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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.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 24, 2010 Grassley Investigates Lilly/WebMD link Reported by Washington Post
A 2002 article on the gigantic medical site about pain and depression says "Lilly is a WebMD Partner," and an advertising award in 2004 went to the FCB "client" Eli Lilly & Co./WebMD--not clients.
Banner and skyscraper ads for Lilly's blockbuster antidepressant Cymbalta on WebMD's home page never seemed to yield to other advertisers in 2009--and the Washington Post reported Lilly and WebMD to be partners in 2000.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 27, 2011 The Drug Store in Your Tap Water
While pharma and water treatment professionals routinely deny the existence of prescription drugs in public waterways and drinking water -- easy to do when they are not tested for anyway! -- Mary Buzby director of environmental technology for pharma giant Merck was a little more candid in 2007.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, February 16, 2009 It's the Cymbalta Stupid
Starting with the death of 19-year-old Cymbalta test subject Traci Johnson in 2004--who hanged herself in the Lilly Clinic in Indianapolis and had no history of mental problems--it has been beset by reports of baffling, rapid, unprovoked, and out of character suicides.
(11 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 28, 2008 Are You Sure You're Not Psychotic Asks Shameless Drug Company?
For years, AstraZeneca has tried to convince depressed people they are really bipolar and need to take the atypical antipsychotic Seroquel (quetiapine fumarate) which is only approved for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
Now the FDA is saying cease and desist
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 22, 2012 The Ambien Made Me Do It!
ne woman in Pennsylvania woke up in the morning after taking Ambien only to find her fingers black. She soon discovered she had gotten up and drank a bottle of black shoe polish in an Ambien blackout. When she told her doctor he said to stop taking the drug. No kidding.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 17, 2014 Watch--Elanco is Becoming the Monsanto of the Animal Drug Industry
Now Elanco, Eli Lilly's animal drug division, is launching a campaign to make Biotech look like a new arm of the UN/WHO. It is exhorting activists to "feed the world" through supporting Biotech food technology and becoming "an advocate for a food secure future."
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 17, 2010 Does the Pink Viagra work?
Despite its rep as a female Viagra, flibanserin really isn't. Viagra exerts mechanical actions, increasing blood flow to the genitalia without increasing desire while flibanserin does the opposite -- increasing desire not blood flow.
(10 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 15, 2012 25 of Big Pharma's Most Offensive Ads
Why are drug ads that sow hypochondria, raise health fears and "sell" diseases the most successful of all?
(13 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 30, 2018 Please Eat Our Cheese Pleads the Dairy Lobby As Sales Nosedive
Americans are drinking so little milk, the dairy industry is turning it into cheese. There is such a surplus of cheese, the US government has bought 11 million tons to distribute to food banks.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 28, 2013 We're Eating What? 9 Contaminants in US Meat
Meat contaminants are not likely to go away because they stem from Big Meat's desire to maximize profits by growing animals faster, squeezing them into small living spaces and keeping meat looking "fresh" on store shelves longer
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 3, 2010 Before You Take That Antidepressant, Visit This Web Site
Pharma and the FDA may still be agnostic about SSRIs causing violence but 700 murders, 200 murder-suicides and 47 postpartum depression cases, including the 2006 case of Andrea Yates who drowned her five children on Effexor, don't lie.
(12 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 12, 2012 Merry Christmas From the Gun Lobby
The gun violence is becoming so over the top it barely makes the Nightly News or delays the shopping, movie or football game. No one even asks anymore, "The gunman was carrying WHAT?"--or "The firearms dealer sold a weapon to WHO?"
(24 comments) SHARE Friday, October 15, 2010 Are Soldiers Suicides Caused by Prescription Drugs?
In 2009 there were 160 active duty suicides, 239 suicides within the total Army including the Reserves, 146 active duty deaths from drug overdoses and high risk behavior and 1,713 suicide attempts, says the Army's suicide report, released in July.
Not only are more troops dying from their own hand than combat says the Army report, 36 percent of the suicides were
(7 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 1, 2010 Army Suicide Report Ignores Suicide-Causing Drugs
The Army report barely considers the suicide-inked antidepressants, antipsychotics and antiseizure drugs whose use exactly parallels the increase in US troop suicides since 2005.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 27, 2012 We're Eating What? The Drugstore in U.S. Meat.
Food consumers seldom hear about the drugs oestradiol-17, zeranol, trenbolone acetate and melengestrol acetate and the names are certainly not on meat labels. But those synthetic growth hormones are central to U.S. meat production, especially beef, and the reason Europe has banned a lot of U.S. meat since 1989.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 20, 2013 They're Feeding Turkeys WHAT?
Thanks to humane scandals at Butterball, Aviagen Turkeys and House of Raeford, many are aware of the cruel handling in commercial turkey production. Fewer people are aware of the food additives and fast-growth methods that put both turkeys and the people who eat them at risk.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 16, 2014 Hair Loss Drug Linked to Disturbing Side Effects That May Be Permanent
No one should have to choose between their hairline and their health. But increasingly, men who use finasteride, commonly known as Propecia, to treat their male pattern baldness are making that choice, often unwittingly.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 19, 2017 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.
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 27, 2018 Have You Fallen For Any of these Meat Industry Myths?
Just because meat is about as good for you as cigarettes doesn't mean the meat industry is conceding anything. Here are its rebuttals about meat's deleterious effects on health.
(12 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 3, 2014 Why Are Medicare Psychiatric Drugs so Pricey? Here's One (Unethical) Reason
As private insurers balk at paying as much a month as $830 for Abilify, $250 for Seroquel, $450 for Geodon and $760 for Invega, Pharma increasingly relies on government programs to subsidize its expensive psychiatric drug habit.
(7 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 29, 2008 Spare Us Paternalism Say Organizing Chicago Sex Workers
As long as sex workers are morally quarantined by illegality and stigma, they risk being robbed, cheated, raped, knifed, shot, beaten up, strangled, abducted, arrested and given diseases said "out" sex worker and SWOP organizer Pussy Willow, 47.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, October 30, 2023 Pink Slime is Still in Meat Supply--Unlabeled
In my new book Click I discuss
the opioid scandals
newer drugs with 5 and 6 figure price tags
the move toward, danger and reasons for faster drug approvals
and the return of pink slime in the food supply
(22 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 8, 2011 Proud, Safe Gun Owners Not Proud or Safe When Names Released
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's ruling last week that the names of the 1.3 million people with Firearm Owners Identification cards (FOID) in the state be published has gun owners up in arms, pun intended.
(63 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 2, 2014 Are George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn "protecting" us?
Open and concealed carriers are so full of fear, they are afraid to go where normal people go--including children, the elderly and 90 lb women--every day unless they have their loaded lethal weapons. They clearly have a mental problem.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 4, 2011 Worse Than Fireworks Deaths? Government Blackbird Poisoning
Do wildlife officials feel just a little hypocritical answering media questions about the New Year's Eve blackbird "rain" when they know they kill 200 times that amount a year as "pests"?
(19 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 10, 2014 If You Can't Stop Eating These Foods, That Was The Plan
There are three reasons Americans' love affair with snacks is growing-- along with their waistlines: the ubiquity of junk food, the ubiquity of junk food advertising and stealth food technology. People who polish off a whole bag of chips or cookies at one sitting (usually in front of TV) are often doing exactly what the product was designed to do--be addictive.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 19, 2010 Government Report Finds Dangerous Residues in Meat
Many food consumers worry about pathogens like E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria in their meat. But according to a new government report, they should worry more about veterinary drugs, pesticides and heavy metals in their food.
SHARE Sunday, January 24, 2010 If You Liked Bovine Growth Hormone, You'll love Beta Agonists
While researchers and scientists investigate the cause of our diabetes, obesity, asthma and ADHD epidemics, they should ask why the FDA approved a livestock drug banned in 160 nations and responsible for hyperactivity, muscle breakdown and 10 percent mortality in pigs, according to angry farmers who phoned the manufacturer.
(40 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 20, 2019 New Study Confirms--Eggs Are A Stroke In A Shell
For years animal agriculture apologists have tried to convince the public that "inflammation, not cholesterol, is the cause of chronic disease." Eat all the eggs, meat and milk you want, they cajole: you won't die from a stroke or heart attack at age 50. We promise. This week a JAMA study reverses the industry-friendly hype
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, December 24, 2010 Who Were The Biggest Corporate Criminals in 2010?
a new study by the Health Research Group of Washington, D.C.-based Public Citizen reveals that pharma is now the biggest defrauder of the federal government. Since 2000, 25 percent of all federal False Claims Act payouts are from pharma versus 11 percent from the defense industry.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 27, 2015 Are You Taking These New Drugs From Our Brave New FDA?
There was a time when the FDA would not have approved drugs so irritating to the esophagus, you could end up in the ER if you lie down after taking one like the bisphosphonate bone drugs or drugs that suppress the whole immune system and invite cancers for less than serious conditions.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 25, 2022 Have We Learned Nothing From The COVID-19 Pandemic?
New animal epidemics ignored. Yet even as 41 countries now have outbreaks of avian influenza called HPAI or H5N1 including the US there is little to no reporting on the threat in the US press.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 1, 2013 They're Baaaaack--Old Pills for New Conditions
Pharma isn't going to deliver dappointing earnings to Wall Street just because it has few new drugs coming online and has failed at its very purpose. It is recycling old for brand new uses.
(21 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 29, 2014 We're Eating WHAT? Mad Cow Risks Ignored By Authorities
When the first U.S. mad cow was found in late 2003, 98 percent of U.S. beef exports evaporated overnight. There was such national revulsion to cow "cannibalism" when described in the late 1990s as the presumed cause of the fatal disease, Oprah Winfrey said she would never eat a hamburger again. Now spin doctors have made mad cow into a less scary occurrence
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 26, 2010 Have You Been Fooled by the These Dirty Pharma Marketing Tricks?
How does the pharmaceutical industry get a product through development, testing and approval and onto your insurer's formulary, television set and bathroom shelf? (And Wall Street profit reports?) And how does it do it so, so seamlessly you think it's your idea? Here are some of pharma's dirtiest tricks.
(16 comments) SHARE Monday, October 31, 2011 A Drug As Scary As Halloween; Blockbuster Drug Causes Cancer, Tuberculosis And Lethal Infections
How did Abbott Laboratories' Humira become an $8 billion a year drug, capable of anchoring an entirely new drug company as Abbott splits into two?
Even though such drugs (which include Remicade, Enbrel and Cimzia and are called TNF blockers) are linked to TB, rare cancers and lethal infections like histoplasmosis?
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 26, 2013 What's Really in the Milk?
The dairy industry has vehemently fought antibiotic restrictions by the government.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 11, 2015 Have You Fallen for These Big Pharma Tricks?
Long before the Internet and direct to consumer advertising, the medical profession tried to reassure people about their health concerns. Sure fatigue and headaches could be a symptom of a brain tumor; sure a cough could be a symptom of lung cancer--but most doctors tried to assuage not sow fear. Remember "take two aspirins and call me in the morning"?
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, January 2, 2015 What Sex Drugs Are on the Horizon for 2015?
Whether ED, HSSD (hypoactive sexual desire disorder) or PE, there is clearly money to made in sex enhancement drugs. Less clear is whether the drugs work, are safe or will save a troubled relationship.
SHARE Saturday, January 13, 2018 Trump Is "Healthy" Except for This Hair Drug He Takes
Last year, Trump's doctor disclosed that the president takes finasteride, a drug marketed as Propecia to treat male pattern baldness. While it's tempting to make Angry Creamsicle and "small hands" jokes, the dangers of finasteride are well documented.
(10 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 16, 2017 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.
(15 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 9, 2009 Think You'll Marry After 40? Buy a Lottery Ticket Too
Your chances of getting married have been promoted from less than the chance of being harmed by terrorists to less than the chance of becoming Secretary of State or Speaker of the House.
They may even be greater than being on a plane that hits a cluster of birds and plunges into the Hudson River and being rescued while waiting on the wings.
SHARE Sunday, October 18, 2009 Farmers Protest Food Activist Michael Pollan at University of Wisconsin
The land grant, ag-based university, in the middle of dairyland, clearly doesn't remember its roots. It gave Pollan's In Defense of Food, another anti-agbiz screed according to industry, free to all incoming freshmen as part of its common book read program where everyone reads the same book, Go Big Read, in August.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 8, 2009 Egg Eaters Horrified At the Daily Grind at Hatcheries
This was not like run-of-the-mill abuse videos where management blames a few Bad Apples and vows to investigate while insinuating the acts were staged or instigated, law enforcement sits on its hands, distributors plead ignorance, the public boycotts the brand for 4 hours and an assistant night shift supervisor gets a 3 month suspended sentence.
The bad apple is the system of egg production itself
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 18, 2009 Pediatric Zyprexa Brochures Embarrass British Health Service
"Your medicine is called Olanzapine. Pronounced 'o-lan-za-peen,'" says the lime green kids' brochure for the antipsychotic Zyprexa, published by Britain's National Health Service (NHS). "Many children, teenagers and young people need to take medicines prescribed by doctors to help them stay well and healthy," says the text amid cartoons of happy children skating, roller blading and playing soccer.
(11 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 11, 2014 Big Pharma Pimps Alcoholics--With Government Help
NIDA's pursuit of a bio treatment for addictions and alcoholism is not only stupid and cruel, it wastes money that could be spent on diseases that can't be treated with a cup of coffee in a church basement.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, December 23, 2013 6 Crimes Against Nature in Factory Farming Part I
Treating animals like heads of lettuce has created institutionalized ruthlessness toward animals, workers and the environment at the same time it harms humans who eat the products
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 8, 2013 Government "Washes its Hands" of Meat and Poultry Safety Inspections
Remember in the mid-1990s when USDA began telling people to wash their cutting boards and utensils after preparing meat and always use a meat thermometer? Because US meat and poultry is so full of pathogens, if you don't kill them they might kill you? That was the beginning of the government's move to pass food safety risks on to customers, and, more distressingly, to meat processors themselves. The move is continuing
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, July 1, 2016 Are You Eating These Products? They Contain Carcinogenic Antibiotics, Activists Charge
After an eight month investigation, food activists have produced evidence that Farmer John, one of California's largest pig farms and a subsidiary of Hormel, is using the carcinogenic antibiotic carbadox in the production of its pork products. The antibiotic is so linked to cancer, in April the FDA proposed removing it from the market to "reduce the lifetime risk to consumers." Series: We are eating WHAT? (16 Articles, 25815 views)
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 8, 2010 Ads Are Cool But Gardasil and Cervarix Vaccines Aren't Selling
Prescription drug advertising can work miracles. With Vioxx, it got 20 million people to pay five times more for a pain reliever that doubled their risk of heart attack.
But advertising may not be working with Merck's Gardasil and GSK's Cervarix, vaccines which protect against Human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus that causes cervical cancer.
(9 comments) SHARE Friday, September 12, 2014 Unarmed Catholic Priest called "ISIS" by Illinois State Rifle Association
In an offensive email about the event, the Illinois State Rifle Association derided the Catholic Priest's "special brand of frothy-lipped lunacy" and "lies, the fabricated statistics, and the hysterical claims about how private firearm ownership is dooming mankind," and actually compared an unarmed religious leader to" ISIS!
SHARE Friday, November 11, 2011 How Safe Is Your Asthma Drug--Part Two
Sales pieces from Scholastic and Merck (who makes Singulair) called, "Health Ed 101-- Learn to Prevent Asthma Symptoms," told parents, "When your child breathes in an asthma trigger, such as pollen from trees or weeds, the body releases leukotrienes (loo-ko-TRY-eens)" and that Singulair blocks the loo-ko-TRY-eens.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 6, 2012 Move Over, ALEC--Big Pharma Wants to Write Laws Too
Pharma is losing so much money from rising co-pays and prescription abandonment, it has launched cagey, public service announcement-sounding campaigns about "patients not taking the drugs they need," as if it is a health and not revenue issue.
(19 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 14, 2014 Risks? They Didn't Stop These 7 Drugs From Making Money
Have you ever noticed how warnings about dangerous prescription drug always seem to surface after the drug is no longer marketed and its patent has run out?
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 25, 2014 Is It The "Terrible Twos" or ADHD?
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week confirmed what many have suspected: more than 10,000 2 and 3-year-old U.S. toddlers are being dosed with drugs like Ritalin and Adderral for "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder." You read that right.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 8, 2015 Brave New Food Animals--Part II
"You don't have to be a vegan to be repulsed by an account in The Times revealing the moral depths to which the federal government -- working as a handmaiden to industrial agriculture -- has sunk in pursuit of cheaper meat and fatter corporate profits," wrote the Times in a follow-up editorial.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 24, 2010 Are Veterans Being Given Deadly Cocktails to Treat PTSD?
A potentially deadly drug manufactured by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has been linked to the deaths of soldiers returning from war. Yet the FDA continues to approve it.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 31, 2013 Do You Have A Chronic Autoimmune Disease? Big Pharma Hopes So.
The profit party is over for Big Pharma except for one category--drugs for autoimmune diseases. Conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis and plaque psoriasis are rare in the adult population but a spate of new ads and self-diagnosing "quizzes" suggest they are Big Pharma's next focus.
(62 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 21, 2012 Thank You NRA!
f Jared Lee Loughner's Tucson rampage last year that killed six people, including a US district court judge, and almost killed former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz) didn't give lawmakers the resolve to check the gun lobby, Friday's movie theater massacre certainly won't.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 15, 2010 Is Pfizer the BP of Drug Companies?
Pfizer is best known for Lipitor, a drug that brings cholesterol down and Viagra, a drug that brings other things up.
But the "world's largest research-based pharmaceutical company" which sits between Goldman Sachs and Marathon Oil on the Fortune 500, is also distinguished by an unrivaled series of corruption allegations.
(9 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 13, 2015 Ann Coulter Is Not a Fat Pig--Donald Trump
It is not too hard to find men who think of women as commodities to buy and dispose of like a good sports car or cigar--think Bill Cosby and Donald Trump. But it is hard to find women who think of women as commodities to buy and dispose of like a good sports car or cigar because they are, after all women.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 25, 2010 Are You Taking Any of These Dangerous Drugs?
Why would Americans take an epilepsy seizure drug for pain? The same reason they'll take an antipsychotic for the blues and an antidepressant for knee pain: good consumer marketing.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 22, 2011 "Pfizer's Neurontin Killed Our Husbands, We Believe"
After being silent for more than six years, two women who say their doctor husbands died from undisclosed Neurontin risks have decided to speak out.
(8 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 22, 2014 We're Eating WHAT? Government Cuts Back Meat Inspectors as Food Risks Increase
In February, USDA recalled 8.7 million pounds of beef products processed at Rancho Feeding Corp. that included Nestle's Philly Steak and Cheese and Croissant Crust Philly Steak and Cheese Hot Pockets, Walmart Fatburgers, Kroger Ground Beef Mini Sliders and other well known brands.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 1, 2023 Surgery Causes Patient Permament, Life-Destroying Pain
What if your primary care physician sent you to a sinus specialist for endoscopic surgery to widen your sinus passages for better drainage? But while you were under sedation the surgeon performed a "septoplasty"--a straightening of the septum"--without your consent which had the effect of permanently cutting off your right nostril's air airflow? This and more happened to Michael Frederick, 35, a middle school science teacher.
SHARE Wednesday, May 13, 2009 Oprah's Queen of Empathy Crown Threatened By KFC Giveaway
Couldn't the Queen of Empathy think of a better way to help viewers feed themselves during the recession than KFC, targeted by animal groups for six years for egregious cruelty by suppliers captured--repeatedly--on video?
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 9, 2013 Worse than Germs--the Chemicals Used to Disinfect Meat
The meat and seafood you buy probably looks and smells fine. But processors may be using unsavory drugs to retard bacterial growth and the drugs do not appear on the label.
SHARE Sunday, August 12, 2012 Are You Ready for the New Diet Drugs?
Despite the 200 million Americans who could use a diet pill and the $60 billion a year such a pill represents to Pharma, the FDA has not approved a new diet drugs in 13 years. Worse, the last diet drug it approved, orlistat, found in the prescription drug Xenical and over-the-counter version, Alli has been a disappointment and the "butt" of jokes.
SHARE Wednesday, December 25, 2013 6 Crimes Against Nature in Factory Farming Part II
While production of the fast-growing frankenfish, the AquAdvantage salmon, has temporarily halted, greed will likely prevail in aquaculture as it has in factory farming
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, October 7, 2011 Are You Mentally Ill? If You Drink Too Much You Are, Says Big Pharma
Pharma's stratagems to grow its "mentally ill" franchise are well known. People with occasional anxiety are really depressed, then bipolar, then suffering from an assortment of amorphous "spectrum" diseases and dysrythmias with no known cause, no cure, no diagnostic tests and no turnoff valve on the pharmacy spigot.
(21 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 14, 2013 New Illinois Law Empowers George Zimmerman style Cop Wannabes
Even as the nation grapples with the fact that Walking While Black is a capital crime, a new Illinois law ensures future Zimmerman style vigilantes. There may only be six people in the nation who understand how stalking someone while armed and murdering them is "self-defense," but in Illinois more "enforcer" bloodshed is just around the corner.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 21, 2012 Better Childhoods Through Chemistry
Where do parents and teachers get the idea there's "something wrong" with their kid and only an expensive drug can fix it? From Pharma's seamless web of ads, subsidized doctors, journals, medical courses and conferences, paid "patient" groups, phony public services messages and reporters willing to serve as stenographers.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 3, 2009 Will Fosamax be Vioxx all over again?
