More Proof the FDA Protects Big Pharma and Other Special Interests, Not Your Health

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has long been in the pockets of Big Pharma and other special interests opposed to the public’s right to access non-drug-based health care methods of their choice. Sadly, however, most people today believe that the FDA lives up to its mandate to protect them. While there are certainly many dedicated and conscientious scientists and researchers employed by the FDA who are attempting to do just that, their efforts are often thwarted at the FDA’s administration level, due to the cozy and incestuous relationship between FDA higher ups, including many of its commissioners, past and present, and the special interest groups the FDA is charged with regulating.

What follows are two recent examples of the FDA’s abuse of its power at the expense of we the people who fund its operations with our tax dollars. The first was forwarded to me by my friend Dr. Garry Gordon, who wrote: “This is sad. We find out that the Commissioner of FDA was a director of Henry Schein, a major supplier of amalgam to the dentists. She has chosen to protect her stock value and ignore the mercury health risk to children.”

FDA’s Sharfstein Covers Up Mercury-Neurological Harm Nexus (6 August 2009)

FDA Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein has given his seal of approval to major mercury exposure for millions of America’s children and unborn children – and to covering up both the neurological risks and the flawed rulemaking process.

Despite admitting that amalgam causes mercury exposure -- and despite knowing that mercury causes neurological harm to developing brains -- Sharfstein rejects putting on contraindications for amalgam, rejects putting on warnings on amalgam and even rejects a requirement that dentists tell patients that amalgam is mainly mercury.

Sharfstein even withdraws FDA’s website warning that dental mercury can cause permanent neurological harm to children and unborn children. Sharfstein’s rule actually says FDA wants to stop a decline in amalgam sales. At Joshua Sharfstein’s FDA, commerce trumps safety.

When the Republicans ran FDA, to their real credit, they put this warning on the FDA website: “Dental amalgams contain mercury, which may have neurotoxic effects on the nervous systems of developing children and fetuses.” Upon assuming power, the Democrats withdrew this warning, covering up the fact that mercury from amalgam causes permanent harm to young children and kills unborn babies. Is this the change we Americans voted for?

Washington is famous for the revolving door -- those in the party out of power takes highly paid corporate positions, then returns to government to bail out their benefactors. The new FDA Commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, worked in the Clinton Administration, then went out and became a director at the dental products colossus Henry Schein, earning a quarter million dollars a year for the handful of hours it takes to be a director. Corporations do this because they know the other party will return to power, at which time the corporations will call in their chits.

Upon becoming Commissioner, Dr. Hamburg owned between $250,000 and $500,000 of Henry Schein stock. Certainly the Harvard-educated Hamburg knew the amalgam rule had the potential to affect her stock value. She could have done the right thing -- recuse herself from the rule. Instead, she worked on the rule for a while, then recused herself gradually, first by “deciding not to participate,” then finally “recusing.” Certainly her next-in-command, Deputy Commissioner, Joshua Sharfstein got the message that there was more at stake than good government.

On what date did Hamburg sell her Schein stock? What work did Hamburg do on the rule before she recused herself? What work did she do protecting amalgam from regulators while at Schein? Through her lawyer, Hamburg refuses to answer any of these questions. Ironically, Sharfstein heads a new a FDA “transparency task force.” A perfect first project would be to expose the Hamburg-Henry Schein links.

Joshua Sharfstein had the opportunity to protect children from amalgam, to save unborn babies and nursing babies from mercury exposure, and to warn us all that amalgam exposes us to toxic mercury. He came to Washington as a child advocate, but changed his stripes once he saw the revolving door game in action. Throwing his reputation out the window, Joshua Sharfstein chose to ally with the amalgam industry and cover up the mercury, turning his back on the children of America.

Just as Margaret Hamburg has embarrassed President Obama for bringing back revolving-door government, Joshua Sharfstein has embarrassed the President for deciding not to reduce the use of mercury in oral health care. If ever a President entered office as an inalterable opponent of mercury, it is Barack Obama, who wrote a law banning mercury exports and who is working for a treaty to phase out man-made mercury by a date certain. But at FDA, his appointee Sharfstein is sabotaging the President’s policies by hiding the mercury from Americans and hence keeping amalgam sales going into the indefinite future.

FDA doesn’t even defend its rule on the science. FDA admits it does not know if mercury fillings are safe for children six and under, or for nursing mothers whose mercury goes through the breast milk, or for pregnant women whose dental mercury No, it’s not science -- it’s about commerce. FDA wants Americans to keep buying amalgam.

The children of America have lost. Another generation will be mercury toxic.

