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Monday, 28 June 2010
Incompetent Swine Flu Drug Dealers Flying Pigs Club, from left:
Andrew Burnham MP - Previously Health Secretary of State, now challenging for the Labour Party leadership
Fear Marketeer Sir Liam Donaldson - Chief Medical Officer (soon to be ex)
Professor David Salisbury, tagged 'Vaccines Basil' - UK Government Vaccines Director
Gillian Merron, Ex-MP - Previously Parliamentary vaccines propagandist, fired by the voters at the General Election
(Caption & Pic Courtesy Of One Click)
Threats of a swine flu pandemic were 'vastly over-rated' by the World Health Organisation, an inquiry has concluded. The Council of Europe also accused the UN's health arm of 'grave shortcomings' in the process that led it to declare a pandemic last year. The debate and recommendations follow a report which described the declaration of the H1N1 pandemic as a ' monumental error' driven by drug companies - spreading fear and wasting huge amounts of money. Pharmaceutical companies profited to the tune of £4.6billion from the sale of vaccines alone. Britain is now desperately trying to unpick the contracts and unload millions of unused vaccines.
Fiona Macrae, Daily Mail
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Victoria Fletcher, Daily Express
GUWAHATI: A major immunisation drive against cervical cancer in Assam has run into rough weather with the main opposition Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) questioning the validity of the vaccine and also whether the campaign was approved by health experts. Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma earlier this week announced the government's decision to vaccinate 100,000 girl students against cervical cancer at a whopping cost of Rs.600 million. "We think the campaign is being done in haste. We need to know if any expert health committee has cleared or recommended the project being introduced," senior AGP leader Bijon Mahajan told reporters. "Moreover, since a large amount of public money is involved, we need to know if at all the vaccine will yield effective results" he added.
The Times Of India
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Aarti Dhar, The Hindu
Daily Mail Reporter, Daily Mail
For the second time this year, GlaxoSmithKline is moving to dispense with litigation by agreeing to wholesale settlements. Last month, the drugmaker agreed to pay about $60 million to settle 700 lawsuits alleging its Avandia diabetes pill causes heart attacks and strokes. Now, Glaxo is settling nearly 200 lawsuits that charged its Paxil antidepressant caused birth defects, although the amounts were not disclosed. The move comes after a Pennsylvania state court jury last October awarded a woman $2.5 million in damages for failing to properly warn docs and pregnant women about the risks of the antidepressant. This case, which was filed by the family of three-year-old Lyam Kilker, who was born with heart defects his mother blamed on the drug. It was the first of 600 such lawsuits and was seen as a test of Glaxo’s vulnerability. Since then, Glaxo settled several other suits headed for a jury, although about 100 more remain pending.
Ed Silverman, Pharmalot
In my life as a paediatrician, I had spent lots of time in dialogue with the parents who often needed to voice their fears about both disease and vaccines. We worked out together the best route for their children. Some chose not to vaccinate at all. Others held onto fear of disease, especially tetanus. Some of the basis of my ability to speak on the marvellous health of unvaccinated children comes from my personal experience as a medical doctor, having collected years of feedback. I found these observations were paralleled over and over again all over the world - Europe, USA, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. As a concerned, compassionate and considerate paediatrician, I can only arrive at one conclusion. Unvaccinated children have by far the best chance of enjoying marvellous health.
Françoise Berthoud, MD, Medical Voices
A former member of Pfizer Inc.'s speakers' bureau who was accused of perpetrating one of the most extensive research frauds in history has been given a six-month federal prison sentence. Dr. Scott S. Reuben, a prolific pain researcher at Bay State Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., who during a 12-year span is believed to have faked at least 21 studies, will also have to return more than $360,000 to drug firms, including Pfizer, that gave him money for research. Other fines and penalties in the case will require Reuben to repay nearly half a million dollars to various parties. Reuben's studies, five of which were funded by Pfizer, had bolstered claims about the post-surgery effectiveness of such painkillers as Pfizer's Celebrex and Merck & Co.'s Vioxx. Vioxx has since been pulled from the market because of safety concerns. "Reuben was showered with cash by Big Pharma," Jim Edwards, a pharmaceutical blogger at bnet.com, said in a post Friday. It is not known how much Reuben made as a member of Pfizer's speakers' bureau.
