BIGOTRY, INTOLERANCE, HATRED - ASH THEY PEDDLE IT

This piece of news that Dr. Michael Siegel has just brought to light, confirmed that there are no limits to how low ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) can go when it comes to smokers and increasingly and steadily the obese.

Through a press release which we will not dignify by linking it here, John F. Banzhaf III, their Executive Director and Chief Counsel, is suggesting that heart donors attach the explicit condition that only never smokers or long time former smokers should receive the precious organ.

Dr. Siegel opined on the bigotry and hatred aspect of such a recommendation and we fully agree with his comment. We would like to add to his analysis that if such strings were to be attached to the gift of life, only the perfect and virtuous would deserve it. If such transplants were granted to the imperfect anyway, the obese would have to be haunted if they didn’t lose and continue to keep their weight off, the workaholics would have to be barred from working long and stressful hours, the sedentary would have to be coerced into community physical work, the anorexic and bulimic would have to be force fed, the alcoholics would have to be forced to stay dry, the diabetics would have to be scolded for abnormal glucose levels! And this only partly covers organ transplants! Can we simply imagine what conditions would have to be attached to the gift of life through blood transfusions?

Since imperfection is naturally human, ASH should go peddle their absurd and immoral policies to some humanoids or godly creatures at another planet. The sooner the better!

BON VOYAGE!

DAVID VS. GOLIATH

The pharmaceutical giants are under attack. Never have we seen such a persistent global offensive against this industry, as we have in the last few weeks. It gives us hope that public awareness is growing and that Big Pharma will finally be held accountable for a number of their immoral and unethical tactics motivated strictly by financial interests.

All private companies are motivated by profits and we citizens have developed natural defenses and critical skills to appraise most products that are offered to us. However, because we naively believe that public health would never allow corporate interests to play with our health, we have a tendency not to question the medical and scientific community and that’s where we are fooled.

When the health and economies of societies are directly affected by unscrupulous tactics, that’s when governments have to step in to protect the public from such wrong-doing. Unfortunately the lobbying powers of the legal drug pushers, coupled with a number of corrupted politicians throughout the world, leave us citizens looking like David vs. Goliath. Our elected officials should be held unmercifully accountable for any free passes they are granting Big Pharma. Our physical, psychological and economic health, depend on it.

Following is the latest offensive against Big Pharma:

Drug giants warned: Tell the truth on medicines

After antidepressant treatments are discredited, fears grow that other products may be ineffective

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Wednesday, 27 February 2008

The pharmaceutical industry came under assault from senior figures in medical research yesterday over its practice of withholding information to protect profits, exposing patients to drugs which could be useless or harmful.

Experts criticised the stranglehold exerted by multinational companies over clinical trials, which has led to biased results, under-reporting of negative findings and selective publication driven by the market, which was worth £10.1bn in the UK in 2006, amounting to 11 per cent of total NHS costs.

The latest attack was triggered yesterday by an analysis of published and unpublished trials of modern antidepressants, including Prozac and Seroxat, showing they offer no clinically significant improvement over placebos (dummy pills) in most patients. But doctors said patients on the drugs should not stop taking them without consulting their GPs.

It was the first time researchers – from the UK, Canada and the US – had successfully used freedom of information legislation to obtain all the data presented to regulators when the companies applied to license their drugs. In some cases it had not been made public for 20 years.

Over the past two decades the drugs, known as selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), have been among the biggest selling of all time, earning billions of pounds for their makers. Yesterday's finding suggests that the money may have been misspent. Drug companies are required by law to provide all data on a drug, published and unpublished, to the regulatory authorities when applying for a licence. But this requirement does not apply to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), which assesses cost effectiveness and recommends which drugs should be used by the NHS.

Peter Littlejohns, the clinical and public health director of Nice, said: "The regulatory authorities have access to everything. Obviously we have access to the published data and we do ask the industry for unpublished data, but it is up to the companies whether to deliver it or not. We have no power to demand it. The issue is that it relies on the good will of the industry."

Professor Mike Clarke, the director of the UK Cochrane Centre, an international collaboration between researchers in 100 countries which has published more than 3,000 systematic reviews of published trials to establish best medical practice, said lack of co-operation from the drug industry was damaging medical care.

"When we ask for details of a trial the company might tell us nothing. We have even less power than Nice. Researchers trying to make sense of trials for decision-makers need to have access to this data. If we have only got access to half of the data, when we see evidence that a drug works we don't know whether to believe it or not.

"It makes us doubtful – that's the big worry. The companies are in the business of making profits – but they are also in the business of providing safe, effective health care."

