323 Scientists who convinced WHO to declare H1N1 a pandemic received kickbacks from H1N1 vaccine makers

Scientists who convinced WHO to declare H1N1 a pandemic received kickbacks from H1N1 vaccine makers

(1) WHO scandal exposed: Advisors received kickbacks from H1N1 vaccine manufacturers
(2) How Corrupted Drug Companies Deceive and Manipulate Your Doctor
(3) Doctors Overtesting, Overtreating: too much cancer screening, too many heart tests, too many cesareans
(4) Cell Phones: Brain cancer surpasses leukemia as #1 one cancer killer in children
(5) Half an hour of mobile use a day 'increases brain cancer risk'
(6) INDIAN mystic, who goes without without food and water, astounds doctors
(7) Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds
(8) Monsanto designed Senate Bill S510 which makes it illegal to Grow, Share, Trade or Sell Homegrown Food
(9) Monsanto's GMO Corn Linked To Organ Failure, Study Reveals
(10) Peter Duesberg's scientific purgatory; now credited as right about Cancer
(11) Obesity: Fast Food chains peddle killer combination of salt, fat and sugar
(12) Electroshock still being used in Psychiatry
(13) Niall McLaren: Psychiatry can't take criticism - biological model of psychiatry will unravel

(1) WHO scandal exposed: Advisors received kickbacks from H1N1 vaccine manufacturers

From: Paul de Burgh-Day <pdeburgh@harboursat.com.au> Date: 06.06.2010 01:08 AM

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

http://www.naturalnews.com/028936_WHO_vaccines.html

(NaturalNews) A stunning new report reveals that top scientists who convinced the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare H1N1 a global pandemic held close financial ties to the drug companies that profited from the sale of those vaccines. This report, published in the British Medical Journal, exposes the hidden ties that drove WHO to declare a pandemic, resulting in billions of dollars in profits for vaccine manufacturers. ==

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/340/jun03_4/c2912

3 June 2010
Cite this as: BMJ 2010;340:c2912

Conflicts of Interest

WHO and the pandemic flu "conspiracies"

Deborah Cohen, features editor, BMJ, Philip Carter, journalist, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, London

dcohen{at}bmj.com

Key scientists advising the World Health Organization on planning for an influenza pandemic had done paid work for pharmaceutical firms that stood to gain from the guidance they were preparing. These conflicts of interest have never been publicly disclosed by WHO, and WHO has dismissed inquiries into its handling of the A/H1N1 pandemic as "conspiracy theories." Deborah Cohen and Philip Carter investigate ...

(2) How Corrupted Drug Companies Deceive and Manipulate Your Doctor

Posted by Dr. Mercola | May 18 2010 | 8,759 views

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/05/18/how-corrupted-drug-companies-deceive-and-manipulate-your-doctor.aspx

Dr. Beatrice Golomb, Associate Professor of Medicine at University of California, San Diego, masterfully exposes the corruption that has metastasized like a tumor throughout the pharmaceutical and medical industries, in the video above.

If you have any doubt about drug companies being riddled with conflicts of interest, those doubts will be shattered after seeing the evidence she presents.

The corruption has become so prolific that it has literally debased medical science.

In the above linked Chicago Breaking News article, Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is quoted as saying:

“Science is not a democracy where people's votes decide what is right. Look at the data, look at science and make a decision based on science that has been published."

What he is really advocating is for you to blindly believe in “facts” that may have been produced in the midst of MASSIVE conflicts of interest.

Before you assume the science in medical journals is credible, let’s take a look at what is going on behind the scenes of editing and publishing in medical science.

Bias #1: Unwanted Results are Not Published

In order for scientific studies to happen, someone has to pay for them.

The top funder for any drug trial is the pharmaceutical company that makes it, since the manufacturer is most invested in “proving” how spectacular its drug is. Dr. Golomb uses the case of statins as an example, stating that all of the major statin studies have been funded exclusively by the drug industry.

The second-highest funder of drug studies is the National Institute of Health (NIH), which is not the group of neutral government experts you may have assumed them to be. In fact, NIH accepts a great deal of money from Big Pharma and is deeply enmeshed with the industry.

But drug companies publish only a fraction of the studies they fund -- the ones that promote their drugs.

If a study does not have findings that are favorable to its product, it is unlikely it will ever make it into a journal for publication.

In contrast, studies that have favorable findings almost always make the cut.

There are simply thousands of scientific studies out there that have never been seen by you or your physician because they have been screened out by editors and reviewers who are being paid to uphold an industry agenda.

Published studies overwhelmingly favor the funding company’s drug. Whichever drug is manufactured by the study sponsor is the drug that comes out on top, 90 percent of the time!

Given this, how can medical journals be considered unbiased?

Bias #2: Bad Results are Submitted as Good

When a scientific study has findings that cast doubt on the efficacy of a drug, oftentimes the negative findings are morphed into positive ones.

For example, in 2008, FDA officials analyzed a registry of 74 antidepressant trials, which included trials that were published and those that were not. The FDA’s findings were then written up in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine1.

This is what they found:

  38 of the trials reported positive results, and 37 of the 38 were published.

  36 trials had negative or questionable findings. Of the 36, 22 were not published at all, and 11 were published in a way that conveyed the results as though they were positive.

So, if you just went to the published literature, it would look like 94 percent of the studies were positive, when in reality only about 50 percent were positive ... equivalent to a coin toss.