Like Vioxx which was launched a month early thanks to its collegial relationship with the FDA, Fosamax was rushed to market in 1995 six months after its application on the basis of two three-year studies.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 18, 2012 Doctor Tells How To Get Off Dangerous Psychiatric Drugs in New Book
Peter R. Breggin, MD, has been called "The Conscience of Psychiatry" for his efforts to reform the mental health field. A Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former full-time consultant at the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Breggin has also been a consultant to the Federal Aviation Agency on the adverse effects of psychiatric drugs on pilots.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, July 11, 2008 Gates Supported Heifer International Increases Suffering
It almost sounds like a joke. Set up dairy enterprises in rural African villages with no refrigeration, electricity, veterinary care or passable roads for a population that can't drink milk because it's 90% lactose intolerant.
(17 comments) SHARE Friday, May 11, 2012 Why Were These Drugs Approved?
Why did the FDA rush to approve bone drugs which turned out to have links to cancer, jawbone death, heart problems, intractable pain and eye disorders? Drugs which actually cause fractures and apparently cease working while patients take them? Why did it foster Merck's apparent marketing plan of making quick money before risks surfaced?
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 14, 2015 Look What "Big Food" is Doing to Stop Food Activists
Officially, Big Food is not worried about the small number of "fringe" food activists who object to cruel, unhealthful and environmentally destructive products. But unofficially, it is a different story.
(25 comments) SHARE Monday, May 13, 2013 Corporate America is Stronger Than the NRA. Why Doesn't It Force Guns Laws?
Even the NRA bans visitors with guns at its headquarters despite being in a "conceal and carry" state and having a firing range on site, according to published reports. "They might be worried about deranged antis trying to kill them," or lack the proper "insurance," say NRA defenders online, citing the same reasons the organizations they blast for "gun free zones" use. Who can say hypocrite?
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 29, 2015 We Aren't Paying No Stinking Taxes--Pfizer
You would think the drug company that made the best-selling drug in the world--Lipitor--and the blockbuster Viagra would appreciate the country and patients who have been so good to it. You'd be wrong.
(13 comments) SHARE Monday, July 7, 2014 Three Sneaky New Ways Big Pharma Is Churning Profits in 2014
the parade of symptoms viewers may suffer from has gotten so over the top, comedian Chris Rock said he was ready to hear a TV ad asking, "Do you fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning? You may be suffering from..."
(12 comments) SHARE Monday, February 25, 2019 Shameless Pharma Execs Appear Before Congress to Defend Their Prices
Why have you raised the price of an insulin vial from $200 to $1,500? Why does Actimmune, for malignant osteopetrosis, sell for $350 in Britain and $26,000 in the U.S.? Why does Novartis charge $475,000 for its new cancer drug? Why does the gallstone drug Chenodal cost $42,570 a month?
SHARE Sunday, February 5, 2012 Antibiotics Injected Directly into Eggs and Big Pharma Secrets
There is no scientific evidence that antibiotics used in food animals have any significant impact on the effectiveness of antibiotics in people," deadpans the Animal Health Institute, representing Abbott, Bayer, Elanco/Lilly, Merck, Novartis and Pfizer in a brochure.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 13, 2012 Government Wants To Stop Suicide Without Stopping Suicide-Linked Drugs
It would be laughable if it weren't tragic. This week Surgeon General Regina Benjamin introduced a plan to stem the nation's growing suicide rate without addressing the nation's growing use of suicide-linked drugs.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 1, 2014 Mad Cow-like Disease Growing in Deer Thanks to Deer Breeders
Many animal lovers have noted the hypocrisy of states citing deer "overpopulation" when they encourage deer breeding farms. What? Recently a four-part expose in the Indiana Star explores how "the pursuit of deer bred for enormous antlers and shot in hunting pens" on trophy farms is spreading CWD at an alarming rate.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 31, 2010 Hefner Feted in Chicago But Movie is as Creepy as Halloween
halfway through the movie, a creep factor sets in. Maybe it is the parade of dead talking heads presented as if they were alive -- Alex Haley, Robert Culp, Tony Curtis -- or the fact that Hef wannabe Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione just died.
SHARE Tuesday, March 26, 2013 Why Americans Have the Most Expensive Urine in the World
It's been said that Americans have the most expensive urine in the world because of all the unneeded vitamins they take. But there is another unneeded substance that Americans ingest, thanks to all the drug ads on TV, that is much more serious: unneeded prescription drugs.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 19, 2012 Should the FDA Give Diet Drug Qnexa Another Chance?
Alli and Xenical encourage weight loss by blocking the body's absorption of fat but can cause "oily bowels" and "anal leakage." Comics had a lot of fun with them when they were first approved with lines like "With Allies Like This, Who Needs Enemas?" and "Free coupon for Depends."
SHARE Sunday, April 29, 2012 How Big Pharma Gets You To Stay on a Drug For Life
Most blockbusters are pills for conditions such as anxiety, high cholesterol or constipation that must be taken daily, often for months or years. They are designed for rich Americans who can afford to buy them says a pharma expert.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 30, 2017 This Pharma-Funded Group Is Also in Bed With Gun Lobby
AFSP volunteers are now told, writes lawyer Erin Dunkerly in the New York Times, they cannot talk about "gun control" and the links between a gun in the home and suicide. Of course, that is like telling people working against drunk driving they can't talk about alcohol.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 23, 2012 Are Foster Children Overmedicated? Government Seeks Improved Guidelines
Universal Health Services Inc., known as the "Standard Oil of mental illness," recently agreed to pay $6.85 million to the U.S. and the state of Virginia to settle allegations that its Keystone Marion Youth Center provided "substandard psychiatric counseling and treatment to adolescents in violation of Medicaid requirements, falsified records and submitted false claims to the Medicaid program."
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 2, 2014 Book Review: Sobriety: A Graphic Novel
Debby's addiction to benzos and alcohol lands her in a psych ward after she threatens to kill her parents if they take her two young sons--and tries to slash her wrists with a ballpoint pen. Matt ends up arrested after joining a Latin gang to avenge the death of his father who was also in a gang.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 11, 2011 Interview with Dr. Phil Interventionist, Joani Gammill
Joani Gammill, a registered nurse, recovering addict and mother of two has just written an account of her career as a professional "interventionist" after an appearance on the Dr. Phil Show that sparked her own recovery. The Interventionist, published by Hazelden, recounts some of her most dramatic and frustrating interventions, arranged by addicts' families, and how they have furthered her understanding of the disease of addi
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 17, 2016 Like the Oregon Ranchers, The NRA is All Hat and No Horse
The gun lobby is mostly old white men who are being retired by younger Americans who are not enamored with guns. In fact, only 18 percent of US citizens 18 to 25 even own a gun!
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 13, 2012 Shameless Drug Company Still Cashing in on Bone Market
There's plenty of ka-ching in selling "strong bones" products for the same reason there was plenty of ka-ching in selling "hormone replacement" products: one-half the population is female, and no one wants to look old.
(14 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 14, 2014 How Big Pharma Stoked the Opioid Epidemic
despite a near consensus among doctors and medical groups and public officials that narcotic painkillers are becoming a health catastrophe, the damage is not likely to end soon with Zohydro ER inexplicably approved this year and likely to become OxyContin 2.0.
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 29, 2013 Ghoulish, Live Animal Charity Has Poor Track Record
Just in time for Halloween, Heifer International's new catalogue is in the mail. Heifer International is a Little Rock-based Christian charity that "ends hunger and poverty" through sending live animals to poor people overseas. The images of cute kids hugging cute animals, many of whose throats will be slit after the cameraman leaves, are right out of Walt Disney or Pet World.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 27, 2010 Governor Paterson, Shut This Dairy Down
grisly footage that every farm randomly chosen for investigation--MFA has investigated 11--seems to yield, indicates the violence is not isolated, not coincidental, but agribusiness-as-usual.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 2, 2012 Are You Eating Antibiotics Without Knowing It? Probably!
In 2008, the FDA had announced that there was "evidence that extralabel use of these drugs [cephalosporins] in food-producing animals will likely cause an adverse event in humans and, as such, presents a risk to the public health," and called for their prohibition. But by the time hearings were held two months later and lobbyists had worked their magic, the "Cephalosporin Order of Prohibition," had somehow become a "Hearing to
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 25, 2010 No Charges Filed Yet in Dairy Atrocity Seen on Nightline
two months after a January television broadcast of calves' and heifers' tails cut off and horns burned with no painkiller and hours-old calves dragged away from their mothers, no charges have been filed against Willet Dairy in Cayuga County, NY by the district attorney's office.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 23, 2014 Living on our tax dollars but fleeing them-- tax inverters AbbVie and Medtronic
The Illinois-based drug company AbbVie is proceeding with its announced merger with the British drug company Shire, based on the small island of Jersey in the English Channel. The company "is expected to be resident in the UK for tax purposes," according to AbbVie's SEC filing. If the deal goes ahead, the company will have a bigger market value than Boeing, McDonald's and Cisco, writes The New York Times, t
SHARE Friday, July 12, 2013 Will the"New" Female Viagra Drugs Work?
A new "pink Viagra" has surfaced, starring on the cover of the New York Times magazine in June and anchoring a heavily promoted book called What Do Women Want? by Times writer Daniel Bergner.
(16 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 22, 2013 Gun "Carry" Extremists Causing Accidents
How many gun rights activists does it take to change a light bulb? 301. 100 to blame the burned out bulb on a gun-free zone; 100 to call the replacement a threat to their constitutional rights, 100 to post prepper remarks about Hitler and the ATF and 1 to change a light bulb.
(16 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 4, 2016 Don't Wait A Year To Stop Using These Dangerous Products
These products do not get you "cleaner" than soap and water but they do do a lot else: they encourage antibiotic resistance and "superbugs" and disrupt endocrine systems in humans and animals, just like pesticides.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 17, 2015 They've nominated WHO to head the FDA?
Califf said "many of us consult with the pharmaceutical industry, which I think is a very good thing. They need ideas and then the decision about what they do is really up to the person who is funding the study," on PBS.
(8 comments) SHARE Monday, February 12, 2018 Are You Taking These Dangerous Drugs?
GERD medicines and antidepressants are among Pharma's top cash cows. But concerning risks continue to emerge as both drug classes are not the blockbusters they once were.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 12, 2013 Angela Davis Addresses Gun Violence in Chicago
Observing that the recent 50-year anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's Washington march felt more like a "historical observance than the start of something new," Davis urged people to connect the dots in the struggle for justice--"imagine the future and inhabit our past." She received a standing ovation.
(18 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 26, 2014 Were These Knife Attacks Caused by SSRI Antidepressants?
It's was crime to jolt the most jaded TV News watchers. Last week, a 14-year-old girl in a Chicago suburb allegedly stabbed her 11-year-old half sister 40 times, killing her. News reports say the 14-year-old was angry over an argument the night before, set her alarm, got a kitchen knife and entered her sister's room. The suspect allegedly uttered that the younger girl was not thankful for what she had done with each stab wound
(10 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 15, 2014 Are You Mentally Ill? Phony "Patient" Groups Hope So
There are several sociological factors behind the "psychiatrizing" of America. Direct-to-consumer advertising works and doesn't just convince people they are "depressed," it convinces them they have GERD, insomnia and restless legs.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 23, 2014 How Big Pharma Made Antipsychotics Everyday Drugs
Does anyone remember Thorazine? It was an antipsychotic given to mentally ill people, often in institutions, that was so sedating, it gave rise to the term "Thorazine shuffle."
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, November 9, 2012 Is Gunman's Spree at Chicken Plant Really "Puzzling"?
Why did a convicted felon and parolee have in his possession 24 rounds of .357-caliber ammunition, 21 rounds of .38-caliber ammunition and an expensive and rare .357 Derringer? Lawrence Jones had a long rap sheet of criminal convictions--sentenced to 13 years in prison for robbery in 1994 and three years for burglary and robbery in 1991. And why was Jones armed at work?
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 18, 2017 Yes, Trophy Hunters Really Do These Things
This is not the first time the love of trophy killing has gone all the way to the White House. President George H.W. Bush, former Vice-President Dan Quayle and the late Retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. were proud members of Safari Club International (SCI)--the bloodthirsty group that sponsored dentist Walter Palmer's murder of Cecil an African lion in the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe in 2015
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, October 10, 2014 Breaking Chicago News--Train Massacre Narrowly Averted
The call came in just before noon yesterday. A man with an assault rifle was firing at a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) Blue Line train from a platform at LaSalle Street and Congress Parkway in Chicago's busy downtown where thousands commute every day. The suspect was carrying 60 rounds of ammunition.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 20, 2018 Rejection of Guns by Young Extends to Hunting
It should surprise no one that the same revulsion against gun culture that erupted among young people after the Florida shooting translates to hunting.
(21 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 9, 2013 No Gun Insurance, Registration, Right to Sue Manufacturers--How Did This Happen?
Remember after 9/11 when authorities decided to better screen flight schools and ban box cutters on airplanes? And most people thought, "You weren't doing that already?...."
This month's proposed gun laws are producing the same, "I-can't-believe-I'm-hearing-this incredulity.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 11, 2013 How Big Pharma Gets You to Think a Drug is Safe
Scratch the surface of many blockbuster drugs that went on to be discredited, or even withdrawn as risks emerged, and an elaborate "publication plan" emerges, developed by the drug company's marketing firm.
SHARE Wednesday, January 28, 2009 Chicago Furrier Pleads Guilty to Running Drug Operation
No one is surprised Adriana Furs was a front. A week after Christmas, Macy's was unloading furs at outtahere prices like $378 for a rabbit coat and $743 for a fox jacket and Saks was selling fur with dressed-from-the-waist-up newspapers photos normally associated with pay web sites and women who get in stopped cars
(9 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 10, 2017 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
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 7, 2009 Behind HBO's "Death on a Factory Farm"
It was a Rodney King moment for the animal movement. A sow being hung by a Creston, Ohio hog farmer as a method of "euthanasia" in full view of a hidden camera.
And when the perpetrators are brought to court and the video introduced as evidence? Not guilty!
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 15, 2013 Gun-Happy Illinois Officials Take Law into Their Own Hands
Armed citizens like George Zimmerman who killed Trayvon Martin in Florida last year have been accused of vigilante justice--taking the law into their own hands. Now four Illinois state officials are doing the same thing.
(12 comments) SHARE Monday, October 14, 2013 Don't Put Criminals With Guns in Jail Says NRA in Illinois
The NRA is opposing a bill that says if someone is arrested with a gun they're not supposed to have, they go to prison for at least three years. It could "ensnare" people with Illinois' new concealed carry permits who make a mistake about where they can and cannot bring their guns.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 4, 2009 Got Antibiotics in Your Food? Thank the FDA
After getting a trough-ful from agribusiness and big pharma, the FDA reversed its ban on antibiotics in the food supply
SHARE Sunday, September 27, 2009 In Bad Times for Ag, Temple Grandin Speaks Out
Grandin, of course is the author of Animals Make Us Human and Animals in Translation and professor of animal science at Colorado State University. She is known for interpreting how the world looks to animals because of the alt perspective from her autism and considered the Ralph Nader of the packing house.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 23, 2011 Should You Take A Psychiatric Drug For Simple Pain?
now, Cymbalta is being promoted as a pain drug of choice like it's not a repurposed antidepressant with antidepressant side effects.
(11 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 1, 2014 US Executions Getting Worse
Increasingly lethal drugs are looking as just cruel as electrocution,
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, November 24, 2017 Pharma's Best Salespeople? Patients Who "Kill the Messenger"
"Prince was not addicted to pain medication. Prince had a medical condition -- chronic pain --which is criminally under-treated.... Physical dependence is not addiction." So reads one of many articles that defend opioids and blame their restrictions for the nation's opioid crisis.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 22, 2010 Is Meat and Milk From Clones in the Food Supply?
When Canadian agricultural leaders asked Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack last week after a scandal about unlabeled clone products in Europe if "cloned cows or their offspring have made it into the North American food supply," he said, "I can't say today that I can answer your question in an affirmative or negative way. I don't know."
(8 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 2, 2013 Why Are Suicides Climbing in the Military? Let's Look at the Drugs Being Prescribed
Several powerful military psychiatrists and administrators are also consultants to Big Pharma who shamelessly enroll veterans in drug studies and promote the pills that drug companies pay them to promote. Who can say conflict of interest?
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 10, 2016 Breaking News: Walgreens Partners With Pharma To Churn Drugs
Just as the public is digesting the fact that former chairman and CEO of drug giant Genentech, Art Levinson, is now the CEO of a new Google life sciences venture with Big Pharma and that he also serves as chairman of Apple Inc., there are more insidious "partnerships" between Pharma and top corporations. Walgreens has now announced a "partnership" with Mental Health America, an advocacy group so steeped in Pharma money, it was
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 26, 2017 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 (7 Articles, 13078 views)
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 8, 2015 Cartoon --Foie Gras is Back on Menu
There is not enough cruelty in the world? We have to do this to animals for a "delicacy"?
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 9, 2014 Military Suicides Not Caused By Pharma Drugs Say Pharma-funded Military Consultants
if you're looking for names of the Pharma companies who've created the most drugged up fighting force in history, you'll have to look at the conflicts of interest of the authors of the research, which appeared in JAMA Psychiatry in March.
SHARE Tuesday, December 13, 2011 In Shocking "Pharmalateralism," FDA Strips Critic of Voting Rights
It's said that it takes 22 FDA safety officers to change a light bulb: 12 to defend the decision to install it, 8 to call it another "lighting option," 6 to quote Big Pharma studies and one to say it doesn't need changing, it just needs a better label. This week's hearings into birth control pills Yaz, Yasmin, Beyaz and Safyral confirm the FDA's dedication to pharmalateralism.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 5, 2020 Breaking News FDA Adds Boxed Warning to Popular Allergy and Asthma Drug
"Due to the wide availability of alternative safe and effective allergy medicines with long histories of safety, we have reevaluated the risks and benefits of montelukast and have determined it should not be the first choice treatment particularly when allergic rhinitis symptoms are mild," said the FDA this week about the allergy and asthma drug marketed as Singulair.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 23, 2009 New Year's Resolutions for the Drug Industry for 2010
Female reps will not "sell" with cleavage and spike heels. Males reps will not high five each other or call them "dude." Reps who sold drugs that were later withdrawn will be banished.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 14, 2016 On This Day in Gun Massacre History
It has only been eight years since Stephen Phillip Kazmierczak shot 25, killing 5 at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL on Valentine's Day.
(55 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 23, 2019 Belgium Bans Cruel Ritual Slaughter Still Allowed in the US
Another country has banned the cruel practice of ritual slaughter--kosher slaughter, sanctioned by Jewish law and halal slaughter, sanctioned by Islamic law.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 15, 2017 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. Series: We are eating WHAT? (16 Articles, 25815 views)
(9 comments) SHARE Friday, April 3, 2009 Binghamton and Carthage Shootings Cause More Problems for Gun Lobby
Campus killers like Northern Illinois University's Stephen Phillip Kazmierczak and Virginia Tech's Seung-Hui Cho were legal gun owners, after all. So were Wisconsin church-killer Terry Ratzmann and immigrants Sulejman Talovic, the Trolley Square mall killer, Chai Vang, the Wisconsin hunter killer and Bart A. Ross, who killed a Chicago federal judge's family who had no trouble buying guns. Let's enforce existing laws!
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Don't Fall for These Food Front Groups
Food front groups sometimes called Astroturf are created by Big Food to keep health and safety regulations from cutting into sales and profits. Monsanto is a big funder
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 25, 2015 Bone Drug--Another Wonder Drug That Wasn't
The bone drug market opened up for the drug industry 12 years ago when the hormone replacement drugs women were taking to prevent fractures were found to increase their risks of cancer and heart disease. Bisphosphonates like Fosamax and Boniva (the latter, advertised by actress Sally Field) were quickly substituted as a way for women to keep their bones strong and stay young looking.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 3, 2011 Pharma's War on Kids
Since 2001, high blood pressure meds for kids have risen 17 percent, respiratory meds 42 percent, diabetes meds 150 percent and heartburn/GERD meds 147 percent. Fifty percent of pediatricians also prescribe kids insomnia drugs according to an article in the journal Pediatrics.
(11 comments) SHARE Monday, June 1, 2015 Do You Have Binge Eating Disorder? Big Pharma Hopes So
More than two thirds of U.S. adults are now overweight and it is fair to say that almost all of them overeat. The average U.S. refrigerator is opened 50 times a day, probably correlated with TV ads
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 21, 2011 Are You Taking Pills You Don't Need? Here Are Some Reasons Why
A new unbranded pharma campaign, Depression Is Real, running on radio stations, compares depression to cancer because it kills and diabetes because it doesn't go away.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 19, 2012 Bone Scan Mania: A 12 Year Drug Industry Con Finally Exposed.
It should be embarrassing to the medical establishment and Medicare administrators that the drug industry and its paid celebrities drove the mania for the bone scans, "osteopenia" and bone drugs.
(16 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 6, 2017 Beware These Pharma Dirty Tricks
Even during the recession of 2009 with people losing their homes and jobs, Pharma remained the nation's third most profitable sector. Now, with its recent five-digit Hep C drugs and six-digit cancer drugs, it is doing even better. (Though Pharma companies still want to incorporate overseas to dodge U.S. taxes.)
How is Pharma able to thrive when other industries are challenged? Here are some of the tricks up its sleeve.
(28 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 19, 2015 White Supremacy Goes To The Very Top Of The NRA
White supremacists and hate groups are some of the nation's biggest gun advocates. Like the NRA itself, which calls a registry and universal background checks the first step to a government takeover, they preach insurrection and stockpiling weapons against impending government tyranny
(17 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 2, 2017 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.
