Archive for December, 2008

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2008

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Dec 20

2008

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Dec 17

2008

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Dec 16

2008

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Dec 14

2008

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Dec 13

2008

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2008

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2008

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2008
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2008

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2008

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2008

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Nov 29

2008

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2008

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2008

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2008

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2008

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2008

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2008

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2008

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a_saving2

What are humans supposed to eat?

Let’s see together what is the ultimate Nutritional Plan for us Human Beings who didn’t  watch TV for more than 2 millions years ..

Carnivore

Herbivore

Omnivore

Frugivors

Humans

Eyes

Look sideways

Look sideways

Look sideways

Look Forward

Look Forward

Skin

No pores

Has pores

Has pores

Millions of pores

Millions of pores

Incisor teeth

Slightly developed

Well developed

Well developed

Well developed

Well developed

Dental Formula

5-8.1.6.1.5-8

5-8.1.6.1.5-8

6.0.0.0.6

6.1.6.1.6

8.1.2-3.1.8

8.1.2-3.1.8

5.1.4.1.5

5.1.4.1.5

5.1.4.1.5

5.1.4.1.5

Tongue

Rasping

Smooth

Smooth

Smooth

Smooth

Hands and Feet

4 footed

4 footed

4 footed

2 hands and feet

2 hands and feet

Nails

Claws

Hoofs

Hoofs

Flat

Flat

Posture

All fours

All fours

All fours

upright

upright

Stomach

Simple and roundish

3 or 4 compartments

Simple and roundish

With duodenum

With duodenum

Intestinal Canal

Typically 3 times length of body

Typically 10 times length of body

Typically 10 times length of body

12 times length of body

12 times length of body

Colon

Smooth

Smooth &

convoluted

Smooth &

convoluted

Convoluted

Convoluted

Mammary Glands

Teats on abdomen

Teats on abdomen

Teats on abdomen

On Chest

On Chest

Placenta

Zonary placenta

Non-deciduate

Non-acciduate

Discoidal

Discoidal

Foods

Flesh

Grass and plants

Flesh and plants

Fruit and nuts

You tell me

From “The Comparative Anatomy of Eating by Milton R. Mills, M.D.:

Facial Muscles

CARNIVORE: Reduced to allow wide mouth gape

HERBIVORE: Well-developed

OMNIVORE: Reduced

HUMAN: Well-developed

Jaw Type

CARNIVORE: Angle not expanded

HERBIVORE: Expanded angle

OMNIVORE: Angle not expanded

HUMAN: Expanded angle

Jaw Joint Location

CARNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth

HERBIVORE: Above the plane of the molars

OMNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth

HUMAN: Above the plane of the molars

Jaw Motion

CARNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side motion

HERBIVORE: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back

OMNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side

HUMAN: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back

Major Jaw Muscles

CARNIVORE: Temporalis

HERBIVORE: Masseter and pterygoids

OMNIVORE: Temporalis

HUMAN: Masseter and pterygoids

Mouth Opening vs. Head Size

CARNIVORE: Large

HERBIVORE: Small

OMNIVORE: Large

HUMAN: Small

Teeth: Incisors

CARNIVORE: Short and pointed

HERBIVORE: Broad, flattened and spade shaped

OMNIVORE: Short and pointed

HUMAN: Broad, flattened and spade shaped

Teeth: Canines

CARNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved

HERBIVORE: Dull and short or long (for defense), or none

OMNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved

HUMAN: Short and blunted

Teeth: Molars

CARNIVORE: Sharp, jagged and blade shaped

HERBIVORE: Flattened with cusps vs complex surface

OMNIVORE: Sharp blades and/or flattened

HUMAN: Flattened with nodular cusps

Chewing

CARNIVORE: None; swallows food whole

HERBIVORE: Extensive chewing necessary

OMNIVORE: Swallows food whole and/or simple crushing

HUMAN: Extensive chewing necessary

Saliva

CARNIVORE: No digestive enzymes

HERBIVORE: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes

OMNIVORE: No digestive enzymes

HUMAN: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes

Stomach Type

CARNIVORE: Simple

HERBIVORE: Simple or multiple chambers

OMNIVORE: Simple

HUMAN: Simple

Stomach Acidity

CARNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach

HERBIVORE: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach

OMNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach

HUMAN: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach

Stomach Capacity

CARNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract

HERBIVORE: Less than 30% of total volume of digestive tract

OMNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract

HUMAN: 21% to 27% of total volume of digestive tract

Liver

CARNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A

HERBIVORE: Cannot detoxify vitamin A

OMNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A

HUMAN: Cannot detoxify vitamin A

Kidney

CARNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine

HERBIVORE: Moderately concentrated urine

OMNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine

HUMAN: Moderately concentrated urine

Still not convinced?

