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***nurse*** · 01-10-2008, 03:18 AM

Losing Weight: The pills don’t work, but still the drug companies push them

Can you lose weight just by popping a slimming pill? Needless to say, the drug companies think so, and they’re in the process of making the best-selling orlistat drug available for everyone without a prescription.
It’s already sold over-the-counter in the USA and the UK, and now GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) are applying to have a weaker version, called Alli, available in pharmacies throughout Europe.

Business is already brisk, with annual sales reaching $155m (£75m) in the 12 months since it was first sold by American pharmacies.

But – do the weight-loss drugs work? Early trials of orlistat suggested that a third of obese people could lose up to 10 per cent of their initial weight, an impressive result that has never been replicated.

A review of 30 trials into orlistat, and other weight-loss drugs such as sibutramine and rimonabant, found that orlistat is the poorest performer, achieving an average weight loss of just 2.9 kg in a year. Sibutramine fared slightly better with a weight loss of 4.2 kg and rimonabant with 4.7 kg.

Worse, the drugs can increase the risk of heart problems. Orlistat is most likely to cause gastro-intestinal problems – and especially faecal incontinence, which a GSK executive has delicately described as “the oops factor”, while sibutramine increases blood pressure, and rimonabant raises the chances of psychiatric disorders, including depression and aggression. This affects 6 per cent of all patients.

The World Health Organization says that “eating less and exercising more must remain the cornerstones of managing obesity”. And nowhere did they mention popping a pill.

***nurse*** · 01-10-2008, 03:19 AM

Epilepsy: Half of all victims are deficient in vitamin D

Almost every week a new piece of research finds out something else about the importance of vitamin D to our health.
Now researchers have discovered that nearly half of all epileptics are deficient in the vitamin, which also increases their risk of osteoporosis, auto-immune disease, cancer, and heart disease.

Around one-third of the general population is vitamin D deficient, but researchers fear the problem is worsened in epileptics by the anti-epileptic drugs they are given. The lifestyle of epileptics could also make their deficiency worse as they may go outdoors less frequently.

***nurse*** · 01-10-2008, 03:21 AM

Heart Infusions: A routine practice that’s useless, and possibly dangerous

Heart attack patients are routinely given infusions of glucose, insulin and potassium – but they could be fatal, researchers have suddenly discovered.
The infusions – which are usually given immediately on admission and continue for 24 hours afterwards - double the risk of death and a further heart attack in the first three days.

Extra fluid is probably to blame, say the researchers, who looked at the progress of 23,000 heart attack victims after they were admitted to hospital.

Although the infusions are supposed to manipulate glucose metabolism, the researchers couldn’t find any benefit to them.

***nurse*** · 01-10-2008, 03:24 AM

Domestic Violence Identified as Stressor Associated With Smoking

Boston, MA -- Using a large population survey in India, a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers has found an association between domestic violence and adult smoking. The study appears in the December 11, 2007 issue of the journal Tobacco Control.

Smoking and chewing tobacco contribute to some 800,000 deaths in India every year. The smoking rate for Indian men is around 29%, for women, approximately 3%. The rate of tobacco chewing is around 29% for men, 12% for women. Although rates of tobacco use are low among women, early indications are that these levels are on the rise. While the harmful effects of tobacco use are well-documented, there has been little research looking at the stressors associated with tobacco use among Indians.

One of those stressors, or risk factors, is domestic violence, a serious problem in India. Some 40% of Indian women report being slapped, kicked, hit or beaten during their marriages. Smaller studies in the U.S. have also found an association between domestic violence and smoking. Researchers hypothesize that smoking may act as a "stress reliever" in households that experience domestic violence. In fact, Indians who smoke or chew tobacco cite stress relief as one of the reasons they begin using and continue to use tobacco.

To see if there was a link between domestic violence and tobacco use in India, the researchers, led by lead author Leland Ackerson, a research fellow, and senior author S. V. Subramanian, associate professor in the Department of Society, Human Development and Health, used data from the National Family Health Survey, a representative cross-sectional survey administered in India during 1998-1999. The samples included 89,092 women and 278,977 family members aged 15 and older.

The researchers found that, for women who had ever been married, 19% reported incidents of abuse; 85% of abused women reported abuse by their husbands. The study found that women who reported past and current abuse had 20%-40% increased odds of tobacco use compared with women reporting no abuse, even after controlling for factors such as income and education level. Another finding was that smoking risk increased for any adult in households where domestic violence was prevalent, regardless of whether they were personally a victim, a perpetrator or neither.

