by Heidi Stevenson

One of the most devastating classes of drugs ever developed is antidepressant SSRIs, selective serotonin receptor inhibitors. Not only can they destroy your own life, but they can also turn you into a murderer. Now, the FDA has approved Brintellix, which may prove to be the worst of them all.

In a press release by pharmaceutical company Lundbeck, the developer of Brintellix^[1], it’s admitted that the cause of depression is unknown. Nonetheless, they cavalierly play with brain chemistry about which they know very little. Making this particular drug potentially even worse than any other SSRI is that it doesn’t limit itself to one or two pathways in the brain. It manipulates a total of 6 receptors!

Although Takeda Pharmaceuticals and Lundbeck, the US distributors, are expecting Brintellix to become a blockbuster drug, the hyped studies that appear to demonstrate both efficacy and safety are far from the full story. In fact, some studies have shown no benefit over placebo whatsoever.^[2] It’s apparent from their approval announcement that the FDA did not take studies with negative results into account. They referred to only 6 studies, which the agency states, “demonstrated that Brintellix is effective in treating depression”.^[3]

SSRIs

SSRIs do not work as claimed. They interfere with normal brain functioning. They don’t stop depression. Instead, they stop the ability to feel emotions. They result in emotional flatness. Some people may find that beneficial, something of a time-out. But it never resolves the problems that lead to depression, and even interferes with resolution. How can anyone resolve a problem when a drug interferes with their ability to even know that it’s there?

All SSRIs do the same thing. They prevent serotonin, also called 5-HT, from being reabsorbed, as their name, selective “serotonin reuptake inhibitors”, indicates. That hasn’t turned out well. These drugs are now known to cause previously nonsuicidal people to take their own lives without warning. They have also made many people violent and are associated with almost all school shootings.

There is little reason to believe that Brintellix will be more effective than other SSRI antidepressants. In fact, the more SSRIs manage to shut down serotonin production, the more harm they do. The brain works to counter the effect. As Dr. Peter Brennan notes, it can result in permanent brain damage.^[4]

In fact, the Los Angeles Time reported that Dr. Michael Thase, a Brintellix development consultant, stated:

It is different enough from the welter of SSRIs currently available that it’s not simply a ‘me too’ drug.^[5]

That’s likely true, but does that make it better?

Brintellix May Be Even Worse

Inexplicable violence, turned both inward and outward, is the result of SSRIs causing a single change to brain function. Brintellix will cause several changes! These changes involve the handling of glutamate, which is a critical amino acid that’s required for brain function and cellular metabolism. Glutamate is necessary—at proper levels, in the right places, and at the right times—for learning, remembering, thinking, and emotions. It’s also involved in energy production throughout the body.

Glutamate excites neural function. Too much glutamate can burn nerves out and too little keeps them from functioning properly. Not only does Brintellix manipulate 5-HT (serotonin), like all other SSRIs, it also manipulates glutamate in several neural receptors:

• 5-HT1A: Agonist
• 5-HT1B: Partial Agonist
• 5-HT3: Antagonist
• 5-HT1D: Antagonist
• 5-HT7: Antagonist

Note: An agonist triggers a response from a cell. An antagonist does the opposite. It blocks a cell’s response.

Does anyone really know what the effects of this manipulation of neural transmission will be?

No. Here is what the manufacturer’s press release announcing Brintellix’s approval says about it:

The contribution of each of these activities to Brintellix’s antidepressant effect has not been established. It is considered to be the first and only compound with this combination of pharmacodynamic activity. The clinical relevance of this is unknown.

Let’s look at that again:

No one knows what relationship exists between any of these neural receptors and Brintellix’s effect.

No one knows what these manipulations of the brain will do to the body, intelligence, emotional state, sexuality, criminality, empathy, or anything else.

Nearly all the effects of Brintellix are unknown.

How Much Harm?

Like so many drugs, Brintellix is being rolled out as safe. Like others, that safety is based on a very slim thread: short term studies, which evade the risks. The existing studies produced by Lundbeck are short term, and many adverse effects take time to be seen. They’re also based on a small number of subjects. Most severe adverse effects don’t show up in such studies.

At this point, the list of adverse effects is both brief and appears to be fairly minor. Medscape^[6] reports the following adverse effects, followed by the percentage who suffered it:

• Nausea: 21-32%
• Diarrhea: 7-10%
• Dizziness: 6-9%
• Dry mouth: 6-8%
• Constipation: 3-6%
• Vomiting: 3-6%
• Flatulence: 1-3%
• Pruritus: 1-3%
• Abnormal Dreams: Less than 1-3%

These adverse effects are not as innocent as they first appear. Notice that as many as a third of the subjects suffered from nausea, and other gastrointestinal effects were not unusual. This is a red flag that there may be a dangerous adverse effect on the digestive tract that doesn’t show up quickly—not something to take lightly.

Dizziness and abnormal dreams are indicative of very serious harmful neurological effects. Pruritus is a neurologically-induced extreme urge to scratch an itch. This symptom is also indicative of neurological damage. Even at this early stage, the adverse effects point to the potential of severe and dangerous, potentially deadly, reactions.

The history of all other SSRIs, which interfere with only one specific function, has been dismal. Is there any reason to expect Brintellix to be different? The studies certainly aren’t more extensive than they’ve been with other SSRIs, so the reality is that, as usual, the people whose doctors prescribe it will be the guinea pigs.

If your doctor tries to prescribe Brintellix, perhaps the correct response should be, “Oink!”

Even Big Pharma’s faithful lapdog called the FDA has acknowledged some risk. They’re requiring a boxed warning that people younger than 24 years are at risk of developing suicidal thoughts. This, of course, is meaningless. All SSRIs carry that warning, and it certainly doesn’t seem to have reduced prescription levels!

