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Sales over science, profit over people, greed over need The great American medicine show, a spectacle of deceit, manipulation, and flimflammery

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Posted 17 May 2012 — by James Street
Category Big Pharma, Ethics of Science, Finance and Politics of cancer research and treatment, Legal

Butterflies waft across a beautiful field of spring flowers. A delightful young family bicycles joyously down a country lane. A couple on a park bench leans sensually into each other. A 40-something woman’s face radiates with both perfect beauty and internal happiness. “All’s right with the world,” is the message… as long as you’ve taken your dosages of Lunesta, Celebrex, Cialis, and Botox.

Welcome to medicated America, where the fix for every problem–from incontinence to erectile dysfunction, stiff joints to mood swings, weight gain to wrinkles– is just a prescription away. Thus the beautiful images, stirring music, attractive actors, and soothing words in the omnipresent, multibillion-dollar kaleidoscope of drug advertising by Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and other giants of Big Pharma–all pitching their particular brand-name nostrum directly at us hoi polloi (the industry spends a fourth of its income on ads and other promotions, nearly double its expenditures on research and development). The corporate come-ons typically conclude with a phrase that has achieved cliche status in America’s vernacular: “Ask your doctor if ‘Suprema Wundercure’ is right for you.”

The better question, though, is one that cartoonist Dan Piraro expressed in one of his “Bizarro” panels: “Ask your doctor if playing into the hands of the pharmaceutical industry is right for you.”

One would assume that in a rich, medically advanced, health-conscious nation like ours, dicey decisions about whether to allow a particular pharmaceutical product into our bodies would be among the most rational we make–as determined by (1) the best science available, (2) the strict moral duty of medical purveyors to “First, do no harm,” (3) good government regulation, and (4) the profession’s fear of public reproach and legal punishment. One would, however, be wrong on all counts:

  • Science has been supplanted by rank hucksterism
  • The strictest “moral duty” of corporate executives has been reduced to maximizing profits
  • A “good” regulation is one that’s good for profit seekers
  • Public reproach is just a momentary embarrassment to be covered over by corporate image makers
  • Legal “punishment” never includes jail time, but only a fine that’s easily absorbed as a necessary cost of doing business by these immensely profitable entities.

In the past three decades, America’s healthcare system has radically metamorphosed from a public service network (largely run by independent physicians and nonprofit hospitals) into a corporate profit machine–one that Dr. Arnold Relman, the renowned former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, calls the Medical-Industrial Complex. Drugmakers have been among the most ambitious, in-your-face pushers of this transmutation of medicine into just another commodity to be sold by hook or crook. In this system, the concept of “care” has been reduced to “caveat emptor,” with the shareholders’ interest in monetary gain overriding all other interests.

 

“Today’s drug ads drive up health care costs, overstate the value of pills, and underplay the dangers of new drugs that have not been proved safe over time. The pharmaceutical industry should stop the hype and give consumers additional and more relevant facts.” –Consumer Reports, September 2006

 

The DTC contagion

A fast-moving, systemic epidemic called DTC has swept across America, endangering public health, jacking up our costs, and weakening the curative connection between health professionals and patients. DTC stands for “Direct-to-Consumer” drug advertising. It’s a plague of marketing, empowering profiteering corporations to short-circuit the judgment of doctors by using all of the tricks of Madison Avenue (including lies) to convince viewers and readers that (first) they’re suffering from a particular malady, (second) the advertiser’s brand-name medicine is the very best cure, and (finally) they must go to their doctors pronto to insist on getting a prescription for that specific drug. The essence of this marketing scheme is to turn consumers into sales representatives for drug peddlers. Brilliant.

Prescribing medicine through the television, radio, print, and internet ads of corporations (whose sole motive is to sell more pills) is so crass, so awash in conflicts of interest, and so inherently dangerous that only two countries have ever legalized it: New Zealand in 1981 and the USA in 1997.

In our country, the corporate-friendly government of Ronald Reagan first okayed DTC drug ads in 1985, but his Food and Drug Administration ruled that pages-long consumer warnings about health risks had to be included, so there were few takers. Then came Bill Clinton’s corporate-friendly government, which issued a revised FDA rule in 1997 allowing drugmakers to dodge the full disclosure provision–as long as their ads met an “adequate” standard for informing consumers about risks.

Such squishy words (slipped into regulations by industry lobbyists) are a corporate wet dream. Thanks to the adequacy loophole, fluffy-puffy, no-worries prescription drug ads quickly mushroomed. In 1997, spending on DTC ads was only $220 million; by 2002, it was $2.8 billion; and it has kept a steady pace of roughly $3 billion a year ever since.

A real reform

What if drug marketers had to tell us the details of every under-the-table payment (aka bribes) that they make to doctors? Well, here’s good news: One of the pluses in Obama’s healthcare reform law, is that they will have to do just that, perhaps as soon as next year. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley added it to ObamaCare, requiring all drug companies to publish on a publicly accessible website (as yet unnamed) every payment that they make to doctors–including the name of recipients and the amount and exact reason for each “gift.” Moreover, this reform has teeth. Federal officials will audit corporate records to assure complete disclosure. Failure to list a payment will result in a $10,000 fine for each deletion ($100,000 for knowingly hiding a payment), and top executives can be liable for omissions, since they must swear to the accuracy of each report.

Of course, industry lobbyists screeched: “Doctors may no longer want to engage in consulting arrangements,” wailed one, “and such reluctance could chill innovation.” Bullstuff. If such “arrangements” are above board, no sweat. The only thing that this breakthrough will chill is corruption. About time, too.

 

Corporations don’t spend that kind of money to dramatize the severity of their products’ nasty side effects. As two ad execs giddily put it in a 1998 report to the industry, “The ultimate goal of DTC advertising is to stimulate consumers to ask their doctors about the advertised drug and then, hopefully, get the prescription.” Obviously, to “get the prescription,” corporate ads don’t stress such unpleasant outcomes as these (taken from the small print of full-page ads for just a half dozen heavily advertised drugs): very high fevers, confusion, uncontrollable bowel movements, trouble swallowing, lower sperm count, prostate cancer, loss of vision, suicidal thoughts… and, of course, death.