For statins, the odds that the funding company’s drug will come out on top are staggering1:

  The odds that the funding company’s statin drug will come out looking better than anyone else’s statin in the “results” section of the article are 20:1.

  The odds that the funding company’s statin will come out on top in the “conclusions” part of the article are 35:1.

So, even if they can’t make the results look good, they can often find a way to twist the conclusions so that their drug appears favorable.

Selectively omitting negative trial results can be devastating to your health, as Merck & Co. proved when they concealed the fact that three patients suffered heart attacks from Vioxx during clinical trials. They conveniently omitted this data (along with other relevant findings) from the copy of the study they submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine for publication.

The omissions were uncovered years later during the 7,000 Vioxx lawsuit litigations.

Bias #3: A Favorable Study is Submitted Multiple Times

When a study yields positive results, it is often submitted multiple times in a way that the reader doesn’t realize it’s the same study, obscured by different author lists and different details. Analyzers have had to look very carefully to determine which studies are actually duplicates because they are so cleverly disguised.

Not surprisingly, trials reporting greater treatment efficacy were significantly more likely to be duplicated, according to Dr. Golomb’s reporting.

In one analysis of the published reports about ondansetron (an anti-nausea drug), the same study was published 5 times. This duplication of data led to a 23 percent overestimation of ondansetron’s effectiveness when a meta-analysis was performed.2

Talk about good mileage!

Bias #4: Follow-Up Reviews Done by Biased Experts

The editorials that follow from a study, submitted by so-called unbiased experts and then published in reputable journals, are often done by non-neutral parties who have a financial tie to the drug maker.

Dr. Golomb uses the case of calcium channel blockers (a type of heart medication) as an example. The connection between authors declaring their support for calcium channel blockers and those not in support of them was highly statistically tied to their affiliation with the drug manufacturer -- in fact, the odds that their opinion was NOT due to their affiliation was more than 1,000:1.

Bias #5: Ghostwriting

Many of the articles that appear in medical journals purportedly written by well-known academics are actually written by unacknowledged ghostwriters on Big Pharma payroll.

Consider the example of Parke-Davis and their drug Neurontin.

Parke-Davis contracted with a “medical education communication company,” or MECC, which is a company paid almost exclusively by pharmaceutical companies to write articles, reviews, and letters to editors of medical journals to cast their products in a favorable light.

In this case, MECC was paid $13,000 to $18,000 per article. In turn, MECC paid $1,000 each to friendly physicians and pharmacists to sign off as authors of the articles, making the material appear independent.

This was also done by Pfizer as a strategy for marketing Zoloft. A document was written that included 81 different articles promoting Zoloft’s usefulness for everything from panic disorder to pedophilia.

The only problem was, for some articles, the name of the author was listed as "to be determined," even though the article was listed as already completed. They weren't helping out an existing team of scientists who happened to be talentless at writing -- Pfizer wrote the article, and then shopped around for scientists willing to claim authorship, to give it a veneer of credibility.

Wyeth-Ayerst employed a similar ghostwriting tactic to promote its “fen-phen” diet drug, Redux.

Bias #6: Journal Bias

Medical journals are generally considered by medical practitioners to be a source of reliable information. But medical journals are also businesses.

Three editors, who agreed to discuss finances only if they remained anonymous, said a few journals that previously measured annual profits in the tens of thousands of dollars now make millions annually.

The truth is that Big Pharma has become quite adept at manipulating and brainwashing practitioners of conventional medicine. They influence the very heart and center of the most respected medical journals, creating dogma and beliefs that support the drug paradigm because it is blessed by the pinnacle of scientific integrity: the prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal.

Peer-reviewed medical journals contain advertisements that are almost exclusively for drugs, amidst articles that are biased toward promoting those drugs. If you have looked through a medical journal lately, you’ll see full-page Pharma glossies, cover to cover.

Pharmaceutical companies spend almost twice as much on marketing as they spend on research!

In 2003, drug companies spent $448 million dollars on advertising in medical journals2. It has been calculated that the return on investment on medical journal ads is between $2.22 and $6.86 for every dollar spent, with larger and older brands at the higher end.

Long-term returns may be even higher when you consider that one ad viewed by a physician could result in hundreds or even thousands of drug purchases, based on the prescriptions he or she writes.

The term “peer-review” has come to imply scientific credibility. But the fact is that many of the peer-reviewers are on the drug company’s payroll, and those who are not are unlikely to detect flawed research or outright fraud.

Medical journals are the number one source of medical information for physicians. In fact, nearly 80 percent of physicians use medical journals for their education, which exceeds information from any other source3. ...

Bias #7: Drug Companies Masquerading as Educators

The education of medical students and residents also comes through the filter of the drug industry, which seeks to groom them before they even finish medical school.

According to Dr. Golomb’s data, Big Pharma now spends $18.5 billion per year promoting their drugs to physicians. That amounts to $30,000 per year for every physician in the U. S.!  ...

Sources:
   Chicago Breaking News Center April 8, 2010

(3) Doctors Overtesting, Overtreating: too much cancer screening, too many heart tests, too many cesareans

Experts say even Obama getting too many med tests

Too much cancer screening, too many heart tests, too many cesarean sections. A spate of recent reports suggests that many Americans are being overtreated. Maybe even President Barack Obama, champion of an overhaul and cost-cutting of the health care system.

By LINDSEY TANNER

AP Medical Writer

Seattle Times March 12, 2010

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2011325113_apusmedunnecessarytests.html?syndication=rss

CHICAGO — Too much cancer screening, too many heart tests, too many cesarean sections. A spate of recent reports suggests that many Americans are being overtreated. Maybe even President Barack Obama, champion of an overhaul and cost-cutting of the health care system.

