'Largest medical fraud takedown in American history' [Archive]

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donnay

07-13-2017, 04:43 PM

'Largest medical fraud takedown in American history': More than 400 doctors, nurses and pharmacists are arrested for heathcare and opioid scams worth $1.3bn in false billing

By Associated Press and Daniel Roth For Dailymail.com
PUBLISHED: 16:10 EDT, 13 July 2017

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Thursday that federal prosecutors have charged more than 400 people in taking part in medical fraud and opioid scams that totaled $1.3 billion in fraudulent billing.

Sessions said that 412 individuals will be prosecuted by his office in what he called the 'largest health care fraud takedown operation in American history' during a press conference in Washington.

Sessions noted that the case involves doctors, nurses and pharmacists that 'have chosen to violate their oaths and put greed ahead of their patients.'

Among those charged are six Michigan doctors accused of a scheme to prescribe unnecessary opioids. A Florida rehab facility is alleged to have recruited addicts with gift cards and visits to strip clubs, leading to $58 million in false treatments and tests.

Officials said those charged in the schemes include more than 120 people involved in illegally prescribing and distributing narcotic painkillers.
Such prescription opioids are behind the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in US history.

More than 52,000 Americans died of overdoses in 2015 - a record - and experts believe the numbers have continued to rise.

'In some cases, we had addicts packed into standing-room-only waiting rooms waiting for these prescriptions,' acting FBI director Andrew McCabe said. 'They are a death sentence, plain and simple.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4694236/US-attorneys-412-health-fraud-case.html#ixzz4mkpj7SUe

ChristianAnarchist

07-13-2017, 05:24 PM

We are part of the medical community and I see none of this kind of behavior. If anything we see the opposite. There are many many people out there with serious pain issues and they can't get the "good stuff" because doctors are afraid of the goons taking their license. If you are on the prescribing side you would see that doctors are frantically tying to find relief for people with chronic pain. They will send longtime patients who have a new back injury to a "pain clinic" because they will be "investigated" if they write "too many" prescriptions.

Quite frankly, I have to question whether this story is a bunch of BS from the goons to scare providers into writing even LESS then they currently do. 400?? Let me see the names, or at least the jurisdictions and some numbers per jurisdictions. I think they are making a mountain out of a molehill and shame on those who claim to be "woke up" for believing this story without any meat to it...

donnay

07-13-2017, 05:59 PM

phill4paul

07-13-2017, 06:19 PM

Give incentives to prescribe opiods. Let people get addicted. Yank it away. People buy on the black market. Black market is run by the CIA. The State makes money off of prosecutions and incarcerations.

What's the problem?

phill4paul

07-13-2017, 06:24 PM

This situation didn't just happen, it has been going on for some years. Opioids are very addicting.

How about all the people that are hooked on Opioids now, because doctors prescribed them like candy. Now doctors are being cautious so where do you think the people turn to? Heroin--hence the epidemic we are currently seeing around the country.

My VA doc told me he's not allowed to give any anymore. He told me that 4 years ago the VA demanded "No veteran will leave in pain." Now he says they look over his shoulder at everything. He said he's tired of it and doesn't give a shit. Looked at my records and my pronouncements that I'm not a fan of opiods and..prescribed me some. They are sitting in my bug out bag now.

nikcers

07-13-2017, 06:25 PM

This situation didn't just happen, it has been going on for some years. Opioids are very addicting.

How about all the people that are hooked on Opioids now, because doctors prescribed them like candy. Now doctors are being cautious so where do you think the people turn to? Heroin--hence the epidemic we are currently seeing around the country.
the drugs are just too damn addicting. the drugs have more negative side effects then positive side effects. I blame the medical industrial complex for sure, someones getting rich off the opium addiction, and its our fault for letting the medical industrial complex have a monopoly on medicine.

donnay

07-13-2017, 06:40 PM

My VA doc told me he's not allowed to give any anymore. He told me that 4 years ago the VA demanded "No veteran will leave in pain." Now he says they look over his shoulder at everything. He said he's tired of it and doesn't give a $#@!. Looked at my records and my pronouncements that I'm not a fan of opiods and..prescribed me some. They are sitting in my bug out bag now.

Rush Limbaugh went doctor shopping some years back because he was hooked on opioids. Again this type incidents didn't crop-up overnight.

My daughter went into labor fives years ago and the first thing the nurse asked if she would like a shot of morphine to lessen the pain. Use to be morphine was used as a last resort, now it is used as a first resort. Then when she was getting ready to leave the hospital they took her blood and told her that they did not want to let her and the baby go because she had opioids in her blood---THAT THEY GAVE HER!! They accused her of being an addict and the baby had Myclonic twitches because of it.

Thank God for Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes called my son-in-law personally with advice and names of attorneys.

ChristianAnarchist

07-13-2017, 09:06 PM

nikcers

07-13-2017, 09:12 PM

Why do people think that if they get a shot of morphine they will instantly become hooked?? That's not the way pain killing medicine works.
Don't worry if you get hooked on morphine you can take some Bayer Heroin

Swordsmyth

07-13-2017, 09:12 PM

Why do people think that if they get a shot of morphine they will instantly become hooked?? That's not the way pain killing medicine works. You can use (as prescribed) for pain and you will not get "hooked". This is just people afraid of something they don't understand. Opium has been used for pain for 1000's of years and it works quite well. If you use it too much, you will be hooked. Again, you have to use it for quite a while and in increasing dosages to ramp up to an addiction.

It's gotten to the point where some of my wife's hospice patients (you know, the kind who are actively dying) will be concerned about getting "hooked". THEY'RE DYING!!! They don't have time to get "hooked" and why would that even come across their minds?? It's because of all the nonsense going around (compliments of the #goonerment #goonsquad) that these things are bad... and before someone says I don't understand the risk I do - YOU CAN GET HOOKED if you don't follow instructions. If you follow instructions you will get through your pain (if your body will heal) and you will be able to stop when needed. Your doctor will keep a close watch on your consumption, believe me...
Not all doctors are so careful or so upright.

nikcers

07-13-2017, 09:19 PM

Not all doctors are so careful or so upright.
Not just that but the drugs don't react the same to everyone the same way. I have a coworker who gets heart palpitations from drinking a pepsi (cafeine), and another that hallucinates when she takes benadryl. From a libertarian perspective I don't give a fuck what you choose, but from a human perspective who has seen so many people addicted to prescription medication I feel for them and wish that we had a better healthcare system.

ChristianAnarchist

07-13-2017, 09:25 PM

Not all doctors are so careful or so upright.

We don't know of ANY doctor that's not. You cannot practice long in this lawsuit crazy society if you are not triple careful. I think there's a lot of nonsense going around about "bad doctors" and I do not see it. If I do, I'll be the first to sound the alarm. The worst I've seen is a couple of doctors who are not as qualified as they should be but I've never seen any case of doctors deliberately pumping pills. This is not to say it NEVER happens (that would be foolish) but I am saying that in my opinion this is way overblown (perhaps because the goonerment goonsquad has some hand in it?)

Besides, I thought this was a LIBERTY forum. Don't people here want liberty?? Doesn't that mean you OWN yourself?? Doesn't that mean you should be able to put anything in your body you want. You should be free to see any doctor you want. This means if you want to see a doctor that gives you vials of morphine and tells you to drink it straight from the bottle you should have the right to see this "doctor". This means that if you want to see a witch doctor who tells you that you can cure your cancer by eating a bowl of newt's eyes by the full moon then you should have that right... Liberty has danger. Liberty means you better check out your doctor and see if others are satisfied. Liberty means that if you are hopeless and no "modern" medicine can cure you you should be able to experiment with ANYTHING you want at your own risk.

nikcers

07-13-2017, 09:31 PM

Swordsmyth

07-13-2017, 09:35 PM

Besides, I thought this was a LIBERTY forum. Don't people here want liberty?? Doesn't that mean you OWN yourself?? Doesn't that mean you should be able to put anything in your body you want. You should be free to see any doctor you want. This means if you want to see a doctor that gives you vials of morphine and tells you to drink it straight from the bottle you should have the right to see this "doctor". This means that if you want to see a witch doctor who tells you that you can cure your cancer by eating a bowl of newt's eyes by the full moon then you should have that right... Liberty has danger. Liberty means you better check out your doctor and see if others are satisfied. Liberty means that if you are hopeless and no "modern" medicine can cure you you should be able to experiment with ANYTHING you want at your own risk.

You are right, but this thread is about fraud which is and should be a crime.
If the doctor is taking bribes to over-prescribe to a patient who has no opinion of his own and is trusting his doctor, then he his not doing his duty to his patient. That is different than if the patient wants more and he is willing to give him more.

Pauls' Revere

07-13-2017, 09:42 PM

Remember the Oxycontin epidemic. FLASHBACK to 1996.

http://theweek.com/articles/541564/how-american-opiate-epidemic-started-by-pharmaceutical-company

[sic]
On December 12, 1995, the Food and Drug Administration approved the opioid analgesic OxyContin. It hit the market in 1996. In its first year, OxyContin accounted for $45 million in sales for its manufacturer, Stamford, Connecticut-based pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma. By 2000 that number would balloon to $1.1 billion, an increase of well over 2,000 percent in a span of just four years. Ten years later, the profits would inflate still further, to $3.1 billion. By then the potent opioid accounted for about 30 percent of the painkiller market. What's more, Purdue Pharma's patent for the original OxyContin formula didn't expire until 2013. This meant that a single private, family-owned pharmaceutical company with non-descript headquarters in the Northeast controlled nearly a third of the entire United States market for pain pills.

[sic]

Boots on the ground was not the only stratagem employed by Purdue to increase sales for OxyContin. Long before the rise of big data, Purdue was compiling profiles of doctors and their prescribing habits into databases. These databases then organized the information based on location to indicate the spectrum of prescribing patterns in a given state or county. The idea was to pinpoint the doctors prescribing the most pain medication and target them for the company's marketing onslaught.

That the databases couldn't distinguish between doctors who were prescribing more pain meds because they were seeing more patients with chronic pain or were simply looser with their signatures didn't matter to Purdue. The Los Angeles Times reported that by 2002 Purdue Pharma had identified hundreds of doctors who were prescribing OxyContin recklessly, yet they did little about it. The same article notes that it wasn’t until June of 2013, at a drug dependency conference in San Diego, that the database was ever even discussed in public.

Now, with big data and mega data were all rats in this lab.

donnay

07-13-2017, 09:58 PM

Why do people think that if they get a shot of morphine they will instantly become hooked?? That's not the way pain killing medicine works. You can use (as prescribed) for pain and you will not get "hooked". This is just people afraid of something they don't understand. Opium has been used for pain for 1000's of years and it works quite well. If you use it too much, you will be hooked. Again, you have to use it for quite a while and in increasing dosages to ramp up to an addiction.

I wasn't the one who was saying one shot can make people addicted. The hospital did.

It's gotten to the point where some of my wife's hospice patients (you know, the kind who are actively dying) will be concerned about getting "hooked". THEY'RE DYING!!! They don't have time to get "hooked" and why would that even come across their minds?? It's because of all the nonsense going around (compliments of the #goonerment #goonsquad) that these things are bad... and before someone says I don't understand the risk I do - YOU CAN GET HOOKED if you don't follow instructions. If you follow instructions you will get through your pain (if your body will heal) and you will be able to stop when needed. Your doctor will keep a close watch on your consumption, believe me...

If you look at what I wrote above--I mentioned about morphine use to be used as a last resort. I would think people in the care of hospice is the last resort.

My daughter trusted the nice nurse in the white coat and accepted the shot of morphine upon being checked in to give birth. Then they wanted to delay their leaving because my daughter was said to have opioids in her blood, that they initially gave her.

Lots of people got addicted to Laudanum tincture as well.

Valli6

07-13-2017, 11:05 PM

This situation didn't just happen, it has been going on for some years. Opioids are very addicting.

The fact that opioids are addictive is nothing new. It was well-known before the end of the 19th century because civil war veterans were given morphine for injuries. Same thing after WWI. It's never been a secret and there's no excuse for anyone to feign ignorance over it - and no need to keep preaching about it, either.

This whole "opioid epidemic" is nothing but a reworking of the drug war. The increase in overdoses isn't due to legally prescribed painkillers, it's due to the fentanyl which comes across the border and is then sold to unsuspecting drug users as heroin. Fentanyl is cheap to produce, so provides the largest profit with the least amount of effort. It only makes sense, that illegal drug providers prefer to sell fentanyl over real heroin, coke, or marijuana - all of which need to be farmed first and then processed.

If Sessions found less than 120 crooked doctors who were actually prescribing painkillers for profit (and look at the wording - "120 people involved in illegally prescribing and distributing" How many were actually Drs. prescribing? How many distributing? Why is the language always so ambiguous?) it sounds more like proof that only a tiny percentage of doctors are actually over-prescribing for profit.

In my own experience, it's very difficult to get painkillers and it's getting more and more difficult all the time - and I see a pain management guy! One thing though, it has a lot to do with your own state's laws. Chris "opioid czar" Christie :rolleyes: is my governor, so you can only imagine the hoops they put you AND your doctor(!) through, in order to fill a simple prescription for pain meds. No one wants to prescribe them any more - "too much liability", my pain management doctor told me.