Ask the experts and Charles Darwin:

What famous naturalists think the question

Written by Professor Luis Vallejo Rodríguez

Nowadays it is extensively claimed that man must eat meat to have a balanced diet containing proteins of good quality. However, considering all this it is surprising that the most famous naturalists in humanity were vegetarians or, at least, they declared one after the other that man is vegetarian by nature.

We have to consider that the words ‘vegetarian’ and ‘vegetarianism’ first appeared about 1838 so before that date they do not appear in any writing and for this reason they speak about vegetable food or vegetable diet. The inexistence of these words makes investigation difficult.

Furthermore we have to add that to know whether or not a famous naturalist was a vegetarian we must read the biographies of each of them. Biographies difficult or impossible to obtain as not all of them have been written. If biographies have been written about famous artists, very little has been written about scientists.

To this difficulty we have to add another one: the scarce or no importance which biographers pay to the eating habits of the people they write about. So for example Colin Spencer complains in his book The Heretics Feast that among 60 biographies about Leonardo Da Vinci only two of his biographers mention that he was a vegetarian.

Even with all these difficulties the declarations of the most famous naturalists of humanity have had one very clear message and as proof you can read what they have said: John Ray (1628-1704) was called the father of English Natural History and in his honor a society was founded which carries his name: The Ray Society.

John Ray

According to John Ray: “There is no doubt that man is not built to be a carnivorous animal”. And furthermore he declares:

a. “What a sweet, pleasing and innocent sight is the spectacle of a table served that way and what a difference to a make up of fuming animal meat, slaughtered and dead! Man in no way has the constitution of a carnivorous being. Hunt and voracity are unnatural to him. Man has neither the sharp pointed teeth or claws to slaughter his prey. On the contrary his hands are made to pick fruits, berries and vegetables and teeth appropriate to chew them.”

b. “Everything we need to feed ourselves and to restore and please us is abundantly provided in the inexhaustible store of Nature. What a sweet, pleasing and innocent sight is a table frugally provided and what a difference from a meal composed of fuming and slaughtered animal meat. In short our orchards offer all the delights imaginable while the slaughter houses and butchers are full of congealed blood and abominable stench.”

Carl Linnée

Another famous naturalist was Carl Linnée (1707-1778), a doctor of the Swedish Navy, president of the Academy of Science and professor of Botany at Stockholm and the University of Upsala. Linnée created the method of natural classification of plants and animals that is still used today although more than two centuries have passed. Linnée wrote:

  • “Edible fruits and plants constitute the most appropriate food for man.”
  • “According to his anatomy, man has not been physiologically prepared to eat meat.”
  • “Fruits are the most adequate food for man according to that demonstrated by the analogy of quadrupeds in the structure in his teeth and digestive apparatus.

George Louis Leclerc

The French naturalist George Louis Leclerc, more commonly known as Count Buffon (1707-1788) was member of the Academy of Science, administrator of the Garden of the King and with several collaborators wrote ‘Natural History’ in 36 volumes. Buffon stated that:

“Man could live on vegetables alone. However the whole of nature is not enough to satisfy his intemperance and the inconsistent variety of his appetite. Man by himself consumes and devours more meat than all the other animals together and not out of necessity but as a form of abuse.”

A collaborator of Buffon was Dr. Luis Maria D’Aubenton, more commonly known as D’Aubenton (1716-1799). He was a professor of Mineralogy at the Garden of the King and of Natural History at the School of Medicine. D’Aubenton said, that:

“It is to be presumed that man, while he lives in a natural state and a graded climate, where the earth spontaneously produces every type of fruit; he feeds himself with these and does not eat animals.”

George Cuvier

George Cuvier (1769-1832) was a French naturalist, anatomist and geologist. He was a professor at the School and Museum of France, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences and Chancellor of the University. He created the theory of Compared Anatomy and Palaeontology. Thanks to his studies we have been able to reconstruct species which have disappeared. Cuvier received the distinctions and titles of Baron and grand official of the Legion of Honour and was honored by Napoleon I, Louis XVIII and Louis Philip. Cuvier stated in his work: Lessons of Compared Anatomy, that:

“The compared anatomy shows us that man in every way is like the frugivorous animals and no way like the carnivorous animals… Disguising the dead meat by culinary preparations, the outward appearance is changed and tenderised because the sight of raw and bloody meat only exited horror and disgust in man.”

