This Medico-Chemical or Petrochemical post is one in a sequence of Politics of Care posts that explores the interface between our ability or inability to Care for our environment and ability or inability to Care for our health and the health of the most vulnerable amongst us.
One of the problems getting in the way of a recognition of the disaster now unfolding within Health is that those concerned about the environment misunderstand health and propose options that will backfire on climate change – see The Controlled Healthcare Opposition.
Equally, the environmental movement cannot succeed while it focuses just on the wider environment. Famines and droughts in Africa just don’t cut it for the rest of the World and probably not even for the rest of Africa. But a Drug Wreck to a woman’s child, or to her parent (husband is a different matter) brings home to her exactly what is wrong with the way we are managing our technologies and techniques more immediately than famines in Africa or anything else can.
For the Green movement, the Petrochemical industry is the bête noire. Exxon is held up as an example of a company that knew climate change was for real half a century ago yet ploughed on regardless. See Exxon and Climate Change Denial Timeline.
The histories of the pharmaceutical and petrochemical industries are so closely intertwined that it doesn’t make sense to think one might be a bête noire and the other not.
History
The discovery of Mauveine in 1856 triggered the emergence of a pharmaceutical industry and turbo-charged the growth of the chemical industry – see The Creation of Psychopharmacology.
Mauveine gave rise to the phenothiazines, one of the first of which, Methylene Blue created the idea of a Magic Bullet. The phenothiazines contributed to the development of the first antibiotics, anti-malarials, antihistamines, antipsychotics, antidepressants and many more drugs.
Mauveine also created the idea of dyes for clothes, for foods and everything else that has color in it. This transformed the chemical industry, opening up the possibility of creating new wants in consumers that the industry could meet. What could be wrong with adding color to life (and to food)?
Nothing we thought – for a long time. Its neat to be able to turn rivers Green for St Patrick’s Day. Food was where concerns first began.
Over the last 50 years, the reputation of the Petrochemical Industry has plummeted. It has become the Fallen Angel. If we are to restore Eden, we need to beware its temptations.
In contrast, for Green and progressive politicians and anyone promoting sustainability, the Pharmaceutical Industry, while doing some pretty egregious things, has still seemed like a Good Angel – the kind we believe when they bring us Tidings of Great Joy.
Splitting
The divisions between Good and Evil in the Chemical Universe map onto comparable divisions many Religions are built on. Worse again, rather than our Chemical divisions being toned down to secular proportions, we seem to be embracing wilder and wilder dichotomies. See the Religion of Technology.
This is most clear within Pharma and perhaps most chillingly in the case of Stimulant drugs used for ADHD. Used on the street, stimulants are demonized as intensely destructive, leading to a violence and homicide that made them controlled drugs, but the same drugs now given on prescription to children get viewed as close to vitamins.
The harms that come from giving these drugs to children – the predictable prescribing cascades and nearly as predictable premature aging – just don’t seem to show up on medical or even parental radars (See Gray Hair, Rotting Teeth, Semi-Blind and Dementia).
Richard deGrandpre has a great book on all this The Cult of Pharmacology that tries to make sense of our preparedness to split drugs into good and bad. Our tendency to split is one that pharmaceutical companies avail of in close to 1984 Big Brother fashion. It enabled them almost overnight to transform the benzodiazepines from ridiculously safe into one of the greatest menaces in peacetime – Let Them Eat Prozac.
In The Crack-Up in 1936, F Scott Fitzgerald said – it is the sign of a sophisticated mind to be able to keep two contradictory thoughts in mind at the same time and still retain an ability to function.
Doctors used to be sophisticated. You have to be able to hold two contradictory thoughts in mind at the same time when aiming at bringing good out of the use of a poison as they once did.
Vets are probably more sophisticated when treating our pets than our doctors now are when treating us.
Most of us and our doctors now prefer to think that when s/he gives us a medicine s/he is giving us a Sacrament – something that can only do good. Where’s the harm in adding Sacraments to Life? Daily if possible.
Where’s the Good Angel?
