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In “The Greening of Medicine, Part 1” published in The Epoch Times, June 24-30, 2010, MD Ronald D. Whitmont demands that the “medical and pharmaceutical industries be held accountable for their role in the current environmental crisis.” He points to mounting evidence that growing levels of pharmaceutical waste is accumulating in water supplies all over the world. Whitmont also points to growing evidence that allopathic medicines hurt patients more than help them.

Whitmont’s is one of many vociferous voices raised in protest against environmental degradation and assault by pharmaceuticals, and the ineffectiveness of drugs in medical intervention.

These ineffective drugs are consumed routinely and then excreted into the environment, invading areas once held to be “pristine and remote.” Whitmont charges, “The medical industry, long known to over-prescribe and over-utilize medications in most conditions, has sown the seeds of a disturbing environmental crisis.”

Because the pharmaceutical industry does not accept the premise that its products can cause harm, it has not attempted to monitor the effects of these products on the environment. However, studies show that anti-inflammatory medicines and derivatives of estrogen affect other living systems in ways that are not yet understood but are beginning to manifest in changes in mating behavior and sexual development in fish and mammals.

Whitmont`s contentions about the gradual saturation of global water supplies are supported by many studies. Two recent studies of the effect of effluent water on adult fish in the UK and Canada found intersexual changes due to estrogen derivatives. Other effects were altered DNA integrity and immune cell numbers and the loss of ability to breakdown pollutants.

Concern about the effects of pharmaceuticals on water supplies began in Europe approximately ten years ago when German environmental scientists found contaminants in groundwater. Other European researchers also found chemotherapy and other drugs in groundwater.

In the mid 1990s a chemist in Wiesbaden, Germany investigated what happens to prescribed medicines. Expecting to find only a few excreted medicinal compounds, he found many: lipid-lowering drugs, antibiotics, analgesics, antiseptics, beta-blocker heart drugs and others.

The Human Genome Project will result in many more drugs, researchers fear, as this project aims to find drug targets for common diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer`s. Drug companies are investing substantial amounts of money into mapping the human genome in the hope that new drug targets will be developed, leading to substantial profits for drug companies. Christian G. Daughton and Thomas A. Ternes wrote, “This explosion in new drugs will severely exacerbate our limited knowledge of drugs in the environment and possibly increase the exposure/effects risks to nontarget organisms.”

Finally, the overprescribing of medication is staggering. In 2003 3.4 billion prescriptions were filled in the US, or 11.7 prescriptions for each of the 290 million people in the country. Many of those patients are given inappropriate drugs. More than 1.5 million people are hospitalized and more than 100,000 die each year from adverse reactions to drugs.

Drugs of questionable effect, that result in death or injury to humans at one end of the scale, later enter the environment where they proceed to contaminate effluent and groundwater throughout the world at the other end. They are then ingested by wildlife for whom they were never intended, and so continue to spread destruction in an ever-widening swath like water ripples on a pond.

Pharmaceutical companies and the medical profession should be held accountable for what they have done.

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/029201_Big_Pharma_accountability.html

Pharmaceutical sales reps are trained in tactics that are on par with some of the most potent brainwashing techniques used throughout the world, according to an in-depth report co-written by former Eli Lilly drug rep Shahram Ahari, and Adriane Fugh-Berman, associate professor of physiology and biophysics at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C..

Pharmaceutical companies spend more than $15 billion each year promoting prescription drugs in the United States.

These campaigns are designed to effectively alter prescribing behavior, to sell more of the high-profit drugs (as opposed to the most effective, and least dangerous).

Newstarget July 30, 2007
PLoS Medicine 4(4): e150, April 24, 2007

Take Control of Your Health

by Dr. Mercola

The fact that sales reps for drug companies serve no useful function other than driving up sales for their blockbuster drugs—at your expense—is no surprise. What may shock you, though, is just how insidious their sales tactics really are.

Last weekend, I saw a woman who used to work for me 13 years ago.  She wound up going to a four-year naturopathic college, but prior to going to ND school she worked as a drug rep.  I heard firsthand, detailed stories of the corrupt and deceitful practices they use.  I am hoping I can convince her to write an article that goes into more details.

