Shannon Brownlee
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 Abramson had already been sifting through other papers in the journals and finding similar problems—papers presenting results of drug research that glossed over risks or accentuated benefits. But the most unnerving discovery of all was the Vioxx research. After doing his calculations, says Abramson, he found himself almost incapable of writing a prescription. What if he gave a patient a drug that killed her? If he couldn't trust what was in the journals, how was he supposed to know what to prescribe? |
Dr. Edward F. Group III, DC, ND, DACBN
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| Pharmaceutical companies spent over $39 billion on domestic
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Staggering Statistics About Modern Medicine and Pharmaceutical Drugs (contd.) drug research and development in 2005 alone. Incredibly, this figure represented less than 16% of sales for that same year!93
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Aren't Prescription Drugs Supposed to Fix What's Wrong with You?
Nearly half of all American citizens take at least one prescription drug and about one in five take three or more medications. |
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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 Science tends to be murky that way, but as any immunologist will tell you, perhaps in no field is it messier than in autoimmune-disease drug research. When we attempt to develop therapies to keep the immune system from attacking itself, it is impossible to guess whether all other functioning parts of the immune system will remain uncompromised in the process—and only long-term clinical trials can provide the answer.
All of which leaves autoimmune-disease sufferers with dicey options. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 It is not surprising that the current president backs Big Pharma and Big Biotech as he does -- his family wealth depends on it. drug research and development performed at the Reagan-Udall Foundation will undoubtedly be paid for, in large part, by companies who have grants from the National Cancer Institute (taxpayer funds).
Von Eschenbach took over the helm of the FDA to create his dream of a cancer sickness industry wherein nobody actually gets well -- they just live indefinitely in a sick condition on really expensive biotech drugs. This project is called the Critical Path Initiative. |
Bill Sardi
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 Progress drug research 60: 59-92, 2003] Therefore, can we assume that the use of anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin, ibuprofen, and COX-2 inhibitors like Vioxx and Bextra, will reduce the risk for cancer? A lot of doctors think so. But recent studies don't bear this out:
¦ A large study of 77,413 women could not find a preventive effect for aspirin or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs against breast cancer. |
Shannon Brownlee
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| This would encourage patients to ask their doctors to be more conscious of the available evidence.
But drug research is only the first step. We also need information about devices, and about the wide array of medical practices that have never been put to any kind of real test. Believe it or not, we already have a federal agency that is supposed to produce precisely the sorts of studies we need. |
| He left his practice several years ago to research and write Overdoled vlmerica, a critique of drug research and pharmaceutical marketing. He now teaches at Harvard Medical School. His patient was an eighty-two-year-old man we'll call Henry Graydon, who had been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. Graydon also suffered from heart disease, which Abramson was treating medically. While in Florida one winter, Graydon suffered a heart attack and underwent bypass surgery. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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 Following footnotes and leads from articles in these journals to other research and reports, I have drilled deeply into drug research and outcomes. In addition, I have reviewed investigative reporting in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times relevant to drug-safety issues. Where appropriate, I have consulted colleagues in specific areas of expertise. I have also reviewed five hundred of the most commonly prescribed medications to make sure that I have included all the medications that will be most relevant to the vast majority of medication users. |
Jeffrey M. Smith
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 Compared to drug research, the potential for industry manipulation in GM crop studies is considerably higher.
• Drug studies generally follow standardized procedures dictated by regulators. The Ag biotech industry largely uses its own testing parameters.
• Drug studies are published in peer-reviewed journals, while most GM studies submitted to regulators are not published and are kept secret from the public.
• Regulators are often biotech proponents, willing to accept shoddy research.
• Most importantly, drugs can show serious side effects and still be approved (GM food can't). |
Too Profitable to CureBrent Hoadley, Ph.D.
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| Madison Avenue has now entered the "new" science of drug research.7 Questions are asked and Madison Avenue designs and completes studies to answer them. Any given drug can be shown to have the qualities "most desired by patients" (and even more highly desired by the underwriting pharmaceutical company).
Doctors can recommend FDA-approved drugs for any purpose, an act called off-label prescribing. However, a pharmaceutical company cannot promote an approved drug for a use that has not received approval. How can doctors be "educated" about this new use for Drug X? |
Dr. Timothy Scott
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 Many are actively involved in drug research. Psychiatrists are, generally speaking, the only mental health professionals who can prescribe drugs. The drug companies of America are keenly aware of all this.
