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This is the first of a series of posts on the Politics of Care forum that will outline what you, what your doctor, what your politician, what the media can do to make a difference to the ongoing destruction of the climate of health and the wider global climate. The to-dos below are to-do.
One
Tell your doctor you want her/him to treat you and your children (minors) in accordance with Guidelines for People, the first element of which would be a commitment to contain medication burdens. Given him/her the freedom to abandon a treatment approach that hinges on Guidelines for Diseases, which push him/her to prescribe us more drugs.
(It is at present a privilege of wealth to have your medication burden reduced. If you are not paying her/him privately for a boutique service, your doctor will be unable to do this or have the courage to do this, unless you give her/him permission with her/ him ideally writing this in your record. See The Guelph Affair (forthcoming)).
Green/Liberal/Progressive folk think that single payer health systems, socialized medicine, can stop excessive prescribing and that private medicine is full of people getting too many treatments most of which they don’t need. This was once true but is no longer true. To get off drugs you need boutique care and public health or insurance funded systems are now more likely to fire doctors who give you boutique care instead of giving you more diagnoses and drugs.
Shipwreck of the Singular the book, outlines how this has happened. The Shipwreck of the Singular post from some years ago outlines apparent answers to avoid. We need to work out how to put it right. This will be picked up further in later posts.
Two
Make clear you want a Relationship Based Medicine rather than an Evidence Based Medicine – one element of RBM means getting to see the same doctor (one you can get along with) on a regular basis rather than seeing a different doctor every visit with them having to consult a computer to have any sense what your issues are. See Surrender, Decernimus ergo Summus and Tis the Season to Rebel.
And see Nearly Invisible: Drug Traffic Accidents. We have a Dream: Getting Engaged to a Doctor And Fragile Doctors.
Three
If your parents have a medication burden that exceeds 5 drugs, and especially if it is 10 or more drugs, draw their attention to the evidence that reducing this to 5 or less drugs can reduce hospitalizations, improve quality of life, and extend life expectancy.
Older women, not in care-homes, make more enquiries about the risk of falls or brain failures from additional drugs, and speak up more than other groups about their personal drug burden – Leslie Kernihan. But many doctors turn nasty when questioned about these issues or about a drug that is not suiting, and even a tough older lady may need support.
Four
Any parents in Care Homes definitely need support. If they have become more confused, fatigued, falling more or seem to be going downhill, there is a good chance their medication burden is the primary factor in this and reducing that burden may see them reborn.
Ask about the medicines they are on. You can or will soon be able to put these medicines into Taper MD or able to get a pharmacist to help you with this. This will give you some idea as to whether a parent’s current medicines may be contributing to the deterioration you are seeing and will offer you a print-off you can take to the residential facility they are in or the doctor they are seeing.
Nobody in the Health Deep State – the Lancet of New England Journal of Medicine or politicians or the lay media – are willing to pick these issues up, even when as now seems clear excessive medication burdens contributed to deaths in long-term care homes – See Dennis the Menace gets Covid.
Five
Ask your doctor if s/he knows whether the articles that underpin the treatments s/he is proposing to give you have been ghost-written or not. If the drug has been developed since 1980, pretty well every single article in the best quality academic literature will have been ghost-written. Maybe ask if s/he knows of any articles on the treatment that are not ghostwritten? Or suggest s/he read Malcharist – a compellingly true to life piece of fiction that affects every medicine you might be put on.
See Making Medicines Safer for all of US.
Six
Ask your doctor if s/he has access to the clinical trial data behind the drug s/he is proposing to put you on. If this is a drug that came on the market after 1980, s/he will not have access. This is true for vaccines also – the clots triggered by Covid vaccines were present in the original clinical trials but concealed. See Data Wars and Data based Medicine.
If your doctor says “No – s/he doesn’t have access but s/he’s confident the regulator has and those who make the Guidelines have” – tell her the Regulator and Guideline makers do not have access. See The Perfect Killing Machine and The Death of Stephen O’Neill and You.
