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Oil Spill Clean Up is one big Proven Money making Conspiracy Gulf of Mexico Oil spill
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Pomegranates reduce the risk of breast cancer
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Coast Guard Under 'BP's Rules'
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Salmonella outbreak in 10 states prompts sprouts recall
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Obama Repudiates Bush Doctrine In West Point Graduation Speech (VIDEO)
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More Factory Farming Means More Antibiotic-Resistant Urinary Tract Infections
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Anti-Obama Teacher Is Placed on Leave in Alabama
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Eating Dirt: The Latest Culinary Trend
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How Bush's DOJ Killed a Criminal Probe Into BP That Threatened to Net Top Officials
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Is aging a disease?
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Incompetence Hits Flack; Where are the Marines?
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Concerns Over Radiation Exposure May Overshadow Life-Saving Benefits of Cardiac Imaging Tests
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Going to the Dogs: What Can Shy Dogs Teach Us About Longevity?
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Gulf oil spill: BP has a long record of legal, ethical violations
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Patents and the price of medical drugs

The patent protection for pharmaceutical drugs has increased substantially in recent years. What that means for consumers is higher prices for an extended period.


Risk Of Infringement

Drug patents were initially put into place to offset drug manufacturers costs and recoup their investments for research, clinical testing, packaging and marketing. By patenting a drug a company is guaranteed they will have no completion for their drug by other companies offering a generic of that drug until the patent expires.

In the 1980’s the length of patents were 15 years. Compare that to today’s length of 25 years, with varying periods regularly granted to pharmaceutical companies for further patents for things like new uses, changes in dosages and color or markings; and you have quite an extended monopoly.

Drug companies know that when their patent is over and generics of their product is allowed on the market, their prices must also come down, so they will do everything within their power to extend their patents. The expiration of a patent removes the monopoly of the patent holder, however, a new drug with significant changes to the compound could be patented.

On the other hand, a generic drug is produced and distributed without patent protection. A generic drug may still have a patent on the formulation but not its active ingredients. Generic drugs must contain the same active ingredients as the original to avoid more clinical trials. According to the FDA, generics are identical or within an acceptable bio equivalent range of the original name brand. When generic products become available, prices are substantially reduced for both the original name brand product as well as the generic because of the competition factor.

Patent lifetimes differ from country to country. According to Elaine Feuer, the author of “Innocent Casualties”, “Because the U.S. is the only major industrialized nation that does not regulate prices or profits of drug companies, prescription drugs generally cost 25% to 40% more than other countries.” In other words, drug companies rely on American sales to boost their profits while the same products are sold worldwide at cheaper prices. In fact, for many drugs, more than half of the revenue is from the United States alone.

Researching Only Profitable Substances

Even though an herb may treat or sometimes cure a disease, drug companies may not desire to research and market it. This is because, herbs, by their very nature cannot be patented. Since the profitability of herbs, vitamins and minerals does not exist, the public may remain largely ignorant of their benefits.

Although companies cannot patent natural plants in their whole form, they can patent the individual ingredients of plants. This is a laborious process since the plants components must be broken down and active ingredients must be isolated. At that point a drug company can say, they have “discovered” a new ingredient.

This system, although it would be profitable for the drug companies, has a downside. Many times an active ingredient does not work as well as the entire plant would have. Take the case of St. John’s Wart; the entire plant kills the AIDS virus in the test tube, while hypericum, the isolated ingredient does not.

As author Gary Null, of “AIDS: A Second Opinion” writes, “One report published in Fact Magazine speculates that the principle reason vitamin C is not commonly prescribed is that it is not as profitable as those syrups and pills your doctor dispenses.”

Patients and Bio Piracy

In 1993, the University of Mississippi Medical Center had a patent issued to them by the United States Patent Office on the use of turmeric for healing. Turmeric had been used for centuries in India as part of the traditional practices of Ayurvedic medicine. The overseas patenting of turmeric and products of the neem tree caused controversy in India as well as other nations. After it was proven that records had existed for the use of turmeric for centuries, the U.S. Patient and Trademark Office canceled its patient. This makes wonder just how far the drug companies will go to turn a profit.


By  Renee Rotto

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Science Closing in on Mystery of Age-Related Memory Loss, Says Neurobiologist
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Scientists decry "assaults" on climate research
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Natural Food: Organic Versus Non Organic

Is organic better than non organic? Organic food cost more but is it really healthier? There are arguments for both sides. Organically grown fruits and vegetables do not use man-made pesticides and herbicides and there are over 400 pesticides used in non-organic farming. Pesticides of course, are designed to kill living organisms. Modern agriculture techniques using pesticides and herbicides yield much larger crops using them, thus increasing their profits. These farmers tend to have very large farms, while organic farms tend to be family owned and operated. The costs of growing food non organically seem less expensive until you consider the costs borne by the taxpayer such as, federal subsides, regulation and testing of pesticides and the clean up and disposal of hazardous wastes. This is not to mention the effects on the environment. Even in remote areas of the earth scientist are noticing the impact of these toxic chemicals. Birds, wind, and water run off, are spreading them into our lakes, rivers and oceans. There is evidence that these toxins are in aquatic creatures, wildlife and humans.


How do these toxins make their way up the food chain to humans? Some is in the animals we consume because they graze on plants where run off has occurred, but some residue remains on the plants themselves. Even washing them, does not remove all residues. Some fruits and vegetables are more susceptible to this: with pesticides penetrating under the outer layers. The EPA considers 60% of all herbicides, 30% of all insecticides, and 90% of all fungicides, as potentially cancer causing agents. The EPA approved many of these long before research linked them to cancer and other diseases.