Legislation to compel the drug industry to publish its results was included in Labour's manifesto at the 2005 election and last month the Commons Health Select Committee demanded that Nice be given unfettered access to all clinical trial results.

Yesterday, the Government said it had been told that compelling the industry to publish trial data would not be allowed and it was instead pursuing a voluntary approach, developing a "searchable register" of all trials that have taken place in the UK and pressing the EU to make its own confidential register public.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "The Government has consistently supported open access to information about research when the findings could affect decisions about treatment or health outcomes. We planned to support the principle of mandatory registration of clinical trials in the UK, but legal advice stated this would be illegal under EU law." A World Health Organisation working group is examining how to improve reporting of clinical trials and is expected to announce a consultation shortly.

The pharmaceutical industry was unrepentant about its strategy yesterday. Richard Tiner, the head of medicines at the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industries, said: "The regulatory authorities have access to all the data – absolutely everything. Nice is not a regulatory authority – it is making decisions on whether medicines should be available on the NHS... There is no reason why the companies would restrict access – it depends what they are asked for. The industry is very much more transparent than it was 10 years ago."

GlaxoSmithKline, maker of Seroxat, said yesterday it "fully endorsed public disclosure of all clinical trial results" and had published all data relating to Seroxat on its website "regardless of study outcome".

The antidepressant debate

Paul Bough, 41: 'You name it, I've tried it: none of them worked'
"The findings of this latest report don't surprise me in the slightest. In fact, they confirm what I already knew.

"I've been a depressive for most of my life, and all of my adult life. After the umpteenth failed suicide attempt seven years ago my doctor said I should try taking antidepressant drugs. You name it, I've tried it. Diazepam, Citalopram, Prozac, Seroxat, Atenolol [a beta-blocker], Efexor: none worked. They turned me into a zombie, totally incapable of motivation or movement and forced to vegetate on a sofa.

"I'd say to anyone on these drugs, you're better off going cold turkey. Talk to people, have therapy, be sociable: but don't rely on these little happy pills. Having tried the lot, I'm coming off – and staying off."

Sylvia Genge, 59: 'Without these drugs I would lose hope altogether'

"The findings go against several decades of experience. I have suffered three major traumas in my life – my father leaving home when I was 11, my husband having an affair, and now an unpleasant divorce – and I'm convinced these drugs helped me survive them. I've been close to suicide myself, but now, in my 60th year, I'm feeling positive and able to survive all the terrifying experiences each day throws at me. I take 20mg of Fluoxetine each day, and it makes me feel I can cope. I simply don't buy the idea that it's just a placebo – but then I suppose the point is even if it were I wouldn't care. These drugs are my crutch and my comfort; without them I would lose hope altogether. I'm staying on."

ARE PEOPLE RESIDENTS OR INMATES?

In the following article, Mr. Dave Brown from the Ottawa Citizen, describes to us how he was thrown out of the Carlingview Manor, a long-term facility when he attempted to interview a perfectly lucid 60 year old smoker who took the leadership to fight for a smoking room for the 40 smokers in the facility.

Kudos to Mr. Brown for bringing yet another horror story to the public’s attention and shame on the legislators of the Smoke Free Ontario Act for having created such a barbaric situation for the elderly who are not only put in danger when left unattended in the cold to smoke, but whose constitutional basic rights are also violated by tyrannical house rules in these homes.

Will Mr. Delahunt, have the same fate as the other four known Canadians who, dare we say, were murdered by such an irresponsible, inhuman legislation? Is this the type of society the rest of us want for our retirement years? Where is the outrage from the relatives of these seniors? Where is the outrage from the public? Incidentally, with a little bit of luck, the Perley Veterans will get their room in February 2008 as you can read here. Let’s remember that this 80 000 $ room will be dismantled in five years as we reported here. The public's generosity is a clear sign that the citizenry does not want to punish smokers, however as generous as their gesture was, it is not the public’s responsibility or duty to finance these rooms. Anti-tobacco has created this situation, anti-tobacco should be held accountable for the suffering, deaths and dilapidation of public funds they have caused! If you are outraged and disgusted by this situation, you can tell us, but more importantly please call, write or visit your MP’s and MPP’s and let them know exactly how you feel.

Facility curbs right to meet
Order to end interview raises question: Are people residents or inmates?

Dave Brown, The Ottawa Citizen Published: Monday, January 14, 2008

The war against smoking has fallout as the vanquished discover they've lost not only the right to smoke, but in some cases, basic Charter rights -- like freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

One week ago, I was ordered out of the lobby of Carlingview Manor, a long-term care facility on Carling Avenue. Apparently, the resident who invited me had not first sought management approval for the visit. The order came from the home's director, Bruce Peterkin.