You can point her/him to this post and posts on the Politics of Care For and posts on Clinical Trial Fraud on RxISK.
You can especially draw her/his attention to the sequence of posts about him or her Model Doctors and Professional Suicide, Scaremongers of the World Unite, So long and thanks for all the Serotonin.
Ask your doctor what s/he is going to do about this (besides complain Healy to whatever medical body currently supervises his registration). Ask too if there is any way you can help her/him with this.
Seven
Insist on your doctor reporting any adverse event you have suffered on treatment leaving his/her name and your name on these events and indicating a willingness to be cross-examined. At present doctors only report 1 in 100 serious adverse events and they do not expect to be called on to make clear that they believe Drug X has caused Problem Y. Leaving their name on these events will call for medical courage and it is not clear how many doctors have this kind of courage. Courage is not a criterion for entry into medical school. See Something Happened: Neo-Medicalism and Decernimus ergo Summus and Sex, Drugs and Bureaucrats.
Insist your doctor gives you a copy of any report they send to the regulator on the adverse event you believe you have had and that they haven’t been able to persuade you that you don’t have.
If they refuse to file a report or to give you a copy once it is filed, you may need to change doctors.
Anonymous reports help pharmaceutical companies – they do not help you or your doctor.
Bear in mind, most doctors do not know how to establish whether a drug has caused a problem – they are not trained to do this at any point in medical school or afterwards.
Eight
If you have had an adverse event on a drug, submit a report to your regulator, leaving your name on it and your doctor’s name indicating a willingness to be cross-examined about this.
Being cross-examined is nothing to worry about. Regulators like FDA, EMA, MHRA remove your name immediately and file your report away to grow mouldy. They are not about to get in touch with either you or your doctor – the very last thing they want is any detail that might force them to connect your drug to a problem.
(Regulators are looking after the health of the pharmaceutical industry not yours. Your doctor is supposed to be putting your health ahead of companies’ health).
Your name on these reports, and ideally your doctor’s name, transforms them from hearsay into evidence. While regulators will do nothing, someone who is seriously injured by the treatment you were on may end up being able to use your report in a way they cannot use the hundreds of thousands of other reports submitted to a regulator, which get dismissed as hearsay.
Nine
Get your doctor to report your adverse event on treatment to the pharmaceutical company that made the drug. If you were on a generic drug, get him/her to report to both the original brand name company (who remain responsible for the drug label) and to the generic company.
The report will need to leave both his/her and your name on it. You too should report to the company, leaving his/her and your name on the report.
Why would you want to have anything to do with a pharmaceutical company that has injured you? Unlike regulators, pharmaceutical companies are under a legal obligation to establish cause and effect between their drug and your problem. They have legal obligations to you that regulators do not have. They would prefer you to report to regulators and not to them. So do what they don’t want you to do.
See American Woman, American Woman 2, and Extreme Petitioning and Let’s do the Abbvie Again.
The company should make contact with your doctor and/or you. They will likely request to see your medical records – which you can agree to provided they agree to interview you, and your doctor also provides you with your record, and provided ideally your doctor is onside.
If your doctor is not onside, you can get all information on you through requests to the health clinic s/he works for and any information about you the pharmaceutical company ends up with through a freedom of information request – although doctors are not above destroying your records (finding they’ve gone missing).
If your doctor is onside, any approach from a company can be a fun and enlightening experience for both her/him and you. You may need to tell her/him you’ll support them – that you are not in the business of holding her/him responsible for anything.
If s/he stonewalls, ask her/him if she has been advised by her medical insurer not to participate in this core element of medical care. If this turns out to be the case, you may need to change doctor.
You/we will also need to find a way to draw the attention of doctors more broadly to the fact that insurers are getting in the way of doctors being honest and advocating on behalf of their patients.