Is it doctors practicing defensive medicine? Or are patients so accustomed to a culture of medical technology that they insist on extensive tests and treatments?

A combination of both is at work, but new evidence and updated guidelines are recommending a step back and more thorough doctor-patient talks about risks and benefits of screening tests.

Americans, including the commander in chief, need to realize that "more care is not necessarily better care," wrote cardiologist Dr. Rita Redberg, editor of Archives of Internal Medicine. She was commenting on Obama's recent physical.

His exam included prostate cancer screening and a virtual colonoscopy. The PSA test for prostate cancer is not routinely recommended for any age and colon screening is not routinely recommended for patients younger than 50. Obama is 48. A White House spokesman noted that earlier colon cancer screening is sometimes recommended for high-risk groups, such as African-Americans.

Doctors disagree on whether a virtual colonoscopy is the best method. But it's less invasive than the traditional procedure and doesn't require sedation - or the possible temporary transfer of presidential power, the White House said.

Yet Redberg, a doctor with expertise in health policy, takes issue with that test and a heart scan to look for calcium deposits in the president's arteries. She said the calcium check isn't recommended for low-risk men like Obama.

And the colon exam exposed him to radiation "while likely providing no benefit to his care," she wrote in an editorial in the medical journal. Obama's experience "is multiplied many times over" at a huge financial cost to society, and to patients exposed to potential harms but no benefits.

"People have come to equate tests with good care and prevention," said Redberg, of the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. "Prevention is all the things your mother told you - eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, don't smoke - and we've made it into getting a new test."

This week alone, a New England Journal of Medicine study suggested that too many patients are getting angiograms - invasive imaging tests for heart disease - who don't really need them; and specialists convened by the National Institutes of Health said doctors are too often demanding repeat cesarean deliveries for pregnant women after a first C-section.

Last week, the American Cancer Society cast more doubt on routine PSA tests for prostate cancer. And a few months ago, other groups recommended against routine mammograms for women in their 40s, and for fewer Pap tests looking for cervical cancer.

Experts dispute how much routine cancer screening saves lives. It also sometimes detects cancers that are too slow-growing to cause harm, or has false-positive results leading to invasive but needless procedures - and some risks. Treatment for prostate cancer that may be too slow-growing to be life-threatening can mean incontinence and impotence. Angiograms carry a slight risk for stroke or heart attack.

Not all doctors and advocacy groups agree with the criticism of screening. Many argue that it can improve survival chances and that saving even a few lives is worth the cost of routinely testing tens of thousands of people. ...

(4) Cell Phones: Brain cancer surpasses leukemia as #1 one cancer killer in children

What is the Real Cancer Threat from Cell Phones?

Posted by: Dr. Mercola | May 27 2010

http://emf.mercola.com/sites/emf/archive/2010/5/27/what-is-the-real-cancer-threat-from-cell-phones.aspx

... Cell phones will one day be to the 21st century what cigarettes were to the 20th, and you don’t want to be among the last to learn the truth.

Australia has already seen an increase in pediatric brain cancers of 21 percent in just one decade. This is consistent with studies showing a 40 percent brain tumor increase across the board in Europe and the U.K. over the last 20 years.

Brain cancer has also now surpassed leukemia as the number one cancer killer in children … what else are we waiting for to take action? ...

(5) Half an hour of mobile use a day 'increases brain cancer risk'

A landmark study into the health dangers posed by mobiles has found people who speak on their handset for more than half an hour a day over 10 years are at greater risk of brain cancer.

Published: 9:00AM BST 17 May 2010

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7729676/Half-an-hour-of-mobile-use-a-day-increases-brain-cancer-risk.html

The World Health Organisation's Interphone report, to be published this week, will say that "heavy users" are more at risk of developing glioma tumours.

It concludes that there is no increased risk of developing the disease in other users.

However, the minimum amount of time which researchers designated at heavy use was just 30 minutes a day.

The study also excluded anyone under 30 from its results, prompting scientists to demand further research into the health implications of mobile 'phone technology.

"Today mobile 'phone use has become much more prevalent and it is not unusual for young people to use mobile 'phones for an hour or more a day," said the scientists in a statement.

The project conducted studies in 13 countries, interviewing tumour sufferers and people in good health to see whether their mobile phone use differed. It questioned about 12,800 people between 2000 and 2004.

A spokesman for the Mobile Operators Association has previously indicated that more than 30 scientific reviews had found no adverse health effects.

(6) INDIAN mystic, who goes without without food and water, astounds doctors

From: Tim OSullivan <timos2003z@hotmail.com>Date: 26.05.2010 09:12 AM

The Irish Times - Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Mystic astounds doctors in two-week study

RAHUL BEDI in New Delhi

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0512/1224270207825.html

AN INDIAN mystic aged 83 who claims to have spent seven decades without food or water has astounded a team of military doctors and specialists who observed him for a fortnight.

The 30-odd doctors who monitored Prahlad Jani round the clock with cameras and via closed circuit television at a hospital in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat province said the long-haired and bearded yogi did not eat, drink or go to the toilet during the experiment.

He remained fit, and exhibited no signs of lethargy.

“Jani’s only contact with any kind of fluid was during gargling and bathing periodically during the period,” said G Ilavazahagan, director of India’s Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences, in a statement after the project ended last week.

