Sunday drive through the blogosphere

China isn't the only one producing questionable drugs:  Bad pharma: Drug research riddled with half truths, omissions, lies. Industry-funded trials are too common, can't be trusted -- and bring pills to market that likely don't work

State EPA plans to list BPA as harmful

Procter & Gamble Must Scrub Carcinogen Dioxane From Tide

Climate change..  predictions are a lot worse than imagined.

A pet fox.

A Belgian's experience traveling in the US.

If abortion is made illegal... women will have illegal abortions.

What's going on with the banks?

Fondly remembering Mussolini... and forgetting how he ended up.

Farmers who don't give in to monocrops.

Our DNA will become our own computers.

Crafting a homemade book.

Scattershot news

Americans throw away 40 percent of their food every day

Less government...

Someone who is very displeased with Windows 8.

Why Pennsylvania's Voter ID Law Is Unconstitutional

But will the pharmaceuticals let this kid ruin their business?  I bet no.

Depression comes from eating too much trans-fats.

Never insult an Irishman:

Michael D. Higgins (who was elected president of Ireland last year) is fed up with over-the-top Tea Party rhetoric, and he isn't afraid to show it. Listen to him call out radio host Michael Graham on everything from health care to foreign policy in this heated exchange from 2010. Trust me, you don't want to miss this one.

The Drought Map.  And those who make money off of food shortages caused by drought.

The Problem with Men Explaining Things.

How corporations 'think'...

Selling their product, ignoring the consequences.

When corporations and morons are allowed to rule the world

15 Dangerous Drugs Big Pharma Shoves Down Our Throats

Chemical Industry Lobbyists Block Measure to Protect Infants and Toddlers

Probe is sought of lead in reusable grocery bags (But what else is new?)

Rep. Schock’s Response To Poll Showing 64 Percent Want End To Tax Cuts For Wealthy: Americans ‘Reject’ That

Another 1995-style government shutdown?

In 2007, Beck Praised IAVA But Now Demonizes The Vets Group As Part Of His Made-Up Soros Conspiracy

No wonder fish are pissed at us

PATANCHERU, India – When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater taken from a plant where about 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were shocked. Enough of a single, powerful antibiotic was being spewed into one stream each day to treat every person in a city of 90,000.

And it wasn't just ciprofloxacin being detected. The supposedly cleaned water was a floating medicine cabinet — a soup of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments. Half of the drugs measured at the highest levels of pharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment, researchers say.

Those Indian factories produce drugs for much of the world, including many Americans. The result: Some of India's poor are unwittingly consuming an array of chemicals that may be harmful, and could lead to the proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria.

Remove greed from health care

Fallenmonk says it best:

...the best answer for the American health care system is to remove the profit incentive that drives all this waste. Drug companies and insurers spend less on care and more on administrative and public relations costs because that's where the profit is. The raw reality is that they have absolutely no incentive to deliver better care, and the sad part is that they make less profit when they do. The ugly truth is that until profit can be completely removed from the system, there will not be meaningful progress on health care.

Pharmaceutical companies hope you will not read this

The best efforts of the scientific community to prove the health benefits of vitamins keep falling short.

[snip]

Everyone needs vitamins, which are critical for the body. But for most people, the micronutrients we get from foods usually are adequate to prevent vitamin deficiency, which is rare in the United States. That said, some extra vitamins have proven benefits, such as vitamin B12 supplements for the elderly and folic acid for women of child-bearing age. And calcium and vitamin D in women over 65 appear to protect bone health.

But many people gobble down large doses of vitamins believing that they boost the body’s ability to mop up damaging free radicals that lead to cancer and heart disease. In addition to the more recent research, several reports in recent years have challenged the notion that megadoses of vitamins are good for you.

Well... they were going to die anyway...

This will make it happen just a bit faster:

New York, NY (AHN) - The pill popping days of Americans will soon be over, another victim of the economic crisis. After a number of cancer patients in the U.S. have reported cutting back on medical treatments due to soaring costs, the next item in line for cost cutting are prescription drugs.

Dr. James King, chairman of the American Academy of Family Physicians confirmed seeing patients who no longer buy Lipitor, a cholesterol-lowering drug, due to its high cost. "People are choosing among gas, meals and medication," King told the New York Times.

Pfizer, which man manufactures Lipitor, confirmed the dip in the sale of the world's top-selling prescription drug in the U.S. by 13 percent for the third quarter of 2008. IMS Health, a research company that monitors prescriptions, added that for the first eight months of the year, number of all prescriptions filled out in the U.S. went down compared to last year.