Side effects do have to be addressed, but not conspicuously–for example, it’s “adequate” for an off-camera announcer to buzz through them with a muted, fast-paced delivery (usually while cartoon butterflies flutter playfully on-screen to distract viewer attention). It’s a disgusting, dishonorable way to generate sales–but it works. In 2008, the House Commerce Committee found that every $1,000 spent on drug ads produces 24 new patients, and a 2003 research report found that prescription rates for drugs promoted with DTC ads were nearly seven times greater than those without such promos. Ethics aside, these consumer hustles have proven to be profit bonanzas:

  • From 2000 through 2004, Merck & Co. poured more than $500 million into adverts promoting Vioxx, turning the pain pill into one of the “Top 100 Megabrands” listed by Advertising Age. The drug was meant for the relatively few people who can’t stomach aspirin, but the PR push touted it to all arthritis patients, a much larger marketing pool. The campaign promised “everyday victories” over pain and immobility, featuring former Olympic skating champ Dorothy Hamill spinning effortlessly (and pain-free) on the ice. Merck’s ads sold some 20 million Vioxx prescriptions, including to people who paid the ultimate price for buying the hype–a 2005 research report in The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, attributed as many as 140,000 sudden cardiac “events” in America to the use of Vioxx. In September of 2004, Merck took the pill off the market over “safety concerns.” As an expert pharmacy consultant told Forbes magazine in 2006, “Vioxx wasn’t a bad drug for everyone, it was a bad drug for certain patients. Unfortunately, people saw the ads and started demanding the drug from their doctors.” That’s the deadly power of mass advertising for drugs.
  • Some ads are simply frauds, including one that Pfizer ran on TV until 2006, hailing the prowess of the company’s cholesterol-lowering drug, Lipitor. The star of the spot was Robert Jarvik, who was described as the well-known “physician” who was the “inventor” of the artificial heart. In a picturesque outdoorsy setting, he was shown vigorously rowing a boat across a lake–visual “proof” that his own heart was in robust condition thanks to his use of Lipitor. His tagline was: “You don’t have to be a doctor to appreciate that.” Good, because he doesn’t practice medicine, and while he worked on the artificial heart, he did not invent it. Oh, he also wasn’t rowing the boat–a double played that role. Embarrassed, Pfizer had to yank the ad–but it continues to merchandize Lipitor with some $250 million a year in commercials, generating about $11 billion a year in sales, more than any other pharmaceutical in history.
  • Bear in mind that these pitches are being made to consumers who cannot just go purchase the product–only licensed medical professionals can diagnose and prescribe. But, again, the promotions work, as an industry spokesman happily affirmed: “There’s a strong correlation between the amount of money pharmaceutical companies spend on DTC advertising and what drug patients are most often requesting from physicians.” He also noted that the trumpeting of brand-name pills “is definitely driving patients to the doctor’s office.” No surprise, then, that prescription drug use has soared in the past decade, during which spending (by consumers, private health plans, and governments) more than doubled. A 2010 survey by the National Center for Health Statistics not only found that about 35 percent of Americans over 60 take five or more prescription medicines a day (more than twice the intake in 1999), but even 22 percent of children under age 12 are on at least one Rx regimen. “People may be taking too many drugs,” deadpanned the NCHS leader. And in recent years, a whole new market has opened up for DTC hucksters: Medical devices. In 2007, Johnson & Johnson launched the first mass-audience TV commercials for highly specialized, complex therapeutic devices. This is beyond odd; it is dangerous. Only expert practitioners have the knowledge and experience to judge whether one brand-name medical gizmo is superior to another. Yet, here was J&J doing a pitch to us clueless consumers for “Cypher,” a drug-coated coronary stent for opening closed arteries. I’m all for consumers getting more say in health care, but–come on!–how would I know enough about the efficacy of various stents to instruct my doctor to “Make mine Cyphers”?

The DTD contagion

In addition to getting you and me to push particular products on our doctors, the drug and device industry runs a massive, sophisticated, and relentless “Direct-to-Doctor” sales program that skates on the thinnest ethical ice and frequently plunges all the way into illegality. While these efforts, costing more than $6 billion a year, occasionally pretend to be “educational,” they are in fact an elaborate exercise in medical flimflammery–nothing but a door-to-door ploy by each of the major makers to hoodwink your doctor into prescribing their brand-name pill, rather than a competitor’s brand or a generic.

To do this, the biggest of Big Pharma deploy an astonishingly large force of “sales reps” all across the country–90,000 of them! That’s roughly one for every nine physicians, and they swarm non-stop into doctors’ offices–one Virginia physician says his office had to set a quota of three visits in the morning and three visits in the afternoon in order to get any doctoring done. They are highly trained in persuasive arts, motivated to make the sale at all costs, and alarmingly successful (a 2003 Blue Cross survey found that more than half of “high-prescribing” doctors relied on the reps as their main source of information about new drugs).

INTRIGUING QUESTION: What occupational sub-group of Americans are, by far, the most heavily recruited to take jobs as drug reps? You might think pharmacists, marketing consultants, or even used car salesmen. All wrong. THE SURPRISING ANSWER: College cheerleaders.

Hey, the point is to “make the sale,” to entice this mostly male profession to switch from A to B. Solid scientific evidence is one thing, but winks apparently work, too–and who’s twinklier, prettier, more buffed, peppier, or more gregarious than cheerleaders? The University of Kentucky, which boasts champion-level cheerleading squads, has been one of the premier movers of talent from pompoms to Pharma. A UK “cheering advisor” notes that his perky collegians are naturals for sales rep positions: “Exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated enthusiasm–they learn those things, and they can get people to do what they want.” He says he routinely receives calls from drugmakers seeking to hire his graduates. “They don’t ask what the major is,” he says.

The demand is so high that an executive of a business that runs cheerleading camps set up a specialized employment firm in 2004 called “Spirited Sales Leaders.” Based in Memphis, it funnels hundreds of former cheerleaders into drug sales.

“There’s a lot of sizzle” in being a sales rep, he explains, and these experienced sizzle-generators can earn six figures a year, counting bonuses, for pep-talking doctors into writing more prescriptions for their companies’ medicines.

Not that these upstanding corporate citizens would stoop to hiring salespeople based on their sex appeal. No, no, explained a top executive of Bristol-Myers Squibb: “[It] has nothing to do with looks, it’s the personality.”

Sex appeal or not, the essence of the job is manipulation, and reps are highly trained and well armed to ingratiate themselves with each individual on their list of doctor-clients. Adriane Fugh-Berman, a doctor and professor at the Georgetown University Medical Center, is a drug company watchdog who has studied the doctor-sales rep relationship. In a 2007 article, she reported that the salespeople play to a doctor’s feeling of being overworked and underappreciated: “Cheerful and charming, bearing food and gifts, drug reps provide respite and sympathy; they appreciate how hard doctors’ lives are and seem only to want to ease their burdens. But every word, every courtesy, every gift, and every piece of information provided is carefully crafted, not to assist doctors or patients, but to increase market share for targeted drugs.” Here are key elements of the DTD operation:

The file. Each doctor is a mark, and drug reps are trained intelligence gatherers who build and constantly update a computerized corporate file on the doc’s personality, preferences, interests, and any personal tidbits that might help them change his or her prescribing habits. The strategic goal of good reps is to become each doctor’s trusted “friend”–not unlike the relationship that lobbyists try to cultivate with lawmakers.