On the other hand, I have a friend in Florida who is a nurse and works in a hospital. After she realized a family member of hers had become extremely addicted to pain pills, she was shocked to learn of the quantity of pills this person was able to obtain by prescription from an assortment of doctors. Very different from my state, where your name goes into a database somewhere, and the doctor can look online and find out if you've been getting pain killers prescribed by other doctors, and when, and in what quantities. :mad:

So, apparently "doctor shopping" happens, but I suspect its limited to just a few areas (like Florida :rolleyes:) and not widespread, like they try to make it sound. I think they want to hide the fact that the increase in usage and all the ODs are really due to our government allowing drug cartel entrepreneurs into the country to corner the drug market.

Schifference

07-14-2017, 04:16 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uV5KMG-YPM

Schifference

07-14-2017, 04:34 AM

I guess it is a good thing we have the government and all its entities to determine what we need and what is good and not good for us.

I was a practicing nurse and am still licensed. When I went thru nursing school pain was defined as what the patient said it was and patients had a right to pain management.

In a longterm facility I worked at you could set your watch by people requesting pain medication. One person comes to mind. He would roll up to the nurses station with a big smile on his face laughing and joking with people and say he needed his percocet and or whatever else he could get.

It was not my place to judge if this person was in pain or not. Besides how could I? Maybe if he didn't get his medications he would have been in total agony an hour later.

Nowadays the push is to get people off opioids.

Healthcare today seems to demonize opioids and glamorize mental health drugs like SSRI's?

SSRI's are addictive. You cannot stop them easily. People go extremely crazy when they get off them. Withdrawal symptoms are terrible.

When a person is addicted to opioids they don't walk around high, they function on the opioids and that functionality becomes their baseline.

I think these mental health drugs are the same or worse. They do not cure a persons mental health issues like anxiety, panic, depression. They only temporarily relieve the symptoms at the beginning of the therapy. Later the person develops a new baseline and the anxiety, panic, depression keeps coming back. So the person goes to see a therapist that prescribes higher doses at first and later more medications in conjunction with the ones already taken. Fast forward 30 years and you have a person taking a huge cocktail of medications that were supposed to keep them mentally fit and they are a wreck.

The only people that benefitted from the SSRI's were the therapists that have weekly customers and Big Pharma.

Jamesiv1

07-14-2017, 05:17 AM

http://www.prestongroup.org/stuff/opium02.jpg

CaptUSA

07-14-2017, 06:59 AM

I had shoulder surgery last year. They started me off with 80 Percocets (325/10 - the good stuff). When I went back in for a post-op follow-up, they asked me how many more I wanted. I still had some left so I said none. When they ran out, I admit I was sad that they were gone. They're addictive - I get it. But at no time did I think someone else should be responsible for me.

That's the way it should be. You could say the doctors were "pushing" them on me - they offered me as much as I wanted. I could have also just taken some to sell them. But I had no interest in either. You see, only I am responsible for the choices I make.

If it weren't for these stupid prescription laws in the first place, there wouldn't be any fraud necessary. People just get what they think they need to manage their pain. They also need to manage themselves so they don't become addicted.

So once again... No need for government here. Please move on.

donnay

07-14-2017, 07:27 AM

CaptUSA

07-14-2017, 07:47 AM

That goes both ways--FDA put an Amish man in jail for six years selling a salve. I am all for government out of the medical business but until that day I am glad to see the double standard is being lifted a bit.

Sorry, Donna. I hear what you're saying, but that applies to EVERYTHING. "Until government gets out of the way, we need moar government!"

"I'm all for free movement, but until government stops giving out goodies, we need to give them moar power to enforce our borders!"
"I'm all for ending the drug war, but until we do that, police need moar tools!"
"I'm all for bringing our troops home, but until then, we need to boost military spending!"
"I'm all for reducing banking regulations, but until then, gimme protection!"

"I'm all for personal responsibility, but until then, the government needs to take care of ALL of us equally!"

<sorry, if that sounded harsh>

It's just in this case, these doctors and pharmacists weren't committing fraud on the users, they were committing fraud on a stupid system of regulations.

ChristianAnarchist

07-14-2017, 09:13 AM

When all is said and done these "400 individuals" will likely result in one doctor and one pharmacist losing their license and no one going to jail. And the reason?? Because it was all BS to begin with...

Wooden Indian

07-14-2017, 09:36 AM

I have chronic headaches. Real blasted pain nearly everyday in my head and neck resulting from trauma.

I can't get anything to take when it's at its worse. Was told to take more OTCs, in fact. Yeah that'll do it!

Wife suffers from severe panic attacks. Real bad stuff, but she would take half a Xanax when they'd get bad and she would be fine after a bit. 90 pills lasted over a year so that tells you how responsible she was... they took them away. Said to try meditation. Now she thinks she's dying once a week when the panic sets in and just suffers quietly.

Fuck your precious government and fuck their interference in my health care.

agitator

07-14-2017, 12:03 PM

K
I have chronic headaches. Real blasted pain nearly everyday in my head and neck resulting from trauma.

I can't get anything to take when it's at its worse. Was told to take more OTCs, in fact. Yeah that'll do it!

Wife suffers from severe panic attacks. Real bad stuff, but she would take half a Xanax when they'd get bad and she would be fine after a bit. 90 pills lasted over a year so that tells you how responsible she was... they took them away. Said to try meditation. Now she thinks she's dying once a week when the panic sets in and just suffers quietly.

$#@! your precious government and $#@! their interference in my health care.

Do you eat chocolate, A relative had headaches until that food was removed.

For anxiety, try Calm, a magnesium supplement.

bunklocoempire

07-14-2017, 02:11 PM

Liberty is always the answer.

Respectively, a "take down" by the same gang that promotes this crap is a joke.

Quit subsidizing bad ideas with aggression to begin with -problem solved.

I'm sure the Republican held-everything will get this sorted out...:D

Created4

07-14-2017, 04:27 PM

We don't know of ANY doctor that's not. You cannot practice long in this lawsuit crazy society if you are not triple careful. I think there's a lot of nonsense going around about "bad doctors" and I do not see it. If I do, I'll be the first to sound the alarm. The worst I've seen is a couple of doctors who are not as qualified as they should be but I've never seen any case of doctors deliberately pumping pills. This is not to say it NEVER happens (that would be foolish) but I am saying that in my opinion this is way overblown (perhaps because the goonerment goonsquad has some hand in it?)

You are either grossly uninformed, or deliberately hiding the fact that this has become an epidemic. And this is pretty common knowledge.

The opioid overdose epidemic in the U.S. killed more than 33,000 people in 2015, which is more than any other year on record, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

While the opioids referenced include both heroin and prescription opioids, nearly half of overdose deaths involve the prescription drugs. [1]

Prescription opioids such as oxycodone (OxyContin), hydrocodone (Vicodin), morphine and methadone are widely prescribed for pain relief. Initially, they were intended to treat severe pain following surgery or injury or due to illnesses such as cancer.

However, they’re now increasingly prescribed for many types of pain, including chronic back pain or pain from osteoarthritis. Opioid prescriptions nearly quadrupled in the U.S. between 1999 and 2013, despite reported pain levels remaining stagnant.

By 2014 nearly 2 million Americans were dependent on or had abused the drugs, [2] and the situation is only getting worse. There are even reports that one opioid maker — Purdue Pharma — knowingly allowed its drugs to be funneled into the black market.

Drug maker Sued for Funneling Pills Into the Black Market

Purdue Pharma is being sued by the city of Everett, Washington, which has been hard-hit by deaths from opioid painkiller and heroin abuse.

The suit alleges that Purdue Pharma, which manufactures OxyContin, supplied the drug to “obviously suspicious pharmacies and physicians and enabl[ed] the illegal diversion of OxyContin into the black market” in the city. [3]

Mayor Ray Stephanson told CBS News that the city has been significantly damaged and its resources, including first responders and even crews cleaning up syringes in public parks, significantly strained as a result of the drugs flowing into their community.

The case is built around a 2016 investigation by the Los Angeles Times, which revealed OxyContin was being trafficked illegally from California to Washington, and suggested Purdue Pharma knew about it but did nothing to stop it. [4] The drug maker is no stranger to litigation. CBS News reported: [5]

“In 2007, Purdue Pharma and its executives paid more than $630 million in legal penalties to the federal government for willfully misrepresenting the drug’s addiction risks.
The same year, it also settled with Washington and other states that claimed the company aggressively marketed OxyContin to doctors while downplaying the addiction risk. As part of that settlement, it agreed to continue internal controls to identify potential diversion or abuse.”

Source (http://healthimpactnews.com/2017/drug-maker-sued-for-funneling-opioids-into-the-black-market/).

Besides, I thought this was a LIBERTY forum. Don't people here want liberty?? Doesn't that mean you OWN yourself?? Doesn't that mean you should be able to put anything in your body you want.

Yes, but this LIBERTY does not exist in the U.S. If it did, most pharmaceutical companies would go out of business.

Just legalize all the illegal drugs today, almost all of which are 1. Natural, 2. More effective than pharmaceutical copy-cats, but 3. NOT patentable.

In which states are Opioid addictions DECREASING? Those states where marijuana has become legal.

Dr. Oz Looks at Medical Marijuana as a Potential Cure for Opioid Addiction (http://healthimpactnews.com/2016/dr-oz-looks-at-medical-marijuana-as-a-potential-cure-for-opioid-addiction/)

donnay

07-14-2017, 04:45 PM

You are either grossly uninformed, or deliberately hiding the fact that this has become an epidemic. And this is pretty common knowledge.

Source (http://healthimpactnews.com/2017/drug-maker-sued-for-funneling-opioids-into-the-black-market/).

Yes, but this LIBERTY does not exist in the U.S. If it did, most pharmaceutical companies would go out of business.

Just legalize all the illegal drugs today, almost all of which are 1. Natural, 2. More effective than pharmaceutical copy-cats, but 3. NOT patentable.

In which states are Opioid addictions DECREASING? Those states where marijuana has become legal.

Dr. Oz Looks at Medical Marijuana as a Potential Cure for Opioid Addiction (http://healthimpactnews.com/2016/dr-oz-looks-at-medical-marijuana-as-a-potential-cure-for-opioid-addiction/)

Exactly.

Wooden Indian

07-14-2017, 10:30 PM

K

Do you eat chocolate, A relative had headaches until that food was removed.

For anxiety, try Calm, a magnesium supplement.

not much for chocolates in our house. Had a neck injury a while back and stress and or too much lifting or pulling gets it going... which is daily. LOL

Latest calming natural remedy for panic attacks we've tried is Valarian extract with St John's Wart. Let's just say it's no Xanax. Will try the magnesium.

Wooden Indian

07-14-2017, 10:36 PM

Opiates are dangerous. Careless use of them can hurt you and others.

Cars are dangerous. Careless use of them can hurt you and others.

Lets not regulate everything that can hurt someone even though we may not approve of it personally.

Opiates are fine for most sensible people just like cars, guns, and soda. Be responsible in your decisions and let others do the same.

Just my .02

ChristianAnarchist

07-14-2017, 10:46 PM

I have chronic headaches. Real blasted pain nearly everyday in my head and neck resulting from trauma.

I can't get anything to take when it's at its worse. Was told to take more OTCs, in fact. Yeah that'll do it!

Wife suffers from severe panic attacks. Real bad stuff, but she would take half a Xanax when they'd get bad and she would be fine after a bit. 90 pills lasted over a year so that tells you how responsible she was... they took them away. Said to try meditation. Now she thinks she's dying once a week when the panic sets in and just suffers quietly.

$#@! your precious government and $#@! their interference in my health care.

Amen brother!

Brian4Liberty

07-14-2017, 10:46 PM

Related:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?509213-My-Cousin-Wrote-This-As-A-Police-Captain-I-see-the-opioid-epidemic-every-day

ChristianAnarchist

07-14-2017, 11:00 PM

You are either grossly uninformed, or deliberately hiding the fact that this has become an epidemic. And this is pretty common knowledge.

Um... yeah, that's it. I'm part of a "conspiracy". I'm hiding the "facts" so that my pharma buddies can make some big bucks...

Source (http://healthimpactnews.com/2017/drug-maker-sued-for-funneling-opioids-into-the-black-market/).

Yes, but this LIBERTY does not exist in the U.S. If it did, most pharmaceutical companies would go out of business.

Just legalize all the illegal drugs today, almost all of which are 1. Natural, 2. More effective than pharmaceutical copy-cats, but 3. NOT patentable.

In which states are Opioid addictions DECREASING? Those states where marijuana has become legal.

Dr. Oz Looks at Medical Marijuana as a Potential Cure for Opioid Addiction (http://healthimpactnews.com/2016/dr-oz-looks-at-medical-marijuana-as-a-potential-cure-for-opioid-addiction/)

Your "source" has an ax to grind and I don't trust them any more than I trust the goonerment or big pharma. I'm using something called "common sense" which is filtered by my personal experiences or the experiences of people I know and trust.

These kinds of studies are almost always pushing an agenda and this one seems to qualify. There's an old saying: "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics..."

33,000 deaths and only "about" half are prescription?? Care to show the real numbers?? I have no idea what those real numbers are but I know how to read between the lines. So we have 16k "prescription" deaths?? First of all that's a pretty small percentage of people on prescription meds and secondly they don't further specify if the "prescription" medication was actually prescribed for the person who died or were the drugs stolen or sold on the "free" market to others who abused them? I suspect there's quite a bit of that going on, how about you??

P.S. The lawsuit means nothing in our sue happy society. The drug maker probably just settled to avoid long drawn out and expensive legal battle. Hell their insurance company probably insisted they settle so they can get on with business...