SSRI = Killer

As the FDA admits, all SSRI drugs are known to be killers, and worse than most drugs, they can result in the deaths of people who don’t even take them! They are implicated in virtually all the school shootings. That’s a lot of carnage.

Brintellix is an SSRI. Is there any reason to believe that it will produce less harm than other SSRIs? In fact, there is every reason to suspect the opposite.

By its developer’s own admission, no one knows what effects are produced by 5 of the 6 functions Brintellix was designed to cause. But we do know that the 6^th function, serotonin/5-HT reuptake inhibition, is a killer. All of the other 5 functions interfere with normal brain activity—and the manufacturer admits that no one knows what those effects will be!

What more do you need to know?

Sources:

1. Takeda and Lundbeck announce FDA approval of Brintellix™ (vortioxetine) for treatment of adults with major depressive disorder. Lundbeck’s Brintellix press release.
2. Antidepressant – vortioxetine. Manufacturer’s Chemist’s review of Brintellix.
3. FDA approves new drug to treat major depressive disorder. FDA’s Brintellix approval announcement.
4. Psychiatric drug-induced Chronic Brain Impairment (CBI): Implications for longterm treatment with psychiatric medication; International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine; DOI 10.3233/JRS-2011-0542.
5. FDA approves a new antidepressant: Brintellix; Los Angeles Times.
6. Vortioxetine Adverse Effects; Medscape Reference.
7. Vortioxetine (Lu AA21004) hydrobromide.
8. Glutamate.
9. Glutamate benefit and side effects, risk and danger.
10. Vortioxetine: A New Antidepressant Choice in the United States

Tagged big pharma, big pharma brintellix, big pharma’s faithful lapdog, brintellix 5-ht1a, brintellix 5-ht1b, brintellix 5-ht1d, brintellix 5-ht3, brintellix 5-ht7, brintellix adverse effects, brintellix lundbeck, brintellix may be a killer, brintellix ssri, brintellix takeda, fda, glutamate brintellix, glutamate excite, lundbeck takeda, serotonin 5-ht, ssri = killer, ssri emotional flatness, ssri interfere with normal brain function, ssri murderer, ssri suicide, vortioxetine adverse effects

A new study clarifies that statins are the greatest medical fraud of all time. The claims made for them are false. The amount of harm they do is staggering, resulting in millions of lives devastated and ended. The worst part of all, though, is that it was entirely predictable—but studies were designed to hide the truth. The media, the health agencies, and the doctors all provided cover for Big Pharma. After all, there was money to be made.

by Heidi Stevenson

Statins are one of the most dangerous drugs prescribed by doctors. The risks from them were obvious before they were ever marketed. Nonetheless, they are among the best selling drugs of all time. Finally, genuine science has been looking at their adverse effects and lack of benefit to document the truth that was obvious from the beginning:

Statins are the greatest medical fraud ever perpetrated.

A new review of the science reports:

The statin industry, with all of its spin-off(s), is a 20-billion-a-year industry. We are observing the revealing of the utmost medical tragedy of all times. It is unprecedented that the healthcare industry has inadvertently induced life-threatening nutrient deficiency in millions of otherwise healthy people.^[1]

The only point on which I can disagree is the statement that the travesty of statins was somehow “inadvertent”. There is, in fact, absolutely no excuse for it.

The authors of the study, Sherif Sultan and Niamh Hynes, have produced a paper that is utterly condemnatory of the use of statins. Not only do they condemn the drugs, they also condemn the pseudo science behind it. Though they don’t state it, and obviously could not take such a risk, there is simply no way around the fact that the science behind statins has been largely fraudulent, and that fraud has been perpetrated by Big Pharma.

So what did the study actually say?

Sultan and Hynes reviewed a large number of studies, using Pubmed, EM-BASE, and Cochrane review databases to find them. They focused primarily on clinical reviews, meta-analyses, and large-scale randomised controlled trials. The entire list of studies they selected is included in their paper, which you can read because it isn’t hidden behind a pay wall.

They stated:

We seem to have fallen into the marketing trap and ignored the niggling side effects with regard to the HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors

The “we” the authors referred to was the medical industry. HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors are statins. Their function is to interfere with HMG-CoA, which is a molecule that’s a precursor to cholesterol. Of course, the purpose of a statin is to reduce cholesterol, which they do accomplish.

So what’s the problem? As the authors state:

Cholesterol is crucial for energy, immunity, fat metabolism, leptin, thyroid hormone activity, liver related synthesis, stress intolerance, adrenal function, sex hormone
syntheses and brain function.

Cholesterol is a primary requirement for an enormous array of absolutely critical functions in the body. Obviously, if cholesterol is reduced, then health must be harmed:

• Energy levels must be reduced.
• There must be interference with fat metabolism.
• The thyroid must not be able to function properly.
• Our ability to deal with stress is stressed.
• The adrenal glands’ functions must be damaged.
• Sexual function and reproductive ability must suffer.
• Our brain must be damaged, which can mean any part of our existence may be harmed, including mental functioning, autonomic processes, coordination, and every other function, including the heart.

There is simply no excuse for not recognizing that not only is there an obvious risk inherent in statins, but that it would be stunning if they didn’t produce harm.

The Benefit of Statins

In terms of benefit, the authors noted that the only people who are helped at all are middle aged men who have already suffered heart attacks. (Readers of Gaia Health will be familiar with this fact, as it’s been stated here many times.) And that benefit is minimal. In fact, the authors point out that statins produce less benefit for these men than aspirin. Please note that Gaia Health does not support aspirin as a treatment for heart disease, either.

In effect, statins produce not one whit of benefit to anyone in any manner.