The data. How can pill peddlers know which ones your doctor is prescribing–isn’t that a private matter? Not in today’s bluntly intrusive world of commercial data mining. A majority of pharmacies sell their records of every single prescription written by doctors doing business with them. This vast trove of computerized info is bought by such data hawkers as IMS Health, which procures prescriptions from about 70 percent of US pharmacies. While the names of patients are deleted, the name of the doctor who wrote each prescription is easily discernible, so pharmaceutical giants pay millions a year to buy, slice, and dice the electronic data on exactly which medicines each doctor has ordered and in what quantities. This is regularly fed to the laptops, iPads, and even smartphones of the sales reps on the ground–allowing them to target their daily pitches, and to precisely and carefully track the slightest of changes in a doctor’s prescribing habits.

The gift. Reps don’t go to a physician’s office empty-handed. Gourmet donuts and lunch treats for the entire staff are daily routines, and doctors and key staffers are treated to dinners at fine restaurants, holiday gift baskets, tickets to a game or show, and such nice personal presents as a silk tie or a monogrammed golf bag. A New York Times report in January of this year says that two-thirds of doctors accept such goodies. For the heavy prescribers of a drugmaker’s concoctions, the gifts grow ever-larger–a ski trip to Aspen, an invitation to make weekly paid “lunch and learn” presentations in other doctors’ offices, an honorarium to make brief comments at a conference in some five-star resort (complete with an “educational grant” to cover the bar tabs and other incidentals), big-buck “consulting” contracts that require practically no work, and outright cash payments for prescribing particular drugs. The Times’ January report found “that about a quarter of doctors take cash payments” and “that they are more willing to prescribe drugs in risky and unapproved ways.”

The hoax. Few doctors are experts in the chemistry and biological impacts of particular medicines, so they rely on honest studies and tests (as reported in credible medical journals) to give them an un-hyped, non-sales-rep picture of the pluses and minuses of the drugs they choose to prescribe to you and me. Unfortunately, this process, too, has been corrupted–drugmakers have regularly paid doctors and researchers to conduct studies and publish results without revealing their financial ties. Pfizer, however, sank this sales-over-science approach to new lows when it launched its antidepressant, Zoloft, in the 1990s. It hired an advertising firm to fabricate “studies,” write them up as salutary reports about the drug, pay some big-name psychiatrists a couple of thousand bucks each to put their names on the reports, and convince major journals (read by thousands of doctors) to publish the ghostwritten “findings.” About half of the medical articles about Zoloft at that time were ad agency fakes. Journal editors, embarrassed by being scammed, have since imposed safeguards, but many doctors and observers say that up to 20 percent of major journal articles are still being ghosted.

We can do better

DTC and DTD are just two surging branches of the central stream running through America’s healthcare industry–an out-of-control stream that should be labeled DTP–”Direct-to-Profit.” The very fact that healthcare, an essential human need, has been twisted into an “industry”–a commercial activity for the purpose of maximizing profits–is a damning measure of its moral bankruptcy.

As avaricious and monopolistic drug corporations have demonstrated again and again, “care” is treated, at best, as an externality to their real work of making money–and at worst as an impediment to that corporate imperative. Thus, top executives and boards of directors constantly seek ever more sophisticated forms of deception and manipulation to, at all costs, make the sale. In this ethos, such loathsome products as blatant price gouging, artificial shortages of vital medicines, deliberate promotion of pills that kill, falsification of medical research, and routine corruption of doctors are not merely tolerated, but expected and accepted as normal.

Is this the best that this great, super-rich country can do? Of course not–we Americans can, must, and will create a system that puts public need over private greed. This month’s “Do Something” features some groups leading the way. I’ll give the final word to Dr. Relman, the thoughtful, insistent, and unflagging voice for an ethical and sensible system of care built around the concept of “Medicare for all.” A decade ago, he wrote that “our health policies have failed to meet national needs because they have been heavily influenced by the delusion that medical care is essentially a business… A different kind of approach could solve our problems, but it would mean major reform of the entire system… Since such a reform would threaten the financial interests of investors… the short-term political prospects for such reform are not very good. But I am convinced that a complete overhaul is inevitable, because in the long run nothing else is likely to work.”

More cutting-edge cancer research supported by industry

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Posted 17 May 2012 — by James Street
Category Big Pharma, Ethics of Science, Finance and Politics of cancer research and treatment, General Cancer Research

An analysis by Fox Chase suggests researchers need to be more aware of potential conflicts of interest than ever before

CHICAGO, IL (May 16, 2012)––Nearly half of the research presented at ASCO’s annual meeting last year came from researchers with ties to companies, and the amount appears to be increasing every year, according to new findings from Fox Chase Cancer Center. The new findings will be presented this year at the 2012 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting on Monday, June 4.

“The results suggest that there may be an increasing dependence on industry to support cancer research,” says study author Angela R. Bradbury, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Clinical Genetics at Fox Chase. “This doesn’t mean the research is flawed or biased in any way,” she cautions, “but it does mean that the professional and research community has to investigate the impact of these relationships and find ways to manage any potential conflicts of interest.”

Bradbury and her colleagues reviewed research submitted to the 2011 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, which requires all authors who want to present their findings to state if they have any relationships with industry. This includes being employed by a company, as well as owning stock, serving as a consultant or expert witness, and receiving honoraria for giving talks or participating in research projects.

They found that 48% of research accepted for presentation at the meeting in 2011 came from a group where at least one author had a relationship to industry—up from 39% of research presented in 2006. These ties to industry appeared to increase every year.

Interestingly, in a second related abstract by the same authors, Beverly Moy, M.D., M.P.H., clinical director of the Breast Oncology Program and a medical oncologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital, reported that high profile research—selected to be presented more prominently at the meeting—was more likely to come from scientists with relationships to industry. Studies from authors with ties to industry also tended to receive higher scores from their peers.

“This finding doesn’t mean that researchers with industry have some ‘in’ that others don’t,” says Bradbury. “Rather, it suggests that authors of much of the cutting-edge, clinically important research have relationships with industry.”

This is not a surprise, she says, given that other sources of research funding have dried up recently. “We need money for cancer research, and it has to come from somewhere. The government has had to cut back on its support, and with the economic crisis research foundations have less money to allocate as well.”

But if cancer researchers are going to continue to link up with companies that can profit from their data, the community has to be aware of the potential issues, Bradbury cautions. “If we’re going to have relationships with industry, we’re going to have to find ways to monitor and manage these relationships, to ensure they don’t end up biasing any results.”

Given that many great clinicians work with companies, patients shouldn’t worry about asking their doctors if they personally have ties to industry, Bradbury reassures. “Whether or not a doctor has a relationship with a company shouldn’t have any impact on patient care,” she says.