The Good Guys (Progressives, Greens, Liberals, Socialists etc) began life split – see The Controlled Healthcare Opposition. For them Health was and has been and is an arena relatively supposedly spared from the depredations of the petrochemical industry. If there are harms to our health, they come as a spill-over from petrochemical poisoning.
While this splitting remains in place, Progressive, Green, Liberal, and Socialist Health policies will sabotage their environmental aspirations.
Populist parties are at present more likely, either by accident or on purpose, to fracture the expert consensus in Health that is pushing relentlessly toward technical solutions to both our health problems and our environmental problems.
MedicoChemical or PetroChemical below challenges this splitting. Send us your proposals to add to the list.
(Re lines 2 and 3 in the Table, the key detail to know is that around 1980 we were taking even less than one drug per day on average. There was no such thing as polypharmacy. This is changing at an astonishing rate – driven by progressive parties).
| Medico-Chemical Industry | Petro-Chemical Industry |
|---|---|
| Life Expectancy Falling | Temperature Rising |
| Over 45s on 3 Drugs Daily and Rising | 1.5 C Rise and Rising |
| Over 65s on 5 Drugs Daily and Rising | 2.0 C Rise |
| Health a Distribution Channel for Drugs | Cities a Distribution Channel for Cars/Oil |
| Salvation lies in Techniques - Innovation | Salvation lies in Techniques - Innovation |
| Polluting Rivers & Lakes | Polluting Breast Milk |
| Risky Fake Chemicals | Risky Fake Chemicals |
| Research Ghost-written | Research Ghost-written |
| No Access to Research Data | No Access to Research Data |
| Drug Wrecks grow GHP | Chemical Spills grow GDP |
| Sense about Science Outsourced PR | Sound Science Outsourced PR |
| Efficacy trumps Safety | Efficacy trumps Safety |
| Doubt torpedoes Safety | Doubt torpedoes Safety |
| Pharma CEO today Petro-Chemical tomorrow | Petro-Chemical CEO today, Pharma tomorrow |
| Corporate Defender Law Firm No 1 | Corporate Defender Law Firm No 1 |
| Greatest Density of Fake Science on Earth | Second Most Dense Fake Science on Earth |
| Regulatory Capture | Regulatory Capture |
There is a striking overlap between this post and posts about Ghosts in the Clinical Trial Machine on RxISK this week and next.
It would be as easy to distinguish between Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee
“you can’t pin it on me” – Medico
100 companies are responsible for 71 percent of CO2 emissions? And how do we hold those companies responsible for climate change when every facet of our political system benefits them – Petro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77RPupTuqak&t=1s
“you can’t pin it on me”
Advocate, Karen Barth Menzies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGfEZlVbUA
racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations…
Posted on Saturday 17 September 2011
And on the subject of articles being ghostwritten by people under contract to pharmaceutical companies, this study is a prime candidate. The trial itself was conducted by Janssen, not directed by any non-company investigator. Of the three authors, Nemeroff had a long-time association with ghost-writer Sally Laden at Scientific Therapeutics Information both through GSK and Cyberonics as had Martin Keller through GSK. Their “guest authorship” is legend. We know from the Rothman Report filed by an investigator with access to primary discovery documents that Excerptia Medica, a medical ghost-writing firm around the corner from Janssen, was churning out articles favorable to Risperdal and soliciting authors during this period. We know that Dr, Nemeroff was editor of Neuropsychopharmacology and had used it as a conduit for promoting Cyberonics and apparently Janssen, companies with which he was financially involved. There’s a hell of a lot more evidence of criminal misbehavior on this page than evidence that Risperdal helps depressed people. And yet the gambit worked.