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 14, 2008 As Antidepressant Sales Sink Pharma Attacks FDA's Black Boxes
Ever since the FDA mandated black boxes on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil in 2004 that warned of suicidal behavior in children and teens--causing sales to drop 25 percent--pharma has been on the war path
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 21, 2014 Author of New Book Discusses Shame and Codependency
Codependents often have trouble being open, honest and assertive with intimate partners says Darlene Lancer, an author and marriage and family therapist. In trying to manage, control and manipulate others, often by "people pleasing" or giving advice, codependents can "turn themselves into pretzels," says Lancer. Now, in her latest book, Conquering Shame and Codependency: 8 Steps to Freeing the True You, Lancer addresses the ro
(10 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 1, 2015 Is the Age of McDonald's Over?
In fact the very things people used to like about McDonald's--fast, cheap, plentiful, predictable food--have become the features that are working against it.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 23, 2018 How Wildlife Services Use Our Tax Dollars for Eradication
To kill blackbirds, the government even uses caged red-winged blackbirds as decoys to attract wild ones says Audubon magazine, "pre-baiting" an area with unpoisoned food to win the birds' confidence and ensure the most deaths.
(12 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 26, 2017 Why Should Taxpayers Pay for the Opioid Crisis When Pharma Caused it?
Trump has announced a national public health emergency over opioids for scourge created by Pharma. When the extent of damage from cigarettes was revealed, Big Tobacco agreed to cease advertising and to pay, in perpetuity, various states to compensate them for some of the medical costs of caring for persons with smoking-related illnesses. Like Pharma, Big Tobacco said cigarettes "weren't addictive." Series: Pharma (7 Articles, 13078 views)
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 30, 2010 No Free Pens But Pharma Influence Still Felt at Psychiatric Meeting
It was 95 degrees with 99 percent humidity. The Gulf had the biggest oil spill in US history. And attendees to this week's American Psychiatric Convention (APA) annual meeting in New Orleans had to brave 200 protestors chanting "no drugging kids for money" and "no conflicts of interest" to get into the convention hall.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 22, 2014 Film Review: Why Are Environmental Groups Mum on Agriculture asks the new Expose Cowspiracy?
It may be paranoid to allege that activists who challenge the cattle industry risk their lives, yet activist nun Sister Dorothy Stang was shot six times outside the town of Anapu, Brazil for doing exactly that. A rancher in Brazil's Amazon was sentenced to 30 years in prison for ordering the killing.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 26, 2020 A Trump Sentence Commutation That Most People Missed
President Trump commuted Rubashkin's sentence. The commutation resulted from pressure from both sides of the aisle said the White House--both Nancy Pelosi and Orrin Hatch. It also came from high-ranking law enforcement officials said NBC, who argued "the sentence was far too harsh for a first-time, non-violent offender."
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 23, 2019 How Pharma Uses the Charge of "Stigma" To Sell Psychiatric Drugs
The elevation of everyday symptoms to "mental illness" and accusation that sufferers are victims who experience "stigma" is the best thing that ever happened to Pharma. Do you overeat? Did your boyfriend just break up with you? Does no one return your emails? Do you fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning? If so, you may be suffering from mental illness! Mental illness is a highly stigmatized, life-long condition, say
(9 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 9, 2019 What is Behind U.S. Obesity? Not Just Too Much Food and Too Little Exercise, Research Reveals
A third of the U.S. population is now overweight, making it just a matter of time before normal size people are actually in the minority. Americans have so ballooned in size, government safety regulators worry that airline seats and belts won't restrain today's men who average 194 pounds and women who average 165 pounds, in a crash.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 17, 2010 Mad Cow Fears Are Back -- As Are Chronic Wasting Disease
Now there are two "mysterious" cases of CJD in McLennan county, Texas says the Waco Tribune-Herald --"a statistical anomaly considering that only one in 1 million people worldwide is affected by the condition in any given year."
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, October 16, 2009 Do You Suffer from Eyebrow Plucking Disease? Divorce?
Depersonalizing "she" ads--"Has She Become a Fixture in Your Office?" "She Hides Anguish Behind Arrogance" "Does She Call You Morning, Noon and Night?---were the norm when doctors, copywriters and drug makers were men and charged with getting women to behave. So was pathologizing everyday conditions, a phenomenon which did not start with direct to consumer advertising.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 31, 2007 Denny's Dumps Supplier Following Graphic Video of Bird Abuse
Employees at the Raeford, N.C.- based House of Raeford poultry slaughterhouse invaded live birds' cavities for eggs which they then threw at each other according to an undercover investigation
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 25, 2009 Looking For a Job in Pharma? Get Ready for a Headache!
while the nation gasps at AIG and Freddie losses, pharma is running a strong second with Merck paying out $4.85 billion for Vioxx, Pfizer $2.3 billion for Bextra (and $430 million for Neurontin) and Lilly $1.4 billion for Zyprexa.
SHARE Tuesday, April 20, 2010 Hormone Therapy Makes Comeback in New York Times magazine. Are cigarettes next?
For reporters and scientists aware of the cascade of hormone therapy (HT) cancer and morbidity studies, seeing its pharma-invented "benefits" disinterred for another lap around the track is like seeing an article suggesting cigarettes may be good for you after all.
(6 comments) SHARE Monday, August 28, 2017 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.
(13 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 7, 2009 My Name Is Nadya And I'm a Motherholic
nstead of praise, the super-ovulating mother of octuplets and Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower, CA where her births took place last month are eliciting hate and incredulity for their audacious medical extravagance during a time of national austerity.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 18, 2018 Think Obesity is Caused by Lack of Exercise not Junk Food? The Message is Brought to You From Big Food Donations
Coca-Cola has bought itself a huge economic footprint. It provides funding to the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, the American College of Cardiology, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Harvard Medical School/Partners in Health. It donates to major universities, recreation and fitness groups and organizations serving ethnic and minority groups whose members are especially challenged with obesity.
SHARE Friday, January 17, 2020 SARS-Like Respiratory Disease Is Spreading
A SARS-like respiratory disease, originating in China, has now spread to Japan and Thailand and is causing deaths. The "new SARS" disease is caused by the same coronavirus as SARS and public health officials are concerned.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 26, 2011 Interview with Psychiatryland Author Phillip Sinaikin, MD
The recently published Psychiatryland, traces how deception, conflicts of interest, medical enabling and direct-to-consumer advertising have resulted in millions being on psychiatric drugs they don't need.
SHARE Monday, January 14, 2013 Prescription Drugs Are Often Behind Mass Shootings
SSRI antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil are so linked to violence, they were given the FDA's highest warning in 2004, a black box, for thei suicidal risks they can create in young adults.
SHARE Friday, June 21, 2013 A Little Arsenic Never Hurt Anyone Says US Chicken Industry
The National Chicken Council, which represents the firms that produce 95 percent of US meat chickens, dismissed the study as reflecting "very low levels of arsenic," reported the New York Times.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, March 20, 2015 Who Are New Drugs Tested On? Sometimes You Don't Want to Know.
In 2005, Vladimir Yuri Zhirakarov, a homeless person in Houston who supported himself by enrolling in clinical trials, died from an adverse reaction to a drug given in a clinical trial at Fabre Research Clinic.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 17, 2014 Outrageous Pharma/Medical Conflicts of Interest
Almost all US large drug companies and 40 percent of all drug companies studied have leaders in academic medical centers on their boards. These drug company board members include deans, chief executive officers, department chairs, trustees at academic medical centers, school of pharmacy officials and university presidents.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 7, 2008 Junk Food Science Researchers Busted
Would a medical journal publish an article pushing for a higher Recommended Dietary Allowance of protein from an author whose email used to be smiller@beef.org?
(9 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 13, 2009 Fragile: Handle with Risperdal
Risperdal (risperidone), an atypical antipsychotic, may have contributed to the deaths of 31 children since its 1993 approval according to the New York Times--including 11 treated for unapproved uses; it may have squandered millions of tax dollars, but it is a branding success story.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 10, 2019 Who Kills Your Meat? Illegal Immigrants Do
Few to no Americans want slaughterhouse jobs like knockers, stickers, bleeders and tail rippers. In fact, when Smithfield's slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, NC, offered inmates work release to work at the local slaughterhouse, the inmates said they would rather stay in their cells. Think about that.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, April 6, 2015 We are eating WHAT?
What if you took a spoonful of your morning cereal and had an allergic reaction or even felt tranquillized? But when you looked at the package labeling there were no ingredients that would seem to be red flags? Increasingly, thanks to an FDA loophole, food makers use additives and chemicals that they and not the FDA have declared "safe" and the ingredients do not appear on the labels.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 3, 2018 "Potty" Ads Work for Pharma Giant AbbVie
To sell exocrine pancreatic insufficiency AbbVie has given it the snappy initials EPI----a contrivance which has also helped sell the conditions of ED (erectile dysfunction), Low T (low testosterone), SAD (season affective disorder) and HSDD (hypoactive sexual desire disorder) and the drugs to treat them.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, September 28, 2012 Is Your Child Mentally Ill? Yes, According to Big Pharma Funded Doctors
ig Pharma has spent millions on public relations campaigns that tell parents, teachers and clinicians to dose children at the first sign of problems. It knows if parents treat their kids early they will never know if the kids needed the druga in the first place and whether residual problems are "mental illness" or drug side effects. The kids will also probably be life long custome
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 28, 2017 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.
SHARE Wednesday, December 15, 2010 Are These Dangerous Drugs in Your Medicine Chest?
Since direct-to-consumer drug advertising was legalized 13 years ago, Americans have become a nation of pill poppers -- choosing the type of drug they desire like a new toothpaste, sometimes whether or not they need it.
But here are drugs to avoid.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, September 2, 2013 Ladies--Read This Before You Take That Bone Drug!
Since the first bisphosphonate to prevent postmenopausal osteoporosis, Fosamax, was approved in 1995, the widely prescribed drug class has been linked to jawbone death (osteonecrosis), irregular heartbeat, intractable pain, esophageal cancer, eye disorders and paradoxically, bone fractures.
(9 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 18, 2019 Pathologizing Kids, Pharma Style
According to data from IMS health in a Wall Street Journal article, many kids are being treated for non-psychiatric conditions that were often considered "adult diseases."
SHARE Wednesday, September 17, 2008 Is Playboy Magazine Over the Hill? Ask Lindsay Lohan
Why is this old man and his aged minion photographers stalking the nation for young hotties Lohan may have wondered as she turned down a nude photo spread
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 30, 2013 Selling Marked Up Drugs With Made Up Patients--Part 1
t's happened to anyone who's attended an open-mike session at an FDA advisory committee hearing. A queue of "patients" materializes out of nowhere to testify, often in tears, about the crucial need for approval of a drug the public has often not even heard of.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, April 3, 2017 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.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 7, 2016 Why Won't Women Take Fracture and Jawbone Death-Linked Drugs Cry Bone Associations
Women are not taking the bone drugs made by our drug company sponsors just because they are linked to esophageal cancer, jawbone death, heart problems, intractable pain and the very fractures they were supposed to prevent! Not only is "untreated osteoporosis" a "public health crisis," said the press release, our Pharma sponsors aren't making any money! What is wrong with patients?
(16 comments) SHARE Friday, December 26, 2008 Defending Agriculture and Sometimes Horse Slaughter and Michael Vick
The sixth-generation farmer Trent Loos with his signature cowboy hat and handlebar mustache is obsessed with farm animals and public ignorance of where food comes from. Like his adversaries.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 22, 2017 No, You Probably Don't Have Adult ADHD (sorry Pharma)
Now comes the news that----surprise!----Adult ADHD is likely another marginal "disease" trumped up by Pharma for no other reason than profiteering. "A new study suggests that adult-onset A.D.H.D. is rare -- if it exists at all," says the New York Times this week. The study "all but ruled out adult-onset A.D.H.D. as a stand-alone diagnosis," and "Most apparent cases of adult-onset attention deficits are likely the result of sub Series: Pharma (7 Articles, 13078 views)
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, November 20, 2020 Here's What Turkey Producers Don't Want You To Know
The Bloomberg School's Center for a Livable Future and Arizona State's Biodesign Institute found fluoroquinolones in eight of 12 samples of feather meal in a multi-state study.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 10, 2017 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 (7 Articles, 13078 views)
SHARE Wednesday, May 5, 2010 Do You Have Shift Work Sleep Disorder? Excessive Sleepiness? Pharma Hopes So
hift work sleep disorder is only one reason for the national epidemic of excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS). Other reasons are obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and narcolepsy -- Wink Wink -- for which Cephalon's drugs are also approved, non-restful sleep (NRS), restless legs syndrome (RLS) and middle-of-the-night insomnia (MOTN).
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 3, 2021 Trump Was On Controversial Baldness Drug
In 2018, President Trump's doctor disclosed that the president takes finasteride, a drug marketed as Propecia to treat male pattern baldness. While it is tempting to make jokes about Trump's hair and even the sexual side effects that accompany the drug, it also has many disturbing adverse effects probably no men should risk for a hair drug.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 1, 2009 Aren't You Glad Your Doctor Completed Pharma's CMEs?
Maybe your doctor passed Quadrivalent HPV Vaccine May Be Effective in Women 24 to 45 Years Old --which sounds like a sales pitch for Gardasil because it is--which "studies" a Lancet article written by Nubia Muñoz, MD, two Merck employees and other authors.
SHARE Sunday, November 9, 2008 What Would Sarah Wear?
Chicago's North Michigan Avenue Magnificent Mile is noticeably light of shoppers this fall as Gucci stock tanks by two-thirds and Coach, Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton stock by half.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 4, 2014 Are You Struggling to Stay Awake? Here is a New Disease You May Have!
The hallmark of unbranded advertising is it calls the disease it is hawking (whether depression, bipolar disorder or restless legs) "under diagnosed," and "underreported" and cites "barriers" and "stigmas to treatment" which of course means sales.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 7, 2016 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.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, August 21, 2017 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)
SHARE Friday, December 9, 2011 Seven Diseases Big Pharma Hopes You Get in 2012
To be a true blockbuster disease, a condition must 1) really exist but have huge diagnostic "wiggle room" and no clear cut test 2) be potentially serious with "silent symptoms" said to "only get worse" if untreated 3) be "under-recognized," "under-reported" with "barriers" to treatment 4) explain hitherto vague health problems a patient has had 5) have a catchy name--ED, ADHD, RLS, Low T or IBS--and instant medical identity 6)
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 10, 2015 Do Animal Advocates Have an Agenda or Are US Farms as Bad as They Say?
By now, anyone who has a TV or computer has seen appalling scenes of farm cruelty against chickens, turkeys, calves, cows and pigs. Are conditions as bad as the activists say or do they have an "agenda" which is to make people go vegetarian?
(9 comments) SHARE Sunday, July 18, 2021 Five-Year-Olds With Breasts? Precocious Puberty Is Worsening and Reasons Are Clear
No scientists dispute that precocious or early-onset puberty is on the rise but reasons are not clear. Is it bad diets and lack of exercise? Is it soft drinks themselves, even when not linked to obesity? Is it the common chemicals known as endocrine disrupters that exert estrogen-like effects? Is it the many legal, unlabeled hormones used in the U.S. to fatten livestock?
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 5, 2012 Michael Vick, Katrina Were Turning Points in Animal Welfare--Humane Leader
Two days after the human story about Hurricane Katrina first hit, the related animal story began to develop, recounts Pacelle: evacuees who left their pets, thinking they would be back two days and unable to reach them; residents who didn't evacuate but stayed with their pets and animal rescuers who rushed in to help animals even as more people fled.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, August 26, 2013 Could a Dark Horse in the New York Mayoral Primary Be Carriage Horses? By Robert Wilbur and Martha Rosenberg
Last summer, the carriage horse issue came to a head when tennis celebrity and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) spokesman Martina Navratilova and others were berated by a driver with shocking slurs , using the N word, C word for women and D word for lesbians, while they were protesting the carriage rides.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 15, 2015 Humor: Who Are These Old People at My Class Reunion?
In science there is a concept called the "survivorship bias." It refers to the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process while overlooking those that did not survive because they are hidden. One of the best examples of "survivorship bias" is the class reunion. Series: cartoons (50 Articles, 53955 views)
SHARE Thursday, November 23, 2017 Humor Cartoon: Overserved and Overfed!
Moderation? What moderation? Over indulging in food and alcohol officially kicks off with Thanksgiving. After the New Year, gym memberships peak
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 12, 2018 Shameless Pharma Lobbying and Offensive Ad Campaigns Pay Off
Pharma has two lobbyists for every member of Congress. Think about that. It spends more on lobbying than tobacco, oil and defense contractors combined. And all that shilling paid off. In a speech yesterday, Trump declared that Pharma's high prices are not the result of Pharma's high pricing. Pharma let out a huge sigh of relief and its stock prices rose.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 4, 2020 At What Age is a President Too Old?
Reagan was the oldest person to assume the U.S. presidency, a distinction he held until 2017, when Donald Trump was inaugurated
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 31, 2012 Will Women Have Short Memories About Hormone Replacement Therapy? Pharma Hopes So
This week a U.S. Preventive Services Task Force reaffirmed the dangers of long-term HRT use. Neither combined estrogen and progestin (as in Wyeth's Prempro) in women without hysterectomies or estrogen alone (as in drugs like Premarin) in women with hysterectomies are safe on a long term basis, said the panel of independent experts after viewing the literature.
(38 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 21, 2015 The "Playboy Philosophy" Is Alive and Well and Spouted by Bill Cosby
It is no surprise that Bill Cosby, who was a frequent guest at the Playboy Mansion and reportedly had bunny girlfriends, would espouse the women-as-commodity philosophy. But he is far from alone.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 3, 2011 CeCe and BeBe Winans Rock the Chicago Theatre--Concert Review
Grammy Award-winning BeBe (Benjamin) and CeCe (Priscilla) Winans are the seventh and eighth of icon "Mom" and "Pop" Winans' ten children who have three Gold and one Platinum album since they began recording in the 1980's. While joking about his early bedtime and how young Mary Mary are, the trim and lithe BeBe danced like a 28-year-old to the kinetic, two-keyboard band.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 4, 2014 Breaking: Perdue Whistleblower Video Reveals Horrors
There is such a gap between Perdue's slick marketing and the reality, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof devoted a whole column today to the video,
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, May 12, 2017 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."
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 23, 2008 Pork-Caused Disease Not Improving in Sidelined Workers
n late November more than 20 people demonstrated at the Quality Pork Producers plant in Austin against the treatment workers who developed a rare, pork production disease have received from the pork processor.
(20 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 7, 2017 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?
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 18, 2019 How Animal Researchers Stay Out of the News
If you are like most people, you know a lot more about how farm animals are treated on factory farms than dogs, primates and other animals are treated in US labs. It is no coincidence.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, June 15, 2018 States Struggle Against Disease Outbreak at Commercial Deer Farms, Using Our Tax Dollars
It's happening on commercial deer farms in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Pennsylvania. Hundreds of captive deer stricken with the dreaded chronic wasting disease (CWD) are being euthanized. As state Departments of Natural Resources (DNR) try to contain the lethal, incurable disease which threatens their all important hunting revenues, cattle farmersnow worry the disease will "jump species." Deer on 11 farms in Wiscon
(10 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 23, 2019 Spreading Deer Disease Poses Risks to General Public, Not Just Hunters
Many think CWD is just a rural problem threatening only hunters and Departments of Natural Resources (DNRs) which depend on hunting licenses for revenue. Recent scientific reports suggest otherwise.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 10, 2023 Pfizer Pfeeds Covid-19 Pfears
Before its COVID-19 "good guy" makeover, Pfizer was linked to some of the most notoriously unsafe drugs that have come down the pipeline. It bought Warner-Lambert in 2000 knowing the company's marketing practices were under criminal investigation and its Rezulin had been withdrawn. Then Pfizer bought the hormone maker Wyeth knowing it carried the baggage of the diet drug Fen-Phen's heart valve suits and cance
(11 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 14, 2012 Was Staff Sergeant Shooter On Dangerous Malaria Drug?
Troops who have used Lariam blame the drug for nightmares, depression, paranoia, auditory hallucinations and other psychiatric symptoms including complete mental breakdowns,
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 24, 2012 Why Do White Collar Fraudsters Never Go to the Prison?
From JPMorgan Chase to MF Global, the message is clear. No matter how much customer money the corporate officers lose through deceit or incompetence they won't be frogmarched off to pen like common criminals. The same is true for BIg Pharma--despite billions in wrongdoing settlements the elite corporate officers never do time. [[CEO]]
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 5, 2013 Is Mad Cow A Worry Again?
Prions are not inactivated by cooking, heat, autoclaves, ammonia, bleach, hydrogen peroxide, alcohol, phenol, lye, formaldehyde, or radiation, and they remain in the soil, contaminating it for years. Alcohol actually makes prions more transmissible by binding them to metal like surgical instruments.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 8, 2010 Will You Take An Immune Drug To Prevent Fractures? Amgen Hopes So.
Prolia is not your grandmother's bone prep. Unlike old fashioned "small molecules" made from chemicals, it is a "monoclonal antibody" derived from genetically engineered Chinese hamster ovary cells that inhibits a protein, RANKL, which causes bone loss.
(21 comments) SHARE Friday, July 6, 2018 One in 8 Takes Antidepressants--Are They Working? Are They Safe?
Suicide in the U.S. has never been higher even as the use of SSRI antidepressants has also never been higher. One in every eight American adults recently took an antidepressant says the CDC and the number is only rising. Are the drugs working?
SHARE Wednesday, May 27, 2009 FDA Waved Through Asthma Drugs Despite Falsified Trials
Trials of Singular, Serevent, Foradil, Flovent, Xolair, Accolate and Xopenex conducted at the Tucson, AZ facility of Vivra Asthma & Allergy were corrupted by protocol violations and outright falsifications says Robert Davidson, MD, a former clinical research subinvestigator at the facility.
