Community

quote:

ORIGINAL: shakezula
people need to decide how much this matters to them. at face value, we all want safe food. but the kind of oversight you want will cost huge bucks.

quote:


i think people should sign a waver.

quote:


if we know a drug was hurried out to market, the drug company must let that be known.

quote:


btw, there was a report that came out a while ago about the study that started the autism/vaccine scare. turns out the data was forged.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize

What was fabricated was the study showing there was no link.

quote:

ORIGINAL: shakezula

http://www.livescience.com/common/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1029

"In his paper, Dr. Wakefield claimed that 8 of 12 families of autistic children who attended the clinic at his hospital began to show signs of the illness immediately after getting the "jab" -- the British name for the MMR vaccine. In the paper, he claimed that the measles virus infected the children's bowels, giving them inflammatory bowel disease, which in turn triggered the autism.

However, the Sunday Times of London found a far different story. Investigative reporter Brian Deer, who has been covering the story since its start, found that hospital and other records showed signs that the children were already developing autism before they had received any injection. And while that difference might be attributable to innocent oversight, the newspaper discovered even more shocking allegations.

According to Mr. Deer, the physicians working under Dr. Wakefield were unable to find signs of inflammatory bowel disease in many of the children, but Dr. Wakefield ordered his team to falsify the data to indicate they had. Furthermore, one of the children deemed to have the condition was taken by a parent to three other labs which were unable to find signs of the illness."

quote:


The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to break its promise to American consumers to timely upgrade the animal feed ban designed to protect U.S. consumers and the U.S. cattle herd against the heightened risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease).

quote:


On April 9, FDA published a special filing in the Federal Register giving the public only seven days to comment on the agency's plans to delay the scheduled April 27, 2009, implementation of its upgraded BSE feed ban.
...
One year ago, the FDA issued a news release touting its promise to upgrade the U.S. feed ban by stating, "FDA Strengthens Safeguards for Consumers of Beef," and informing consumers that the new feed ban would become effective on April 27, 2009, after allowing time for the industry to adapt its practices to the new requirements.

quote:


The woman, Deborah Fellner, said Tri-Union Seafoods LLC, the maker of Chicken of the Sea brand tuna, failed to warn her of the risks of consuming tuna fish.
...
A federal trial judge had tossed Fellner's lawsuit, but an appeals court in Philadelphia reinstated it, saying the FDA had taken no regulatory action that preempted her legal claims.

The Supreme Court rejected Tri-Union's request that it review the case. Instead, the justices let the lower court ruling stand without comment.
...
Among other things, the company pointed to a 2005 letter the FDA sent former California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who was attempting to sue Tri-Union for not placing a warning label on its products. The FDA told Lockyer that such warning labels were preempted by federal law. The agency said it had analyzed the issue for several years and decided not to require mercury warning labels on seafood products.

quote:


Though Westco/Westcott had no comment for SN, an ABC News published report revealed that Moradi had the peanuts tested at an FDA-approved lab and all came back negative for contamination. Since the financial repercussions of recalling product would put him out of business, he sought proof from the FDA that whole redskin peanuts roasted in oil have led to illness. But to no avail.

“For seven years, they did not do inspections [at the PCA plant in Georgia] and now at the cost of a tiny little small business they are coming, and they are forcing me and they have no proof,” Moradi told ABC.

quote:


A December 2008 press release from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, or CSPI, noted that the Food and Drug Adminstration's midnight decision to give the go-ahead for rebaudioside A, a sweetener extracted from the herb stevia, was "President Bush's parting gift to the soda industry."

quote:


State law requires farmers to dispose of dead animals through an approved method within 48 hours of death. These methods include incineration, boiling or steaming, burying, removal by a licensed rendering establishment, disposition in a contained landfill or composting according to information from the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture.

quote:


Pediatricians had petitioned the FDA to impose a ban on the use of cold-and-cough drugs in children under the age of six, citing lack of scientific evidence that the products work at all in children, as well as a high risk of adverse effects. Advocates of such a measure point to studies finding that 7,000 children in the United States visit emergency rooms every year due to cold-and-cough drug overdoses.