More on the future Water Wars

Keeping track of the 'escalating fights over water and water rights, between cities and farms, between states, between neighbors.'

Here are some articles that touch on quality and quantity available. Via Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat, AP's article on pharmaceutical contaminates in our drinking water:

A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky.

World's Water Supply at Risk:

One of the world's leading water experts explains how our local water supplies are threatened across North America and across the globe. Surface waters are being polluted, and we are mining our groundwater at unsustainable rates. At the very time when corporations are privatizing everything, our governments are allowing corporations to move in and take over the ownership of essential resources like water. The more our water becomes polluted, the more precious it becomes. The more desperate people are, the more they will pay for their water, and the more money there is to be made from cleaning it up.

The corporation KBR poisoned our soldiers in theaters of war:

The AP reports that, between 2004 and 2006, “dozens of U.S. troops in Iraq fell sick at bases using ‘unmonitored and potentially unsafe‘ water supplied” by KBR. The Pentagon’s internal watchdog said soldiers experienced skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections, diarrhea and other illnesses after from using the discolored, smelly water.

Expect more of these stories as we find out we have treated our most essential of needs so casually. Global warming also means less snow pack which leads to less water in rivers and in aquifers. Some burgeoning population centers which rely heavily on rivers are feeling this already:

The world is running out of water and needs a radical plan to tackle shortages that threaten the ability of humanity to feed itself, according to Jeffrey Sachs, director of the UN's Millennium Project.

Professor Sachs, who is credited with sparking pop star Bono's crusade for African development, told an environment conference in Delhi that the world simply had "no more rivers to take water from".

The breadbaskets of India and China were facing severe water shortages and neither Asian giant could use the same strategies for increasing food production that has fed millions in the last few decades.

"In 2050 we will have 9 billion people and average income will be four times what it is today. India and China have been able to feed their populations because they use water in an unsustainable way. That is no longer possible," he said.

Since Asia's green revolution, which began in the 1960s and saw a transformation of agricultural production, the amount of land under irrigation has tripled. However, many parts of the continent have reached the limits of their water supplies. "The Ganges [in India] and the Yellow river [in China] no longer flow. There is so much silting up and water extraction upstream they are pretty stagnant," said Prof Sachs.

(Psst ... turn off your taps!)

Well, nobody saw this coming!

Medicare premiums are going up:

Seniors need to start comparison shopping now for their Medicare benefits. Enrollment begins November 15 and researchers say that beneficiaries in the most popular plans could see their monthly premiums lurch up 21%. Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center, recommends,

"making a list of your medicines and how much you pay for them under your current plan. Check if that plan and other potential plans will cover those medications next year. If a plan doesn't, you could check with your doctor to see if a similar medicine or a generic would be as effective. Check the fine print because some plans permit certain drugs only after a patient has tried other medications."

[snip]

Oddly enough, the popular plans that built up a big user base by having lower premiums are the ones raising their prices most significantly. Funny how that works.

Doing the math

For a better health care system. It wouldn't cost that much, says R. Neal of Looking South. Check the link for his comparisons of American, Canadian, French and British taxes and expenses. Neal concludes:

So, yes, providing universal insurance coverage or universal health care for everyone would cost a little more in taxes, but not that much more. And think of the savings, not to mention peace of mind and security. It seems pretty clear that it would be better than the $2 trillion we spend now that leaves nearly 50 million people behind and gives false hope to the other 250 million who think they are insured until they file a claim.

Thank you. Another blockade destroyed, another hurdle removed. Watch Big Pharma and the Insurance companies build another one...

This means not only will I go see the movie

I will buy the DVD and send copies to all I know....

For his damaging exposé of the health care industry, Moore is now under attack from front groups supported and funded by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Indonesia had its 19th human death of bird flu this year

Do you know why they are not participating with the World Health Organization?

However, Indonesia since March has refused to share human bird flu samples with the World Health Organisation (WHO) after an Australian company developed a vaccine for commercial sale using an Indonesian sample without Jakarta's knowledge.

The government says foreign drug manufacturers are developing commercial bird flu vaccines using samples from poor countries such as Indonesia that ultimately may be unable to afford or even access them.

Indonesia has called for changes in WHO rules that would prevent samples from being used to develop vaccines unless all countries can access the scientific information without fear of patents or copyrights - and will continue its ban on sharing samples until that happens.

