Nearly every major drug company convicted of criminal behavior in three-year, $11 billion sweep

Many medical professionals and members of the general public are losing faith in the credibility of the clinical trial and drug approval process, and rightfully so in light of all the corporate corruption and criminal behavior that has recently come to light. Two new papers published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) suggest that drug industry corruption is so pervasive nowadays that even the most rigorously-conducted studies and trials are not being taken seriously by many doctors.

Over the past three years, nearly every major drug company on the planet has been convicted of some kind of criminal behavior, whether it is fudging drug safety data; pushing drugs for off-label uses; bribing doctors and medical professionals to prescribe dangerous drugs; or conducting fraudulent clinical trials. Collectively, these companies have been forced to pay roughly $11 billion in fines for these and other crimes, which have apparently become a normal part of their corporate operating procedures.

"In all, 26 companies, including eight of the 10 top players in the global industry, have been found to be acting dishonestly," writes Jeremy Laurance for the U.K.'s Independent about Big Pharma's culture of corruption. "The scale of the wrongdoing, revealed for the first time, has undermined public and professional trust in the industry and is holding back clinical progress."

Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), for instance, was recently fined $3 billion for bribing doctors, lying to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), illegally marketing and promoting drugs, and falsifying clinical trial data (http://www.naturalnews.com/036417_Glaxo_Merck_fraud.html). Merck, Pfizer, Novartis, and many other major players have also been convicted in recent years of similar wrongdoing, and faced similar fines.

No drug company executives, employees have ever been held personally responsible for criminal behavior

The real shocker in all this; however, is the fact that not a single drug company executive at any of these behemoth organizations has ever been held personally responsible for their companies' crimes. Though millions of people have been injured or killed by these drug companies' illegal activities, the only penalties the industry has ever had to face are relatively measly criminal fines that amount to practically nothing in the greater scheme of things.

According to Kevin Outterson, a lawyer from Boston University, these criminal fines, as large as they might seem to the average person, are a mere fraction of these companies' overall revenues and profits. As we pointed out before, such fines are now considered to be just another "cost of doing business" to many drug companies. As Outterson puts it, these fines will do little, if anything, to actually deter such illegal activity from taking place in the future.

"Companies might well view such fines as a quite small percentage of their global revenue," Outterson is quoted as saying by the Independent. "If so, little has been done to change the system. The government merely recoups a portion of the financial fruit of firms' past misdeeds."

The fat cats that have yet to be personally tried for criminal behavior

The following list of links identifies drug company executives that have never been held personally responsible for corporate crimes:

• GlaxoSmithKline:
http://www.gsk.com/about/executivebiographies.htm

• Merck & Co.:
http://www.merck.com/about/leadership/executive-committee/home.html

• Pfizer:
http://www.pfizer.com

• Johnson & Johnson:
http://www.investor.jnj.com/governance/management.cfm

• Novartis:
http://www.novartis.com

• AstraZeneca:
http://www.astrazeneca.com/About-Us/Board-and-management

• Roche:
http://www.roche.com/about_roche/management/executive_committee.htm

• Sanofi:
http://www.sanofi.us

• Abbott Laboratories:
http://www.abbott.com/news-media/leaders.htm

• Bayer:
http://www.bayer.com/en/board-of-management.aspx

• Eli Lilly:
http://www.lilly.com/about/executives/Pages/executives.aspx

• Bristol-Myers Squibb:
http://www.bms.com/ourcompany/leadership/Pages/senior_management.aspx

Sources for this article include:

http://www.independent.co.uk

Repeat business? FDA approves new cancer drug to treat toxicity caused by another cancer drug

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new cancer drug that allegedly treats the deadly side effects caused by another popular cancer drug. The new drug, Voraxaze (glucarpidase), is said to expel methotrexate, a commonly prescribed and highly toxic chemotherapy drug, from the body. But Voraxaze comes with its own set of harmful side effects, which shows that approving drugs to treat the side effects of other drugs is an endless, but highly profitable, cycle of toxicity.

Methotrexate's known side effects include kidney and liver destruction, skin rashes, mouth sores, damaged intestines, and death. The drug often lingers in the body following cancer treatments, as weakened organs become increasingly incapable of expelling it from the body. So to "fix" this problem, the FDA has decided to approve another drug that it says breaks down methotrexate and eliminates it from the system.

But Voraxaze, which is made from genetically-modified (GM) enzymes, carries with it harmful side effects of its own, including hypertension, arrhythmia, allergic dermatitis, nausea, and vomiting. And these are just the short-term side effects observed among a small clinical trial group of just 290 patients, which is the only trial that has been conducted evaluating the safety of Voraxaze.

Worse, Voraxaze received "fast-track" approval from the FDA based on a single clinical study of just 22 patients, which allegedly evaluated the drug's effectiveness. By all reasonable scientific standards, a single study with this ridiculously small amount of participants can hardly be considered a valid indicator of a drug's efficacy (http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm287997.htm).