Created4

07-14-2017, 11:30 PM

Um... yeah, that's it. I'm part of a "conspiracy". I'm hiding the "facts" so that my pharma buddies can make some big bucks...

Your "source" has an ax to grind and I don't trust them any more than I trust the goonerment or big pharma. I'm using something called "common sense" which is filtered by my personal experiences or the experiences of people I know and trust.

Great. You win the argument then, since stats mean nothing, and your own "common sense" trumps everything else.

Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids have quadrupled since 1999,1,2 and so have sales of these prescription drugs.3 From 1999 to 2015, more than 183,000 people have died in the U.S. from overdoses related to prescription opioids.1,2

Source - CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/overdose.html)

Of the 20.5 million Americans 12 or older that had a substance use disorder in 2015, 2 million had a substance use disorder involving prescription pain relievers and 591,000
had a substance use disorder involving heroin.

Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the US, with 52,404 lethal drug overdoses in 2015. Opioid addiction is driving this epidemic, with 20,101 overdose deaths related to prescription pain relievers, and 12,990 overdose deaths related to heroin in 2015.

Source - American Society of Addiction Medicine (https://www.asam.org/docs/default-source/advocacy/opioid-addiction-disease-facts-figures.pdf)

There are many more reports, (like I said, this is common knowledge), but of course your experience trumps all this.

ChristianAnarchist

07-15-2017, 07:25 AM

Great. You win the argument then, since stats mean nothing, and your own "common sense" trumps everything else.

Source - CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/overdose.html)

Source - American Society of Addiction Medicine (https://www.asam.org/docs/default-source/advocacy/opioid-addiction-disease-facts-figures.pdf)

There are many more reports, (like I said, this is common knowledge), but of course your experience trumps all this.

No one is trying to say there is no drug problem! Of course there is (and pretty much always has been). We can all see that with our own eyes. What I "doubting" is the fake numbers coming from the fake news. If you want to believe them that's entirely up to you. I'm just putting this out there so others don't follow down the fake news road.

Am I right about my position? I really don't know. I do know that for 40 years or so "doubting" what I read in the news has put me on the right side of reality more often than not so that's where I stand. If those numbers turn out to be real (I doubt it) then I'll admit that I was wrong. Until such time I shall continue to sow doubt on vague "studies" that are worded in generalities...

Created4

07-15-2017, 09:42 AM

No one is trying to say there is no drug problem! Of course there is (and pretty much always has been). We can all see that with our own eyes. What I "doubting" is the fake numbers coming from the fake news.

I did not quote any "news" source. I quoted two health organizations that track numbers like this. "Fake new" has become the new all purpose straw man to knock down by anyone who wants to make a point but has no facts to support it.

AuH20

07-15-2017, 09:50 AM

The pharmaceutical industry and the FDA would never let a highly addictive substance come to market. No way. ;)

Valli6

07-15-2017, 03:43 PM

I'm using something called "common sense" which is filtered by my personal experiences or the experiences of people I know and trust.

These kinds of studies are almost always pushing an agenda and this one seems to qualify. There's an old saying: "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics..."

33,000 deaths and only "about" half are prescription?? Care to show the real numbers?? ....

Now, this is what using common sense looks like. ^

A few of us on this thread, have had first hand experience with these drugs and/or pain, so can claim to know know what we're talking about.

Others here, have NO EXPERIENCE WITH DRUGS or chronic pain. You are simply reading government propaganda and spreading it. This is not helpful to anyone.

The info our government is publicizing about an "opioid epidemic" is contrived and written to mislead. They're creating a false impression to achieve their own outcomes. They want you to place all the blame on doctors. "The doctor is your enemy" "Doctors must be controlled" "We will save you from these selfish doctors."

Well, from my real world experience, and the experiences of persons around me, this is not the way it is! Also, I'm old enough to remember earler "drug crisis" that used similar tactics. They tell you who the monster is, then throw your money around to save you from it.

I'm not saying that there hasn't been an increase in opioid use, addiction and especially overdoses - there has been! But it's not because of doctors. They take a real problem and then create their own phony version of what's caused it and why it occurred. You can bet, they've already decided how they want to "save us" from it! "Never waste a good crisis!" - remember?

Has anyone missed the fact that they just budgeted $45 billion for this opioid epidemic?

Here's an idea. Try reading some of the government reports that have NOT been publicized. Dig up a copy of the 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment. In it, they essentially admit that the increase in overdoses is due to all the fentanyl brought into the country by trans-national criminal organizations and gang-connected illegal aliens. Remember that Obama encouraged and even enticed these people to come here.

Created4

07-15-2017, 04:27 PM

Others here, have NO EXPERIENCE WITH DRUGS or chronic pain. You are simply reading government propaganda and spreading it.

And you know this how? You are actually wrong....

This is not helpful to anyone.

What is not helpful is using solely subjective experiences to promote one's agenda.

The pharmaceutical cartel is the most powerful economic force not only in the U.S., but in the world. They use the FDA in the U.S. to squash anything natural to promote their pharmaceutical products.

Statistics show that in the states where marijuana is legal prescription opioid use decreases. How does that "government propaganda" achieve their purposes?

Your whole argument in fact betrays "common sense."

ChristianAnarchist

07-15-2017, 10:02 PM

And you know this how? You are actually wrong....

What is not helpful is using solely subjective experiences to promote one's agenda.

The pharmaceutical cartel is the most powerful economic force not only in the U.S., but in the world. They use the FDA in the U.S. to squash anything natural to promote their pharmaceutical products.

Statistics show that in the states where marijuana is legal prescription opioid use decreases. How does that "government propaganda" achieve their purposes?

Your whole argument in fact betrays "common sense."

Talk about "straw men"...
Just bring up the pharmaceutical cartel and try to paint anyone who disagrees with you with that brush. How does goonerment propaganda achieve ANY purpose? They scare the weak minded into thinking they NEED them to fix their problems. Time for you to wake up and smell some Liberty...

ChristianAnarchist

07-15-2017, 10:04 PM

I did not quote any "news" source. I quoted two health organizations that track numbers like this. "Fake new" has become the new all purpose straw man to knock down by anyone who wants to make a point but has no facts to support it.

Yeah, I count those "health organizations" as fake news. They have an agenda and they mean to trick people into helping them achieve it. I'm sure they appreciate your help.

Created4

07-15-2017, 11:52 PM

Yeah, I count those "health organizations" as fake news. They have an agenda and they mean to trick people into helping them achieve it. I'm sure they appreciate your help.

Oh yes, we "help" organizations like the CDC.

CDC stories on Health Impact News. (http://healthimpactnews.com/?find=CDC)

ChristianAnarchist

07-16-2017, 08:11 AM

Oh yes, we "help" organizations like the CDC.

CDC stories on Health Impact News. (http://healthimpactnews.com/?find=CDC)

By "we" are you indicating you have a position with the Health Impact News organization?

And you insinuate that you think the CDC is corrupt (since you provided the link) and yet your previous point was supported by information you obtained from this same CDC...

Created4

07-16-2017, 08:56 AM

By "we" are you indicating you have a position with the Health Impact News organization?

And you insinuate that you think the CDC is corrupt (since you provided the link) and yet your previous point was supported by information you obtained from this same CDC...

I provided MULTIPLE sources to show that the opioid addiction and abuse problem is common knowledge. It is not even a debatable fact. This response about the corruption in the CDC is response to your absurd statement that I was "helping" them somehow. You are obviously uninformed. My connection to Health Impact News is well known, as it has been in my signature for many years.

Valli6

07-16-2017, 11:47 AM

The pharmaceutical cartel is the most powerful economic force not only in the U.S., but in the world. They use the FDA in the U.S. to squash anything natural to promote their pharmaceutical products.

Statistics show that in the states where marijuana is legal prescription opioid use decreases. How does that "government propaganda" achieve their purposes?

I agree there is rampant corruption in the pharmeceutical industry, but to blame this on legally prescribed pain meds is barking up the wrong tree. The corruption occurs because our government colludes with the industry and keeps legal those practices that allow them to ramp up prices way beyond anything realistic. Opioid pain-relievers are NOT one of the drugs driving their profits - opioids are cheap! But our own government has set up a system that favors one corporation over another, and allows the most politically connected one to monopolize a product by disallowing competing products.

Consider the epi-pen - epinephrine autoinjector. Without it, a severe allergic reaction means death for some people. It costs around 8 bucks to produce a 2-pak, but "Since Mylan bought the EpiPen in 2007, the device’s wholesale price has soared from $100 to more than $600 for a now-standard two-pack." http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/01/epipen-outrage-silicon-valley-engineers-figure-true-cost-to-make-lifesaving-auto-injector-about-10 There are competing products, but Mylan can charge whatever they want because the FDA protects them by disallowing the competition's products.

Statistics show that in the states where marijuana is legal prescription opioid use decreases. How does that "government propaganda" achieve their purposes?
This makes perfect sense to me! It stands to reason, that when you have a 2nd choice for relief, you are going to try it, maybe stick with it, or use it intermittently. This would have the effect of reducing the overall number of people using the 1st choice. The key word is "choice". I'm entitled to choose what works best for me. My choice should not be made by some bureaucrat who has never used either drug and is therefore clueless about their effectiveness, or ineffectiveness.

Still, it's notable that the statistics you are citing fail to acknowlege the huge amount of illegally obtained pain meds used. This includes real vicodin/percocet/etc and counterfeits - all purchased on the black market from cartel people, gangs, crooked doctors. Legitimate doctors play no role in this! By the way, the CDC is just another offshoot of our massive government, not an independent source.

Marijuana also appears to help opioid addicts quit and stay off of opioids - which also makes sense to me. Again, it's a matter of having a choice. I'll take it a step further and assert that if marijuana had been legal, we wouldn't even see an increase in opioid use. Most people would stick with harmless, easily obtained, legal marijuana - but no one in the government wants to believe that because it would place the blame on them.

I agree that natural cures are an additional choice we should have access to and the FDA/gov isn't interested in them. But I find that nearly all the claims are pretty much useless. You can research any herb or plant substance, and someone out there will tell you it cures cancer, or whatever! They rarely bother to tell you how to put the herb to practical use, ie what quantity is needed to have an effect, or how to isolate/quantify the active ingredient. It's always just vague suggestions. Not useful.

I want to retain my options. I reject the vilification of pain killers.

Valli6

07-16-2017, 11:54 AM

,,,

donnay

07-16-2017, 12:20 PM

Created4

07-16-2017, 12:31 PM

I agree that natural cures are an additional choice we should have access to and the FDA/gov isn't interested in them. But I find that nearly all the claims are pretty much useless. You can research any herb or plant substance, and someone out there will tell you it cures cancer, or whatever! They rarely bother to tell you how to put the herb to practical use, ie what quantity is needed to have an effect, or how to isolate/quantify the active ingredient. It's always just vague suggestions. Not useful.

It is not that the FDA/gov is not interested, it is that they see non-patentable natural substances that cure (marijuana is a good example) as competition to their patented drugs, and therefore aggressively suppress them.

The information on natural cures is plentiful. And they are used in many countries outside the U.S.

Recently the FDA targeted essential oil companies, around the time Big Pharma was working on an Ebola drug.

Here is a good article on comparing pharmaceutical drugs with plant extracts (essential oils).

http://healthimpactnews.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/04/Essential-Oils-and-Pharmaceuticals-Compared.jpg

Why Essential Oils Heal and Drugs Don’t (http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/why-essential-oils-heal-and-drugs-dont/)

by Dr. David Stewart, Ph.D.
The Chemistry of Essential Oils

If you tell most medical doctors that essential oils bring about healing with no negative side effects, they won’t believe you. This is because in medical school, students are repeatedly told by their professors that all effective medicines have negative side effects, and if they don’t then they can’t be effective.

When I was in medical school one professor emphasized this point in a colorful, graphic manner with specially prepared slides. In each slide specific drugs were depicted as evil looking demons or goblins. As he presented each picture, he explained, “Although ugly and capable of doing harm, these ‘demons’ are also the bearers of some good. So long as the benefits outweigh the risks, we use them,” he summarized. “We have no choice,” he continued, “because if a drug has no dangers, then it can have no benefits. That’s just the way it is. And that’s why it is essential that only qualified physicians be allowed to prescribe medicines,” he concluded.

Actually, the professor was telling the truth. Within the restricted practice of allopathy (MDs) the only real medicines are physician prescribed pharmaceuticals. Such medicines always do have negative side effects. All of them. No exceptions. Hence, doctors are trained to accept the bad with the good as the price of effective medicine.

The Danger is in the Drug Itself

The dangers of prescription drugs are intrinsic to the drugs themselves, not in how they are administered. No matter how careful the physician in prescribing and how compliant the patient in following doctor’s orders, even then deaths and damages occur. In fact, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, more than 100,000 Americans die every year, not from illegal drugs, not from drug overdoses, not from over-the-counter drugs, and not from drug abuses, but from properly prescribed, properly taken prescriptions. In this country, more people die from doctor’s prescriptions every ten days than were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Why is this so? Why do allopathic drugs always have undesirable effects (along with their apparent benefits) while one can find healing with natural products, such as essential oils, with no undesirable effects? Here is why.

Why Companies Deliberately Sell Dangerous Products

It is illegal to patent any natural product. The way to big profits in the medicine industry is to create an unnatural substance that never before existed in nature, then patent it, and obtain a monopoly. Hence, the molecules of pharmaceutical drugs are all strange to the human body. In all the history of humankind, such molecules were never encountered or taken into any human body. Hence, the body does not easily metabolize them. God never made your body to accept and deal with these chemicals and antibiotics.

