By Arjun Walia
Modern day medicine, for the most part, is not really medicine. It’s not about people’s health but if anything, it’s about money. Arnold Seymour Relman was a professor of medicine at Harvard and former Editor-in-Chief of The New England Medical Journal and was also one of many prominent figures within the medical field who emphasized it best by stating, “The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.” (source)
There are so many statements similar to Relmans and even more examples to hammer home the point of pharmaceutical fraud like not disclosing certain information from clinical trials or research that exposes a number of different kinds of prescription medications. The latest example comes from a study conducted by researchers at the Washington University School of Medici where they discovered a link to drugs that are known as proton pump inhibitors, used to combat heartburn, to fatal cases of cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, and upper gastrointestinal cancer. The results were shocking to say the least, as researchers found that such risks increases the duration of their use (PPIs), even when they are taken at low doses. (see study)
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In North America, especially within the United States, the number of people taking prescription medication is staggering. When it comes to PPIs in particular, more than 15 million Americans have prescriptions and many millions more purchase the drugs on their own and take them without even consulting with a doctor. But how much do doctors really know?
Although doctors have a wealth of knowledge when it comes to human physiology and psychology and a fair amount when it comes to diseases, the truth is that they know very little about the drugs they prescribe that have been marketed and promoted by the industry they work in. How come it’s never mentioned that prescription medication is one of the leading causes of death? We are talking about a lethal epidemic that’s promoted and marketed as medicine, how insane is that? Doctors put their trust in pharmaceutical companies, and patients put their trust in the doctor, and as a result we have a deadly epidemic on our hands. This recent study concerning PPIs was published on May 30th in the journal The BMJ,
“Taking PPIs over many months or years is not safe, and now we have a clearer picture of the health conditions associated with long-term PPI use,” says senior author Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at the School of Medicine.
When it comes to many prescription medications, it’s a mystery how they even get on the market, and it should make more people question whether appropriate safety testing is being done to approve them as safe for human consumption. How are our federal health regulator agencies doing this? There is a lot of information out there showing how they’ve actually been completely compromised, and that’s why we see a constant “revolving door” between agencies and big corporations.
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Julie Gerberding, the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association ‘Woman of the Year,’ is a prime example of someone who has gone through the revolving door between government regulatory agencies and the corporations they are supposed to be regulating. She is also a former CDC director. You can read more about that story here.
The corruption is never-ending when it comes to the link between corporations and government agencies. In fact, only a few years ago more than a dozen scientists from within the CDC put out an anonymous public statement detailing the influence corporations have on government policies. They were referred to as the Spider Papers.
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When it comes to PPIs specifically, there is other research available that links them to dementia, bone fractures, heart disease and pneumonia.
The researchers found that these drugs lead to thousands upon thousands of excess deaths every single year, and we are simply talking about one drug.
For the study, researchers sifted through de-identified medical records in a database maintained by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Examining medical data acquired from July 2002 to June 2004, the researchers identified 157,625 people — mostly Caucasian men ages 65 and older — who had been newly prescribed PPIs, and 56,842 people who had been newly prescribed another class of acid-suppression drugs known as H2 blockers. They followed the patients — 214,467 in total — for up to 10 years.
The researchers found a 17 percent increased risk of death in the PPI group compared with the H2 blocker group. They calculated 45 excess deaths attributable to long-term PPI use per 1,000 people. Death rates for PPIs were 387 per 1,000 people, and death rates for H2 blockers were 342 per 1,000. (source)
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Furthermore, the study found that more than half of the people taking PPIs did not need to be taking them. Among this group, PPIs related deaths were more common, with almost 23 people per 1,000 dying from heart disease, almost five per 1,000 from chronic kidney disease, and three from stomach cancer.
“Most alarming to me is that serious harm may be experienced by people who are on PPIs but may not need them,” Al-Aly said.
At the end of the day, pharmaceutical companies are not going to find what they’re not looking for. If a drug is being manufactured to combat heart-burn, the drug will be tested to see if it combats heart-burn, but will long term studies be carried out to see what other biological effects the drug is having? Judging by the evidence, no.
The pharmaceutical companies have been able to purchase congress. They’re the largest lobbying entity in Washington D.C.. They have more lobbyists in Washington D.C. than there are congressman and senators combined. They give twice to congress what the next largest lobbying entity is, which is oil and gas… Imagine the power they exercise over both republicans and democrats. They’ve captured them (our regulatory agencies) and turned them into sock puppets. They’ve compromised the press… and they destroy the publications that publish real science.
– Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (source)
*Article originally appeared at Collective Evolution. Reprinted with permission.