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 11, 2019 White Supremacy Goes To The Very Top Of The NRA
White supremacists and hate groups are some of the nation's biggest gun advocates. Like the NRA itself, which calls a registry and universal background checks the first step to a government takeover, they preach insurrection and stockpiling weapons against impending government tyranny
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 28, 2017 Trump Exwives, Daughters Make Fur Great Again
It should surprise no one that Donald Trump's greed-is-good 1980's redux includes lavish displays of fur. Images of his fur-clad ex-wives Marla Maples and Ivana Trump keep alive the dated image of the "kept" women in diamonds--as dated as Trump's beauty pageant, grab-their-p*ssy approach to women in general.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 23, 2014 Getting to Sleep in a Post-Ambien Society
To both drug makers and those afflicted with insomnia, the barbiturate/Dalmane/Halcion/Ambien sagas reveal two overarching truths: there is a huge market/need for insomnia drugs and the drugs have fallen woefully short when it comes to dangerous side effects.
(11 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 24, 2012 Third Party Nominees Highlight Issues Ignored in 2-Party Debates--in Obama's Home Town
Lambasting the "duopoly" and "Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee" tone of the Obama/Romney presidential debates, a slate of third party candidates at the Hilton Chicago on Tuesday offered voters fresh and impassioned views about the economy, war on terrorism, war on drugs and election, legislative and educational reform.
(13 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 4, 2019 Is Fat the New Normal?
It is not just Americans who have become so fat, though they seem to be leading the way. A recent observational survey on Chicago's Michigan avenue failed to detect one normal-weight person during a 30 minute viewing sample period
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 29, 2010 Overweight? Diet drugs may not be the answer
Thanks to human's "thrifty gene," diet drugs work until they don't work, say scientists. When the body senses it's losing its adipose stores, it actually changes the metabolic rules to retain saddlebags and love handles. Thanks for that.
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 20, 2008 Is A Bipolar Disorder Diagnosis the Latest Mania?
In his latest book, Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder (the John Hopkins University Press) David Healy, author of Let Them Eat Prozac, looks at the historic roots of our current "medicalized distress" in which half the population is said to suffer a mental illness at some point in life and babies are diagnosed in utero as bipolar.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 9, 2017 Is the Way Your Meat Was Produced Your Business?
It is no surprise that states, with the help of American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have been writing "Ag-Gag" bills that criminalize producing, distributing or even possessing photos and video taken without permission at an agricultural facility.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, July 11, 2014 Pro Pharma, Pro Animal Research and Heading a Government Health Institute?
With disturbing links to cronyism, pharmaceutical conflicts of interest, overmedication of children and cruelty to animals--why is this person heading a government institute? Supported by our tax dollars?
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, March 4, 2022 Pfizer is not Our Pfriend
Thanks to Covid, Pharma is no longer the industry responsible for 100,000 U.S. opioid overdose deaths just last year, a growing number of talcum powder-related ovarian cancers and 38,000 deaths (and 88,000 heart attacks) from Vioxx.
SHARE Sunday, November 24, 2019 How Has Coke Remained the "Real Thing" for Over 100 Years?
Coca-Cola provides funding to the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, the American College of Cardiology, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School/Partners in Health and other other major universities. It also funds many recreation and fitness groups--with a focus on ethnic and minority organizations--and the CDC itself through the non-profit CDC Foundation
(10 comments) SHARE Friday, August 7, 2009 Should Your 3-Year-Old Be On Antidepressants?
Even though the pharmaceutical industry has got 27 million Americans on antidepressants thanks to direct to consumer advertising--ten percent of the population--it is looking for depression in preschoolers. And guess what?
It's finding it!
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 24, 2008 Does Christie Hefner Have Any Regrets?
Not pretty enough to pose for her father's Playboy magazine and not male enough to rate the company stock he bequeathed to his sons in 1997, Hefner is the Poster Child of female subjugation and codependence--propping up a regime she neither created or benefits from like Condi Rice.
(8 comments) SHARE Monday, October 30, 2017 Despite Its Celebrity Backers, This Charity Does More Harm Than Good
Scratch the surface of "feed the world" campaigns and you often find Big Food/biotech seeking new markets for their chemicals, pesticides, GMO seeds, fertilizer and animal drugs. (You also find Big Pharma seeking markets for high cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes and GERD medicines.) Series: We are eating WHAT? (16 Articles, 25815 views)
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, December 8, 2008 Secretary of Bloodsports and other Commerce
Richardson is among the one half of one percent of the public who is pro the sacred tradition of cockfighting which was legal in New Mexico until he sought the Democratic nomination for president.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, August 7, 2020 NRA Thrill Killers
To cement its access to the old boys network in Congress, the NRA funds the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation, called a "charity" but "little more than the social directorate of the National Rifle Association," says the Tampa Bay Times. At a soiree thrown by the Foundation, lawmakers got to swoon over blowing away wild hogs in Myrtle Beach, S.C with silencers.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 15, 2008 Why do we need Prop 2? Ask these Norco Ranch hens
As the egg industry and agribusiness trot out "experts" to defend California's $337 million egg industry against Prop 2's humane changes, the diary of "Aaron," who worked at the Norco Ranch egg farm in Menifee, CA in August and September of this year stands in sharp contrast.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 23, 2021 While the Nation Is Watching Covid, Look What Drug Makers Are Doing
While no one is looking, drug makers have raised medication prices though they promised they wouldn't. They have stopped their boycott against Facebook. And they have increased their sleazy, manipulative marketing to kids. Here are the details.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, June 10, 2019 Humor: Stop These Language Abuses
It is tempting to verbally abuse these poseurs. But of course they can't be insulted. When you say "Go to hell" they'll say "I'm sorry we're having trouble. I thought you said Wisconsin Dells?"
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 3, 2012 Do You Have Adult ADHD? Big Pharma Hopes So
The bad news is theADHD kid market has peaked out with 4.5 million U.S. children now carrying the label. The good news is adult ADHD is an emerging market.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 18, 2020 The Latest TV Awareness Ad? Tardive Dyskinesia
Before TV drug ads, doctors tried to reassure patients they were probably fine. Today, drug ads and online "symptom checkers" do just the opposite. The most insidious are "unbranded" ads that scare people about a disease without mentioning that they are selling a drug for it.
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 14, 2011 The Ten Worst Employers To Work For
Now that the economy is bouncing back again, there is good and bad news. The good news is that companies are hiring. The bad news is: the same ones you didn't want to work for before are you still don't want to work for.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 28, 2015 Unqualified NIDA Director Should Step Down
The signature symptom of addiction is "denial" which is why no alcoholic or addict would voluntarily take Volkow's vaccine (and why Antabuse/ disulfiram fails for most people).
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, January 20, 2020 Before There Was #MeToo There Was Playboy
Like female lawyers defending Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, it was no doubt hoped that a female Playboy CEO, Hefner's daughter Christie Hefner, would show it wasn't sexist.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, December 30, 2019 New Year's Resolutions for Big Pharma
We'll stop conducting clinical trials on people who can't give informed consent and think they're getting medical care. We will stop marketing cholesterol drugs, HPV vaccines and lifestyle drugs to poor people whose major health problems are malaria, diarrheal diseases and potable water.
(5 comments) SHARE Monday, January 13, 2020 Meat-Related Diseases Are Booming
Now, a SARS-like disease is back in China. "Because some of the patients worked at a seafood market where birds, snakes, and organs of rabbits and other game were also reportedly sold," there is concern that the pathogen comes from animals like SARS reported Bloomberg this month.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 8, 2010 Morning Blues? Try Nuvigil Not McDonald's!
McDonald's helps the morning lethargy with economy priced breakfast items. Nuvigil helps it with a drug that can cause "a serious rash or a serious allergic reaction that may result in hospitalization or be life-threatening," also known as Stevens Johnson syndrome. SJS patients are treated on burn units if they are lucky enough to survive.
(12 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 24, 2016 Trump, Ailes, Cosby, Ann Coulter Keep "Playboy Philosophy" Alive
Accused rapist Bill Cosby was a frequent guest at the Playboy Mansion and personified the "Playboy philosophy." But so do Donald Trump and Roger Ailes, the former Fox News chairman ousted last month over charges of sexual harassment with their widely reported sexist attitudes toward women.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 20, 2017 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.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 7, 2016 Misguided Patients Pharma Loves You
Patients who think they are under attack are abetted by thousands of "professional patients" who Pharma jets to Washington and parades in front of state agencies to showcase the "need" for expensive new drugs. They raise health care costs especially in government programs
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 9, 2013 6 Horrifying Things About Your Pork
The US pork industry is plagued by sanitation and humane violations. Soon, a Chinese company may own pork giant Smithfield Foods.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 27, 2010 Governor Strickland: Shut This Egg Inferno Down
Once again thousands of trapped animals have died from a factory farm fire.
250,000 hens at Ohio Fresh Eggs in Harpster died when firefighters "cut power to the chicken barns and ventilation systems to keep the flames from spreading," say news reports.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 25, 2010 New NIH Director Discusses Goals, Genomes and the "Nerd" Problem in Chicago
Collins addressed personnel from the three universities -- which have formed a research partnership called the Chicago Biomedical Consortium -- and members of the public for an hour and a half on Saturday on Northwestern's Chicago campus.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, June 13, 2014 Did You Take Vioxx? New Risks Have Emerged
in an improbable chain of events, Merck is returning to court against its will to face charges that Vioxx also caused devastating non-healing of spine/bone after surgical procedures, a charge supported by scientific studies.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 10, 2009 JAMA Apologizes for Cattlemen Tainted 'Science'
Would a medical journal publish an article pushing for a higher Recommended Dietary Allowance of protein from an author whose email used to be smiller@beef.org?
JAMA did in its June 25 issue this year in an article titled The Recommended Dietary Allowance of Protein: A Misunderstood Concept.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 17, 2013 Selling Marked Up Drugs with Made Up Patients-- Part Two
Suicide prevention is a knee-jerk marketing tool for Pharma even though suicides are rising, not falling, despite the 400 percent increase in its heavily promoted antidepressants; it now accounts for 36,000 deaths a year. Hello?
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, November 28, 2014 We're Drinking WHAT?
You don't have to see a doctor to imbibe a witch's brew of prescriptions pills. Antibiotics and psychiatric, cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy and heart drugs are in many public drinking water systems says the Associated Press.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 1, 2015 $1000 a Pill? Yes Says Big Pharma.
To stay a Wall Street darling, Pharma is rolling with new, uber priced drugs notably hepatitis C drugs that cost $1000 a pill. Gilead Sciences sold $12.4 billion worth of its hepatitis C drug, Sovaldi, at that price last year, reports the New York Times "straining the budgets of insurance companies and Medicaid programs."
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 12, 2015 We Don't Know How Bird Flu Is Spreading--Factory Farmers
Like the piles of dead piglets a few months ago,, factory farmers don't want the press to cover the thousands--maybe a million--dead turkeys. They don't consumers asking a lot of nosey questions about how meat is raised
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 13, 2009 The Sex Scandal No One Wants To Talk About
Residents from Chicago' s New City neighborhood can be forgiven for not being too relieved that convicted killer/rapist Andrew Crawford is eligible for the death penalty. The reason is they have heard "we got the killer" before.
SHARE Monday, October 5, 2009 It's Deja Vu All Over Again for Pfizer
Pfizer's $2.3 billion settlement announced last month by the US Department of Justice, for fraudulent marketing of Bextra, Geodon, Lyrica and Zyvox inducts the world's biggest drug maker into the pharma Three-Peat Hall of Fame.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 27, 2010 Better Lashes Through Chemistry: New Mascara is a Drug
According to patient information, Lattise- "may cause darkening of the eyelid skin which may be reversible [nee irreversible]... increased brown pigmentation of the colored part of the eye which is likely to be permanent"[and] hair growth to occur in other areas of your skin that LATTISE- frequently touches."
(26 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 9, 2014 Guns as Cool As Cigarettes--NRA
NRA is shamelessly trying to "sell" how cool guns are the way cigarettes used to be sold. All businesses and corporations protect their customers from smoke while many allow them to be exposed to lethal weapons!
(9 comments) SHARE Friday, January 31, 2020 Live Animal Markets Caused the Coronavirus Epidemic
China's live animal markets sell wolf pups, scorpions, bamboo rats, squirrels, foxes, civet cats, raccoon dogs, salamanders, turtles, crocodiles (including crocodile tail, intestines, and tongue) and ostriches for human consumption. Nothing has been learned from SARS caused by the same wildlife markets.
(7 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 16, 2014 Hey, Mayor de Blasio! What Ever Happened to the Carriage Horse Ban? Wilbur/Rosenberg
The hapless carriage horses not only brought de Blasio early exposure, they helped to fill his campaign coffers. Why? Because the horses inspired parking lot czar Steve Nislick to bankroll NYCLASS, an organization devoted to phasing out the carriage horse industry
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 2, 2011 Out of New Diseases and Blank Checks from Insurers, Pharma Targets Alcoholics
Pharma is now targeting the nation's millions of alcoholics and drugs addicts as its new revenue source. Like energetic kids who are really hyperactive and people with normal life problems who are really depressed, alcoholics and drug addicts, we are now told, really have a brain disease!
SHARE Saturday, October 3, 2009 Yale Murder Peels Back Plexiglas Curtain of Animal Research
animal researchers now have two new fears: depraved technicians--and the public peeling back the Plexiglas curtain on the secretive, pork-ridden world of animal research.
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, September 25, 2017 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 (7 Articles, 13078 views)
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, October 23, 2015 We're eating WHAT? Consumers Redress Big Food
A reporter described black women "assigned to the chitterlings room, where they would scrape feces and worms from intestines," workers throwing "a piece of shoulder at a friend across the conveyor" just to get his attention, and prisoners who preferred their cells to work release at the slaughterhouse
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, March 16, 2018 Beware These Health Myths
Twenty million people have come down with "depression" since direct-to-consumer drug advertising was legalized in the late 1990s -- many self-diagnosing. Often the symptoms (overeating, fatigue, moodiness or "sensitivity to rejection") resemble the human condition itself, before drug advertising.
(17 comments) SHARE Friday, December 27, 2013 Can this Violence Be Stopped? Not With Current Laws!
What if you had a boyfriend who was arrested and convicted for domestic violence against you? And even though you split up and he moved to another state, you know he is amassing military style weapons because you have an eight-year-old daughter together who visits him in Arizona?
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 5, 2011 Perry's N-gate Reminiscent of Cheney's Racism-Charged Hunting
The flap over the racist name of the hunting lodge that Texas Governor Rick Perry's family leased is not the first time hunting and racism have conspired to tar a politician.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 11, 2010 Are You Squeamish? Sarah Palin Isn't.
Do-it-yourself-slaughter to prove you're not squeamish or in denial about where your meal came from, is increasingly popular in warmer climes than Alaska often coached by gourmet chefs and foodies.
(14 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 27, 2012 Don't Tell My Neighbors About My Firearm: Gun Owners
This week's publication in the Journal News of the names and addresses of handgun permit holders in two New York counties has gun rights enthusiasts calling the news media what they are often called themselves: bullies.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 10, 2019 How Drug Makers Use Celebrities to Push Drugs
Singer LeAnn Rimes pushed awareness of eczema, Paula Deen awareness of diabetes, and Adam Levine, the lead singer of Maroon 5, sold ADHD in a campaign called It's Your ADHD. Own It."
SHARE Tuesday, June 25, 2013 Death of Meat Inspector Highlights Conditions at Nation's Slaughterhouses
Was Jose Navarro, a federal poultry inspector who died two years ago at the age of 37, a victim of increasingly noxious chemicals used in poultry and meat production? Chemicals like ammonia, chlorine and peracetic acid that are frequently employed to kill aggressive bacteria in meat and poultry?
(15 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 26, 2014 Amazing But True--Fur is Still Sold and Worn
One woman I interviewed says she was refused service in a restaurant for wearing a fur, albeit an edgy restaurant populated by young people.
SHARE Sunday, February 21, 2010 Dolls and Drudges Don Pants: Gail Collins Discusses Her New Book
here have only been about three seconds in history when women weren't hostile to the feminist, says the New York Times' Gail Collins, which was always linked to images of "unattractive man-hating women in ugly shoes"
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 5, 2009 New England Raid Is New Blow To Egg Industry--in time for Easter
It takes a lot to get state agriculture officials to raid an established farm in the company of state police. But that's what the Maine Department of Agriculture did to Quality Egg of New England and Maine Contract Farming in Turner, ME on April 1 with a search warrant and in consultation with Androscoggin County prosecutors.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Greedy Factory Farmers Attract Bird Flu
At least 44 million birds, especially egg laying hens, have been killed by US factory farmers trying to control bird flu.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 10, 2018 Book Review: Golden Giving - Everything You Need to Know for an Enriched, Socially Conscious Retirement
Let's say you are approaching the Big 50, 60 or 70. You might feel healthy and energetic but the "R" word (retirement) is still around the corner. There are many stereotypes of retirement----the three "Gs" of golf, gardening and grandkids----but for most Baby Boomers and Generation Xers those activities will likely feel a bit empty.
(8 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 8, 2015 It's a Scary World For Gun Advocates
Ever notice how gun advocates are afraid of everything? Maybe they need psychological help not lethal weapons
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, May 21, 2012 Psychiatrists Seek New Patients At Annual Meeting; Watch For These New Diseases
Some question the objectivity of a disorder manual written by those who stand to benefit from an enlarged patient pool and new diseases. Furthering the appearance of self-dealing is the revelation that 57 percent of the DSM-5's authors have Pharma links.
SHARE Friday, November 22, 2019 Sleep Disorder? Pharma Thanks You
If you think you are seeing a lot of ads for sleep-related drugs lately you are right. Pharma is rolling out a banquet of "sleep disorders" like Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder, Advanced Sleep Phase Disorder, Non-24-hour Sleep-Wake Disorder, Irregular Sleep Wake Rhythm, Jet Lag Disorder and Shift Work Sleep Disorder. These are on top of the predecessor conditions of Chronic, Acute, Transient, Initial and Middle-Of-The-Night Insom
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 21, 2015 Deciphering Detox Therapies
Do "detox" diets and preparations really work? Doctors and health care practitioners do not agree. While almost everyone agrees that the environment is rife with pesticides, heavy metals, chemicals and endocrine disrupters that can store in the human body--especially its fat--how to cleanse the body of the toxins is the subject of great disagreement.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 17, 2010 Resisting Antibiotic Resistance
when the FDA issued a directive in 2008 to ban non-therapeutic use of cephalosporin ABs in livestock--drugs also used in humans--to curtail resistance, irate lobbyists stormed Capitol Hill and the Bush administration backed down.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, January 5, 2018 Are You Eating Meat With Drug Residues?
Factory farming which confines animal "units" to minimal space to save money has been a boon for Animal Pharma. Such "efficiencies" require high use of growth-producing drugs and drugs to treat and prevent diseases caused by crowding, stress, and immobility. Despite the drugs, tragic losses from bird flu and porcine epidemic diarrhea virus have occurred which Big Food has largely kept hidden from the public.
SHARE Friday, April 23, 2010 Are You at Risk From Vaccine and Fibromyalgia Advertising?
t was only last year that Cymbalta maker Eli Lilly agreed to pay $1.42 billion for mismarketing its antipsychotic Zyprexa. Lyrica maker Pfizer agreed to pay $2.3 billion for Bextra, Geodon, Lyrica and Zyvox fraud in 2009 and $430 million for mismarketing Lyrica parent, Neurontin, in 2004.
Do the aggressive fibromyalgia and HPV campaigns imply forgiveness is cheaper than permission?
(11 comments) SHARE Friday, September 15, 2017 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.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 6, 2019 Humor: From Underwear to Outerwear--Notes From Lollapalooza
On the 50th anniversary of Woodstock where blue jeans and headbands were the rule of the day, a new uniform was in evidence at Lollapalooza: bralettes and short shorts. Girls by the thousands flocked to the annual four-day music festival in what those of use over 30 would consider...their underwear.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 29, 2009 Craigslist Killer Shows Risk of Actress/Model/Singer Currently Stripping Lifestyle
when a woman has an improvident one night stand and does the "shame walk" home, when her "friends" post or sext her moments of dissipation or compromise or she "shares" them herself on her blog or webpage that's one thing.
But when she declares on the Web-- I am all alone in a room waiting to meet and provide erotic services to you, whoever you are--that's real prostitution.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 21, 2017 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 (7 Articles, 13078 views)
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 4, 2017 Should 5-Year-Olds "Plink" Squirrels and "Gig" Frogs ?
While most of the U.S. is trying to get guns out of the hands of children, hunting groups and state legislatures are trying to put them in.
While the nation tries to mentor children academically, hunting groups and state legislatures are trying to mentor them in hunting.
(12 comments) SHARE Friday, December 30, 2016 These "Sportsmen" Don't Do This for Money or Ecology--They Do It for "Fun"
When Josh Bransford, a ranger in Idaho's Nez Perce National Forest, mugged for the camera in front of a bloody, agonized and dying trapped wolf in 2012, the public was outraged. It was an early "Cecil" moment
(14 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 2, 2013 Why Does Government Allow Innocents to be Mowed Down in Airports and Movie Theatres?
Imagine lawmakers allowing lead to remain in gasoline because of the oil and gas lobby.
Imagine them allowing secondhand smoke in public places because of the tobacco lobby.
Pretty ridiculous except that's exactly why we have the parade of bloody AR-15 massacres--the gun lobby.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 18, 2009 Born With A Statin Deficiency? Line Forms To The Left!
How could a drug company-funded study unabashedly designed to show why the general population should use its drug (Crestor, or rosuvastatin) not just people with heart disease and high cholesterol be anything but a sales pitch? Why did the press swoon?
