Friday, December 31, 2021
Wednesday, December 29, 2021
Corporate Media and Their Local Affiliate Lackeys Whoring For Big Pharma
If were to rank your station I'd give its weather reporting a 9. The weather guy is one of the best I've seen. Sports reporting is very good but your News is atrocious. Most local news is pathetic but you lackeys, without fact checking, parrot the inaccurate uninformative BS the network sends and the rest of it is often advertising under the guise of a news story. You guys are as unethical and Dr Oz and Dr Phil.
In order to have accurate news you need accurate unbiased sources. With the COVID pandemic you are merely parroting what the NBC, a corporate run whorehouse, is told by the Medical Mafia's mouth pieces eg the CDC, WHO and the notoriously corrupt FDA.
Your "news" division will not fact check what the NBC corporate clowns feed you. Are you people so naive to believe that Pfizer, J&J, and to a less degree Moderna are not exploiting this epidemic for obscene profit? Does your "news" division have the journalistic integrity to say why the US has twice as many COVID deaths as India? Does your news division have the integrity to report on how Japan pretty much stopped the virus cold?
American COVID Data
India COVID Data
Japan COVID Data
CDC drastically drops estimate of Omicron cases in US
Omicron Drives U.S. Virus Cases Past Delta’s Peak - The ...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/23/us/omicron-case-count.html
Dec 23, 2021 · Omicron Drives U.S. Virus Cases Past Delta’s Peak. By Lauren Leatherby , Charlie Smart and Amy Schoenfeld Walker Dec. 23, 2021. 140. The Omicron variant, which is now dominant in the United ...
Omicron variant accounts for 73 percent of new Covid cases ...
Omicron Is Now the Dominant Variant in US...But How Many ...
Omicron Variant: What You Need to Know | CDC
Dec 20, 2021 · Omicron in the United States. CDC is working with state and local public health officials to monitor the spread of Omicron. As of December 20, 2021, Omicron has been detected in most states and territories and is rapidly increasing the proportion of …
U.S. COVID-19 deaths, hospitalizations 'comparatively' low ...
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/despite-surge...
8 hours ago · U.S. COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations are comparatively low despite a surge in cases as the highly infectious Omicron variant of …
Hospitalizations and deaths much lower with Omicron - The ...
9 hours ago · The first Omicron case in Kansas occurred in mid-December, but hospitalizations and deaths from other COVID variants are also much milder. Last year, there were 914 deaths attributed to COVID in November but only 244 this year. The drop in December deaths so far is even more precipitous, with 1,369 last year and only 147 through December 23.
Omicron variant may be good news - Washington Times
Tuesday, December 28, 2021
How To Clown Trumpanzees using Poe's Law
Trump's mob are filthy liar and lie spreaders, that's a given. Trump's mob is also stupid, that's also a given and stupid people repeat stupid things. Trump and his mob are immune to facts and truth. Lying and shit talk is all they know. We can beat them at their own game by mocking them and their bullshit unmercifully.
Here are a few examples.
1. Trump has claimed that he is the Chosen One. We can do a lot with this one. While pretending to be a MAGAt we can tell other MAGAts that Trump was indeed chosen by God to save the world and that he is indeed the TRUE Messiah.
Does Trump really think he was ordained by God to save the world? Yes he does. Trump is a grandiose narcissist and narcissists believe and things like that.
In a recent interview with that lying whore Candace Owens Trump claimed to be instrumental in creating the 3 vaccines.
2. Donald Jr suggests Trump's blood is the cure.
3.The Wall Is Complete, Mexico Paid For It. They Just Don't Know It.
When it came to the wall Trump knew several things. He knew it would not stop incursions into the US and he knew there was no way to get Mexico to pay for it. He also knew that most incursions into the US were not by Mexicans but by South Americans.
The narrative can be, Trump completed the wall, Mexico paid for it and it stopped illegal immigration cold. We know it didn't get built as Trump promised and that there was actually a surge in border crossings.
4. Alternative Facts
5. Trump's Admiration for Hitler and Other Murderous Despots
MGGAt narratives can go something like this:
1. The Nazi Holocaust was a hoax concocted by the Jews.
2. Hitler had a lot of good ideas and that is why Donald admired him so much.
3. Let's be honest, White people really are superior.
4. Mein Kampf is a great read.
6. Trump''s Overt Racism
MAGAt Narratives:
1. He's right niggers really are lazy.
2. Bring back slavery and then they'll have to work.
7. Trump Called American War Dead Sucker and Losers
MAGAt Narratives:
1. If would be a crime to send a brilliant man like Trump to Vietnam I'm glad he faked have bone spurs.
2. He's right, only suckers and losers join the military and besides, Trump knows more than the US Generals.
Trump's Vile Trashing of John McCain
MAGAt Narratives:
I didn't think so before but Trump's right about people in the military, they really are losers and suckers, especially John McCain.
John McCain was a commie!
Everything about John McCain's capture and torture was fake news by the liberal socialist media. He was pampered at the Hanoi Hilton that commie bastard.
I'll be posting more ways to troll Trump's trolls. In the meantime, engage them on social media and pretend to be one of them while posting stuff that makes them cringe and fight among themselves.
Here's a growing list of Trump's Traitorous Twitter Trolls for you to fuck with.