The Adverse Effects of Statins

The authors found that, for every 10,000 individuals in good health who take statins:

• 307 extra patients suffer from cataracts.
• 23 additional patients develop acute kidney failure.
• 74 extra patients develop liver dysfunction.
• Statins increase muscle fatigue by 30% and cause an 11.3% incidence of rhabdomyolysis at high doses.
• They also state, “What’s more, it induces inflammatory myopathy, including necrotizing autoimmune myopathy with immunosuppression and the statin-related myopathy can last for 12 months.”

They also point out that statins cause erectile dysfunction, and that young men suffer 10 times as much erectile dysfunction on low doses of statins. Beyond all these adverse effects:

• According to the FDA’s adverse event reporting system, about 40 out of every 10,000 statin reports are for interstitial lung disease, which causes scarring in the lungs that is almost never reversible.
• Statins cause hyperglycemia after eating in both diabetics and nondiabetics.
• Statins “induce full blown type 2 diabetes in women.”
• Statins increase the risk of developing HbA1c in people with and without diabetes. HbA1c is a condition that causes glucose to stick to hemoglobin, which is an indicator of greater harm from diabetes.
• Statins prescribed to the elderly cause a 9% increase in diabetes.
• Statins can cause insulin resistance.
• A correlation between Parkinson’s disease and low cholesterol exists, which clearly implicates statins.
• A correlation between statins and early-onset cataracts has been found. Statin users may be 50% more likely to develop cataracts early.

Here’s the most shocking health risk of statins:

[S]tatin use is associated with an increased prevalence and extent of coronary plaques calcification. Ironically for a drug which was marketed to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease, the confirm registry identified a strong association of statin use to the progression of coronary artery plaque features.

This isn’t simply irony. Statins increase the harm that they are supposedly meant to decrease!

In relation to this particular heart risk, the authors also found that:

Statin use was correlated with a greater incidence of severe coronary artery stenosis as well as increase in the numbers of coronary vessels developing obstructive coronary artery disease. Furthermore, statin use was linked to an increase in the prevalence and extent of mixed calcific plaque. Five prospective studies have borne witness to the fact that statin therapy does not induce any coronary calcium regression and evolution of
coronary calcium continues regardless of statin treatment

That is, statins increase the narrowing of coronary arteries, which can only increase the chance of heart attacks. They increase the development of obstructive coronary artery disease. Statins may increase calcium-related arterial plaques.

Statins also produce a significant increase in the risk of cancer and neurodegenerative dysfunction in the elderly.

The authors point out even more than this—but just how much more do you need to know? Statins are health destroyers.

Intentionally Hiding the Facts

The study points out that statins may increase the risk for nonmelanoma skin cancers by 1.6 times. The authors then state:

For unknown reasons, since these publications the squamous cell carcinoma has been excluded in all reports from subsequent statin trials.

Is there any way to interpret that other than that the statin industry does not want there to be more evidence that statins cause skin cancer?

The authors referenced studies that had claimed to demonstrate benefits from statins. However, when they were reanalyzed by independent scientists—that is, scientists who genuinely didn’t have ties to Big Pharma—they found that the claimed results were false. The studies actually showed that statins produced no benefit and a great deal of harm.

Cohorts in Crime

It’s bad enough that Big Pharma produces studies that can only be called junk science to give an impression that statins are effective and safe. It’s obviously fraudulent, and all those who have willingly taken part in such studies—whether by paying for them or doing them—should be prosecuted criminally. There is simply no way to get around the fact that, at the very least, many of these people are guilty of negligent homicide by providing false evidence of both efficacy and safety.

News Media

The news industry has also been guilty, as this study was published over two months ago, yet there’s been virtually no coverage by the mainstream media. This is news that could save the lives of millions of people, yet the mainstream media hasn’t bothered with it. Clearly, their interests are not in real news, but are in their owners’ financial interests. Every mainstream media corporation in the United States is owned by another corporation that also owns at least one major pharmaceutical corporation or is controlled by someone with heavy interests in them. For example:

• News Corporation owns Viacom.
• Ropert Murdoch founded News Corporation.
• Murdoch sits on the board of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

If that weren’t enough, consider also that the pharmaceutical industry is, by far, the biggest advertiser on mainstream media. To suggest that the news media hasn’t also been complicit is either naive or intentionally misleading. The mainstream news media has clearly determined that their duty, to provide information that the public needs, is not their concern.

Health Agencies

The agencies that are supposed to protect us from harmful health products, such as the FDA, the CDC, and the NIH, have all been complicit in the promotion of statins. Even now, the CDC strongly recommends the use of statins. The FDA does nothing more than add warnings to the package inserts of statins, an utterly meaningless endeavor that has never been shown to have any significant effect on sales of drugs. The NIH states, “Statins are relatively safe for most people.”

It’s obvious that our health agencies are acting almost exclusively as marketing agents for Big Pharma.

Doctors

Last, but certainly not least, are the doctors who prescribe statins. They tend to argue that it’s not their fault, that they can only go by the studies. But the reality is that it’s their job to stand between their patients and dangerous drugs. If they are unable or unwilling to do their jobs—which is clearly the case for any of them who prescribe statins without informing their patients of the risks and almost complete lack of benefit—then they are no different than those who produce pseudo science, junk science, or outright fraudulent science to support these poisons. At a minimum, they are guilty of failing in their duty to their patients. They may also be guilty of negligent homicide for any patient who dies as a result of their lack of diligence.

The Greatest Medical Fraud of All Time

Statins are the greatest medical fraud of all time. It had to be known from the very beginning that they would likely produce a great deal of harm. As the authors point out, statins interfere with the production of cholesterol, thus producing deficits in metabolic functions that are necessary for life.