Ten
Consider submitting a RxISK Report on your adverse event. Then bring the report to your doctor and ask him or her to file a complementary report.
Consider giving us permission, if approached by anyone acting for people injured by drugs who have had the same or similar event that you have had, to put them in touch with you. They may want you to discuss what happened and perhaps file an affidavit explaining what happened to you.
This is not something unusual or a conflicting interest pitch for business. Katinka Newman, who wrote The Pill that Steals Lives, has been standing up for you and others in court cases for years. Kim Witczak, whose husband Woody committed suicide on Zoloft (sertraline), has also been doing it. Anne Marie Kelly, who discovered the link between antidepressants and alcoholism, has also made a clear a willingness to do so. We have a large number of others volunteering to do this – mostly women.
Eleven
If your doctor is onside, give us her/his name. We have begun a set of RxISK Maps that locate doctors willing to agree that drugs can cause problems and willing to work with people to establish what is happening on treatment.
See RxISK Map, Reformation Day, Here we Stand we can do no Other – remembering We are the 99%. .
If this can be developed it may ultimately be good for business for doctors and if the ‘market’ works as it is supposed to do, it should slowly bring doctors around to recognising the need for them to agree drugs are complex things that can cause problems.
Recognizing this goes hand in hand with ensuring doctors remain the main prescribers – if drugs work wonderfully well and are harmless, then nurses and pharmacists are cheaper prescribers. It takes a highly paid expert like a doctor to tease out whether treatment has caused a problem or not – nurses could do it also but at present are more likely to be dumped on by management if they do so.
So there are very real grounds for you to say to your doctor that raising an adverse effect of treatment is not a criticism of them but puts you on their side and might keep them in business.
Twelve
Avoid screening for prevention – blood pressure, peak flow rates, bone density, lipid levels, blood sugar, mood, ADHD. When you meet your doctor, you need to meet as two people with her/him listening to you. No measuring instruments of any sort should be let get in the way of this. You definitely do not want him/her acting as an agent of Pharma.
See The Macbeth Test.
Thirteen
At present when it comes to your health and the health of your family, your Motivation is worth more than their Expertise. This will continue to be the case as long as their expertise channels the greatest concentration of fake and fraudulent claims on earth.
Think local not global. Your experience of your health and especially what your drugs and your environment are doing to you and your family are more likely to be correct than whatever the experts say to you. Listen to it and look through to see how our world is structured and where experts slot into it.
See Better to Die RxISKing It and Better to Die RxISKing It 2
Fourteen
Whatever the religious, political or other conspiracy you believe in, its figureheads – the Pope, Joe Biden, Donald Trump or any other political leader, or other figurehead – is not going to help you. We’ve been in touch with most of them and there is no reply.
We will update this if some politician or other leader or political or other group come onside and will keep you posted.
Finally
You have a vote. You can vote for a politician who is prepared to pick up the gauntlet on Data Access and the Ghost Writing of the Medical literature. They must speak about these things publicly and try and get a debate going before you cast your vote.
Whatever your affiliation was in the past, if the person you would naturally vote for shows no signs of picking up these issues, do not vote got this person or their party.
Do not even vote for a Green party unless they pick these things up as if they fail to pick things up, it will indicate that they don’t know what is causing climate change.
Your life is at stake and your families and friends lives, along with the climate of healthcare and the global climate – its not a time to get sentimental or tribal about who gets your vote.
Posts to come will cover what Doctors can do to save healthcare and the world, what Politicians can do, what the media and others can do.
These ideally need to be drawn to the attention of politicians who whatever their background are the only ones that can get the kind of debate that is needed going.
Here’s one and a whole group of doctors possibly good to contact and to vote for :•in Canada.
BIG PHARMA › NEWShttps://youtu.be/vUrp5PlnBwQ?t=58
Canadian Parliament member Derek Sloan said at a press conference the job of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario “is to protect the public, not stifle legitimate scientific inquiry or dissent by professional doctors.”
