top
diabetes researcher in 1997…”; Dr. Ronald Germain, “deputy
director of a major laboratory at the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases”; Jeffrey Schlom, head of
the National Cancer Institute’s Laboratory of Tumor
Immunology and Biology; and Jeffrey Trent, one-time
scientific director of the National Human Genome Research
Institute.
No small fries.
Jeffrey Schlom, for example, was involved in directing
studies funded by NIH to test new uses for a particular
cancer drug. Schlom was also receiving fees from a company
that was trying to produce this very drug “through genetic
engineering.” Obviously, a positive assessment of the drug
would help make a genetically engineered version of it more
profitable in the marketplace.
What does it mean when a government employee is also hired
by people and companies in the private sector? Think of it
this way. An FBI agent is also a paid consultant to an
accounting firm. In his government work, the agent
investigates white-collar crime.
Drug companies want $$$. This means they must get studies
done that present a wonderful picture of their new drugs, so
that the FDA will approve and certify the meds for public
use, and doctors reading the results of the studies will
want to prescribe those drugs to patients. If a
pharmaceutical company is paying a government researcher
fees, that company can sometimes obtain a favorable opinion
on a drug…
Dr. Eastman, mentioned above, wrote a letter to the FDA
offering a positive assessment of a diabetes drug. He did
not say he was a paid consultant to the company that made
the drug. Eastman, in his letter, claimed that there was a
very low probability of liver failure from taking the
drug---and six months after that, in an NIH study, a
volunteer on that drug died from liver failure.
These government employees who take money on the side always
say they have no conflict of interest in their minds and
hearts. But the question will always be moot, because they
don’t normally leave notes around that say,
“Tuesday---remember to lie about Haldol.”
In the case of NIH, the Times reveals that, increasingly,
agency officials are allowing almost every employee with an
outside consulting income to keep his arrangements
secret---and this extends to these NIH employees actually
signing confidentiality agreements with their drug-company
employers, agreements that insure nothing will be said about
what outside work is being done.
So you could easily get a situation where an NIH lab
director is running a study on a new drug, is really working
for the company that makes the drug, says nothing about this
connection, has patients in the study die, and STILL will
not reveal that he is working for the drug manufacturer,
because to do so would break the confidentiality agreement
he has signed.
Here's another scenario. A researcher at NIH who also
(secretly) works for a biomedical firm wangles a study at
NIH for one of the firm's new drugs. Just obtaining that
study could allow the firm to leverage new investment
dollars. And the stock price of the firm could go up.
If you read over my stories of the last few days, you will
find an answer to the question, "How can 100,000 people
a year in the US die from the administration of medical
drugs?" The amount of lying and deception on every
relevant front is enormous enough to allow that to happen.
JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com
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