There is, therefore, no excuse for doctors not to know.

There is no excuse for the news media not to do the research that would have shown them the fraud being perpetrated.

There is no excuse for the health agencies that approved statins or the ones that promote them. They had to have the relevant information.

And finally, there is no excuse for the doctors, because they should have known. If they didn’t, then they were derelict in their duty.

Everyone involved in the development, marketing, approval, promotion, and prescription of statins is guilty of perpetrating the greatest medical fraud of all time. Tallying up the death toll is most likely impossible, but there can be little doubt that the numbers run into multiple millions.

Please forward this article to anyone you know who is taking statins or considering it. They have a right to know the truth—and that truth is not being told by any doctor who prescribes them.

Source:

1. The Ugly Side of Statins. Systemic Appraisal of the Contemporary Un-Known Unknowns; Journal of Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases; Sherif Sultan and Niamh Hynes; doi:10.4236/ojemd.2013.33025.

by Heidi Stevenson

A population-based study in Sweden shows that the massive deployment of statins has provided no benefit. Three times as many statins were being taken by Swedish people in the year 2000 than in 1998. Yet, the numbers of people suffering or dying from heart attacks were unchanged by the increase!

Not only does this demonstrate that the massive push to press people into taking statins has been based on flawed science, it also turns the claim that randomized double blinded placebo controlled (RDBPC) drug trials are the gold standard upside down.

The study with the unwieldy name, “No connection between the level of exposition to statins in the population and the incidence/mortality of acute myocardial infarction: An ecological study based on Sweden’s municipalities”, was published today in Biomed Central’s Journal of Negative Results in Medicine.^[1] We can count our blessings for this journal that produces reports of studies that did not get the expected results. The shame is that such results are not generally valued as highly as those that were expected. They are, after all, every bit as significant and important. The only usual problem with them is that they don’t support the results that Big Pharma wants to promulgate.

The authors’ conclusion is quite clear. They do not hem and haw about it:

Despite a widespread and increasing utilisation of statins, no correlation to the incidence or mortality of AMI [acute myocardial infarction] could be detected. Other factors than increased statin treatment should be analysed especially when discussing the allocation of public resources.

There is no truth behind the claims of benefit from statins.

Even though three times as many Swedish people between ages 40 and 79 were taking statins, there was no reduction in heart attacks. It’s unfortunate that the study didn’t also investigate the adverse effects caused by them. Then we would know how many people were harmed by these drugs that are known to cause muscle pain and destruction.

The study covered nearly the entire Swedish population aged 40-79 for the years 1998-2000. They included the data from 289 municipalities, which included all areas of the country, urban, suburban, country, industrial, and everything inbetween. The only one left out could not be included because of missing data. The total numbers were 1,926,113 men and 1,995,981 women—for a total of 3,922,094 people.

Here’s the study’s graph of results:

Incidence and mortality of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and statin utilisation in the Swedish population, 40-79 years old, 1998-2002. DDD: Defined daily doses per 1,000 inhabitants and day

Results from virtually the entire Swedish population demonstrated that the threefold increase in statins use provided no benefit.

Randomized Double Blinded Placebo Controlled Trials (RDBPC Trials)

So, what does that mean for all those pseudo-scientific RDBPC trials touted as being the gold standard in testing drugs? Obviously, it means that they’re worthless—at least in the way that they’re currently applied in pharmaceutical drug trials. Clearly, they are easily and routinely subverted.

The effects of a drug when the entire populace is examined are obviously more important than carefully designed trials, especially when they’re done by or for the people who stand to profit from them.

Adverse Effects

But the story is even worse than this study demonstrates, because it doesn’t address the adverse effects of statins, which can be quite severe. They include pancreatitis, rhabdomyolysis (muscle pain and wasting), hepatitis, angioedema, urticaria, shortness of breath, edema, pruritis, and blood in the urine. All of these can be life threatening or indicative of the onset of life-threatening conditions. It is, therefore, safe to assume that statins are among those drugs that do far more harm than good.

Gaia Health has been telling you the truth about statins, digging through the trials to point out the flaws and telling you about their risks. Based on these deeply-flawed studies, so-called experts have been pressing more and more people to take these devastatingly dangerous drugs. There’s even a push to put everyone over a certain age on them, and suggestions by doctors that they should be handed out like condiments at fast food restaurants.

The inherent flaws and corruption at the heart of modern medicine are demonstrated by this single incontrovertible study. They are exemplified by simply noting that:

Source:

1. No connection between the level of exposition to statins in the population and the incidence/mortality of acute myocardial infarction: An ecological study based on Sweden’s municipalities

Tagged big pharma, biomed central statins, conventional medicine, Journal of Negative Results, modern medicine, no truth to statin claims, pharmaceutical drugs, pharmaceuticals, science, statin claims, statins, statins provide no benefit, statins study, swedish statins study

by Heidi Stevenson

Finding new uses for old drugs is big money. To that end, metformin, a generic diabetes drug, is being given to fetuses to see if it can prevent them from becoming obese. Trials are popping up in several countries, and at least one has already begun in the UK.

Just five years ago, metformin was considered a potential teratogen, that is, a cause of birth defects. Now, though, it’s suddenly being seen as perfectly safe. So safe, in fact, that researchers are jumping at the chance to give it to fetuses to see if it might prevent obesity when they’re born. However, the claim that metformin is safe does not appear to be universally accepted.

Potential Adverse Effects

An editorial in The Medical Journal of Australia^[1] worries about the potential of adverse effects from metformin. The authors refer to adverse effects listed in the manufacturer’s insert. Wrong Diagnosis^[2] lists it as a teratogen, a substance that induces birth defects. Drugs.com^[3] discusses metformin’s association with ketoacidosis, a life-threatening condition.

