humans lived in tribes

"All humans lived in tribes for 99% of our time on earth. The present nuclear family system is only the result of the more natural tribal society being destroyed by kings and emperors who wanted slaves and wanted everyone to depend on their government rather than on one another."

Consumer Beware: Antibiotic Free Meats That Aren't | The Healthy Home Economist

Consumer Beware: Antibiotic Free Meats That Aren't | The Healthy Home Economist:
Wellness information stripped of the ever present, cleverly disguised profit motive that is behind health messages in the media. True Health and Wellness Information that is a Refuge from the Propaganda!
Friday, August 13, 2010

Consumer Beware: Antibiotic Free Meats That Aren't

Reading food labels is a confusing experience for the majority of consumers. This confusion is purposely engineered in many instances to keep consumers guessing and product sales flowing. MSG, for example, hides behind over 50 different labeling names. Overwhelmed consumers are often deceived into buying products loaded with MSG that they would never buy if labeling policies required full disclosure.

This very effective cat and mouse game is also played with other neurotoxins like aspartame (nutrasweet), splenda, neotame and other artificial sweeteners consumers actively attempt to avoid. These pseudo sugars are frequently hidden in sports drinks and other "low carb" fare using the overly broad "natural" or "artificial" flavorings labels that allow food manufacturers to hide the exact names of undesirable chemicals away from the concerned eyes of the consumer.

To avoid undesirable additives, consumers must battle an ever changing landscape of labeling gamesmanship played by food manufacturers that is aided and abetted by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Is Your Meat Truly Free of Antibiotics?

Neurotoxins aren't the only chemicals consumers are trying to avoid in their food. An ever growing segment of the consumer market is seeking meat from animals raised without antibiotics due to concern over the rapid rise of superbugs like MRSA and the ever plummeting age in which young girls are experiencing the onset of puberty - both of which are linked to low dose antibiotics in animal feed.

In Denmark, a ban on the use of antibiotics in animal feed drastically reduced antibiotic resistant infections in people. "The Danish Experiment", a source of pride for the country's 17,000 farmers, provides strong evidence that feeding antibiotics to animals has deadly consequences in humans.

Low dose antibiotics fed to livestock via feed causes them to mature more quickly, and this may be one cause of early development in girls who consume meat and milk produced from such animals.

Just another reason to avoid taking your children to fast food restaurants where the meats are an antibiotic residue pharma fest. Ah, but I digress ....

Antibiotics in drinking water is yet another environmental problem linked to the use of these drugs by agribusiness. A shocking 70% of all antibiotics used in the United States every year is purchased by agribusiness for otherwise healthy livestock!


There's The Rub

Do you want meat from this animal?

Consumers concerned about the problems described above and wishing to avoid antibiotics in their food are falling all over themselves to buy meat and milk from animals not subjected to the daily insult of antibiotics in their feed. As with other undesirables like MSG and aspartame, antibiotics are hiding behind confusing labeling nuances.

According to the USDA (Federal Register, Vol. 67, No. 250; December 30, 2002), a product labeled "Not Fed Antibiotics" or "No Subtherapeutic Antibiotics Used" may actually come from an animal that was given antibiotics for illness or injury. An FDA antibiotic withdrawal period prior to "harvest" (slaughter) to reduce (but not necessarily eliminate) antibiotic residue in the meat must be observed for either of these labels to be used.

Even more vague are meats with the label "No Detectable Antibiotic Residue". Products with this label mean that "a statistical sampling analysis using a science based protocol" was unable to detect any antibiotic residue. In other words, the animals could have been eating antibiotic laced feed for the entire production phase but the farmer simply followed the prescribed FDA withdrawal phase before slaughter. If subsequent "science based" tests failed to find antibiotic residue, the label is permitted.

The best labels for consumers seeking no antibiotic meats at the store are "No Antibiotics Used" or "Raised Without Antibiotics". These labels mean that the animal was raised from birth to slaughter with no antibiotics used at any time.

Best Way to Source Truly Antibiotic Free Meats

Interestingly, the USDA prohibits the label "Antibiotic Free" for some reason. It seems to me that if a consumer wants to source truly antibiotic free meats, it would be best to go to a local farmer where you can familiarize yourself with how the animals are raised and observe production procedures.