"This is the first study to show a link between domestic violence and tobacco use in a developing country. It is a powerful piece of evidence that we found this same relationship in a place where poverty is endemic that had previously been shown only in wealthy nations," said Ackerson.

The study highlights yet another negative outcome of the social problem of domestic violence. "This research is important in terms of both tobacco control and the campaign against domestic violence," added Subramanian. "It reinforces the notion that addressing the psychological and social context is key in the fight against tobacco. Additionally, our findings provide further proof of the negative effects of domestic violence, evidence which will hopefully aid those working to address this problem."

***nurse*** · 01-10-2008, 03:25 AM

Antibiotic Leads to Tendon Ruptures; FDA Ignores Risks

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Despite long-standing evidence that fluoroquinolone antibiotics can cause tendon ruptures, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has failed to increase its warnings to patients and physicians about the dangers of the medicines, Public Citizen told a federal court Thursday.

Public Citizen sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asking the court to force the FDA to act upon a petition the consumer group filed with the agency 16 months ago. The FDA has failed to respond to the petition, which asked the agency to put a “black box” warning on fluoroquinolone antibiotics (such as Cipro, Levaquin and others) to make doctors and patients more aware of the risk of serious tendon injury before tendons actually rupture.

The petition also urged the FDA to send a warning letter to physicians, as well as require an FDA-approved medication guide to be dispensed when prescriptions are filled. Public Citizen contends that the FDA is violating the Administrative Procedure Act by not acting upon the petition.

Stronger warnings could lead to earlier intervention and prevent needless injuries by allowing doctors to switch patients to other antibiotics, said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group.

“While the FDA sits idly by and ignores the problem, more people will suffer serious tendon ruptures that could have been prevented,” Wolfe said. “The current warning is buried in a long list of possible adverse reactions and is far too easy to miss.”

From November 1997 through December 2005, the FDA received 262 reports of tendon ruptures, mainly of the Achilles tendon, 258 cases of tendinitis and 274 cases of other tendon disorders in patients using fluoroquinolone antibiotics. An additional 74 tendon ruptures have subsequently been reported to the FDA for a total of 336. Because only a small fraction of cases are typically reported to the FDA, the actual number of ruptures and other tendon injuries attributable to the antibiotic is much higher.

***nurse*** · 01-10-2008, 02:30 PM

Six Things You Should Never Do in Your Car

Driving takes total concentration. If you try to do other things when you're at the wheel, you risk having an accident.

-Adjust your child's safety belt before you start out, not while you're in traffic.
-Don't peer into the rearview mirror to comb your hair or touch up your makeup.
-Don't drive with one hand holding the wheel and the other holding a hamburger. If you're
hungry, stop and eat.
-If a bee or flying insect dive-bombs you or your passengers, pull off the road and get rid of the
winged invader. Don't swat at the bug while maneuvering through traffic.
-Don't try to drive and read a road map at the same time. If you're lost or need to get your
bearings, pull off the road and look at a map, or have a passenger help you follow directions.
-If your children start to misbehave, don't turn around to discipline them. Pull off the road and
settle the problem, and teach your children how dangerous it is to misbehave in a car.

Note: One thing you should do in your car is always wear a safety belt. It can make the difference between surviving a car crash intact or not surviving at all, between walking away with just a scratch or never walking again.

***nurse*** · 01-11-2008, 07:03 AM

Skin Cancer: Why some sun worshippers are more likely to get it than others

Why is it that some sunbathers get melanoma, or skin cancer, and some don’t? One unsuspected risk factor is endometriosis, and a woman who has had the problem is nearly twice as likely to also develop melanoma.
Endometriosis affects around 2 million women in the UK, and 10 million in the US, and it’s a painful condition that occurs when cells that usually line the womb start replicating elsewhere in the body.

But it also seems to dramatically increase the woman’s chances of getting melanoma, French researchers have discovered.

A possible link has been suggested in the past, but researchers overseeing a major women’s health study, involving 98,995 participants, decided to find out. During 12 years of follow-up, they discovered that women who had endometriosis were almost twice as likely to develop melanoma. They also discovered a possible risk for women who had fibroma.

There was no increased risk for women who suffered from ovarian cysts, uterine polyp, breast adenoma or breast fibrocystic disease.

