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Martha Rosenberg is an award-winning investigative public health reporter who covers the food, drug and gun industries. Her first book, Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health, is distributed by Random House. Rosenberg has appeared on CSPAN and NPR and lectured at medical schools and at the Mid-Manhattan Public Library.
Get Ready to Eat Chinese Chickens
Imported food regulation has many loopholes. By the FDA's own audit, six out of eight of its shrimp certifiers did not even know what drugs and chemicals were approved in U.S. exports.
Do You Have "Osteopenia"? Pharma Hopes So
TV personality Meredith Vieira dropped any pretense of professional objectivity in pushing bone scans. "They did a test on my heel, hip and spine, which only took a matter of five minutes. And it was totally painless. It's so simple to do." Series: Pharma (5 Articles, 6325 views)
Saturday, October 7, 2017(20 comments)
Congratulations! You are a Size Zero!
The average American man now weighs 194 pounds and woman, an astounding 165 pounds. In 2002, the average American woman weighed 153 pounds and in 1994, 147 pounds. Does anyone see a trend?
Saturday, September 30, 2017(7 comments)
How Offensive Ads Sell Drugs For Pharma
How did Pharma become the third most lucrative U.S. industry? In addition to millions doled out federal lawmakers and medical groups, it uses the world's best ad agencies and public relations firms to "move product." Series: Pharma (5 Articles, 6325 views)
Thursday, September 28, 2017(2 comments)
Will Hugh Hefner Be Remembered as a Visionary or a Flesh Peddler?
Some credit Hefner, with his eternal bathrobe and pipe, with helping the nation lose its 1950s Puritanism and gray flannel workaholism and enjoy recreational sex and drugs. Women, whose lives could be ruined at the time by unwanted pregnancies, were no longer "bad" if they consented to sex thanks to the Playboy philosophy.
Tuesday, September 26, 2017(3 comments)
How Pharma Got a Quarter of the Population on Antidepressants
The weight gain, sexual dysfunction and bone thinning/fractures linked to antidepressants have been well publicized. But a 2010 JAMA article suggested that in most cases antidepressants don't even work Series: Pharma (5 Articles, 6325 views)
Monday, September 25, 2017(4 comments)
There is Money in Dosing Kids
How did the once modest medical specialty of child psychiatry become the aggressive "pediatric psychopharmacology" that it is today? Thanks to Pharma-driven disease mongering, kids who were once considered normal now suffer from ADHD, conduct disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorders, mixed manias, pervasive development disorders, personality disorders and even schiz Series: Pharma (5 Articles, 6325 views)
Thursday, September 21, 2017(6 comments)
Do You Remember This Pharma Hoax Against Women? It Is Coming Back (Part One)
How did menopause become a "disease" and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) the "cure"? It began with a bestselling book in 1966 called Feminine Forever by Robert A. Wilson, a Wyeth-funded gynecologist (Wyeth was bought by Pfizer.) The book referred to postmenopausal women as "flabby," "shrunken," "dull- minded," and "desexed," and warned that "no woman can be sure of escaping the horror of this living decay." Series: Pharma (5 Articles, 6325 views)
Saturday, September 16, 2017(10 comments)
Please Help Me Eat This Giraffe
Last year, when12-year-old huntress Aryanna Gourdin posed with a dead impala, giraffe and zebra she had killed in Africa, the public was appalled. "You don't deserve any respect. Taking for granted the greatest gift of mother nature and the universe," wrote one of her many critics on the internet. "Sickening little witch" wrote another.
Friday, September 15, 2017(11 comments)
Filmmaker Takes Dead Aim at Big Pharma and the Opioids, Atypicals and SSRIs Killing Americans
There have been several films about the evils of Big Pharma but Legal Death: In Drugs We Trust, a new film series in development promises to be the most unsparing. Unlike academics and medical groups who express "concerns" about Pharma tactics while not wanting to lose its funding, Filmmaker Tim Alexander clearly takes no Pharma money.
Sunday, September 10, 2017(9 comments)
How Big Pharma and Big Food Have Made Us Fat and Sick
We "suffer" from seasonal allergies, asthma, seasonal affective disorder, social anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, erectile dysfunction, irritable bowel syndrome, dry eye, fibromyalgia, insomnia, migraines, mood disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, spectrum disorders, chronic fatigue, restless legs, excessive daytime sleepiness, osteopenia, perimenopause, and lactose intoler
Friday, September 1, 2017(5 comments)
Why Are Newspapers and Books Waning? Clickbait is One Reason
The book business is struggling with nonreaders and how long a book takes to produce. They are old before they are new. Time-tested authors like Tom Wolfe, Eric Schlosser, Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Gilbert and even Bob Woodward no longer "chart" like they once did.
Monday, August 28, 2017(6 comments)
Better Than Statins And Only $200,000 a Year Says Drug Hype This Week
Hep C drugs were rolled out $o fa$t, Pharma did not realize that patients with pre-existing, dormant hepatitis B infections could experience reactivation of the infections on the drugs and even die. Sorry about that.
Monday, August 21, 2017(5 comments)
How Pharma Keeps Health Care Costs Astronomical
Disease awareness campaigns, other than for depression, have been chillingly successful. A 2014 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that more than 10,000 two- and three-year-olds in the U.S. are now on the stimulants Ritalin, Adderall and their cousins for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
Are Animal Rights Activists Winning or Losing On the Farm?