The issue is expected to be high on the agenda of the WHO's annual World Health Assembly, which begins Monday in Geneva.

How dare you trample on his religious feelings by wanting Plan B

Even though he is a pharmacist and legally trained to handle drugs, he has feelings too, you know!

Via trifecta at New Pairodimes:

A bunch of fundamentalists are gathering together to fight Plan B being available for women. On the radio tonight, I heard one excuse. Pharmacists in Washington State are being religiously surpressed by being forced to dispense this medication.
[snip]

A coalition of American pro-life groups and doctors' associations has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the approval of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for over-the-counter sales of the "Plan B" morning-after pill.

The lawsuit-- brought by the Family Research Council, American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, Concerned Women for America, and Safe Drugs for Women-- charges that the FDA improperly authorized sale of Plan B because of intense political pressure.

Specifically, the suit says that the manufacturers of Plan B failed to demonstrate that the drug is safe for all women, and that the directions provided on the label are adequately understood by the women who will take the drug.

In approving the sale of Plan B, the FDA too an inexplicable step, observed Wendy Wright, the president of Concerned Women for America; the federal overseer made "a high dose of a drug available without a prescription when a low dose of the same drug requires a prescription." Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, charged that the FDS "sacrificed women's health and committed unprecedented violations of the law" in approving the drug for over-the-counter use.

1 in 150 children have autism

So what will we do with this horrifying statistic?

Search for the causes?

Or let the pharmaceuticals make pills that will fix one thing but eff up everything else and cost an arm and a leg?

New cancer drug?

Washington - Her carefully cultured cells were dead and Katherine Schaefer was annoyed, but just a few minutes later, the researcher realised she had stumbled onto a potential new cancer treatment.

Schaefer and colleagues at the University of Rochester Medical Centre in New York believe they have discovered a new way to attack tumours that have learned how to evade existing drugs.

Tests in mice suggest the compound helps break down the cell walls of tumours, almost like destroying a tumour cell's "skeleton".

The researchers will test the new compound for safety and hope they can develop it to treat cancers such as colon cancer, oesophageal cancer, liver and skin cancers.

"I was using these cancer cells as models of the normal intestine," Schaefer said.

Normal human cells are difficult to grow and study in the lab, because they tend to die. But cancer cells live much longer and are harder to kill, so scientists often use them.

Schaefer was looking for drugs to treat the inflammation seen in Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, both of which cause pain and diarrhoea.

She was testing a compound called a PPAR-gamma modulator. It would never normally have been thought of as a cancer drug, or in fact a drug of any kind.

[snip]

The compound works in much the same way as the taxane drugs, including Taxol, which were originally derived from Pacific yew trees.

"It targets part of the cell cytoskeleton called tubulin," Schaefer said. Tubulin is used to build microtubules, which in turn make up the cell's structure.

Destroying it kills the cell, but cancer cells eventually evolve mechanisms to pump out the drugs that do this, a problem called resistance.

"Resistance to anti-tubulin therapies is a huge problem in many cancers. We see this as another way to get to the tubulin," Schaefer said.

The PPAR-gamma compound does this in a different way from the taxanes, which might mean it could overcome the resistance that tumour cells often develop to chemotherapy.

"Most of the drugs like Taxol affect the ability of tubulin to forms into microtubules. This doesn't do that - it causes the tubulin itself to disappear. We do not know why."

So...will the pharmaceutical companies let this drug exist? Or will they shut it down because it threatens their cancer medicines?

It does not cost that much to do medical research

that we need to spend a huge percentage of our money on health care and medicine.
Merrill Goozner of The Huffington Post:
"The drug industry's mantra that it costs over $1 billion to develop a new drug gets trotted out every time someone in Congress wants to do something about the high price of drugs. With the incoming Democratic Congress pledging to force Medicare to negotiate drug prices like the Veterans Administration, the industry's counteroffensive has begun. I've already seen several full page image ads (as opposed to product-specific ads) in the nation's leading newspapers.

The industry's claim rests on a simple proposition. Without high prices, research and development will be cut back. For the millions of Americans suffering from cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, and (fill in the blank with your most feared disease here), the fervently hoped-for miracles that are just over the horizon will not emerge from industry's labs.

It's a compelling story, and total hogwash, as a new report from the Government Accountability Office released by leading Congressional Democrats today shows."

Pharmaceutical companies mourn the leaving of Santorum.

There will not be many allies in Congress now...*sob*