Military doctors believe Jani’s experience could help soldiers survive longer without food in combat situations, assist astronauts and even save people trapped in natural disasters until help arrives.

During the fortnight-long observation, doctors took scans of Jani’s organs, brain, and blood vessels, in addition to performing tests on his heart, lungs and memory capacity.

“The reports were all in the pre-determined safety range through the observation period,” neurologist Sudhir Shah said, adding that they were still mystified over how he survives.

What the phenomenon is remains a mystery, he declared. “If Jani does not derive energy from food and water, he must be doing that from energy sources around him, sunlight being one,” Dr Shah speculated.

Medical practitioners could not shut their eyes to possibilities of a source of energy other than calories, said the doctor, who had examined Jani previously in 2003 for 10 days. He said Jani’s urine appeared to be reabsorbed by his body after forming in his bladder.

Jani, who claims to be a “breatharian”, living on a “spiritual life force” after being blessed at a young age by a goddess who gave him special powers, has returned to his village near Ambaji in northern Gujarat to resume his routine of yoga and meditation.

His claims have been supported by a local doctor specialising in studies of people claiming supernatural abilities, but others have deemed him a “village fraud”.

India has an ancient tradition of fasting by sadhus – holy men who renounce the world and repair to mountains or forests to dedicate themselves to achieving moksha (salvation), the fourth and final Hindu goal of life through meditation and contemplation.

Many religious sects also fast regularly for days on end without adverse effects, as part of rituals.

(7) Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds

From: WVNS <ummyakoub@yahoo.com> Date: 20.05.2010 09:39 AM

Tuesday 18 May 2010

by: Beverly Bell

http://www.truthout.org/haitian-farmers-commit-burning-monsanto-hybrid-seeds59616

"A new earthquake" is what peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that Monsanto will be donating 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds, some of them treated with highly toxic pesticides. The MPP has committed to burning Monsanto's seeds, and has called for a march to protest the corporation's presence in Haiti on June 4, for World Environment Day.

In an open letter sent May 14, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the executive director of MPP and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP), called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti "a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds ... and on what is left our environment in Haiti."(1) Haitian social movements have been vocal in their opposition to agribusiness imports of seeds and food, which undermines local production with local seed stocks. They have expressed special concern about the import of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

For now, without a law regulating the use of GMOs in Haiti, the Ministry of Agriculture rejected Monsanto's offer of Roundup Ready GMOs seeds. ...

(8) Monsanto designed Senate Bill S510 which makes it illegal to Grow, Share, Trade or Sell Homegrown Food

From: Dr. Gunther Kümel <sapere--aude@web.de> Date: 19.05.2010 02:22 AM

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/paintsville-ky/TU04QDO2GRRBGG3DT

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/s-510-is-hissing-in-the-grass/#more-1828

Senate Bill S510 Makes it illegal to Grow, Share, Trade or Sell Homegrown Food

S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, may be the most dangerous bill in the history of the US. It is to our food what the bailout was to our economy, only we can live without money.

“If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God.”~Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower

It is similar to what India faced with imposition of the salt tax during British rule, only S 510 extends control over all food in the US, violating the fundamental human right to food.

Monsanto says it has no interest in the bill and would not benefit from it, but Monsanto’s Michael Taylor who gave us rBGH and unregulated genetically modified (GM) organisms, appears to have designed it and is waiting as an appointed Food Czar to the FDA (a position unapproved by Congress) to administer the agency it would create — without judicial review — if it passes. S 510 would give Monsanto unlimited power over all US seed, food supplements, food and farming. ...

(9) Monsanto's GMO Corn Linked To Organ Failure, Study Reveals

From: WVNS <ummyakoub@yahoo.com> Date: 09.03.2010 10:40 AM

Sat Mar 6, 2010

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/12/monsantos-gmo-corn-linked_n_420365.html

In a study released by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, analyzing the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers found that agricultural giant Monsanto's GM corn is linked to organ damage in rats.

According to the study, which was summarized by Rady Ananda at Food Freedom, "Three varieties of Monsanto's GM corn - Mon 863, insecticide-producing Mon 810, and Roundup® herbicide-absorbing NK 603 - were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities."

Monsanto gathered its own crude statistical data after conducting a 90-day study, even though chronic problems can rarely be found after 90 days, and concluded that the corn was safe for consumption. The stamp of approval may have been premature, however. ...

(10) Peter Duesberg's scientific purgatory; now credited as right about Cancer

The World’s Most Reviled Genius

Can the scientist who denied the cause of AIDS be trusted to cure cancer?

By Jeneen Interlandi | NEWSWEEK

Published Oct 9, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Oct 19, 2009

http://www.newsweek.com/id/217015

Peter Duesberg has grown accustomed to all of the slights that come with a life in intellectual exile. The 72-year-old molecular biologist no longer expects an invitation to present his research at the big conferences in his field or to meet with any of the scientists who visit the University of California, Berkeley, where he works. Nor is he surprised when his manuscripts are inexplicably rejected. But in an open lecture this past May, when a visiting scientist claimed that practically no one had investigated the role chromosome damage plays in cancer, it was a step too far. Duesberg himself has been hammering away at that very question for years. He's published peer-reviewed papers on the topic, given a recent talk at the National Cancer Institute (his first there in 15 years), even hosted two small conferences of his own. So when the speaker solicited audience feedback, he jumped up immediately. "Excuse me," he said into the microphone. "But I am nobody."