An independent panel commissioned by the FDA to review the doctors' suggestion concluded that the recommendation was sound and should be adopted as a rule by the agency. Instead, the FDA ignored both groups and came up with a new rule.

The agency claims that its conclusions were based on a review of emergency room data on cold-and-cough overdoses in children, but it has refused to release the data it used in its analysis.

"There was no data suggesting that the drugs were effective in kids under 12," objected FDA advisory panel member Sean Hennessy of University of Pennsylvania. "I don't see how [the new policy is] a fully rational approach to the problem."

quote:


On the Friday before Monday's air date, Monsanto's lawyer faxed a letter to Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News in New York, claiming that the series was biased and unscientific. It threatened, "There is a lot at stake in what is going on in Florida, not only for Monsanto, but also for Fox News and its owner." Rupert Murdoch, of course is the owner, and part of what was at stake was lots of Monsanto advertising dollars--for the Florida station, the entire Fox network, and Murdoch's Actmedia, a major advertising agency used by Monsanto. Fox pulled the series for "further review."

After the Florida station's general manager, who had a background in investigative reporting, meticulously vetted the show, he verified that every statement was accurate and unbiased. The station re-scheduled the series for the following week.

Monsanto's attorney immediately sent another, more strongly worded letter to Ailes, this time indicating that the news story "could lead to serious damage to Monsanto and dire consequences for Fox News." The airing was postponed indefinitely.

The Florida station's general manager and news manager were soon fired, and according to Wilson, the new general manager was a salesman with no news experience. Wilson tried to convince him to run the rbGH story on its merits. He said Monsanto's whole PR campaign was based on the false statement that milk from rbGH-treated cows is "the same safe wholesome product we've always known." But even Monsanto's own studies showed this to be a lie, and it could be endangering the public.

quote:


A prominent Massachusetts anesthesiologist allegedly fabricated 21 medical studies that claimed to show benefits from painkillers like Vioxx and Celebrex, according to the hospital where he worked.
...
Dr. Reuben had been a paid speaker on behalf of Pfizer's medicines, and it paid for some of his research.

quote:


Just last week the FDA’s Dietary Supplement program manager told Expo West, to paraphrase his statement, “that FDA is about to receive much more money and will be able to saturate the field with inspectors… a large increase in our force out there… largest supplements firms shouldn’t have a problem funding, but some mom and pop operations will be lost… recommends that small firms band together so the new rules don’t break their backs… “

quote:


Free Prozac was sent to people in Florida -- unsolicited -- in an attempt to get them started on the drug, according to Associated Press report below.
...
S.K.'s sample Prozac was an attempt by Lilly to switch patients to a new variety of the brand-name drug because the patent for Prozac taken daily had expired, Farmer said. The drug now is available in a cheaper, generic copy.

quote:


The student movement has had at least one victory so far, with the school agreeing to require all professors and lecturers to tell students of any financial ties to the drug industry. In one case, a professor was required to disclose 47 financial relationships. A full 1,600 of 8,900 teachers have reported at least one financial relationship in an area related to their teaching, research or medical practice.

quote:


Other student demands, however, have met more resistance. Harvard does not own its affiliated teaching hospitals, for example, making it harder to impose regulations on them.

quote:


For years, we've been among those who have questioned how the hell anyone (let alone the US Patent Office) can justify the concept of patenting genes. Yet, the Patent Office has continued to issue such patents, even as they have been shown to cause significant problems in diagnosing and treating certain illnesses. Finally, however, it appears that the concept of patenting genes is about to get tested in court.

quote:


On June 6, 2007 the New York Times revealed a stunning event that occurred in March of 2006 wherein FDA safety supervisor Dr. Rosemary Johann-Liang approved a black box warning on Avandia to warn about the risk for congestive heart failure. The von Eschenbach team ordered her to retract her approval of the warning. She was then stripped of her power to make such warnings and removed from supervision of the safety of Avandia.

quote:


Second, researchers lied about the number of people tested. Eli Lilly, the manufacturer, claims that thousands of people received Prozac in controlled clinical trials during its testing phase. In actuality, the numbers were far lower, since those who failed to complete the studies due to negative side effects were never accounted for. FDA material, derived via the Freedom of Information Act, shows that up to 50% of the test patients dropped out of the studies because of serious side effects. In his book,28 Dr. Breggin reports that, in the final analysis, only 286 people were used as a basis for Prozac's approval. Significantly, Lilly has never challenged this information. "They've had me under oath in court," Breggin says, "and they haven't contested a single word that I've written in the book."14

quote:


...a new analysis by University of Michigan (U-M) Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers just published in the online version of the journal CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, found that a very large number of clinical cancer studies published in well-known medical journals have financial connections to pharmaceutical companies. Most importantly, the study flat out concludes that conflicts of interest may cause some researchers to report results that are biased to be favorable to Big Pharma companies.

quote:

ORIGINAL: drnick

You'll love this one:

The FDA has ruled that clinical trials performed outside the USA don't have to be as well regulated as those done IN the US if the results are used to support applications for registration of products IN the US.

Practically it means that there is no longer a moral or ethical code covering these trials as far as the FDA are concerned, just a description of procedures.

So if a company want to experiment the populations of poor countries, it is easier to do, and in fact they can get away with a far lower level of consent that would be demanded in the US (or Europe).
This has led to deaths in the past (and lawsuits, eg. a meningitis antibiotic trial in Nigeria using children done by Pfizer - some died, some were damaged).

Not good.

quote:


children who get the flu vaccine are more at risk for hospitalization than their peers who do not get the vaccine, according to new research that will be presented on May 19, at the 105th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego.
...
They found that children who had received the flu vaccine had three times the risk of hospitalization, as compared to children who had not received the vaccine. In asthmatic children, there was a significantly higher risk of hospitalization in subjects who received the TIV, as compared to those who did not (p= 0.006).

quote:


...The FDA has, without officially announcing any change in procedure, basically dropped the practice of inspecting the labs that carry out the first wave of tests on new medical devices, according to a report by the nonprofit organization The Project on Government Oversight.
...
The inspections in question are those carried out at labs that conduct the earliest tests on new medical devices, a category that includes internal devices such as stents, external devices such as breast pumps, and diagnostic devices such as thermometers and magnetic imaging machines. While all devices must eventually be tested on humans before receiving FDA approval, they must also undergo a battery of other tests before they get to that stage.

According to documents reviewed by the project, the FDA conducted 33 inspections of these early testing labs in 2005, seven in 2007 and one in 2008. None are schedule for 2009

quote:


(NaturalNews) Dr. Paul Offit of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) received at least $29 million from his share of royalties for Merck's Rotateq vaccine after using his position with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ensure that childhood vaccination with the vaccine became compulsory.
...
According to a report on the Web site "Age of Autism," a review of CHOP's royalties schedules reveals that Offit likely received between $29 million and $55 million for his work developing the Rotateq vaccine for rotavirus, which causes diarrhea in infants. Because the vaccine is jointly owned by CHOP and by the Wistar Institute but Offit is the only inventor listed on the patent from CHOP, he received 100 percent of inventor's rights payments from CHOP.
...
While a member of the ACIP, Offit consistently voted in favor of making vaccination against rotavirus part of the compulsory U.S. childhood immunization schedule. He also voted to rescind recommendation of Wyeth's competing vaccine RotaShield, while aggressively advocating for the idea that other rotavirus vaccines would be less dangerous.

quote:


"Unlike most other patented products, the market for mandated childhood vaccines is created not by consumer demand, but by the recommendation of an appointed body called the ACIP," Olmsted and Blaxill write. "In a single vote, ACIP can create a commercial market for a new vaccine that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars in a matter of months."

quote:


(NaturalNews) The FDA has approved Forest Laboratories' antidepressant Lexapro (escitalopram) for use in children and adolescents, even as the federal government and 11 states have filed a lawsuit against the company for illegally pushing the drug on kids.

quote:


Inspection reports from a Nestlé USA cookie dough factory released yesterday show the company declined several times in the past five years to provide Food and Drug Administration inspectors with complaint logs, pest-control records and other information.

The records, which date to 2004, were made public after Nestlé's Toll House refrigerated, prepackaged cookie dough was discovered to be the likely culprit in an E. coli outbreak that has sickened 69 people in 29 states, according to the latest estimates from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.