Metformin is known to cross the placenta, making it enter a fetus’s bloodstream directly. That means they’ll get the full dose. Whatever dose the mother takes, the fetus gets without modulation—along with all the adverse effects.

In spite of the known risks, and in spite of having absolutely no idea what effects metformin might have on a developing fetus or its effects after birth, Big Pharma is putting money behind giving it to fetuses.

Trials in Process or Planned

The first trial is being run in the UK at Liverpool Women’s Hospital. Obese women are divided into placebo and non-placebo groups.^[4,5]

Another US trial by The University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston is in the process of recruiting patients.

Excuses for the Metformin Trial

There appears to be nothing more than wishful thinking behind the trial. The researchers hope that babies will be born smaller, though they apparently have nothing on which to base that hope other than…well, wishful thinking.

There is no sense of whether babies would remain smaller, if indeed they actually are born smaller by being given a drug. In fact, there’s no consideration whether the drug might disastrously affect the fetus’s metabolism and lead to a lifetime of disability.

The most frightening aspect of these trials is that they might be successful. If that’s the case, then we’ll be facing massive drugging of overweight pregnant women, most assuredly with pressure and the application of guilt, very likely with women being forced to take these drugs and prosecuted for child abuse if they don’t. But that may not be the worst of it. What will become of these drugged babies as they grow? The fact is that no one knows. Yet, this experiment on the lives of children yet to be born is going ahead full steam.

Dr. Andrew Weeks, the lead researcher of the UK trial, offers the excuse that it’s better to give the mothers and their fetuses this drug, because:

The difficulty comes when you have been living in a particular way for years that is not healthy. To suddenly change to a different lifestyle is not easy to do. Lifestyle change takes time, and we would always encourage this as well, but the use of Metformin gives us another option when the other is not realistic.

Interesting, isn’t it, that Weeks’ focus is on blaming obese women for their situation? He holds the typical assumption that these women are lazy or without will power. There is no consideration for the fact that much of what obesity is a result of the foods that people are encouraged to eat—especially low-fat and artificially-sweetened, both of which result in weight gains—and an environment that discourages exercise. The failure is not in the obese person. The failure is in a medical system that doesn’t address the real causes of obesity, and even actively encourages the very things that cause it.

Dr. Weeks advocates drugging fetuses, rather than changing the factors that result in obesity. Like so many modern medical practitioners, the focus is no longer on health. It’s on treating symptoms. Fat pregnant women tend to produce fat babies? Just give ‘em drugs!

Health is not the absence of drugs. Health is not found in drugs. Trying to make newborns healthy by drugging them before they’re born is pure insanity.

Sources:

1. Metformin and serious adverse effects
2. Metformin — Teratogenic Agent
3. Metformin
4. Babies given anti-obesity drugs in the womb
5. Baby obesity research: no need to panic
6. Metformin in Pregnancy, Its time has not yet come
7. Babies given anti-obesity drugs in the womb
8. Diabetes Drug Metformin in Baby Weight Trial
9. Metformin in Pregnancy, Its time has not yet come
10. metformin (Rx) (Medscape’s adverse effects list for metformin)
11. Metformin in Women With Type 2 Diabetes in Pregnancy Trial (MiTy)
12. Metformin Versus Insulin in Pregnant Women With Type 2 Diabetes
13. Diabetes Dialectics

Tagged big pharma, big pharma metformin, conventional medicine, drugging fetuses, drugs for health, drugs for health insanity, metformin, metformin fat babies, metformin fetuses, metformin obese babies, metformin obesity, modern medicine, pharmaceutical drugs, pharmaceuticals, science, using drugs to create health

by Heidi Stevenson

A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine purports to show that fish oil provides no benefit whatsoever in prevention of heart disease.^[1] At first glance, it would appear to be true. The study is, after all, double blind and placebo controlled, not to mention having a significant number of participants. But is it for real, or is there some sleight of hand at work?

There’s one initial clue that should give pause. The study’s endpoints had to be changed. That’s always a bad sign. In fact, it breaks the rules of good research. But, they had to do it because they found that their study participants weren’t dying as fast as they’d anticipated.

Now, if they’d been interested in the truth, they’d have tried to figure out what was wrong. After all, the odds of dying when people have signs of heart disease are pretty well understood. Otherwise, how could they possibly have anticipated the rate at which deaths would occur?

Of course, they didn’t sit back and wonder what they might be doing wrong. Instead, they just added new end points to their study.

How They Cheated: Basic Trick

There’s a blatantly obvious reason that the death rate was lower than expected, but we’ll get to that in a minute, after demonstrating the study’s primary flaw:

There was no placebo!

Certainly, the write-up on the study claims there was, but the fact is that a placebo, to be legitimate, must contain things other than the active ingredients being tested. So what’s being tested? Eicosapentanoic acid and docosahexanoic acid, two of the substances in fish oil that are believed to be the active properties that provide its benefits.

The “placebo” used was olive oil. What’s in olive oil? Eicosapentanoic acid and docosahexanoic acid, among other substances. Why would anyone expect different results between subjects who took the active ingredients and a “control” group who also took the active ingredients?

How They Cheated: Secondary Trick

The death rate in both the fish oil and fake placebo groups was less than the author anticipated. Why would that be?

In fact, the study did demonstrate something significant. Fewer people in both groups died than the researchers anticipated. Why would that happen? Simple! Both fish oil and olive oil are beneficial in heart health.

Nonetheless, rather than admit the truth—since clearly, these researchers were focused on something other than finding out what’s beneficial to heart health—they refused to ask why there were fewer deaths than anticipated. Instead, they simply ignored the only valid question. Instead, they simply added end points to the trial, such as nonfatal heart attacks and strokes.