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/derek-sloan-doctors-condemn-censorship-scientific-inquiry-vaccine-risks-kids/
Firstly, let’s get a grip here –
If any Doctor is suicidal, I would be extremely sympathetic – no one wants our first-stop-doctor to be in immense pain to the point of being suicidal.
What I do have an issue with is why Wessely and Appleby are so hot-on-the-heels of Clare Gerada and her campaigning –
What do Wessely and Appleby know about Doctors and Suicide apart from the relentless campaigning by Clare Gerada and why has this issue not been spread far-and-wide in the National Press that Doctors are increasingly suicidal –
Occasionally you read of a Doctor suicide and it is very distressing for the doctor and their family, but by no means is it a regular occurrence compared to the thousands of patients who have died or been harmed from the reckless over-prescribing of SSRIs.
Wessely and Gerada have been extremely vocal that antidepressants have no safety issues, that stories of harm would put people off taking antidepressants.
But this obfuscation with Antidepressants has reached crisis point –
If Clare Gerada wants to protect doctors that is her right but I have a real issue with her husband and the person responsible for Suicide Prevention jumping-on-board
Simon Wessely Retweeted
louis appleby
@ProfLAppleby
Held seminar on stressed/suicidal doctors on Friday with
@ClareGerada
@SimonDGregory
@NHSEngland
. Personal stories so powerful, people devoting their lives to public service, finding themselves in despair. We must do better. Our new paper: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/11/6/e045588
Research team:
Personal Stories so powerful are available on Antidepressant Risks
https://www.antidepressantrisks.org/
Personal Stories so powerful are on Welsh and Scottish Petitions
Personal Stories so powerful are on RxISK.org.
Three Amigos, I have total disquiet about…
Katinka Blackford Newman
@antideprisks
https://www.facebook.com/events/351429946507256/?ref=newsfeed
FRIDAY, 2 JULY 2021 AT 18:00 UTC+01
Katinka Blackford Newman: Personal Stories & The Launch of Antidepressantrisks.org
Katinka Blackford Newman is an award winning BBC trained documentary film-maker who lives in London. Her interest in antidepressants began in 2012 when she nearly lost her life because of an adverse reaction to an antidepressant. She was hospitalised and prescribed more drugs which made her extremely ill.
After a year she was lucky to be taken off all the drugs and made a full recovery.
She researched the side effects of antidepressants and interviewed some of the world’s leading experts. Her best-selling book ‘The Pill That Steals Lives’ has been featured on Radio 5 Live, BBC London, Good Morning Britain, the Victoria Derbyshire Show and in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Mail and The British Journal of Psychiatry.
In 2017 her research was made into a BBC Panorama programme ‘A Prescription for Murder’ which investigated whether an antidepressant could be the cause of one of the worst mass killings of this century.
This year she co-founded a not for profit organisation to highlight the dangers of antidepressants. Antidepressantrisks.org is run by a team of experts including Professor David Healy, and people who have had first hand experience of antidepressants. In the Stolen Lives section it allows people to tell their stories in their own words.
A Good-Hour of a spell-binding account when Katinka talks to Angela Peacock
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=302592411607879&ref=watch_permalink
Angela is running a series of conversations through Medicating Normal; recent talks include David Healy and Michael Baum.