@j_Borders
@CongressmanJVD
@NRA
@DonaldJTrumpJr
@EricTrump
@DevinNunes
@Jim_Jordan
@IvankaTrump
@AGWillliamBarr
@BetsyDeVos
@KellyAnnConnway
@SarahHuckabee
@GovMikeHuckabee
@DanScavino
@TeamTrump
@kayleighmcenany
@GOP
@CLewandowski_
@EliseStefanik
@marxwasaracist
@sunny28282
@RealBenCarson
@SecretaryCarson
@KatrinaPierson
@OANN
@DineshDSouza
@mattgaetz
@RepMattGaetz
@JudgeJeanine
@Jim_Jordan
@DiamondandSilk
@seanhannity
@RandPaul
@Jim_Jordan
@ProudNavyMom
@jperky1956
@avi29nash
@truedream416
@MacNutt77
@ShielaHammond4
@replouiegohmert
@eichstadt_janie
@Franklin_Graham
@Andie_Cole_
@Trimixdiver3
@RepMikeJohnson
@stclairashley
@SenJoniErnst
@IngrahamAngle
@FAIRImmigration
@GOP
@thomtillis
@SenatorBurr
@GOPchairwoman
@tedcruz
@JohnCornyn
@Donnalucy9
@gopleader
@senatemajldr
@navymousel
@lovelyelefant17
@BonillaJL
@haninglm
@RandPaul
@DrRandPaul
@RealCandaceO
@TuckerCarlson
@TPostMillennial
Monday, December 27, 2021
10 Reasons For Banning Anti-Vaxxers and Anti-Maskers From Hospitals
1. These people are assholes and they were born asshole and they breed.
2. Assholes vote for other assholes such as Trump, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell etc...
3. They are dangerous.
5. Many support the overthrow of the government.
6. They spread disease.
7. Because many of them are obese and smokers, their behavior increases the cost of health care.
8. They knowingly and unknowingly spread dangerous lies on social media.
9. They are anti-science.
Sunday, December 26, 2021
Let Em DIE! Deny The Unvaccinated Health Care
Hospital acquired infections are a huge problem in the US. We need to be keeping these leppers out of hospitals. Dead MAGAts can't spread the Corona virus.
MAGAts are bad people who should never have been born. When their ignorance and arrogance put them in early graves we should celebrate the end of their horrid lives.
People who are sick and injured through no fault of their own deserve medical care more than any MAGAt. Stupidity, arrogance and ignorance should be punished and not rewarded.
Anti-Vaxxers put our healthcare workers are risk for serious illness and death.
Saturday, December 25, 2021
Omicron Herd Immunity Effect Is Big Pharma's Worst Nightmare
Omicron may sideline two leading drugs against COVID-19
WASHINGTON (AP) — As strained U.S. hospitals brace for a new surge of COVID-19 cases caused by the fast-spreading omicron variant, doctors are warning of yet another challenge: the two standard drugs they’ve used to fight infections are unlikely to work against the new strain.
Fact Time: So far it looks as though vaccinated people who become infected with the Omicron variant don't get very ill and they clear the infection in 6 days. It looks as though no medications will be need in nearly all Omicron cases.
For more than a year antibody drugs from Regeneron and Eli Lilly have been the go-to treatments for early COVID-19, thanks to their hyped ability to head off severe disease and keep patients out of the hospital.
But both drugmakers recently warned that laboratory testing suggests their therapies will be much less potent against omicron, which contains dozens of mutations that make it harder for antibodies to attack the virus. And while the companies say they can quickly develop new omicron-targeting antibodies, those aren’t expected to launch for at least several months.
Fact Time: Antibodies are only one layer of protection in the immune response. Immune Response Explained
A third antibody from British criminal drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline appears to be the best positioned to fight omicron. But Glaxo’s drug is not widely available in the U.S., accounting for a small portion of the millions of doses purchased and distributed by the federal government. U.S. health officials are now rationing scarce drug supplies to states.
“I think there’s going to be a shortage,” said Dr. Jonathan Li, director of the Harvard/Brigham Virology Specialty Laboratory. “We’re down to one FDA-authorized monoclonal antibody” with omicron because of the reduced effectiveness of Regeneron and Lilly's drugs.
Probable Explanation: The families within the Medical Mafia all work together to create shortages. The fact remains, big pharma is a global drug cartel. Chances are, non of the aforementioned drugs are effective. Big Pharma also knows that the need for monoclonal anti-bodies will be nearly non existent for Omicron. The fact is, Omicron will produce natural immunity with side effects similar to vaccines.
The delta variant still accounts for more than 95% of estimated U.S. cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But agency leaders say omicron is spreading faster than any past variant and will become the dominant strain nationwide within weeks.
Fact Check: Omicron is the dominant variant worldwide. Also, variants are not strains.
Delivered by injection or infusion, antibodies are laboratory-made versions of human proteins that help the immune system fight off viruses and other infections.
Glaxo's drug, developed with Vir Biotechnology, was specifically formulated to bind to a part of the virus that is less likely to mutate, according to the companies. Early studies of laboratory-simulated omicron by the drugmakers and outside researchers show promising results.
Don't believe shit the medical mafia wants you to believe until you have actual proof. Big Pharma's collective lie hole is nearly as big as its obscene profits.
Supply of the drug is “extremely limited, and additional doses of the product will not be available until the week of January 3rd,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in an statement posted online.
Like other criminal profiteers, big pharma is an expert at created fake shortages.
After pausing distribution last month to conserve supply, HHS is now shipping 55,000 doses of the drug, called sotrovimab, to state health departments, with the doses arriving as early as Tuesday. An additional 300,000 are expected in January.
This is called fuck the taxpayers.
The agency said it is distributing the drug to states based on their levels of infections and hospitalizations.
HHS recommends states conserve the drug for the highest risk patients who are most likely to have omicron infections, either based on laboratory testing that can identify the variant or elevated levels of omicron spread in local communities, identified as 20% and higher.
High-risk patients include seniors and those with serious health problems, such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes and immune-system disorders.
Prior to the pause in shipments, Glaxo’s drug accounted for about 10% of the 1.8 million antibody doses distributed to state health officials between mid-September and late November, according to federal figures.
London-based criminal Glaxo says it is on track to produce 2 million doses by May, under contracts with the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Japan and several other countries. The company is working to add more manufacturing capacity next year.
