This article by Elaine Silvestrini who writes for Drugwatch.com, a consumer education and patient advocacy website based in Orlando, FL, which appeared in the NJ Asbury Park Press newspaper on 4/13/18, puts the sickness selling scam of big pHarma in its true perspective.
Understand that the steadily rising drug prices are endangering the safety of the “tricks” of the “hooker” medical cartel.
Here’s the article:
“Big Pharma money seems to be everywhere anyone is making policy or taking any kind of action involving drug manufacturers. As a general statement, this is probably no surprise.
But the details of how much Pharma money has influenced and potentially tainted policy making, medical education and even patient advocacy are sobering. They also raise questions about how the U.S. should refocus healthcare priorities to better benefit patients.
Consider:
*Doctors who write prescriptions and researchers who investigate drugs have been paid billions by drug companies, according to the government’s Open Payments database.
*Least surprising, the Center for Responsive Politics has documented that the industry contributes millions to political campaigns to support legislation policies that would benefit it.
*But even non-profit groups that are supposed to represent the interests of medical patients have received millions from Big Pharma, as documented separately by Kaiser Health News and at least one U.S. Senate Investigation report. For example, the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation received $2.7 million from AbbVie in 2015, according to Kaiser. AbbVie makes billions from its drug Humira, which is used to treat conditions including Crohn’s. The drug costs patients as much as $63,000 a year. The American Diabetes Association benefited from $2.9 million from Eli Lilly, which raised the price of its insulin product, Humalog 30 times over two decades.
*As detailed in a report by the Project on Government Oversight, federal law has fostered a cozy relationship between Pharma and the agency that’s supposed to regulate the industry. The Food and Drug Administration (affectionately referred to as the Fraud and Drug Administration). The FDA depends heavily on funding from the industry and is required to work closely with drug manufacturers in developing regulations and procedures.
“Some observers fear that such approaches may not be scientifically sound, that they could be more susceptible to manipulation, and that they could lead to lower standards,” according to the POGO report.
*In New Jersey (affectionately known as “Shitsville”) alone, drug and medical device companies gave $111 million in general contributions, not counting research funds, to doctors and hospitals in 2016, according to the government database. The largest chunk – $16.5 million – was for consulting fees, followed by more than $11 million for food and beverages and nearly $10 million for travel and lodging.
New Jersey based companies did their part. For example, Allergan gave $66 million in general payments to doctors and hospitals while Novartis spent nearly $442 million on research grants.
Patient advocacy groups may be the most troubling benefactors of all that Pharma money. Kaiser defines patient advocacy groups as nonprofits devoted to assisting patients with a particular disease, disability or condition. This assistance would go beyond just providing the services or care.
It’s true that patient advocates and pharmaceutical companies should work together at times and often share the same interests. But patients’ needs, both financial and medical, and drug manufacturers’ fiduciary priorities are not identical. Groups can work with Pharma where they share goals, without depending on the industry for money.
According to KHN investigation, Allergan gave $716, 500 to patient advocacy groups in 2015, while New Jersey based Johnson & Johnson gave more than $6 million.
Pharma has a history of using money to shape policies that benefit its bottom line at the expense of the patients it is supposed to help. This is illustrated starkly by the role that drug-makers played in creating the opioid crisis. As I documented at Drugwatch, drug companies profited handsomely employing a multi-pronged marketing push that redefined the way the medical community treated pain. This all-encompassing effort succeeded resoundingly, drastically increasing prescriptions for opioids while obscuring the very real risks of addiction that had deterred such approaches in the past.
Now, some in Congress, are complaining that the drug makers’ marketing efforts are being subsidized by taxpayers to the tune of $6 billion in tax deductions in 2015 alone. And, there’s plenty of evidence demonstrating that all this money Pharma is spreading around is yielding results for the manufacturers’ bottom lines.
A study last year found that 65 percent of U.S. patients visited a doctor who received money from drug companies, although most patients didn’t know about the payments.
A 2016 study by researchers at the University of California found that doctors who were given free meals worth less than $20 were significantly more likely to to write prescriptions made by the companies that provided the meals.
A similar study in 2018 found that doctors and teaching hospitals in the U.S. receive about $7 billion a year from drug manufacturers. When researchers focused on certain cancer scenarios, the payments were linked to higher rates of costly prescriptions from the drug makers.
Drug prices are rising in the U.S. at rates that are endangering patients and contributing to the overall cost of health care. Policy makers and citizens should understand just how Big Pharma uses their windfall to effect policies to make them even richer.”
My comments:
We stay sick because Big Pharma and the large food companies, by paying off all advertising medias, make sure we all eat the foods destined to keep us sick. Maybe if you check out
“A Sane Diet for an Insane World”, all will be put into proper perspective for you.
Aloha!
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.
So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
