HUMAN PHARMING | VOL. 2: OVERDOSE

April 16, 2022 MouthyBuddha

The American medical system, as it now stands, is revered worldwide and is considered the cutting edge of progress. Has the public been deceived about the successes and accolades of allopathic medicine? More than a century has passed since wealthy magnates began conspiring to bastardize the healthcare industry. HUMAN PHARMING VOL 2: OVERDOSE counts the body bags, evaluates the failures, and follows the money in this damning exposé that will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about the medical industry.

TRANSCRIPT & SOURCES

On July 26, 2000, an editorial by Dr. Barbara Starfield of Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled Is US Health Really the Best in the World? Her investigation calculated iatrogenic deaths in America, or deaths caused inadvertently as the result of seeking medical intervention.

In her editorial, Dr. Starfield demonstrated that 225,000 deaths every year were linked to conventional American medical treatment under a hospital or physician’s care. This figure included deaths from unnecessary surgery, medication errors in hospitals, and from infections contracted in hospitals. One of her most startling discoveries was that 106,000 people die annually from over the counter or prescription medication taken in its proper dosage. Dr. Starfield admitted that higher estimates were closer to 284,000.

Dr. Starfield’s reputation in the scientific community is beyond reproach. She has received 10 high-honors throughout her career, including multiple for her contributions to research.

Her investigation inspired a later report on the subject that was published in 2003 by Dr. Gary Null, Dr. Carolyn Dean, Dr. Martin Feldman, Dr. Debora Rasio, and Dr. Dorothy Smith. Their landmark report, entitled Death By Medicine, sought to further assess the collateral damage caused by the American healthcare industry.

“Never before have the complete statistics on the multiple causes of iatrogenesis been combined in one article… You have to step back to see the big picture, as we have done here. Each specialty, each division of medicine keeps its own records and data on morbidity and mortality. We have now completed the painstaking work of reviewing thousands of studies and putting pieces of the puzzle together.”

According to their study, in which the team spent thousands of hours reviewing medical records from across the nation, the exact number of deaths they came up with was 783,936.

“Our considerably higher figure is equivalent to six jumbo jets are [sic] falling out of the sky each day.”

According to the statistics compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this would place doctors as the leading cause of death in the United States.

Death By Medicine explains,

“It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US. (By contrast, the number of deaths attributable to heart disease in 2001 was 699,697, while the number of deaths attributable to cancer was 553,251.5)”

The investigation did not merely evaluate iatrogenic deaths. Death by Medicine, which was later adapted into both a book and a film, looked at other inefficiencies and externalities of the American medical system.

“This fully referenced report shows the number of people having in-hospital, adverse reactions to prescribed drugs to be 2.2 million per year. The number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections is 20 million per year. The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million per year. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million per year.”

Death by Medicine also stated that, by 2003, the United States was spending $282 billion annually on doctor-related or drug-related deaths. However, this was a conservative estimate since the team of researchers claimed most mistakes generally go unreported and the number is likely to be 20 times higher than their estimate of 784,000. Their more dramatic estimate was that 15.8 million people die annually from surgery, properly prescribed drugs, and medical errors. These numbers are from 2003 and are therefore very conservative estimates.

The pharmaceutical revolution promised to deliver us from pain, sickness, and death. In reality, it seems to have exacerbated the problem.

In the decade from 2004 to 2014, the FDA recalled a total of 4,278 pharmaceutical drugs that it previously deemed both safe and effective. That amounts to 1.2 drug recalls every single day for 10 consecutive years. Moreover, the number of recalls is increasing over time, indicating that the FDA is either becoming less competent or more corrupt. There is no excuse for this degree of failure that has resulted in tens of millions of consumers being prescribed dangerous drugs. (Additional references 1, 2)

This is quite the dismal performance from the FDA which has the authority to issue regulations and guidance documents as part of the implementation of the laws passed by Congress.

Why is the healthcare system utterly failing its patients? Why is virtually every chronic disease increasing in prevalence, severity, and average age of onset?

On September 10, 2010, the New York Times ran an article entitled Teaching Doctors About Nutrition and Diet. For the first time in a mainstream publication, the problem was acknowledged: American doctors are only required to take approximately 25 hours of courses focusing on diet and nutrition to earn their medical degrees.