http://1boringoldman.com/index.php/2011/09/17/racketeer-influenced-and-corrupt-organizations/
Racketeering. It is what it is…
Quote – ‘Silence Miss Carson, Silence’
Silent Spring, Carson’s best-known book, was published by Houghton Mifflin on September 27, 1962.[35] The book described the harmful effects of pesticides on the environment, and is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement.[36]
….she came away discouraged by the aggressive tactics of the chemical industry representatives, which included expert testimony that was firmly contradicted by the bulk of the scientific literature she had been studying. She also wondered about the possible “financial inducements behind certain pesticide programs.”[51]
The overriding theme of Silent Spring is the powerful—and often adverse—effect humans have on the natural world.[59]
Carson also accuses the chemical industry of intentionally spreading disinformation and public officials of accepting industry claims uncritically. Most of the book is devoted to pesticides’ effects on natural ecosystems. However, four chapters also detail cases of human pesticide poisoning, cancer, and other illnesses attributed to pesticides.[60] About DDT and cancer, the subject of so much subsequent debate
The story of the birth defect-causing drug thalidomide broke just before the book’s publication as well, inviting comparisons between Carson and Frances Oldham Kelsey, the Food and Drug Administration reviewer who had blocked the drug’s sale in the United States.[69]
In the weeks leading up to the September 27, 1962, publication, there was strong opposition to Silent Spring from the chemical industry. DuPont (a main manufacturer of DDT and 2,4-D) and Velsicol Chemical Corporation (exclusive manufacturer of chlordane and heptachlor) were among the first to respond. DuPont compiled an extensive report on the book’s press coverage and estimated impact on public opinion. Velsicol threatened legal action against Houghton Mifflin and The New Yorker and Audubon unless the planned Silent Spring features were canceled. Chemical industry representatives and lobbyists also lodged a range of non-specific complaints, some anonymously. Chemical companies and associated organizations produced a number of their own brochures and articles promoting and defending pesticide use.
American Cyanamid biochemist Robert White-Stevens and former Cyanamid chemist Thomas Jukes were among the most aggressive critics, especially of Carson’s analysis of DDT.[71] According to White-Stevens, “If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth.”[72] Others went further, attacking Carson’s scientific credentials (because her training was in marine biology rather than biochemistry) and her character. White-Stevens labeled her “…a fanatic defender of the cult of the balance of nature,”[73] while former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, in a letter to former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, reportedly concluded that because she was unmarried despite being physically attractive, she was “probably a Communist.”[74]
The creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by the Nixon Administration in 1970 addressed another concern that Carson had brought to light. Until then, the same agency (the USDA) was responsible both for regulating pesticides and promoting the concerns of the agriculture industry; Carson saw this as a conflict of interest
In the 1980s, the policies of the Reagan Administration emphasized economic growth, rolling back many of the environmental policies adopted in response to Carson and her work.[91]
. Cardin of Maryland had intended to submit a resolution celebrating Carson for her “legacy of scientific rigor coupled with poetic sensibility” on the 100th anniversary of her birth. The resolution was blocked by Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma,[122] who said that “The junk science and stigma surrounding DDT—the cheapest and most effective insecticide on the planet—have finally been jettisoned.”[123] T
List of works
• An apocryphal story holds that over twenty publishers rejected the book before Oxford University Press. In fact, it may have only been sent to one other publisher before being accepted.
BBC News
Published17 December 2020 (Snippetts)
For the first time in the UK – and possibly the world – air pollution has been recognised as a cause of a person’s death.
On 16 December, Southwark Coroner’s Court in London found that air pollution “made a material contribution” to the death of nine-year-old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah.
She had lived near the South Circular Road in Lewisham and died in 2013, following an asthma attack.
Her case has been making headlines around the globe.
At the conclusion of the two-week inquest, Mr Barlow said Ella had been exposed to “excessive” levels of pollution. The pollutants included nitrogen dioxide (NO2) – a gas emitted by combustion engines that can irritate the airways and aggravate respiratory diseases.
The inquest heard that, in the three years before her death, she had had multiple seizures and was admitted to hospital 27 times
He referred to a report by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee in 2010, which concluded there were 35,000 premature deaths a year as a result of air pollution. He also referred to several other papers.
….Ella’s mother Rosamund has worked tirelessly to uncover the facts behind her daughter’s death
“Unless a parent or a dependent of a person… were extremely persistent, as Ella’s mother was in this case,… I don’t think a doctor is going to feel sufficiently confident in writing a death certificate to put air pollution as a causal factor, even though it’s opened up as much more of a possibility for them.”