Need further evidence on who won? Just yesterday (Aug. 5), Henry Schein’s CEO Stanley Bergman offered this salute to Dr. Hamburg:

“I would like to extend on behalf of the company, our Board and our shareholders our sincere thanks to Dr. Margaret Hamburg, who has served as the Director of Henry Schein Company's Board since 2003. Dr. Hamburg left our Board following her confirmation as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. We would like to thank Dr. Hamburg for the insight she shared with the Henry Schein Board throughout the years and wish her continued success.”

Hamburg claims she broke her ties with Schein three months ago. But Schein’s CEO issues his thank-you the day after the FDA rule was published in the Federal Register. Margaret Hamburg may not be in the hip pocket of Henry Schein Inc, but Schein’s CEO sure thinks she is. And he has the evidence to show it: a rule that allows Schein to sell amalgam to anyone, a rule that covers up the mercury, a rule that contains propaganda to be used by Schein to defend against the upcoming class action suits.

FDA bans mercury in all veterinary products. The new FDA, under Margaret Hamburg and her Sancho Panza, Joshua Sharfstein, have decided that children don’t merit the protection FDA gives horses and dogs.

The Washington bigshots have direct access to Joshua Sharfstein. So should you: his e-address is JMSharf1@fda.hhs.gov Why not write him yourself? Talking points follow:

Questions to consider asking Deputy Commissioner Sharfstein

(1) Dr Sharfstein, why, under your rule, are children less important than horses and dogs when it comes to mercury exposure?

(2) Why did you Democrats withdraw FDA’s website warning that dental mercury can cause neurological harm to children and unborn children, which the Republican Commissioner agreed to last year?

(3) Will your new “transparency task force” disclose the details of your boss’s ties with Henry Schein, or will she be allowed to cover it up like you cover up the risks of ental mercury?

(4) Does President Obama know that you approved a rule that will keep Americans from learning that amalgam is mainly mercury, and does the President know about Commissioner Hamburg’s conflict of interest with Henry Schein?

Charles G. Brown, National Counsel
Consumers for Dental Choice
www.toxicteeth.org

This next item was sent to me by Deborah A. Ray, MT of the American Association for Health Freedom, an organization I strongly support. (To find out more about AAHF, visit www.healthfreedom.net.)

FDA Attacks Natural Thyroid Millions Depend On

We have learned that Time-Cap Labs, producer of a generic version of the brand name drug Armour, a natural and bioidentical thyroid replacement, has been ordered by the FDA to stop production. The FDA has decided to classify the company’s product, available for over a century, as an unapproved new drug. Since the new drug approval process is prohibitively expensive for a non-patentable substance, the FDA is in effect banning the natural product. The purpose? Presumably to protect the profits of other, inferior drugs that have been FDA approved.

According to statistics by the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and other medical organizations, approximately twenty-seven million Americans have a thyroid disorder. Thyroid consumer advocate Mary Shomon projects that 2 million of these patients take either Armour Thyroid or a generic equivalent.

Armour and other "whole" natural thyroid preparations (including Westhroid and Nathroid as well as Time-Cap Lab’s Thyroid) are bio-identical, complete hormone preparations, containing "T4" "T3" "T2" and "T1" in the same proportions made by the human thyroid.

The FDA approved preparations Synthroid (T4), Cytomel (T3), and Levethyroxine (T4) include bio-identical molecules, but are not complete or totally bio-identical as they do not contain "T2" or "T1". It’s no wonder so many people feel much better with the balanced natural products that have been available for generations.

As famed physician Dr. Jonathan Wright observes: “Natural thyroid has never killed or severely harmed anyone since first use in the 1890s, prior to the FDA itself. It is a mainstay not only in the treatment of hypothyroidism but also in ‘healthy aging’ therapy. That the FDA should even be its thinking of requiring a new drug approval for a safe, 100 plus year old natural treatment is outrageous.”

We will report further as soon as we confirm more of the facts, and as always, we’ll let you know how you can get involved.

And It's The Same Story in Hong Kong

More than half of health care workers surveyed in Hong Kong said they would refuse to be vaccinated against swine flu, according to a study released Wednesday.

Fear of side effects and doubts as to efficacy were the two main reasons cited, said the study, published online by the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

UK Doctors and Nurses Refuse To Take New Swine Flu Vaccine

More than half of doctors and a third of nurses in the UK say they would not take the new swine flu vaccine when it becomes available this autumn.

They are concerned that the vaccine may not be safe, as it will not have been thoroughly tested, and it may not work. They also feel that swine flu is a more benign virus than early reports suggested.

A survey of 216 family doctors has discovered that nearly 60 per cent would refuse to have the vaccine – even though they are considered ‘front line’ workers who should be protected – and a third of 1,500 nurses polled also said they would not want to be vaccinated.

The public also has its reservations, a study in a Canadian journal has found. It would take a big PR campaign to convince them to have the vaccine, researchers found.

(Source: The Guardian, 25 August 2009).