Contrast this with mainstream medicine's rejection of at least 24 separate studies, all with much larger sample sizes, that have identified a clear and definitive link between fluoride consumption and disease in recent days. "Further research" is always necessary when the issue involves proving fluoride's toxicity, or proving the benefits of an herbal or dietary supplement. But when a new drug is up for approval, one small, industry-funded study is enough for regulators.

So thousands of cancer patients who become poisoned by methotrexate, which is also used to treat psoriasis and arthritis patients, will also now receive an intravenous dose of GM enzymes that have never been definitively proven either safe or effective. Leave it to the FDA to once again pander to Big Pharma at the expense of public health.

Source for this article include:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/17/us-fda-voraxaze-idUSTRE80G2FE20120117

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/034761_cancer_drugs_toxicity_Voraxaze.html#ixzz1kUzdihXq

14 signs that the collapse of our modern world has already begun

Note: I do not agree with everything in this article, however there are some valid points and wish to post it here on the blog.

A lot of people believe the world as we know it is going to end on December 23, 2012. Nonsense, I say. The far more honest answer is that the end of the world as we know it has already begun. And it doesn't mean the end of the world; it means the closing of one era and the birth of a new one. It is a transition between the ages. This particular transition, however, promises to be the most tumultuous and costly transition humankind has ever seen.

But don't wait around for December 2012 to look for the signs. Here are 14 signs that the world as we know it is unraveling right now. We are living through the end of one era and the birth of a new one. In the future, they'll look back and call this all one moment in history, but when you're living through it, it seems to move forward at almost a snail's pace. But make no mistake: We are living through the opening chapters of the end of the world as we know it, and on the other side of all this will emerge a new world that's very different from the one we know today.

#1 - Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis - At first it seemed like a fluke; but now it's a pattern. The weather is becoming increasingly extreme. Over 120 tornadoes recently struck the U.S. Midwest. Texas is on fire and suffering through an extreme drought. And where there aren't fires and droughts, there are floods. This is only the beginning... watch for more freak weather over the next 18 months.

#2 - The silence of the bees - Colony Collapse Disorder continues to accelerate across North America. We already know it's being caused in part by chemical pesticides (and possibly worsened by GMOs), but the chemical industry is engaged in a full-on cover-up to deny this truth while the pollinators of our world suffer a devastating population collapse.

#3 - The failure of nuclear science - The Fukushima catastrophe proves one thing: Scientists are dangerously arrogant in their planning of large-scale projects, and they fail to account for the awesome power of Mother Nature. Nuclear science promised us clean, green energy -- but now it has delivered a silent, invisible poison that's infecting our planet.

#4 - The vicious pursuit of Wikileaks - In an age of such rampant deceit, there is no room for the truth. So those who tell the truth (Wikileaks) are viciously pursued as if they were criminals.

#5 - The rise of the medical police state - The armed SWAT raids on Maryanne Godboldo in Detroit are only the beginning (http://www.naturalnews.com/032091_M...). The truth is that the medical system uses guns to force its vaccines and chemotherapy onto children and teens across America. The medical system has become so utterly useless, corrupt and dangerous that it must actually invoke guns in peoples' faces just to "convince" people to take its medicine. This is a gunpoint-enforced medical monopoly that exists as a threat to our health and our freedoms.

#6 - The increasing frequency of food shortages and crop failures - Notice the spike in food prices? That's just the beginning: Food prices will continue to skyrocket in the years ahead due to extreme weather, the loss of pollinators and the global contamination of crops by GMOs. Real food is becoming increasingly scarce in our world. You might want to think about starting a home garden...

#7 - The runaway destruction of the world by energy companies - The radioactive fallout from Fukushima isn't the only way in which energy companies are destroying our world: Don't forget about the Deepwater Horizon and the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico -- a spill that isn't over, by the way. They're still spraying Corexit in the Gulf one year later!

#8 - The continued GMO contamination of our planet - This may be the worst chapter in the coming collapse: The widespread genetic pollution of our planet through GMOs. This is a crime against nature and against humanity. It is a "gene spill" that may never be contained as it spreads its deadly DNA across the world's food crops, leading to crop failures and starvation (http://www.naturalnews.com/032167_g...). The use of GMOs is the closest thing to "Satanic" that you'll find in modern agriculture. The agenda behind this is pure evil.

#9 - The tyranny and criminal crackdowns targeting real food (raw milk) - When you can't even sell honest farm food to your neighbors without being targeted and arrested by the cops, something is terribly wrong with the world. But this is happening today, all across America. Now the feds are even targeting the Amish! (http://www.naturalnews.com/029322_r...)

#10 - The escalation of the counterfeiting of the money supply - In a failed economic system approaching collapse, the moronic leaders can only think of "solutions" that actually accelerate their own downfall. The runaway counterfeiting of money by the Federal Reserve (with its "quantitative easing" and other counterfeit methods) is a classic sign that the end of our current system is fast approaching. The economic insanities are obvious to anyone who can still do math.