Why Aren’t These Fraudulent Papers Retracted?

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Posted 15 May 2012 — by James Street
Category Ethics of Physicians, Ethics of Science, Finance and Politics of cancer research and treatment, Legal
Monday, 14 May 2012 00:00 By Martha Rosenberg, Truthout | News Analysis

Glasses over text(Photo: Elvire.R.)

 

According to Science Times,(1) the Tuesday science section in The New York Times, scientific retractions are on the rise because of a “dysfunctional scientific climate” that has created a “winner-take-all game with perverse incentives that lead scientists to cut corners and, in some cases, commit acts of misconduct.”

But elsewhere, audacious, falsified research stands unretracted – including the work of authors who actually went to prison for fraud!

Richard Borison MD, former psychiatry chief at the Augusta Veterans Affairs medical center and Medical College of Georgia, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a $10 million clinical trial fraud,(2) but his 1996 US Seroquel® Study Group research is unretracted.(3) In fact, it is cited in 173 works and medical textbooks, misleading future medical professionals.(4)

Scott Reuben MD, the “Bernie Madoff” of medicine who published research on clinical trials that never existed, was sentenced to six months in prison in 2010.(5) But his “research” on popular pain killers like Celebrex and Lyrica is unretracted.(6) If going to prison for research fraud is not enough reason for retraction, what is?

Wayne MacFadden MD, resigned as US medical director for Seroquel in 2006, after sexual affairs with two coworker women researchers surfaced,(7) but the related work is unretracted and was even part of Seroquel’s FDA approval package for bipolar disorder.(8)

More than 50 ghostwritten papers about hormone therapy (HT) written by Pfizer’s marketing firm, Designwrite, ran in medical journals, according to unsealed court documents on the University of California – San Francisco’s Drug Industry Document Archive.(9) Though the papers claimed no link between HT and breast cancer and false cardiac and cognitive benefits and were ghostwritten by marketing professionals not doctors, none has been retracted.

For example, a paper written by DesignWrite’s Karen Mittleman,(10) according to court-obtained documents, titled “Is there an association between hormone replacement therapy and breast cancer?” in the Journal of Women’s Health(11) finds, “these data fail to provide definitive evidence that the use of postmenopausal HRT is associated with an increased incidence of breast cancer,” and is unretracted.

Pfizer/Parke-Davis placed 13 ghostwritten articles(12) in medical journals promoting Neurontin for off-label uses, including a supplement to the Cleveland Clinic,(13) but only Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews and Protocols has retracted the specious articles.(14)

Since 2008, when Pharma-slanted science forced Congressional investigation,(15) major journals have instituted systems to obviate fraud and financial corruption and implemented stronger disclosure policies. One of the key figures investigated in 2008 for Pharma financial links was Alan F. Schatzberg MD, former American Psychiatric Association president, in whose co-written textbook the Borison research still appears! Researchers and doctor authors also have a new awareness of the dangers of working from second-hand data that they have not personally collected or analyzed.

Nor is the phony science just a product of “Big Pharma.” In 2008, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) was forced to print a correction stating that authors of an article arguing for a higher recommended dietary allowance of protein were, in fact, industry operatives.(16) Sharon L. Miller was “formerly employed by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association,” and author Robert R. Wolfe PhD, received money from the Egg Nutrition Center, the National Dairy Council, the National Pork Board and the Beef Checkoff through the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said the clarification. Miller’s email address, in fact was smiller@beef.org, which should might have been the JAMA editors’ first tip-off.(17) The article has also not been retracted.

Footnotes:

1. See here.

2. Steve Stecklow and Laura Johannes, “Test Case: Drug Makers Relied on Two Researchers Who Now Await Trial,” Wall Street Journal, August 8, 1997.

3. Richard Borison et al., “ICI 204,636, an Atypical Antipsychotic: Efficacy and Safety in a Multicenter, Placebo-Controlled Trial in Patients with Schizophrenia,” Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology 16, no. 2 (April 1996): 158–69.

4. Alan F. Schatzberg and Charles B. Nemeroff, Textbook of Psychopharmacology (New York: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2009) p. 609.

5. See here.

6. Scott Reuben et al., “The Analgesic Efficacy of Celecoxib, Pregabalin and Their Combination for Spinal Fusion Surgery,” Anesthesia & Analgesia 103, no. 5 (November 2006): 1271–77.

7. See here.

8. See here. (BOLDER study.)

9. Martha Rosenberg, “Flash Back. The Troubling Revival of Hormone Therapy. Consumers Digest, November 2010.

10. See here.

11. 1998 December; 7(10):1231-46.

12. Kristina Fiore, “Journals Aided in Marketing of Gabapentin,” MedPage Today, September 11, 2009.

13. United States District Court, District of Massachusetts, Report on the Use of Neurontin for Bipolar and Other Mood Disorders.

14. P. J. Wiffen et al., “WITHDRAWN: Gabapentin for Acute and Chronic Pain,” Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews and Protocols 16, no. 3 (March 16, 2011); P. J. Wiffen et al., “WITHDRAWN: Anticonvulsant Drugs for Acute and Chronic Pain,” Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews and Protocols no. 1 (January 20, 2010).

15. See here.

16. See here.

17. See here.

Tobacco company ads take aim at Proposition 29

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Posted 15 May 2012 — by James Street
Category Ethics of Science, Finance and Politics of cancer research and treatment
The June 5 ballot initiative would raise cigarette taxes by $1 a pack to fund tobacco-related disease research. Its supporters lack the funds for a comparable campaign. 

Lance Armstrong with supporters of Proposition 29 Friday at Children’s Hospital. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times / May 12, 2012)

By Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times

May 12, 2012, 4:32 p.m.

Every morning when UC San Diego physicist Herbert Levine laces up his running shoes and chugs alongside Mission Bay, his earphones crackle with radio ads opposing a proposed $1-per-pack cigarette tax to raise money for cancer research.

The ads are funded by the tobacco industry. They call Proposition 29, the tobacco tax that state voters will consider on the June 5 ballot, a bureaucratic boondoggle, an initiative that would raise mountains of cash for research but not a penny for treatment.

“They’re saying cancer research is bad? It’s a strange message,” said Levine, whose own work relies on the fundamentals of physics to help unlock the mysteries of cancer.

He’s leaving next month for Rice University, lured away in part by the fruits of a $3-billion bond measure Texas voters approved in 2007 to fund the study and treatment of the disease.

The Texas success helped inspire the American Cancer Society, former Democratic state Sen. Don Perata and others in California to launch a similar campaign in Proposition 29 — but with a big difference. They hitched it to a new tobacco tax.