The loss of two leading antibody therapies puts even more focus on a pair of highly anticipated antiviral pills that U.S. regulators are expected to soon authorize.
Clever huh?
The drugs from Pfizer and Merck would be the first treatments Americans can take at home to head off severe disease. Pfizer’s drug in particular has shown a powerful effect, curbing hospitalizations and deaths by nearly 90% in high-risk patients.
Yet they have no proof to back up that claim.
“If it’s rolled out effectively this has a real big potential,” to make up for antibody treatments, said Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University. “That’s an immediate place where these antivirals could minimize the impact of omicron.”
Omicron with its mild symptoms, rapid spread and short duration will probably be what ends this pandemic and that pisses off the criminal scum at big pharma.
Still, initial supplies of both drugs are expected to be limited.
The shrinking toolbox of treatments is a painful reminder that the virus still has the upper hand in the U.S., even with more than 200 million Americans fully vaccinated.
What we are not being told by the whore corporate media is which vaccine has had the most breakthrough infections, disease and deaths. A report from the Connecticut Dept of Heath seemed to indicate that most breakthrough infections and deaths were people who got the weak Pfizer vaccine. The article was squashed and has no vanished.
Scientists around the world are racing to understand omicron, including whether it causes more or less severe disease and how easily it evades protection from prior infection, vaccination, and antibody drugs.
They already know that vaccinated people have mild to moderate symptoms from Omicron.
“We're certainly going to see hospitalizations rise,” said Dr. James Cutrell of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. “If we have a lack of antibodies that’s certainly going to contribute to that many more patients needing to be in the hospital.”
This is mostly BULLSHIT! Infection will rise to perhaps 1 million per day but based on the UK and South Africa data it is NOT certain that hospitalizations will increase like they did with wild covid and the other variants. Dr James Cutrell is probably getting kickbacks from big pharma.
___
Friday, December 24, 2021
Big Pharma's Crimes The Third Reich and Nuremberg Pharma Tribunal of 1947/48
by Gabriel Donohoe
October 18, 2008
from NaturalNews Website
Many Things Are More Evil Than Trump. This Is One Of Them.
After World War Two, scores of suspected Nazi war criminals were prosecuted by the Allies in the Palace of Justice in the city of Nuremberg, the birth-place of the Nazi Party.
The defendants were drawn not just from the military, but also from medical, judicial, administrative, industrial, and other sectors of the German war machine.
Among the industrial prisoners charged with crimes against humanity were 24 managers of IG Farben, an organization without whom, according to U.S. Chief Prosecutor Telford Taylor, the Second World War would not have been possible.
In 1925, IG Farben, Interessengemeinschaft Farben, (Association of Common Interests), became a powerful cartel of German chemical and pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer (the aspirin manufacturer), BASF, AGFA, and Hoechst (now known as Aventis.)
By 1933, the IG Farben group had become the largest chemical and pharmaceutical corporation in the world. And even today, although it doesn't use the name IG Farben, its companies remain the most powerful transnationals on the planet in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and agro-chemicals.
The IG Farben cartel was crucial to the Nazi war effort by supplying synthetic fuel, rubber, and other chemicals. They also manufactured Zyklon-B, the nerve gas used to kill millions at the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Birkenau and elsewhere.
The cartel, later known as the 'Devil's Chemists', used unwilling inmates of the concentration camps as slave laborers and guinea pigs to test chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and vaccines. Tens of thousands died, and those who became too ill to be of any use were murdered in the gas chambers.
IG Farben worked closely with the Nazi regime and the SS and were perhaps the most important dynamic in driving the Nazi war machine, donating some 80 million Reichsmarks in return for chemical, pharmaceutical and petrochemical industries seized from occupied countries.
Yet they could not have gotten to a position of such power without huge investment from John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil Company.
Together with Rockefeller they set up a company called Standard IG Farben.
Although he knew it would be used for war purposes, Rockefeller was able to organize a shipment of 500 tons of tetraethyl lead to IG Farben in 1938 which the Luftwaffe needed for aviation fuel. Amazingly, a year later, with war about to break out, he supplied them with up to 20 million dollars of tetraethyl lead which directly enabled Hitler to start the War by attacking Poland and France.
Even as late as 1942 he supplied the Nazis with oil diverted through Switzerland and refueled German submarines in the Channel Islands.
When charged under the "Trading With The Enemy" Act, Rockefeller got away with a 'slap on the wrist' (5,000 dollar fine) when President Roosevelt abruptly halted the investigation at the behest of the War Department. (The unpatriotic Rockefeller had threatened to stop supplying the U.S. with crucial supplies of war-time oil.)
IG Farben went on to build the largest industrial complex in Europe at Auschwitz to manufacture chemicals and explosives for the German war effort.
The venture was financed by Deutsche Bank to the tune of almost one billion Reichsmarks.
This complex, known as IG Auschwitz, covered some 24 square kilometers including the Auschwitz concentration camp from which it drew on a huge pool of slave labor. IG Farben directors were instrumental in turning this huge complex into the largest extermination camp in human history.
On a number of occasions, when orders were given by the Allies to bomb the complex, Rockefeller used his influence through John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War (who was a former legal counselor to IG Farben), to cancel the bombing raids, much to the chagrin of some of the Allied commanders.
Furthermore, not one bomb fell on IG Farben's Headquarters back in Germany, at Frankfurt. Astounding, at a time when German industrial cities were widely bombed and pulverized, including Frankfurt itself.
At the Nuremberg Trials, 24 of the IG Farben directors and other industrialists were charged with genocide, slavery, and other crimes against humanity.
Many of these unscrupulous villains would later play a key role in reinstating several IG Farben companies as huge players in the pharmaceutical/chemical industry not only in Germany but also throughout Europe and the United States. And several of these former Nazis would be pivotal in devising a pan-European trade association which has now evolved into the European Union.