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 6, 2015 Humor-- Rail Rage A growing Social Problem
When a train is approaching and you need to add money to your fare card fast, people who've never used the fare card machines decide it's time to learn--now. Behind them are people with borderline obsessive compulsive disorder depositing a decade's worth of nickels one at a time. Series: cartoons (50 Articles, 53955 views)
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 22, 2016 Breast development at 7? Yes it's happening in the U.S.
Padded bras for kindergarten girls with growing breasts to make them more comfortable? Sixteen percent of U.S. girls experiencing breast development by the age of 7? Thirty percent by the age of 8? Clearly something is affecting the hormones of U.S. girls--a phenomenon also seen in other developed countries. Girls in poorer countries seem to be spared--until they move to developed countries.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, November 21, 2008 Is That A Turkey Being Slaughtered Behind You? You Betcha!
Posing for photographers with her felled moose, her child inches from its bleeding mouth, Sarah Life-Is-Precious Palin is not confused about where meat comes from.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 3, 2013 Mad Cow is Back in a New Form
After the discovery of a mad cow in its herds, Brazil is experiencing what the US went through in the early 2000's when three mad cows were found in its food supply: rapid, across the board boycotts of its exports
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, October 20, 2014 Breaking News--Indiana Deaths Show Plight of "Lost Women"
It has not been reported yet that the seven women whose bodies were found since Friday in Indiana were involved in high-risk lifestyles. But many in the Chicago and northern Indiana area remember the 1990s reign of terror from killers who targeted such women.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 5, 2009 Clotheslines Are Back--and So Are Their Problems
Sure, nothing beats the fragrant aura of sheets dried amidst pastoral breezes--but how about towels, assuming they even dry? Do they go in the linen closet--or in the garage as emergency sandpaper?
Raise your hand if you've hung wash in the climes like Phoenix or Vegas and found your royal blue shirt converted into a robin's egg blue shirt in about two hours?
(6 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 18, 2023 Psychiatrist Speaks Out Against the "Corrupting Influence of Big Pharma"
If you are sick of hearing about "how we are in a Democracy (your vote counts) based on Capitalism (true competition is good for business)," when we are actually in "a Corpocracy meaning the corporations have more power than you do and they chum up to one another to make sure all of their collective interests are being pursued while pretending to compete," you will like Pimps, Whores, and Chiggers: Musings from the Drug Safety
(11 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 21, 2009 Is the Economy Why People Are Killing Their Families?
The occasional Susan Smith or Andrea Yates who kills her kids has given sway to the weekly child, sibling, parent, grandparent, spouse and all-of-the-above killer.
And like an Airbus A320 landing in the Hudson river rather than at the airport we adjust with sweeping efficiency.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 19, 2009 What Happened to Anna Wintour's October Issue?
Why does Wintour's shellacked, pageboy helmet bob--last seen on Monica Lewinsky in 1999 when she was doing penance--not disqualify her fashion oeuvre? And the shrunken, osteoporosis blazers paired with A-line skirts? How about the sleeveless, abstract-floral orange print jersey dresses that look like, gulp, Butterick patterns? Am I missing something?
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 25, 2009 Death on the Half Shell? MRSA at the Beach? Scientists Disclose Antibiotic Resistance
Once confined to hospitals and medical settings, resistant bacteria are now rampant in schools, locker rooms and the community and complicating treatment of HIV, TB, campylobacter and diseases seen in returning Iraq war veterans said presenters at the AAAS meeting in Chicago where Al Gore spoke
(15 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 16, 2015 A Decade of Questions over a Paxil Study Leads to a Victory
Do you remember Vioxx, Bextra, Baycol, Trovan, Meridia, Seldane, Hismanal, Darvon, Mylotarg, Lotronex, Propulsid, Raxar or Redux? They were all highly promoted drugs that were withdrawn for safety risks after millions used them. Sorry about that.
SHARE Saturday, April 1, 2023 Menopause Mongering Returns, Big Time
Drug makers are reviving the "disease" of menopause to sell drugs. They are banking, correctly, on the public's shot memory of the 60 year lethal scourge against women known as hormone replacement therapy
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, April 21, 2023 Are You Woke? Then Why Are You Still Eating Meat?
Veganism requires a mindful discipline three times a day as opposed to yelling "racist" or "transphobe" to a micro-agressor. In fact, in the entire history of Woke politics has anyone yelled "speciesist" when someone insouciantly tucks into their Thai Chicken?
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 28, 2023 Why Do Men Do These Things?
Looking at men's "character defects" that make them charming but and frustrating
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, March 15, 2011 Oh That? Seroquel Marketing Undeterred by This Week's Deceptive Marketing Settlement
When you see the ads, who would know AstraZeneca inked the largest multi-state consumer protection settlement on record relating to deceptive Seroquel marketing just this week? For $68.5 million? Only a year after inking a similar settlement related to burying side effect and safety information for $520 million with the government?
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, November 28, 2011 Did Anyone Notice Pharma's Black Friday?
The pharmaceutical industry had two things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving season. Three new wrongdoing settlements that broke right before the holiday were buried among yam and traffic jam news--and a new sleeping pill that isn't new at all but just Ambien with a new name became a leading "news" story.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, November 29, 2019 Cartoon--More Faux Thankfulness
Thanksgiving weekend is notable for its murder of turkeys, gluttony, mindless consumerism/capitalism replete with plastic waste and deer hunting--50,000 killed in Illinois alone. Entitlement, self-indulgence and environment destruction--what "gratitude."
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 17, 2019 Are You Falling for These Pharma Scare Tactics?
Long before the Internet and direct-to-consumer advertising, the medical profession tried to reassure people about their health concerns. Remember "take two aspirins and call me in the morning"?
Flash forward to today's online "symptom checkers"--
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, November 10, 2014 Did you or your children use the blockbuster asthma drug Singulair?
World sales of Merck's asthma drug Singulair were about $5 billion a year until 2012 when its patent expired and it was the U.S.'s seventh best-selling drug. But in September, data from an FDA committee were presented that acknowledge "safety concerns" about "neuropsychiatric adverse events, including suicide and suicide attempts" with the drug.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 12, 2016 Yes Americans are Gigantic But It Is Not Totally Their Fault
While eating too much--and getting enough sleep--is under our control, sadly some American obesity comes from harmful food and environmental factors that did not exist until the last decade or two. Series: We are eating WHAT? (16 Articles, 25815 views)
SHARE Saturday, July 20, 2019 Are Your Frequent UTIs From Food You're Eating?
According to new reports, bacteria that cause urinary tract infections (UTIs), usually E. coli, are among the human infections rapidly developing resistance.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, February 27, 2009 Vet School Defends Dog Labs as Pickens gift Withdrawn
Madeleine Pickens, wife of billionaire T. Boone Pickens, was about to gift the university's Center for Veterinary Health Sciences $5 million until she learned of the repeat and terminal surgeries performed on man's best friend in its labs and withdrew the largesse.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, March 11, 2011 Moms-To-Be--Are You Taking This Dangerous Drug?
the parade of heart, liver and muscle complications seen with withdrawn drugs has lacked the side effect that sends shivers down the spines of consumers, regulators and drug-makers: birth defects.
(13 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 12, 2017 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, 5189 views)
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 2, 2019 Yes, Some Detox Therapies Work Say Scientific Studies
Environmental toxins are everywhere including endocrine disruptors, phthalates, plastics like bisphenol A, pesticides like triclosan, herbicides like glyphosate (Roundup) and much more. In lieu of removing this morbid legacy from Big Chem, Big Food and so-called consumer companies, scientific reports say some natural remedies can help.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, April 27, 2018 Return a Violent Person's Guns To Him? It Happens All The Time.
This is hardly the first time gun-friendly authorities have returned weapons to violent offenders. Early last year, the Fort Lauderdale airport shooting suspect, Esteban Santiago, had his gun returned to him and proceeded to kill five and injure eight with it.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 8, 2008 Obama-Hating NRA Down to Its Only Trick
As the economy tanks, the NRA is left with only its they're-gonna-take-your-guns bullet. Unfortunately, voters care more about butter than guns right now.
SHARE Monday, March 9, 2009 Forest Labs and AstraZeneca Sleazy Science Revealed
When the Onion writes, "Ann Coulter not a hate monger says Ann Coulter," people laugh. But when pharma uses the same logic--its scientific studies get published and its drugs get approved and prescribed.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 15, 2018 Do You Have These Diseases? Pharma Hopes So
In the excellent book, Generation RX, Greg Critser traces the history of direct-to-consumer advertising and unveils early concerns from major drug companies that it would raise fears of disease, sell unnecessary pills and corrupt the doctor/patient relationship. That's exactly what has happened and Pharma is lamenting it all the way to the bank.
SHARE Saturday, March 28, 2009 Thanks A Lot, HBO, Says Meat Industry
undercover "employees" with hidden cams who immortalize factory farm conditions on YouTube, websites and HBO are as big an occupational hazard to factory farmers than the ones that elicit FREEZE! IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE!
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 2, 2015 Four Cases of Possible Human Mad Cow Raise Questions
Mad cow disease (BSE or bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and the related Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) found in humans are back in the news.
(10 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 29, 2013 How to Talk to a Gun Nut (If You Must)
till, after their threats, paranoia and persecution fantasies have been aired, most gun extremists settle on these five, shopworn arguments that a fourth-grader could refute.
(11 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 28, 2013 Few Have Fur On Their Black Friday Shopping List
The fur biz, like the ivory biz, is forgotten but hardly gone. Not too many Americans wear fur or buy ivory anymore--or beam at the photo of the hunter Melissa Bachman posing with her murdered lion. The problem is the bloodshed has gone overseas.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 8, 2015 Did Your Doctor Pass These Drug-Company Funded "Courses"?
A 2008 course called "Bipolar disorder: individualizing treatment to improve patient outcomes, part 2" was taught by teachers who were fundedby Abbott, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca; GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Novartis, Pfizer, Wyeth, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Shire and four more drug companies.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 27, 2015 Brave New Animals Exposed by New York Times Are Tip of Iceberg
Did you read this week's New York Times' expose about the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center's experiments to help the meat industry make animals more "profitable"? The Center's experiments, funded by our tax dollars, combine the worst of factory farming with the worst of animal research. And the cruelty, which horrifies even veterinarians, is to help private industry, Big Meat, with public funds. What?
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 2, 2020 Yes, These Drugs Are in US Meat
Merck markets 49 vaccines for poultry alone to prevent diseases like fowl pox, turkey coryza, bursal disease, coccidiosis, laryngotracheitis, hemorrhagic enteritis, avian encephalomyelitis of course salmonella and E. coli. Yum.
(8 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 21, 2018 Pharma Has Good Friends in Media and Academia
Before the Internet, there was a strict firewall in newspapers and magazines between news and ads and ads were even marked "advertisement" to leave no doubt. Not anymore.
SHARE Wednesday, November 6, 2013 Did You Take Risperdal? Did Your Grandma?
At least 15,000 elderly people in nursing homes die a year from drugs like Risperdal said FDA drug reviewer David Graham in Congressional testimony a few years ago. Eli Lilly who makes the similar drug Zyprexa and AstraZeneca who makes Seroquel have also settled charges that they churned the elderly drug market at the price of Grandma and Grandpa's lives.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 25, 2012 It's Baaaaaack--US finds Fourth Mad Cow
This week's announcement has already cost the US export business. Ninety-eight percent of US beef exports evaporated within 24 hours when the US's first mad cow was discovered in Washington state in 2003.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 6, 2010 Remember Vioxx? Cymbalta and Lyrica May Be Vioxx 2
Though Vioxx and Bextra are gone and Celebrex is under a darkening cloud, the practice of prescribing unsafe drugs for simple pain that can just as easily be treated with older and over-the-counter drugs is alive and well.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 30, 2017 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 (7 Articles, 13078 views)
SHARE Thursday, November 22, 2018 Opioids for Depression? Not So Fast Says An FDA Advisory Committee
The mental illness "franchise" has been very good to Pharma. While it could not "grow" the number of people with actual schizophrenia, it has successfully grown those diagnosed with amorphous "schizoaffective" and bipolar disorders and, of course, depression.
(11 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 17, 2013 Another Mentally Ill Mass Shooter Passes Background Check
the Navy Yard massacre will not pry federal and state lawmakers out of the NRA's grip. Lawmakers barely blinked when one of their own, Congressman Gabby Giffords, was shot in the head by a conceal and carrying legal gun-owner who was mentally ill. Nor did the death of 20 first-graders on December 14, 2012 even inspire Congress to pass universal background checks in April.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 22, 2010 How Worried Should You Be About Your Bones?
While most of the world is now aware of the risks of osteoporosis, the problem with the bone drugs is: they may not work and you may not need them.
(7 comments) SHARE Monday, August 15, 2011 No Food, No Drinks, No Strollers, No Change: No Wonder US Retail is Tanking
Grumpy, overworked or absent employees are just the latest rung in a retail descent that began with signs in the window like No Food, No Drinks, No Strollers, No Change, No Restroom, No Soliciting, No Backpacks, No Refunds, No Exchanges, No Bills Over $20, No Credit Cards, No Special Orders, No Pets, No More Than 3 Students At A Time and even No Leaning On The Counter.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, February 28, 2011 Eating a Pig With a Wooden Leg
You can't "eat cheeseburgers all day long and lose weight" said the hottie authors who come from the modeling world. "No wonder you're fat and bloated!"
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 3, 2019 Humor: Feeling Hopeless and Depressed? Stop Reading the Help Wanted Ads
Sure there are help wanted ads but most of us have seen the pitches before and don't fall for them. Sometimes we even talk back to them. Ambitious? Hard-working? (No, I'm a lazy slacker!) Career minded? (No I want my name on my shirt forever!)
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 14, 2020 Of Course Your Cat Can Get Covid--the Virus Came From Civet Cats!
Since Covid has become politicized and is being used to attack lawmakers at the federal, state and local levels, awareness of its grisly animal origin has been lost. Covid-19, also called SARS-CoV-2, derives from China's unhygienic and, to many, cruel live animals wet slaughter markets the pictures of which are stomach churning.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 10, 2017 Afraid You're Sick and Need a New Advertised Drug? Turn off the TV
Pharma companies love disease awareness advertising because, unlike direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, risks and warnings of possible drug treatments do not have to be listed.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 22, 2020 Humor: Old Clothes in Your Closet? They Will Come Back in Style
The last decades, leggings and yoga pants replaced blue jeans for women because they were more comfortable, offered a sleeker look and you could work out in them. Also, in the summer they were cooler. Now jeans are back. What a novel idea. Some are pre-torn--again just like before.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 30, 2020 Here Is Why Covid May Start a Meat Export Trade War
The meat industry and public health groups say transmission of a virus like SARS or MERS through meat is unlikely. But apparently China, whose love of eating palm civet cats mired it into a huge SARS outbreak, is less sure. Scientists also have their doubts.
(31 comments) SHARE Monday, October 26, 2015 Meat as good for you as cigarettes--WHO
This week the World Health Organization announced that meat, especially processed meat, causes cancer
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 13, 2015 We're Eating WHAT? Mad Cow Reported in Ireland as US ban is Lifted
Even as the U.S. lifts its 15-year import restriction on beef from Ireland (which was ground zero during mad cow scares) a likely new case of mad cow, BSE, has turned up in Ireland. Both Norway and Canada are also reporting cases of mad cow disease which they call atypical.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 15, 2015 Do You Have Cyberchondria? You Have Drug Ads to Thank If You Do
As a tongue-in-check affliction called "cyberchondria" quickly developed, rare conditions were "sold" to a wide population like "restless legs" or made more serious like GERD--which was generally considered to be heartburn before DTC advertising
(7 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 24, 2017 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?
(9 comments) SHARE Friday, December 27, 2019 Humor: Remembering "Businessmen" and Hippies
Brief cases served an important social function. They were instant status. They told the world the men had jobs--they were "businessmen" who went to the office every day. ("Corporate executive" hadn't been invented yet.) Their dads had worn hats and hid behind newspapers on commuter trains for the same reason.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, October 1, 2021 Baby Food Alert: Interview With Asian-Based Food Processing Consultant
"We are now living in an entirely anthropologically re-engineered paradigm and one needs an unnatural degree of self-discipline to maintain a normal weight and stay healthy," says this interviewee.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 30, 2009 "Naughty" Pharma Still Got Christmas Presents From FDA in 2009
The FDA gave he Christmas present of approving Seroquel and Zyprexa for children and hence, Medicaid reimbursement even as its own Division of Pharmacovigilance (DPV) reported a "a direct association between adverse metabolic effects of treatment with atypical antipsychotics" and children! A hypothesis the DPV report says is "provocative" and requires "robust" followup.
SHARE Tuesday, December 15, 2009 Bone Drug/Cancer News Highlights Women's Risky Therapy Choices
Many women receiving menopausal treatments today are too young to remember the old American folk tune, There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly even though the song could be written about them.
SHARE Saturday, July 3, 2010 Are You Ashamed Of Your Family? Your Pet? Your Car?
They say the opposite of shame is pride or honor but most people -- and most countries -- have a lot more of the former than the latter. While a lot of personal shame centers around age, income and weight, especially when they're going in the wrong direction, there are other rich sources of shame in life:
SHARE Thursday, October 18, 2012 Worst Radio Ads of 2012
You would never know there's a recession going on by listening to commercial radio in 2012. Car dealership ads were exceeded only by home remodeling and bank ads.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, December 23, 2016 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.
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 14, 2018 This Factory Farming Apologist Now Counseling Trump
He defended Michael Vick's dogfighting. He followed environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. across the country to bash his anti-factory farm speeches. Now he is counseling Trump
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, July 9, 2015 Who Remembers Dick Cheney's Bout with the Confederate Flag?
A photographer from the New York Daily News managed to get on the premises and snapped a photo of a Confederate flag displayed in a Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club garage!
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 2, 2022 Condemn Killing Birds Like This Veterinarians Say to the AVMA--Now!
Veterinarians, animal advocates and concerned citizens are saying the AVMA's refusal to formally condemn ventilation shutdown and ventilation shutdown plus heat is a clear instance of the association putting corporations and economic interests over animals and a violation of the Veterinarian's Oath itself.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, March 9, 2020 Pharma Finds Profit in "Geriatric ADHD"
People younger than Gen Xers may not remember that drugs like Ritalin, Concerta and Adderall were once street drugs that went by names like "Black Beauties," "White Cross" and "LA Turnarounds" and of course "meth."
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, March 13, 2023 Can Americans Trust the CDC?
Few are aware of the existence of the CDC Foundation, a separate, nonprofit organization, established by Congress in 1992 to seek private-sector donations and public-private partnerships. To those concerned about conflicts of interest, "public-private partnerships," which mix taxpayer funds with industry's, are likely the biggest red flags.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 16, 2011 Thank You For Arming Nutters, NRA
But an NRA brochure posted on the Internet in 2007 called Freedom in Perilhe United Nations, animal rights activists, illegal aliens, Katie Couric, Rosie O'Donnell, George Soros, Michael Moore, Nancy Pelosi, Sens. John Kerry, Edward M. Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein and York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg with crude drawings.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 12, 2019 Big Meat Doesn't Want You to Know About This New Disease
Have you ever heard of African swine fever (ASF) caused by the African swine fever virus (ASFV)? A fourth of the world's pigs have died from it just this year -- half of all of China's pigs -- but like previous food animal pandemics, Big Meat has managed to keep it out of the news.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, June 11, 2018 Another Slaughterhouse Raid Turns Up Abuses
On April 5, with helicopters chopping above, 97 workers, mostly Hispanic, were detained----leaving a workforce of only three. Thirty-two of the detainees were released the same day, 54 were kept in detention and 10 were arrested for defying previous deportation orders.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, July 24, 2023 Your Dry Cough May Be "ILD" Mongers New Drugmaker Campaign
Do you have shortness of breath or a dry, hacking cough? The drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim hopes so--that's why it has launched a new "awareness" campaign to sell the disease of interstitial lung disease to people who might think they are fine. (See: "Have Drug; Need Patients!")
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 26, 2015 We're eating WHAT? Turkey Bacon Products Recall Puts Focus on Meat Adulteration
Once again a widely distributed meat product is being recalled. Kraft Heinz Foods announced it is recalling approximately 2,068,467 pounds of turkey bacon products that may be "adulterated" because they may spoil before the "Best When Used By" date. Series: We are eating WHAT? (16 Articles, 25815 views)
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, May 21, 2010 The Doctor Won't See You Now: New Training Helps Prescribers Cope With Pharma Over Promotion
Eight years later, after thousands were harmed or killed from such off-label marketing -- Neurontin could only be legally promoted for seizures and post-shingles nerve pain -- a judgment against Pfizer awarded $430 million to the nation's Attorneys General who earmarked $21 million for training products for prescribers to help prevent future Neurotins.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 15, 2008 Service? Declining Retail Sector Will Special Order It for You
It's no secret the US retail sector is hurting as the holidays approach, having just reported its worst quarter since 1992.
But how much is its own fault with its ubiquitous anti-service signs like, No Food, No Drinks, No Strollers, No Change, No Restroom, No Soliciting, No Backpacks, No Refunds, No Exchanges, No Bills Over $20, No Credit Cards, No Special Orders, No Pets and No More Than 3 Students At A Time.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 10, 2018 Americans' New Food Preferences Threaten Big Agriculture
Whether egg-free mayo, non-dairy milks or meat alternatives, the U.S.'s food preferences are clearly changing. A full halfof Americans surveyed said they would support a ban on slaughterhouses and would prefer slaughter-free such as "lab-grown meat" and animal-free meat. Sixty percent of U.S. consumers claim to be reducing their consumption of meat-based products. Of those cutting back, 55 percent say the change is permanent.