Lets look at some statements made by Cuvier:

  • “According to the constitution of mans principle organs, it has been demonstrated that his nourishment should not consist of any other thing than vegetables.”
  • “Mans natural food, judging from his structure, should consist of fruits, roots and vegetables.”
  • “The whole of the human body even down to the slightest detail is destined by nature for an exclusively vegetable diet.”
  • “Man appears to be organized to feed on fruits, roots and the succulent parts of vegetables. His short mandibles of medium force, his canines of the same length as his other teeth, and his tuberous molars do not permit him to chew grass or devour meat without preparing these foods through cooking. His digestive organs are formed in accordance with the disposition of his teeth. His stomach is simple and his intestine canal is of medium length and very well fixed to his large intestine.”

Alexander von Humbold

Alexander von Humbold (1769-1859) was a German naturalist, explorer and geographer. He carried out studies on magnetism and supported the theory of the igneous origin of rocks. He is considered to be the founder of Climathology, Terrestrial Morphology, Physical Geogrophy of the Oceans and the Geography of the Planets. He wrote a book in 30 volumes entitled Cosmos and Trips to Equimoctial Regions of the New World. Humbold stated that:

“Eating animals as food is not far away from athropophagy and cannibalism. The same amount of land used to graze and feed cattle could feed ten people, if however we cultivated it with lentils, kidney beans or peas it could feed a hundred people….The Orinoco basin can produce sufficient bananas to feed the whole of mankind comfortably.”

Richard Owen

Richard Owen (1804-1892) was an English naturalist who studied with Cuvier, catalogued the Hunter Collection of the British Museum and organized the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. He studied anatomy and compared Physiology and Palaeontology. He wrote A Course in Compared Anatomy and Palaeontology and Physiology in Vertebrae. Owen stated:

a. “The anthropoids and all quadumanous derive their nourishment from fruits, grains and other succulent vegetable substances and the strict analogy between the structure of those animals and man clearly demonstrates their natural frugivorousness.”

b. “The apes, whose dentition is almost equal to that of man, lives principally on fruit, seeds, nuts and other similar kinds of savoury textures of nutritious value which are elaborated by the vegetable kingdom. The profound similarity between the dentition of quadrupeds and that of humans demonstrates that man was from his origins adapted to eat fruit from the trees in Paradise.”

Charles Darwin

Of course, the most famous of all British naturalists also agreed with the other naturalists. I am referring to Charles Darwin (1800-1882) who at the age of 22 years started on a journey around the world which lasted 5 years. On this journey Darwin collected material which served to publish his most famous book in 1859: The Origin of Species by Natural Selection: Darwin was a member of the Royal Society of London and after his death he was buried in Westminster Abbey with great funeral honours and diplomatic representatives from many great nations were present at his funeral. Darwin wrote:

“The grading of forms, organic functions, customs and diets showed in an evident way that the normal food of man is vegetable like the anthropoids and apes and that our canine teeth are less developed than theirs and that we are not destined to compete with wild beasts or carnivorous animals.”

In his book The Origin of Man he tells us:

“Although we know nothing for certain about the time or place that man shed the thick hair that covered him, with much probability of being right we could say that he must have lived in a warm country where conditions were favourable to the frugivorous way of life which, to judge from analogies, must have been the way man lived.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) was an English doctor and anthropologist who supported Darwin’s theories and became the president of the Royal Society. Among other books he wrote Zoological Evidences as to Man’s Place in Nature and Compared Anatomy. Let’s look at some of Huxleys’ statements:

a. “Man came before the axe and fire so he couldn’t be carnivorous.”

b. “The length of mans digestive tube is 5-8 meters and the distance between the mouth and the coccyx is 50 to 80 centimeters, which gives us a result of 10 as in other frugivorous animals and not 3 as in the carnivorous or 20 as in the herbivorous animals.”

c. “The only animal with probable omnivorous morphology that exists, is the bear, which has some pointed teeth and others that are flat.”

