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Health Roundup: Gambling with drugs, Squaretrade failures and counterfeit drugs (satire)

Friday, March 31, 2006
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: health news, Natural News, nutrition


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The following true story is almost too hilarious to hear sitting down. Prepare to leave your seat. A retired doctor from Austin, Texas named Max Wells is suing multiple drug companies and casinos for $14 million to recoup losses he suffered as a result of -- get this -- prescription drug side effects. The Parkinson's drug he was on, the lawsuit claims, causes compulsive gambling behavior. Dr. Wells, it turns out, was so compulsive that he coughed up $14 million in gambling losses before finally being taken off the medicine.

Any time you take prescription drugs, of course, you're gambling with your health. But Dr. Wells takes the concept to a whole new level. Interestingly, losing $14 million did not bankrupt the man. Can you guess why? Because he's a retired doctor, and he apparently socked away quite a nice sum of cash treating other people with conventional medicine. I wonder how much money he made from Big Pharma? The irony is almost unbearable...

So what about all the people this doctor may have promoted drugs to over the years? Shouldn't they also get to sue somebody for their side effects? Their losses probably didn't reach $14 million -- because few people make the money that doctors make -- but they may be substantial nonetheless.

It turns out Dr. Max Wells is probably right, by the way, in blaming his compulsive behavior on prescription drugs. A Mayo Clinic study on Parkinson's patients taking the same drugs (Requip and Mirapex) also developed compulsive behaviors. See http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2005-rst/2925.html

These drugs really do mess with your head. Casinos would be smart (and no more evil than they are already) to offer free prescriptions to all senior citizens who walk through the door, thereby replacing Parkinsonian shaking with casino shakedowns. "Free drugs for all gamblers!" Sounds like Vegas to me. After all, they already serve free drinks to anyone foolish enough to drink and gamble.

All of this serves as yet one more reason to ditch prescription drugs and switch to natural medicine (healing through foods, herbs, acupuncture, chiropractic, and other modalities). No natural food or herb has ever turned a patient into a compulsive gambler and caused them to lose $14 million. Except, perhaps, tapioca pudding, but that's only due to the sugar content (which makes children and adults alike commit senseless acts of indulgence).

Squaretrade is less useful than expired pharmaceuticals

Squaretrade is touted as a service that's supposed to "make online shopping smarter, safer and easier." It's also a place where online pharmacies can acquire some sort of semi-authoritative license number that's supposed to mean they're legitimate online pharmacies. (Of course, I keep getting spammed from an online pharmacy that claims to be Squaretrade certified, so don't put too much faith in this system.)

For the past week, I've been trying to log in to Squaretrade.com to verify the pharmacy license number of an online seller of prescription drugs. It turns out that Squaretrade is just flat broken and it keeps sending me through an endless eBay loop that redirects you back to Squaretrade.com where you get to start all over. In other words, the whole system is utterly useless and apparently serves no purpose whatsoever other than to waste the time of web surfers who are under the misimpression that Squaretrade has some actual purpose.

The Squaretrade website is still up, but nobody's home. At least not on my web browser.

Counterfeit drugs just as safe as genuine drugs?

The FDA is clamping down on sales of counterfeit drugs, which it says don't work and contain dangerous ingredients. Coincidentally, the same is true for genuine prescription drugs, which cost ten times as much. With genuine prescription drugs now killing at least 100,000 Americans each year due to fatal side effects, the sale of counterfeit drugs with inert ingredients may actually be REDUCING patient deaths.

But that's not good enough for the FDA, which wants to protect the profits of drug companies by outlawing overseas drug purchases, banning drugs from Canada, and discrediting online pharmacies (many of which are, indeed, completely bogus). Of course, buying drugs from your local pharmacy doesn't guarantee you're getting the real deal either, as drug wholesalers (the companies that supply local pharmacies) also trade in counterfeit products.

The only way to know you're getting REAL medicine, it turns out, is to eat raw, fresh plants. Because edible plants can't be faked, and they just happen to contain powerful medicines (like anthocyanins) that are 100% compatible with the human body. No prescription needed, either, and common edible plants won't cause a heart attack and kill you like many drugs.


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About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is a best selling author (#1 best selling science book on Amazon.com) and a globally recognized scientific researcher in clean foods. He serves as the founding editor of NaturalNews.com and the lab science director of an internationally accredited (ISO 17025) analytical laboratory known as CWC Labs. There, he was awarded a Certificate of Excellence for achieving extremely high accuracy in the analysis of toxic elements in unknown water samples using ICP-MS instrumentation. Adams is also highly proficient in running liquid chromatography, ion chromatography and mass spectrometry time-of-flight analytical instrumentation.

Adams is a person of color whose ancestors include Africans and Native American Indians. He's also of Native American heritage, which he credits as inspiring his "Health Ranger" passion for protecting life and nature against the destruction caused by chemicals, heavy metals and other forms of pollution.

Adams is the founder and publisher of the open source science journal Natural Science Journal, the author of numerous peer-reviewed science papers published by the journal, and the author of the world's first book that published ICP-MS heavy metals analysis results for foods, dietary supplements, pet food, spices and fast food. The book is entitled Food Forensics and is published by BenBella Books.

In his laboratory research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products.

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Through the non-profit CWC, Adams also launched Nutrition Rescue, a program that donates essential vitamins to people in need. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released over a dozen popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.

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