The Medical Industry Controls The Narrative

Keep that in mind whenever you are investigating any medical procedure. Doctors are in business to make money. Drug companies are in business to make money. Hospitals are in business to make money.



There is no other industry that is more dangerous or corrupt than the medical industry. They don't call if the medical Mafia for nothing.

Of all the filthy criminals on the planet the medical industry sweeps all  the medals, gold,  silver and bronze. Every year they trade positions with doctors sometimes taking the gold and big pharma and the medical device companies settling for silver and bronze with the financial industry finishing a distant fourth. 

Of the big pharma criminals the thugs at Bristol-Meyers-Squibb are in the top tier when it comes to shameless and brazen criminal behavior.

ByJIM EDWARDSMONEYWATCHMarch 30, 2011, 7:00 AM

Bristol-Myers Docs Studied Diabetes at Disneyland, 3 Execs Claim

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Last Updated Apr 1, 2011 10:22 AM EDT

Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY)'s payment of gifts and kickbacks to doctors was so thinly disguised that at one point they sent doctors to a "Medical Eduction Diabetes Program" located at Disneyland, according to three former employees suing the company in a California state court.

The whistleblower suit makes the usual claims about the way BMS did business before the industry decided to clean up its act in the mid 2000s. Drug sales reps gave doctors $1,500 "preceptorship" fees, lunches, cognac, cigars, Starbucks gift cards, show tickets and golf outings in order to encourage them to write prescriptions for BMS drugs such as the antipsychotic Abilify and the cholesterol treatment Pravachol, the suit alleges.

But BMS took it a step further, the three former employees allege: "BMS' entire culture encouraged the provision of kickbacks," and reps were encouraged to spend whatever it took, by any means necessary, to get doctors to write BMS prescriptions (click to enlarge):


The company told BNET it denies the allegations:

The overwhelming majority of the allegations in the lawsuit relate to alleged conduct a decade or more old. In fact, some of the conduct is alleged to have occurred in the 1990s.

Bristol-Myers Squibb firmly believes the lawsuit has no merit and intends to defend itself vigorously. The company has been and remains committed to upholding the highest standards of business integrity and ethics and has a robust compliance program.

In Los Angeles, BMS had a special relationship with the LA Lakers basketball team because former sales rep Lucias Allen, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, played for the Lakers and the Milwaukee Bucks from 1969 to 1979. That allowed BMS to send doctors on expensive fantasy basketball trips, where the emphasis was on collecting player autographs than physician education:



On another occasion BMS sent doctors to Puerto Rico where they enjoyed Swedish massages and deep-sea fishing on the company's dime:


But it is the Disney-diabetes trip that, perhaps, takes the biscuit:


The plaintiffs claim the gifts were kickbacks that triggered private insurance companies to pay for prescriptions that otherwise could have been filled with cheap generics or not dispensed at all. The California Insurance Commissioner has intervened in the suit, joining the plaintiffs.

Related:

• See No Evil: How Too-Detailed Expense Reports Allegedly Got an Amgen Sales Rep Fired
• Some Inconvenient Facts About Yervoy, Bristol-Myers' New "Holy Grail" Cancer Drug
• 10 Reasons Drug Prices Always Go Up -- and What We Can Do About It

© 2011 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

It's Conclusive! Scumbag Doctors Killed Joan Rivers

Gastric bypass is an inherently dangerous surgery but add to that the greedy scumbag butchers who get filthy rich doing it. Joan Rivers went in for a simple but needed procedure and criminally negligent doctors killed her. Joan Rivers was wealthy. How do you think American doctor, the leading cause of death and injury are going to treat you? THINK ABOUT IT!

New Report Cites Multiple Violations at Clinic Where Joan Rivers Died

By Taryn Ryder4 hours agoYahoo Celebrity

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Joan Rivers (Getty Images)

The clinic where Joan Rivers had a fatal routine surgery "failed to identify deteriorating vital signs and provide timely intervention," an investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has revealed.

Yorkville Endoscopy also failed to properly document how much of the sedative Propofol was used, and the report confirms that people in the room photographed Joan with a cell phone while she was sedated, according to ABC News.