Dr. Fritz ter Meer, a director of IG Farben who was directly involved in developing the nerve gas, Zyklon-B, which killed millions of Jews, was sentenced to seven years in prison but was released after four years through the intervention of Rockefeller and J.J. McCloy, then U.S. High Commissioner for Germany.
An unrepentant Fritz ter Meer, guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, returned to work in Bayer where he served as Chairman for more than 10 years, until 1961.
This same ter Meer, a convicted Nazi war criminal, went on to become one of the initiators of the Codex Alimentarius Commission in 1962, an organization that was nurtured by,
Codex Alimentarius, supposedly set up to protect the health of consumers and ensure fair practices in the food trade, is in reality extremely hostile to the world's vitamin, supplement, and natural food industries and seems determined to destroy them.
Codex is controlled by Big Pharma whose only raison d'être is to promote disease and sell more pharmaceuticals.
Karl Wurster, chairman of the IG Farben company, Degesch, which manufactured the Zyklon-B nerve gas, was charged as a war criminal but was somehow acquitted. He later served as CEO of BASF of 13 years, until 1974.
Hans Globke co-authored the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Race Laws and was responsible for writing the new laws of the Greater European Reich in Nazi-occupied countries.
After the War, Globke became a minister in Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's government and served from 1949 to 1963. He was free of any parliamentary supervision and controlled the Secret Service.
He was also directly involved in plotting with the oil and drug cartel on how to take over and control European markets within the newly constructed European Economic Community (EEC), fore-runner of the current European Union (EU).
Walter Hallstein was a prominent Nazi law professor who stated in 1939:
One of the most important laws (in occupied European countries) is the 'Protection Law of German Blood and Honor'.
This Nazi "blood and honor" lawyer was instrumental in creating the European Union's basic structure and became the first head of the European Commission, an executive body adroitly designed to rule Europe without any interference from democratic control.
This absence of democracy is quite evident in Brussels especially today.
In 1957, Chancellor Adenauer and Hallstein signed the first European Treaty in Rome.
[Much of the information here on IG Farben has come from Dr. Matthias Rath, a tireless campaigner for health freedom and the scourge of Big Pharma. Dr. Rath, under the Freedom of Information Act, has managed to obtain tens of thousands of IG Farben documents from the War Crimes Tribunal that had been kept secret for six decades and has posted them on his website. See (www.profit-over-life.org) , also (http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/) . These are incredible sites - you'll spend hours there! Check out articles on Codex Alimentarius, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and Dr. Rath's series of Open Letters to the New York Times.]
The domination by the pharmaceutical industry of current medical practice and their insidious influence on government legislation is a direct legacy of IG Farben and the Nazi war criminals who ran the original cartel.
Crimes are still being committed today on such a massive scale that millions of people have died since World War Two and millions more are being poisoned daily by these monsters. It is impossible in this short article to list all the horrendous criminality of Big Pharma, Big Food, Big Biotech, and their political henchmen but the following paragraphs provide some examples of the death and mayhem they cause.
In a recent report authored by Dr. Gary Null, Dr. Carolyn Dean, et al, (Death by Medicine) some 780,000 Americans are killed by their doctors or by the medical system each year. 106,000 of these die from properly prescribed medicine in properly prescribed doses and over two million people are hospitalized because of adverse effects from taking these FDA-approved prescription drugs.
The directors of the companies who manufacture these drugs well know the harm they cause but do all they can to keep such adverse information from the public.
These gangsters are driven by greed and profit; they couldn't care less about people's health or their lives. A good example is the scandal of Vioxx, a drug that was kept on the market even though it was known to cause heart attacks.
Vioxx is believed to have killed between 50,000 and 70,000 people. Other dangerous drugs include Baycol, Bextra, Celebrex, and the list goes on...
Big Pharma is involved in rigging drug trials, ghostwriting the reports of "independent" researchers, bribing politicians, doctors, and scientists, and hiding reports unfavorable to their drugs. One particularly nasty example of collusion that appeared recently on NaturalNews was the case of Dr. Biederman of Harvard University who advocated mind-altering drugs for children while being secretly paid off 1.6 million dollars from the drug companies.
And to maintain their markets, Big Pharma is very active in suppressing vitamins, minerals, and natural health foods.
They also suppress any information on natural health and are energetically assisted in this by their friends in the FDA and other government bodies. They are helped by colluding politicians who push through legislation to favor big corporations and they remain unchallenged by mainstream media who have a deeper affinity for advertising revenue than for people's health.
Big Food poisons us with chemical additives, preservatives, colorings, flavorings, trans fats and other harmful ingredients.
The effects of these deadly additives are well known and documented:
aspartame, MSG, sodium benzoate, potassium bromate, sodium nitrite, and thousands more...
It's no wonder most of us are sick, and we're getting sicker.
Governments turn a blind eye to crimes of toxicity and actively promote the dumping of fluoride and chlorine in our water, the use of mercury in vaccines and in dentistry, and to a host of other criminal acts committed in the pretext of advancing public health.
Again with government complicity, Big Biotech poisons us with Genetically Modified crops in a plot to own the patents to the very food that's nourished us for hundreds of thousands of years. GM crops pose one of the greatest threats to our health and survival on this planet. No one really knows what effects this frankenfood will have on us or future generations.
GM food is currently suspected as a cause of Morgellon's Disease.
And what kind of a warped, evil mind would invent a "terminator" seed that is designed to become sterile when the plants are harvested so that the farmer is forced to buy more seeds from these already mega-rich corporations.
What if these terminator seeds infiltrated the crops across the world?
Now it is time to say, "Enough!"...