Rest assured that there is MASSIVE waste and fraud in the drug industry. In the end, you are the one paying the price twice, by emptying out your wallet and endangering your health with drugs you probably don’t need in the first place.

Drug reps are not your run-of-the-mill salespeople. They are meticulously trained to spot the weaknesses of every client. Doctors usually believe they are immune to persuasion tactics, and drug reps know just how important it is to maintain that illusion.

Last year pharmaceutical companies spent over $15 BILLION on physician advertising—a fancy word for bribing individual doctors. And the industry claims it’s worth every penny, which only proves that drug reps most definitely increase drug sales by influencing physicians to change their prescription habits.  That is $10,000 for every doctor in the US.

But exactly how do they do it? What makes otherwise well educated, intelligent doctors turn their backs on their Hippocratic Oath (to do no harm) and do the complete opposite (prescribe completely unnecessary drugs)?

It turns out that doctors are mostly unaware of just how extensive and detailed the drug companies’ profiling of them is. Not only are reps trained to assess their personality, practice style, and medical preferences, they’re also instructed to sniff out personal information, like the names of family members, birthdays, and family interests —as well as the physician’s professional interests and recreational pursuits.

All of this information goes into a database for future reference. When the time comes to devise an “incentive”—say a dinner, sporting event, or membership —it is custom tailored to suit the prey. It’s all about establishing personal rapport. Oftentimes, doctors mistake the reps’ cleverly disguised interest in them as personal friendship. This is exactly how it’s designed to work!

Physicians are clinically dissected into “types” based on their personality, and encounters are specifically tailored for maximum effect. (see text in blue)

“Friendly” physicians get the buddy treatment. Samples and gifts are given, not because it’s part of the job, but because the rep “likes” them. Lunch may be brought in under the guise that the doctor actually provides “pleasant relief from all other docs out there.”

Aloof and skeptical physicians receive journal articles and extensive data that counter the documented apprehensions he or she may have.

“Mercenary” physicians (who generally don’t prescribe as many drugs) receive a clear message that the dinner they just accepted implies their willingness to prescribe a particular drug to a certain number of patients exhibiting certain symptoms. Reneging on the prescriptions-for-dinner bargain gets broadcast over the jungle drums, and suddenly reps don’t come-a-knocking with goodies anymore.

High-prescribers receive better presents, including unrestricted “educational” grants that essentially amount to cold, hard cash.

Competing-drug prescribers are deftly manipulated into understanding how the drug will work better than the competitor’s for a certain patient niche (to circumvent their reluctance to switch).

“Acquiescent” physicians who foolishly imagine that simply agreeing will get rid of the nuisance, realize all too late that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Gifts here are subtly used to enhance subconscious guilt and social pressure to reciprocate. Sales numbers show it works like a charm.

Hard-to-see physicians are actually not dissed by drug reps, because they’ve found that a good hand-delivered lunch to the office staff, followed by snooping under the guise of a friendly chitchat, can work even better than talking to the doctor to find the right hot buttons.

“Charismatic” physicians, those who are highly credentialed with an aura of integrity, are chosen as “thought leaders” to enhance and further certain drugs. These leaders are invited, and paid, as speakers to influence their peers. Depending on their level of allegiance and tact, they may be elevated through the ranks of speakers to the national circuit and beyond, gaining personal clout and fatter wallets as they go along with the program.

In recent years, physicians have become increasingly aware of—and dismayed by —the additional practice of script tracking. Health information organizations, such as IMS Health, Dendrite, Verispan, and Wolters Kluwer, buy pharmacy prescription records and resell them. Drug companies keep tabs on the return on their bribes with this data, as it tells them the prescription rate of each doctor.

Patient names are not included in these records, but physicians are easily identified through either state license number, DEA number, or a pharmacy-specific identifier, through the American Medical Association’s master database. Physicians are then ranked on a 1-to-10 scale, based on how many prescriptions they write; a “10” is every reps’ dream date.

This information also reveals how many of a doctor’s patients receive specific drugs, how many competing drugs are prescribed compared with the target drug, and how the physician’s prescribing habits change over time. It tells them if a drug is “in favor” or not, and gives them the tools to cook up a winning strategy for future manipulations.