Over 30 billion tons, of topsoil is eroded each year across the United States and Europe, due to non-organic methods of farming. This is due to the vast amount of areas where farmers plant the same crop year after year.

Organic farmers rotate crops and grow crops of “green manures” to conserve the soil and preserve nutrients. Green manures are plants like soy, and legumes, that when plowed under the soil, it is revitalized. These practices conserve the topsoil and ready it for another crop. Many organic farmers have livestock or chickens where they harness their output as well. They make use of natural fertilizers through composting. By integrating livestock and utilizing these natural manures, earthworms and other soil organisms can easily replenish the soil.

Even if organic food saves the earth and doesn’t poison us with toxins, is that enough to make it worth the extra cost? If you’re not sure consider this. Why are we eating fruits and vegetables for in the first place? It’s for a little thing called antioxidants. That’s the stuff that keeps us healthy enough to fight off those toxins. Could there be a difference in the amount of antioxidants between organic and non-organic foods. The answer turns out to be yes.

Flavonoids are phenolic compounds that have potent antioxidant activity within them. These are produced in plants in response to plant stressors, such as insects and competition for nutrients from other plants. “If an aphid is nibbling on a leaf, the plant produces phenolics to defend itself. Bitter or harsh phenolics guard the plant from these pests.” Says, Alyson Mitchell, PH.D and food scientist at the University of California. When pesticides are applied the need for the plant to produce phenolics is reduced and so are the antioxidants. “This explains why the level of antioxidants is much higher in organically grown foods.” Mitchell says.

Organic farmers do use natural fertilizers like manure. Some have come to question the safety of manure on crops due to the recent food recall of peanut products. Using manures as a fertilizer is a source of various bacteria’s like Ecoli. Those who are against organic farming contend that without pesticides a plant is virtually unprotected against fungi. Fungi are natural carcinogens. While it may be true that there are natural occurring carcinogens to be concern with, to any logical person, organic farming remains the obvious healthier choice.


By  Renee Rotto

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Organic, small farmers fret over FDA regulation
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Do Prescription Drugs Cause Disease

Today Americans are losing trust in the pharmaceutical companies that make drugs and vaccines. People are even beginning to question the federal agencies that recommend them, due to the devastating side effects and diseases that they produce.


One only needs to watch television to become acquainted with the many so call side effects that prescription drugs have in store for their clients. Many times these side effects are much worse than the actual problem. The lists of scary prescription drugs is long and even the commercials tell you to contact you doctor to decide if this drug is right for you. Some commercials state that if you have been taken a certain drug and feel better, you should not stop.

Even worse than prescription drugs is the use of mandatory vaccinations. This is the case with the vaccine, Gardasil. Gardasil is a vaccine that is supposed to guard young girls against the human papillomavirus (HPV) that can lead to cancer of the cervix, vagina and anus. Several states have proposed requiring the vaccine be given to all schoolgirls entering the 6th grade. The fast track licensure of the vaccine and its universal use recommendation has launched a petition and issued a national press release calling on President Obama, his administration and congress to investigate Gardasil. One obvious question is why more than 10,000 reports of Gardasil-related reaction, injures and deaths being dismissed by federal health officials as “coincidence”.

Serious health problems such as stroke, blood clots, cardiac arrest, seizures, fainting, lupus and even death were associated with the vaccine Gardasil. Regardless of this, the maker of Gardasil, maintains a rather cavalier attitude towards these serious health problems and deaths. As of Sept. 1, 2009, 44 deaths in the U.S. have been reported among females who received Gardacil.

Other vaccines have also come into question in the past. Over the past 27 years the stories of deaths and brain damage that have been reported to the National Vaccine Information Center have not changed. A trusting parent takes a bright, healthy child to a doctor for a routine vaccination and that child is never the same again.

Prescription drugs can cause liver damage in several ways. Some drugs are directly injurious to the liver. Others are transformed by the liver, into chemicals that can be injurious to the liver. The toxicity of drugs is difficult to detect in early trials with only a few thousand patients. Many times toxicity will only surface after millions of patients begin to receive the drug after the drug is approved by the FDA and is on the market.

The huge profits made on drugs in this country may be one reason people have become skeptical about prescription drugs but it has also been suggested that the pharmaceutical industry may even be manufacturing new diseases to create drugs for. In fact, a group of doctors accused drug companies of inventing fictitious diseases to sell more prescription drugs. The Royal College of General Practitioners in the UK has accused drug companies of inventing fictitious diseases or exaggeration the severity of symptoms in order to boost their sales. Some of the over-hyped conditions include hypertension, osteoporosis, high cholesterol, anxiety and clinical depression. The college says that these diseases are inappropriately treated with drugs and that many of the physicians who have prescribed these drugs have financial ties with the pharmaceutical companies. In response, a spokesperson for the pharmaceutical industry in the UK actually said, ‘The Royal College of General Practitioners is suffering from argumentative disease and we have a drug for that.’

You can’t patient a disease so the next best thing is to patient the toxic chemical that you claim will treat the symptoms of that disease.
This is how Ritalin became popular. They invented a disease and gave it the name, “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder”. Now many little kids take this drug, when in reality their only problem may just be too much sugar in their diet.
Of course the ultimate goal of the pharmaceutical industry is to legislate the existence of a disease so the law will order the mandatory use of their drugs. In that case if a parent disagrees or believes a drug is dangerous, the state can come in and take the child away or force the drug to be given. If this idea disturbs you or causes you to be depressed, don’t worry; the drug companies have antidepressants for you.

By  Renee Rotto

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