This is Angela
https://www.antidepressantrisks.org/stolen-lives/angela-p
This is a brilliant series and next up include Wendy Dolin and Kristina Gehrki
All credit to Angela for bringing death and harm from Antidepressants and other drugs to the fore with these powerful narratives and for this collaborative effort hitting upon all the right people …
Hugely important and informative discussion between Angela Peacock and Wendy Dolin including the history of MISSD, the Campaigns and how GSK were instrumental in the death of Stewart Dolin from Akathisia
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=489536442149691&ref=watch_permalink
It’s useful to have a form like this one file Different surgeries have their own forms It would be useful to let the medics know there is a documented not just verbal consent which could then be obstructed – importantly having the medical record to hand would also be useful to help discussion between the person giving and the person being given authority to access to information. An extra benefit being that the person giving consent would be gaining access to their records sometimes for the first time. I think there is a separate more legal arrangement for people unable to give informed consent to allow access
eg Castlegate & Derwent Surgery
There may be circumstances that you wish for another individual to gain access to your medical record. This would allow the named person to speak on your behalf to a member of our team about your medical requirements and have access to your medical record.
If you require this to be arranged we request that you complete the form below and hand into our Reception team who will add the contact details of the named individual to your medical record.
Click here to download the Consent Form- for another individual to gain access and / or to discuss my medical record
If you have a change to your named individual or you wish to remove the person from your medical record, we will require you to complete a ‘change/ remove consent form’ that should be handed into our Reception team to update your medical record.
Click here to download the Remove or update of consent form
STOMP (I haven’t come across any
updated info but there are still major scandals being reported) NHS is the probably not the best way to go as tokenism is rife ,rather than individual groups
‘I am an expert advisor currently involved with a major programme of work aimed at improving healthcare for people with learning disabilities.
It is important to get this right and that means listening to and involving people like me. I can bring my experience and understanding of others’ needs to the project so we can tackle what is really important to people.
One of the projects I’m currently working on is how people with learning disabilities, autism, or both, can be wrongly prescribed psychotropic medication. This kind of medication is very strong and affects a person’s mind – people have talked about feeling “out of it” when taking some of these drugs.
This is where an independent group meets people who are at risk of being admitted to mental health or learning disability hospitals, or are already in these hospitals. These reviews look at the type and quality of care people need, and whether they could get this in the community instead of in a hospital.
Through my involvement in this work, people told me their stories about being over-medicated, but at the time I didn’t really understand what this meant, especially as I am not a trained medical person – a doctor, nurse or psychiatrist.
In 2016, NHS England started the STOMP programme, which stands for ‘Stop over medicating people’ and how it affects adults, young people and children with learning disabilities, autism or both.
I was asked to be involved and co-lead working with Anne Webster, Clinical lead. At first I felt very limited in my knowledge, but I met with several colleagues who are nurses and GPs and I asked lots of question and learnt a lot. For example over-medication can mean people gain weight, have organ failure and can even die earlier. I’ve also spent time talking to the people I represent to understand their point of view. This subject is a really important as it affects people’s wellbeing and the quality of their life.
From my experience I would urge people with learning disabilities to ask questions about the medication they are on.
It’s important that you know what you are taking and why. Do you know the side-effects, or if there is something else you could have in place instead of medication? Do you know you are entitled to annual health checks by your GP?
Get your family, your carer or supporter to help you find details about the medicine you are taking and, above all, don’t be afraid to ask questions.
You can read more about stopping over-medication of people with learning disabilities (STOMP) in a blog by Anne Webster, clinical lead for improving health and quality in the learning disability programme.
Carl Shaw
Carl Shaw is one of three learning disability advisers and two learning disability network advisors working on the learning disability programme and has been with NHS England for 18 months.
He previously worked as a quality auditor at Dimensions – a charity which provides personalised social care services for people with learning disabilities and autism.
monaka bibi says:
10 April, 2018 at 12:29 pm
Thanks.my son was taken from me despite the fact he wasn’t even psychotic. Becasue the team didnt want to bother visiting him . In hospital he was over medicated and no one listen to us. After 3 mnts his hair fell out, his vision went blurred, he got parkinsonism tremors, skin is pealing, loss of muscle and tachacardia. He turnwd hypersexual and unpredictable.Also he has become retarded. No one ever listened to me. In fact they banned me seeing or speaking to him because I complained. It’s like they are getting paid to kill him. He has autism and they repeatdly told me that it’s my fault they’ve done this to him because I didn’t get an early diagnose for him in his formative years. I have accepted that he will die and n3ds to punished a slow and painful death. No one. Has given.me an answer to why they took a non cilantro person and made him look and sound and behave psychotic. He has a ctr on 12 /4 /18. But I’ve lost faith. The nurses judgment and reports are what counts.