Between 1990 and 2004, spending for prescription drugs increased five times, to a whopping $188.5 billion, and drug reps increased from 38,000 to 100,000 strong. That’s a ratio of one drug rep for every 2.5 physicians targeted for “detailing.” Talk about having a personal “Big Brother.”

The idea that reps provide some kind of valuable, informative service to physicians is total fiction, created and perpetuated by the drug industry, to keep this deadly, but profitable, scheme going.

Dr. Mercola
 www.mercola.com

For those not familiar with the term, integrative medicine signifies the joining of conventional medical practice with alternative methods utilizing a complementary approach. Due to rapidly growing interest among the general population in treatments other than conventional drugs and surgery, many in mainstream medicine are adopting this dual modus operandi when it comes to prescribing treatment options to their patients. In other words, with alternative medicine on the rise, conventional medicine is quickly becoming an outmoded remnant of the past.

According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), roughly 38 percent of adults and 12 percent of children utilize some form of alternative medicine or treatment. According to a 2007 survey conducted by NCCAM, adults in the U.S. spent nearly $34 billion in out-of-pocket expenses in order to obtain alternative treatments. This figure does not take into account alternative services covered by insurance reimbursement, signifying an even greater unknown amount expended for alternative treatments.

Of the roughly $34 billion spent, 65 percent was for “self-care” treatment in the form of natural products and supplements, homeopathic medicine, and various exercise and physical fitness classes. The other 35 percent comprised general alternative practitioner costs.

Despite a ruinous economy, dietary supplement sales in particular have seen continued growth over the past several years. According to research conducted by Nutrition Business Journal, dietary supplement sales increased 6 percent to $25.2 billion in 2008. The year prior also saw a 6 percent increase, despite slowing growth in most other product sectors.

Meanwhile, growth in prescription drug sales has been rapidly declining for the past eight years, slowing by 52 percent in 2007 over 2006 figures, and plunging a whopping 65 percent in 2008. Overall, growth in pharmaceutical drug sales has been dwindling since 2001, a sign that the tides may definitively be turning in favor of alternative and natural remedies.

Many insurance companies are also now covering alternative therapies including chiropractic care, acupuncture, massages, biofeedback, and herbal remedies. Some even offer discounted memberships to health clubs and other wellness incentive programs to encourage disease prevention and healthy living. After all, prevention is the best medicine as far as insurance companies are concerned as it saves them money in the long run.

Integrating medicine is proving to serve as an amiable catalyst for educating the public about the legitimacy and superiority of a natural, preventive approach to health care. It is guiding public thought away from the reactional symptom management paradigm towards natural disease remediation and prevention. As a result, what was once considered alternative is quickly becoming the new conventional.

According to a study published December 11, 2007 in the online edition of Environmental Health Perspectives, banning lindane is a viable solution to protecting health and the environment without resulting in increasing problems with head lice and scabies. In 2002, California banned pharmaceutical use of lindane due to concerns about water quality, when high levels of this treatment for head lice and scabies were found to be impacting wastewater quality.

The study, “Outcomes of the California Ban on Pharmaceutical Lindane: Clinical and Ecologic Impacts,” describes the effects the ban has had on wastewater quality, unintentional exposures, and clinical practice. This is the first time that a pharmaceutical has been outlawed to protect water quality. As such, this ban provides a rare opportunity to evaluate the possible or potential outcomes of future public health interventions aimed at reducing pharmaceutical water contamination.

The study authors compiled data on lindane in wastewater treatment plant effluent for several large plants in California and one outside of California. Data on exposures to lindane were obtained from records of the California Poison Control System. The impact on clinical practice was assessed via a survey of 400 pediatricians.

Wastewater treatment plant monitoring showed that lindane declined in California after the ban. Similarly, unintentional exposure calls declined. Most physicians were aware of the ban (81%) and had used lindane previously (61%), but did not notice any difficulties with the ban (78%).