The upside, they say: Along with raising more than $800 million for research on tobacco-related diseases and prevention programs, the hike in cigarette prices will stop 220,000 kids from starting to smoke and encourage 100,000 current smokers to quit.

The downside? Two of the nation’s largest tobacco companies — Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. — and their affiliates have spent more than $30 million against the initiative thus far, dwarfing the $4 million raised by proponents.
“These guys aren’t going to lie down,” said seven-time Tour de France winner and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, whose Livestrong Foundation spearheaded the Texas campaign. “The goal is saving lives. Period. We are 100% sure that this will do that.”

The Proposition 29 campaign, Californians for a Cure, is relying heavily on social media, including blasts to Armstrong’s 3.4 million followers on Twitter, and husbanding its limited funds by airing 15-second television ads and staffing volunteer phone banks. Livestrong contributed $1.5 million to the campaign, with other major backing coming from the American Cancer Society andAmerican Heart Assn.

The tobacco companies have remained in the background, allowing a coalition of taxpayer and business groups to be the public face of the opposition. Their committee, Californians Against Out-of-Control Taxes and Spending, unleashed an onslaught of mail and other ads attacking the initiative for allowing the proceeds to be used out of state and raising money for research instead of treatment.

“We have major budget problems in California. More than 2 million Californians are unemployed, and instead of addressing those issues, this would fund an entirely new bureaucracy,” said David Kline, spokesman for the California Taxpayers Assn.

Voters were stung by a similar initiative in 2004, when they approved a $3-billion bond measure for stem cell research, said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. The stem cell agency, already short of money, paid its part-time chairman a salary of $400,000 annually and hired former California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres at $230,000 a year to serve as one of the institute’s vice chairmen.

“The fact that this creates a new bureaucracy should be a red flag to everyone,” Coupal said.

Proposition 29 supporters call the ads and criticism a ruse, orchestrated by tobacco companies that expect to lose nearly $800 million a year in cigarette sales if the initiative passes.

“They are trying to protect their profits, which go out of state,” said Jim Knox of the American Cancer Society. “They deceive and lie about their deadly product. It’s what they do.”

Knox cited a recent tobacco-funded television ad featuring Northern California doctor La Donna Porter. Major medical organizations have backed Proposition 29; but in the ad Porter, dressed in a white lab coat, criticizes the measure for “creating a huge new research bureaucracy with no accountability.” Porter was featured in a similar tobacco-funded ad in 2006, when cigarette companies successfully fought off an effort to hike tobacco taxes.

It’s because of the companies’ political muscle, Knox said, that Californians haven’t approved a tobacco tax at the ballot box in 14 years. The Legislature, awash in campaign contributions from tobacco interests, hasn’t raised tobacco taxes since 1994.

If approved, Proposition 29 would raise an estimated $860 million a year, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Sixty percent of the money would be used to support research on prevention, diagnosis, treatment and potential cures for tobacco-related diseases, including cancer, heart disease and emphysema; 15% would be used to build or lease facilities or be spent on equipment; 20% would go to tobacco prevention and cessation programs; 3% would be directed to law enforcement programs to reduce illegal sales to minors and smuggling; and 2% would pay administrative costs, the analyst said.

Tyler Izen, president of the union that represents LAPD officers, said he opposes the initiative because it offers no flexibility on how the tax funds could be spent. The initiative would provide some money for law enforcement but without “the discretion to spend the resources fighting serious crimes like murder, assaults or rape.”

The fund would be administered by a new nine-member Cancer Research Citizens Oversight Committee. Four members would be appointed by the governor, including three from a designated California cancer center — a research and treatment facility such as UCLA‘s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center; two members would be chosen by the state director of public health; and three would be either chancellors from a University of California campus or their designees.

Perata, who survived prostate cancer and who kicked in $1 million from a campaign account he controlled to get Proposition 29 on the ballot, said the oversight panel is modeled after the one that doles out research funds at the National Cancer Institute.

He said voters want assurances that their money is well spent, and “don’t want to see taxes going into the general fund, because they have no confidence in Sacramento. Even taxes they’re not paying.”

phil.willon@latimes.com

Leader quits Texas cancer initiative over grant-review concerns

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Posted 11 May 2012 — by James Street
Category Ethics of Physicians, Ethics of Science, Finance and Politics of cancer research and treatment
By Todd Ackerman

Updated 11:36 a.m., Friday, May 11, 2012

The top scientific officer of Texas’ $3 billion cancer-fighting initiative is resigning, citing concerns about the review process that allocated $20 million of taxpayer money to two Houston institutions.

Dr. Alfred Gilman, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas‘ chief scientific adviser since its 2009 launch, appealed in a resignation letter for the agency to revise its rules to keep further awards from going to programs that “were not described and therefore could not have been reviewed.” The big award in question involved a joint proposal by the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Rice University.

“I will stay until (the Oct. 5th Scientific Review Committee meeting) to be certain that those who are preparing applications to be submitted by May 31 will still encounter a functional peer review system,” Gilman, a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist, wrote Tuesday in his letter to William Gimson, the organization’s executive director. “Negative action (in a July meeting) would in addition be extremely harmful to the research community’s view of science in Texas, and thus on the ability to recruit scientists to the state.”

He wrote that Gimson’s most critical concern will be to keep the external peer review systems intact and says Gimson’s ability to do that is “dependent on the attitude of CPRIT leadership, particularly the oversight committee.” The tone suggested anxiety that the grant-judging system he set up – composed of “some of the best cancer researchers and physicians in the country, free of conflicts of interest and all coming from outside of Texas” – is threatened.

The oversight committee, the institute’s governing board, is appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker of the House.

Gimson called the matter a difference of opinion over which committee should have reviewed the joint M.D. Anderson-Rice proposal, a kind of business plan to accelerate the availability of life-saving treatment now in development. Gimson said the proposal was evaluated by the CPRIT committee that reviews commercialization grants; Gilman, he said, wanted it evaluated by the committee that reviews scientific grants.

Says advice not sought

In an email Thursday night to the Chronicle, Gilman called Gimson “polite in saying we had a ‘difference of opinion’ ” and added that he is “entitled to put whatever interpretation on the situation he desires.”

But Gilman asked why CPRIT’s biggest grant ever was given to M.D. Anderson for a proposal that was submitted very late in the process and included only 6.5 pages of “non-scientific description of a plan to conduct early-stage, preclinical drug discovery?”

“Drug discovery is research,” Gilman wrote in the email. “The advice of CPRIT’s excellent, out-of-state research reviewers was not sought.”

The provosts at M.D. Anderson and Rice said they submitted their application in response to a CPRIT request for proposals in the commercialization category and that the funding decision was then up to CPRIT judges. Rice Provost George McLendon said the review of commercialization proposals by business experts is just as rigorous as the review of research proposals by science experts.