I didn't leave quietly and, in a later telephone conversation, apologized to Mr. Peterkin for the temporary loss of my volume control. Volume doesn't show in print, but I'm still screaming.

An interview with resident Don Delahunt about his efforts to get a smoking room at Carlingview Manor took a darker turn when the long-term care facility's director intervened, and said the reporter needed permission to speak to Mr. Delahunt -- who is not of diminished capacity and has the paperwork to prove it. Don Delahunt is 60 years old, a smoker, and he's sane. He has the paperwork to prove it. It was part of his medical package when he moved in after months in hospital. He had a stroke July 27. It left him blind and in a wheelchair. He's one of 40 smokers in the place, and they want a smoking room. He took on a leadership role in the fight.

It was my use of a notebook that triggered the alarm that an interview was in progress, and Mr. Peterkin appeared. When his order to leave was refused, he said police would be called. Fine. I'll wait. But Mr. Peterkin stayed, and it became clear an interview would be impossible.

The only way it would happen, he said, would be if I left, called him, and had my acceptance of Mr. Delahunt's invitation approved. The story suddenly moved from smoking to basic rights. Perhaps if Mr. Delahunt invited me to his private quarters upstairs?

I was told to leave, call, and talk about it. My volume increased. He said he would make himself available for our talk later, but meanwhile, had more pressing matters.

On the edge of losing my temper, I left. Mr. Peterkin called later to tell me I had been approved, and gave his view on the smoking issue. He said government regulations shut down the manor's smoking room more than a year ago, and new regulations make upgrading costs prohibitive. It's the same for 630 similar long-term care homes in Ontario.

But the issue now was the right of the institution to control residents' rights to speak to whomever they want -- or to use the lobby for such conversations.

Are they residents or inmates? Is there a fear of whistleblowing or complaining?

The need to protect a person of diminished capacity is understandable, but should not equal care be taken to protect the rights of the able?

Mr. Peterkin referred the issue to head office. That's Central Care Corporation in Mississauga, with 90 seniors facilities in Canada, and the spokeswoman is Mary Nestor.

It's a confusing issue, she said, pointing to just some of the legislation that governs such homes -- The Residential Tenancies Act (2006), Landlord and Tenants Act, Nursing Homes Act, Charitable Homes Act, Municipal Homes Act and the list goes on. The Smoke Free Ontario Act is in there, too.

She supported Mr. Peterkin's handling of the situation.

Ann Dobbins didn't. A registered nurse and long-time seniors advocate, she is now a researcher and liaison officer with Alavida Lifestyles, a new player in Ottawa's retirement residence field. She called the approach "ridiculous" and a "violation of rights. They (residents) have a right to talk to anybody they want to."

It's a situation that is growing more complex as legislators grind out more legislation.

My suggestion: If management is concerned about a resident conferring, its first question should be to itself. Is there a power of attorney on file for that patient? If there is, step in immediately. If there isn't and you step in, you're out of line and don't be surprised if somebody raises a voice of objection.

I think I just withdrew my apology.

With Mr. Delahunt and myself at the lobby meeting was Howard King, 87, another resident/inmate proudly born and raised in Sydney, N.S. He said he's been smoking for 80 years. He offered something to think about: If they (anti-smoking campaigners) are worried about polluting the air, they should think again about a room with exhaust. He said he's pretty sure not every resident is, like smokers, stepping outside to pass gas. Ask him if he always does that, and he'll give you a look of great piety.

Society declared war on smoking. We won. What's happening now is the mopping-up phase, and we're giving no quarter. We've become mean. It's tantamount to shooting the wounded.

EXPOSING SIDS IN AMERICA

The following is a very troubling story and we sincerely apologize in advance for the unpleasant emotions it may bring to the parents and relatives who lost a child to SIDS, but the story must be told far and wide in order to maybe, just maybe, start saving lives through real scientific research instead of wasting them.

We have repeatedly expressed our indignation against distorted statistics caused by a number of biases, against artificial epidemics created when hypertension, diabetes, cholesterol and BMI’s permissible levels were lowered, by how the definition of addiction has been changed to suit certain agendas, how people have suffered or died because of irresponsible government decisions, how 23,000 people in Canada die annually because of medical errors, but even after all we have discovered and read, we didn’t for a moment think we would read anything as despicable as what the following stories reveal.