Non-toxic natural organic substances are usually easily eliminated by the body when their usefulness has run their course. Up to a point, your body can even deal with and eliminate natural toxic substances. But when your body receives a synthetic substance, even one that may seem benign or inert (like plastic), your body does not know how to metabolize and eliminate it. If sent to the liver to break it down into disposable compounds, the liver says, “Hey. What is this? I don’t know what to do with it. Here kidneys, you take it.” Then the kidneys react saying, “Hey liver, don’t send it to us. We don’t know what it is either. Send it to the pancreas. Maybe it will have an enzyme that can deal with it.” Then the pancreas objects, “Hey guys, what do you think you are doing? I don’t want this stuff. Dump it in the blood or the lymph or try the spleen. Maybe the spleen can filter this thing out or something.” Finally, the substance ends up in the long term waste holding area of the body (usually fat tissue, including the brain) where it can remain for years and even for a lifetime, perturbing normal body functions as long as it remains. That’s why you can find traces of prescription drugs in your body taken in childhood, decades ago.

On the other hand, natural molecules, such as those found in essential oils, are easily metabolized by the body. In fact, your body was created to handle them. When an essential oil molecule finds the receptor sites it was designed to fit and conveys its information to the cell, or participates in other therapeutic functions, it then goes on its way to the liver and the kidneys and moves out of the body. Its benefits have been conveyed and its job is complete.

By contrast, the unnatural molecules of man-made drugs attach themselves to various tissues, disrupting normal function for years while the body tries to figure out what to do with them. Meanwhile, they wreak mischief with our bodily functions and even our minds.

Who is in Control?

Another reason commercial drug companies don’t want to sell natural products is that they are not in complete control of their production. When you synthesize everything in a laboratory, you are in control. You can produce your medicines at will, in any quantity, whenever you choose. This way you can meet market demands as they materialize.

When you depend on nature to grow your product, God is in control. You are at the mercy of the seasons. You can only grow so much with a given year’s crop. If a year’s supply runs out before the next crop is ready for harvest, then you and your customers just have to wait. Meanwhile, you lose potential sales and profits.

Drug companies want to be totally in charge of producing their products. They don’t want God to be in charge. By omitting God from the manufacture of their medicines, they have omitted his healing power.

Drugs versus Oils

Drugs and oils work in opposite ways. Drugs toxify. Oils detoxify. Drugs clog and confuse receptor sites. Oils clean receptor sites.

Drugs depress the immune system. Oils strengthen the immune system. Antibiotics attack bacteria indiscriminately, killing both the good and the bad. Oils attack only the harmful bacteria, allowing our body’s friendly flora to flourish.

Drugs are one-dimensional, programmed like robots to carry out certain actions in the body, whether the body can benefit from them or not. When body conditions change, drugs keep on doing what they were doing, even when their actions are no longer beneficial.

Essential oils are multi-dimensional, filled with homeostatic intelligence to restore the body to a state of healthy balance. When body conditions change, oils adapt, raising or lowering blood pressure as needed, stimulating or repressing enzyme activity as needed, energizing or relaxing as needed. Oils are smart. Drugs are dumb.

Drugs are designed to send misinformation to cells or block certain receptor sites in order to trick the body into giving up symptoms. But drugs never deal with the actual causes of disease. They aren’t designed for that purpose. While they may give prompt relief for certain uncomfortable symptoms, because of their strange, unnatural design, they will always disrupt certain other bodily functions. Thus, you always have some side effects.

Oil molecules send information to cells and cleanse receptor sites so that they bring your body back to natural function. Oils are balancing to the body. Drugs are unbalancing to the body. Oils address the causes of disease at a cellular level by deleting misinformation and reprogramming correct information so that cells function properly and in harmony with one another. With drugs, misinformation is fed into the cells so that some temporary relief may be obtained, but there is never any true healing. Drugs only trade one kind of disease for another.

Because essential oils properly applied always work toward the restoration of proper bodily function, they do not cause undesirable side effects. They are feeding the body with truth. Drugs feed the body with lies. While no amount of truth can contradict itself, it doesn’t take many lies before contradictions occur and the body suffers ill effects.

Eighteen Doctors Speak Out

Not all physicians are caught up in the idea that the only good medicines are ones that can also be harmful. Here are some comments by physicians, themselves, on the practice of medicine.

“Every educated physician knows that most diseases are not appreciably helped by medicine.”
Richard C. Cabot, M.D. Professor Harvard School of Medicine; Author of Differential Diagnosis, The Art of Ministering to the Sick, and other books.

“The cause of most disease is in the poisonous drugs physicians superstitiously give in order to effect a cure.”
Charles E. Page, M.D.

“Medicines are of subordinate importance because of their very nature, they can only work symptomatically.”
Hans Kusche, M.D.

“The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.”
William Osler, M.D.

“If all the medicine in the world were thrown into the sea, it would be bad for the fish and good for humanity”
O.W. Holmes, M.D. American Poet, Professor of Medicine, Dartmouth College and Harvard University

“Drug medications consist in employing, as remedies for disease, those things which produce disease in well persons. Its materia medica is simply a lot of drugs or chemicals or dye-stuffs—in a word poisons. All are incompatible with vital matter; all produce disease when brought in contact in any manner with the living; all are poisons.”
R.T. Trail, M.D. Author of The True Healing Art and other books. Quote from a lecture to members of Congress and the medical profession, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.

“Every drug increases and complicates the patients condition.”
Robert Henderson, M.D.

“The greatest part of all chronic disease is created by the suppression of acute disease by drug poisoning.”
Henry Lindlahr, M.D. Author of Diagnostic Methods, Nature Cure: Philosophy and Practice, Natural Therapeutics, and other books.

“Medicine is only palliative, for back of disease lies the cause, and this cause no drug can reach.”
Wier Mitchel, M.D.

“Medical practice has neither philosophy nor common sense to recommend it. In sickness the body is already loaded with impurities. By taking drug – medicines more impurities are added, thereby the case is further embarrassed and harder to cure.”
Elmer Lee, M.D. Past Vice President, Academy of Medicine.

“Our figures show approximately four and one half million hospital admissions annually due to the adverse reactions to drugs. Further, the average hospital patient has as much as thirty percent chance, depending how long he is in, of doubling his stay due to adverse drug reactions.”
Milton Silverman, M.D. Professor of Pharmacology, University of California. Author, The Drugging of America, Prescription for Death, and other books.

“What hope is there for medical science to ever become a true science when the entire structure of medical knowledge is built around the idea that there is an entity called disease which can be expelled when the right drug is found?”
John H. Tilden, M.D. Author of Impaired Health, Etiology, Hygiemic, and Dietetic Treatment of Appendicitis, and other books and articles.

“We are prone to thinking of drug abuse in terms of the male population and illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. It may surprise you to learn that a greater problem exists with millions of women dependent on legal prescription drugs.”
Robert Mendelsohn, M.D. Chairman, Illinois State Medical Licensing Board, Author of Confessions of a Medical Heretic, How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor, and other books.

“Why would a patient swallow a poison because he is ill, or take that which would make a well man sick.”
L.F. Kebler, M.D. Author of Technical Drug Studies, Medicated Soft Drinks, and other works.

“Drugs never cure disease. They merely hush the voice of nature’s protest, and pull down the danger signals she erects along the pathway of transgression. Any poison taken into the system has to be reckoned with later on even though it palliates present symptoms. Pain may disappear, but the patient is left in a worse condition, though unconscious of it at the time.”
Daniel. H. Kress, M.D. Author of The Cost to Society of Cigarettes: A Century of Analysis, Ulcers and Smoking, and other books.

“There are over 10 million adverse reactions yearly from FDA-approved over-the-counter and prescription drugs. We are not talking about mild nausea or headaches. Between 60,000 and 140,000 people die each year from adverse drug reactions. Each year, more Americans die after taking prescription drugs than died in the entire Vietnam war. Over half the drugs approved by the FDA since 1976 were later found to be much more toxic than previously thought. Several had to be removed from the market.”
Julian Whitaker, M.D. Author of Reversing Heart Disease, Guide to Natural Healing, The Heart Surgery Trap, and other books.

“There are significant efforts by insurance companies to exclude preventive health care and education and the use of natural, inexpensive remedies, while ignoring the benefits of nutrition. At the same time they pay huge medical claims to hospitals for surgery and pharmaceutical products. There is an unwritten agreement between hospitals and insurance providers to reimburse the hospitals for services performed in hospitals – to scratch each other’s back – so to speak. There is a hidden agenda in this. If insurance providers pay hospitals for patients’ medical claims, then at the end of the year the insurance companies can go to the state insurance commissions with their track records and request a premium increase. A premium increase translates into more profit for the insurance carriers as well as the hospitals.”
Terry S. Friedmann, M.D. Author of Freedom Through Health and other publications. Co-founder and Board Member, American Holistic Medical Association.

“The necessity of teaching mankind not to take drugs and medicines, is a duty incumbent upon all who know their uncertainty and injurious effects; and the time is not far distant when the drug system will be abandoned.”
Charles Armbruster, M.D.

So there you have it, why oils heal and drugs don’t. Let’s hope Dr. Armbruster is right, that “the time is not far distant when the drug system will be abandoned.” Pharmaceutical companies and their physician drug dealers could market and sell natural products with genuine healing capabilities, but most won’t. There isn’t any money in it.

Emergency Medicine is the Best of Medicine

In Dr. Robert Mendelsohn’s book, Confessions of a Medical Heretic, he describes medicine as a practice of religion rather than a practice of science. Doctors practice what they believe, not what they can substantiate by valid science. According to Mendelsohn, in the religion of medicine, physicians are the high priests and their ecclesiastical robes are their white coats. Hospitals are the temples where many holy waters are dispensed in the form of drugs, antibiotics, and vaccines. People tithe to the church of medicine by dutifully paying their insurance premiums. The word “prescription” is very close to the term “prescriptural,” thus implying a scriptural basis for their use. The Holy Bible containing the scriptures of medicine is the Pharmaceutical PDR. For millions of people, their faith and confidence in the religion of medicine is far greater than their belief in the institutions of worship they may attend. In a crisis, they would sooner call 911 than call upon God in prayer.

Dr. Mendelsohn was a practicing pediatrician at the Michael Reese Medical Center in Chicago, a professor at the University of Illinois School of Medicine, Chairman of the Illinois State Licensing Board, and appeared on national television many times. He is author of another book entitled, How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor, where he states, “When it comes to treating a sick child, one grandmother is worth two pediatricians.” He also often said, “If you always assume your doctor is wrong, most of the time you will be right.” In Dr. Mendelsohn’s opinion, “The best of medicine is emergency medicine.” I agree. When it comes to chronic disease, they have little or nothing to offer – no cures, only treatments and disease management.

I don’t want to imply that there is no use for medical care as we have it today. If I were in a serious accident with a massive head injury, damage to my internal organs, or a broken limb, I would want to go to the nearest emergency room as fast as possible with the best physicians and nurses on staff. Allopathic medicine is wonderful in a crisis and saves many lives. Emergency medicine is what they do best. In a traumatic situation where you could die unless immediate action is taken, allopathy with all of its drugs, surgeries, equipment, and other paraphernalia can be just what you need to get through the crisis.

But as for healing, allopathic medicine doesn’t offer much. After you have been rescued by allopathic measures from imminent death in an emergency situation, the healing is still up to you by seeking other modalities. And when it comes to chronic illness like cancer, arthritis, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease, allopathy has no cures and usually makes matters worse.

One reason medical practitioners do best in a crisis is because that is the emphasis in their training. In fact, in America, 85% of medical expenditures are for crisis applications – responding to accidents, acute life-threatening conditions, or patching up the body when seriously advanced disease has occurred and death may be imminent. Meanwhile, less than 6% of health care expenditures are for prevention and wellness education.

True healing can only take place with the participation of the patient on all levels – mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical. The idea of “leaving it to the doctor” leads to unending sickness and poor health. Health care and health maintenance is something you do for yourself, with the help of God. Not something for which you pay your money and continue to do as you please without altering your lifestyle.

Health care is your responsibility – not the government’s, not the insurance company’s, not the health care system’s, and not the doctor’s.

Can the Present Health Care System Change?

In my opinion, changing the medical system toward natural and spiritual forms of healing that encourage more individual responsibility is impossible. The system can’t change. It won’t change. It must be replaced. There was a time for horses and buggies, but when automobiles came along people gave up their former ways of transportation. There is also a time to repair your car and keep it, and a time to discard it for a new one. The medical profession is a sophisticated machine, but it rests on a fallacious foundation. Its philosophical basis is like a Model-T Ford stuck in the mud that can’t move and won’t change.

There is a time to repair the old car and a time to replace it. The current medical system is an old car, beyond repair, parked on a false foundation. It survives, not because it serves the good of humanity, but because it has become politically entrenched in our society. The time has come to remove its legal franchise and replace it by allowing alternative modalities to flourish free of the shackles placed upon them by allopathy’s monopolistic intent.

Terry Friedmann, MD, in his book, Freedom Through Health, envisions a new holistic system to replace the current one that emphasizes personal responsibility and fosters cooperative relationships among many modalities with allopathy playing only a minor role. Dr. Friedmann’s new health care model would include nutrition, exercise, stress management, and aromatherapy, to address the whole person – mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In their books, Robert Mendelsohn, MD, and Richard Gerber, MD, also foresee a new holistic medical paradigm – one not dependent on allopathic drugs and procedures as its primary focus.