And what did they discover from the secondary endpoints? In fact, they learned something that supports the fact that both fish oil and olive oil are beneficial to heart health: The secondary endpoints had the same results in both groups.

What Went Wrong?

Now we need to ask: Why is this pseudo study so embarrassingly wrong? How did the authors get themselves into such an absurdly ridiculous situation? And that can be answered quite simply: Follow the money.

Who paid for this junk science? There were three funders: Pfizer, Società Prodotti Antibiotici, and Sigma-Tau. All three of them are pharmaceutical corporations.

It isn’t in their interest to fund research that elicits the truth. It’s in their interest to fund research that drives potential patients and their doctors to their products. The fact is that fish oil and olive oil are not products that they sell. What they sell are drugs.

Pfizer sells the cholesterol reduction drug, Lipitor. Fish oil and olive oil are both in competition with Lipitor. So, a study that directly debunks claims about the heart health benefits of fish oil and indirectly implies that olive oil is also not beneficial is just the sort of thing they’d want to fund.

What do the researchers know? If they hope to continue to receive research funding, they’d better deliver what the funders want.

So they did.

If it means that your health is damaged, that apparently means nothing to them. If it means you die as a result, they don’t care. As long as they continue to get funded, they’re happy to produce whatever faux results the buyers want.

As to those “experts” who have been promoting the phony results of this study,^[2,3] shame on them! The question is, do they prefer to be thought of as just plain ignorant, unable to see how absurd this pseudo study is, or do they want to be thought of as stupid, unable to understand how absurd it is?

Sources:

1. n-3 Fatty Acids in Patients with Multiple Cardiovascular Risk Factors; New England Journal of Medicine; The Risk and Prevention Study Collaborative Group; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1205409
2. No benefit of fish oil in high-risk patients
3. Fish Oils to Prevent Heart Disease: A Definite ‘No Go’

Tagged big pharma, double blind study, end points, fish oil, fish oil study, heart disease, junk science, olive oil, olive oil study, pfizer junk science, pfizer pseudo sciience, pharmaceutical drugs, pharmaceuticals, placebo, placebo controlled study, pseudo-science, pseudoscience, science

by Sujatha Byravan

Over the last week, there have been several articles celebrating the passage of 60 years since James Watson and Francis Crick published their paper in Nature describing the double helical structure of the DNA molecule. It unleashed a genomic worldview and led to the central dogma of genetics and biology. The linear flow of cellular information from DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) to RNA (ribonucleic acid) to protein within cells, which seemed elegant in its simplicity, captured the imagination of many and is by now enshrined in science.

Ever since, largely through miscommunication by many parties, “there is a gene for condition xyz” has been taken to mean, “the gene causes xyz and the gene alone causes it.” This idea has trapped the general thinking on genetics in numerous ways, building an edifice for a molecule that supposedly unzips all by itself, self-replicates, has the blueprint for all the components of a single cell and organism, causes all diseases and defines all characteristics. Its power and hold are strong also because the idea and its implications fit like a glove within culturally inscribed, fatalistic beliefs of all hues and shades in different societies.

The strength of this acceptance is so extreme that these days it is quite normal to hear people refer to some of the deeply engrained practices within an organisation, in a business, or even in a community, having nothing to do with genes, as being “in their DNA.” Nevertheless, this popular notion of DNA being the central and the only player in cellular and genetic information is quite flawed and scientists have known this for a long time even as new evidence continues to mount opposing the perception of DNA as the master molecule. It is also no longer a simplistic genes vs environment argument, nor do genes provide a map or blueprint that is merely set off one way or another or slightly modified by the environment; indeed “what is a gene?” is a hotly debated and unsettled question in science.

Scientific Observations

The linear model of the central dogma got slashed bit by bit when we learned that DNA molecules don’t do anything by themselves; their expression is controlled, modified and regulated at different levels by proteins, RNA, chemicals in the cells, other genes that may be close by or far away, and by the environment over time in multiple ways, and in different stages of growth, development and disease.

Genetic expression is quite plastic and the effects of multiple genes cannot be added up. While monogenic diseases, those that are controlled by a single pair of genes, make up a handful of all existing diseases, the living conditions of organisms and numerous, perhaps hundreds of genes, are implicated in each of the common health conditions.

That genetic tests claim to be able to predict or add value to one’s health by testing the probability of common health problems, such as heart disease or diabetes, or tailor one’s diet and so on and so forth is false or highly exaggerated. Prof. David Goldstein, writing about gene variants and disease in The New England Journal of Medicine says that the effect of small variations to the DNA sequence is limited, so that a very large portion of the genome is needed to explain a disease.

This leads to pointing at everything in the DNA as being responsible for a health condition, which is the same as pointing at nothing. Other scientists find that, contrary to earlier thinking that there were distinct locations for individual genes, most genes are overlapping. Based on their understanding of RNA and their role in gene expression they believe it might be time for a new definition of a gene to be put in place.

Scientists, who have been concentrating on mechanisms of inheritance and expression not related to DNA sequences—a system called epigenetics—think that we should be concentrating on gene networks. Furthermore, the architectures of cellular components other than DNA and RNA are also perceived as important, and the trajectory that is selected by a cell and organism under environmental stresses is deemed to play a big role. Still others are working on different ways in which epigenetic inheritance is taking place and realising that these are not rare and are likely to be numerous and part and parcel of normal development. These kinds of cellular networks and mechanisms may turn out to be the missing elements in predicting disease.

Paradigm shift

This complexity in our understanding of inheritance and genetic networks challenges various applications, including our ideas on evolutionary selection and how this might actually occur on whole organisms and molecules. The point is that this debate appears to bypass the world at large and is seemingly not bringing about huge changes in applications or the fanfare surrounding DNA. Perhaps these shifts occur at a different pace in various fields of inquiry.