I personally feel more comfortable trusting an actual person I've had a conversation with about how the animals are treated in both illness and health than a label that may or may not be accurate or whose semantics has deceived my buying intentions!

*A special thanks to Stanley Fishman, author of Tender Grassfed Meat, for helping me track down the USDA reference material for this article.

Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist

This post is submitted to Fight Back Friday

Picture1 Credit

Picture2 Credit

The Codex, Fluoride, Auschwitz, Monsanto Connection | Farm Wars

The Codex, Fluoride, Auschwitz, Monsanto Connection


By Barbara H. Peterson
Farm Wars
What do Codex Alimentarius with its official food standards, the fluoridation of our water and food supply, genocide at the Auschwitz concentration camp, and Monsanto, the company responsible for genetically altering the world’s food supply all have in common? Is there a connection that binds these seemingly diverse organizations together? Yes, there is. In fact, they are so inextricably bound that separating them is all but impossible.

Let’s start at the beginning with Auschwitz and connect the dots.

Auschwitz
Auschwitz was known for its “network of concentration and extermination camps built and operated in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. It was the largest of the German concentration camps (Wikipedia).”
Auschwitz also had a factory called I. G. Auschwitz:
I.G. Auschwitz, founded in Kattowitz on April 7, 1941, was intended to be the largest chemical factory in Eastern Europe and at the same time a building block in the process of “Germanizing” the region. According to the plan, the production facilities were to supply the Eastern European market with plastics in peacetime, following their use for wartime production. In addition to German skilled workers and forced laborers from all over Europe, increasing numbers of prisoners from the Auschwitz concentration camp were deployed at the gigantic construction site in Auschwitz. In 1942 I.G. Auschwitz built its own corporate concentration camp, Buna/Monowitz. (Wollheim Memorial)
In fact, I.G. Auschwitz was designed from the very first to be an extremely complex chemical factory, producing, besides Buna, high-performance fuels (including aviation gasoline and fuel oil for naval use), various plastics, synthetic fibers, stabilizing agents, resins, methanol, nitrogen, and pharmaceuticals. (Wollheim Memorial)

I.G. Farben, which consisted of BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst (now known as Aventis), owned I.G. Auschwitz. A man called Frits ter Meer was on the I.G. Farben Managing Board from its foundation, and was responsible for I.G. Auschwitz. I. G. Auschwitz had a cozy relationship with the Auschwitz concentration camp, in that it used forced labor of the prisoners to work in its factory, and also used them as guinea pigs.
Under Frits ter Meers direction, I.G. Farben used a fluoridation program to control the population at the Auschwitz concentration camp in any given area through the mass medication of drinking water supplies.“By this method they could control the population in whole areas, reduce population by water medication (fluoride) that would produce sterility in women, and so on.” (ShopUSI)
Frits ter Meer was ultimately convicted at Nuremberg of plundering and slavery, but his sentence was commuted due to friends in high places. Fritz then went on to become one of the architects of the Codex Alimentarius Commission in 1962/3.
Codex Alimentarius
Codex was created by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations (UN). According to the Codex official site:
The Codex Alimentarius Commission was created in 1963 by FAO and WHO to develop food standards, guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme. The main purposes of this Programme are protecting health of the consumers and ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations.(Codex Alimentarius)
The Codex Alimentarius Commission implements the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Program, the purpose of which is to protect the health of consumers and to ensure fair practices in the food trade.(Organic Consumers)
In other words, under the auspices of “protecting the public health and ensuring fair trade practices,” the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Program is implemented by the Codex Alimentarius Commission. The FAO and WHO set the standards, and the Codex Commission implements them. All members of the UN are obligated to comply with these standards.
So, what does Codex have to do with fluoridation, and just how could a mass fluoridation program be implemented without our knowledge or consent under Codex guidelines?
The answer is – WHO has already determined that fluoride should be included in our food and water supply because it is “necessary for public health:”
Many countries that are currently undergoing nutrition transition do not have adequate exposure to fluoride. There should be promotion of adequate fluoride exposure via appropriate vehicles, for example, affordable toothpaste, water, salt and milk. It is the responsibility of national health authorities to ensure implementation of feasible fluoride programmes for their country. Research into the outcome of alternative community fluoride programmes should be encouraged.