He wasn't always. In the past three decades, Duesberg has been described as a genius, a martyr, and a genocidal lunatic—often by the same person, usually amid the fierce debates and international headlines that come with major scientific breakthroughs. In 1971, at the age of 33, he became the first scientist to identify a cancer-causing gene—a biological holy grail that secured his place among an elite group of the country's top researchers. Tenure at Berkeley and a coveted spot in the National Academy of Sciences followed. So did rumors of a Nobel and millions in grant money from the National Cancer Institute.

Then in 1988, Duesberg broke ranks with his colleagues and postulated that the newly discovered human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) was not the cause of AIDS. Rather, he declared, it was a harmless passenger virus, found by coincidence in patients whose illnesses stemmed from a constellation of other factors including malnutrition and substance abuse. For this, he was summarily cast out of Eden: Grant money evaporated. Graduate students disappeared. Nobel laureates stopped inviting him to dinner. Of course, he might have been forgiven—or at least forgotten—were it not for his consultation with Thabo Mbeki in 2000. When Duesberg advised the South African president not to bother with antiretroviral medication programs (he still believes the drugs are more toxic than the virus), his adversaries say he condemned hundreds of thousands of the world's most vulnerable people to death. Consorting with Mbeki to such disastrous ends fixed Duesberg as more than a mere pariah. From then on, he was Duesberg the mass murderer.

Since then, the fallen hero has toiled in what amounts to scientific purgatory—a smaller lab with private funding where he continues his cancer research. The shadows have proved both a refuge and a prison for Duesberg—freeing him to pursue less conventional ideas, but preventing his colleagues from taking those ideas seriously. His stubbornness has made him one of science's most disturbing paradoxes—a self-avowed outsider searching desperately for a way back in. While he implores his colleagues to open their minds about cancer, he continues to keep his own closed about HIV, insisting still that the virus does not cause AIDS. To honestly evaluate his latest work, we will have to separate science from scientist.

For decades now, researchers have been operating (to the tune of billions of dollars) under the assumption that cancer is the work of oncogenes: human genes that have mutated or viral genes that insert themselves into the host's DNA. According to current dogma, oncogenes cause cells to divide uncontrollably, spurring a cascade of additional mutations that eventually results in a tumor. So far, this hypothesis has led to a number of apparent cul-de-sacs: some faltering attempts at gene-replacement therapy, a growing roster of targeted drugs that work only for some patients (and usually not for very long), and, more recently, the Cancer Genome Atlas—a concerted effort by the National Cancer Institute to sequence the genomes of 10,000 tumor samples, described by more than a few insiders as a colossal waste of time and money.

Duesberg has a different hypothesis. According to him, tumors are created not by the accumulation of individual mutations, but by wholesale changes in the structure and arrangement of a cell's chromosomes. "It's the difference between changing a couple of words in a sentence and ripping the entire set of encyclopedias apart," he says. The upheaval is so great that a tumor effectively constitutes a new species—one that grows like a parasite inside its host. Duesberg says that characterizing these upheavals is the best way to understand how cancer begins. Two decades into his scientific exile, some scientists think he might actually be on to something. Something big enough to change the way we look at cancer.

The defining trait of any given species—the thing that distinguishes it from all other species—is not so much its genetic code as its karyotype: the number and size of chromosomes into which that code is organized. Humans and cats and worms all share numerous genes in common, but each has a different karyotype: cats have a total of 38 chromosomes, worms 12. And with a few rare exceptions, humans have two copies each of 23 different chromosomes. Cells that deviate significantly from this blueprint—by making five copies of one chromosome, for example, or only one copy of another—usually die pretty quickly. But sometimes, Duesberg says, a cell will chance upon a new karyotype that doesn't kill it. These cells are called aneuploid, and they tend to grow and divide in rapid and unstable fashion. Eventually, he says, they evolve into something that can grow uncontrollably anywhere in the body.

It turns out that almost all solid tumors are aneuploid, and this little-examined fact may have implications for the way some cancers are diagnosed and treated. For example, the karyotypes of prostate and cervical tumors can be used to predict whether a given lesion is likely to become malignant, and thus help determine whether surgery is warranted. Swedish doctors are beginning to make use of this information, but aneuploidy receives little attention in the U.S., where the vast majority of funding still goes toward oncogene research. Part of the problem may be entrenched viewpoints that hinder innovation. But another problem may be Duesberg himself.

For five minutes, at least, the embattled scientist can be charming. When I met him at the Caffe Strada just a few blocks east of Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue, he rode up on an old -Schwinn, gave me a hug, and bought me a scone. He is loquacious and grandfatherly. He has bright blue eyes, a warm smile and a thick German accent that makes him endearingly difficult to understand. It's at 10 minutes that he begins to betray himself. In explaining the impact chromosome changes can have on health, he lumps being a woman and having Down syndrome into the same category. "One happens when you add an extra copy of chromosome 21, and the other," he says, half joking, "when you take away the Y chromosome and put an X in its place; you lose all the IQ genes." He calls black people Schwarzes, and gay people homos, and as an example of how evolution can go awry, he compares Nobel laureate James Watson to E. coli. His assistant, Josh Nicholson, describes these constant gaffes as fingernails-on-a-blackboard irksome. "But he's not racist," Nicholson says. "He's just from a different era, when people actually talked like that."