More importantly, the central dogma and the genetic horoscope theory have a lot invested in them by the genetic industry of testing, genomic medicine, plant genomics, and funding priorities by major government and private donors. If we changed our approach and were to study cellular genetic networks, the effects of epigenetics, the changes and effects of the environment or even the rare mutations that lead to large effects, perhaps we would learn more about our health and free ourselves from the age of DNA determinism.

(Sujatha Byravan is a biologist based in Chennai. She was president of the Council for Responsible Genetics, Cambridge, Massachusetts.)

Gaia Health is pleased to republish this, originally titled Sixty years of a DNA world view, with the author’s consent.

Tagged conventional medicine, dna, dna fatalistic beliefs, dna horoscope, dna life, fatalistic beliefs, gene redefinition, genes overlap, genetic cause of disease, genetics, genetics research, modern medicine, no genetic cause of disease, science

by Nancy Rubenstein Del Giudice

When Dr. Oz announced on his popular mainstream television show, “Depression is not a disease”, that not only can SSRIs lead to disaster for many but that the serotonin theory of depression is fraud, the silence was thundering.

There were no reports on the news. Talk of John Stewart, yes, but not Dr. Oz. This is no joke.

No congressional sub-committee was convened to investigate for purposes of prosecution, no recalls were announced from the FDA … and the beat goes on.

Out popped the pills from manufacturing plants. The Italian coffee machine turns itself on as the alarm sings and the drug rep dresses for a full day of selling doctors on friendship.

At the television station, life goes on as usual. The show is what matters. People are thankful for the pharmaceutical sponsors who pay them well and treat them so finely.

My point is that Dr. Oz’s show was orchestrated. In my humble opinion.

Here is a list of 10 issues:

1. It has been known—well known to those who cared to find out—that the Serotonin Theory was debunked as far back as the 80s, and possibly earlier. Check out Robert Whitaker and Ann Blake Tracy on this.

2. No, Dr. Oz did not organize a small coup and fool the sponsors (who make the drugs) by deviously airing this important public announcement. It was scheduled and advertised, and the pharmaceutical companies paid for it.

3. Check out the timing. The patents have run out.

4. They have a new theory which probably refers to the new ketamine drugs; same old fraudulent science based on the false notion of pathology.

5. They have pictures! Oh goody, brain scans! They are so interesting that I don’t even care that there are no control groups. Wait a minute! This is not science! And … there is no science in the brain scan industry. Lots of pretty pictures of flickering brains, but let’s be real. Apply basic scientific method and you’ll find absolutely nothing. We just don’t know enough about the brain.

6. Is it possible that Dr. Oz has known for a long time that these drugs cause suicide, violence, depression, and mania? Well, put it this way; I hope he did. Because if he didn’t, and he is a practicing cardio-thoracic surgeon, if he doesn’t understand these drugs and their metabolic effects… then isn’t he a danger to his patients? One out of four or five of his patients are taking an SSRI. Cold turkey withdrawal from an SSRI can CAUSE a heart attack, so to suppose these drugs are not relevant to a heart surgeon simply doesn’t make sense.

7. If these drugs are so bad (and they are), what does this say about the branch of “medicine” that relies upon them; the psychiatric profession.

8. If depression is not a disease (though in some cases depression can be a symptom of a real disease), then aren’t doctors who tell their patients that it is a disease (in order to gain their compliance) culpable? They should be.

9. The most dangerous times for people taking antidepressants are either in the beginning (when many are told their adverse reaction is so called mental illness) or n withdrawal (see Beyond Meds, a highly informative site). Dr Oz’s show is likely to have caused at least a few people to cold turkey and maybe a couple of physicians to cut off prescriptions. That happened in Britain with benzodiazapenes and this continues to be a public health disaster. The show was irresponsible.

10. Where is the tipping point? Could this be an “ah ha” moment that politicizes people? The pharmaceutical companies don’t think so. They expect the American public to “baaah” along like the sheep we are. If you are not already an activist, it is time to become one, and welcome to the matrix.

I may not be Sue Grafton, but this is not the Land of Oz. This is America. So let me end with a quote from a great American to inspire us all in our quest for good health and freedom:

Genius is common sense in its work clothes –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tagged big pharma, conventional medicine, depression brain scans, depression is not a disease, dr. oz antidepressants, dr. oz depression, dr. oz profit, dr. oz ssri, modern medicine, pharmaceutical drugs, pharmaceuticals, ssri depression, ssri drugs, ssri patent expiration, ssri patents

It’s past time for conventional medicine to step down from its hubristic stance to realize that they don’t know better than nature, that they cannot beat nature, and that they must work with nature, not against her. Until they do, they’ll be no different than any of the other soul-sucking industries that exist by raping the earth of her bounty.

Picasso’s Guernica with Petri Dish Culture superimposed (Petri Dish photo by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

by Heidi Stevenson

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is again screaming about yet another antibiotic-resistant disease. The latest, a mouthful called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) is resistant to nearly all—possibly all—antibiotics and kills one in two people who get it. That makes it one of the most dangerous infectious diseases known.

The increasing number of antibiotic-resistant diseases is terrifying, but the fact that we need to face up to is that these diseases are all caused by the treatment that modern medicine has relied on as the primary excuse for its existence for decades: antibiotics. These drugs were supposedly the greatest invention ever made. They were going to rescue us from all infectious diseases. We were entering a new era.

And it’s certainly proven true that we’ve entered a new era—but it’s one of far worse diseases than those originally treated with antibiotics!

• Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) originally burst into headlines as the horrific flesh-eating bacteria. It’s still that, though it’s been given the gentler name of MRSA.
• Clostridium difficile (C diff) has a mortality rate that may run from 10% to 30%. It’s a severe, and often relapsing, disease that causes diarrhea, inability to eat, and lack of energy, not to mention pain.
• Escherichia coli (E coli) is a natural pro-bacterium that normally lives in the human gut. But it’s been turned into a killer disease with antibiotics.

Then we have drug-resistant tuberculosis, along with a range of other diseases that are out of control and more virulent as a direct result of modern medicine’s standard treatment, antibiotics. The age of antibiotics is turning into something entirely different than was envisioned. Instead of an infectious disease utopia, we’re seeing the beginnings of an infectious disease apocalypse—that is, we are as long as the modern medical paradigm stays in effect.

Medical Hubris

In terms of our individual lives, a few decades is a long time, but in terms of history, it’s a moment. The moment of antibiotics’ glory is passing, being replaced by a time of learning to deal with the horror diseases they’ve created. There is a way, but as Sayer Ji of Green Med Info notes:

Widespread drug resistance marks the end of a certain type of cavalier, medical hubris, and the start of authentic humility within the medical culture. Not only is the conventional medical establishment throwing up their hands in surrender against the “simplest” of organisms – germs – but they are being forced to return to Nature for instruction.

Sayer refers to an example from the Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology titled, Black raspberry root polyphenols exhibit antibacterial activity against drug resistant bacteria. He notes that the root—not the berry—of the black raspberry plant “contains polyphenols which are lethal to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA),carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB), and Bacillus anthracis (Anthrax).” The roots contain these polyphenols because they dig into soil, a potentially hostile environment, while the berries don’t have it because they serve as food for animals that help spread the black raspberry seed.

The fauna and flora of Gaia—our earth, our home—have learned over eons how to survive. Yet medicine presumes to know better. Antibiotics were first used in wars because the most common means of death in war isn’t wounds, but the infections that develop from them. For this purpose, antibiotics worked brilliantly. But it must be noted that wholesale war is a uniquely human quest. Such pursuits in animals exist only momentarily and occasionally, not on the mass scale that we humans engage.

Unlike Sayer, who foresees a new humility coming over modern medicine, I see more of the same. The drug culture of medicine is driven by one thing: greed. The greed of Big Pharma’s profits have always utilized nature’s bounty. They have stolen it, sliced it, diced it, analyzed it, and sterilized it, taking only single molecules and calling them the “active substance”—a piece of nature that does not act alone, but rather acts in concert with the entire plant in cooperative symbiosis. But that allows them to patent that single part of nature, and then to find ways to synthesize it, mass produce it, and charge obscene amounts. And now, government agencies, such as the FDA in the US and the MHRA (Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) in the UK, are eliminating access to the plants themselves and handing sole rights to Big Pharma.

Aspirin is a simple example. It’s derived from the bark of a willow tree. The stuff you buy in a store has little relationship to willows. It is, instead, a mass produced chemical called acetylsalicylic acid. Note that even its name comes from the natural product, as the taxonomic name for willow is Salix. While it has the ability to alleviate pain and inflammation, it does so at great cost with adverse effects that can kill. Willow tree bark, though, is a safe natural product that’s been used through the ages for pain relief.

The cordyceps mushroom has been used in Chinese medicine for ages. Now, though, Novartis AG has patented a chemically-altered substance made by the mushroom and named it fingolimod for use in treating multiple sclerosis. Under their patented brand, Gilenya, they have exclusive rights to sell it and to charge the price they wish. That price is $4,000 a month—$48,000 a year—per patient! In the UK, all Chinese medicinal herbs are now banned. So, anyone in the UK who wishes to take advantage of this beneficial mushroom must either find it on the black market or pay for it. (It may get approved for use by the National Health Service, making it free or very inexpensive, but the reality is that the people pay for it through their taxes.)

Through the saga of the cordyceps mushroom, we can see the reality of how modern medicine’s cohort, Big Pharma, is stealing the gifts of nature, twisting them into “purified” and isolated drugs, and then using governments to eliminate our access to the natural products.

What’s Been Wrought

So now Big Pharma and Big Medicine are stealing our access to natural medicines, as the same old clearly faulty paradigm of suppressing symptoms through powerful and dangerous treatments continues. We’re now entering an apocalyptic world of diseases far more virulent than their ancestors, both in terms of severity of disease and infection aggression. But we’re left with fewer resources, as natural products are being systematically taken from us. That leaves us solely at the mercy of rapacious Big Pharma and Big Medicine’s greedy grasp.

The parade of apocalyptic diseases is on the march. Big Pharma’s pipeline of treatments is fading, other than through the theft of nature, which had always been freely available to us, but is now being withheld through tricks of semantics. If a plant provides a healthy benefit, then it’s redefined as a drug and banished … but then handed over to Big Pharma for profiteering. And the benefits of Big Pharma’s products tend to be illusory, full of life-destroying adverse effects, while we’re unable to access safe and health-producing natural products.

It’s past time for conventional medicine to step down from its hubristic stance to realize that they don’t know better than nature, that they cannot beat nature, and that they must work with nature, not against her. Until they do, they’ll be no different than any of the other soul-sucking industries that exist by raping the earth of her bounty. Gaia’s life, and ours, depend on that paradigm shift.

Tagged antibiotics breed disease, big pharma, carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae, cdc antibiotic-resistant disease, cdc cre, conventional medicine, cre, drug-resistant diseases, drug-resistant tuberculosis, E. coli, escherichia coli, medical hubris, medicine hubris, medicine humility, methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus, modern medicine, mrsa, pharmaceutical drugs, pharmaceuticals