The time has come to move on to paradigms and modalities based on different premises than those that underlie modern allopathy. Those of you who have opted out of the system in favor of essential oils and their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits are among the pioneers who are replacing the system.

As for those of you who have taken over-the-counter or prescription drugs over long periods of time, essential oils are your best friend because they can cleanse the residues of these toxins from your system once and for all and help restore your body back to its natural healthy state.

Excerpted from the book: The Chemistry of Essential Oils Made Simple: God’s Love Manifest in Molecules – Chapter 11

Copyright Care Publications – All rights reserved.

About the Author

Dr. David Stewart studied theology, philosophy, and English at Central Methodist College in Fayette, Missouri (1955-58) and studied chemistry, biology and social sciences at Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg (1962-63). He also studied commercial photography at Los Angeles Trade Technical College (1959-60). He completed a BS degree in Mathematics and Physics at Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy in 1965 and was salutatorian of his graduating class. His MS and PhD degrees are in geophysics (theoretical seismology) and were earned from the University of Missouri at Rolla in 1969 and 1971 respectively. He spent a semester in medical school at the University of North Carolina (1973) and has been a Certified Childbirth Educator (CCE) with the American Academy of Husband-Coached Childbirth (AAHCC) since 1975.

Dr. Stewart is also a Registered Aromatherapist (RA) with the nationally recognized Aromatherapy Registration Council (ARC), which is endorsed by the National Association of Holistic Aromatherapists (NAHA), of which he is a member.

He has held positions as a hydraulic engineer and hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Southern California (1965-67). He was a professor on the faculty of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, (1971-1978) and also held a professorship at Southeast Missouri State University (1988-1993). He was also a part-time United Methodist Pastor (1993-94, 1997-99) in rural Missouri. He has been the Executive Director of the InterNational Association of Parents and Professionals for Safe Alternatives in Childbirth (NAPSAC International) since its founding in 1975.

For most of his professional career, Dr. Stewart has been self-employed as an author and lecturer, mainly in the area of alternative health care. He has also served on advisory committees to the American Public Health Association (APHA) and the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM). He has testified as an expert on health matters before state legislative committees, U.S. congressional committees, medical licensing boards and courts of law throughout the U.S. as well as in Canada.

He has authored or coauthored over 200 published works including more than a dozen books (including Healing Oils of the Bible). Two of his books won the “Books of the Year” Award from the American Journal of Nursing. One of his flyers on breastfeeding (published by La Leche League International, LLLI) sold over two million copies in ten languages.

Ender

07-16-2017, 02:59 PM

Now, this is what using common sense looks like. ^

A few of us on this thread, have had first hand experience with these drugs and/or pain, so can claim to know know what we're talking about.

Others here, have NO EXPERIENCE WITH DRUGS or chronic pain. You are simply reading government propaganda and spreading it. This is not helpful to anyone.

The info our government is publicizing about an "opioid epidemic" is contrived and written to mislead. They're creating a false impression to achieve their own outcomes. They want you to place all the blame on doctors. "The doctor is your enemy" "Doctors must be controlled" "We will save you from these selfish doctors."

Well, from my real world experience, and the experiences of persons around me, this is not the way it is! Also, I'm old enough to remember earler "drug crisis" that used similar tactics. They tell you who the monster is, then throw your money around to save you from it.

I'm not saying that there hasn't been an increase in opioid use, addiction and especially overdoses - there has been! But it's not because of doctors. They take a real problem and then create their own phony version of what's caused it and why it occurred. You can bet, they've already decided how they want to "save us" from it! "Never waste a good crisis!" - remember?

Has anyone missed the fact that they just budgeted $45 billion for this opioid epidemic?

Here's an idea. Try reading some of the government reports that have NOT been publicized. Dig up a copy of the 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment. In it, they essentially admit that the increase in overdoses is due to all the fentanyl brought into the country by trans-national criminal organizations and gang-connected illegal aliens. Remember that Obama encouraged and even enticed these people to come here.

I suggest you read a little real history.

The biggest "criminal" org in the world are the alphabets, they pay all the illegal gangs you are so afraid of to get drugs where they want them.

And marijuana is perfectly safe. It became a "drug" when Big Corps got the gov to make hemp (which is NOT a drug) illegal because it was stronger than steel or cotton & they couldn't have that.

My family are all natural health people- my 73 yr old grandmother is healthier and more attractive than most 30-40 yr olds.

ChristianAnarchist

07-16-2017, 03:11 PM

I provided MULTIPLE sources to show that the opioid addiction and abuse problem is common knowledge. It is not even a debatable fact. This response about the corruption in the CDC is response to your absurd statement that I was "helping" them somehow. You are obviously uninformed. My connection to Health Impact News is well known, as it has been in my signature for many years.

Hey. I'm not your enemy here. Learn how to read what is being written. You can go back and see that I've never stated that there is not an addiction problem. In fact I've pointed out that we've always had a problem. What I've been disputing throughout this thread is the claim that people in the healthcare system are somehow to blame. THAT issue is pure bs pumped out by people who have an agenda that's anti Liberty. Do you disagree?

Ender

07-16-2017, 03:49 PM

Hey. I'm not your enemy here. Learn how to read what is being written. You can go back and see that I've never stated that there is not an addiction problem. In fact I've pointed out that we've always had a problem. What I've been disputing throughout this thread is the claim that people in the healthcare system are somehow to blame. THAT issue is pure bs pumped out by people who have an agenda that's anti Liberty. Do you disagree?

The healthcare system is certainly deserving of blame. Money is in pain and illness- not in remedies. Even in med school- doctors do not learn anything about prevention of disease- something that everyone should be educated on.

Does that mean there are not good individuals out there in the medical world? Of course not- there are some wonderful people who are trying to help others- they just do not understand the Matrix that they live in.

Created4

07-16-2017, 05:21 PM

What I've been disputing throughout this thread is the claim that people in the healthcare system are somehow to blame. THAT issue is pure bs pumped out by people who have an agenda that's anti Liberty. Do you disagree?

You're clearly brainwashed. The largest criminal settlements in the history of mankind have been settlements against Pharmaceutical companies.

Pharmaceutical companies now among largest corporate criminals in the world: no better than white-collar drug dealers (http://healthimpactnews.com/2012/pharmaceutical-companies-now-among-largest-corporate-criminals-in-the-world-no-better-than-white-collar-drug-dealers/)

BMJ: Escalating Criminal Behavior by Pharmaceutical Companies due to Insufficient Penalties (http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/bmj-escalating-criminal-behavior-by-pharmaceutical-companies-due-to-insufficient-penalties/)

https://cdn.healthytraditions.com/media/wysiwyg/category/Confessions%20of%20an%20Rx%20Drug%20Pusher.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4bYng7X7Kk

MD$ on the Take: My Career-Ending Expose (https://www.henrymakow.com/i_was_a_corporate_whistle_blow.html)

Liberty? Are you kidding? There is no "liberty" in the medical system. Only a handful of companies are approved by the FDA, who derives most of their funding from Big Pharma.

The revolving door between Big Pharma and government is well known.

Big Pharma Exec to Head “Independent” Institute Of Medicine (http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/big-pharma-exec-to-head-independent-institute-of-medicine/)

Former CDC Director Julie Gerberding sells 38,368 shares of Merck Stock for $2.3 Million (http://healthimpactnews.com/2015/former-cdc-director-julie-gerberding-sells-38368-shares-of-merck-stock-for-2-3-million/)

Valli6

07-16-2017, 05:36 PM

I suggest you read a little real history.
The biggest "criminal" org in the world are the alphabets, they pay all the illegal gangs you are so afraid of to get drugs where they want them.

And marijuana is perfectly safe. It became a "drug" when Big Corps got the gov to make hemp (which is NOT a drug) illegal because it was stronger than steel or cotton & they couldn't have that.

My family are all natural health people - my 73 yr old grandmother is healthier and more attractive than most 30-40 yr olds.
Come on, I've been a member of Ron Paul forums since 2008 and your talking to me like I just fell off a turnip truck. What in the world gave you the impression that I didn't already know that the government does corrupt things like that, and that marijuana is perfectly safe? (and your grandmother is not better looking than me! :mad:)

You're lucky everyone in your family is healthy but it's probably due more to your genes, than anything else - just the luck of the draw. Some of us are born predisposed to certain diseases and there aren't always steps one can take which will alter that course.

Guys, I've read all the classic herbals, newer herbals, a couple recent books on herbal medicines, a bunch of old "materia medica"/Formulary/Dispensatory type books from the late 1800's/early 1900s, and looked into essential oils. I like the idea of natural medicines, but nothing in these books treats the kind of pain I'm thinking about.

When the pain is due to irreparable damage - when the disks in your spine finally flatten completely and dry up, and your vertabrae start growing osteophytes which choke your spinal cord and the nerves that branch off of it to other parts of your body - only an opiate helps. I'll settle for having only 1 or 2 (maybe 3?:o) good days out of the week if it keeps me from getting addicted.

ChristianAnarchist

07-16-2017, 05:45 PM

The healthcare system is certainly deserving of blame. Money is in pain and illness- not in remedies. Even in med school- doctors do not learn anything about prevention of disease- something that everyone should be educated on.

Does that mean there are not good individuals out there in the medical world? Of course not- there are some wonderful people who are trying to help others- they just do not understand the Matrix that they live in.

Oh my God... Such nonsense! Have you actually been to med school?? Of course they teach prevention. Half of what my wife does with her patients is all about prevention. She is hardly alone as that's what is the focus of primary care medicine. Some of you just have a bone to grind and don't want to believe that medicine helps people. Pretty much every doctor I've heard talk about patient care has stated that if you have a good response with some undocumented treatment then continue with that. No doctor I know thinks they know everything about the human organism.

Want alternative treatment? Go for it. No one is stopping you. In fact both me and my wife use some forms of "alternative" treatments for aliments and we recommend them to our friends and her patients when appropriate.

Peace and Liberty brother...

Created4

07-16-2017, 05:46 PM

I like the idea of natural medicines, but nothing in these books treats the kind of pain I'm thinking about.

When the pain is due to irreparable damage - when the disks in your spine finally flatten completely and dry up, and your vertabrae start growing osteophytes which choke your spinal cord and the nerves that branch off of it to other parts of your body - only an opiate helps. I'll settle for having only 1 or 2 (maybe 3?) good days out of the week if it keeps me from getting addicted.

But most pharmaceutical products are simply patentable knock offs on the natural stuff to begin with. You cannot get pure, natural opium, for example, because it is illegal.

For example, a drug like vicodin combines hydrocodone with acetaminophen, and acetaminophen (http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/acetaminophen-more-dangerous-than-you-ever-suspected/) is linked to liver disease and other serious side effects.

You'd probably be better off with pure, natural opium, or even heroin, then the toxic pharmaceutical products. But there IS NO LIBERTY when it comes to drugs. Toxic pharmaceutical products are legal, pure, natural forms are not (although some laws are changing on marijuana.)

ChristianAnarchist

07-16-2017, 05:54 PM

You're clearly brainwashed. The largest criminal settlements in the history of mankind have been settlements against Pharmaceutical companies.

Pharmaceutical companies now among largest corporate criminals in the world: no better than white-collar drug dealers (http://healthimpactnews.com/2012/pharmaceutical-companies-now-among-largest-corporate-criminals-in-the-world-no-better-than-white-collar-drug-dealers/)

BMJ: Escalating Criminal Behavior by Pharmaceutical Companies due to Insufficient Penalties (http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/bmj-escalating-criminal-behavior-by-pharmaceutical-companies-due-to-insufficient-penalties/)

https://cdn.healthytraditions.com/media/wysiwyg/category/Confessions%20of%20an%20Rx%20Drug%20Pusher.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4bYng7X7Kk

MD$ on the Take: My Career-Ending Expose (https://www.henrymakow.com/i_was_a_corporate_whistle_blow.html)

Liberty? Are you kidding? There is no "liberty" in the medical system. Only a handful of companies are approved by the FDA, who derives most of their funding from Big Pharma.

The revolving door between Big Pharma and government is well known.

Big Pharma Exec to Head “Independent” Institute Of Medicine (http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/big-pharma-exec-to-head-independent-institute-of-medicine/)

Former CDC Director Julie Gerberding sells 38,368 shares of Merck Stock for $2.3 Million (http://healthimpactnews.com/2015/former-cdc-director-julie-gerberding-sells-38368-shares-of-merck-stock-for-2-3-million/)

Yes, yes, I'm so brainwashed... I'm waiting for my latest check from the pharma companies right now so I can make my down payment on my Learjet...

Of course the #goonerment alphabet soup agencies are the reason we don't have more choice in medicine. Don't think anyone is arguing otherwise. It's certainly not the doctors who want to have your choices limited. The pharma companies?? They do what all companies are supposed to do - make money for their shareholders. Of course they don't want you to chose pot over their expensive options.

At any rate, I hope if you are ever in a situation where you are in great pain you let the doctors prescribe opiates or anything else that will help you ease your pain. Munching on an herb isn't going to cut it in that situation. If and when your body is back in order, you can use any kind of health routine you like. Putting your broken back in order will be done by a doctor... (oh, and there will be drugs from big pharma there helping you cope...)