#11 - The plummeting intelligence of the masses - One of the most disturbing signs that we're already in the collapse is the great dumbing-down of the masses. The drooling, CNN-watching television zombies who dominate our landscape offer absolutely nothing of value to the world. They are the "mindless consumers" who get vaccinated, watch television and eat processed, pasteurized junk food. They're on psychiatric meds and believe everything the government tells them. Most of these people, of course, won't make it through the collapse.

#12 - The complete and utter fabrication of the mainstream news - Much of the mainstream news is now utterly and completely fabricated these days: The reporting on Obama's long-form birth certificate; the news about the war in Libya; the coverage of the economy and the U.S. debt... it's all so utterly false and unbelievable that an intelligent person watching the news can't help but explode with laughter. It is a sign of this collapse that the information sources relied upon by the masses are unable to report the truth anymore and must resort to weaving politically expedient fictions on everything from health care and medicine to the fate of the U.S. dollar itself.

#13 - The ongoing pharmaceutical pollution of our world - Beyond the GMO contamination and the radiation contamination of our world, we are also experiencing the mass pharmaceutical contamination of our planet. It's not just the pharma factories that dump their products into the rivers (http://www.naturalnews.com/025415_w...); it's also the fact that well over half the population is now taking drugs almost daily, and those drugs pass right through their bodies and end up in the water supply where they contaminate the fish (http://www.naturalnews.com/025933.html). Even beyond that, the drugs end up in the human sewage sludge that's packaged and sold as "organic soil!" (http://www.naturalnews.com/029504_o...)

#14 - The radioactive contamination of the global food supply - Here's one that's really insidious: The global food supply is now contaminated with the radioactive fallout from Fukushima. We're told the levels are "low," but we're not told the truth of how radioactive cesium isotopes persist in the food supply for centuries. How is the human race going to survive its exposure to CT scans, radioactive food, chest X-rays, TSA body scanners and even the secret DHS mobile X-ray vans that can penetrate your body with X-rays as you're walking into a football stadium? The total radiation burden on the human race is now reaching a point of mass infertility. That may be the whole idea, actually.

It's accelerating, too

December, 2012 may be a useful date as some sort of mid-point in the crisis, or perhaps as a trigger date for some further acceleration of society's rapid unraveling. But make no mistake: We are already living in the collapse of our modern world. And you have a front-row seat! (Exciting, huh...

Think about what's happening around you these days. These are the signs of the last, desperate clutches of a civilization built on utterly unsustainable practices that don't value life on our world. These are the End Times of the corporate oligarchy; the monopolistic for-profit corporation machine that destroyed everything in our world in exchange for a slightly higher quarterly earnings report.

In the quest for more money, humanity has sacrificed its food supply, its pollinators, it's oceans, forests and soils. Greed-driven humans have used other humans as medical experiments and cannon fodder. We have created wars to sell more bombs, and we've invented disease to sell psychiatric chemicals.

These are the practices of a failed civilization... and one whose days are numbered. Watching it all crumble is far more interesting than watching it continue its destructive ways, of course, because those of us paying attention realize a future civilization must rise up in the place of this one after the collapse.

Say goodbye to the false power of institutions

It would be nice if our future leaders remembered the importance of liberty and personal responsibility, of course. The answer to all the world's problems, it turns out, is freedom -- freedom in medicine, freedom in economics and freedom from government tyranny.

Because, let's face it: The root cause of most these problems that are bringing down our world right now is bad government. It is bad government (Big Government) that approved the GMOs. Bad government enforced the medical monopoly and allowed the pesticides to kill the honeybees. Bad government drove us into inescapable debt and costly foreign wars. Bad government outlawed health freedom and protected the monopolistic practices of the food companies, drug companies and chemical companies.

The downfall of modern human civilization is, as you probably guessed, also the downfall of the very idea that Big Government creates a better society. Because if there's one idea that needs to stay dead after the collapse, it's the idea that We the People somehow need another group of people (government workers) to live off our hard work while hounding us with their false authority, directing every little detail of our lives.

What we need in our world isn't more government, but more freedom. If we had freedom, integrity and personal responsibility, we wouldn't even be facing the global collapse that has already begun. But alas, the human race is an infant species and it must learn some lessons the hard way, it seems.

This lesson should be long remembered: If you let the corporations, the banks and the governments run your economies, your farms and your lives, they will enslave you and steal your future while you sleep; they will inject silent poisons into the very world around you until you awaken one day to find that all you created has been destroyed. They will promise you paradise but deliver only death. Beware of any entity that is not a living person -- no government, no institution, no corporation has a soul, nor a heart, nor a conscience. They are forces of organized destruction that decimate those things we hold dear while delivering to us things that will only enslave us or harm us.

Beware the corporation; the government; the non-profit institution working as a front group for private industry. Never allow yourself to be ruled over by any institution which exists only as a fictional construct organized from the projection of human greed.

And be ready for the acceleration of the collapse. Because if you are reading this, you are the future of the human race. You have a duty to stay alive, keep your genes intact, and be around to help create the Next Society after this one crumbles into history.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032258_economic_collapse_2012.html#ixzz1gULxszvf