According to the study’s authors, the California experience suggests elimination of pharmaceutical lindane produced environmental benefits, was associated with a reduction in reported unintentional exposures and did not adversely affect head lice and scabies treatment. This ban serves as a model for governing bodies considering limits on the use of lindane or other pharmaceuticals.

Depending on its use, lindane is considered a pesticide or a drug. As a lice or scabies product intended to be used on the human body, it is registered with the Food and Drug Administration as a drug. When it is applied in other ways, it is typically registered with the Environmental Protection Agency as a pesticide.

What happens to medicines after they leave your body? Norwegian researchers have examined the presence of twenty toxic pharmaceuticals in the wastewater coming from two Oslo hospitals. Their stunning conclusion is that seventeen of these toxins were actually present in the wastewater! When they examined the wastewater flowing into the water treatment works (WTWs), they again found twelve pharmaceuticals.

Ok, so there are chemical compounds in our wastewater you might say, that’s why it’s waste. Wrong. Although there are a lot of wastewater treatment works (WTWs) on our planet, a considerable amount of wastewater still flows back into nature. In this case, the pharmaceutically polluted water flows into the Oslo fjord environment. Furthermore, when they examined the purified water coming from the WTWs, the researchers were still able to detect eleven pharmaceuticals in the ‘clean’ water. This is cause for concern about the environment, people, and animals living in these fjords. This scientific study was commissioned by the The Norwegian Pollution Control Authority (SFT). The SFT wanted to study the presence of 20 pharmaceuticals in the wastewater during a twelve week period.

Pharmaceutical drugs are polluting our water

When Norwegian researchers examined the wastewater coming from two hospitals (Rikshopitalet and Ulleväl) they were able to detect all of the 20 studied substances, with the exception of three. Then they examined the water just before it entered the purification plant. At this point in the chain, the chemicals were already diluted. Still, the researchers were able to find twelve different substances above detection level. The third phase in this scientific study focused on the quality of purified water. When they checked the water flowing out of the water treatment works, there were still eleven pharmaceutical substances present.

The substances that were present in the highest concentration throughout this research study were paracetamol, iboprufen, diclofenac and metoprolol. After purification, these substances were still detectable in the water (along with seven others). This means that the WTWs are not able to filter out pharmaceutical drugs, on the contrary, they might even be responsible for toxic by-products left in the purified water:

“Scientists around the world often find drugs in water samples taken from streams and other waterways, but little is known about by-products of those drugs created during chlorine treatment or time spent in the environment,” said the researchers, headed by NIST chemist Mary Bedner.

In an earlier study done in 2004, researchers from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) examined what happens to chemical pharmaceuticals when they react with chlorine - a disinfectant commonly used in wastewater treatment. One of their conclusions was that paracetamol, which is highly present even in purified water, forms multiple byproducts when combined with chlorine, two of which are highly toxic. When pharmaceutical drugs react with chlorine, they mostly form hydrophobic compounds, which tend to build up in the body. This study agrees with the Norwegian study, that water treatment works cannot fully purify water.

What can we do about it?

There are still large areas that are not covered by water purification plants throughout the globe. In our chemical age, we almost forget that maybe our dishwasher water (or medicated urine) flows into a nearby brook. And even if our waste goes to WTWs, it is not guaranteed that it will be totally detoxified.

Preventing is better than curing

Use natural products whenever you can. Try to avoid buying any products from drug companies. There are lots of natural alternatives available. You can even build a pharmaceutical factory in your back yard and grow your medicine for free!

If everyone starts taking responsibility and stops listening to the drug companies, we might be able to turn the results of the next SFT study drastically around. Saving the earth begins by saving ourselves!

About the author
Dorien Herremans is a commercial engineer (MSc University of Antwerp) and is currently a lecturer at Gesthotel University. She is the founder of raw-vegan.org, a living food network in Europe and runs a raw vegan Bed and Breakfast and retreat center in a 100% natural loghome in the Swiss Alps. For more information about the center or staying in Naturalp, please visite naturalp.org

Source: www.newstarget.com

Earlier analyses, including an NIA-supported study suggests America’s obesity epidemic, which is contributing to higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension, could be threatening the decline of our health. Furthermore, some of the today’s common diseases didn’t even exist 40 years ago. In this same time frame, we have made enormous advances in medical technology: we have more doctors, more pharmaceutical drugs, and more hospitals. In conclusion, all we have to show for all this is the sickliest generation of Americans in history with ever increasing disease rates.