Search for successor

In the email, Gilman also asked why “seven very highly regarded and highly scored multi-investigator collaborative research applications (selected by competitive peer review from a group of 40) were not even brought to the oversight committee for consideration?”

Gimson said he has “no concern whatsoever” about the oversight committee’s commitment to the integrity of peer-review committees. He said the committees’ attrition rates, 20 percent, are in keeping with most peer-review committees and assured that future members would continue to come from outside Texas.

Gilman, 70, who came to CPRIT from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, wrote that he plans to resign Oct. 12. Gimson said CPRIT will start looking for a successor as early as next week.

Under Gilman’s direction, CPRIT has invested $500 million in cancer research projects and attracted almost 40 cancer research scholars to Texas.

 

todd.ackerman@chron.com

Bernie Sanders Advocates a Free Market in AIDS Drugs

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Posted 09 May 2012 — by James Street
Category Cost, Ethics, Ethics of Science, FDA, FDA, Finance and Politics of cancer research and treatment

Monday, 07 May 2012 09:23 By Dean Baker, Truthout | News Analysis

Drugs are cheap. Patent monopolies are expensive. These are simple facts that everyone should know, but for some reason few do.

The point here is simple; the vast majority of drugs are cheap to produce. Chain drug stores sell hundreds of generic drugs for $5-$7 per prescription. They can do this profitably because few drugs require expensive chemicals or manufacturing processes.

However, many brand drugs sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars per prescription. This is due to the fact that drug companies have patent monopolies on these drugs. The government will arrest anyone who produces these drugs without the permission of the patent holder. Since drugs can be essential for people’s health and/or life, if they can find a way to pay any price demanded by the drug companies, they will.

The higher prices due to patent monopolies are the reason that many people have difficulty paying for drugs. If all drugs were sold in a free market as generics, paying for drugs would not be a serious issue except for the very poor.

Of course, patent protection is the way in which drug companies finance their research. It costs a lot of money to research new drugs and then test them to establish their safety and effectiveness and bring them through the Food and Drug Administration’s approval process.

However, there are more efficient mechanisms than patent monopolies to finance drug research. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is proposing one such mechanism, a prize system, be adopted to support research on AIDS drugs.

This system, which has been proposed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, among others, would set up a $3 billion a year prize fund to buy out existing and future patents for AIDS drugs. The fund would compensate drug companies and researchers for their work. The patent would then be placed in the public domain so the drug could be sold in the free market as a generic. AIDS patients would no longer have to struggle to find ways to pay for their drugs; they would be sold at prices comparable to other generic drugs.

This may sound like some big socialist give away, but only to people who have difficulty understanding economics. Under our current system, the government is giving something of enormous value to the drug companies: a patent monopoly. It will instead be buying out this monopoly and allowing drugs to be sold in a free market. As any economist can tell you, eliminating the monopoly and allowing a free market should lead to enormous savings.

In the case of AIDS drugs, much of the savings would accrue directly to the government, since the government pays for the bulk of AIDS treatment through Medicaid and other programs. The savings to the government from getting AIDS drugs at free-market prices is likely to vastly exceed the money spent on the prize fund.

We will be able to put a more precise dollar amount on these savings if the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) can be persuaded to score Senator Sanders Bill (S.1138). There will be a hearing on this bill later in the month, which will include testimony from Professor Stiglitz, among others.

It is worth noting that a prize fund is not the only alternative to patent-supported research. The government already spends $30 billion a year supporting biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This research wins praise from across the political spectrum for its high quality and cost effectiveness.

While most NIH funding is devoted to basic research, there is no reason that this funding could not be expanded to cover the cost of developing and testing new drugs. The research could even be contracted out to existing drug companies or new ones that want to compete for funding.

The advantage of this system over a prize system is that all of the research findings would be immediately placed in the public domain. A patent prize system encourages secrecy as companies try to prevent competitors from benefiting from their work. This secrecy has led to enormous waste and duplication in the research process.

By contrast, if the government was funding the research upfront, it could make full disclosure of all research findings a condition of accepting the funding. Not only would any patents resulting from the research be placed in the public domain, but all the research that was relevant to the drug’s development would also be in the public domain.

We can argue over the relative merits of different alternatives to the system of patent-supported research in prescription drugs; however, it is essential that we start this discussion. Currently, we spend close to $300 billion a year for drugs that would cost around $30 billion in a free market. The $270 billion difference is approximately five times as large as what is at stake with extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

This is where the real money is and we should be talking about it. The hearing on Sanders’ bill is a good start. CBO’s scoring of the bill would be an excellent follow-up.

YES on Prop 29: Cut Health Care Costs, Spur the Economy — and Cure Cancer

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Posted 06 May 2012 — by James Street
Category Finance and Politics of cancer research and treatment

Nurse, Social Worker, Educator, Author www.TheSilverPen.com

Posted: 04/30/2012 10:57 am

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking costs Californian taxpayers $9 billion every year in health care costs, and much more in lost productivity. This translates into smoking-caused costs of $15 per pack of cigarettes. And yet, at just 87 cents per pack, California’s tobacco tax is one of the lowest in the nation.

That doesn’t make sense and, this June, we’ll have the chance to do something about it.

On June 5, Californians will have the opportunity to pass Proposition 29, the California Cancer Research Act. By adding $1 tax per pack of cigarettes and equivalent tax on other tobacco products, Prop 29 will save an estimated 104,500 lives from premature smoking-caused deaths, prevent 228,700 children from becoming adult smokers and save Californian taxpayers an estimated $5.1 billion in long-term health costs from declines in smoking.

What’s more, passage of Prop 29 will generate $735 million per year in total revenue. This money will be used to fund life-saving research on cancer and other tobacco-related diseases, and to support smoking cessation and prevention programs. To assure these resources are invested responsibly, the proposition will create a nine-member Citizen’s Oversight Committee made up of scientists, doctors and cancer survivors.

Prop 29 Supports Life-Saving Medical Research

Opponents of Prop 29 (namely Big Tobacco) call it “wasteful spending.” We are certain that the one in two Californians who will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives would disagree. Passing Prop 29 will allow California’s world-renowned universities, research institutes, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, medical doctors and advocacy groups like the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association to accelerate the fight against cancer and other smoking-related diseases. Cancer and heart disease are the leading causes of death in California.

We are in the midst of a transformative decade in cancer research and in translating our research advances to patient benefit. Researchers around the state will use revenue from Prop 29 to unlock the secrets of how cancer develops and spreads, so we can design better diagnostics and therapeutics. Prop 29 will help us detect cancer earlier, treat tumors more effectively and ultimately save more lives.