Here is the reference document:
Diet, Nutrition, and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases PDF
A 1994 World Health Organization expert committee suggested a level of fluoride from 0.5 to 1.0 mg/L (milligrams per litre) (Wikipedia)
Currently, compliance with WHO’s directive of the fluoridation of water, salt, and milk varies from country to country. Water fluoridation has been introduced by varying degrees in many countries. View each country HERE. An interesting fact to note is that drinking water is not fluoridated in any part of Germany. Is it mere coincidence that one of the founders of the Codex Alimentarius Commission just happened to be in charge of the fluoridation program at Auschwitz, and that Germany is somehow exempt from fluoridation? Or, maybe they know something that we don’t.

The Public Fluoridation Deception
Most are aware of the water fluoridation program that has been foisted upon us as a “treatment for dental disease” and cure for cavities. This is proven propaganda and has been disputed in the EPA’s own documents, which list fluoride as a contaminant, as well as in countless other professional publications. Yet, the mass water fluoridation program continues, causing food and liquids that use this contaminated water to contain fluoride also. According to our own CDC Department of Health and Human Services:
“fluoridated water is diffused throughout the population as residents of non-fluoridated communities increasingly consume foods and beverages processed and bottled in fluoridated communities. Thus, many individuals residing in non-fluoridated communities have benefited from fluoridation policies.”
This is called “Building Capacity to Fluoridate.” (CDC)
So you see, our country is complying with the UN/WHO/FAO/Codex fluoridation policy and we the people don’t even know it. Just like the prisoners at Auschwitz most likely didn’t know that they were being subjected to a fluoridation program and being poisoned with their water until it was too late. If food is produced using fluoridated water, then it contains fluoride. All you have to do is contaminate the water, and the food issue takes care of itself.
The following chart shows just how “in compliance” the U.S. is: Percent of U.S. Population Receiving Fluoride
And if some of you are still wondering if we are really following Codex mandates, wonder no more. Many do not know this, but ‘Codex’ already consists of around 300 official food standards, some of which have been in ‘global effect’ since as long ago as 1966 (Rath Foundation). So it shouldn’t come as a big surprise to find out that fluoridation is just another facet of this program. Here is a list of foods from the Codex Alimentarius site.
The Monsanto Connection
Monsanto, Cargill, BASF, Bayer, and Aventis (or I.G. Farben) are all in partnership under the banner of Crop Science. They are partnered in various ways, such as:
BASF Plant Science and Monsanto to expand their collaboration in maximizing crop yield.
Monsanto, Bayer team up on herbicide tolerance
Mergers and acquisitions
Monsanto and Cargill team up
Monsanto and Cargill are in a 50/50 joint venture partnership. Monsanto makes the seeds, which make the crops, and Cargill makes the fertilizer. Cargill also just happens to be responsible for 70-75% of the hazardous waste hydrofluosilicic acid used in fluoridation programs. (Fluoride Action Network)
The U.S. government considers the basic chemical composition of hydrofluosilicic acid, a toxic waste, and fluoride to be the same when dumped in the water supply:
Due to the obviously intriguing aspect of this “waste disposal policy”, there has naturally been quite a bit of curiosity concerning the safety of this public health practice. Apparently, however, there are no government safety studies currently available on fluosilicic acid. This is because the government is basing their fluoridation policy on the assumption that there is no chemical difference, after dilution into the water supply, between pharmaceutical grade sodium fluoride and the industrial grade hydrofluosilicic acid.(Fluoride Action Network)
Oregon, which is very low on the compliance list with only 19.4% fluoridation, is attempting to increase that level considerably. In 2007, HB 3099, the Oregon water fluoridation bill, would have required community water suppliers serving more than 10,000 people to “optimally fluoridate.” Fortunately, it was not passed. If passed, it would have increased the fluoride levels in Oregon to 68%. Good for Cargill and Monsanto, bad for us.
Reasons Not to Fluoridate
The following partial list is compiled from Fluoride Alert:
Fluoride is a cumulative poison.
Chromosome damage
Kidneys
Brain
Alzheimers
Rats dosed prenatally demonstrated hyperactive behavior. Those dosed postnatally demonstrated hypoactivity (i.e. under activity or “couch potato” syndrome)
Lowering of IQ
Early onset of puberty
Affects thyroid gland
Arthritis
Cancer
Infertility
Harms bones – brittle