After discovering through the articles how research to save the lives of SIDS has been undermined for years because of various reasons, some more immoral than others and how many lives we may have saved if we hadn’t relied on the secure feeling the ‘’back-to-sleep’’ campaign and its distorted statistics, how can anyone possibly trust anything public health and the bureaucrats behind it tell us? It is saddening, maddening, revolting and it sure leaves us with the helpless feeling of not knowing who and what to trust anymore.

Saving babies: Exposing sudden infant death in America

Every day in America at least 10 babies die suddenly and mysteriously.

Yet some of the more than 4,000 victims of sudden infant death each year could be saved if there was a simple national standard for infant death investigations, a seven-month review by Scripps Howard News Service has found.

In fact, we are getting further away from solving the mystery of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome because of sloppy procedures, manipulation of statistics, misguided efforts to protect the feelings of grieving parents, and deliberate attempts to make SIDS go away, at least on paper.

The Scripps review of 40,000 infant deaths going back to 1992 revealed that the quality of infant death investigations, the level of training for coroners, and the amount of oversight and review vary enormously across the country. In many cases, professional bias -- both for and against a diagnosis of SIDS -- trumps medical evidence.

As a result, the odds that an infant's death will be correctly diagnosed are often determined by geography rather than science. In other words, the same death might be called SIDS in one county and called something else just down the road.

"There's no rhyme or reason to what medical examiners are diagnosing as SIDS, suffocation, strangulation or undetermined," said Theresa Covington, director of the National Center for Child Death Review Policy and Practice at the University of Michigan. "The variability is across the country and within the states."

The confusion comes with a very high price: the deaths of more babies who might have been saved through medical research.

The deeply muddled approach even has many experts questioning if a much-celebrated decline of SIDS deaths since the early 1990s was actually as significant as first believed.

"If we had a standard approach to investigating and classifying these deaths, our approach to prevention and research could be a lot clearer," said Dr. James Kemp, a leading SIDS researcher at St. Louis University. "The whole reason for keeping count is to figure out how to avoid the next infant death."

Yet questionable statistics from this haphazard system continue to guide public policy and outreach campaigns, as well as government research efforts that have devoted more than $110 million to SIDS research in the past five years from the National Institutes of Health alone, plus millions more from foundations seeking to understand why babies continue to die.

"You have to worry about the quality of this data (from death certificates), but there are researchers still using them," said Covington. "I simply don't put any credibility on any research that uses those numbers anymore."

According to standards set by the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, SIDS should be diagnosed when an infant less than 1 year of age dies suddenly and unexpectedly and no clear cause of death is found after a thorough investigation that includes an autopsy, examination of the death scene and review of the child's clinical history.

Scripps conducted an extensive study into how infant deaths are investigated in the United States using records provided by the CDC. The records detail the sudden deaths of 40,239 infants, half of whom died in the 1990s and the rest in a five-year period from 2000 to 2004.
The records of the most recent infant deaths, from 2000 to 2004, can be examined in the first searchable database of its kind at www.scrippsnews.com/sids.

The review found enormous variation in how the deaths of infants are investigated and classified. The SIDS rate, according to the data, is 12 times higher in Mississippi than in New York. Most experts agree that the big differences are caused by how the deaths are classified, not by how the babies died.

-- Variations are sometimes even greater from county to county within a state because coroners take widely different approaches to how they determine the cause of infant deaths in their areas.

-- Federal records show a dramatic decline in reported cases of SIDS, dropping from 4,895 cases in 1992 to only 2,247 in 2004, the most recent year for which complete data is available.

-- The records reviewed by Scripps showed that cases of SIDS virtually disappeared in some states and cities over the last several years, but closer examination of the data makes it evident that thousands of those lives have not been "saved," but rather lost under another name.

-- Coroners and medical examiners said SIDS was responsible for nearly 80 percent of all sudden infant deaths 15 years ago and only 55 percent in 2004. What increased during this time were diagnoses that CDC statisticians labeled as "threats to breathing" and "other ill-defined causes of mortality."

-- Some researchers think that this "code shifting" of infant death causes has substantially overstated the success of public health efforts against SIDS. The diagnosis of SIDS has been replaced on death certificates by new and vague terms like "undetermined cause" and "sudden and unexplained death."

-- The result is that, while deaths attributed to SIDS are down, the overall number of sudden infant deaths has remained steady, and even ticked up in some years, since 2000.

Death by another name

"A lot of us are concerned that the rate (of SIDS) isn't decreasing significantly, but that a lot of it is just code shifting," said John Kattwinkel, chairman of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's special task force on SIDS. "We don't know where the best place is to put our emphasis on further reducing the risk of SIDS. It is still a very high killer of babies."

The danger is that medical researchers can't trust the causes listed on infants' death certificates, clouding hopes for a solution to the mystery of SIDS -- and also masking other risks to babies.