This unmitigated evil must end. Those responsible must be stopped and made to answer for their crimes. We need to revisit Nuremberg and finish the job that was begun there some 60 years ago.
I propose compiling a record of all the people from the above-mentioned industries, mass media, politics, government regulation bodies, finance, and from wherever appropriate, and entering them in a register along with their observed crimes against humanity. This register would be presented as a prosecution document when the day of reckoning comes. These individuals are acting against the health interests of the people of this planet and must be dealt with accordingly.
When a name and a crime goes on the list, that person should be put on notice so that they can't say they were unaware of their crime or that they were just "following orders". This will also give them a chance to repudiate their crime and to join the ranks of the promoters of natural health and freedom of choice.
This book of records might become known as "The Nuremberg List" and widely publicized so that it quickly enters the public consciousness.
Soon, the very mention of "The Nuremberg List" - unlike "Schindler's List" which offered hope and salvation - would instill fear of liability and punishment into those who persist in poisoning their fellow man. Perhaps a respected organization like Natural News might agree to compiling such a list.
Dr. Matthias Rath has already started things rolling by instigating proceedings against some of these corporate criminals.
In June, 2003, Dr. Rath's Foundation lodged formal charges against those special interests behind the pharmaceutical 'business with disease' at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, the Nederlands.
The ICC is the premier world court for cases of genocide and other crimes against humanity.
Dr. Rath said,
"We are convinced that one day soon these charges will form the basis for an international tribunal at the ICC that will shadow the scope of the Nuremberg Pharma Tribunal of 1947/48."
Among those charged are,
Tony Blair
...and other members of the Republican administration.
Also cited are executives of the
...and other culpable people.
See more details here. Dr. Rath should be congratulated for his efforts and assisted in every way possible.
Let this be the beginning of the end for corporate tyranny and let good health and fair play prevail on this beautiful but defiled planet of ours.
Shocking History of Pfizer and J&J Murderous Crimes
On January 15 of this year, US federal prosecutors in Boston filed a complaint against Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and related companies, alleging violations of the federal False Claims Act and related legislation (Associated Press 2010).1 Allegedly, from 1999 through 2004, J&J made payments to Omnicare to induce increased prescribing of Risperdal to patients in nursing homes. Risperdal is J&J's brand of risperidone, a drug used in the treatment of schizophrenia.
The inducement was somewhat indirect. Omnicare is a pharmaceutical services provider, the largest in North America, that contracts with nursing homes and other facilities to provide drugs prescribed by patients' physicians. Omnicare's pharmacists dispense these drugs; they also provide oversight of patients' drug use and health condition. According to the complaint, Omnicare pharmacists review patients' charts at least monthly and make prescribing recommendations that physicians follow more than 80% of the time.
The ultimate objective of all prescription drug marketing is to determine what is written on the prescription pad. In this case, the chain of influence ran from drug company to dispensing contractor to pharmacist to physician. Over the period alleged, J&J sales through Omnicare rose from $100 million to $280 million. Risperdal made up more than one-third of these sales.
Omnicare's website stresses the company's mission to promote the health of seniors.
Omnicare: The Prescription for Positive Outcomes
Omnicare is the nation's leading provider of pharmaceutical care for seniors. Each day, our pharmacists serve more than 1.4 million residents of skilled nursing, assisted living, and other healthcare facilities in 47 states and Canada. While doing this, we capture a tremendous amount of data. Omnicare combines this data with its proprietary outcomes algorithm technology, based on best practices in geriatric medicine, to identify and help treat diseases in the elderly.
We do all this, and much more, with one goal in mind: to help ensure the health of seniors in a cost-effective manner. (Omnicare 2010)
This noble language might suggest that Omnicare is “an eleemosynary outfit.”2 Not so. It is a strictly for-profit corporation (OCR-N on the NYSE) like Johnson & Johnson (JNJ-N), with the mission – the one for which its executives are paid – of providing “enhanced shareholder value” – i.e., profit for its shareholders. For the hard-eyed men and women of Wall Street, the rest is just public relations fluff. Payments from J&J to Omnicare to encourage pharmacists to promote the prescribing of Risperdal were a win–win strategy for both corporations.
For patients, perhaps not so much. Atypical antipsychotic drugs such as risperi-done can have some quite nasty side effects; in particular, the US Food and Drug Administration requires manufacturers to include special labelling warning of an increased risk of death related to psychosis and behavioural problems in elderly patients with dementia.
Kickbacks in the nursing home pharmacy context are particularly nefarious because they can result in excessive prescribing of strong drugs to patients who have little or no control over the medical care they are receiving. … Nursing home doctors should be able to rely on the integrity of the recommendations they receive from pharmacists, and those recommendations should not be a product of money that a drug company is paying to the pharmacy. (US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, quoted in Associated Press 2010).
In addition to the risks to patients, the other side of the coin of corporate gain was the cost to public and private payers. But these interests, like those of patients, were not represented when J&J implemented a strategy of, in effect, purchasing Omnicare's nursing home pharmacists to act as an extension of its own sales force.
The charges against J&J have not been proven in court, nor are they likely to be. Corporations prefer not to go to trial; rather, they negotiate a settlement that will permit them to continue denying wrong-doing while paying to make the charges go away. (Such settlements may, however, include a formal guilty plea on one or more criminal charges.) Omnicare, as it happens, settled related charges last November for a payment of $98 million to the United States and state governments (Associated Press 2010); with that case settled, J&J will probably choose the same option. The only real issue in dispute will be the size of the penalties.
The amount of money involved in this case is in fact very small potatoes. J&J will probably pay a couple of hundred million in fines and civil penalties. The stakes were somewhat higher last September, when Pfizer and related companies settled a number of charges for a total of $2.3 billion (O'Reilly and Capaccio 2009). This settlement set a new record for a criminal fine – $1.2 billion – plus civil penalties of $1 billion. Subsidiary Pharmacia & Upjohn pleaded guilty to one count of a felony, misbranding of a pharmaceutical, and was assessed a forfeiture of $100 million.