It is up to us to stand up and say no to mass water fluoridation. If someone wants fluoride, then let him/her take it. I have no problem with that. But to forcibly administer this poison to an unsuspecting and unwilling populace without prior knowledge or consent is criminal. We are not Auschwitz prisoners….yet.
© 2010 Barbara H. Peterson

Company Research on Genetically Modified Foods is Rigged

Company Research on Genetically Modified Foods is Rigged:
In 2004, the peer-reviewed British Food Journal published a study claiming that when shoppers in a Canadian farm store were given an informed, unbiased choice between genetically modified (GM) corn and non-GM corn, most purchased the GM variety.

The research, which was funded by the biotech industry and conducted by four staunch proponents of GM foods, other findings around the world that show how people avoid genetically modified organisms (GMOs) when given a choice.

The controversial article was nonetheless given the Journal's prestigious Award for Excellence for the Most Outstanding Paper of 2004. It is often cited by biotech advocates as proof that people are embracing GM foods.

Fortunately Stuart Laidlaw, a reporter from Canada's Toronto Star, had visited the farm store several times during the study and described the scenario in his book Secret Ingredients. Far from offering unbiased choices, huge signs placed over the non-GM corn bin read, "Would you eat wormy sweet corn?" It further listed the chemicals that were sprayed during the season.

By contrast, the sign above the GM corn stated, "Here's What Went into Producing Quality Sweet Corn." No wonder 60 percent of shoppers avoided the "wormy corn." In fact, it's a testament to people's distrust of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that 40 percent still went for the "wormy" option.

In addition to the signs, the "consumer education fact sheets" in the store were nothing more than pro-GM propaganda. And the lead researcher, Doug Powell, was even seen trying to convince a customer who purchased non-GM corn to switch to the GM variety.

The Science of Rigging Studies

Cambridge University's Dr. Richard Jennings, a leading researcher on scientific ethics, described the study as "flagrant fraud." But there are plenty more examples of "cooked" research in the much more critical area of GMO safety assessments.

• When dairy farmers inject cows with GM bovine growth hormone (rbGH), there are plenty of changes in the milk—including an increase of that hormone itself. To allay fears, the FDA claimed that pasteurization destroys 90 percent of the hormone.

  In reality, the researchers of this drug (then owned by Monsanto) pasteurized the milk 120 times longer than normal. But they only destroyed 19 percent. So they spiked the milk with a huge amount of extra growth hormone and then repeated the long pasteurization. Only under these artificial conditions were they able to destroy 90 percent.

• To demonstrate that rbGH injections didn't interfere with cows' fertility, Monsanto appears to have added cows to their study that were pregnant BEFORE injection.
• When Aventis CropScience prepared samples to see if the potential allergen in StarLink GM corn was intact after cooking, instead of using the standard 30-minutes, they heated the corn for 2 hours.
• When independent researchers published a study in July 1999 showing that Monsanto's GM soy contains 12-14 percent less cancer-fighting phytoestrogens, Monsanto responded with its own study, concluding that soy's phytoestrogen levels vary too much to even carry out a statistical analysis.

  Researchers failed to disclose, however, that they had instructed the laboratory to use an obsolete method of detection—one that had been prone to highly variable results.

• To prove that GM protein breaks down quickly during simulated digestion, biotech companies use thousands of times the amount of digestive enzymes and a much stronger acid than what the World Health Organization recommends.
• Monsanto told government regulators that the GM protein produced in their high-lysine GM corn was safe for humans, because it is also found in soil. Since people consume small residues of soil on fruits and vegetables, the protein has a long safe history as part of the human diet.

  But the actual amount of the GM corn protein an average US citizen would consume (if all their corn were Monsanto's variety), would be "about 30 billion-4 trillion times" the amount normally consumed in soil residues. For equivalent exposure, people would have to eat as much as 22,000 pounds of soil every second of every day.