(9 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 3, 2016 Government Fights Zika While Allowing These Birth-Defect Linked Drugs
In 2005, the FDA warned health care professionals and patients that the SSRI Paxil "increases the risk for birth defects, particularly heart defects, when women take it during the first three months of pregnancy."
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, August 27, 2018 Look How Urban Birds Have Adapted to Man
It is not a surprise that urban birds have lost their fear of man and changed their behavior from living in built environment. What is a surprise is how quickly it has occurred.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 21, 2017 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
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 12, 2015 Animal, Worker and Environmental Abuse? Tyson Tops The List
Animal abuse is only part of Tyson's abusive track record. There is also worker and environmental abuse, abuse of consumers through risky products and charges of wrongdoing at the state and federal level. Series: We are eating WHAT? (16 Articles, 25815 views)
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 16, 2010 An Animal Researcher and a Comedian
In a PowerPoint presentation at a National Institute on Aging workshop which appeared on the NIA web site until July one researcher finds the primates who will give their lives to science...funny.
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 22, 2008 Mad Cow Scare In Cattle Country
Ten years ago, Oprah Winfrey was in town courtesy of Texas cattlemen who sued her for disparaging hamburgers on her show. P.S. She won.
Now mad cow is back in the news as the Amarillo Public Health Department confirms a hospitalized local woman is being tested for the human variety--and cattle futures at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange are tanking.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, January 16, 2009 Ann Coulter To Kiss No Babies on Book Tour
Ann Coulter could practice law or model clothes. She could teach first grade and single-handedly solve the problem of kids calling the teacher Mommy. She could work in a health insurance office and deny claims for a living. But for some reason--book sales? personality quirk?-- she would rather serve as a right wing piñata, albeit a small one, to the media
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 22, 2021 Mainstream Media Shamelessly Boosts Its Top Advertisers--Drug Makers
As I have continually reported, the risks of brand name drugs are often ignored until the patent runs out and all profit has been made. Examples of risks only revealed post patent were seen with the drugs Vioxx, Lipitor, Fosamax, Paxil, Ambien, Adderall, Nexium and, apparently now with mirtazapine.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 2, 2017 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? (16 Articles, 25815 views)
SHARE Sunday, January 6, 2013 They Want Us to Eat What? Doubts About GM Salmon Part Two
When FDA food scientists Kathleen Jones and Kevin Greenlees presented AquaBounty's AquAdvantage salmon allergy studies at 2010 hearings, members on the committee considering the approval were appalled at the "science.
(8 comments) SHARE Monday, May 28, 2018 Eggs Good For Your Heart? Not Likely!
Last week consumers heard the news that "an egg a day may reduce heart disease risk." Cynics might ask does a cigarette a day reduce the risk of lung cancer too?
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 22, 2018 Ben & Jerry's Not as Green As Many Think
Many people remember Ben & Jerry's original "hippie," natural, anti-corporate image when it was founded in 1978 in Burlington, Vermont. But over the years, its eco-friendly, family farmed image has eroded, highlighted by its sale to Anglo-Dutch multinational food giant Unilever in 2000 and culminating with the Organic Consumers Association's shocking discovery last year of Monsanto's glyphosate (Roundup) in Ben & Jerry's produ
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, May 9, 2014 Five Gross Ways Your Meat is Kept Safe to Eat
Big Meat has found some novel ways to retard the growth of salmonella, E.coli and listeria on commercially grown meat--but it does not necessarily want people to know about them and they are conspicuously absent from labels.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, September 1, 2017 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.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 13, 2017 Birth Control Pills Linked to Breast Cancer--How Could That Happen?
While Pharma, the FDA and the medical establishment collectively plead "Who Knew"-- they knew. Almost 50 years ago the breast cancer risks of hormonal birth control pills were exposed by Barbara Seaman in The Doctor's Case Against the Pill and reiterated in her follow-up book The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 18, 2018 Women Don't Fall for Pharma Commercials in Mainstream Media
This week the New York Times does some heavy lifting for Pharma screening and drugs. "Ladies...consider getting your bone density checked," Jane Brody writes in its Science section. There is "solid evidence that treatment with a bone-preserving or bone-building drug is beneficial when a bone density test reveals a level of bone loss defined as osteoporosis in the spine or a hip." Pharma thanks her.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, October 24, 2010 Unsafe At Any Dose: Deaths Seen with Hormone Therapy in JAMA
Pharma's lucrative estrogen plus progestin combo is already known to increase the chance of getting breast cancer by 26 percent. But an article in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows hormone therapy also increases the chance of dying from breast cancer, as follow-ups are conducted on women who took it.
SHARE Wednesday, March 21, 2012 Everyone Loves "Got Milk" Ads--But They Don't Sell Milk (and Their Claims are False)
Selling milk looks easy and even fun when you see the celebrity "milk mustache" ads. "Got Milk?" ads may be the most recognizable and spoofed of all ad campaigns but they are probably also the least successful: milk sales have actually fallen every year since the ads began admit the agencies charged with selling milk.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, July 7, 2017 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."
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, April 14, 2017 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.
(6 comments) SHARE Friday, October 26, 2018 Don't Fall for TV Ads That "Sell" Diseases
Most of us have our guard up when it comes to TV drug ads. We know the butterflies, sunsets and puppies are designed to distract us from terms like "blood clot," "heart attack," "stroke," "seizure," "life-threatening allergic reaction" and "death." We realize the audio----if not the video----is actually telling us why we don't want to "ask our doctor" about the advertised drug.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, December 3, 2018 George H. W. Bush Loved Lion Hunting
As the nation eulogizes George H. W. Bush, few mention that Bush along with former Vice President Dan Quayle and the late Retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. were proud members of Safari Club International (SCI), a shockingly bloodthirsty group that promotes Teddy Roosevelt style big-game trophy hunting
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, March 10, 2016 Did Novartis and Genentech Get Away with This Big Marketing Scam?
Xolair, (omalizumab), developed from humanized rodent cells (yes, you read that right), is part of Big Pharma's new wave of bio-engineered liquid drugs, rolled out when blockbusters like Lipitor and Viagra went off patent.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, March 20, 2020 Coronavirus observation
Coronavirus observation from those not on smart phones
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 16, 2010 Has Psychiatry Become Unhinged? This Doctor Says Yes
do psychiatrists, motivated by mysteries of the human mind and the desire to help people, really want to become mere "pill pushers" whose only contact with patients is 15 minute "med checks" as they hand patients off to less trained professionals for "therapy"?
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 17, 2009 Are You Eating This Pork?
Working in a hot, fly and manure infested hog barn amid screams of 2,784 sows, 483 sows with litters, 864 gilts, 5,400 nursery pigs and 15 boars could make anyone snap. But some of the workers sound snapped before working at Country View.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 6, 2023 Do Gory Animal Photos Change Your Eating Habits? If You Are Like Most People, Probably Not
No one wants to be called bad for eating what they eat""especially at mealtime and as long as there is more than one channel on peoples' devices, they will tune horrifying animal images out and keep eating what they are eating. Unless, hopefully, just as tasty food is available that is not cruel such as slaughter-free, "lab" meat which also mitigates the environmental toll of factory farms and grazing.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, March 3, 2023 How Consumer Drug Ads Gaslight Us
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug ads have been accused of giving dual and confusing messages and even being "bipolar." Even as viewers see rainbows, sunsets, puppies and smiling grandparents, the audio cautions that the advertised drug may cause allergic reactions, severe infections, brain bleeds, seizures and more including death. Will the drugs make us better or kill us? Do you have the sound on or off?
(17 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 28, 2016 Massage Therapists and Manicurists Need Training--But Not Gun Carriers?
Yet despite frequent gun accidents, an increasing number of states are passing laws calling training requirements illegal. Why? Because requiring people who carry lethal weapons to know how to handle or shoot them violates the Second Amendment
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 30, 2018 The Ambien Made Me Do It Says Roseanne Barr
Is a side effect of Ambien racism and anti-Semitism? Or does it simply lower someone's inhibitions so their innate racism and anti-Semitism come out? Disgraced TV star Roseanne Barr says taking Ambien explains her recent tweets which instantly moved ABC to cancel her show.
(14 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 27, 2016 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
SHARE Wednesday, September 14, 2011 Was Perry Wrong to Push HPV Vaccine?
Whether you are against politicians helping Pharma loot our health care dollars or mandatory medicine, Texas Governor Rick Perry's facilitation of Merck's Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, Gardasil, has angered Repubicans and Democrats alike.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 14, 2013 More Bad News About Red Meat
If red meat had a publicity agent, he or she would be fired by now. Publicity agents are supposed to plant positive news about their client and kill any negative publicity. But ever since James Garner, the face of the "Real Food for Real People" beef campaign, suffered a heart attack in 1988, there has been nothing but bad publicity about red meat.
(3 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 23, 2015 Thank you Hillary for Exposing Big Pharma Price Profiteering
It is no secret that now that Lipitor, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Singular, Concerta, Cymbalta, Abilify and other blockbusters have gone off patent, Pharma is pricing drugs in the four digits to stay a Wall Street darling. Even generics, are ballooning in price as part of the profit party-- though there are no R&D costs attached to them and it is pure caprice.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 27, 2019 Slaughter-free Meat is "Fake"?
It is hard to believe that "meat" that excludes slaughter, grazing, ranching, CAFOs, feed needs, toxic run off and many drugs given to the animals would be attacked by anyone but the meat industry.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 20, 2015 Who remembers this Stand-Your-Ground Case Months After Trayvon Martin?
Zimmerman did not invoke Florida's Stand Your Ground law in his defense but George Dunn, a 47-year-old software developer charged with murdering Jordan Davis, did and a new Sundance documentary covers his trial.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 21, 2009 Earth to Fur Designers
This year at Fashion Week people lack jobs clothing budgets and entertainment budgets for the few places they could wear fur (the opera and then there's the opera.) Even charities and arts events are folding.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 4, 2015 Are Men Falling for the Same Hormone Con as Women?
Of course everyone (except hormone hawkers) realizes that people lose hormones because they age, they do not age because they lose hormones
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, December 3, 2021 Free Drug and Alcohol Addiction Treatment? Drug Makers Can Fix That!
The isolation, disconnection and fear caused by the Covid pandemic has increased the number of people suffering from alcoholism and drug addiction. Yet the government proposes a high-tech treatment few will take voluntarily for a condition already treated for free-- killing non-human primates in the process?
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 21, 2010 Hormones: Still Pushed by Pharma; Still Dangerous
The medical press trumpeted again this month the shopworn pharma factoid that menopausal hormones may be good for you, not bad. This is at least the eighth time researchers have tried to resuscitate the therapy and its franchise profits since a government study linked it to cancer and heart disease in 2002.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 9, 2022 Don't Fall For These Drug Maker Ruses
This week authors with 17 financial links to drug makersreported that the aggressively marketed rheumatoid arthritis drugs (think Humira) could lower Alzheimer/dementia risks in arthritis patients with cardiovascular disease.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 17, 2012 For Some Black Friday is Black Fur-Day
In addition to cruel methods of killing the animals, furs from China that are labeled gae-wolf, goupee, Asian wolf, China wolf and Mongolia dog have been found to be from...gulp...dogs and cats.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 28, 2017 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.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 22, 2014 Hey Doc--I think I Have Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency!
Have you ever noticed how Big Pharma in the United States has things exactly backwards? Instead of developing new pills that people need like non-addictive painkillers and antibiotics for resistant infections, it develops new diseases.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 3, 2015 Another Toddler Shoots His Mother
"Carrying" has become so accepted, people treat their guns like cell phones. Look what happens.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 19, 2016 Does America Always Forgive Disgraced Public Figures? Not These Transgressors!
There are limits to what we will tolerate from public figures. Despite Eliot Spitzer's successes as New York Attorney General, and later as Governor he was forced to resign in 2008 over charges of employing prostitutes. Since then new allegations have surfaced
SHARE Monday, June 21, 2010 Why You Should Care About the University of Miami NIH Scandal
UM President Donna Shalala, former Health and Human Services secretary, allowed the hiring of the poster boy for conflicts of interest without a job posting, national search, search committee or vote from UM psychiatry faculty.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, June 22, 2018 The Mother/Child Separation That Big Dairy Perpetrates
videos clearly show mother cows rushing after their babies as they are taken away for veal and even following the trucks down the road that are taking their babies to slaughter.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, November 29, 2021 Beware of These Drug Maker Tricks
Disease mongering removes the need for drug reps; patients tell the doctor both the condition they have and the exact med they need, making a mockery of medical school education.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 15, 2018 NRA to Families of Slain: Drop Dead
Guns are love says the NRA after the second biggest school shooting in US history
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 27, 2016 Who Says These Drugs Are Safe? Big Pharma
Senator Bernie Sanders says he opposes the confirmation of Califf. "Instead of listening to the demands of the pharmaceutical industry and their 1,400 lobbyists, it is about time that the FDA and Congress started listening to the overwhelming majority of the American people"
SHARE Tuesday, November 22, 2011 Arsenic, Antibiotics and Asthma Drugs in Your Turkey? Yes!
ractopamine is also banned in Europe, Taiwan and China, where 1,700 ractopamine "poisonings" were reported and ractopamine-produced pork was seized in 2007. (You have to worry when China calls a food unsafe.)
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 23, 2012 We're Eating WHAT? McDonald's-Linked Slaughterhouse Shut Down
This week's suspension of Central Valley Meat Co. in Hanford, CA for abuses against sick and dying cows, recorded by Compassion Over Killing, shows that little has changed in the nation's slaughterhouses since the school lunch scandal four years ago.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, April 30, 2010 Do You Have Low T? Circadian Dysrhythmia? Pharma Hopes So
But pharma's recent plan to move from mass-market molecules into more lucrative vaccines and biologics did not see the anti-vaxer movement coming: millions of Americans saying You Want to Vaccinate Me -- and My Child -- with WHAT?? and condemning vials of H1N1, rotavirus, MMR vaccines and Gardasil and Cervarix to sit, well, way past their expiration dates.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, July 24, 2020 Prepare For Millions More Covid Deaths Thanks to WHO
Covid, along with SARS, MERS, Ebola and HIV were all caused by exposure to and consumption of wild animals. But WHO says eating wild animals is a great source of food and jobs. Why develop a vaccine when wildlife markets virtually assure that new animal viruses will emerge requiring new vaccines?
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 20, 2008 Is A Bipolar Disorder Diagnosis the Latest Mania?
In his latest book, Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder (the John Hopkins University Press) David Healy, author of Let Them Eat Prozac, looks at the historic roots of our current "medicalized distress" in which half the population is said to suffer a mental illness at some point in life and babies are diagnosed in utero as bipolar.
(6 comments) SHARE Monday, June 9, 2014 Once Again, NRA Shoots Its Own Moderates
The NRA's tactics are reminiscent of the saying about what to do if a tiger is chasing you and your friend. You don't have to run faster than the tiger, says the joke, just faster than your friend. Who will be the NRA's next target that runs too slow?
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 9, 2010 Now Praised, Six Years Ago Aspirin Was Denigrated by Vioxx Marketing
It has only been six years since the COX-2 specific inhibitor Vioxx was billed as a super aspirin that didn't have aspirin's "risks" by Merck. Widely advertised and pitched by Olympians Dorothy Hamill and Bruce Jenner, Vioxx turned out to double the risk of heart attack and was withdrawn from the market in 2004.
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 14, 2018 Is Animal Violence Approaching a "Me Too" Moment?
Some say we are approaching a "me too" moment in which public figures' love of animal violence will be no different than their abusing a partner or committing rape. It will no longer be ignored or condoned as "boys will be boys."
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 28, 2018 Will Pharma Defeat the New Medicare Proposal as It Did in 2014?
In 2014, the Obama administration sought the same "price relief" for Medicare but was defeated by Pharma lobbyists. At the time, 100 pills of the "protected" psych drug Abilify cost $1,644, 100 pills of the "protected" psych drug Geodon cost $958, 100 pills of the "protected" psych drug Invega cost $1,789 and 100 pills of the "protected" psych drug Seroquel cost $2,000
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 25, 2011 Who Are These Old People at My Class Reunion?
Where are the people who failed economically, professionally, socially, romantically and bodily? They don't show up!
SHARE Friday, August 6, 2010 Paralysis and Alcoholism Funny? Yes Said Cartoonist John Callahan
The year was 1989. Millions of wheelchair-users were about to be recognized for the first time by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Millions more had came out of "family abuse" closets to join Adult Children of Alcoholics 12-step groups. And John Callahan's just published autobiography, Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, made fun of both. Callahan passed away last week at the age of 59.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 12, 2011 Are You Addicted to Starbucks?
How did Bucks convince America that Happy Hour should be wired not wasted and that they have a Macchiato deficiency that requires five dollars and 500 calories a day to treat? Are the sleeping pills Ambien and Lunesta lucky beneficiaries or was some kind of quid pro quo arranged?
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 17, 2019 Beware These Foods
From mercury in tuna and wood pulp in parmesan cheese to ground beef treated with ammonia to retard E. Coli (called "pink slime"), the press does a good job exposing the dangerous and deceptive practices of Big Food. The problem is, the public forgets about the food risk or contamination, assuming that reform is in the works and that is just fine with Big Food. Often nothing changes.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, June 4, 2010 Dairy Gothic: Cows Stabbed With Pitchforks at Ohio farm
Only five months after Mercy For Animals' undercover video at Willet Dairy aired on Nightline and inspired legislation to prevent future abuses, a new Mercy For Animals dairy video has even ag professionals crying uncle.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 10, 2013 1,556 US Gun Owners Tried to Board Planes With Weapons Last Year
Recently, Shemane Nugent, wife of gun extremist Ted Nugent, "forgot" she had a Smith and Wesson .38 Special revolver in her carry-on bag with five rounds and 10 additional rounds in a side pocket at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. Her lawyer called it an "honest mistake."
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 29, 2014 Not Lovin' It! The Sordid Side of McDonald's
Activists have decried its treatment of workers and industrialized food production. The international community has deplored McDonald's trade practices and protectionism. Animal activists oppose its wholesale commodification of animals. Public health experts condemn its unhealthy, fattening food. And there's more
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 29, 2021 Remembering When Karen Wasn't An Insult
Karen has become code for an angry, entitled, racist white woman. Karen is "the kind of woman who asks to speak to the manager," and polices others' behavior said a piece in the Atlantic.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, November 5, 2021 Thank You For The Fat Acceptance Movement: Big Food
Big Food has managed to make the U.S. and much of the world obese and the fat positivity and anti-weight bias groups have added a social justice overlay to their successful marketing.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 7, 2016 Are You Ingesting Estrogen Without Knowing It?
In 2011, the United Kingdom's Daily Mail observed that women's bra cup sizes were growing even when the women themselves were not gaining weight and speculated it was estrogen exposure Series: We are eating WHAT? (16 Articles, 25815 views)
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 12, 2021 Book Review In Hindsight: The Story Of How Two Sisters Hurt, Hindered, and Healed Each Other
In most families, the same things that sisters share--parentage, childhoods, DNA--can sometimes serve to make them rivals, especially when they're close in age. Who gets more attention? Who has better looks? Who has more friends, higher grades? Who do Mom and Dad seem to like better?
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 20, 2010 Would You Use a Home DNA Kit?
San Diego-based Pathway Genomics Corporation planned to place the Insight Saliva Collection Kits in 6,000 Walgreen stores until the FDA said, "you're selling WHAT?" and it put its plans on hold
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 9, 2013 Gun Owners On "Winning Streak" Boasts Illinois NRA
Gun owners are on a "winning streak" Todd Vandermyde, the NRA's lobbyist in Illinois, told news media. Chicago-area lawmakers in the General Assembly "had better realize that," he threatened.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 23, 2021 Will People Lose Their Pandemic Pounds?
In the Covid-19 pandemic over half of U.S. adults gained weight according to an American Psychological Association poll; two out of five gained an average of 29 pounds and ten percent gained more than 50 pounds.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 30, 2011 Was Early Menopause Hormone More Pharma Spin?
the evidence for a "timing theory" was nothing more than some Godforsaken ovariectomized primates at Wake Forest and Mount Sinai medical schools behind three security doors, trials at major medical centers conducted by several Wyeth-linked researchers and pharma supplication to Wall Street.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, April 13, 2020 Meat Workers Die from COVID-19 virus; Slaughterhouses Close
COVID-19 has closed US slaughterhouses and killed workers. Another, coronavirus, native to pork and as underreported as COVID-19
(until the pandemic), is established in China.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 20, 2020 "Meat For Mental Health" Is Latest in Fake Nutritional Science
"Meat Improves Mental Health" mainstream media blasted out in late April, without mentioning the "study," published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, was funded by an "unrestricted research grant from the Beef Checkoff, through the National Cattlemen's Beef Association." Such fake science from the meat industry is becoming more common as people drop meat.
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 6, 2019 Is The Healthocracy Making Your Pain Worse?
Despite the flood of narcotics, failure-prone surgeries and new, expensive procedures, pain patients are not getting better. They are getting worse and often becoming lifelong patients.
SHARE Saturday, May 9, 2020 Tyson Opens Slaughterhouse Despite 1,000 Sick Workers
Tyson has a long history of adulterated food, bribing federal officials and regulators, polluting public waterways and worker and animal abuse. Here is its rap sheet
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 29, 2010 Salmonella with Your Omelet? Don't forget Stroke and Ovarian Cancer
In addition to salmonella, eggs are the highest cholesterol food known to man, causing the heart attacks and stroke 33.5 million Americans take statins to avoid. Hello? They are also linked to diabetes, ovarian cancer and contain antibiotic residues.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, January 8, 2010 Wyeth Is As Contrite As AIG
Months after a Sen. Charles Grassley-led investigation into its ghostwriting and the unretracted falsified science it planted in medical journals, he hormone giant is behind new articles in the Journal of Women's Health and Menopause.