***nurse*** · 01-11-2008, 07:13 AM

Antidepressants, Bipolar Disorder and the Chemical Enslavement of Humankind by Drug Companies

Big Pharma is constantly looking for new ways to develop its markets and generate more profits. This is the inescapable directive of all corporations: Be more profitable, regardless of the cost to society. In Big Pharma's case, the pursuit of this mission inevitably leads to the targeting of an ever-increasing selection of pharmaceutical consumers who have the potential to become lifelong customers.

With antidepressants, deeply depressed adults were targeted first. When that market was saturated, drug companies began selling the idea that antidepressants were "happy pills," suitable for use in not merely serious depression states, but even as "depression prevention!" (So-called "early intervention," where you use antidepressant drugs in perfectly healthy people in order to "prevent" depression from appearing.) This was a major breakthrough for Big Pharma: Now they could sell drugs to healthy people and were no longer limited to merely selling drugs to the sick.

When that market was saturated, they went after the children. Multi-million dollar marketing and propaganda campaigns convinced children that virtually any experience of sadness -- say, losing a pet or having a friend move away -- was a disease that could be treated with pharmaceuticals. Soon, millions of children were put on drugs like Prozac, and the great push towards diagnoses of bipolar disorder was underway by the hopelessly corrupt psychiatry industry, which is wholly owned and controlled by Big Pharma.

When a sufficient number of children were drugged with antidepressants and amphetamines (like Ritalin), the drug companies realized there was still one non-drugged entity in a typical household that could potentially become a new revenue source: The family dog. So Big Pharma lobbied the FDA for the approval of antidepressant drugs for dogs, and in February, 2007, the FDA approved Prozac for dogs. Because, apparently, dogs have "chemical imbalances in their brain" requiring treatment with patented synthetic chemicals, just like children and adults, right? (See the book Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients.)

Prozac liquid drops for your pet fish are, apparently, just around the corner. And don't be surprised to see Ritalin for "hyperactive" dogs, too. There's no emotion, behavior or experience that's safe from the disease labels of Big Pharma and the FDA. (See related CounterThink cartoon: Fidozac: Antidepressants for dogs.)

The massive scientific fraud behind the sickness industry It is altogether curious that these "brain chemistry diseases" like ADHD and bipolar just happened to emerge in the population immediately after the drug companies started advertising drugs to treat them. If you are to believe the hucksters pushing these drugs today, diseases like ADHD and depression have spontaneously appeared in tens of millions of children and dogs. There is no rational, scientific explanation for the explosion in diagnoses of such brain chemistry diseases, nor is there any rigorous examination of other potential causes for unhappiness such as poor dietary practices, chemical exposure, chronic environmental stress or just simply the fact that life is sometimes an emotional roller coaster, and that's perfectly normal.

What used to be just a normal unhappy moment or episode of sadness is now described by drug-pushing psychiatrists as a disease requiring chemical treatment. Shyness is no longer simply a personal attribute; it's also a disease requiring chemical treatment. Creative expression, excitement and active curiosity in children is no longer a sign of a healthy, learning child; it's a symptom of a "disease" called ADHD that requires treatment with powerful mind-altering amphetamine drugs that used to be called "speed" when they were sold on the street. The mass drugging of America is underway, and the whole point of this grand medical charade is to simply increase the share prices of the stocks of powerful corporations.

There is nothing resembling scientific medicine in any of this. It's all a grand marketing scam, contrived by those who have a financial interest in the sales of yet more pharmaceuticals. Our families, our children and even our pets are now being exploited by these Big Pharma criminals and psychiatric quacks. We're losing not just a generation of minds to this mass chemical warfare being perpetrated on our population; we're actually losing our souls. We're giving away what it means to be human by surrendering our experiences to "chemical containment."

Big Pharma will stop at nothing to find more ways to force yet more pharmaceuticals down the throats of anything that has a throat. As long as there's more money to be made, drug companies will do whatever is necessary to generate more profits, including bribing doctors, subjugating medical school curricula, committing deliberate scientific fraud, paying off medical journals, handing kickbacks to FDA decision makers, buying lawmakers, controlling the media and directing the very course of medical belief in the western world. The number of children harmed, killed or mentally lobotomized by their dangerous drugs is of no concern: The only number that counts is the share price at the end of the day. And besides, even if millions of people are killed each year around the world by Big Pharma's drugs, they know that humans are always making new babies, and every newborn represents a new opportunity for disease diagnosis and a lifetime of chemical treatment.

The human race has nearly reached the point of absolute chemical enslavement by drug companies. And the people who have no idea what's happening are, not surprisingly, the very same ones currently taking the pharmaceuticals.

First, they come for your wallet. And then your mind. And then your soul.

And when they're done with that, they come for your children.