P.S. I just did a search on largest lawsuits and guess what?? They weren't pharma related... Where do you get this stuff?? The "top 20" pharma lawsuits don't even add up to the tobacco suit...

Swordsmyth

07-16-2017, 05:54 PM

The truth lies somewhere in-between the two sides of this argument.

Ender

07-16-2017, 05:56 PM

The truth lies somewhere in-between the two sides of this argument.

No, it does not.

Ender

07-16-2017, 06:01 PM

Oh my God... Such nonsense! Have you actually been to med school?? Of course they teach prevention. Half of what my wife does with her patients is all about prevention. She is hardly alone as that's what is the focus of primary care medicine. Some of you just have a bone to grind and don't want to believe that medicine helps people. Pretty much every doctor I've heard talk about patient care has stated that if you have a good response with some undocumented treatment then continue with that. No doctor I know thinks they know everything about the human organism.

Want alternative treatment? Go for it. No one is stopping you. In fact both me and my wife use some forms of "alternative" treatments for aliments and we recommend them to our friends and her patients when appropriate.

Peace and Liberty brother...

We're probably not talking about the same idea in the matter of "prevention" and maintaining good health. I've known some pretty decent doctors but I have yet to see one teach how to naturally prevent anything.

And, the gov stops many "alternative" treatments. Like the Amish guy going to jail for 6 years for a salve that has hurt no one.

And Peace backatcha. ;)

Ender

07-16-2017, 06:07 PM

Come on, I've been a member of Ron Paul forums since 2008 and your talking to me like I just fell off a turnip truck. What in the world gave you the impression that I didn't already know that the government does corrupt things like that, and that marijuana is perfectly safe? (and your grandmother is not better looking than me! :mad:)

You're lucky everyone in your family is healthy but it's probably due more to your genes, than anything else - just the luck of the draw. Some of us are born predisposed to certain diseases and there aren't always steps one can take which will alter that course.

Guys, I've read all the classic herbals, newer herbals, a couple recent books on herbal medicines, a bunch of old "materia medica"/Formulary/Dispensatory type books from the late 1800's/early 1900s, and looked into essential oils. I like the idea of natural medicines, but nothing in these books treats the kind of pain I'm thinking about.

When the pain is due to irreparable damage - when the disks in your spine finally flatten completely and dry up, and your vertabrae start growing osteophytes which choke your spinal cord and the nerves that branch off of it to other parts of your body - only an opiate helps. I'll settle for having only 1 or 2 (maybe 3?:o) good days out of the week if it keeps me from getting addicted.

The disks in your spine do not have to flatten if you know how to take care of yourself and it's more than just herbs for illness.

Many diseases, including cancer, are caused from lack of oxygen. Almost everyone in the western world breathes backwards- w/o correct breathing your body cannot use oxygen as it is meant to.

And my grandmother is probably better looking than you- most people think she's 40- and she's also brilliant. ;)

ChristianAnarchist

07-16-2017, 06:11 PM

We're probably not talking about the same idea in the matter of "prevention" and maintaining good health. I've known some pretty decent doctors but I have yet to see one teach how to naturally prevent anything.

And, the gov stops many "alternative" treatments. Like the Amish guy going to jail for 6 years for a slave that has hurt no one.

And Peace backatcha. ;)

Yeah, I should have said "no people are stopping you other than the goonerment goonsquad"... We have no argument here as to what a bunch of sheitheads they are...

Created4

07-16-2017, 06:23 PM

I just did a search on largest lawsuits and guess what?? They weren't pharma related... Where do you get this stuff?? The "top 20" pharma lawsuits don't even add up to the tobacco suit...

The following is a list of the 20 largest settlements reached between the United States Department of Justice and pharmaceutical companies from 1991 to 2012, ordered by the size of the total settlement. The settlement amount includes both the civil (False Claims Act) settlement and criminal fine. Glaxo's $3 billion settlement included the largest civil, False Claims Act settlement on record,[1] and Pfizer’s $2.3 billion settlement including a record-breaking $1.3 billion criminal fine.[2] Source (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical_settlements).

Pharmaceutical Companies Causing 106,000 Deaths a Year (http://healthimpactnews.com/2012/pharmaceutical-companies-causing-106000-deaths-a-year/)

Quotes:

In fact, the drug industry now tops all other industries in the total amount of fraud payments for actions against the federal government under the False Claims Act.

In August of last year, the Bureau of Investigative Journalists also shed some much needed light on the vast corruption within the pharmaceutical industry. A large number of pharmaceutical companies are guilty of fraud, cover-ups of fatal side effects, and huge kickbacks paid to doctors.

A total of 19 drug companies also made AllBusiness.com’s Top 100 Corporate Criminals List for the 1990s. Charges run the gamut from international price-setting, illegal marketing, false claims, hiding serious problems with their drugs and, in one case (Ortho, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson), obstruction of justice and eight counts of persuading employees to destroy documents in a federal investigation.

Between those three sources alone, there’s no longer a shred of doubt that the pharmaceutical industry is officially the most crime-infested and crooked industry on the planet—at least in terms of criminal activities that are actually being caught, pursued and prosecuted. (For a running list of the most recent news on False Claims Act cases, see the Taxpayers Against Fraud site.)

http://healthimpactnews.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/06/deaths-in-one-year-due-to-drugs-vs-supplements-3.jpg

http://healthimpactnews.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/03/illegal-marijuana-deaths-compared-FB.jpg

ChristianAnarchist

07-16-2017, 07:21 PM

Source (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical_settlements).

Pharmaceutical Companies Causing 106,000 Deaths a Year (http://healthimpactnews.com/2012/pharmaceutical-companies-causing-106000-deaths-a-year/)

Quotes:

http://healthimpactnews.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/06/deaths-in-one-year-due-to-drugs-vs-supplements-3.jpg

http://healthimpactnews.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/03/illegal-marijuana-deaths-compared-FB.jpg

Wait... I just used that same list of 20 pharma lawsuits in my last post to prove you wrong. Now you are trying to use it to prove you right??? Did you even read my post?? I stated that this list of 20 "largest" is not the largest suits in the world. Not even close. Add them all together and they don't even equal the ONE lawsuit against big tobacco. (You must have missed this point...)

But wait... One can claim they are the biggest "among pharma companies"... Yes, what exactly does that prove? I can present a list of biggest lawsuits against railroad operators. That's nothing more a list against railroad operators...

Without actually doing any research on it, I'd say the biggest crooks are the banking industry... but that's just me...

P.S. your deaths in 10 years graphic is "sourcing" JAMA 1998. Do you know that?? First I would question the "study" and second, that's some pretty old data...

donnay

07-16-2017, 08:02 PM

Attorney Tells All: How the U.S. Courts Shield Big Pharma from Liability

It’s not easy to sue Big Pharma. But, legal firm Baum Hedlund has been doing it for years. Unfortunately, as pharmaceutical deceit and side-effects grow, it’s getting exponentially more difficult. After all, using prescription drugs as prescribed is the top killer in the USA. I reached out to attorney Michael Baum to get a behind-the-scenes look at how this growing monster is shielded from liability by our court system. Baum generously agreed to share his candid insights. If you or a loved one are taking prescription meds — make sure you read this interview closely.

TPC #1: Does the court system protect the pharmaceutical industry from liability? If so, how?
Mr. Baum: Yes. The court system has made it very expensive for claims to be made against pharmaceutical companies for injuries. For instance, drug lawsuits require expert testimony from a person with a related PhD and/or MD level education. Otherwise, the case may be thrown out before going to trial.

This makes suing drug companies pricey because the experts charge high hourly rates to offset the “cost” of going up against the same entities that pay for grants, lucrative industry jobs and coveted academic positions.

Furthermore, many judges now have gate-keeping authority to reject cutting-edge science that goes against the status-quo — what the rest of the scientific community “believes.” Drug companies are able to foster “established beliefs” with hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing aimed at physicians, medical journals, academic opinion leaders, and professional organizations of scientists. Once those marketed messages become pervasive, use of the drug becomes the standard of care. So overcoming that impression is like convincing a court the emperor is not wearing new clothes, which can be very difficult.

TPC #2: What are the ramifications of this conflict, on the average U.S. citizen?
Mr. Baum: The expense itself can make bringing an individual case prohibitive. We now have to combine cases to spread the cost. Unfortunately, courts (and legislative actions) have whittled away using these class actions for drug injuries.They now say that each person’s damage is unique and not common across a class, even if they suffer the same injury, e.g. a heart attack.

Combining many claimants into lawsuits is still possible, but it requires enough similarly injured people to justify a consolidated action. Finding lawyers qualified and willing to take on the detailed investigation and pay out the expense of engaging experts is itself a big hurdle. Drug companies can afford to make lawsuits long and difficult, so financing such litigation with qualified, available lawyers can be a barrier to an average U.S. citizen pursuing a drug case.

There’s also the pill-popping culture that causes an additional barrier. Many injuries occur after a person has been prescribed a number of drugs. Separating out one drug’s effect from another adds another level of complication. Thus, many law firms and courts will reject cases unless it is clear that the likely culprit is one particular drug.

TPC #3: If a drug has been proven ineffective and dangerous in a court of law, why is it still on the market?
Mr. Baum: A court is not the FDA, so it does not have the power to recall a drug. An individual court finding that the drug was not effective and harmful to one person may not indicate that there are others that may benefit from the drug. So court cases are not used to dictate what can or can’t be on the market.

Most drugs are essentially dangerous chemicals that have benefits that outweigh their risks. If court trials show that a warning was not adequate, labeling can be modified to address that.

In the context of pediatric prescribing of an antidepressant like Paxil or Celexa, litigation showed that the drugs did not out-perform placebo. It also showed that they doubled the risk of suicidal behavior. Eventually, the FDA required a black box warning about the risks, but the marketing and clinical experience of the placebo effect convinced many doctors to keep prescribing them. Plus, the studies proven false in litigation don’t necessarily end up getting corrected or withdrawn.

One such infamous study, Paxil 329, is still published and cited by other studies in favor of the drug, despite widespread recognition that it was ghostwritten and contained false information. Again, the marketing created the impression of safety and efficacy. A counter-marketing campaign has not occurred to correct the mis-impressions created by the initial marketing and ghostwritten articles.

TPC #4: How do drug companies get away with false advertising? Has a pharmaceutical company ever been convicted in court for false advertising?
Mr. Baum: I guess the short answer is they get away with it until they get caught. Whistleblower cases and product liability lawsuits have exposed many fraudulent campaigns, resulting in large fines or verdicts. I think many of the methods used during the 90’s and up till recently (ghostwriting, bribing with dinners, entertainment tickets, trips, or opinion leader status) have been curtailed to some degree by such lawsuits.

As with many frauds, they are coated with some truth — they used self-funded and ghostwritten or controlled study results to promote benefits and minimize risks. Once published by cooperative journals, the studies can be circulated by sales representatives to physicians. It takes a while for the courts and scientific community to catch up with these tricks, if ever.

TPC #5: In your experiencing suing drug companies (whose dangerous drugs are APPROVED by the FDA) — would you say the FDA is doing its job at protecting patients?
Mr. Baum: There are some elements of the FDA that are trying to protect consumers. Other factions consider the pharmaceutical companies to be their “clients” since the FDA is partially funded by the companies through the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA).

The volume of work the FDA must do to monitor the risks — with all the drugs already on the market, plus the drugs trying to get on the market — can result in subtle problems getting masked by “summaries” of data provided by the companies. In other words, an overworked FDA can end up simply relaying information spoon fed to them by Big Pharma. This is counter to what the FDA was set up for, which was to act as a non-biased third party to business interests.

TPC #6: Does a black box warning really have much influence over whether or not people choose to take the drug? (Does anyone even bother to READ those warnings?)
Mr. Baum: A black box warning is a good step in the right direction. But it may not be enough to overcome the misimpression created by the massive marketing campaigns that preceded the black box warnings. This is a clear case of Mark Twain’s observation, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

TPC #7: Is the lack of sufficient warning on medications the biggest problem here? Or is it that drug makers are allowed to sell products that require such warnings in the first place?
Mr. Baum: Any medication may have risks that are worth taking for the needed benefits — antibiotics can prevent an infection from becoming fatal, but they adversely affect other useful bacteria in the gut. Adequate warnings with appropriate guidance make it possible for drugs with some harmful side effects to be used effectively and safely.

The problem I see is the excess influence of pharmaceutical money in the marketing, medical education, professional publications, public media direct-to-consumer advertising, political donations, and lobbyists. These have resulted in a system that enables drug dangers to go uncorrected too long at the expense of public health.

TPC #8: What do you personally believe needs to CHANGE about the pharmaceutical drug industry as a whole?
Mr. Baum: I think it would be useful to stop direct-to-consumer advertising. The current media are too dependent on Pharma marketing dollars. Therefore, they are unable and unwilling to critically analyze proclaimed benefits and potential harms of drugs. This has crushed unbiased reporting and journalism. Intrepid reporters’ stories can end up not getting aired to protect the advertising income.

Further, pharmaceutical companies should not be allowed to fund “educational” dinners, seminars, or continuing medical education on drugs they have a profit motive to positively influence.

Ghostwriting of clinical trial results needs to be exposed. The patient data from clinical trials (with patient identifying information protected) should be available so that scientists can see what actually happened, not just the spin that the pharmaceutical marketing departments were able to maneuver into print.