• Monsanto's high-lysine corn also had unusual levels of several nutritional components, such as protein and fiber. Instead of comparing it to normal corn, which would have revealed this significant disparity, Monsanto compared their GM corn to obscure corn varieties that were also far outside the normal range on precisely these values. On this basis, Monsanto could claim that there were no statistically significant differences in their GM corn.

Methods used by biotech companies to hide problems are varied and plentiful. For example, researchers:

• Use animals with varied starting weights, to hinder the detection of food-related changes;
• Keep feeding studies short, to miss long-term impacts;
• Test Roundup Ready soybeans that have never been sprayed with Roundup—as they always are in real world conditions;
• Avoid feeding animals the GM crop, but instead give them a single dose of GM protein produced from GM bacteria
• Use too few subjects to obtain statistical significance
• Use poor or inappropriate statistical methods, or fail to even mention statistical methods, or include essential data
• Employ insensitive detection techniques—doomed to fail

Monsanto's 1996 Journal of Nutrition study, which was their cornerstone article for "proving" that GM soy was safe, provides plenty of examples of masterfully rigged methods:

• Researchers tested GM soy on mature animals, not the more sensitive young ones. GMO safety expert Arpad Pusztai says the older animals "would have to be emaciated or poisoned to show anything."
• Organs were never weighed.
• The GM soy was diluted up to 12 times which, according to an expert review, "would probably ensure that any possible undesirable GM effects did not occur."
• The amount of protein in the feed was "artificially too high," which would mask negative impacts of the soy.
• Samples were pooled from different locations and conditions, making it near impossible for compositional differences to be statistically significant.
• Data from the only side-by-side comparison was removed from the study and never published. When it was later recovered, it revealed that Monsanto's GM soy had significantly lower levels of important constituents (e.g. protein, a fatty acid, and phenylalanine, an essential amino acid) and that toasted GM soy meal had nearly twice the amount of a lectin—which interferes with your body's ability to assimilate nutrients.

  Moreover the amount of trypsin inhibitor, a known soy allergen, was as much as seven times higher in cooked GM soy compared to a cooked non-GM control.

In December 2009, a team of independent researchers published a study analyzing the raw data from three Monsanto rat studies. When they used proper statistical methods, they found that the three varieties of GM corn caused toxicity in the liver and kidneys, as well as significant changes in other organs.

Monsanto's studies, of course, had claimed that the research showed no problems. The regulators had believed Monsanto, and the corn is already in our food supply.

Safe eating.

[Citations for studies are available in Part 3 of Genetic Roulette, by Jeffrey M. Smith, www.geneticroulette.com.]

To learn more about the health dangers of GMOs, and what you can do to help end the genetic engineering of our food supply, visit www.ResponsibleTechnology.org.

About the Author

International bestselling author and filmmaker Jeffrey Smith is the leading spokesperson on the health dangers of genetically modified (GM) foods.

His first book, Seeds of Deception, is the world's bestselling and #1 rated book on the topic. His second, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, provides overwhelming evidence that GMOs are unsafe and should never have been introduced.

Mr. Smith is the executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, whose Campaign for Healthier Eating in America is designed to create the tipping point of consumer rejection of GMOs, forcing them out of our food supply.

Take Action Now by clicking on the following link to understand all the myths and realities behind GE crops. Education of GMO is the best step to avoiding them and spreading awareness of this increasing threat in our food supply that can rob you of your health.

For a straightforward guide to shopping Non-GMO, see the Non-GMO Shopping Guide.