Rivers, 81, died on Sept. 4, one week after undergoing an outpatient throat procedure at the clinic to treat voice changes and acid reflux. During surgery, Rivers stopped breathing and went into cardiac arrest. Last month, the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner ruled Joan ultimately died of a lack of oxygen to her brain.

"The cause of Ms. Rivers's death is anoxic encephalopathy due to hypoxic arrest during laryngoscopy and upper gastrointestinal endoscopy with Propofol sedation for evaluation of voice changes and gastroesophageal reflux disease. The manner of death is therapeutic complication," the OCME said in a statement. "The classification of a death as a therapeutic complication means that the death resulted from a predictable complication of medical therapy."

Following the comedian's death, the New York State Health Department launched a routine investigation of Yorkville Endoscopy, only to find lapses in four categories necessary for accreditation: governing body and management, surgical services, medical staff, and patient rights.

In a statement regarding Monday's findings, attorneys for Melissa Rivers said in a statement: “Our client, Melissa Rivers, is terribly disappointed to learn of the multiple failings on the part of the medical personnel and the clinic as evidenced by the CMS report. As any of us would be, Ms. Rivers is outraged by the misconduct and mismanagement now shown to have occurred before, during and after the procedure. Moving forward, Ms. Rivers will direct her efforts towards ensuring that what happened to her mother will not occur again with any other patient.”

Yorkville Endoscopy issued the following statement regarding the report as well:

"From the outset of the August 28th incident described in the CMS Report, Yorkville has been fully cooperative and collaborative with all regulatory and accreditation agencies. In response to the statement of deficiencies, Yorkville immediately submitted and implemented a plan of correction that addressed all issues raised. The regulatory agencies are currently reviewing the corrective plan of action and have been in regular contact with Yorkville. In addition, the physicians involved in the direct care and treatment referenced in the report no longer practice or provide services at Yorkville. Yorkville will continue its commitment to complying with all standards and accreditation requirements."

Corrupt FDA Corrupt Doctors

Americans Fed up with Drug Industry Influence and FDA Corruption

By Mike Adams, Natural News Editor

More than four out of five Americans think drug companies have too much influence over the Food and Drug Administration, and 84 percent believe that advertisements for prescription drugs with safety concerns should be outlawed, reveals a striking new survey from Consumer Reports.

The survey results, released today, are based on a telephone survey of 1,026 American adults conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center. They reveal the Food and Drug Administration to be alarmingly out of touch with the concerns of the American people. Some of the most interesting results include:

• 96 percent agreed the government should have the power to require warning labels on drugs with known safety problems. As Consumer Reports explains, "Right now, the Food and Drug Administration must negotiate safety warning labels with a drug maker."

• 84 percent agree that drug companies have "too much influence over the government officials who regulate them." More than two-thirds of those surveyed are concerned that drug companies actually pay the FDA to review and approve their drugs. It's a situation that turns drug companies into the "customers" of the FDA. (See related cartoon, The Puppets of Big Pharma)

• 92 percent agree that pharmaceutical companies should disclose the results of ALL clinical trials, not just the ones with positive results that they wish to publicize. (Currently, drug companies can bury negative drug trials, and the FDA has in fact been caught conspiring with drug companies to keep negative drug data secret from the public.)

• 93 percent think that the FDA should have the power to demand follow-up safety studies from drug companies. Currently, the FDA has no authority to require follow-up safety studies on drugs after they are introdued to the market. This is a serious oversight shortfall, given that many problems with drugs only appear after widespread use. (Patients are widely used as guinea pigs in any new drug launch.)

FDA Conflicts of Interest. Click to view full cartoon.

• 60 percent agreed that doctors and scientists with a financial conflict of interest should not be allowed to serve on FDA advisory boards (what were the other 40 percent thinking?). Currently, doctors who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in "consulting fees" from drug companies are not only allowed to vote on the recommendations for FDA approval of their drugs, there is not even any FDA requirement to disclose such conflicts of interest. (See related cartoon on FDA Conflicts of Interest)

New rules proposed by the FDA would reduce this level of corruption by allowing doctors to receive a maximum of $50,000 per year from companies impacted by their decisions. (Thereby making the FDA numerically less corrupt than it is now, but still tolerating blatant conflicts of interest. It's like setting a "bribery ceiling.")