A number of fraudulent marketing practices were involved for a number of different Pfizer or subsidiary products. The criminal charges focused on the illegal promotion of several Pfizer brands – Bextra (valdecoxib, a pain medication, since removed from the market), Geodon (ziprasidone HCl, an atypical antipsychotic), Zyvox (linezolid, an antibiotic) and Lyrica (pregabalin, a seizure medication). These were promoted for “off-label” use, i.e., for uses other than those approved by the FDA.3 But there were also kickbacks to physicians and the use of unverified and misleading marketing materials to promote the prescribing of several other Pfizer brands, including Viagra (sildenafil) and Lipitor (atorvastatin).
This was by no means Pfizer's first offence. In 2007, Pfizer subsidiary Pharmacia & Upjohn paid $34 million and pleaded guilty to paying kickbacks for formulary placement of its drugs and entered into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement for off-label distribution of Genotropin, its brand for the human growth hormone somatropin (US Department of Health & Human Services and US Department of Justice n.d.).
In 2004, Pfizer subsidiary Warner–Lambert pleaded guilty and paid more than $430 million to resolve criminal charges and civil liability arising from its fraudulent marketing practices with respect to Neurontin, its brand for the drug gabapentin. Originally developed for the treatment of epilepsy, Neurontin was illegally promoted off-label for the treatment of various forms of neurological pain, and in particular for migraine.
In 2002, Pfizer and its subsidiaries Warner–Lambert and Parke–Davis paid $49 million to resolve civil claims that it had failed to report best prices for its drug Lipitor as is required under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Statute.
As this is being written, gabapentin is back in the news. The CBC (2010) reports that
Pfizer has been ordered to pay $142 million US in damages for fraudulently marketing gabapentin, an anti-seizure drug marketed under the name Neurontin. A federal jury in Boston ruled Thursday that Pfizer fraudulently marketed the drug and promoted it for unapproved uses.4
This case demonstrates one reason why drug companies often prefer to settle rather than go to trial. The CBC report continues:
Data revealed in a string of U.S. lawsuits indicates the drug was promoted by the drug company as a treatment for pain, migraines and bipolar disorder – even though it wasn't effective in treating these conditions and was actually toxic in certain cases, according to the Therapeutics Initiative, an independent drug research group at the University of British Columbia.
The trials forced the company to release all of its studies on the drug, including the ones it kept hidden.
A new analysis of those unpublished trials by the Therapeutics Initiative suggests that gabapentin works for one out of every six or eight people who use it, at best. The review also concluded that one in eight people had an adverse reaction to the drug.
Dr. Tom Perry, quoted in the story, estimates that Neurontin sales in Canada are around $300 million per year. Since the drug has been in use since the late 1990s, at least a billion dollars has been spent on an illegally promoted drug with few benefits and serious side effects.
In response to this record of persistent criminal behaviour, the September 2009 settlement included Pfizer's signing of an “integrity agreement” to be overseen by the US Department of Health & Human Services. In essence, while denying virtually all charges of wrong-doing, Pfizer accepted a form of trusteeship for a period of years, to try to prevent the company from doing in the future what it denied having done in the past.5
The integrity agreement, however, imposed the further requirement that Pfizer make public its cash payments to practitioners. On March 31, 2010, the New York Times reported that
Pfizer … paid about $20 million to 4,500 doctors and other medical professionals in the United States for consulting and speaking on its behalf in the last six months of 2009 … [and] $15.3 million to 250 academic medical centers and other research groups for clinical trials …. (Wilson 2010)
While most of the disclosures were required by the integrity agreement, “[c]ompany executives said they had long planned to be more transparent.” The “skepticism [of] some outside experts” may have been reinforced by the fact that Pfizer's website (like those of Eli Lilly, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline) is “set up in ways that make it difficult to download and analyze the entire database” (Wilson 2010). It is also notable that the integrity agreement does not apply to payments made to physicians outside the United States – in Canada, for example – and accordingly, none of these were disclosed.
An integrity agreement was also imposed in the previous record settlement of health industry fraud charges, the $1.7 billion paid by the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) in 2003 (US Department of Justice 2003b). In this case, the charges involved “false claims arising from a variety of allegedly unlawful practices, including cost report fraud and the payment of kickbacks to physicians” (US Department of Justice 2003a) as well as fraudulent billings of various types. But in the HCA case the Department of Justice also proceeded against a number of corporate executives. A corporation may treat both criminal and civil penalties as simply business expenses, to be weighed against the revenues earned from illegal behaviour. But human beings can be put in jail, and that is a whole other matter. Conceivably, convicting corporate executives of criminal behaviour and sentencing them to terms of imprisonment might be a more effective deterrent to the “repeat offender” behaviour demonstrated by Pfizer.
Unfortunately, while several HCA executives were indicted, the American courts threw out the charges against individuals. The corporation – i.e., its shareholders – incurred the financial penalties; the executives involved were presumed innocent. In the absence of such personal liability, both criminal and civil penalties appear to be, to Pfizer at least, a business expense worth incurring. You have to spend money to make money.
This point was illustrated in 1998, when the Canadian courts rejected a suit by Bristol-Myers Squibb to suppress a research report on the effectiveness of various forms of statins. CCOHTA (the Canadian Coordinating Office of Health Technology Assessment, now the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health) had found that statins were, indeed, effective in lowering blood levels of LDLs, but that no one variant had an advantage over others on the market. Bristol-Myers Squibb's pravastatin (branded as Pravachol) had the leading market share in Canada, and the company feared that this assessment might undercut its marketing. The company sought an injunction forbidding the report's release. This was denied. The company appealed the ruling. The appeal was denied.