Some students from abroad in the 1990s were housed in the middle of a major city in Wales. Their wives insisted on going back home as their children including babies developed respiratory conditions as well as serious asthma. They were prescribed inhalersfor the first time in their lives rather than housing in the less polluted parts of the city. Currently a GP in East London , an eco campaigner is campaigning on this including highlighting the massive numbers of plastic inhalers being junked . (as well as other medical devices)It is an uphill struggle ,but does have some growing support ,to get prescribers to take it seriously. Their are growing numbers of eco articles in medical journals but they are still not confident enought to put pollution on a death certificate. What would happen if more did….
Since writing this 7 yrs ago P G has left Cochrane and set up another Institute for scientific freedom. When it has been proven that people die and get seriously ill from pollution – and politicians, medics. regulators and the law sit on their hands are afraid of rocking the boat on this issue as well as the corruption of drug prescribing – what freedom.
Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare Paperback – 28 Aug. 2013
by Peter Gotzsche (Author)
Review
‘It s time for more insiders like Gøtzsche to break this conspiracy of silence by standing up for the fact that this is not now, and never has been, okay.’ –Lynne McTaggart, What Doctors Don’t Tell You’Gøtzsche calls for radical changes to demedicalise society, rein in an industry that’s hellbent on profit, make clinical trials transparent and independent, have regulators focus on drug safety, and much more. The lies and fraud must be stopped!’ –Nexus: New Times”THIS ENLIGHTENING, ALARMING and depressing book deserves a wide readership among doctors but also among politicians, health administrators, and drug and medical device regulators” –Kerry J Breen, Adjunct Professor – Department of Forensic Medicine, Monash University
Great post. But in addition to Big Oil and Big Pharma, let’s not forget about Big Tobacco, Big Sugar, and now Big Dope, all merging into one sinister worldwide conglomerate:
Alex Berenson: Tell Your Children
https://www.amazon.com/Tell-Your-Children-Marijuana-Violence-ebook/dp/B07GNV64PJ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=tell+your+children+alex+berenson&qid=1624707377&s=books&sr=1-1
Ross Grainger: Attacker Smoked Cannabis
https://www.amazon.com/Attacker-Smoked-Cannabis-psychopathic-violence/dp/1527246868/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Ross+Grainger%3A+Attacker+Smoked+Cannabis&qid=1624707429&s=books&sr=1-1
The smearing of Rachel Carson is by no means a thing of the past. The Rachel Carson = Hitler trope was the brainchild of two men, Roger Bate and Steve Milloy, the latter of whom pitched his services to the tobacco companies but was rejected. Apparently he too sleazy even for them:
Patrick D Hahn: “Rachel Carson: Worse Than Hitler?”
https://meliponula.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/rachel-carson-worse-than-hitler/
Whistleblowers and Covid are discussed here including on the video. I’m not promoting DEFENDER as I don’t know enough to guage how far to trust it – but do claim the right to access what they are saying and maybe use that in my own decision making. Many of us don’t trust these self appointed guardians of what we are allowed to read , their actions just increase suspicion.
THE DEFENDER
06/21/21
•
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/
“The purpose of CPSO is to protect the public,” said Sloan.
The Defender is experiencing censorship on many social channels. Be sure to stay in touch with the news that matters by subscribing to our top news of the day. It’s free.
Canadian politician Derek Sloan and three medical professionals — who say they represent hundreds of their colleagues — said last week in a press conference on Parliament Hill the Canadian government is suppressing information about the harmful effects of lockdowns, vaccine risks in children and the efficacy of certain COVID treatments.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) issued a “dire statement” late April threatening doctors who spoke out about what they witnessed in their local hospitals and communities while working on the frontlines of COVID, said Sloan.
“The purpose of CPSO is to protect the public,” said Sloan, “not stifle legitimate scientific inquiry or dissent by professional doctors.”
The government’s attempt to intimidate doctors had the opposite effect, said Sloan. Instead, his office was flooded with calls from doctors, nurses and other scientific medical experts who said they’ve been threatened and blocked from sharing their stories.
Byram Bridle, associate professor of viral immunology at the University of Guelph, Ontario, is one of many medical professionals who said they’ve faced extreme censorship for asking legitimate scientific questions about COVID.