Larry Flynt Tells It Like It Is

This is a must read editorial:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-flynt/common-sense-2009_b_264706.html

Connecting the Dots: Swine Flu, Global Warming, Goldman Sachs

As the media continues to bombard us with fear-laden stories about swine flu, global warming, the economic downturn, etc, I’ve become increasingly aware of the very same underlying theme behind such stories that writer Steven Grant outlines below. This is taken from his most recent column, Permanent Damage, which appears each Wednesday at www.comicbookresources.com (yes, I’m an avid fan of comic books, but I primarily read Steven’s column because of his insightful views on world events). I was planning to write a piece about what Steven discusses myself, but he did such a cogent, intelligent job of it that I’m sharing his version instead. Here it is:

“Back in the real world, all kinds of interesting and bizarre things seem to be going on. The new swine flu continues to generate urgency and panic, mostly among governments and news agencies, with several European and American state governments gearing up for mandatory vaccinations (for anyone who doesn't voluntarily get one, of course, so they can maintain the illusion that vaccinations are voluntary), and various members of the federal government have been putting forth the idea that mandatory vaccine shots are entirely Constitutional, suggesting the Feds are considering it as well. Meanwhile, the virus seems not to be cooperating very well in the production of sufficient volume of vaccine (everyone needs two shots, apparently), and levels aren't rising fast enough for interested parties' tastes. There's also much talk of bypassing FDA testing and approval procedures – emergency, you know – to speed delivery, while exempting vaccine manufacturers from lawsuit in the event vaccines. (There are several different ones being made by different companies, all of them qualifying as experimental at best.) While such exemptions are fairly standard, historically swine flu vaccines have done more harm than good, as in 1976, when public outcry forced the government to abandon vaccinations after deaths and the paralyzing Guillain-Barré syndrome were connected to the vaccinations.

That year swine flu came and went without much widespread effect.

What makes this year's version interesting isn't so much the flu itself – the deaths associated with it so far appear to only result in people with already seriously compromised immune systems, meaning that in symptom and effect it's pretty much like any other flu – but that the promotion of a vaccine has followed almost exactly on the 1976 script, with dire warnings that, after a very mild spring and summer as far as flu cases go, it will mutate and return with a vengeance in the fall. But why are they so sure it will mutate, and if it does, why so sure it'll mutate into a devastating variety? A slew of contradictory messages from the World Health Organization hasn't helped much. News that they're "tweaking" the virus, ostensibly to help antivirus manufacture, comes on the heels of news they're investigating reports the flu is man-made, in labs in, of all places, my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where samples of the horrific 1918 Spanish flu drawn a couple years ago from a frozen Inuit corpse of that era have been experimented with. (A genetic similarity of the "Mexican" flu, as it's called in Europe, to the Spanish flu is the legitimate concern in all this.) Meanwhile, WHO also quietly (or, rather, barely) announced they will no longer tally swine flu-related deaths. No reason was given, but the implication is clear: there aren't enough deaths to support the hysteria campaigns surrounding the flu.

But in England, at least, flu fever rages on, as it was revealed that Tony Blair's wife contracted the dastardly bug. The message spread far and wide by Britain's media was that even the families of the famous and powerful

That this should come at a moment when other European nations are facing their own populace resistance to immunizations and when Blair is openly politicking with the EU to effectively become president of Europe makes for... interesting timing.

Thrown into this mish-mash is Goldman-Sachs, the brokerage firm that recently infuriated the nation by posting massive profits and huge bonuses for their latest quarter after cheerfully soaking up billions in government aid after pleading impending financial disaster following last year's sub-prime crash and its fallout. Hidden for most amid all that outrage is that Goldman-Sachs is suing a former employee who allegedly stole proprietary software that a judge declared can be used to manipulate the entire market.

Aside from its status as an old and venerated investment firm with strong ties to the government (not to mention the Russians), what guarantee do we have that Goldman-Sachs hasn't been using their software to manipulate the stock market? Would they have developed this software without intent to use it? Considering the profits they seem to have cobbled together while all around them in investments are holding on for dear life. We can "blame" everything on the free market, but manipulation and free market forces are often hard to distinguish in the moment, as in the 2002 California energy crisis (from which the West has never really recovered – its effects went well beyond California – and which greatly contributed to California's current economic crisis) that was originally chalked up to "market forces" but turned out to be the work of an energy cartel rigging prices.