But Bristol-Myers Squibb won by losing. The release of the report was delayed from December 1997 until May 1998, and a large part of CCOHTA's budget, and the time and focus of its staff, were diverted to litigation. As the Journal of the American Medical Association reported, “[t]he $230,000 that CCOHTA spent on lawyers to defend the right to publish its report represents approximately the income from a single day of sales of Pravachol in Canada, but it amounts to 13% of CCOHTA's annual budget” (“Drug Firm Suit Fails to Halt Publication of Canadian Health Technology Report” 1998). The costs of (probably predictably) unsuccessful litigation were well worth incurring – as was the opprobrium of the research community. Memories are short.6
Nor are the financial penalties very significant compared to the size of the companies involved (see (Table (Table11).
TABLE 1.
Sales and net revenues, based on 2009 annual reports of the world's 12 largest pharmaceutical firms (millions USD)
| Company | Revenue | Net Income |
|---|---|---|
| Johnson & Johnson | 61,897 | 12,266 |
| Pfizer | 50,009 | 8,635 |
| Roche | 45,304 | 7,860 |
| Glaxo Smith Kline | 44,421 | 8,877 |
| Novartis | 44,267 | 8,454 |
| Sanofi–Aventis | 40,870 | 11,814 |
| Astra Zeneca | 32,804 | 7,544 |
| Abbott Laboratories | 30,800 | N/A |
| Merck | 27,428 | 13,024 |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb | TBA | TBA |
| Bayer Healthcare | 22,297 | 2,365 |
| Eli Lilly | 21,836 | 4,328 |
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pharmaceutical_companies. Retrieved April 9, 2010.
In eight years of repeated malfeasance, Pfizer has accumulated just under $3 billion in fines and civil penalties, or only about a third of last year's net revenues. For J&J, a penalty of $200–$300 million would hardly count as pocket change.
But the world evolves. In January 2010 the FBI, operating in conjunction with authorities in the United Kingdom and Israel, executed a “sting” operation against a number of mostly small-time arms dealers who offered bribes to the “representatives” of a fictitious African nation to secure equally fictitious contracts to supply arms and ammunition. This is an offence under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), and the charges are laid against the individuals who offer bribes or otherwise engage in corrupt practices as defined by American law. The FBI were careful to ensure that the victims of the sting were fully aware that their intended actions were illegal. Twenty-two executives were then arrested, all but one in Las Vegas (where else?).
This operation was the first under a new modus operandi for the US Department of Justice, involving a “campaign-style” approach targeting industries identified as highly corrupt and then trying to bring simultaneous prosecutions against a large number of people in those industries. It also featured close transatlantic cooperation between the FBI and the City of London police (Henriques 2010).
What is of particular interest is that the next industry to be targeted using the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was pharmaceuticals. On November 12, 2009, at the 10th Annual Pharmaceutical Regulatory and Compliance Congress and Best Practices Forum, Assistant Attorney General Larry Breuer (chief of the Department of Justice criminal division) cautioned that the level of government involvement in health systems outside the United States makes the environment ripe for bribery, corruption and FCPA violations. He indicated that the department's increased scrutiny of the pharmaceutical industry “will mean investigation and, if warranted, prosecution of corporations … but also it will involve investigation and prosecution of senior executives” (Main Justice 2009). Will the international nature of the pharmaceutical industry enable such investigations to reach corrupt practices – and individuals – within the United States itself? (Could it reach into Canada?) Answers are probably some years away.
A commercial corporation, as a legal person, differs from natural persons – you and me – in being wholly amoral. It is a social organization brilliantly designed for a single purpose – the pursuit of profit. The test of a corporate action is, will it tend to increase profits – or, more generally, the net worth of the corporation? The action may involve the breaking of laws, or threats to the health and well-being of patients or other natural persons. Looking at Pfizer's record, one thinks of the phrase “habitual criminal.” But the corporation lacks the mens rea, the guilty mind, associated with criminality in the natural person. Amoral, purely legal persons recognize no moral restraints, so are no more capable of feeling guilt than a robot (Bakan 2004).
But “Corporations don't lie, steal, conceal, plunder, bribe and scheme. People do.”7 The corporate form typically permits corporate executives to escape personal accountability. The key to discouraging corporate malfeasance in the pharmaceutical industry may therefore lie in reaching through the corporate veil to charge those natural persons whose decisions determine the behaviour of the corporation.
But there is no risk of that happening in Canada. In sharp contrast to the US Department of Justice, regulatory authorities in Canada are reminiscent of Monty Python's parrot.8 To the contrary, and to the outrage of much of Canada's health research community, the vice-president and medical director of Pfizer Canada, Dr. Bernard Prigent, was on October 5, 2009, appointed to the Governing Council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the premier national institution for funding health research.
This extraordinary appointment raises very troubling questions about the motivations not only of the Canadian federal government, but also of Dr. Alain Beaudet, the president of CIHR. Dr. Beaudet is well aware (unlike, one suspects, most of Mr. Harper's Conservatives) of the difference between genuine pharmaceutical innovation and a marketing masquerade. Yet the appointment can only have been made on his recommendation, or at least with his blessing. What was he thinking when he decided to get into bed with Pfizer, and deliberately snubbed so many Canadian health researchers? Is it conceivable that Dr. Beaudet was simply unaware of Pfizer's record of persistent criminal behaviour and casual disregard for the health and well-being of patients? That would be a major failure of due diligence; the record is all in the public domain and readily available. Was he bowing to government pressure? Again, unlikely. People of integrity, under political pressure to betray the public trust, should and do resign.