Prop 29 Stimulates California’s Economy

In addition to saving lives and lowering health care costs, passage of Prop 29 will help stimulate the state’s economy by creating and saving jobs in California. The biotechnology industry has been a shining example of stability and growth in our state over the past several decades, and is an area we should be turning to now to help our state recover from economic decline.

Today, California is home to several of the most vibrant life-science research clusters in the world, including 10 of the country’s 66 NCI-designated cancer centers (more than any other state in the nation). The San Francisco Bay Area boasts the oldest and largest biomedical cluster in California and is a world leader in biotechnology. San Diego is known for its biopharmaceutical and medical diagnostics companies, while Orange County has a reputation for medical device inventions and Los Angeles is the place for cutting-edge cancer research and patient care.

As of 2009, the biotechnology industry employed nearly 270,000 Californians. And that number jumps to more than 783,000 jobs when we include everyone employed in academic research, bio-pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical devices, laboratory services and other supporting industries.

Yet, global financial woes and diminishing support from the federal government — the National Institutes of Health in particular — will negatively impact California’s biomedical industry for years to come. Passage of Prop 29 would be instrumental in further enhancing our state as a global leader in biomedicine, in enhancing our ability to retain and create jobs in the biotechnology industry, and in fully delivering on the promise of bringing new live-saving strategies to the patients who need them.

The choice is simple. Prop 29, the California Cancer Research Act, will benefit every Californian by lowering health care costs in the state, by enhancing California’s economy, and by funding life-saving research that produces new diagnostics, treatments and cures for patients.

Hollye Jacobs, RN, MS, MSW To read more about Hollye’s holistic and humorous journey over, around, above and below breast cancer, please visit her blog, The Silver Pen (http://www.thesilverpen.com/). You may email her at hollye@TheSilverPen or follow her on Twitter @hollyejacobs.

Sherry Lansing is chairman of the University of California Board of Regents and former chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group. She also founded The Sherry Lansing Foundation and co-founded Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C), a charitable program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) that raises funds to accelerate the pace of groundbreaking translational research that will get new therapies to patients quickly.

Kristiina Vuori, M.D., Ph.D. is the president of Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. and director of Sanford-Burnham’s National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center. She is also a member of the Stand Up to Cancer/Melanoma Research Alliance Dream Team and sits on the Board of Directors of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Follow Hollye Harrington Jacobs on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hollyejacobs

 

Cancer Research Held Back by … Wrong Labels?

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Posted 21 Apr 2012 — by James Street
Category Ethics of Science, Finance and Politics of cancer research and treatment, General Cancer Research

Cell lines used in study are often misidentified: Wall Street Journal

By Mark Russell,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 21, 2012 9:40 AM CDT
(Newser) – As many as one-third of cancer cell lines used by scientists around the world could be wrongly labeled, undermining huge amounts of medical research, reports the Wall Street Journal. For basic biology research, the problem is probably not so serious. But for the study of specific cancers and treatment, wrongly labeled cell lines means money and resources are often completely wasted. (The article begins with an anecdote from a scientist who had to pull his paper on head and neck cancer, because he discovered the cells he was working on were actually from cervical cancer.) Worse, critics say, is the possibility that misidentified cell lines could have led to drugs that are inappropriate for some types of cancer.

It’s a problem that has been known since the 1960s, but largely ignored by scientists afraid the discovery might invalidate their research and hurt their careers. It seems to stem from basic carelessness: Cells are drawn from tumors, grown in labs, and stored for years in freezers, where the mixup often occurs. The National Center for Biotechnology Information is trying to clean up the mess and establish new standards, but the NIH, for instance, still does not require authentification of cell lines when it doles out grant money. “Screaming and shouting, it doesn’t do any good,” says one pathologist. “The whole ethos of science is to strive for the truth and produce a balanced argument about the evidence. Yet, all this crap is being produced.

Obama betrays the left; cheers continued expansion of drug war, criminalization of plant-based medicine

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Posted 16 Apr 2012 — by James Street
Category Finance and Politics of cancer research and treatment, Legal, Marijuana

 

 

(NaturalNews) If you happen to need even more evidence that President Obama has gutted his campaign promises and betrayed not only the left but also African Americans who enthusiastically supported his election, he has just gone public with his support for the continued war on drugs. Keeping marijuana criminalized, it seems — and keeping more African Americans in prison — is a top priority for the Obama administration.

This means Obama supports the midnight DEA raids on our citizenry; the filling of prisons with small-time pot smokers; the disproportionately punitive sentences handed down to black men and women across America who aren’t really criminals at all… they merely suffer from a chemical addiction that would more rightly be considered a medical issue.

Nearly every country in Latin America has now openly and publicize recognized that the so-called “war on drugs” is a complete and total failure. But Obama thinks it’s just great! Fill the prisons! Prosecute more blacks! Buy more guns and night vision gear for the DEA! That’s what Obama’s America stands for, it seems.

“I personally and my administration’s position is that legalization is not the answer,” Obama said just hours before the meeting of Latin American leaders at the Convention Centre in Cartagena, Colombia, for the Americas Summit (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-17716926). Meanwhile, Obama’s top Secret Service agents and military commanders were banging Colombian whores in the background, then refusing to pay them their $47 prostitution fee. (http://www.naturalnews.com/035580_Secret_Service_Colombia_prostitutes…) Obama had “no comment” on that particular issue.

Let’s get real about all this. Marijuana prohibition simply doesn’t work. At least not for reducing crime and drug addiction. Anyone who thinks prohibition works is completely delusional. But it does work for certain special interests. What are those special interests, anyway?

Who BENEFITS from the continued criminalization of marijuana?

If you really want to know why prohibition remains in place with marijuana, it’s simple to find out why. Just ask yourself “Who benefits?”

• The DEA. Without a drug “problem,” the DEA won’t get hundreds of millions of dollars worth of increases in operating budgets from the federal purse strings. If drugs were decriminalized, the DEA would have to be sharply downsized (which would be a great thing for liberty and safety but a terrible thing for the DEA honchos).

• Private prisons. Thanks to illegal agreements between prison operators and state governments, prisons can put prisoners to work at slave labor wages — just a few cents an hour — manufacturing goods that the corporate prison owners sell for pure profit. If you thought the Nike sweatshops in Asia were bad, go visit a prison in the USA some time and watch the slave labor taking place right here at home.

• Local police. The “drug war” is the excuse that local police departments use to receive more grant money for weapons, assault gear and now even armored assault vehicles to be used against the citizens. Without the drug war excuse, all this grant money disappears and these cops have to go back to actually serving the community instead of bashing in doors like a bunch of cocaine cowboys.

• The government drug runners! It’s now a well-known fact that the ATF, DEA and other government agencies are all heavily involved in running drugs across America. Just Google any of these terms if you want to check it out for yourself. The ATF is even engaged in money laundering through the globalist banks. This is why government crackdowns on drugs are highly selectively — drug raids are really just a way to eliminate the competition so that the biggest drug dealer of all — the government itself — can continue to rake in the maximum profits. Legalizing drugs would obviously cause street prices to collapse, sucking all the profits out of the government-run drug business.