Improving healthcare would indeed make a massive difference to many lives. Healthcare evolved into the unaccountable mess it is because well-meaning governments established systems in which the roles of payor and decision-maker are separate from the role of patient / consumer.
Whether it be pure socialized medicine (Canada / U.K.) or schemes involving multiple different insurers (USA), the end result is that physicians pay attention to what payor/decision-makers want, and what they want is standards, conformity and efficiency. Central planning cares about what it sees as the best deal for society as a whole.
Patients, naturally, have dramatically different objectives. They want to be heard and responded to, and they want care that is customized to their personal situation.
Sadly, listening to patients the modern West is perceived, correctly, as superfluous to the major objectives of the system.
If anything, the system runs better than we have a right to expect because there are so many exceptional doctors, like David Healy, But they are not the majority.
There’s a lot of discussion going on in GP land about triaging consultations
‘NHS England has produced an implementation toolkit for online consulting,9 which contains information for individual practices and for commissioners. There are lots of variables, such as whether the first-line triage is done automatically or by a human being,..;
‘It’s gone from “I want to see a GP or a clinician” to “you will see one if you need one” quote from a GP in favour of as he sees it rebancing power to GPs again. Not optimistic for a relation based partnership there but many GPs are against the triaging policy pushed in by tech crazy Matt Hancock who has/had a finger in too many pies such as Babylon.
://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj. and https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/04/18/simon-hodes-the-gp-will-triage-you-now/ of Thing is it’s not been as usual or what the public expected of the publicly funded NHS in UK for many years There have been massive numbers of complaints and abuse against medics in primary care not just during Covid as some GP ‘s started to use triaging. People these days are registering with a practice not a named GP. And are unaware of how many services are provided by the private sector It goes under ther radar because they are still paid for under the NHS not by individuals who are referred to them GPs are paid as businesses with extra payments for certain referrals eg social prescribing or carrying out certain procedures. A group practice calling itself ‘socialist’ can now make increased income from having a private company housed in the same building. Right now there are people waiting months to get life saving operations many are desperate enough to phone in to radio programs while the well off can get referred by and NHS practitioner to a colleague working both in the NHS and privately. I get what you say about the exceptional doctors but the majority of people cannot pick and choose – The system in UK runs much, much worse that we have a right to expect of a decent society. The next generation will hardly realise what they are being sold is far from what was fought for by decades ago.
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30 Jun 2021
Revealed: ExxonMobil’s lobbying war on climate change legislation
Alex Thomson
Chief Correspondent
A senior ExxonMobil lobbyist has been captured on camera revealing how the oil giant is using its power and influence to water down US climate legislation.
The explosive footage was obtained by Unearthed, Greenpeace UK’s investigative platform, who posed as head-hunters to obtain the information from one of ExxonMobil’s most senior Washington lobbyists.
https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-exxonmobils-lobbying-war-on-climate-change-legislation
3 years ago
Exxon accused of misleading investors on climate change
Published22 October 2019
Exxon is accused of misleading investors about the potential cost of financial regulation
An unprecedented climate change lawsuit against American oil giant Exxon Mobil is set to go ahead in New York.
The state has accused the company of misleading investors about the potential costs of climate regulation to its business.
Exxon says it shared the necessary information and the claims are politically motivated.
The case is at the forefront of a rising number of legal actions faced by oil and gas firms.
Exxon’s trial on the fraud claims will start on Tuesday and is expected to last 15 days. Former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who led Exxon for a decade, is among those likely to appear in court.