In fact, Duesberg grew up during World War II, a Catholic in Nazi Germany. Both parents were prominent doctors; his father volunteered as a medic in the Nazi Army to avoid being forced into the Nazi political party. And Allied forces firebombed his house one Christmas Eve while his family huddled in a shelter. He recalls his formative years fondly, but it's clear that that time still hangs over him: in casual conversation, Duesberg repeatedly refers to the war, the Holocaust, and the idea of being a "good German"—almost always in some comparison to his current situation. Being cast out of the mainstream, for example, is like being herded onto a train by the Gestapo, never to be seen again.

At Berkeley, Duesberg has long since been relegated to the small, cluttered corner of a decaying building, where he and Nicholson have done their best to conduct research on a shoestring. For a recent series of tumor experiments, Nicholson bought mice from a pet shop in downtown Berkeley and snuck them into the lab. (Lab animals are supposed to be housed in a separate veterinarian-run animal facility, and only by investigators who have obtained the necessary approvals, but all of that costs money.) Campus officials found them out halfway through the six-month project. Despite Duesberg's pleas to let them finish up, the mice were confiscated and killed. The data were lost. "We are the pauper scientists," he says, recalling the incident. "Always begging on our knees. Ever since HIV."

In truth, Duesberg had marked himself as an iconoclast even before the discovery of HIV. He came to Berkeley in 1964, after finishing his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Frankfurt. Back then, scientists still believed that yet-to-be-discovered viruses were the root cause of all cancers, and Duesberg quickly joined the likes of David Baltimore and Robert Gallo in the hunt for these viruses. Duesberg was the first to score a win. He sequenced the entire genome of RSV—a chicken virus believed to trigger tumor growth—and identified the offending gene, called src, which was thought to cause rapid, unchecked cell growth when it inserted itself into the host genome. Soon after, Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus found an analogous src gene in human cells that, when mutated, did the same as the viral form of the gene. Almost immediately, the tribe of cancer researchers split into two factions: one continued searching for cancer viruses; the other turned its attention to human oncogenes. Duesberg had already begun to suspect that neither was the smoking gun.

For starters, some known carcinogens like arsenic and asbestos did not seem to cause mutations. On top of that, no single mutation was enough to turn a normal cell cancerous. Over the years, researchers have accounted for this by expanding the list of required mutations. In breast cancer alone, some 250 mutations are now thought to play a role. But several researchers have noted that a cell's chances of hitting on the exact combination of required mutations would make cancer a rare event, not a common disease.

In his quest for another instigator, Duesberg stumbled upon aneuploidy, something almost all tumors had in common. The aneuploidy nature of cancer was no secret—German scientist Theodor Boveri first noted it in 1914—but it had long since been written off as a consequence of cancer, not a cause. In 1984 Duesberg began to question this presumption. Doing so meant trivializing two decades' worth of his own oncogene research, but he says that was fine by him. "Science is a game," he says." And I was prepared to lose." But just as he was fleshing out his new hypothesis, a mystery epidemic seized the nation; the towns and cities surrounding Berkeley's campus were at its very epicenter.

Duesberg concocted his AIDS hypothesis in the frenetic early days of the epidemic, when the balance of evidence had not yet tipped in favor of HIV. At first, he proceeded along perfectly respectable avenues of inquiry—mapping out the epidemic use of poppers, a nitrite drug that had become a cheap and popular way of getting high—and showing that it correlated strongly with the AIDS epidemic. His results were published in Science and Nature, and for a brief moment it appeared that his hypothesis was at least plausible.

But as a consensus formed around HIV as the cause of AIDS, Duesberg refused to budge. He clung to the outliers: HIV-positive patients who never developed full-blown AIDS, and patients with all the symptoms of AIDS but no detectable HIV. When his colleagues offered potential explanations for each, he challenged their interpretations of the data. Before long, the so-called golden boy had alienated himself from all but a few friends. "He was irritating too many people at once," says George Miklos, an Australian scientist who helped map the human genome. "He was challenging the HIV work and raising all these uncomfortable questions about oncogenes. Nobody wanted to hear it. So they wrote him off as crazy."

Experts who have followed Duesberg's career say he is not so much crazy as pathologically stubborn. "He is like a big-game fisher who loves the fight too much," says Seth Kalichman, a social psychologist whose recent book on HIV-deniers included a whole chapter on Duesberg. "He's destined to lose because he won't give any slack. It's tragic because he's clearly a brilliant thinker and could have had much more to offer." While it's clear that Duesberg craves a return to respectability, he refuses to cede any ground to his adversaries. "If you go on your knees," he says, "then they say, 'We knew you were wrong all along—now you've admitted it!' "

In recent years, cancer researchers have begun to take up the questions that Duesberg laid out 25 years ago—reexamining the role of aneuploidy and other forms of chromosome instability in tumor formation, and figuring out how they tie into the mutation model. "The relative contribution of each is now one of the biggest questions in cancer," says Thomas Ried, a scientist at the National Cancer Institute who recently invited Duesberg to present his aneuploidy research.

But even as some of his ideas rise to the top, Duesberg himself remains stuck at the bottom. Few scientists who have turned their attention to aneuploidy bother to cite Duesberg's work. His lab is down to its last $50,000, and this past year Berkeley officials relieved him of his only remaining teaching duty. Even some scientists who don't agree with Duesberg say that he has been treated unfairly. "The ideological assassinations that he has undergone will remain an embarrassing testament to the reactionary tendencies of modern science," Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, wrote in 1996.