There is not a long line to fill jobs whose descriptions are, "Remove dead animals from 98 degree ammonia-infused pens wearing face mask, $8 an hour possible, depending on experience."
Wednesday, June 28, 2017(2 comments)
Both Kosher and Halal Slaughter Cruel
Even though some Jews and Muslims might be bitter enemies, meat is one thing they agree on: Muslims "often substitute kosher foods when their own ritually produced and certified halal foods are not available," reports the Sioux City Journal.
Have You Forgotten About Last Week's Nursing Home Massacre? The Gun Lobby Hopes So.
If women regularly walked into bars and killed their husbands and everyone next to him would the male-dominated gun lobby be silent? Or would it ask how women with histories of domestic abuse who were under orders of protection managed to get guns and kill?
Saturday, May 20, 2017(5 comments)
Vice Covers Controversial "Born With a Junk Food Deficiency"
The USDA seeks to support good nutrition and prevent obesity but it also helps Big Food market milk and cheese and other fattening foods and buys up surpluses. It is supposed to keep meat safe but protected the identities of US ranches with mad cow disease, putting producers before consumers.
Friday, May 12, 2017(4 comments)
Can't Resist Some Foods? It's Not Your Fault
Microwave popcorn's irresistible smell is from butter flavoring chemicals like diacetyl and Pentanedione which are dissipated by the heating process. They have been linked to "popcorn lung."
Tuesday, May 2, 2017(17 comments)
Don't Fall for These Pharma Scare Tactics
ADHD is not the only way Pharma has medicalized and monetized childhood. Temper tantrums are now called "Disruptive Mood Disregulation Disorder." Thanks to "pediatric psychopharmacology" children are increasingly diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorders, mixed manias, social phobias, bipolar disorders, conduct disorders, depression and "spectrum" disorders.
Friday, April 28, 2017
10 Gun Victims Killed on the day of JFK Assassination--Book Review
What if you didn't grow up amid America's gun culture but are still a member of the race which suffers the most from it? As Gary Younge, a black reporter who grew up in England, demonstrates in a moving new book, it might cause you to ask hard questions other reporters duck.
Friday, April 14, 2017(2 comments)
San Bernardino Murders--Latest Example of Gendercide
This week's San Bernardino killer Cedric Anderson is a case in point. Despite a 30-year history of battery charges and domestic violence allegations, he was not barred from legally buying a gun and killed his wife and a student this week.
Interview with the Author of the Pharma Thriller Not Safe As Prescribed
"In the U.S. our growing drug culture for both legal and illegal drugs is affecting every community, person, family member or a friend. Everybody knows somebody struggling from too many drugs," says this pharmacist author.
Big Meat's Dirty Little Secret: Few Jobs For Americans
Few to no Americans work as knockers, stickers, bleeders, tail rippers, flankers, gutters, sawers and plate boners in U.S. slaughterhouses for under ten dollars an hour
Is There More to the Bacon Shortage Than Reported?
The pork industry doesn't mind news stories about bacon and how people love it so much they will probably be willing to pay more if there is a shortage What it does mind are stories about the porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDv) outbreak of 2013 and 2014 in which one tenth of all U.S. pigs died. Yes, you read that right. Series: We are eating WHAT? (14 Articles, 17472 views)
Why Isn't Pharma Paying for the Opioid Addiction Epidemic It Caused?
Pharma marketed opioids for every possible affliction from headaches and lower back pain to non-pain conditions like depression, divorce and boredom, reported Bloomberg. IMMPACT, a Pharma-funded lobbying group even privately met with federal regulators to facilitate new opioid approvals.
Is THIS What Is Wrong With Trump?
There is no slight--perceived or otherwise-- for which Trump will not seek retaliation. Great characteristic for a leader--NOT Series: Martha's Bar (4 Articles, 3951 views)
Trump Wives, Daughters Keep Fur on Fashion Map
It should surprise no one that Donald Trump's greed-is-good 1980's redux includes lavish displays of fur. Daughters Ivanka and Tiffany, ex-wife Ivana and current wife Melania have all stepped out in fur notes the Daily Mail.
Will Trump Give Pharma a Pass on Overseas Jobs?
Pharma favors overseas trials for the same reason corporations ship out jobs. Less regulations; cheaper labor. Drug trial subjects are compliant and often believe they are being treated for a disease.
Monday, December 5, 2016
Ben Carson to Head What?
There are many question marks about Ben Carson. His pimping for supplement marker Mannatech and claiming they did not pay him--the speaker bureau did. Series: cartoons (50 Articles, 43737 views), cartoons (50 Articles, 43737 views)
Sunday, November 27, 2016(14 comments)
Pay No Attention to those Videos, Say Factory Farmers
Many factory farmers and ag professionals are miffed that the days of "it's-none- of-your-business" farming are over. Once upon a time, consumers cared only about the price and wholesomeness of food and didn't worry about--or investigate--its origins and "disassembly." Now consumers increasingly want to know how an animal lived, died, and even what it ate in between
Monday, November 21, 2016(4 comments)
Are Cloned Animals on Your Dinner Plate?
It has been six years since the BBC, while reporting on a cloned cattle herd in Britain, said cloned products have been in the U.S. food supply for two years. Margaret Wittenberg, global vice-president of Whole Foods Market at the time agreed. Series: We are eating WHAT? (14 Articles, 17472 views)
