OT: but related articles on healthcare/medical industry....

[Guest guest]

Pulse of Health Freedom - April 7, 2009

Going Back to Basics May Help Us Achieve Healthcare for All

Congress hopes to enact a mandate for all Americans to receive health insurance

as part of a sweeping overhaul of US healthcare by the end of the year. But

fully 87% of our nation’s healthcare dollars are spent treating chronic

disease, not emergency care. Part of the problem is that the drug industry is

now marketing illnesses, offering pharmaceutical solutions to problems the

public didn’t even realize they had.

Does the Medical Industry Have a Fundamental Lack of Integrity?

Federal investigators created a sham medical study to see how companies—paid

by drug and medical device makers to oversee patient safety during clinical

trials—evaluate those studies. The FDA has acknowledged that patients have

died during clinical trials, and fraudulent data is known to be submitted. The

New York Times reports that some companies even “shop for an accommodating

oversight board†when their research is questioned by more stringent

reviewers. 

Media Distortion Damages Both Science and Journalism

Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen of the University of Cambridge says that news articles

reporting his recent autism study aimed for “bold sensationalism†and ended

up distorting his research entirely. The media must take responsibility not only

for twisting the facts, but also for choosing to focus on “the hot new

medication†instead of on lifestyle changes that are safer, more effective,

and significantly less expensive.

When the Sum of the Parts Exceeds the Whole

The first nationwide study of human drugs in fish tissue has found that fish

caught near wastewater treatment plants serving five major US cities had

residues of pharmaceuticals in them. And a study published in Environmental

Health Perspectives found that certain pesticide mixtures in fish are more toxic

than the “sum of their individual components†would be predicted.

Edited by Deborah A. Ray, MT (ASCP)