"We are told that physicians should first do no harm," said Henry Krous, a prominent child pathologist and director of the San Diego Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Research Project. "But we need to be aware that we can do harm by using terms that don't gain anything to the understanding of this disorder."

Among the other findings of the Scripps investigation:

-- In some states and counties, investigators are told not to issue a SIDS diagnosis if any other cause is suspected, causing the rate at which the syndrome is reported to the CDC to plummet to just a fraction of the national average. Several large metro areas reported no SIDS cases during the five-year period even though there were dozens of sudden infant deaths.

-- Other jurisdictions offer extra pay to coroners who fill out complex medical forms detailing the circumstances of sudden unexplained infant deaths. Some have reported as much as a 55 percent increase in SIDS deaths since the incentives began.

-- The variance in diagnoses can be equally great within the same state, so that one county is diagnosing SIDS at three or even four times the rate of its neighboring counties.

-- States with local and state boards assigned to review the evidence in mysterious infant deaths are three times more likely to identify children who have died from suffocation or smothering than do states with little or no oversight in child deaths.

-- The 28 states that have statewide medical examiners are more likely to diagnose SIDS deaths than the 22 states without a top medical examiner.

-- States that mostly rely on appointed, well-trained medical examiners to investigate infant deaths issue 10 percent more SIDS diagnoses than states that elect often less-well-trained coroners, many of whom do not have college degrees.

-- Coroners, who generally are not required to be doctors or even have any medical background, were 37 percent more likely than medical examiners to issue a diagnosis of "undetermined causes" on the death certificates of infants.

"No one knows why my baby died"

Caught in the middle are thousands of grieving parents left without clear explanations for why their babies died.

"The autopsy report said 'undetermined causes.' It is a horrible, horrible thing to be told that no one knows why my baby died," said Angie Steffke, of Indianapolis. Her son, Owen, died mysteriously in 2003 at the age of 8 months.

"A police detective told me that the state of Indiana no longer uses the term SIDS. The new name is 'undetermined causes,' " Steffke said. "That really upset me because they want to say that SIDS is happening less often. But there are no fewer babies dying. They are just calling it 'undetermined causes.' "

Suzette Gripp, of Eads, Tenn., has been calling for better SIDS investigations since the 1974 death of her daughter, Sheyenne. She became so frustrated by the system she even conducted her own research survey of more than 300 SIDS parents over a seven-year period.

"The problem to me lies with there not being a law in place for a national standard for death investigation of infants," Gripp said. "They (medical authorities) tout the numbers going down, but those numbers are so skewed because of the reporting system that no one really knows how many babies are dying from SIDS or from other causes.
"
If we just had good information, I believe we could find out what's causing all these deaths. There needs to be a federal mandate, that it's punishable by law if local and state investigators don't follow whatever protocol has been set. It needs to be made a national priority."


The mystery of SIDS

Decades of SIDS research has found many risk factors that make it more likely that a seemingly healthy infant will stop breathing, but it was studies from Europe, Australia and New Zealand during the 1970s and '80s that spotlighted one particular threat -- babies sleeping on their stomachs.

That in turn generated the U.S. government's "Back to Sleep" campaign encouraging new parents to position babies on their backs for sleeping. The outreach effort, begun in 1994, gets credit for cutting SIDS deaths by 30 percent to 50 percent by the end of the decade.

In 1992, 80 percent of more than 6,000 sudden unexplained infant deaths nationwide were labeled SIDS deaths; just four years later, as Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala announced a 30 percent decline in SIDS deaths since 1992, only 69 percent of such deaths were being called SIDS.

Shalala said in 1996 that 1,600 fewer deaths from SIDS was "a real cause for celebration. This is a very rapid improvement and there's every reason to believe that the Back to Sleep campaign has made the difference."

But soon after that celebration, SIDS experts began seeing a worrisome plateau in sudden infant deaths, around a stubborn 4,000 a year. The difference was, fewer and fewer of those deaths were being classified as SIDS, so that by 2004, only about half of the infant deaths without obvious medical causes were being called SIDS.

The shift appears to have occurred for many reasons -- from deliberate decisions by health officials and medical examiners to avoid SIDS diagnoses to a failure among many investigators to go through the extensive process of elimination of other causes of death that leaves SIDS as the only explanation.

"The success of the Back to Sleep effort has been short-lived and in the past few years, the number of infant deaths has held steady," said St. Louis University's Kemp. "The diagnostic mess has been the subject of a lot of meetings and debate, but the lack of consistency continues and it leaves too many infants dying who don't have to be."