Sir Arthur Keith

Sir Arthur Keith (1866-1955) was a famous English anatomist and anthropologist. Together with Martin Flack he discovered the Sino auricular nodule which is where cardiac contractions originate. He was Rector of Aberdeen University and wrote: Instruction to the Study of Anthropoid Apes Ancient Types of Man and Essays about Evolution of Humans. This anthropologist tells us that:

“Chimpanzees and gorillas have the same digestive mechanisms as man does. That is the proof of compared anatomy in favour of a diet of crude vegetables which permits the fermentation to produce several disposals daily, soft and free from putrefaction.”


These are the researches by the most famous naturalists that mankind has had.

We have to observe that their studies were frequently supported and made reference by comparing the anatomy of man to that of other mammals, especially the ape family, and speak to us about the formation of teeth and digestive tubes of these animals. In this way all these famous naturalists arrived at the same impressive conclusion: man is vegetarian by nature, and if the word vegetarian does not appear in their writings, it is because the word did not exist before or until 1838 and the studies of all the famous naturalists were written before that date.

We could argue against vegetarianism that the pictures of pre-historic man on the rocks the cavern show him as a hunter. However this does not necessarily mean, that meat is the ideal form of food for man. Furthermore, we have to take into account, that the anthropologist Alan Walker of John Hopkins University, when studying the grooves of fossilized teeth, found a diverse assortment of different foods.

He claimed that our first human ancestors did not live predominantly on meat, nor seeds, buds, leaves or grass, neither were they omnivorous. It seems that they subsisted principally on a diet of fruit. Exceptions have not been found. Each tooth was examined and those coming from hominids of the period twelve million years ago, which are in direct line to Homo Erectus, proved to be fruit eaters.

Conclusion

I want to ask the reader the following question: Is man by nature a vegetarian? Nowadays most doctors tell us, that he is not, but the most famous naturalists have all deduced, that he is.

If this is really so, only a small minority of the population of developed countries, the people we call vegetarians would be eating correctly, whilst the great majority of the population would be eating incorrectly.

Professor Rodriguez has published three books in Spanish:

  • La curación del cáncer por limpieza del intestino grueso (1990)
  • Alimentación y éxito escolar (1991)
  • El cancer y los intereses creados (1993)

Still not convinced?

Ask God :

“Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.” (Genesis 9:3-4)

Still have doubts?

Please spend some time on this site, maybe you will change your opinion, maybe not… Who knows… after all it is your life and you’ve been programmed by years of advertising, telling us what to eat, what to do and what to believe. To be a Vegan or a Vegetarian is a choice. A crucial decision for your health. If we were not meant to be vegetarians, then why is animal protein so bad for us? A vegetarian diet can be one of  the answer to prevent cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, and this is not just a coincidence.

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THE USE OF HYPNOSIS AS A COMPLEMENTARY TOOL  TO FIGHT DISEASE

FIRST

Don’t let the medical system dispossess you from your rights and dignity. We are not children. We have the right to ask questions. We have the right to double check their diagnosis and procedures. We have the right to refuse  protocols. We have the right to know and ask for a record of all the medicines that we are given People with life threatening diseases have to deal with offen with the arogance of their doctors. . Patients have to endure the coldness of hospital environment while at the same time find the resources necessary to fight thier disease. Patients have to be sometimes too.. patient.

My personal advice to keep your cool is to use several tools ( see MiND TOOL CATEGORY) in combination and you will get fast results. One very good combonation for example: Self Hypnosis, Visualization, Deep Breathing, participating and socializing in group support or in a forum with other patients has had proven results. Dr Spiegel D from Stanford Medical School was able to double the life expectancy of a group of women afflicted with metastasis breast cancer using the above combination.

You can increase  your speed of recovery. I just found a source where you can download audio Hypnosis for a very reasonable fee which goes to charity, or even for free at: http://www.hypnosisdownloads.com/

A personal note: When my wife had to go to a Medical care facility and had to wait for more than 10 minutes she fell asleep. This result was obtained through a relaxing tape of Self Hypnosis that she was listened to every night before falling asleep.

In one word she is programmed to relax completely each time she is in a medical environment. Another thing, consider the use of a tape of Self Hypnosis before and after any surgeries. This is such a powerful tool that in the past doctors where able to perform even amputation just with the help of Hypnosis to put their patients to sleep. So use it. This should be mandatory, especially for children.