Lobbyist armies should be curtailed to prevent excessive legislative influence. Approval boards and advisory committees should not have members on the payroll of pharmaceutical companies, directly or indirectly. Company documents obtained in litigation should be more easily made public, especially when they don’t involve actual trade secrets and would affect public safety.
https://thepeopleschemist.com/attorney-interview-how-us-courts-shield-big-pharma/

Created4

07-16-2017, 09:14 PM

I stated that this list of 20 "largest" is not the largest suits in the world. Not even close. Add them all together and they don't even equal the ONE lawsuit against big tobacco. (You must have missed this point...)

Actually, you apparently missed this statement (or chose to ignore it):

Glaxo's $3 billion settlement included the largest civil, False Claims Act settlement on record,[1] and Pfizer’s $2.3 billion settlement including a record-breaking $1.3 billion criminal fine.[2]

If you think a single lawsuit against a tobacco company, or railroad, etc. was larger and contradicts this, then supply the link/evidence.

P.S. your deaths in 10 years graphic is "sourcing" JAMA 1998. Do you know that?? First I would question the "study" and second, that's some pretty old data...

Yes, it is old. It is much larger today. Hospital deaths due to medical errors alone is the 3rd leading cause of death in the U.S. according to multiple sources, so if you include deaths due to prescription drugs, the medical system is easily the leading cause of death in the U.S. today.

Hospital Errors are the Third Leading Cause of Death in U.S. (http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/hospital-errors-are-the-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-u-s/)

Death of Americans: The Medical System is Now the Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S. (http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/death-of-americans-the-medical-system-is-now-the-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-u-s/)

Could Your Hospital be Killing You? (http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/could-your-hospital-be-killing-you/)

Is Medicine Really the Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, or the First? (http://healthimpactnews.com/2016/is-medicine-really-the-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-us-or-the-first/)

ChristianAnarchist

07-16-2017, 10:25 PM

Actually, you apparently missed this statement (or chose to ignore it):

If you think a single lawsuit against a tobacco company, or railroad, etc. was larger and contradicts this, then supply the link/evidence.

Yes, it is old. It is much larger today. Hospital deaths due to medical errors alone is the 3rd leading cause of death in the U.S. according to multiple sources, so if you include deaths due to prescription drugs, the medical system is easily the leading cause of death in the U.S. today.

Hospital Errors are the Third Leading Cause of Death in U.S. (http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/hospital-errors-are-the-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-u-s/)

Death of Americans: The Medical System is Now the Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S. (http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/death-of-americans-the-medical-system-is-now-the-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-u-s/)

Could Your Hospital be Killing You? (http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/could-your-hospital-be-killing-you/)

Is Medicine Really the Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, or the First? (http://healthimpactnews.com/2016/is-medicine-really-the-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-us-or-the-first/)

26 Billion against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco comes to mind. You add all 20 of your pharma cases above and they don't even come close. If you want to specify only "criminal" then the Glaxo one above was (something like) 1.6 billion for criminal penalty (but who's counting?) There are so many more cases in the billions all you have to do is google it if you want more...

Your JAMA reference is totally worthless. They give a number claiming "deaths" but the don't specifically say that the "deaths" came about by patients using their prescribed medicine AS DIRECTED or were people purposely using drugs not prescribed to them and dosing higher than instructions say?? I suspect these are very cooked numbers and the number of deaths attributed to drugs used as directed by a doctor are pretty small. We have over 15,000 patients and we know of no such cases. We have a "free" subscription to JAMA that comes to our office every month. It goes straight to the trash. There just isn't much good info there...

Hospital deaths due to medical errors the 3rd leading cause in the US?? Common sense tells you this is a fabricated number. "Based on an analysis of prior research, the Johns Hopkins study estimates that more than 250,000 Americans die each year from medical errors."... That sounds like another way of saying "Hell, we don't know but I'll shoot this huge number out there so we can get some press"...

Created4

07-16-2017, 10:40 PM

26 Billion against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco comes to mind. You add all 20 of your pharma cases above and they don't even come close. .

Here is again. I know this is hard for you to understand:

Glaxo's $3 billion settlement included the largest civil, False Claims Act settlement on record,[1] and Pfizer’s $2.3 billion settlement including a record-breaking $1.3 billion criminal fine.[2]

These are single cases - not an entire industry. But if you wanted to change the argument to entire industries, I think you would come up short there as well.

So if you have a single lawsuit settlement larger than either one of these, please provide it.

Hospital deaths due to medical errors the 3rd leading cause in the US?? Common sense tells you this is a fabricated number.

Depends how you define "common sense" then I suppose. I prefer facts.

These facts about hospital deaths are not even in dispute. Many sources have published them, and the one interviewed on the daytime TV show "The Doctors" at this link provided above (http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/could-your-hospital-be-killing-you/), is with surgeon Martin Makary, M.D., M.P.H who serves as the co-director of The Johns Hopkins Quality and Safety Research Group (QSRG), and details his findings in his book Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won’t Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care. Click on the link (http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/could-your-hospital-be-killing-you/), watch the interview, and learn just how useless your "common sense" is.

You have provided no evidence whatsoever to back up your beliefs and "common sense," so continuing this discussion with your circular reasoning is fruitless.

Ender

07-17-2017, 01:01 AM

Statin Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs A Giant Hoax; Add Just Four Days To Your Life

By Bill Sardi

July 17, 2017

What we now observe is a blistering condemnation of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs coming out of news sources in Great Britain with absolute silence on the subject from US-based news agencies.

The scathing denunciation of statin drugs emanates from The Pharmaceutical Journal in the UK that declares the cholesterol hypothesis of cardiovascular disease is “dead.”

The prevalent mantra that statins are “life-savers” and that “people will die” if they discontinue statins, as well as advice “everyone over 50 should be on a statin drug,” is based upon “cherry-picking” of the data say investigators. A review of 44 published trials of statin drugs finds among subjects taking statins to prevent heart attacks, these pills only add 4 days to one’s life!

Even the newly introduced evolocumab (Repatha), which is an injected drug that reduces circulating cholesterol by a whopping 60% only reduced the incidence of non-fatal heart attacks by 1.5%.

Hoax on humanity

The revelation that Big Pharma and its minions of medical journal editors and medical journalists have pulled off a giant hoax on humanity is an example of the growing realization of a cabal that continues to perpetrate medical falsehoods under the guise of science.

French researchers conclude it is possible “nobody benefits from statins.”

The Cochrane global network of researchers who analyze the risks and benefits of medicines calls for a “do not resuscitate” order on cholesterol as the cause of heart disease.” This means, bury the cholesterol paradigm now and forever. But again, this clarion call is coming from British-based news press.

Don’t expect a U turn anytime soon

Certainly such a ruse represents a whopper of a lie. About a quarter of Americans over 45 years of age take statins as pharmaceutical companies rake in billions of dollars in sales.

Will any of the recent revelations about statin drugs change the course of modern medicine? Will guidelines for medical care of patients who have experienced heart attacks and those who are at higher risk (primary prevention) be scrapped?

Investigators write in The Pharmaceutical Journal: “When looking at the totality of the evidence, the sobering results of these studies have left many doctors wondering whether the directive to lower LDL-C aggressively using pharmacotherapy has been misguided. ‘Big Pharma’ has certainly triumphed, yet the patients have not… Furthermore, contrary to reports about stopping statins as a consequence of media How Statin Drugs Reall... James B. and Hannah Yo... Best Price: $11.18 Buy New $14.97 scare stories about side effects resulting in thousands of heart attacks and deaths, there is no scientific evidence from registry data of a single person suffering such a fate.”

These investigators suggest the abandonment of cholesterol as the prevailing paradigm in modern medicine and replacement with “insulin resistance” as the true culprit behind cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity.

They claim correction of insulin resistance could prevent 42% of heart attacks. They put the blame on dietary practices, namely intake of refined sugars and refined carbohydrates (bread, pasta, cereals and rice). They lambast public health authorities for misdirected dietary guidelines.

The one Health journalist who dared to reveal all about statin drugs, Dr. Maryanne Demasi, was attacked for questioning the statin/cholesterol propaganda. Obviously, other intimidated journalists decided to fall in line and not speak out.

Statin drug profits

Statins as a class represent the world’s most successful selling drug. The first 14.5 years of marketing Lipitor, the world’s leading statin drug, generated $125 billion in sales. Lipitor was introduced in 1997.

Did the weight of the scientific evidence carry statin drugs to the top of the list in drug sales? Or was it influence peddling by the drug industry that buoyed statin drugs on Wall Street?

The prescription drug industry is reported to have spent $5.2 billion on advertising drugs directly to consumers in 2015. Lipitor: Thief of Memo... M.D. Duane Graveline Best Price: $6.88 Buy New $15.49

While conflict of interest disclosures are required for authors of published studies, the news media, which is the recipient of billions of dollars of advertising dollars from Big Pharma, has obvious conflicts of interest that go undisclosed, especially by ignoring the present breaking news emanating out of Great Britain over the ineffectiveness of statin drug.

The evening news on television in the US is virtually owned by pharmaceutical companies.

Should direct-to-consumer drug ads be banned?

The American Medical Association did call for a complete ban on direct-to-consumer advertising of drugs in 2015.

National Public Radio characterized direct-to-consumer drug advertising as “selling sickness.”

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times says direct-to-consumer drug advertising is a “bad idea that is about to get worse.” The article says burgeoning health care costs coincided with the green light given by the FDA in 1997 for these ads.

There has been talk in Congress for a couple of years now of eliminating financial incentives doctors have for prescribing the most expensive drugs, but nothing substantial has been done. Congress is likely to grandstand hearings but stop short of outlawing direct-to-consumer advertising altogether.

With Big Pharma spending $2.6 billion on lobbying Congressional representatives between 1998 thru 2012, bribery is alive and well in Washington DC. Do Congressmen recuse themselves from voting on pharmaceutical drugs or even disclose during hearings of their The Statin Damage Crisis Dr. Duane Graveline M.... acceptance of donations from the pharmaceutical lobby? Hell no! Congressmen ought to wear hats emblazoned with the names of their sponsors like winners of auto races do.

Big Pharma has also enlisted big-time professors at major medical institutions to endorse their products. For example, experts at top universities have been active in promoting new $1000/day cures for hepatitis C.

Recently it was revealed how drug companies gouge insurance pools. For example, a compound drug for gastroesophageal reflux that sells for $9027 was found be comprised of individual elements that cost $20. The two components for a $1471 anti-migraine drug were found to cost only $37 when purchased individually.

It’s even been suggested that the US government buy out a drug company to save money.

Will investment advisors begin to advise their clients to bet against Big Pharma’s stocks as Congress considers restrictions on the industry? Just wait till Big Pharma enters the marijuana market. Imagine the direct-to-consumer ads?

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/07/bill-sardi/cholesterol-lowering-drugs-giant-hoax/

ChristianAnarchist

07-17-2017, 06:45 AM

Here is again. I know this is hard for you to understand:

These are single cases - not an entire industry. But if you wanted to change the argument to entire industries, I think you would come up short there as well.

So if you have a single lawsuit settlement larger than either one of these, please provide it.

Depends how you define "common sense" then I suppose. I prefer facts.

These facts about hospital deaths are not even in dispute. Many sources have published them, and the one interviewed on the daytime TV show "The Doctors" at this link provided above (http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/could-your-hospital-be-killing-you/), is with surgeon Martin Makary, M.D., M.P.H who serves as the co-director of The Johns Hopkins Quality and Safety Research Group (QSRG), and details his findings in his book Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won’t Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care. Click on the link (http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/could-your-hospital-be-killing-you/), watch the interview, and learn just how useless your "common sense" is.

You have provided no evidence whatsoever to back up your beliefs and "common sense," so continuing this discussion with your circular reasoning is fruitless.

I don't understand how a "liberty" type person can be so closed minded!! I cited a "single case" (R.J Reynolds - you even quoted it). Don't bother (again) quoting your 3 (three) cases that pale in comparison to it. Use a good search engine and you will find many many more.

You say you prefer "facts" and I've provided our own experience with thousands of patients over a period of 14 years (that's "facts"). Experiences are facts and someone who understands the fight against our liberty should be well aware of the tricks used in publications (like JAMA) to twist facts into propaganda. If you are so afraid of dying in the hospital I suggest that if you are injured and bleeding you don't go there... You will be so much safer...

donnay

07-22-2017, 11:41 PM

Muslim Doctors Alleged Masterminds of Largest Medical Fraud in U.S. History: $1.3 Billion

By Geller Report Staff - on July 20, 2017

The U.S. Justice Department has arrested 412 nationwide for what its calling as the largest opioid prescription drug and health care fraud in all of U.S. history — totalling $1.3 billion in bogus dealings.

And guess what?

A group of Michigan doctors — Muslim Michigan doctors — have been fingered by investigators as the brains behind the scheme.

This isn’t something you’ll read in the mainstream newspapers.

Creeping Sharia has it, though:

Officials have made 412 arrests nationwide, including 56 doctors and targeting 200 clinics. …

Federal officials said a group of Michigan doctors was responsible for a major chunk of the scheme.

One of the clinics hit in the sting operations is in Farmington. Federal officials said the opioid epidemic is part of it, but the medical office and a number of others were set up specifically as a criminal enterprise to rip off Medicare.

Federal officers raided the Fisher Building Wednesday, and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said their work accounted for 10 percent of the scam’s value.

“Six doctors in Michigan prescribed patients with unnecessary opioids, some of which ended up for sale on the streets,” Sessions said.

A physician group called Global Quality used to operate out of a Woodward Avenue office building.