“In the mid-1980s, the National Academy of Sciences published a landmark report highlighting the lack of adequate nutrition education in medical schools; the writers recommended a minimum of 25 hours of nutrition instruction. Now, in a study published this month, it appears that even two and a half decades later a vast majority of medical schools still fail to meet the minimum recommended 25 hours of instruction.

We are reaching the logical conclusion of the standardization of the medical industry which began with the Flexner Report of 1910. The New York Times article explained that more than 100 medicals schools were assessed by the University of North Carolina.

“While the researchers learned that almost all schools require exposure to nutrition, only about a quarter offered the recommended 25 hours of instruction, a decrease from six years earlier, when almost 40 percent of schools met the minimum recommendations. In addition, four schools offered nutrition optionally, and one school offered nothing at all. And while a majority of medical schools tended to intersperse lectures on nutrition in standard, required courses, like biochemistry or physiology, only a quarter of the schools managed to have a single course dedicated to the topic.”

Not only are our doctors taught virtually nothing on nutrition in medical school, they are too busy to stay current with new scientific discoveries.

According to a study published in The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 2011, the average amount of time it takes for scientific information to trickle down into medical practices is 17 years. To put things in perspective, if you look at a single medical subject like obesity, there are roughly 10,000 new studies published annually – and that’s only accounting for those published in English. How can a doctor, who is busy seeing patients daily, hope to keep up to date with the latest scientific breakthroughs?

Doctors are primarily trained in two treatment protocols: drugs and surgery. This means that not only do doctors have conflicts of interest to prescribe drugs, not only do they lack knowledge in diet and nutrition, but most have had little, if any, exposure to the countless safe and verifiable alternative treatment methods available.

Pharmaceutical drugs are intended to treat symptoms of illness and disease. However, they do not address the cause of said symptoms. Headaches are not caused by an aspirin deficiency any more than cancer is caused by a lack of radiation. This is the type of thinking that has dominated the Rockefeller-controlled healthcare industry for the last century. Furthermore, these synthetic drugs come with more side effects than consumers realize.

According to an article published by Live Science on May 23, 2011, an assistant professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine named Dr. Jon Duke used a computer program to analyze 5,600 drug labels and more than half a million labeled effects.

“They found the more commonly prescribed drugs averaged around 100 side effects each, with some drugs containing as many as 525 listed reactions.

The greatest number of side effects was found in antidepressants, antiviral medications and newer treatments for restless legs syndrome and Parkinson’s disease. In general, medications typically used by psychiatrists and neurologists had the most complex labels, while drugs used by dermatologists and ophthalmologists had the least.”

How is a consumer supposed to know whether they are merely taking a new drug to address a side effect from a different drug they ingested? But that’s the point, isn’t it?

Many people are unaware of the developmental process of new drugs. Most believe that pharmaceutical companies develop drugs from scratch on their own – and in many cases they do. However, research and development for the early stages of drugs are often carried out in government laboratories which later sell the formulas to private companies.

On May 25, 2011, the Huffington Post ran an exposé entitled The Horrifying Hidden Story Behind Drug Company Profits.

“Our governments have chosen, over decades, to allow a strange system for developing medicines to build up. Most of the work carried out by scientists to bring a drug to your local pharmacist — and into your lungs, or stomach, or bowels — is done in government-funded university labs, paid for by your taxes. Drug companies usually come in late in the process of development, and pay for part of the expensive but largely uncreative final stages, like buying some of the chemicals and trials that are needed. In return, they own the exclusive rights to manufacture and profit from the resulting medicine for years.”

According to the article, a study by Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, explains that only 14% of the budgets of pharmaceutical companies goes into development and the rest goes to marketing.

“And even with that puny 14 percent, drug companies squander a fortune developing “me-too” drugs — medicines that do exactly the same job as a drug that already exists, but has one molecule different, so they can take out a new patent, and receive another avalanche of profits.

As a result, the US Government Accountability Office says that far from being a font of innovation, the drug market has become “stagnant.” They spend virtually nothing on the diseases that kill the most human beings, like malaria, because the victims are poor, so there’s hardly any profit to be sucked out.”

The article confirms public suspicions that pharmaceutical companies effectively control government regulators and have basically written the laws that directly affect them.

“The drug companies have spent more than $3 billion on lobbyists and political “contributions” over the past decade in the US alone. They have paid politicians to make the system work in their interests.”

In 1994, Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) which literally states that only a drug can “treat, cure, or prevent any disease.” This means that vitamins and other supplements are under legal pressure to avoid making claims about how they can treat, cure, or prevent illness and disease despite scientific evidence and common sense telling us otherwise.