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Vioxx: How an insider exposed the flaws of the FDA and how these flaws can cost 100,000 Americans their lives.

alternative medicine

The True Story of David J. Graham, MD, MPH

Graduated from the John Hopkins University School of Medicine
Trained in Internal Medicine at Yale and in Adult Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania
Three-year fellowship in Pharmacoepidemiology
Masters in Public Health at John Hopkins, with a concentration in Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

Drugs, Lies & Crimes:

In November 18, 2004, he was the Associate Director for Science and Medicine in the FDA’s Office of Drug Safety and had spent more than 20 years working for the FDA. A great researcher with an impeccable career. According two the FDA he had only a couple of flaws, ethics and morals.

In this society what used to be a quality is now viewed as a defect and you will understand why, as you continue reading the article further. Now let us hear what Dr. David Graham has to say in his own words as he tells us his story, as he told it in front of a Congressional committee. This entire deposition can be found on the Internet as well. To say the least, it is sad to see how hundreds of thousands of people are sacrificed in vain in the name of greed and bad politics – without remorse.

Doing His Job Too Well

During my career, I believe I have made a real difference for the cause of patients’ safety. My research and efforts within FDA led to the withdrawal from the US market of:

• Omniflox, an antibiotic that caused hemolytic anemia.
• Rezulin, a diabetes drug that caused acute liver failure.
• Fen-Phen and Redux, weight loss drugs that caused heart valve injury.
• PPA (phenylpropanolamine), an over-the-counter decongestant and weight loss product that caused hemorrhagic stroke in young women.
• Trovan, an antibiotic that caused acute liver failure and death.
• Lotronex, a drug for irritable bowel syndrome that causes ischemic colitis.
• Baycol, a cholesterol-lowering drug that caused severe muscle injury, kidney failure and death.
• Seldane, an antihistamine that caused heart arrhythmias and death.
• Propulsid, a drug for nighttime heartburn that caused heart arrythmias and death.

I have done extensive work concerning the issue of pregnancy exposure to Accutane, a drug that is used to treat acne. It can cause birth defects in some children who are exposed in utero if their mothers take the drug during the first trimester.

During my career, I recommended the withdrawal of 12 drugs from the market. Today, only two of those remain, which are Accutane and Arava, a drug for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. My co-worker and I believed that Arava causes an unacceptably high risk of acute liver failure and death.

A Lone Voice Against Vioxx:

Let me begin by describing what we found in our study, what others have found, and what this means for the American people. Prior to the approval of Vioxx, a study was performed by Merck named 090. This study found nearly a 7-fold increase in heart attack risk with low dose Vioxx. The labeling at approval said nothing about heart attack risks.

During the next four years, studies after studies, where there was an increasing link between Vioxx and increased incidents of heart failure. Finally the FDA made a labeling change about heart attack risk with high-dose Vioxx, but did not place this in the “Warnings” section. Also, it did not ban the high-dose formulation and its use. I believe such a ban should have been implemented.

In March 2004, another epidemiologic study reported that both high-dose and low-dose Vioxx increased the risk of heart attacks compared to Vioxx’s leading competitor, Celebrex.

Our study, first reported in late August of this year that Vioxx increased the risk of heart attack and sudden death by 3.7 fold for high dose and 1.5 fold for low dose, compared to Celebrex. A study report describing this work was put on the FDA website on Election Day.

Among many things, this report estimated that nearly 28,000 cases of heart attack or sudden cardiac death were caused by Vioxx. I emphasized to the committee that this is an extremely conservative estimate.

Announced Deaths

The FDA always claimed that randomized clinical trials provide the best data. If you apply the risk levels seen in the two Merck trials, VIGOR and APPROV, you obtain a more realistic and likely range of estimates for the number of cases in the US. This estimate ranges from 88,000 to 139,000 Americans.

Let us get a better picture as to how many lives we are talking about. We are not just talking numbers. Imagine that instead of a serious side effect of a widely used prescription drug, we were talking about jetliners. Please ignore the obvious difference in fatality rates between a heart attack and a plane crash and focus on the larger analogy that I am trying to draw. If there were an average of 150 to 200 people on an aircraft, this would bring to a total of about 88,000 to 138,000 people, which would be equivalent to 500 to 900 aircrafts dropping from the sky.

This translates to about two to four airliners every week, week in and week out, for the past 5 years. If you were confronted by this situation, what would be your reaction, what would you want to know and what would you do about it?