Duesberg's old life still haunts him at every turn. At an opera this past spring, he spotted Jay Levy, a friend from the good old days who has since become a laboratory director and lead HIV researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. "I called over to him, and I think at first he was trying to pretend he didn't hear me," Duesberg says. "And I think he was looking over his shoulder the whole time—afraid someone would see us together." But the two men talked through the intermission, mostly about the fun they used to have. "He used to throw these fantastic parties," says Duesberg. They also talked science, sparring a bit over Levy's latest work on latent HIV infection. Recalling the evening weeks later, Duesberg admits that he misses his old friends and the intellectual rigor of their exchanges. "The whole dissident idea attracts a lot of crazies," he says, his voice trailing off into a sigh. "And then all of a sudden, without realizing it, you've become one of them."

(11) Obesity: Fast Food chains peddle killer combination of salt, fat and sugar

Obesity: The killer combination of salt, fat and sugar

Our favourite foods are making us fat, yet we can't resist, because eating them is changing our minds as well as bodies

David A Kessler

The Guardian, Saturday 13 March 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/13/obesity-salt-fat-sugar-kessler

For years I wondered why I was fat. I lost weight, gained it back, and lost it again – over and over and over. I owned suits in every size. As a former commissioner of the FDA (the US Food and Drug Administration), surely I should have the answer to my problems. Yet food held remarkable sway over my behaviour.

The latest science seemed to suggest being overweight was my destiny. I was fat because my body's "thermostat" was set high. If I lost weight, my body would try to get it back, slowing down my metabolism till I returned to my predetermined set point.

But this theory didn't explain why so many people, in the US and UK in particular, were getting significantly fatter. For thousands of years, human body weight had stayed remarkably stable. Millions of calories passed through our bodies, yet with rare exceptions our weight neither rose nor fell. A perfect biological system seemed to be at work. Then, in the 80s, something changed.

Three decades ago, fewer than one Briton in 10 was obese. One in four is today. ...

"Higher sugar, fat and salt make you want to eat more." I had read this in scientific literature, and heard it in conversations with neuroscientists and psychologists. But here was a leading food designer, a Henry Ford of mass-produced food, revealing how his industry operates. To protect his business, he did not want to be identified, but he was remarkably candid, explaining how the food industry creates dishes to hit what he called the "three points of the compass".

Sugar, fat and salt make a food compelling. They stimulate neurons, cells that trigger the brain's reward system and release dopamine, a chemical that motivates our behaviour and makes us want to eat more. Many of us have what's called a "bliss point", at which we get the greatest pleasure from sugar, fat or salt. Combined in the right way, they make a product indulgent, high in "hedonic value".

During the past two decades, there has been an explosion in our ability to access and afford what scientists call highly "palatable" foods. By palatability, they don't just mean it tastes good: they are referring primarily to its capacity to stimulate the appetite. Restaurants sit at the epicentre of this explosion, along with an ever-expanding range of dishes that hit these three compass points. Sugar, fat and salt are either loaded into a core ingredient (such as meat, vegetables, potato or bread), layered on top of it, or both. Deep-fried tortilla chips are an example of loading – the fat is contained in the chip itself. When it is smothered in cheese, sour cream and sauce, that's layering.

It is not just that fast food chains serve food with more fat, sugar and salt, or that intensive processing virtually eliminates our need to chew before swallowing, or that snacks are now available at any time. It is the combination of all that, and more.

Take Kentucky Fried Chicken. My source called it "a premier example" of putting more fat on our plate. KFC's approach to battering its food results in "an optimised fat pick-up system". With its flour, salt, MSG, maltodextrin, sugar, corn syrup and spice, the fried coating imparts flavour that touches on all three points of the compass while giving the consumer the perception of a bargain – a big plate of food at a good price.

Initially, KFC meals were built around a whole chicken, with a pick-up surface that contained "an enormous amount of breading, crispiness and brownness on the surface. That makes the chicken look like more and gives it this wonderful oily flavour." Over time, the company began to realise there was less meat in a chicken nugget compared with a whole chicken, and a greater percentage of fried batter. But the real breakthrough was popcorn chicken. "The smaller the piece of meat, the greater the percentage of fat pick-up," said the food designer. "Now, we have lots of pieces of a cheaper part of the chicken." The product has been "optimised on every dimension", with the fat, sugar and salt combining with the perception of good value virtually to guarantee consumer appeal.

He walked me through some offerings at other popular food chains. Burger King's Whopper touched on the three points of the compass – then was altered for further effect. In its first, stripped-down form, the burger was explosively rich in fat, sugar and salt. Then the chain began adding more beef, extra cheese or a layer of bacon. McDonald's broke new ground in another way – by making food available on a whim. "The great growth has been the snacking occasion. You get hungry, you want something, your mind pushes off the reality of what you ought to eat, and you end up picking up a hamburger and a giant soda or french fries."

Next they introduced a high-fat, high-salt morning meal. "They took what they learned from the core lunch and dinner menu, and applied it to breakfast. The sausage McMuffin and the egg McMuffin are stand-ins for the hamburger. In effect, you are eating a morning hamburger." ...

(12) Electroshock still being used in Psychiatry

From: Gary Kohls <gkohls@cpinternet.com> Date: 17.02.2010 12:10 AM

Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter # 389

Think They Don’t Electroshock People Anymore?

Think Again–Even toddlers and pregnant women are being shocked

By Dr. John Breeding, author of The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses

http://waronyou.com/topics/think-they-don%E2%80%99t-electroshock-people-anymore-think-again%E2%80%93even-toddlers-and-pregnant-women-are-being-shocked/

Ask the average person about the use of electroshock treatment in today’s society and 9 out of 10 will respond, “They still shock people?”