“It’s a major milestone as a part of a growing wave of cases that Exxon and other major oil companies are facing, not only here in the United States, but in fact in jurisdictions around the world,” said Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law.
Fraud claims
New York’s attorney general filed the financial fraud suit in 2018, after years of investigation by state authorities.
In court filings, the state says internal documents show Exxon evaluated new projects based on forecasts for costs associated with climate change that were lower than those it told investors it was using.
Those calculations made investments appear less risky and more valuable.
“By representing that it was applying higher projected carbon costs than it was actually using, ExxonMobil made its assets appear significantly more secure than they really were, which had a material impact on its share price,” the state wrote.
Former Exxon boss Rex Tillerson One not to vote for
Former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was chief executive of Exxon when it was pressed to account for climate change
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nywkw5jV7Jkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nywkw5jV7Jk
Follow up today 1 july can be viewed also on Channel 4 catchup —
-All4 – soon
Concentrated on the latest scandal involving Exol re ‘ Forever Chemicals’ which remain in the environment forever.All4.com
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1 Jul 2021
ExxonMobil chief exec apologises over revelations of lobbying war against climate legislation
By Calum Fraser
The chief executive of ExxonMobil has issued a public apology after secret filming of one of its senior lobbyists was broadcast exclusively on Channel 4 News exposing tactics used by the oil giant to water down US climate legislation.
A statement by ExxonMobil’s chief executive Darren Woods was released after the explosive footage, captured by Greenpeace UK’s investigative platform Unearthed, sent shockwaves through Washington D.C.
Mr Woods said the company was “shocked” and is “deeply apologetic” about the comments made by lobbyist Keith McCoy “including comments regarding interactions with elected officials”.
Several senators were named in the covert recordings as “crucial” to ExxonMobil’s lobbying strategy with Democrat Senator Joe Manchin dubbed the “Kingmaker”.
Mr McCoy also released a statement saying he was “deeply embarrassed” by his comments that included claims the company “aggressively” fought climate science to protect their “investments” and “shareholders”.
‘ExxonMobil called to testify’
Prominent Democrat member of Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reacted to the story on Twitter highlighting the “standing weekly check-in call” Senator Manchin allegedly had with ExxonMobil.
Democrat Congressman Ro Khanna also Tweeted, saying he would ask the chief executives of “Exxon, Chevron and other fossil fuel companies to testify” in Congress before the Environment Subcommittee that he chairs.
Speaking to the undercover reporter on a Zoom call in May, Mr McCoy described a lobbying strategy in which he claimed ExxonMobil uses third parties to mask its interests from public view and accountability.
He said the company would get “associations to step in” as a “whipping boy” for ExxonMobil executives that are called before hearings in Congress.
Influential American author and environmental journalist Emily Atkin said she wspeas left “near echless” by Mr McCoy’s revelations, adding: “An Exxon official admitting, on camera, how the company works to prevent effective climate action by using third party ‘whipping boys’ so no one knows it’s them.
“These recordings should be played on every TV station in the world.”
Environmental journalist Jamie Henn said the “Exxon Tapes are already rippling across Capitol Hill”.
What is ExxonMobil?
ExxonMobil is one of the largest corporations in the world and the biggest oil and gas company in the US with a market value of about $236 billion and revenues of more than $180 billion.
The oil and gas multinational is headquartered in Texas and its best-known brands include Esso and Exxon.
Its former chief executive Rex Tillerson served as Secretary of State during the Donald Trump presidency.
The company has repeatedly come under fire from environmental activists over the years and faced accusations of applying pressure on US lawmakers when climate legislation is proposed.
The company has rejected these accusations, saying it has “supported climate science for decades”.
Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse told Channel 4 News climate change legislation was a “by-partisan thing” until a Supreme Court ruling in 2010 let “unlimited money pour into politics” which “Exxon and the rest of the fossil fuel industry took advantage of”.