• 91 percent said they had seen a drug advertisement on television or in print (a "victory" accomplished by the FDA legalizing such ads in 1998), and 26 percent said they asked their doctor for a brand-name medication after learning about it from an advertisement. This is the purpose of advertising, of course: To increase sales of drugs, not -- as is claimed by Big Pharma and the FDA -- to "educate" patients about medical treatments.

• 75 percent agreed that the allowing of drug advertising has resulted in the over-prescribing of pharmaceuticals. Fifty-nine percent said the government should restrict pharmaceutical advertising, and 26 percent said they "strongly agree" with such restrictions.

Direct-to-consumer advertising is the bread and butter of Big Pharma, and it is the primary reason the industry has exploded its revenues and influence since 1998. The invention and marketing of fictitious diseases via television advertising has proven instrumental to the drug industry's successful pushing of medically unjustified drugs onto consumers. (See the Disease Mongering Engine to invent your own fictitious diseases and disorders right now!)

• The survey further revealed 54 percent of consumers think that viewing drug advertisements allows them to "take charge of their health care." The survey did not, however, reveal whether these people were in fact suffering from deterimental cognitive side effects at the moment they were taking the survey. Statistically, it seems reasonable to assume that approximately half of the adults taking the survey were on drugs at the time they were answering the survey questions.

When Pharmacists Tell the Truth. Click to view full cartoon.

• More than half of those surveyed said they are currently taking prescription drugs, indicating that more than half of American adults are now on drugs. Forty percent said they have experienced a negative reaction (side effect) from taking prescription medications. (See related cartoon on side effects.)

Most side effects go unreported, and there is currently no enforced legal requirement that doctors or drug companies report known side effects to the FDA. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, prescription drugs currently kill approximately 100,000 Americans each year. None of those deaths are accurately recorded as "death by pharmaceuticals."

• As mentioned earlier, 84 percent agree that advertisements should be outlawed for drugs with safety concerns. The United States is the only advanced nation in the world that allows drug companies to advertise directly to consumers. It was legalized in 1998 by the FDA, following political pressure and influence from the drug companies who knew that being able to promote fictitious diseases and push brand-name drugs would result in windfall profits. (Some drugs are sold at markups as high as 300,000% over the cost of their ingredients.)

The makers of Vioxx and Paxil had studies that indicated safety problems for years, but did not release those results to the public. - Consumer Reports The real threat of pharmaceuticals
Interestingly, the survey did not ask consumers the following question: How many Americans do you think is acceptable for the drug companies to kill each year?

Because right now, that number is, conservatively, about 100,000 American citizens. More realistic estimates put it at double that number, or 200,000. I've often stated that pharmaceuticals kill more Americans each year than diet in the entire Vietnam War, and the number of Americans killed by acts of terrorism are dwarfed by the number killed by prescription drugs that the FDA and drug companies unquestionably knew were killing people. It's not that these deaths were truly accidental... they were fully documented but ignored anyway by an industry that is now clearly a very real threat to the health and safety of the American people.

This is no exaggeration: The number of people killed by FDA-approved pharmaceuticals since 9/11 is equivalent to dropping a nuclear bomb on a major U.S. city. International terrorists could not even hope to cause the number of casualties in the United States that have been achieved by the drug companies working in conspiracy with the FDA.

If we don't put limits on the influence and corruption of the drug companies by banning drug ads and demanding serious FDA reforms, the body count will only get worse. Consumers are finally waking up to this reality, and they're increasingly demanding "get tough" solutions that would require the FDA to protect the people instead of protecting Big Pharma profits.

As Bill Baughan, a senior policy analyst with Consumers Union (Consumer Reports), said, "Consumers expect Congress to take their concerns about drug safety seriously, and deliver legislation that will prevent future Vioxx-type disasters. Failure to act this year on the strongest possible bill, when more than 80 pecent of Americans agree that Congress should do whatever is necessary to ensure drug safety, would equate to gross legislative malpractice." Most Americans agree with NaturalNews
What's really interesting about these results is that they show most Americans agree with NaturalNews on issues like drug advertising, ending conflicts of interest at the FDA, requiring all clinical trials to be published, and other similar topics covered in this survey.