They do. It’s estimated that more than 100,000 Americans are electroshocked each year; half are 60 and older, and two-thirds are women. In Australia, it was recently revealed that psychiatrists had electroshocked 55 toddlers age four and younger. In the UK, three year olds have been brutalized with it. And one of the country’s leading mental health “patients’ rights” groups—the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI)—recently endorsed the use of electroshock on pregnant women. One would wonder why a patients’ rights group would endorse such an obviously harmful procedure if not for the fact that the group has recently been exposed as a major front for the psycho/pharmaceutical industry.

The FDA reports pregnant women miscarrying following ECT, while studies show that in addition to the risk of death, the fetus can suffer malnutrition, dehydration and violent injury. Electroshocking children, pregnant women and the unborn is tantamount to torture and should not only be banned but those administering it prosecuted. ...

(13) Niall McLaren: Psychiatry can't take criticism - biological model of psychiatry will unravel

From: Max <Max@mailstar.net> Date: 28.03.2010 09:50 AM

http://18thoutlawpsychiatry.blogspot.com/

AN AUSTRALIAN PSYCHIATRIST EXPOSING PSYCHIATRY IN AUSTRALIA

by Justice Lover

http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/whats-wrong-with-psychiatry-a-psychiatrist-explains/blog-287623/

I invite the reader to follow the link below to a very recent video by an Australian psychiatrist. Here is the inroduction to the video :

"Dr. Niall McLaren, an Australian practicing psychiatrist for 22 years, explains what is wrong with the psychiatric profession: That it cannot/will not take criticism, for fear the entire model of biological psychiatry will unravel.

That there is no science to psychiatric diagnoses, no brain based diseases. And that psychiatry only pushes mental disorders as biological disease in order to convince people to take psychiatric drugs, causing a host of dangerous side effects." ==

http://www.wbpublicity.com.au/nm/psych.htm

News release from Dr Niall McLaren

Attention: Editor 26/7/08 psych 1

Doctor calls for reform of psychiatric practices

Australian psychiatrist Niall McLaren is calling for his profession to change its "theory of mind" to stop doctors from misdiagnosing patients and oversubscribing drugs.

Dr McLaren says that many psychiatrists have adopted a "pseudoscientific biopsychosocial" theory which often leads them to misdiagnose adults and children and prescribe inappropriate drugs with debilitating side effects.

He has written and published a book to explain his own "biocognitive" theory of mind as an alternative and has presented this theory to academic audiences in the United States.

His book titled "Humanizing Madness: Psychiatry and the Cognitive Neurosciences" was first published in 2007.

This year he has lectured on his theory at Florida State University, Duke University in North Carolina, University of Michigan, and Wayne State University in Michigan.

He also talked with staff of the National Institute of Health in Washington, DC.

Dr McLaren is a psychiatrist in Darwin, Northern Territory.

He was head of the department of psychiatry at the Repatriation Hospital in Perth for five years before becoming the regional psychiatrist for the Kimberley Health Region from 1987 to 1993.

Dr McLaren says that his unconventional views over the years have placed him at odds with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP), which is the governing body of psychiatrists in the two countries.

He says, "Most psychiatrists accept that mental disease just is brain disease, that mental symptoms are nothing more than brain illnesses manifest in a particular way.

"Consequently, they think the proper way of relieving these peculiar symptoms is to correct an underlying disturbance of brain function using physical treatments such as drugs, electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) or even brain surgery.

"Thus a depressed person who sees a psychiatrist will almost certainly be told: 'You have a chemical imbalance of the brain, and these antidepressant tablets will cure you.'

He says, "If the depression does not get better, the patient may well be admitted to hospital for a course of ECT.

"It seems all very rational but it is all very wrong.

"This type of biological psychiatry should be but a small part of a larger treatment program in which human mentality takes priority," he says.

The College of Psychiatrists in Australia has endorsed what they call the biopsychosocial model, an integrated understanding of the biological, psychological and social aspects of mental health problems.

"They adopted this model after the collapse of the classic models of psychoanalysis, biologism and behaviorism," he says.

Dr McLaren says, "Most Australasian psychiatrists accept the biopsychosocial model as the central intellectual element in their field, or as a definition of the discipline itself.

"Historically, the model derives from a series of papers written by the American psychiatrist George Engel, starting in 1960.

"It is a matter of public fact that, while George Engel outlined a place for a new model and even devised a name for it, he never wrote it. That is to say it is false to state that there exists any model, theory, approach, intellectual context or frame which could meaningfully be called biopsychosocial.

"There is nothing in Engel's papers which in any way qualifies as a scientific model, theory, plan, exposition or anything of the sort."

Dr McLaren says, "This means that the work the college accepts as the theoretical basis for our existence as a separate specialty of medicine is illusory.

"After reviewing in my book the main theories used in modern psychiatry," he says, "I conclude that eclectic psychiatry is a pseudoscientific myth.

Dr McLaren says, "My biocognitive model is totally different. It states that the mind has two irreducibly mental components, cognition and conscious experience, which together account for the whole of mental life.

"It allows us to rely on known principles of physically based data processing in accounting for the ability of the mind to make the near infinite decisions on which daily life is based," he says.

"The biocognitive model is diametrically opposed to the biological approach that has gained the ascendancy in psychiatry over the past 25 years.

"Biocognition is wholly and irreducibly a mentalist account of human behavior, yet it is firmly based in the physical structure of the brain," he says. ...