CHD Calls on FDA to Take COVID Vaccines Off the Market – Submit a Comment
Bridle was asked on a radio program if he believed COVID vaccines were linked to heart inflammation in young males. He gave his honest opinion, saying he did believe there is a link. He pointed to evidence to support it.
Within 24 hours, Bridle said he was attacked on all fronts. A “libelous website” and a fake Twitter account were created to slander him, said Bridle. He was harassed daily via phone, email and social media, and one of his colleagues even went as far as to release confidential medical information about his parents, Bridle said.
It was an “egregious act,” said Bridle. “A practicing physician should know they shouldn’t be releasing confidential medical information.”
In search of a place where he could speak freely, Bridle joined the Canadian COVID Care Alliance, a group of independent Canadian doctors, scientists and healthcare practitioners committed to providing balanced evidence-based information to the Canadian public about COVID.
Bridle warned that suppressing open discussions of science and medicine in Canada violates the “hallmark of a Democratic society.”
Also speaking at the press conference was Dr. Patrick Phillips, family and emergency medicine physician, and Dr. Don Welsh, professor of physiology and pharmacology at Western University.
Both expressed concerns about their inability to speak the truth about the negative effects of lockdowns and the benefits of using treatments such as vitamin D for COVID.
Phillips said “massive lockdowns” have caused a lot of harm and, until now, he’s never seen so many suicidal children in his practice.
“Science has not been functioning properly for the last 15 months,” Welsh said. The government’s lockdowns, masks, infectious disease tracing and social distancing have “created a remarkable list of hardships for Canadians that will take this country many years to recover from.”
I would add another industry to this comparison, the agriculture industry. Of course all three overlap extensively but it should be made apparent that the Ag industry engine hits on all the same weak destructive murderous polluting cylinders as the medical and chemical industries. All three see life as a machine; something wrong, then tweak it with some chemical fix.
The fundamental cause of failure of conventional medicine and agribusiness are the same. They dont look holistically at the entire system. They pick a few “common symptoms” and find a chemical fix for those few symptoms and declare success. Very little attempt to look at a long term or more comprehensive issues. Neither is serious about cures for chronic disease. Give the patient a chemical crutch and move on to the next.
Medical industry is killing the population. Ag & Chemical Industries are killing the population and the planet.
‘The CMA sends a clear message..that braking the law will not be tolerated’ lets not hold out breat for the next tolerated scandal
The CMA has imposed over £100 million in fines after Advanz inflated the price of thyroid tablets, causing the NHS and patients to lose out.
From:
Competition and Markets Authority
Published
29 July 2021
Advanz increased the price of thyroid tablet packs from £20 in 2009 to £248 in 2017 – an increase of 1,110%.
Latest CMA fine “sends a clear message” to the pharma sector that breaking the law will not be tolerated.
Following an investigation, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has found that from 2009 until 2017 the pharmaceutical company Advanz charged excessive and unfair prices for supplying liothyronine tablets which are used to treat thyroid hormone deficiency.
They achieved this because liothyronine tablets were among a number of drugs that, although genericised, faced limited or no competition and therefore could sustain repeated price increases. This strategy, which began in 2007, involved an overall price increase for liothyronine tablets of more than 6,000%.
The CMA has fined the firms involved a total of over £100 million for the relevant periods in which they broke the law: Advanz (£40.9 million), together with HgCapital (£8.6 million) and Cinven (£51.9 million) – two private equity firms which were previously owners of the businesses now forming part of Advanz.
The price increases were not driven by any meaningful innovation or investment, volumes remained broadly stable, and the cost of producing the tablets did not increase significantly. NHS spending on the tablets in 2006, the year before the implementation of the strategy, was £600,000, but by 2009 had increased to more than £2.3 million and jumped to more than £30 million by 2016.
Eventually the drug was placed on the NHS ‘drop list’ in July 2015. This led to patients being faced with the prospect of having their current treatment stopped or having to purchase liothyronine tablets at their own expense. That is particularly concerning, given that many patients do not respond adequately to the main treatment for hypothyroidism, levothyroxine tablets – and instead rely on liothyronine tablets to alleviate symptoms such as extreme fatigue and depression.