There is an education to be found in looking through old issues of the Archives of General Psychiatry, America's leading psychiatric journal. I have done so, and I am impressed by how hard it would be for a psychiatrist not to be fooled into believing that mental problems are caused by biochemical malfunctions in the brain. |
Amarjit S. Basra
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 Reviewing the research and development of new drugs from Chinese traditional and herbal drugs, it is shown that developing natural drugs is an important pathway for new drug research. About 140 new drugs have been developed since 1949, of which about 80 originated directly or indirectly from medicinal plants. This background has shown that increasing emphasis on the use of medicinal plants in searching for new drugs in China is undoubtedly a correct strategy. |
Dr. Timothy Scott
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| Now that some of the psychiatric journals have adopted conflict of interest policies, we can get some idea about whether or not there are drug industry ties to the drug research. Are there? "Wow!" is the best answer. Here is the brief "declaration of interest" for one Psychiatric Bulletin article:
D. T. has received research funding from various manufacturers of atypical antipsychotics and the Department of Health, and consultancy fees and honoraria for presentations received from AstraZeneca, Janssen-Cilag, Novartis, Pfizer and Eli Lilly. S. M. |
Phyllis A. Balch, CNC
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 Some directions of antiviral drug research now being pursued include the following:
• Anti-sense compounds. By locking on to strands of viral DNA or RNA, these drugs act a bit like chewing gum stuck in the teeth of a zipper—they "gum up" the zipper so that the virus's genetic instructions are blocked.
• Cellular targets. These compounds inhibit factors inside the immune cells that HIV needs for replication, and have shown promise in interfering with the virus's ability to reproduce. |
Dr. Timothy Scott
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| The degree to which FDA standards need to be raised is greater in the area of mind drug research since "depression," "anxiety" and "confusion" are more difficult to measure than heart attacks, strokes and cancer.
(3) The amount of money being made with mind drugs is greater than was made with hormone pills, and thus their promotion is greater.
A Closer Look
In many of the lectures I give, I provide an example of a poorly designed study which fooled the researchers and the public. And yes, I have often been fooled also. |
| Not only are many psychiatrists not very skeptical of the mind drug research; some apparently view reading journal research as optional. I suspect this is because a majority are now almost fully convinced that they cannot really help their clients other than by prescribing pills. Here is how one psychiatrist put it:
Reading our current psychiatric journals is probably character-building and interesting for the sake of knowledge, but optional. I say this from feeling that the journals will not contain evidence to change expected clinical practice and that most psychiatrists feel similarly. |
| Money Influences drug research and Drug Approval
Merck's arthritis drug Vioxx made front page news in 2004 when Merck announced it was going to remove the drug from the market because of concerns over increased cardiovascular risks. Most of the public still believes that the Vioxx-heart problem link was only discovered in 2004. The 2004 edition of the Physicians' Desk Reference24 (PDR), the compilation of
FDA-approved drug package inserts, makes it plain that the danger was known years before the drug was pulled from the market. |
| The drug companies could, in effect, hire the nation's top scientists without having to fund some of the graduate students, libraries, research equipment or many other expenses associated with drug research. This saved the drug companies huge sums and resulted in better funding for bioscience in universities all over the nation.
I am not arguing that this was a good development. The evidence indicates that this system did, in fact, compromise objective science. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 So you spend three hours running your legs off, coughing up cash for "the cure," and then these organizations take your money and spend it on drug research. But then, if a new drug is found that even claims to help treat the disease, do they give you the drug for free? Of course not. You have to pay for it, and you're usually paying monopoly prices in the U.S. thanks to the national drug racket operating here.
For most diseases, the race for the cure is really just a way for drug companies to shift R&D costs to suckers. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 So we're not doing basic drug research, and we don't even have, for example, articles on single herbs. I'm not very interested in that -- I'm more interested in integrated care protocols, where we look at everything that can be used.
Mike: So that leads me to I think an important question for readers, which is -- how does a patient assemble a team of integrative care providers?
Dr. Pizzorno: Boy, that's a real challenge, because there are some clinics around where you have practitioners working together, and that's certainly a good start, but most people don't have that ability. |
Amarjit S. Basra
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| Traditional experience of Chinese medicine: Its application in drug research and new drug searching, in J. Beal and E. Rinhard (eds.), Natural products as medicinal agents (Stuttgart: Hippokrates Verlag, 1981), pp. 351-394.