(10 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 15, 2022 Junk Food Sellers Target Poor Countries
Big Food is increasingly targeting poor countries as "emerging markets" to please Wall Street and shareholders. The marketing is especially unethical since obese people are more likely to get and give COVID-19
SHARE Monday, July 26, 2010 Recession Over? Not on the Radio!
Men: do you want to be bigger and thicker where it counts? Once upon a time, it was advertising about women's flow that raised questions of taste on broadcast media
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 26, 2021 Progressive Magazine Bashes Women and Supports Pharma in Recent Article
It is shocking to see an exemplar of progressive media bash women, parents, mothers and health advocates while supporting "pharma-aligned doctors" and dangerous drugs like Tamifu. Why has the magazine gone to the "money side" of these issues?
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 26, 2014 Another Botched Execution (Wilbur/Rosenberg)
As the nation is horrified by another botched execution, a capital defense lawyer in Texas, legal scholar in New York and the former warden of San Quentin work against capital punishment.
(13 comments) SHARE Monday, June 16, 2014 Iraq Meltdown Shows Folly of Original Invasion
Conservatives blame the Iraq crisis on the lack of troops remaining. Progressives said the invasion was wrong to begin with.
(10 comments) SHARE Friday, October 2, 2020 Why a Vaccine Is Not the Answer to Covid
A Covid vaccine is a fool's errand because live slaughter wet exotic wildlife markets will continue to brew new "covids."
(6 comments) SHARE Monday, September 13, 2021 Is Obesity the New Smoking?
In the 1960s, 42 percent of Americans smoked. Ubiquitous cigarette ads, eventually banned in the US, promised that smoking made men more masculine and women sexier and thinner. Plus cigarettes tasted good.
Now, in 2021, only 14 of the US population smokes but 42 percent of the population is obese. Have people just switched rooms on the Titanic? Is obesity the new smoking?
(5 comments) SHARE Saturday, November 21, 2015 Frankenfish Salmon Approved by FDA
Many are shocked that the genetically engineered AquAdvantage salmon (AAS), created by inserting genetic material from Chinook salmon and ocean pout into wild Atlantic salmon, was approved by the FDA this week Series: We are eating WHAT? (16 Articles, 25815 views)
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 16, 2018 Humor: What Was I thinking? Rationalizations Behind Holiday Overeating
After months of salad, sit-ups and running on snow, you hear yourself say, "Please pass the spinach, mushroom and ricotta tart... and the mashed potatoes... and the cinnamon rolls," as if your evil twin has commandeered your mouth.
SHARE Wednesday, October 6, 2021 The Sleazy Ways AbbVie Made Humira a Best Selling Drug
If you're like most people, you never heard of the prescription drug Humira until 2013. That's when Abbott Laboratories spun off AbbVie, to aggressively market the rheumatoid arthritis (RA) drug which went on to become the top selling drug by 2019.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 19, 2009 Remembering Woodstock's Women Musicians: Both of Them
Despite Collins' 2004 book America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, she's yet to comment on the "position" of women performers at Woodstock--both of them, Joplin and Slick--which was probably as Black Power leader Stokely Carmichael said of women in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) "prone."
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, April 22, 2011 Would This Video Make You Stop Eating Beef? Futures Traders Think So
Once again Big Food is "appalled" by the video -- which shows sick and injured calves killed with hammers, workers standing on calves' necks and barely alive calves on "dead piles" -- while working to make publicizing such videos illegal.
SHARE Tuesday, February 2, 2010 Why Are Pfizer's Ghostwritten Hormone Therapy Articles Not Retracted?
Plagiarism, "unethical research" and unreliable findings from "fabricated data" are grounds for retraction of medical journal articles according to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
But one look at the US National Library of Medicine database reveals that bogus, ghostwritten papers Wyeth (now Pfizer) planted in medical journals in a scandal which reached the US Congress last year, still stand, unretracted.
(34 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 12, 2014 Life Threatened by Loud Music, Skittles or Popcorn? Yes Say Armed Vigilantes!
Once vigilante-style cop wannabas are armed, anyone from a kid carrying Skittles or playing music too loud to someone texting his daughter or throwing popcorn at the movie theater looks like a "bad guy" to be shot and killed.
(6 comments) SHARE Wednesday, October 27, 2021 Exclusive OEN Interview with Exposer of Fauci's "Beagle Gate"
This week major news outlets are reporting that Anthony Fauci's NIH division funded research for beagle puppies' to be eaten alive by insects, their vocal cords removed to stop barking and cries of pain. I interviewed the founder of the exposing group for OEN.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 6, 2009 Can We Have An Overweight Surgeon General?
Isn't Obama himself a smoker? Doesn't his chief White House economic adviser, Larry Summers, require a reinforced chair not just for his adiposity but his narcolepsy in high level meetings? (Or was his nap, shown in a New York Times photo, a sugar coma?)
SHARE 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.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, September 11, 2015 Thanks McDonald's for Egg Awareness--But Don't Stop There
This week, food giant McDonald's announced it would use 100 percent cage-free eggs in ten years. It is a game changer which will transform other top food producers, egg producers and the awareness of food consumers themselves. Thank you McDonald's! Series: We are eating WHAT? (16 Articles, 25815 views)
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 4, 2010 How Was Your Veal "Prepared"? Like in this Video?
While Mercy For Animals (MFA) uncovered similar atrocities at two dairies this year, Locke, NY-based Willet Dairy (which ran on Nightline) and Plain City, OH-based Conklin Dairy Farm, results are often whitewashed as soon as they surface.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 8, 2011 Are You Afraid to Display a Bumper Sticker? You Should Be.
Once upon a time, bumper stickers were a harmless way to engage other motorists on the merry way to work or a vacation in the Wisconsin Dells. But today, with road rage and polarizing politics, displaying a bumper sticker is more like establishing eye contact with a yard dog. A yard dog who doesn't understand "never mind."
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, March 21, 2011 The Few The Proud The Thin
In a report released last fall by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), the United States is the fattest of 33 countries. Mexico and New Zealand are next runners up with India and Indonesia the thinnest.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, November 19, 2021 Biden Nominates Two Industry Shills to "Regulate" Their Industries
How can FDA or USDA officials who shamelessly serve industry also regulate industry and protect consumers? Clearly they can't and Biden should be ashamed of these retrogressive nominations.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 30, 2009 Doctors Boo Obama in Chicago
the 236,000 member AMA which represents a fourth of the nation's practicing physicians, has always been obstructionist--fighting managed care, cost controls, posted fees, politicians, insurance companies, nurses and even a physician "glut" in the past.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 15, 2023 How Fraud at the Border Hurts the Needy. Interview with Border Reporter Todd Bensman
Almost everyone wants to help downtrodden and poor people seeking a better life. But according to Todd Bensman a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and longtime reporter, the public is seriously misled about current immigration at the U.S. southern border. Right after his July testimony at a joint hearing of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement and the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, December 4, 2009 Fished Killed; Waterways Poisoned by Illinois Destroyer of Natural Resources
This week Illinois DNR practiced its poisonomics, again and dosed six miles of the Chicago Sanitary and Shipping Canal (CSSC) to save the $7 billion sport fishing industry from invasive carp and protect boaters from being "attacked" by carp which can "leap out of the water" and strike them.
(15 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 12, 2014 Does Your Estranged Ex-boyfriend or Ex-husband Have a Gun?
It is no coincidence that violent "exes" are so alike. There is a definite "domestic batterer" personality. The dark behavior begins with possessiveness and extreme suspicion and graduates into violence including violence against their partners' pets.
SHARE Wednesday, February 18, 2009 Do Fashion Buyers Still Have Their Jobs? Why?
Don't fashion buyers understand you're supposed to recycle unsold merchandise--not creative ideas, few though they might be?
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, November 21, 2016 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? (16 Articles, 25815 views)
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, June 13, 2021 A Criminal For Helping a Suffering animal? Interview with Activist Wayne Hsiung
At Petaluma Poultry, Hsiung said dozens of deputies and a helicopter arrived on scene to arrest the activists. Members of DxE internationally face felony counts for burglary, racketeering, and domestic terrorism, among other charges.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 16, 2013 Bad Diets for Kids--and the Drugs That Enable Them
Over one-third of US kids are overweight, and 17 percent are obese--which, for a four-foot-ten-inch child would be a weight of 143 pounds. Obesity predisposes people to diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, sleep apnea and respiratory problems, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis and musculoskeletal disorders.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 26, 2016 Humor: Shandling Was Among Comics Who Riffed About Dogs
Woody Allen drew laughs when he remembering asking his mother where babies came from and she replied "Dogs"--thinking he said "rabies." Series: cartoons (50 Articles, 53955 views)
SHARE Saturday, May 19, 2018 Gun Lobby Thanks Public For Short Memory
It has been a whole 24 hours since nine students and a teacher lost their lives in a shooting at Santa Fe High School, not far from Houston. Already the news cycle has moved on and Twitter has gone dark. The gun lobby and pro-gun politicians thank the public for its short memory.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 15, 2011 Employees: Are You Dressing for the Job?
US workers are performing low-wage jobs with no benefits, future and, sometimes, purpose. Jobs whose main perks are air-conditioning and access to the Internet
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 19, 2021 Humor: Holiday Dieting--an Oxymoron
After months of salad, sit-ups and running (even on snow), you hear yourself say, "Please pass the spinach, mushroom and ricotta tart... and the mashed potatoes... and the cinnamon rolls," as if your evil twin has commandeered your mouth.
(5 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 30, 2021 New Year's Resolutions for the Men in Your Life
We will stop telling a woman she looks beautiful by candlelight or in total darkness and realize this is actually an insult.
SHARE Thursday, August 3, 2023 Don't Fall For This Sleazy and Deceptive Marketing
It's no secret that milk sales have fallen for decades. A wealth of nondairy milks are now available without dairy milk's cholesterol, calories, antibiotics and even pus - and its astounding cruelty to calves, cows and workers. Dairy operations are also such polluters they are called "environmental crack houses."
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, June 14, 2010 Teflon Chicken Don, Jack DeCoster, Agrees to Cruelty Plea
Maine Contract Farming, formerly the DeCoster Egg Farm, has a three decade-long complaint history from workers, neighbors, environmental officials, labor officials and humane workers.
(10 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 10, 2013 Gun Lobby Thankful for Public and Media's Short Memory
Who remembers that Aaron Alexis killed 12 at Washington's Navy Yard just three months ago? Who remembers that Paul Ciancia allegedly killed a TSA agent at the Los Angeles airport last month?
SHARE Friday, June 16, 2006 Stormin' Norman Shooting for Cancer Patients
The Safari Club is trying to improve its image by getting anyone--the poor, the sick--to eat the animals it harvests. Now Stormin' Norman is geting into the act.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, September 5, 2008 Wanna Buy a Car Lot Full of SUVs?
Thanks to US gas prices, SUVs have become the Thanks to US gas prices, SUVs have become the fur coats of the automotive industry: ostentatious, outdated, hard to defend and even harder to maintain.
(10 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 25, 2013 Why Are Gun Lovers So Angry at Starbucks?
Since Starbucks' decision last week to disinvite guns from its stores, gun lovers have become furious. Some say they will boycott the coffee shops, some say they will sneak their guns in anyway and at least one spokesman compared Starbucks' request to discrimination against gays.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 22, 2022 Has This Chicago Furrier Not Heard the News?
Over the last few years fur sales have become as dead as their unwilling animal donors. Armani, GUCCI, Prada, Valentino, Versace have banned fur as have large retailers like Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's and the Neiman Carcass sorry Marcus group.
(11 comments) SHARE Friday, August 13, 2021 Lab Leak Theory Is An Insult To Scientific Intelligence
According to Live Science, COVID-19 is hardly the only disease to jump species from animals to humans. Pandemics from influenza to AIDS to the prehistoric plagues came from animal hosts, as did Ebola and Lym
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 31, 2013 New Year's Resolutions for the NRA by Elliot Fineman
We will stop referring to ourselves as a "civil rights" organization that defends "human rights." It is a sacrilege to people actually killed or harmed by civil and human rights abuses.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 16, 2021 White Supremacy? It Goes To The Very Top Of The NRA
This week, many are cheering the news that the NRA is now as financially bankrupt as it is morally. Last year, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued four current or former NRA executives for "illegal financial conduct," leading to the gun group's recent declaration of bankruptcy.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, June 15, 2015 Is Bird Flu Just About the Price of Eggs and Farmer Profits?
The egg industry treats birds like paper towels. 50 million US birds were killed for the flu which the conditions they are kept in caused in the first place. Thank you greedy, heartless factory farmers Series: cartoons (50 Articles, 53955 views)
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 31, 2016 How Big Pharma Fosters 17,000 Opioid Deaths a Year
Narcotics have made a comeback for two reasons: younger clinicians lacked the addiction awareness of their older peers and Big Pharma has churned them.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 28, 2021 Are There Children in Your Life? Introduce Them to This New Food Superhero!
On the first day at a new school, Niko finds the class is inebriated on junk food--"tossing candy wrappers at each other, jumping on tables, and sleeping at their desks." Where was the teacher? She was "eating a bag of potato chips and reading a newspaper, as if nothing was wrong."
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, September 10, 2021 Have Drug Makers Created A Generation of Hypochondriacs?
younger generations have grown up under nonstop drug industry spin which has elevated normal facets of the human psyche-blue moods, mood swings, growing up, "nerves," attention problems-"to mental illness."
SHARE Tuesday, November 8, 2011 How Safe Is Your Asthma Drug? Part One
The popular asthma drugs Symbicort, Advair Diskus, Serevent Diskus, Dulera and Foradil warn on their labels that they cause an increased "risk of death from asthma problems."
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 4, 2014 A Year After This Pig Farm Abuse, No Charges Filed!
The cruelty against pigs videotaped at West Coast Farms in Oklahoma last year was so sickening Tyson Foods immediately dropped the supplier. The National Pork Producers Council demanded that authorities "bring criminal charges against workers who abused animals." Yet a year later, workers have apparently not been charged and may have fled town as the Creek County District Attorney's office drags its feet.
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 3, 2018 Yes Big Pharma is Getting Worse
If you think prescription drugs are getting more dangerous, you are right. Once upon a time if a drug were linked to dangerous side effects or deaths, it would simply not be approved. End of story. Now, the risks are transferred to the patient in the form of detailed warnings on the label and TV commercials.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, December 12, 2008 Some Refuse Eid Animal Sacrifice
"I have been a proud, meat-eating Muslim all my life but the details of the slaughter spelt out in the English language make my stomach churn," writes writer and filmmaker Parvez Sharma on the Huffington Post website in an article subtitled No Eid For Me.
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 25, 2015 Bad Week for NRA
Ever notice how quiet the NRA is when the "law-abiding citizens" whose "gun rights" it defends go on bloody rampages?
SHARE Friday, July 13, 2012 Is Your Food Exposing You To This Pesticide?
Janette Sherman, M.D., a pesticide expert and toxicologist, has studied the effects of chlorpyrifos for many years and talked about what her research has revealed.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, July 15, 2020 Death Penalty Hypocrisy--cartoon
The federal government on Tuesday carried out its first execution in almost two decades
SHARE Tuesday, June 8, 2021 Graphic Novel Review: Fictional Father
Career ambition, LGBT romance, addiction, family dysfunction, money, the art world--they are all themes found in this tragi-comedic new graphic novel
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 25, 2010 Has FDA Already Decided About Genetically Engineered Salmon?
Even though the FDA held hearings about how AquAdvantage Salmon should be labeled the day after hearings about if it should be approved this week, it said it has not decided yet about the genetically engineered fish.
Unfortunately, its invited speakers didn't get the memo.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, August 27, 2014 Victim of Chicago Killer, John Gacy, Becomes Anti-Bullying Activist
About 45 people gathered on a hot August night at a Chicago LBGT community center to hear a chapter in Chicago history that is often forgotten--how John Gacy prowled the streets of Chicago's northside from 1972 through 1978, picking up young men and murdering at least 33 of them.
SHARE Saturday, August 1, 2009 How Has the Recession Affected Your Jewelry and Cruise Ship Needs?
This recession hasn't just made things rough for people who sell things and people who can no longer buy them (because they also sell things to people who can no longer buy them.) It's made things rough for the nation's copywriters.
SHARE Tuesday, November 13, 2012 Prescribed and Abandoned; Another Drug Settlement
Even before this week's settlement, Pristiq had few friends in the Pharma community. "Pristiq is not a good drug by any standard," wrote an anonymous poster on the industry chatroom cafepharma when the FDA declined the menopause indication.
SHARE Sunday, December 5, 2021 Gun Loving Parents like the Crumbleys Are Not Rare
According to Oakland County, Michigan prosecutor Karen McDonald, mother Jennifer Crumbley posted that taking Ethan to a shooting range was "a mother-son day" and that she "bought a gun for her baby for Christmas."
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, January 27, 2012 Are You Still Eating Butterball Turkeys?
The sordid collegiality between government and industry which makes a mockery of democracy, consumer rights and animal welfare, brings to mind the saga of egg don Austin "Jack" DeCoster, the salmonella king.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 21, 2009 Depressed? Hopeless? Stop Looking at the Help Wanted Ads
Unlike the 2000 recession, this one has no faces to blame like Jack Grubman, Henry Blodget, Frank Quattrone or Dennis Kowalski. The nameless wonks at AIG, Fannie and Freddie still have their jobs! Thank goodness for Bernard Madoff.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, August 6, 2021 The Hidden Face of Animal Disease Research
Animal disease research in government or government-funded labs often flies under the public radar and it goes way beyond COVID-19 questions.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, December 9, 2008 If The Chicago Tribune Falls in the Forest Can It Cover Its Own Story?
The Tribune probably wishes it had the $17.7 million golden parachute back it bequeathed to former Tribune Chairman and Chief Officer Dennis FitzSimons when he left the company twisting in the wind. (What would he get if he left it solvent--his own island?)
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 15, 2012 Please Refrain From Mass Shootings Until Talk of New Laws Passes: NRA
The problem is a lack of God in school said radio personalities Mike Huckabee and Mark Levin on the day of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. There are not enough guns, echoed the Queen of Mean Ann Coulter. We need more!
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, July 18, 2020 Why the Wet Markets That Caused Covid Will Continue
The WHO defends wet wildlife slaughter markets that include poached and exotic animals because they create "jobs."Get ready for more Covid pandemics if this one ends
SHARE Wednesday, October 14, 2009 DogFighting Thrives in Chicago--even at Day Care Center
On the same day the nation watched a video of the beating death of 16-year-old Derrion Albert in Chicago, Cook County sheriff deputies were watching a video of an animal being burned to death on the cell phone of a man arrested the same day in connection with a dogfighting operation run at a suburban Chicago day care center.
(7 comments) SHARE Friday, February 11, 2011 Men, Avoid These Valentine Faux Pas
don't tell your wife or girlfriend she looks beautiful by the light of one candle. Impaired observer compliments haven't worked since Blanche DuBois covered the light bulbs in Streetcar Named Desire to look younger.
SHARE Sunday, November 22, 2009 Cash for Clunkers-like Ag Program is Domestic Dumping
Funded by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act revenues, its Meat the Need proposal would increase the amount that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients receive in food assistance if they use it for animal products. Recipients would either get a separate electronic benefits transfer (EBT) card or earmarked vouchers.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 2, 2022 New Book Hides Mental Health Institute Director's Sordid Past
Insel is not the first or last government official to treat himself or herself to the riches of the industry revolving door Louisiana Rep. Billy Tauzin surfaced at PhRMA after overseeing Medicare legislation; CDC director Julie Gerberding surfaced at Merck.
(9 comments) SHARE Friday, January 18, 2013 Who Says The NRA Hates Regulation? Look at the Laws It Likes!
The NRA hates the government's jackbooted agents and loves to whip up its wild-eyed prepper population. Yet the NRA has quietly enacted a lot of regulations of its own which it relies on the same government jackbooted agents to enforce. Who can say hypocrite?
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, July 19, 2016 Why the Gun Lobby Doesn't Mind Cop Deaths
The killing of law enforcement officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge demolishes all the gun lobby's pro-gun arguments from the real problem being "gun-free zones" to the claim that guns provide defense against "bad guys.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 2, 2021 Humor--Who Needs Olympics? Transit Riders Have Their Own "Games"
As gas prices rise, some are becoming "strap hangers." Others don't have a car to begin with. ("It's cruel to keep a car in the city," says one of my friends, as said about dogs.
So as the shutdowns end and people start their life again, the commuter train "games" are starting again.
(8 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 15, 2009 Massacres Set Pro-Gun Legislation Back
The problem is that gun "enthusiasts" like Michael McLendon and Bruce Jeffrey "Santa Claus" Pardo are increasingly becoming the gun lobby's poster boys.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, August 13, 2010 Do Politicians Have to Hunt to Get Elected?
Even though sport hunters account for only four percent of the nation -- not much more than vegetarians and considerably less than LGBTs -- many candidates, even dove candidates, feel compelled to don Blaze Orange and show the nation their Davy Crockett (or Annie Oakley) side.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 18, 2008 Those Dead Fish? Your Tax Dollars at Work
the fish kill was not an unfortunate runoff accident to be blamed on agricultural nitrates.
It was deliberately administered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources which laced the pond with the South American poison Rotenone to "restore" the water body into a "model Illinois freshwater habitat."
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 6, 2021 Will Brick and Mortar Shopping Survive Devastating Odds?