Proponents of the act assert that it is not protecting the consumer from dangerous or misbranded supplements, while opponents assert that it unfairly penalizes nutritional supplement companies while letting pharmaceutical companies commit all sorts of offenses.

In 1983, the United States was home to 50 different independent news media companies. By 2004, this number had reduced to six companies. They are News Corporation, National Amusements, Disney, Time Warner, Comcast, and Sony. These six companies own nearly all the newspapers, magazines, books, radio and TV stations, and movie studios in the country. These companies are among the 325 largest corporations in the world.

Alarmingly, the same news media companies most Americans trust to report unbiased information – especially when it comes to healthcare – own controlling interests in the pharmaceutical companies that run ads on their channels and outlets.

According to FAIR.org,

 “A recent FAIR study of nine major media corporations and their major outlets, Disney (ABC), General Electric (NBC), CBS, Time Warner (CNN, Time), News Corporation (Fox), New York Times Co., Washington Post Co. (Newsweek), Tribune Co. (Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times) and Gannett (USA Today) found connections to six different insurance companies. Five out of the nine media corporations studied shared a director with an insurance company; two insurance companies—Chubb and Berkshire Hathaway—were represented by more than one media corporation director.

The study also found crossover between these media corporations and several large pharmaceutical companies, such as Eli Lilly, Merck and Novartis…. Out of the nine media corporations studied, six had directors who also represented the interests of at least one pharmaceutical company. In fact, save for CBS, every media corporation had board connections to either an insurance or pharmaceutical company.”

The website goes on to list the media companies and the pharmaceutical companies they are connected to. Disney and ABC are connected to Procter & Gamble. General Electric and NBC are connected to Chubb, Novartis, Procter & Gamble, and Merck. Time Warner is connected to AIG, Health Cap, and Paratek Pharmaceuticals. News Corp and Fox are connected to GlaxoSmithKline, Genentech, and Hybritech. The New York Times Co. is connected to First Health Group and Eli Lilly. Tribune Co. is connected to Abbott Labs, and Middlebrook Pharmaceuticals. And finally, USA Today and Gannett are connected to Chubb.

When it comes to commercial airtime on television, Big Pharma dominates all other industries. By controlling the dissemination of news, drug companies can curate their own reputations unlike any other. Broadcasters don’t want to bite the hand that feeds.

Why are drug companies advertising to the consumer anyway, and not solely to doctors? Direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising (DTCPA) was illegal in America until the early 90s.

According to a 2011 article published in Pharmacy and Therapeutics,

“The U.S. and New Zealand are the only countries that allow DTCPA that includes product claims. Most other countries don’t allow DTCPA at all; however, Canada does allow ads that mention either the product or the indication, but not both. The pharmaceutical industry and lobby groups have tried unsuccessfully to overturn bans against DTCPA in Canada and other countries or regions, such as in the European Union (EU). Notably, in 2008, 22 of the 27 EU member states voted against proposed legislation that would have allowed even limited “information to patients” to be provided.”

In 2000, it was reported that drug companies spent $2.5 billion on direct-to-consumer advertising. According to USA Today, that number exceeded $6 billion in 2016. In 1997, the average American watched approximately 9 drug commercials per day. By 2006, 64 different drugs were advertised to the public per day.

The FDA does not review these drug ads before they are broadcast and does not require all known side effects to be listed on the drug product’s label.

EPILOGUE

The authors of Death by Medicine opined on the state of the western medical system and the challenges that we face in reforming it.

“We are fully aware of what stands in the way of change: powerful pharmaceutical and medical technology companies, along with other powerful groups with enormous vested interests in the business of medicine. They fund medical research, support medical schools and hospitals, and advertise in medical journals. With deep pockets, they entice scientists and academics to support their efforts. Such funding can sway the balance of opinion from professional caution to uncritical acceptance of new therapies and drugs. You have only to look at the people who make up the hospital, medical, and government health advisory boards to see conflicts of interest. The public is mostly unaware of these interlocking interests.”

A proper diagnosis of the problem would acknowledge that healthcare is an industry with profit motives and self-preserving mechanisms like any other. Private interests commandeered the global healthcare industry, shifted the medical ethos from natural to synthetic and from curable to treatable. Corruption within the medical system can be a hard pill to swallow. However, once we become aware of “human pharming,” we can no longer be led to the slaughterhouse by men in white lab coats.