Lee Howard, theday, Connecticut
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) will support legal challenges to the recently passed Digital Economy Act, according to a new national policy. The new policy, which was signed off by the NUJ's National Executive Council in May, raises concern from other industry groups that the Act's measures could be used against sites that publish material of public interest without permission, such as the whistleblowing site Wikileaks. Now the union has formulated a policy that will see it support opposition to the Act, such as that led by internet service provider TalkTalk, in the courts. "The measures in the Digital Economy Act are a form of protectionism by the existing entertainment industry, which has been self-destructively slow in adapting to new technology," says the background to the new policy, seen by Journalism.co.uk.
Judith Townend, journalism.co.uk
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Jane Bryant, The One Click Group
It boggles the mind, what ordinary people are having to put up with right now. First it was greedy bankers, with employees at all levels pocketing commissions and bonuses by selling loans to people who couldn't afford them. This meant that in the end we had to bail them out with money we had paid in taxes - money the bankers had no right to, which should have stayed in our pockets or at least been used to help the needy in society. Then it was those we elected to represent us blatantly, shamelessly stealing money from the people by fiddling their expenses on a grand scale. And when caught out, moaning and groaning as if they were the ones being unfairly treated, not their hard-working, honest constituents. Throw in the Labour government which borrowed money as if there were no tomorrow. Mismanaged the economy so grotesquely that we now face the biggest budget cuts the country's seen for 100 years. And top it off with a coalition full of politi cians who stand to collect vast pensions from the state, saying the only way to balance the books is to cancel retirement. The unfairness of it appals me. Like everyone else, I can only hate the politicians and money men who brought this about.
Michael Winner, Daily Mail
The expenses scandal returned to haunt Parliament as it emerged that MPs claimed more than £10million from taxpayers between July and December last year. New figures also revealed the extent to which many appeared to have been fleecing taxpayers by claiming cash they did not need. While public outrage appeared to have prompted many to rein in their excesses, others just carried on claiming, including some who knew they were going to retire at the election or who were forced to do so, or even face court action. Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said some MPs were still claiming for petty and indulgent items. He added: “The very fact that accommodation costs dropped so much shows the benefits of transparency but also suggests a lot of MPs were claiming far more than they needed.”
Alison Little, Martyn Brown & Padraic Flanagan - Daily Express
On June 10th, Barack Obama issued an Executive Order creating the “National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council. As with all government programs and bureaucracy, this additional layer of bureaucracy is ostensibly intended to do good, in this particular case to develop and promote a national strategy for improving Americans’ health. As the Executive Order puts it, this Public Health Council will write up and give to the President “a list of national priorities on health promotion and disease prevention to address lifestyle behavior modification (including smoking cessation, proper nutrition, appropriate exercise, mental health, behavioral health, substance-use disorder, and domestic violence screenings) and the prevention measures for the five leading disease killers in the United States.” Obviously, these Neanderthals have never heard of the Law of Unintended Consequences. For a gov ernment to create yet another costly and top-heavy “council” to help prevent illnesses may sound wonderful to some people – especially if it is to include some complementary and alternative approaches; but it is absolutely doomed to failure and to create more illness and more sickness in the United States.
Scott C. Tips, Press Release, National Health Federation
Motherhood came easily to my mom. She popped out the three of us, as reliably as toast, every other year. But by modern standards she was a mediocre parent. She smoked. She drank. She drove us around without seatbelts, while she smoked. We raced around without bike helmets and made our way to school on our own. We never wore sunscreen except at the beach. Times were simpler then. Nobody had heard of child abuse or BPA. Mothers used cloth diapers, not because they were environmentally responsible, but because Pampers hadn’t been invented yet. Peanut allergies were virtually unknown. Now we know better. The obligations of responsible mothering have been ratcheted way up. Every generation of mothers is buffeted by different waves of social panic. The new ethic of mothering promises that you will find wisdom, happiness, and connectedness, not only with your children but with the earth itself. Instead, what you mostly get is guilt. So you fed your kids fast food last week? Bad mommy! It occurs to me that the high moral bar we’ve set for modern motherhood is a tremendous deterrent to motherhood itself. Any thoughtful woman would have to think twice, thrice, or three times thrice before committing to a task with such demanding standards. So long as you keep the kids from running out into the traffic, they’ll probably be fine. It seemed to work for Mom.
Margaret Wente, The Globe And Mail
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