Mr McCoy’s comments appear to lift the lid on how ExxonMobil apply political pressure behind the scenes.
He said: “Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. Did we hide our science? Absolutely not. Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true. But there’s nothing, there’s nothing illegal about that.
“We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders.”
Mr McCoy, who has represented the company in its liaison with the US Congress for the last eight years, also claimed ExxonMobil recently lobbied Congress to dilute the climate provisions of President Biden’s Infrastructure Bill.
‘Deeply apologetic’
When Channel 4 News first approached ExxonMobil with the recordings of Mr McCoy’s comments, the company did not apologise.
Instead, a spokesperson accused Greenpeace, who posed as headhunters to convince Mr McCoy to agree to the Zoom call, of waging a “multi-decade campaign against our company and industry”.
They said their “lobbying efforts fully comply with all laws and are publicly disclosed”, adding that “Greenpeace and others have distorted our position on climate science”.
However, hours after Channel 4 News broadcast the footage, the company released a statement from chief executive Darren Woods.
He said: “The individuals interviewed were never involved in developing the company’s policy positions on the issues discussed. We condemn the statements and are deeply apologetic for them, including comments regarding interactions with elected officials.
“We were shocked by these interviews and stand by our commitments to working on finding solutions to climate change.”
In a statement released on LinkedIn, Mr McCoy said: “I am deeply embarrassed by my comments and that I allowed myself to fall for Greenpeace’s deception.
“My statements clearly do not represent ExxonMobil’s positions on important public policy issues.”
E-cigarette maker Juul pays $40m to North Carolina
“For years, Juul targeted young people, including teens, with its highly addictive e-cigarette. It lit the spark and fanned the flames of a vaping epidemic among our children – one that you can see in any high school in North Carolina,” said Stein in a statement. “This win will go a long way in keeping Juul products out of kids’ hands, keeping its chemical vapor out of their lungs, and keeping its nicotine from poisoning and addicting their brains.”
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/news-and-features/blogs/detail/choosepsychiatry/2019/09/25/is-it-possible-to-be-both-a-psychiatrist-and-a-patient
and https://doctor-and-patient.com/2021/05/29/wellbeing/#more-3259The BMJ
Access thebmj.com – THe Blog Doctor & Patient –
Mental health from both sides
How to be both: a psychiatrist’s experience of mental illness
July 2, 2021
‘Ultimately, I don’t think that many people will remember what medication I prescribed them, but I do hope that some remember that I listened. I believe that people are more likely to take that medication, and to come back to see me if I do, but it’s not just that. There is comfort in talking, that can’t easily be measured. I hope, if and when I am ill again, that someone listens to me.’
.”It’s lovely to come across such an exceptionally decent, warm hearted and deeply thoughtful human being . To often psychs who are encouraged to tell their stories are being used as stooges or there is a some motive. Somehow reading other things R L has published this doensn;t seem to be the case. Rebecca L doesn’t reveal herself as much in this bmj article as elsewhere eg blogs; twitter but although it may seem a bit mean spirited I think this article in thebmj shows how practitioners can fall into the ‘listening’ message being promoted when Communication is a two way thing . here R L is focussed on listening while dismissing the need to communicate some of the most important parts of a consultation ie info about medication as though it is hardly that important to ensure people are given that Even if unable to take it in at first nobody should be discharged without knowing which medication has been given. Apart from the right to consent to treatment people will not necessarily see her in future and if another medic wishes to make changes that needs to be understood and some agreement made. It’s shocking that practitioners will prescribe on the basis of a diagnosis without knowing a person at any real level ,listening shouldn’t be an exceptional kindness but an expectation – Rebecca does come across as a genunely kind person but listening in view to it assisting in a person’s willingness to take medication just isn.t on. A real communication would assist a person to decide whether to take medication which can cause serious harms. She will know enough to give some indication of the risks , it;s not a kindness to leave people unaware.