Related Links:

Warning: This Common Food Causes Devastating Offspring Defects in New Research Study

Refined Foods are Bad, But These May Be Far Worse

Genetically Engineered Soybeans May Cause Allergies

The Many Misconceptions About Genetic Engineering and Organic Agriculture

The Many Misconceptions About Genetic Engineering and Organic Agriculture: "everything we eat has been genetically manipulated in some way. That nothing we eat really has been gathered from the wild. It turns out a lot of people think that for example, organic farmers gather the seed and plant it in the garden, and the seeds that they gather are from the wilderness! And so when you tell people that everything we eat is essentially influenced by human hands (except maybe some wild blueberries or chanterelles), everything we eat has been manipulated. In fact very little that we eat would actually survive out in a natural ecosystem because it needs a farmer to take care of it.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Jimmy Keller is Another Victim in the War on Cancer Cures

Jimmy Keller is Another Victim in the War on Cancer Cures:
The war on cancer that is being won is actually the war on cancer cures. That war's direct casualties are the courageous, independent individuals, whether MDs, holistic practitioners, or laypeople who have discovered a safe, efficacious cure for cancer that has better results than orthodox medicine's chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery.

The collateral damage from government agency raids on alternative cancer cure clinics are the cancer victims successfully receiving treatments and those of us who prefer to stay out of the extremely expensive, dangerous and ineffective medical mafia matrix.

Jimmy Keller's Story

Jimmy Keller's dedication to curing his own cancer motivated him to share his discoveries by practicing medicine without a license in his home state of Louisiana. Jimmy's success and passion for natural cancer curing attracted the medical mafia, forcing him to set up a small clinic in Mexico. From there, he was kidnapped at gunpoint in 1991, and railroaded into prison by Federal Prosecutors in a Brownsville, Texas kangaroo court.

Jimmy Keller's story is covered compassionately and completely in Ellen Brown's book Forbidden Cure, as appropriate a title that a title can be. Think of those two words: it indicates that an actual cure is being forbidden, which has been the case with several casualties of the war on cancer cures for almost a century.

Jimmy's drama started when he was a victim of severe facial skin cancer while operating a successful water treatment business in Louisiana. The surgery permanently disfigured his face. Consequently, his appearance impacted his business and sales career. Then his cancer came back painfully in other areas of his body.

Depressed and afraid to undergo more 'orthodox' treatment, Jimmy went into an emotional decline. His parents received word of an alternative cancer treatment center in Dallas, TX. Jimmy went hopelessly to Dallas just to please them, but he was surprised that his condition improved considerably without pain or side effects.

That Dallas clinic was shut down by the Feds in 1969 before Jimmy made a full recovery, but he had learned a lot there and was determined to continue his treatments. He moved back to his home town in Louisiana and managed an out of home alternative cancer cure co-op, where often cancer patients administered laetrile shots and other treatments to each other. As the ban on laetrile became enforced, Jimmy's research led to developing his own solutions.

Jimmy's Treatments

His protocol involved good diet with supplements and enzymes, and his own solution was based on L-arginine, an amino acid known to soften cancerous tumors, and histidine, another amino acid that enhances tissue health among other attributes. His injected solution included different forms of vitamin B12 as well as the complete B-complex and vitamin C. Jimmy's treatments would sometimes include DMSO, Pau d'Arco tea, an iodine supplement, an immunity nutraceutical, injectable Essiac tea, mistletoe extract, and cesium chloride.

Jimmy adjusted his treatments slightly according to daily kinesiology or muscle testing. He had an 80% remission success rate, with many permanently cured. But sometimes the cancer would return. He would have treated those with returned cancers if he were allowed to continue. But because he was stopped, they became "collateral damage" from the war on cancer cures.

Conclusion

After his release, Jimmy suffered a stroke and was paralyzed. He died at the age of 75 in 2009. Jimmy knew he could be hijacked back into the States to be imprisoned if he didn't stop treating patients. His compassion and dogged persistence for continuing to help patients effectively once started made him fair game for our fascist medical system.

Sources for More Information Include:

Author/Attorney Ellen Brown's article: Discover a Cancer Cure and Go to Jail
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/...

Jimmy's abduction by one whose wife had a dramatic improvement but later became "collateral damage".
http://www.karlloren.com/Jimmy_Kell...

Major Jimmy Keller Source Page
http://www.karlloren.com/Jimmy_Kell...

LA Times dramatic story of JK's capture and trial
http://quanta-gaia.org/health/Kelle...