45. You, J.Q.. Le, W.J., and Mei, J.Y., 1982, The in vitro effect of agrimophol on Schistosoma japonicum, Acta Pharm Sin, 17: 663-666.
46. Hunan Institute of Pharmaceutical Industry, 1978, Pharmacological investigation of the pressure action of Citrus aurantium. Science Bull Sin, 23( 1): 58-62.
47. Zheng, J.M. |
| They are also the resources for new drug research and development. The following pathways for the discovery and development of new drugs from Chinese traditional and herbal drugs should be reviewed and considered.
Research Conducted Under the Guidance of Experiences of Chinese Traditional Medicine
No records of the term chronic myelocytic leukemia can be found in the classic works on Chinese traditional medicine. However, based on the theories and methods of Chinese traditional medicines, diagnosis of this condition can be made and treated according to the symptoms involved. |
| Traditional experience of Chinese herb medicine, its application in drug research and new searching, in J. Beal and E. Reinhard (eds.), Natural products as medicinal agent's (Stuttgart: Hippokrates Verlag, 1981), p. 351; Xiao, P.G., 1986, The role of traditional medicine in the primary health case system of China, Economic and Medical Plant Research, 4:17-26; Xiao, P.G., 1983, Recent developments on medicinal plants in China, J Ethnopharmacology, 7:95-100; Liu, C.X. and Xiao, P.G., Chinese medicinal plants (Tianjin: Tianjin Institute of Pharmaceutical Research, 1992), pp. 1-497; Liu, C.X. |
Mike Adams
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 From your tax dollars, because a significant portion of the drug research being conducted today in this country is paid for by taxpayer dollars.
The drug companies like you to believe that it's their investment in revenues of research that creates new miracle drug breakthroughs, but the truth is that some of the research is actually paid for with government money and grants to universities and institutions. |
| Drug companies spend billions on drug marketing—more, in fact, than they spend on drug research. The purpose of that marketing is to make prescription drugs look safe and effective (for treating something, anything), and then convince consumers to walk into their doctors' offices and ask for those drugs by name.
The tactic works. Studies show that when patients ask for drugs by name, the vast majority of doctors will ultimately write them a prescription for that drug, even if the patient shows no signs of the disease for which the drug is intended! |
| Why does the FDA approve drugs based entirely on drug research conducted by drug companies themselves, who obviously have a profit bias to produce positive results?
These are just a few of the many questions any honest observer should be asking. Once you begin asking them, you can't help but be amazed by the answers that will begin to emerge. And if you ask enough honest questions, and pay attention to the answers, you will come to the inescapable conclusion that conventional medicine is not at all what it seems. |
| Why is much of the drug research being conducted today paid for by taxpayers, but then the rights to the chemical discoveries resulting from such research are given to pharmaceutical corporations that turn around and charge the taxpayers monopoly prices on the very same drugs?
Why do cosmetics ingredients not need to be proven safe?
Why are prescription drugs sold at prices representing 30,000 percent (or higher!) markups over the cost of their ingredients? In any other industry, that would be called profiteering. |
Amarjit S. Basra
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| They play an important role in modern drug research and development in which new drugs from biological sources are being sought.
DEVELOPMENT OF RESOURCES
Due to the destruction of forests, overgrazing of meadows, expansion of industry, and urbanization, as well as excessive collection of rare and en-
TABLE 2.5. Genera containing more than 15 medicinal species and with higher proportion of therapeutic members. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 The drug companies are no longer able to hide the truth about these dangerous drugs (although they've certainly tried), and the lies of the FDA have been blatantly exposed by its own senior drug research Dr. David Graham, who testified before Congress that, "The FDA is incapable of protecting Americans."
The game is up. Big Pharma has exploited the public health so much, for so long, that the backlash has begun. The lawsuits are in full swing. Congress is contemplating restricting drug advertising, and talk of FDA reform is everywhere. |
Robert Whitaker
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 He was also well known in the world of commercial drug research. He'd done a number of studies for pharmaceutical firms and had been a named author on published results. In the spring of 1994, he had a contract with Abbott Laboratories to test sertindole. However, the protocol specifically excluded patients who were suicidal. Nursing notes, according to her brother Ed, also showed that Susan Endersbe had reservations about entering a drug experiment. But no matter. On May 27, the day that Abuzzahab met Endersbe, he enrolled her in the study. |
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