The History of the FDA:


In 1938, Congress enacted the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, basically creating the FDA, in response to an unfortunate incident in which about 100 children were killed by an elixir of sulfanilamide, a medication that was formulated using anti-freeze. This Act required that animal toxicity testing be performed and safety information be submitted to FDA prior to approval of a drug.

In 1962, Congress enacted the Kefauver-Harris Amendments to the FD&C Act in response to the thalidomide disaster in Europe. Between 1957 and 1961, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 children were born with thalidomide-related birth defects. These Amendments increased the requirements for toxicity testing and safety information for pre-approval and added the requirement that “substantial evidence” of efficacy be submitted.

WE ARE FACED WITH WHAT MAY BE THE SINGLE GREATEST DRUG SAFETY CATASTROPHE IN THE HISTORY OF THIS COUNTRY OR THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

We are talking about a catastrophe that I strongly believe could have or should have been largely or completely avoided, but it wasn’t, and over 100,000 Americans have paid immensely for this failure. In my opinion, the FDA has let the American people down, and sadly, betrayed a public trust.
How The FDA Reacted To David J. Graham’s Wish To Go Public With His Research:
“We had planned to present the data at the International Conference on Pharmacoepidemiology, in Bordeaux, France. We concluded that high-dose Vioxx significantly increased the risk of heart attacks and sudden death and that the high doses of the drug should not be prescribed or used by patients.

This conclusion triggered an explosive response from the Office of New Drugs, which approved Vioxx in the first place and was responsible for regulating it post-marketing.

The response from senior management in my office, the Office of Drug Safety, was equally stressful. I was pressured to change my conclusions and recommendations, and basically threatened that if I did not change them, I would not be permitted to present the paper at the conference.

One drug safety manager recommended that I should be barred from presenting the poster at the meeting and also noted that Merck needed to know our study results.

“An email from the Director for the entire Office of New Drugs was revealing. He suggested that since the FDA was “not contemplating” a warning against the use of high-dose Vioxx, my conclusions should be changed.“

Crimes Against Children

In mid August, despite our study results showing an increased risk of heart attack with Vioxx, and despite the results of other studies published in the literature, FDA Announced It Had Approved Vioxx For Use In Children With Rheumatoid Arthritis. Heart warming isn’t it?

September 22

At a meeting attended by the director of the reviewing office who approved Vioxx, the director and deputy director of the reviewing division within that office and senior managers from the Office of Drug Safety, no one thought there was a Vioxx safety issue to be dealt with. At this meeting, the reviewing office director asked why had I even thought to study Vioxx and heart attacks because FDA had made its labeling change and nothing more needed to be done. At this meeting a senior manager from ODS labeled our Vioxx study “a scientific rumor.”

Eight days later, Merck pulled Vioxx from the market, and jetliners stopped dropping from the sky.

David Graham’s Conclusion:


I would argue that the FDA, as currently configured, is incapable of protecting America against another Vioxx. We are virtually defenseless. It is important that this committee and the American people understand that what has happened with Vioxx is really a symptom of something far more dangerous to the safety of the American people.

Please, read the full testimony online.

Big Pharma Is Learning it The Hard Way

Vioxx generated $2.5 billion in worldwide sales for Merck in 2003, 11 percent of the firm’s total revenues.

Merck spent $100 million on direct-to-consumer Vioxx advertising in 2003, aimed at pushing arthritis sufferers to ask their doctors to prescribe the drug. It expended $500 million more to promote the drug to doctors and pharmacists and in medical journals. As usual, more was spent to sell the drug than to conduct research on its safety and efficacy.

As soon Merck announced the pulling of Vioxx from the market, they lost $27 billion when their stock plummeted on Wall Street. Similarly, when Pfizer announced that they were taking Celebrex off the market, the company’s market value decreased by $25 billion . This might explain why it was so difficult to take a drug off the market when it was previously approved by the FDA. The financial interest and consequences were enormous. Merck could lose another $20 billion settling personal injury suits, which would bring total loss to $47 billion. Perhaps they should have spent more money making medicine that works without killing you, instead of concentrating their efforts on lobbying and advertising.

Conclusion

Thanks to brave whistleblowes like David Graham, the truth about Vioxx finally came out. He also exposed fatal flaws of the FDA, and revealed how these flaws cost many Americans their lives. These deaths could have been avoided. Because of greed and corruption it is too late for them, but let’s make sure they did not die in vain. We must demand reform of the FDA so that dangerous products like Vioxx never make it to the shelf. We must stop placing trust in institutions which fail to earn it.

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