Meanwhile, very few Americans agree with the FDA or the wishes of organizations like the American Medical Association and drug companies themselves -- most of which like things just fine the way they are.

Drug companies, of course, would love to maintain the status quo and continue conducting business as usual. But thanks to grassroots consumer advocacy campaigns such as StopDrugAds (www.StopDrugAds.org), and sites like this one, the real story about the dangers of pharmaceuticals are no longer being censored and kept from the public.

The word is out: Pharmaceuticals are now the 4th leading cause of death in America. The best way to protect Americans from these dangerous, deadly products is to enact sweeping reforms that end the medical racket currently being operated by the FDA / Big Pharma tag-team.

Unfortunately, many of the very lawmakers who will vote on this pending legislation are, much like FDA advisors, "on the take" from the very same pharmaeutical companies that stand to be impacted by their vote. And no lawmakers that I know of are abstaining from the vote due to conflicts of interest. The reality is that Big Pharma has bought Congress, and whatever vote that will soon emerge is a far cry from the real reforms we'd see if our national lawmakers weren't financially beholden to the drug companies for their own reelection campaigns.

Thus, if Congress actually manages to pass a law that would eliminate drug company influence over FDA decision makers, it would be a clear case of lawmakers under the influence of drug money passing laws to eliminate the influence of drug money for others, but not for themselves.

There should be a law against that, it seems.

The FDA Vision Test. Click to view full cartoon.

True facts about the FDA

The following are facts about the FDA I've documented in my new book, Natural Health Solutions and the Conspiracy to Keep You From Knowing About Them. As this book reveals, the FDA has:

	Worked to keep deadly drugs on the market as long as possible before reluctantly pulling them (usually only after being sued by groups like Public Citizen). The astonishing story of Rezulin, a diabetes drug, is a good example.
	Repeatedly banned and confiscated herbs and nutritional supplements that compete with prescription drugs. Ephedra, for example, was banned by the FDA based on a political agenda, not good science.
	Conducted armed raids on alternative medicine clinics, confiscating computers, threatening alternative health practitioners, and scaring away patients. (See Tyranny in the USA: The true history of FDA raids on healers, vitamin shops and supplement companies)
	Ordered the destruction of recipe books promoting stevia, a natural sweetener that competes with sales of aspartame (yes, the FDA actually ordered the books to be destroyed).
	Been caught red-handed accepting bribes.
	Voted to put deadly drugs right back on the market even after such drugs were recalled by their manufacturer.
	Openly opposed the banning of junk food advertising to children during World Health Organization meetings.
	Suppressed information about the harm caused by dangerous drugs in order to prevent the press and the public from learning the truth about them.
	Attempted to silence its own drug safety scientists to prevent them from going public with the truth about dangerous drugs.
	Censored scientific information about the benefits of natural foods like cherries by threatening cherry growers with legal action if they did not remove scientific information about cherries from their websites. (See FDA tyranny and the censorship of cherry health facts)
	Pursued and shut down companies selling genuine cancer cures that provably work better than any prescription drug (such as Lane Labs' MGN-3).
	Vigorously argued against making "optimal health" a goal of the Codex Alimentarius discussions, striking the phrase from the final report.
	Rigged its drug safety review panels with decision makers who have substantial financial ties to drug companies, even while refusing to disclose such blatant conflicts of interest.
	Planned, organized, and took part in armed "SWAT-style" raids on vitamin shops, pet food stores, and even a church.
	Knowingly approved harmful food additives for widespread use in the food supply (such as aspartame, which has a rather dubious history and has been proven toxic in several studies), even when its own safety experts recommended denying approval.
	Allowed the continued legal use of harmful, cancer-causing food additives in the national food supply such as sodium nitrite (which causes cancer and yet is intentionally added to nearly all processed meats).
	Refused to ban a poisonous artificial fat from the food supply (hydrogenated oils) for decades, even though the World Health Organization urged member nations to outlaw the substance in 1978. Hydrogenated oils continue to harm infants, children, and adults today.

It is clearly time to reform not merely the FDA, but the entire medical industry. Drug companies are running amok, and this new Consumer Reports survey reveals that consumers are finally fed up with it.