The most plausible explanation may be that Dr. Beaudet shares the federal government's objective of promoting the increased commercialization of research in Canada – at whatever cost. He may see a closer relationship with Pfizer as a way to increase funding for drug research – perhaps even for the CIHR – and of currying favour with Ottawa. But while Dr. Beaudet undoubtedly recognizes a distinction between “commercialization” and drug pushing, Pfizer does not. Does Dr. Beaudet consider the company's history of criminal settlements, guilty pleas and convictions irrelevant to this appointment – or even a positive recommendation? If all that matters is increased sales of drugs, regardless of their benefits, Pfizer is the one to call.9 Dr. Beaudet's CIHR, like Mr. Harper's federal government, may just hope to share the loot.10
A closer relationship with Pfizer, and the drug industry generally, may indeed promote greater commercialization of Canadian research. If so, Pfizer and other shareholders will reap the benefits, as will those Canadian researchers who become their “out-house” (as opposed to in-house) research departments. Dr. Beaudet's political masters, apparently believing that an expanded drug industry is an end in itself regardless of the consequences for the health of Canadians or the costs of healthcare, will also be pleased. All economic activity – beneficial, harmful or just plain ineffectual – is included in the gross domestic product. Illegal and corrupt marketing practices, and the drugs they promote, all contribute to “economic growth” as well as drug company profit.
But Pfizer's track record inspires no confidence whatever that the health of Canadians will benefit in proportion, if at all, from any such growth. What is certain is that any benefits in health or wealth from this relationship will be paid for, and over-paid, by Canadian patients, insurers and taxpayers. Dr. Beaudet has allowed the commercialization mandate to override CIHR's responsibilities to Canadians. Pfizer is not an eleemosynary outfit.
Notes
1.See also US Department of Justice, “United States Files Suit against Drug Manufacturer Johnson & Johnson.” Retrieved April 9, 2010. <http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/Press%20Office%20-%20Press%20Release%20Files/Jan2010/JohnsonandJohnsonPR.html>.
2.“Around the headquarters in Rahway, New Jersey, there is so much high-minded talk about Merck's life saving mission that one might consider the company an eleemosynary outfit. But this mis-impression is never conveyed in conversation with [the president] who is as devout a disciple of the bottom line as ever there was.” (Robertson 1976: 136)
3.Physicians may prescribe a drug for an off-label use, but the manufacturer may not legally promote it for such use.
4.The suit was brought by Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, and was described in Business Week as a “civil racketeering trial.” See www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-23/pfizer-defends-epilepsy-drug-neurontin-at-fraud-trial-in-boston.html.
5.Having done no wrong, Pfizer presumably paid $2.3 billion just to avoid the trouble of proving its innocence in court.
6.Coincidentally, the offices of CCOHTA in Ottawa were burgled during this dispute, and computer disks were stolen, but no suspects were ever identified.
7.Steven Lewis, obviously inspired by the National Rifle Association of the United States.
8.Perhaps if the federal government rather than the provinces had to pay for pharmaceuticals, they might be more energetic. But white-collar crime seems to be taken much less seriously in Canada. Recall that Conrad Black was tried, convicted and imprisoned in the United States for “obstruction of justice,” removal of documents in blatant violation of a court order. The order was issued and the offence occurred in Canada; no charges were laid here.
9.Pfizer is no different from any other pharmaceutical firm, only larger and more egregious.
10.If that is the only objective, why not legalize (and tax) B.C. Bud? Because that would upset the Americans, who are armed and dangerous.
References
- Associated Press. J&J Alleged to Have Paid Kickbacks. The Globe and Mail. 2010. Jan 15, Retrieved April 9, 2010. < http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20100115.escenic_1432378/BNStory/Business/>.
- Bakan J. Toronto: Penguin Canada; 2004. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. [Google Scholar]
- CBC News. Pfizer to Pay $142M for Drug Fraud. 2010. Mar 26, Retrieved April 9, 2010. < http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/03/25/gabapentin-ubc.html?ref=rss>.
- Drug Firm Suit Fails to Halt Publication of Canadian Health Technology Report. Journal of the American Medical Association. 1998 Aug 26;280(8):683–84. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Henriques D.B. FBI Charges Arms Sellers with Foreign Bribes. The New York Times. 2010. Jan 20, Retrieved April 9, 2010. < http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/21sting.html>.
- Main Justice. Criminal Division Chief Breuer's FCPA Pharma Speech. 2009. Nov 12, Retrieved April 9, 2010. < http://mainjustice.virtual.vps-host.net/2009/11/12/criminal-divisionchief-breuers-fcpa-pharma-speech/>.
- Omnicare Inc. 2010. Retrieved April 9, 2010. < http://www.omnicare.com/home.asp>.
- O'Reilly C., Capaccio T. Pfizer Agrees to Record Criminal Fine in Fraud Probe. 2009. Sep 2, Retrieved April 9, 2010. < http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a4h7V5lc_xXM>.
- Robertson W. Merck Strains to Keep the Pots Aboiling. Fortune. 1976 Mar;:134–39. 168, 170. [Google Scholar]
- US Department of Health & Human Services and US Department of Justice n.d. Pfizer Fact Sheet. STOP Medicare Fraud. Retrieved April 9, 2010. < http://www.stopmedicarefraud.gov/pfizerfactsheet.html>.
- US Department of Justice. Largest Health Care Fraud Case in US History Settled. 2003a. Jun 26, Retrieved April 9, 2010. < http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2003/June/03_civ_386.htm>.
- US Department of Justice. Justice Dept. Civil Fraud Recoveries Total $2.1 Billion for FY 2003. 2003b. Nov 10, Retrieved April 9, 2010. < http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2003/November/03_civ_613.htm>.
- Wilson D. Pfizer Details Payments to Doctors and Researchers. The New York Times. 2010. Mar 31, Retrieved April 9, 2010. < http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/business/01payments.html?ref=health>.
Big Pharma's Crimes Against Humanity - Nuremberg Trials
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