• Local District Attorneys and prosecutors. Without the drug war to give them a juicy field of easy targets to prosecute, their careers would take a huge hit. It’s so much harder to arrest real criminals than to go after pot smokers and raw milk farmers, isn’t it? Gee, imagine the difficulty of actually fighting REAL crime for a change?

• Big Government. The entire government benefits from the continued criminalization of drugs. For starters, it establishes the outrageous precedent that government can outlaw a native plant — even a plant that has grown wild across North America for hundreds of years. This alone is an outrageous encroachment on fundamental human freedom. Beyond that, the government can always point to “drug violence” as another excuse to squash our freedoms and put in place a tyrannical police state. It’s all “for your own good,” of course. Isn’t it always?

• Big Pharma and the hospital industry. Because recreational drugs are illegal, they’re often cut with dangerous chemicals that cause liver damage and kidney damage. This results in yet more repeat business for hospitals and the drug industry. If street drugs were legalized, they would be standardized and regulated, and adulteration of those products would be extremely rare. They would be safer to use, in other words, which is exactly what the pharmaceutical industry is dead set against. They only make money when people are damaged or sick from using street drugs concocted in somebody’s trailer.

Who LOSES from the drug war? You!

So we’ve covered the beneficiaries of the drug war, but who loses from it? You do, of course: Your liberties, freedoms, tax dollars and personal safety are all threatened by the existence of the war on drugs. Decriminalizing and regulating these drugs would have an enormously positive impact on you and your life.

If drugs were decriminalized, here’s what would happen:

• Drug gangs would vanish as their source of revenues (illegal drugs at black market prices) dry up.

• Drug-related crime would sharply fall.

• State revenues would skyrocket from the regulated sale of legalized marijuana.

• The corrupt prison industry would collapse to perhaps only 25% of its current size.

• Your personal safety and security would be greatly enhanced due to the lack of drug violence, shootings, home invasions and more.

• Mexican drug gangs would lose their power base, resulting in a sharp drop in crime along the border.

• Former “criminal” pot smokers would once again become taxpaying members of the workforce, contributing to the financial upkeep of society rather than draining it as prisoners.

• The happiness index across society would sharply rise.

Even the Red Cross says decriminalize marijuana

It’s all pure economics, my friends. Cause and effect. Legalize recreational drugs and you end the violence, the crime, the prison system overload and the entire underground market for the stuff.

It’s all so obvious that even the Red Cross has called for decriminalization (http://copssaylegalize.blogspot.com/2012/03/red-cross-calls-for-drug….).

At the same time, countless members of the FBI, DEA and active-duty police organizations are also openly calling for decriminalization (http://www.leap.cc/).

The rational argument for ending prohibition is further detailed at www.Norml.org

There are no rational reasons for keeping marijuana criminalized. There are only political reasons for doing so. That’s why Obama continues to support the irrational war on drugs — because it’s a political issue.

Obama, the betrayer of the political left

Obama, of course, is a teleprompter-reading puppet of the global elite. He does what they tell him to do, and right now they’re telling him to keep pushing Drug War propaganda because it’s a highly effective way to expand the police state and keep people living in fear while denying them access to plant-based medicine.

Obama, it turns out, has betrayed the left so many times I can hardly keep count: He supports the GMO industry, he signed the NDAA which expands secret arrests and secret Gitmo-style prisons, he’s an opponent of farm and food freedom (http://www.naturalnews.com/035301_Obama_executive_orders_food_supply….) and he has proven himself to be nothing more than a big business operative who defends the status quo while preaching “hope and change” that he never delivers.

Obama has assaulted free speech, due process (http://www.naturalnews.com/034537_NDAA_Bill_of_Rights_Obama.html), medical freedom and parental rights. In doing so, he has betrayed many of the top priorities of the very people who once put him into office.

He wants to keep marijuana criminalized because that’s what the police state fascist system of corporate control wants.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the alternatives we’re given are going to be any better. This is not some pitch for Romney, for God’s sake. That guy is just as much of a corporate sellout as Obama (and Bush before him). Elections are created to present the illusion that the People have a choice when, in reality, all they’re voting for is which color of puppet they want to see on television while we’re all being imprisoned, exploited, enslaved and oppressed by a growing fascist state.

Care to guess which candidate would have decriminalized marijuana from the get-go? His name is Ron Paul, and the ideas of freedom and liberty that he espouses are the real answer for the future of our nation. No matter who shows up in the ballot box this November, Ron Paul is my President, because he’s the only candidate who is deeply committed to legalizing freedom in America.

Hyundai sets goal to break record for pediatric cancer research funding

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Posted 09 Apr 2012 — by James Street
Category Finance and Politics of cancer research and treatment, philanthropy

Hope on Wheels is in its 14th year in the fight against cancer

Hyundai’s Hope on Wheels non-profit organization has set a goal to surpass $57 million in donations for pediatric cancer research this year, placing Hyundai as a leading fundraiser for the cause in the nation.

Throughout the year, Hyundai will host a national grant donation tour, a nationwide 5k race series, an online social media campaign and a partnership with the Childhood Cancer Congressional Caucus, with a special comprehensive campaign during September’s National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

This year’s program selected 13-year-old C.J. George as the National Youth Ambassador to travel the country to share his battle with cancer at Hope on Wheel events.

“We see Hope On Wheels as a critical part of our mission at Hyundai,” said John Krafcik, president and CEO of Hyundai Motor America. “Pediatric cancer takes far too many young lives and impacts far too many families. We are proud to work with our Hyundai dealers to fund research to end this disease.”

The company plans to donate $12 million to children’s hospitals nationwide through its signature Hyundai Scholar Grant and Hyundai Hope Grant awards. Scholar grants of $75,000 will be awarded to 41 principal investigators pursuing innovative research early in their careers and 36 other Hope Grants of $250,000 will be given to children’s hospitals across the country.

Winners will be announced at a Handprint Ceremony in September where children will cover a Hyundai Tucson with their handprints to commemorate their battles with cancer.

“Every 36 minutes a child is diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. Through research, 80 percent of those cancers can be cured, but that’s just not good enough,” said Gary Micallef of the Hope On Wheels Board of Directors. “The Hyundai dealers across America proudly join in this fight.  This is one we must win for our children, our communities, and our future.”

Related headlines
Hyundai sponsors ultramarathoner and record holder Jenn Shelton
Hyundai earns top rating in miles per gallon and carbon-dioxide emissions
Hyundai announces specifics of Its Hybrid Lifetime Battery Guarantee

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