The Problem with Intellectual Property
The unholy alliance between Big Pharma and the FDA and Federal Government is truly breathtaking to behold. Unfortunately, its nature is so arcane and obscure that only a few notice this, other than those who …
Mechanisms of Harm: Introduction
[The following is the Introduction to Lori Weintz’s book, Mechanisms of Harm: Medicine in the Time of Covid-19.]
No one has the full story or complete knowledge about the Covid-19 pandemic and our response, but we should be able to …
Perverse Incentives
I. Introduction
We live in a world awash in perverse incentives.
A perverse incentive is when the rules, structures, or practices of any system reward bad behavior or sociopathic outcomes.
I had to come up with my own definition because …
The Era of Informed Consent is Over
In a significant blow to patient autonomy, informed consent has been quietly revoked just 77 years after it was codified in the Nuremberg Code.
On the 21st of December 2023, as we were frantically preparing for the festive season, the …
Kid Lab Rats
“Mommy, can I be a Covid lab rat?”
That is a request most parents will never hear and it is a request that very few parents would ever want to hear.
But, unlike the more typical “Can I have a …
The PREP Act Swallowed the Bill of Rights
The US sold its citizens’ right to jury trials to the country’s largest lobbying force, and Americans now bear the costs after Pharma cashed record profits.
The PREP Act, a 2005 statute invoked by HHS Secretary Alex Azar at the …
The Silent Shame of Health Institutions
For how much longer will health policy ignore multimorbidity, that looming, giant elephant in the room, that propagates and amplifies suffering? For how much longer will the ‘trend’ of increasing diagnoses of multiple health conditions, at younger and younger ages …
WHO’s Guilty of Fake News, Now?
“A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood,” poet William Shenstone once wrote. These words are likely to strike a chord with those who have been following the World Health …
In Health Care, We Are Flying Blind
In the movie Paddington, a bear moves in with a London family. The father of the house is an insurance actuary. As the bear is bathing, he places a panicked call to his home insurer to add a provision in …
The Fairy Tale of Pandemic Risk
Public health has come into its own over the past few years; a once-backwater profession now promoted to be the arbiters of liberty and human relationships. Outbreaks of diseases associated with death at an average age of about 80, or …
DOD Told Pharma Exec the Virus “Posed a National Security Threat” on Feb. 4, 2020
A leaked recording obtained by investigator and writer Sasha Latypova features an executive at the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca stating the following:
It wasn’t a surprise to me when I got a call on February 4th from the Defense Department here …
Medicine Has Been Fully Militarized
I am thinking of a certain industry. See if you can guess what it is.
This industry is huge, constituting a large portion of the nation’s GDP. Millions of people earn their living through it, directly or indirectly. The people …
The Loosening of Rules on Informed Consent
On January 22, 2024, amendments to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations (21 CFR 50) covering Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) were finalized and implemented. The amendments added a new section 50.22 that allows for exceptions to informed consent requirements …
Disease-X and Davos: This is Not the Way to Evaluate and Formulate Public Health Policy
[Full PDF of report is available below]
Private Interest and the Development of Pandemic PolicyPublic health messaging should provide accurate information so that the public and their leadership can formulate appropriate responses, weighed against society’s competing priorities. Planning for …
Big Pharma’s Dirty Marketing Schemes Exposed
In most countries, Big Pharma is not allowed to advertise vaccines and prescription medicines direct to consumers, and advertising of over-the-counter medicines is tightly regulated.
That’s not a problem for Pharma. There are plenty of other workarounds to promote drugs …