In the United States, our modern society is so preoccupied and overwhelmed with every day activities of living we have lost contact with what is important. Have you ever contemplated the miracle of the human body functioning in harmony with lungs breathing, heart beating, senses sensing, muscles moving, healing and regenerating itself? Few have the time to think about this until problems develop.

Up until recently people believed each subsequent generation entering into its retirement years would be in better physical shape than the preceding generation. Then in March 2007, Health and Retirement Study research published by the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), revealed the disturbing trend of Americans in their early to mid-50s reporting poorer health, more pain, and more trouble doing every day physical tasks than their older peers reported when they were the same age in recent years.

How can American pre-retirees be reaching retirement age in not as good health as their predecessors? Regrettably, the public is not educated enough about how our food and medical systems work together to keep us ill, thereby making money for themselves at our expense. Undesirable ingredients used in processed foods are part of the reason toward declining health in America. Disappointingly, the pharmaceuticals the medical system uses are no longer fully tested and many times contribute to further health decline instead of curing us while they become wealthy at our expense.

www.newstarget.com

According to the results of a national survey, virtually all doctors asked reported some sort of financial relationship with medically related industries such as pharmaceutical companies.

The financial connections ranged from free lunches to payments for consulting and lecturing.

The survey was sent to more than 3,000 practicing anesthesiologists, cardiologists, family practitioners, general surgeons, internists and pediatricians, and just over half responded. Some 94 percent of the respondents acknowledged some kind of relationship with the drug industry, although 80 percent of them primarily accepted free food or drug samples.

However, research has shown that even inexpensive gifts can influence behavior.

In addition, more than one-third of the respondents were paid by the drug industry to travel to professional meetings or attend medical education classes. Family practitioners said they met an average of 16 times a month with industry reps, the most of any specialty surveyed. However, cardiologists were more than twice as likely as family practitioners to receive direct payments from industry.

Doctors were more likely to receive payments from industry if they were male, had any role in training doctors or developing medical guidelines, or had few uninsured patients or patients on Medicaid.
New England Journal of Medicine, (Free Full-Text Study)
USA Today April 26, 2007
Washington Post April 29, 2007

Dr. Mercola’s Comment:

Many may not realize that I too was a paid consultant for a drug company. I was hired by them to promote the benefits of estrogen replacement therapy, and they flew me around the country to lecture to physician groups and paid me a healthy stipend.

But that was over 20 years ago, well before I found my path onto natural medicine. But the trend certainly continues today with nearly all conventionally trained physicians who are as equally clueless as I was when I first graduated medical school.

Despite some reports to the contrary, this landmark study in the New England Journal of Medicine confirmed what all of us already knew: Drugmakers and medical device manufacturers have bought and paid for your doctors, with incentives ranging from the tiny perks to enormous fees. (Incidentally, one very absurd factoid, among many: Health professionals were sent checks for $20 just for being sent this survey.)

This is a VERY common practice, and I can recall receiving many dozens of these checks or actual currency in the mail. However, I haven’t received any in this century that I can recall.

Although some physicians interviewed for various articles about these insane study results disputed any differences in their prescribing patterns, I wouldn’t take them at their word based on a study I posted recently about the influence drug reps have on convincing your doctor to prescribe Neurontin for off-label uses. One researcher on that study was amazed at “how effective a very brief visit by a drug representative — most often less than five minutes — can be in influencing physicians’ choices to use a drug for an unapproved indication.”

Drug companies shell out $4 billion each year in the United States to advertise directly to consumers on the television and print media. But that is small potatoes when it comes to what they spend on marketing to physicians. They spend $16 billion each year to directly influence doctors. That is $10,000 for every single physician in the United States.

Meanwhile, the sad fact of the matter is, most of the drugs being prescribed by these compromised doctors are useless at best and outright dangerous at worst, which is why the drug companies have to spend so much money to convince doctors to prescribe them and patients to use them.

Source: www.mercola.com