A West Bloomfield man was named the ring leader.

Mashiyat Rashid is accused of being the ring leader in scamming Medicare for $164 million. Rashid had no problem displaying his significant wealth on Facebook, where pictures show him standing in front of a Bentley sedan and a corporate jet. He also has pictures of himself and a friend courtside at the NBA Finals.

Rashid is not a doctor, but the doctors named in the case are Joseph Betro, Spilios Pappas, Abdul Haq, Tariz Omar and Mohammad Zahoor.

Federal officials indicted suspects a week ago and they’ve already been arraigned.

More than 400 people across the country were charged Thursday for taking part in health care fraud and opioid scams including six Michigan doctors in connection with a raid Wednesday at the Fisher Building in Detroit.
This is massive — historical.

And what’s sad is that while media outlets around the nation are reporting on the opioid scandal, they’re not focusing on the Muslim tie. They’re reporting as if the prescriptions were the problem.

Again, Creeping Sharia has more:

The six Michigan defendants are:

Mashiyat Rashid, of Oakland County – controlled, owned or operated Global Quality, Aqua Therapy, Tri-County Physicians, Tri-State Physicians, New Center Medical, National Laboratories, and Tri-County Wellness;

Yasser Mozeb, of Oakland County – allegedly received payments from Global Quality and Tri-County Wellness;
Abdul Haq, of Washtenaw County, physician enrolled as a participating provider with Medicare for Aqua Therapy, Tri-County Physicians and Tri-State Physicians;

Joseph Betro, of Oakland County, physician enrolled as a participating provider with Medicare for Tri-County Physicians and New Center Medical;

Tariz Omar, of Oakland County, physician enrolled as a participating provider with Medicare for Tri-County Physicians.

Mohammed Zahoor, of Oakland County, physician enrolled as a participating provider with Medicare for Tri-County Physicians.

The defendants are charged with five counts of health care fraud and health care fraud conspiracy. Rashid and Mozeb are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and pay and receive health care kickbacks. Rashid is charged with money laundering, receipt of kickbacks in connection with a federal health care program and payment of kickbacks in connection with federal health care program.

Authorities say Rashid and his co-conspirators engaged in illegal kickbacks and billing for medically unnecessary joint injections, drug screenings and home health services.

Investigators believe Rashid’s companies’ fraudulently billed Medicare $126 million. Approximately $1.3 billion is believed to have been fraudulently billed in scams across the country.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette charged three people including two dentists with Medicaid fraud in connection to the massive healthcare fraud takedown.

More, Schuette charges 3 people, including 2 Michigan dentists, with Medicaid fraud

Najah Roumayah, 71, of West Bloomfield, and David Dickey, 67, of Camden, were both charged with Medicaid fraud-false claim. More News Headlines Federal agents raid offices at the Fisher Building on Wednesday, July 12, 2017, in Downtown Detroit.

Marie Denard, 31, of Macomb, was charged with 25 counts of Medicaid fraud-false claim and one count of false pretenses.

Roumayah allegedly billed Medicaid for dental services not performed between 2012 and 2016. Roumayah’s dental practice is located in Berkley, Michigan.
http://pamelageller.com/2017/07/muslim-doctors-masterminds-largest-medical-fraud-u-s-history-1-3-billion.html/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fzen.yandex.com

Ender

07-22-2017, 11:48 PM

http://pamelageller.com/2017/07/muslim-doctors-masterminds-largest-medical-fraud-u-s-history-1-3-billion.html/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fzen.yandex.com

Sorry but I'm not gonna take Geller-Hater's word for anything- or Jeff Sessions.

And I am pretty certain there are doctor's all over the US that hand out opiates like they were M&M's; very convenient to finger 6 Muslims out of 400+ and accuse them of being the masterminds.

donnay

07-22-2017, 11:57 PM

Sorry but I'm not gonna take Geller-Hater's word for anything- or Jeff Sessions.

And I am pretty certain there are doctor's all over the US that hand out opiates like they were M&M's; very convenient to finger 6 Muslims out of 400+ and accuse them of being the masterminds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5unL7Ys5Q4

https://creepingsharia.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/rashid-indictment.png
https://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2017/07/17/more-muslim-medicare-fraud/

Ender

07-23-2017, 12:42 AM

https://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2017/07/17/more-muslim-medicare-fraud/

Your link is creepingsharia.wordpress.com- I'm sure they have no prejudices & are completely honest about muslims. :rolleyes:

And where did those drugs come from? Big Pharma, who is making a fortune with compliant doctors and pushing everyone into becoming addicts. And, if anyone else should be blamed it should be the alphabets who fund drug runs all over the world from the ME to S. America-

Wooden Indian

07-23-2017, 09:25 AM

The boogeyman drugs came from the boogeyman Muslim. The war on ____ is justified, comrad.

nikcers

07-23-2017, 10:39 AM

The boogeyman drugs came from the boogeyman Muslim. The war on ____ is justified, comrad.
I think it's justified if you are looking at the right war. Right now the only ones fighting the war is Rand Paul. I know that there are probably cases out there where its completely justified, where opiates are the best and only option. I know that there are safer alternatives, because you can see in states where marijuana is legalized- opiate abuse plummets. What does that mean, who knows for sure, but I think its because there is a monopoly on pain. People are waking up to it, but the war on drugs is just one head to the hydra. I know how government works, it just doesn't. I think of it like the epi pen crisis, where people were dying because only one company could sell epi-auto injectors.

It turned out there were other options available that were even cheaper though. Ron Paul talked about it right away and said that people could just use a regular needle. Its like those stairs the guy built in his town for 550 that the state wanted to spend over 100X that. I just fail to comprehend that there isn't cheaper and more efficient alternatives, especially if the free market were involved in medicine. I would imagine if you inject the free market into healthcare we would have tons of non addictive alternatives, and maybe even cheap options for people who actually need it because NOTHING else works.

ChristianAnarchist

07-23-2017, 06:18 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5unL7Ys5Q4

https://creepingsharia.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/rashid-indictment.png
https://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2017/07/17/more-muslim-medicare-fraud/

Even if all is true, it doesn't justify the "war on drugs". In this "report" it stated that Muslims put the law of Allah before the laws of man... DUH!!! So I put "God's law" and even "common sense" before the "laws of men". Laws of men are nothing but a bunch of words on paper written to empower the movers and the shakers and they have nothing to do with "good". In fact they are mostly BAD! Why would any sane person put the "laws of men" anywhere but at the bottom of the logical ladder on things to obey??

donnay

07-23-2017, 06:34 PM

Even if all is true, it doesn't justify the "war on drugs". In this "report" it stated that Muslims put the law of Allah before the laws of man... DUH!!! So I put "God's law" and even "common sense" before the "laws of men". Laws of men are nothing but a bunch of words on paper written to empower the movers and the shakers and they have nothing to do with "good". In fact they are mostly BAD! Why would any sane person put the "laws of men" anywhere but at the bottom of the logical ladder on things to obey??

Oh I definitely agree. The war on drugs has always been the war on us. These Muslims are just scapegoats, IMHO. This opioid epidemic started with over prescribing pain meds to the point people got hooked on them. The CIA had the heroin in the wings to sell to these people who could not get pain meds.

Our troops are guarding the poppy fields in Afghanistan for this very agenda.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW2YWqVpT4E

donnay

07-26-2017, 05:14 PM

New Harvard Study Confirms Big Pharma & Federal Govt Root Cause of Opioid Epidemic

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/big-pharma-opioid-696x366.jpg

A new study published in the Harvard Law & Policy Review painstakingly describes how Big Pharma deception and federal government patenting have brought about the current U.S. opioid epidemic. As lawsuits pile up against pharma companies, this study confirms that for 20 years, the American public has served as the victim in a gargantuan scheme of money and power.

The study, titled The Opioid Epidemic: Fixing a Broken Pharmaceutical Market, gets right to the point in the introduction.

“In this article, we argue that non-rigorous patenting standards and ineffectual policing of both fraudulent marketing and anticompetitive actions played an important role in launching and prolonging the opioid epidemic. We further show that these regulatory issues are not unique to prescription opioids but rather are reflective of the wider pharmaceutical market.”

Researchers follow with a primer on the rise of opioid prescriptions and how pain became “the fifth vital sign.” By the 1990s, doctors realized that chronic pain was often ignored, and pain management became a hot topic. Physicians were urged to make greater use of opioids, with experts in the field downplaying the potential for misuse and addiction – a view largely based on experience with morphine.

But this was before OxyContin came along.

Purdue Pharma, recognizing that this newfound view of the medical establishment could be exploited, worked to develop an improved synthetic opioid. Their golden ticket was found with the extended-release oxycodone pill known as OxyContin, patented and approved by the FDA in 1995.

However, Purdue’s exclusive patent was based on corporate fraud and government ignorance.

“Purdue was able to patent extended-release oxycodone in the United States despite the fact that its constituent elements—the active ingredient oxycodone and the controlled-release system Contin—had been developed decades earlier…Oxycodone was used in clinical practice in Germany as early as 1917, and was first introduced in the United States in 1939.”

Purdue’s angle was to develop a controlled-release version of oxycodone, banking on its success with the patented MS Contin for morphine. Here’s where the feds stepped in to help.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) initially rejected Purdue’s patent request for extended-release oxycodone, citing the combination as “obvious.” But Purdue responded with a statistical falsehood – which the company knew was false – and the patent office made an about-face, granting the 20 year patent for OxyContin.

Since then, the cozy relationship between Big Pharma and government has grown, with the pharma industry spending almost a billion dollars in ten years on lobbying federal and state governments and campaign contributions.

As the Harvard study notes, “low patenting standards” and “a history of tepid enforcement” provided incentive for Purdue to embark on a massive, fraudulent marketing campaign. With the guarantee of no competition provided by government, Purdue spent obscene amounts of money getting American hooked on their newly-patented product.

“Between 1996 and 2000, the company more than doubled its U.S. marketing team…In 2001, Purdue paid forty million dollars in bonuses tied to extended-release oxycodone…Purdue also invested heavily in analytics, developing a database to identify high-volume prescribers and pharmacies to help focus their marketing resources…

Patients were offered starter coupons for a free initial supply of extended-release oxycodone, 34,000 of which were redeemed by 2001…Finally, Purdue hosted forty all-expenses-paid pain management and speaker training conferences at lavish resorts. Over five thousand clinicians attended, receiving toys, fishing hats, and compact discs while listening to sales representatives tout the alleged benefits of extended-release oxycodone…Purdue elevated the stakes, spending an estimated six to twelve times more promoting extended-release oxycodone than its competitor Janssen spent marketing a rival opioid…

Purdue’s efforts paid off. Between 1996 and 2001, extended-release oxycodone generated $2.8 billion in sales. From 2008 to 2014, annual sales exceeded $2 billion.”

It gets even worse.

As the patent expiration for OxyContin approached, Purdue developed an “abuse-deterrent formulation” of the drug, for which FDA granted a patent in 2010. Not satisfied with a simple new patent, Purdue filed a “citizen petition asking the FDA to refuse to accept generic versions of the original extended-release oxycodone formulation on safety grounds.” Incredibly, FDA also granted this to Purdue, “effectively preventing the marketing of low-cost, therapeutically equivalent products that might undercut Purdue’s incentive to continue to widely promote its new abuse-deterrent formulation.”

By the way, the “abuse-deterrent” OxyContin doesn’t really deter addicts, and it has fueled the explosive heroin epidemic as addicts seek out cheaper, black market alternatives. But Purdue is content making its billions off the patented drug.

While thousands of Americans die under a campaign of deception and greed, official Washington pretends to care with the occasional fine levied against pharma companies, including for false marketing by Purdue.

But no one ever goes to jail; no one in top management is ever held to account. The persons in “personhood” conveniently disappear when corporations get in trouble. And the fines? Mere pocket change compared to the revenues already made from the drugs involved.

“Rather than deterring fraudulent marketing, the penalties simply became a cost of doing business.”

The Harvard study provides much more insight into the fraudulent marketing practices of Big Pharma, the patent schemes enabled by federal government, how generic drugs are routinely stifled, and possible ways to address the injustice.

Some of the more sinister effects of the system include “hard switches” which force patients to go from one costly patented drug to another instead of generics. The use of “citizen petitions” by pharma corporations to slow generic drugs and keep prices high is a particularly insidious scheme.

The study notes that today, “Over four million Americans misuse opioids each month” at a societal cost of $80 billion annually. 300 million prescriptions were written in 2015 in the U.S., which has a population of 323 million. This is reflected in the fact that 80 percent of the world’s opioids are consumed in the U.S., which has 5 percent of the world’s population.

The misuse of opioids is a not a simple issue, and personal choice is of course involved. But the above numbers point to something much bigger going on.

As the Harvard study confirms, Big Pharma has exploited the enormous addiction potential of opioids to prey upon the American populace for decades — made possible by a federal government with blatant disregard for the well-being of citizens.
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/harvard-study-pharma-opioid-epidemic/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fzen.yandex.com

ChristianAnarchist

07-28-2017, 06:35 PM

“In this article, we argue that non-rigorous patenting standards and ineffectual policing of both fraudulent marketing and anticompetitive actions played an important role in launching and prolonging the opioid epidemic. We further show that these regulatory issues are not unique to prescription opioids but rather are reflective of the wider pharmaceutical market.”

Ya, so get rid of regulation and it solves the problem... You can make, sell, buy whatever you want whenever you want it (or not buy it...)