What ties all this together is a meme that I ran across four times while flipping channels in the last week. (Sorry, they came and went too fast to have noted references.) Russia's President Medvedev, talking to member of the EU, brought up the possibility of a world government. Discussing last October's financial collapse and the ongoing international financial crisis, a financial guru on CNBC announced another, worse financial crisis will hit within six months (he didn't specify its nature) and the only way to deal with or prevent these financial crises is a single world government – he called it crucial and necessary - with the power to control all currencies and regulate all financial transactions. A health official (not sure if he was CDC or some other organization) suggested that the current swine flu may only be the first of many "superbugs" facing us in this century and that the most effective way to deal with the impending threat is a world government that can act unilaterally to combat them. Someone promoting Al Gore's global warming agenda (which has been taking some pretty severe hits lately, seemingly making many who've warmed to Gore's ideas even more determined to enact a sweeping anti-global warming program ASAP) was lauding the virtues of the "carbon credits" idea being shoved through Congress at the moment and stated the best way to ensure carbon credits were being traded fairly (though, it should be mentioned, Gore owns the trading system and would personally profit on every trade) and keep it from becoming another bubble/bust in the making is – say it with me now – a world government overseeing the whole thing.

I'm not exactly a John Bircher, but when the same thing is mentioned in this many different contexts in such a short space of time, something's in the air, or something's in the water. What gives? The wider context most of them share is the concept of imminent and critical necessity - the same premise for the Iraq War, and while I'm generally in line with global warning crew some of them are getting pretty damn scary in a Robespierre kind of way. Anyway, in the midst of all this, it suddenly came to me what Al Gore really wants with this whole carbon credits sideshow. (The basic translation of carbon credits: you can still pollute and burn energy as much as you want, as long as you buy someone off.)

He wants to be the first President Of Earth. (Take that, land that robbed him of his triumph in 2000!)

These are the questions I'd like answered: why is everyone talking one-world government in passing all of a sudden? Why is that suddenly supposed to be the answer to all crises? Should we ever make decisions based on crisis necessity, since the tools clearly exist to generate any crisis necessary, whether political, economic, environmental or medical? And if Blair, Gore & Medvedev duke it out to be first president of the world, can we make it a cage match?

(Note: No Fox News program, personality or source was consulted in the writing of this piece.)” are not safe from the bug… What was severely downplayed in the reports was her relatively mild incapacitation – was there ever a moment when she seemed anywhere near death? – and that neither Tony nor their children (so far) contracted the flu. So how contagious is it, really?

Copyright © 2009 by Steven Grant. All rights reserved.)

All I will add to Steven’s comments is that I personally believe that the agenda for a one-world government has been in the works since at least the dawn of the 20^th century, and that things have slowly but inexorably moving in that direction primarily due to the increasingly intrusive control of government in our lives under the guise of social services and national security.Additionally, I do not believe the official stories about swine flu, global warming, or the economy. My view is that they are all media manipulations in service of an elite agenda.

World Health Org Still Beating the Swine Flu Drum

The Associated Press reports today that Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) now believes that the swine flu (H1N1) outbreak "appears to have reached pandemic proportions." Chan intends to make a conference call to government leaders around the world tomorrow once she obtains "indisputable evidence." Currently, WHO states that swine flu has affected 26,563 people in 73 countries and caused 140 deaths.

Whoa, stop the presses. What an emergency. Far less than one percent of everyone who develops swine flu dies!

As far as I'm concerned, this is more fear-mongering by WHO, happily spread by a very compliant and ill-informed media.

Tomorrow, be on the lookout for calls from WHO and others for more vaccines (possibly mandatory), etc.

What will not be mentioned, should such calls occur, is the inherent risks such vaccines have, and the far greater percentage of deaths they are likely to cause.

As always, your best protection is to be informed and educate yourself because you simply cannot trust the media to ask the right questions or provide the best answers.

NYC Swine Flu Death

It's now being reported that Mitchell Wiener, an assistant principal of a high school in Queens, NY died of swine flu yesterday. Previously, when he was hospitalized last week, NY's Mayor Michael Bloomberg was quoted in the NY Post as saying that Mr. Wiener had "a pre-exisiting" health condition. As far as I've been able to find, now word of what that pre-existing condition has been stated in the media. Instead, we are being told simply that swine flu killed Mr. Wiener.

But did it?

Before that question can be answered, the following questions must also be asked:

What was Mr. Wiener's pre-exisiting condition?

How long did he have it (from the pictures of him now appearing in the media, neither he nor his wife look healthy and both are overweight)?

While hospitalized, was he exposed to infectious bacteria and/or viruses? (Hospitals are notorious for being breeding grounds for such infectious agents; as a result, many people in the US each year die from infections that they did not have prior to being hospitalized.)

What was Mr. Wiener's immune status prior to being exposed to H1N1 (swine flu)?

By all accounts, Mr. Wiener was an exemplary educator who went well beyond the call of duty when it came to his job description, and his passing is a tragic loss for all who knew him. But we still do not know for certain whether or not H1N1 was the primary factor in his passing. And even if it was, there is still no call for alarm. Mahy people regularly die from "normal" flu-related causes, too. When they do, it isn't front page news.