Jimmy Keller's son Jim's 2009 Eulogy
http://forbiddenmedicine.blogspot.com/

The German nutraceutical Jimmy often used in addition to his solution
http://www.carnivora.com/

Pfizer Officials Sued by Investors

Pfizer Officials Sued by Investors:

Pfizer not only made repeated violations of federal laws when illegally marketing their drugs, they did so knowingly in what is being called “a calculated bet that the negative consequences of getting caught would never become significant.”

Instead of cleaning up their act long ago, Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker, paid out the largest health care fraud settlement in history -- $2.3 billion -- for illegally promoting uses of four of its drugs, including Bextra.

Now, the company’s investors are mad and are suing Pfizer for all lost profits and other benefits due to their “systematic disregard for the laws governing its fundamental business …”

The Arrogance is Appalling

The truth is, drug companies continue to display this type of blatant disregard not only for federal laws but also for public health because they are unlikely to suffer much of a consequence for their crimes.

Most people have no idea about how shielded these huge drug companies really are.

Pfizer engaged in illegally promoting their drug Bextra for off-label use, despite their knowledge that it was associated with an increased risk of stroke and heart attack.

Bextra was pulled from the market in 2005, but not before many people were damaged by its use. When Federal prosecutors realized that convicting Pfizer would likely be a corporate death sentence (as any company convicted of major health care fraud is excluded from Medicare and Medicaid), they cut Pfizer a deal. Just as the big banks on Wall Street were deemed “too big to fail,” Pfizer was deemed “too big to nail.”

Why?

Prosecutors claimed to be concerned about the loss of jobs by Pfizer employees and financial losses to Pfizer shareholders as a result of being excluded from the Medicaid/Medicare programs.

So the prosecutors charged a Pfizer subsidiary, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co., instead. In fact, this particular subsidiary company was created specifically for this purpose, as a sacrificial lamb, having been incorporated the very same day its lawyers filed a “guilty” plea in another case involving kickbacks.

In the end, all Pfizer lost was about three months’ profit, but all contracts, including those with Medicaid and Medicare, were spared.

This is just one more example of your federal government failing to protect you, and opting to protect big business’ interests instead.

Like the child who spoils their dinner with candy, drug companies know it’s far easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. But even after being “caught” red-handed, they are merely slapped on the wrist and left with penalties that are the equivalent of being sent to bed without supper.

Pfizer is Not Alone in Their Actions

Pfizer may be the world’s largest drug company, but they are far from the only one that operates on such unethical scruples.

Just last month, drug maker GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay more than $1 billion to resolve more than 800 lawsuits alleging that Paxil, an antidepressant, caused birth defects. In all, the company has paid out more than $2 billion over Paxil-related injuries, which along with birth defects include suicides, attempted suicides and addiction problems.

In a sign of the times, the company announced dutifully that it has set aside $2.4 billion to resolve such litigation involving not only Paxil but also Avandia, a diabetes drug that remains on the market despite steep heart attack risks.

Once again, the company is left with a mere slap on the wrist (Paxil generated $11.7 billion in sales over a nine-year period) while the people hurt by the drugs are left permanently injured and in some cases killed.

No amount of money can give a family back their lost loved one or make up for a child’s lifelong heart defect, caused by its mother taking Paxil while pregnant. But Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and many others just like them will continue to carry on business as usual, with lawsuits like these regarded as a small inevitable cost of doing business.

Another Reason to Take Control of Your Health

Drug companies are not looking out for you; they are looking out for their profits and they are now in full collusion and cooperation with the government. The government has long ago abandoned its role to protect you and your family from these pernicious forces, now they are partners in crime to pillage as much as they can from you and your family.

You need to understand that any corporation's primary and essential responsibility is to their shareholders -- NOT to you -- and the sooner you realize this, the better.

Drug companies have accumulated so much wealth, power and government influence that so far they have been able to largely escape any serious consequences that would prevent them from changing their ways.

So until real systemic change takes place, your best health strategy is quite simply to employ and maintain a naturally healthy lifestyle that will optimize your body’s innate healing abilities and minimize your need for the drug companies’ latest concoctions.

Related Links:

Pfizer to Pay Record $2.3 Billion Fine

Who Says Drug Companies Are “Too Big to Nail,” Even When Charged with Felonies?

How Corrupted Drug Companies Deceive and Manipulate Your Doctor