Brick and mortar stores and shopping malls hit the trifecta in 2020. Internet competition, Covid-19 and looting caused by social unrest. In Chicago, affluent shopping areas remain boarded up while Amazon delivery trucks float down deserted residential streets
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 8, 2009 Can a Bad Drug Get a Fair Hearing at the FDA? Seroquel Hearings Begin
Seroquel has been bad news. Court documents shows employees illegally marketed the drug for off label uses--you don't make $4.5 billion a year selling to schizophrenics and bipolars, after all--and AstraZeneca buried the drugs' diabetic risks. Now FDA considers widening its use
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, September 6, 2012 California Slaughterhouse Reopens. No Risk to Consumers Found--Just Animals.
It was yet another triumph of cheap meat over animal suffering. A week after the USDA closed Central Valley Meat Co. of Hanford, CA for egregious treatment of sick and dying dairy cows, the facility has reopened under pressure from lawmakers.
(5 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 6, 2021 Before Congratulating Pharma, Look at Its Recent Track Record
While the wolrd appreciates expedited Covid vaccines, other medicines that drug makers have expedited and aggressively marketed have harmed the public. Worse, the fallout has barely been covered in the year of the pandemic.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 27, 2008 What Would "Bloggers" Twain and Franklin Think of the Web?
When Ben Franklin advised Americans to, "Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with a few; friend to one; enemy to none," over 200 years ago he clearly was not anticipating the Web.
SHARE 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, 53955 views)
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, October 7, 2014 Who Remembers This About Mark Sanford?
Unlike former South Carolina Governor, now Congressman Mark "Sanford, the mourning dove is known for not leaving its mate. While many remember that Sanford left his gubernatorial duties in 2009 to "hike the Appalachian Trail " in the arms of his Buenos Aires consort, few remember that part of the official delegation was dove hunting in Cordoba, Argentina.
SHARE Wednesday, January 12, 2011 Despite Scandals and Troop Deaths, Seroquel Now Marketed for Depression
Originally approved for schizophrenia in 1997, Seroquel has subsequently been approved for bipolar disorder, for some groups of kids and as an add-drug for depression. This "indications creep" has mostly flown below the public's radar.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 26, 2022 Humor: Back on the Commuter Train? Prepare for This!
With gas prices climbing and Covid shutdowns over, many are strap hanging again on the Chicago Transit Authority's (CTA) commuter trains.
SHARE Wednesday, May 25, 2022 UK Reporter Analyzes US Gun Violence in Startling Book
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 U.S gun violence? As Gary Younge, a black reporter who grew up in England demonstrates in a moving new book titled, "Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives," it might cause you to ask hard questions other reporters duck.
SHARE Tuesday, December 29, 2020 Diet Drug Pulled From Market Because of Cancer Fears
Today, the average American man weighs almost198 pounds up from 166 pounds in the 1960s and the average American woman weighs 170 pounds up from 140 pounds in the 1960s. (The trend brings to mind an old New Yorker-style cartoon in which a doctor tells a fat patient "according to this chart you should be eight feet and two inches tall.")
SHARE Tuesday, July 31, 2018 New Orleans Jaguar Escape Again Proves Animals Loathe Zoos
In July, a 3-year-old male jaguar, Valerio, at New Orleans' Audubon Zoo escaped and fatally mauled four trapped alpacas, one emu and one fox who were held in other displays. Valerio bit a hole in steel fencing and zoo officials vowed to install stronger materials.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, May 19, 2021 Humor: Covid Has Increased Housing Rage
Are the daily pot smokers really "medical users"? Has anyone ever seen them?
Why do the techno music lovers begin, not end, playing their music at 10 PM?
Why doesn't the couple in Unit 12 just get a divorce?
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 9, 2019 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS): Will You Cave to Big Pharma?
To fight the current, similar proposal Pharma is using the same tear-jerking tactics with high budget PR campaigns that aggressively give the phone numbers of lawmakers. Ending Pharma's high "protected" drug Medicare prices represents European style "socialized" medicine says one hysterical ad rationing is just around the corner!
(6 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 7, 2021 News of the Covid Pandemic Brought to You By Charmin
News of the Covid pandemic is largely funded by consumer products giant Procter & Gamble who makes Charmin toilet paper and Bounty paper towels.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 18, 2021 Humor: A Yankee Tries to Learn "New Orleansese"
Yankees can master the names of Carnival krewes -- Rex, Endymion, Zulu, Bacchus, Comus -- and the meaning of the King Cake and Twelfth Night but it might take months to realize that "erl" means oil and "ersters" means oysters.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, February 2, 2022 6 Medication Mistakes That You Might Be Making
Americans might be the most medicated people in the world thanks to aggressive drug-maker marketing and favorable regulation. But drugs can be over-prescribed, conditions over-diagnosed, and less expensive non-drug treatments slighted. Here are common dangers to watch for in your and your family's medication use.
SHARE Friday, September 11, 2020 The Voter That Big Pharma and Big Food Have Created
How did we get into this political mess? As many as a quarter of the population is on happy pills. Two-thirds of the population is overweight--hooked on food. Millions are not angry but complacent. What me Worry?
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, November 12, 2021 The Reason Many Are Saying No To a Turkey This Year
As "Turkey Day" approaches, animal lovers cringe, food safety advocates become vigilant and turkey producers hope you are not reading the news and have forgotten these items
(4 comments) SHARE Monday, June 29, 2015 They Are Eating What in Yulin China?
Supporters of the Yulin dog meat festival charge that critics are hypocrites. "What about the consumption of beef when cows are considered sacred in India, they say, or guinea pigs in Latin America, or dogs in Korea or turkeys in the United States?" they ask
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, February 8, 2021 Humor: There is Only One Unlimited Resource--Shame!
While a lot of personal shame centers around age, income and weight, especially when they're going in the wrong direction, there are other rich sources of shame in life:
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 3, 2009 Sure You're Ready for a Dancing Cockatoo like Snowball?
"People think cockatoos are cuddly and easy to take care of but they're not," says Weiner 50, a Glencoe police lieutenant when he's not running the Chicago area bird refuge and shelter. "We tell them--if you want a bird that doesn't bite, doesn't poop, doesn't require care, patience, skill, money and frequent veterinarian visits, go to Toys R Us."
(4 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 9, 2016 If You Try To Leave Me I'll Kill You--Armed and Dangerous Partners
Horrified shoppers watched as store employee Nadia Ezaldein was shot in the head as she worked at the accessories counter by estranged ex-boyfriend Marcus Dee who then turned the gun on himself.
SHARE Friday, July 25, 2008 Solving Urban Poverty with 55 Gallon Drums of Fish--Another Heifer Success Story
With its shameless photos of children hugging rabbits, goats and calves they will also dispatch and its celebrity stumpers, live animal charity Heifer International often gets a pass from donors and the press about its circular logic--that the poor should raise animals with the resources they don't have.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 4, 2019 Rubber and Metal with Your Chicken? Tyson Obliges
Rubber and metal are some of the recent surprise "ingredients" found in Tyson chicken. In January, 36,420 pounds of Tyson chicken nuggets were recalled due to rubber contamination. In March, a recall for possible metal contamination of ready-to-eat Tyson chicken strip products began which continues--now encompassing 12 million pounds.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 5, 2013 Is Your Food Artificially Dyed?
Farmed salmon are dyed with the chemicals astaxanthin and canthaxanthin to produce an appealing, though unnatural, pink
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, August 17, 2021 Humor: Starbucks Are Filling Up Again-Is That a Good Thing?
How did Starbucks convince Americans that happy hour should be wired, not wasted, and that they have a Macchiato deficiency that requires five dollars and 500 calories a day to treat?
(11 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 12, 2013 Welcome to 2013, Cuccinelli. Women Vote and Guns Are A Woman's Issue
Cuccinelli's guns-everywhere/no restrictions NRA platform is also a women's issue. Intimate partner homicide increases by 500 percent when a firearm is present and almost always it is the woman who is killed.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 19, 2021 Humor: With Covid Shutdowns Over Can Class Reunions Be Far Off?
Many at the class reunion seem to have done so well financially, including sending their children to college, that they are on second, soul-nourishing careers like crafts and fiber art, teaching yoga, giving pet training classes and "life coaching."
SHARE Thursday, March 12, 2009 A Merger From The Folks Who Brought You Vytorin
As Whitehouse Station, NJ-based Merck announces its purchase of Kenilworth, NJ-based Schering-Plough who remembers that it was a Merck/Schering-Plough combo that brought us Vytorin?
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, October 4, 2013 Do You Really Want to Work There?
With another jobless recovery at hand, it is tempting to accept any position offered to you. But there are 12 kinds of companies you don't want to work for. Here are the warning signs.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, December 20, 2018 Pharma Profit Party Continues into 2019
When did you become aware of the obscene prices Big Pharma is charging for drugs? For many it was when a smirking Martin Shkreli, founder of Turing Pharmaceuticals, testified on the Hill in about his price hike of the antiparasitic drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750, calling lawmakers "imbeciles" in a tweeted goodbye. He is now enjoying some time at Club Fed.
(10 comments) SHARE Friday, October 23, 2020 Is Pharma Our Covid Savior?
The Covid pandemic has given Pharma a temporary halo. Who cares about its prohibitively expensive drugs, the way it hides drug risks, the way that it "sells" diseases through TV ads and "symptom checkers" and the opioid epidemic it created? We need a vaccine and we need it now
SHARE Tuesday, June 29, 2021 Cartoon: Who Remembers Travel?
Will the travel industry, crushed by violence, wars, disease outbreaks, environmental threats and climate change ever come back?
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 18, 2013 Armed "Good Guys" Stop Bad Guys--Except When They Don't
Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, assistant prosecutor Mark Hasse, Colorado Department of Corrections executive director Tom Clements and Mingo County Virginia sheriff Eugene Crum are the latest casualties of the NRA's national shootout
SHARE Saturday, August 30, 2008 With Dropping Wages, Dress Codes Harder to Enforce
They say people aren't dressing up to fly anymore--and it's probably the same reason they aren't dressing up for work: the treatment you get doesn't deserve it
SHARE Thursday, April 22, 2021 A Quick History of Cancel Culture
Cancel culture has been with us for a long time. Sometimes a public figure's faux pas is all we remember about them.
SHARE Thursday, November 29, 2007 No Holiday Season for Women in High Risk Lifestyles
In Ipswich, Atlantic City and Chicago, women are struggling to overcome the addiction to high risk lifestyles which have claimed the lives of their associates.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 10, 2013 Have Things Changed Since This School Shooting in 1988 by Laurie Dann?
Why can't we stop violent criminals like Loughner, Holmes, Cho, Kazmierczak, Goh, Page, Roberts and Dann from striding into gun shops and buying guns for lethal rampages? Because a national registry of gun owners would violate our Second Amendment rights says the NRA
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 30, 2015 Remembering the Year in Gun Massacres
The year 2015 not only marked an escalation in mass US shootings, it marked an escalation in where mass shootings occur from churches, movies, highways and medical offices to on the street during a live TV newscast.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, April 18, 2008 New Diet Drug Tanking Just Like Its "Treatment Effects"
Since GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) high profile launch of alli last summer, the first FDA approved diet drug sold over the counter, the only figures that have flattened are sales.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 1, 2019 Humor: The Rationalizations Behind Holiday Overeating
If you drink too much during the holidays most peopleincluding youwill soon forget about it. But if you overeat during the holidays, tomorrow holds no similar reprieve for you. It is denial or the gym--or denial and the gym. It's sweat pants with a drawstring, sweater dresses as wide as they are long and Liz Taylor style kaftans. (Unless you still have a muumuu.)
(5 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 4, 2021 Woke....Most of the Time
Too many Wokes today only choose the easy issues--the ones that require no lifestyle changes
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 24, 2008 Cornell Expert Details Milk Dangers at Fired Teacher's Hearing
The life expectancy of NFL players and health effects of milk on children were part of Dr. T. Colin Campbell's testimony at a fired middle school teacher's hearing near Chicago.
SHARE Wednesday, August 21, 2013 Ag Gag Laws are Ultimate "Kill The Messenger"
How hard is it to get hired in a slaughterhouse or on factory farm? Can you fog a mirror? Can you start this afternoon? 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," or "Determine sex of newborn chicks and grind up unwanted males for dog food: $6 dollars an hour; chance for advancement."
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 8, 2016 Trump said and did WHAT?
Democrats, Republicans and even the pet community are shocked at Trump's lewd sexual predation
(4 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 9, 2021 Don't Fall for the Term "Fake Meat" Invented by Ranchers
It is obvious why meat producers are fighting the plant-based meat movement with inaccurate and fear-producing terms like "fake meat." Not only is "fake" an emotional word, it is not even accurate when referring to cultured meat which derives from the cells of "real meat" and is identical except that no slaughter occurs.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 2, 2009 Video Shows Price of Cheap Eggs: Chicks Ground Up Alive
A video just released by Mercy For Animals from Hy-Line Hatchery in Spencer, Iowa, the largest hatchery for egg-laying breed chicks in the U.S., confirms what has been rumored for years about the egg industry: that newborn males which are worthless to the industry are ground up alive in chopping machines called macerators.
SHARE Tuesday, November 16, 2010 Eid Slaughter Sacrifice Is Sad Day for Animals
"The scent of blood is invariably overwhelming on the first day of Eid Al-Adha. One can literally sniff the blood in the air. It is pungent with a hint of salt and bitterness. Some streets are awash with blood."
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 7, 2012 There's Money in Cruelty: California Chefs Fight Foie Gras Ban
as the deadline for California's first-in-the nation ban on foie gras, chefs contemplate defying the ban (and facing fines of up to $1,000) as they serve foie gras going away parties or "wakes."
SHARE Monday, July 25, 2011 Your Brain on PMS
It is said that women's periods are a lot like airline meals. We hate them, we complain about them, we dread them--but just let the flight attendant try to skip you!
(4 comments) SHARE Sunday, September 6, 2009 Eat, Pray, Dine on Veal
Gilbert knows all about Yoga, mantras, Brahmans, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, the Hopi Indians and Apollonius of Tyana; she's down with St. Theresa, St. Francis, the Kabbalah and Sufism.
But she was absent the day they taught Ahimsa--the doctrine of refraining from causing pain, injury or violence to any living thing. The doctrine that guides most spiritual leaders--and spiritual paths.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 21, 2021 Remembering Tom T. Hall-the storyteller
Everyone remembers Hall's "I like beer," a paean to the world's most down-to-earth alcoholic beverage which explains that "Whiskey's too rough, Champagne costs too much, vodka puts my mouth in gear" as an Oktoberfest-like chorus in the background intones "He likes beer."
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, November 27, 2015 Black Friday Blues
without Black Friday some retailers would not exist Series: cartoons (50 Articles, 53955 views)
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, August 15, 2014 Ferguson Unrest Good For Business--Gun Lobby
You would think the world's oldest civil rights organization, as the NRA calls itself, would speak out about the events in Ferguson. Aren't the law enforcement personnel in the hot seat the same jack-booted thugs the NRA screeched about 20 years ago?
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, November 13, 2015 Are Republicans' Best Days Behind Them?
Everyone agrees--if Trump or Carson get the nomination, Hillary will be the next president Series: cartoons (50 Articles, 53955 views)
SHARE Tuesday, August 31, 2021 How Animal Rights, Once a Progressive Stepchild, Became a Movement
After a while, activists gave up the ineffectual "supply side" tactic of beseeching hostile lawmakers to regulate animal operations in their state for the more leveraged "demand side" -- going directly to food outlets and their customers with proof of grisly deeds. Once the McDonald's, Wendy's, KFCs and Burger Kings of the world were outed as buying and serving abused animals things began to change".
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, January 31, 2021 New Year's Resolutions for Drug Makers
Covid vaccines have given drug makers a temporary halo. Yet their sleazy business plans cry out for these New Year's resolutions
SHARE Saturday, December 8, 2012 They Want Us to Eat What? Doubts About GM Salmon
he genetically modified salmon, created by Boston-based AquaBounty Technologies, is designed to grow twice as fast as wild Atlantic salmon--reaching its full size in 18 months instead of three years. It was created by inserting genetic material from Chinook salmon and ocean pout into wild Atlantic salmon. No wonder it's called a Frankenfish.
SHARE Saturday, October 9, 2010 No Preaching; No Finger Pointing: New Book Shows Why Alcoholic Self-Help Group Works
Hazelden Publishing's new release, The Book That Started it All, shows, through its original edits, that AA's simple steps were far from simple.
We asked Sid Farrar, the book's editor and Hazelden's editorial director, how the handwritten exchanges in the book reveal the philosophies which have kep
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, August 30, 2012 Do Candidates Need to Hunt to Get Elected? Ask Huckabee.
Even though catch-and-release ï¬shing has replaced a lot of catch-and-eat ï¬shing and camera safaris have replaced big-game hunting (except for GoDaddy's Bob Parsons and Spain's king Juan Carlos who recently gunned down elephants) practically every US presidential contender still feels compelled to don blaze orange outerwear and kill a few for the "Gipper" of public opinion.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, January 28, 2022 Best Economy Since 1984?
Happy days here again--NOT. Yesterday's news seems absurd
(11 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 3, 2015 New Year's Resolutions for the NRA-2015
Thanks to the NRA no one blinked when a 2-year-old fatally shot someone in a Walmart last week.
SHARE Friday, February 8, 2013 Are Eggs Safe to Eat Again?
Heart disease isn't the only health concern associated with eating eggs. According to studies in the journals Nutrition and Diabetes Care , eating eggs is "positively associated" with the risk of diabetes.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, January 25, 2021 Humor: New Year's Resolutions for American Men
We will stop telling a woman she looks beautiful by candlelight or in total darkness and realize this is actually an insult.
SHARE Monday, December 15, 2008 Behind the Velvet Curtain With a Retail Santa
You might think with the crisis in public confidence over politicians and the economy people have become cynical about Santa story. You'd be wrong.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, December 24, 2014 Merry Christmas From The Oil Industry
From BP's catastrophe to this week's spill in the Black Sea near the port of Tuapse, the oil industry shamelessly continues its assault on the environment
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, October 28, 2010 Be Like Lindsay Lohan? Yes, When It Comes to Fashion
Say what you want about Lindsay Lohan but her desire to sell a line of leggings is absolutely right on.
Leggings are as liberating as the "divided skirt" was a hundred years ago that allowed women to first ride bicycles.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, August 27, 2021 Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right in Afghanistan
Who remembers how US troops were told to ignore the institutionalized rape/sexual slavery of little boys by Afghan security forces-- the so-called "good guys"? A tradition called Bacha bazi?
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, September 2, 2011 State Is Broke But Still Raising Pheasants for Cheney-style Hunting
The state of Illinois may be broke (like most states after the 2008 economic meltdown) but you can still shoot tame pheasants that the state has hatched and raised expressly for your recreational pleasure at Illinois state parks this fall.
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, March 8, 2019 The Downside of the World's Love Affair with Shrimp
More than half of imported shrimp is "farmed"grown in huge industrial tanks or shallow, manmade ponds that can stretch for acres. At least 150 shrimp can be crowded into a single square meter, where they're fed commercial pellets, sometimes laced with antibiotics to ward off disease
SHARE Thursday, March 17, 2022 Bird Flu Is Back in US Thanks to Factory Farmers
Big Food is trying to hide the very expected outbreaks of bird flu. Even as "farmers" gas millions of birds, they try to pretend 1) intensive factory farming doesn't cause/spread the disease 2) bird flu doesn't affect people. Don't believe the lies.
(4 comments) SHARE Thursday, April 28, 2016 Are You Eating Antibiotics in Your Food? Yes!
KFC-supplier Koch Foods said "We do not administer antibiotics at growth promotion doses" on its website, but documents from the mills that make its feed to its specifications indicated otherwise, said Reuters Series: We are eating WHAT? (16 Articles, 25815 views)
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, February 22, 2013 Obama's Home Town Turns Out For Universal Background Checks
Carrying photos of lost loved ones and signs reading "We Deserve a Vote," a strong crowd turned out in the freezing Chicago rain in support of universal background checks on Friday.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 5, 2014 When it Comes to the Contentment Quotient, New Orleans Is Doing Better Than Chicago
In New Orleans, unlike in Chicago, when you talk to your neighbor on the street, on the streetcar or in the park-- they talk back! In Chicago your neighbor will first scrunch up his face, then move his seat or chair and then actually call security because you are obviously panhandling or mentally ill. Welcome to Chicago.
SHARE Wednesday, April 2, 2008 Tainted Deer Meat Tarnishes Hunter Humanitarian Program
Dumping carcasses makes hunters look like they just like to kill. But find someone who will actually eat the game--staff at canned hunting clubs for example or the poor--and you are suddenly a humanitarian.
(7 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 26, 2014 "Oh, That." Guns So Common, Air Travelers "Forget" Them
It is happening more and more. T.S.A. screeners at the airport, in addition to finding hidden bottles of shampoo, are finding guns that passengers "forgot."
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, August 17, 2009 Vytorin: Both Kinds of deception
Merck and Schering-Plough have the audacity to bring back the "two sources of cholesterol" campaign less than two years after their Vytorin marketing drew lawsuits from state attorneys general and a Congressional intervention
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 12, 2013 Animal Drugs in Your Food? Probably
Most people have heard of the drug companies Pï¬zer, Eli Lilly, and Merck. But they may not have heard of the animal-drug companies Fort Dodge, Elanco, or Intervet and the drugs they make. "Animal Pharma," the animal-drug divisions within drug companies, tends to operate under the public's radar.
SHARE Saturday, December 29, 2007 Quit Picking on Huckabee's Son Says Michael Vick
Mike Hukabee did not get the bounce he hoped out of his post Christmas pheasant hunting trip. Allegations about his son hanging a stray dog didn't help
SHARE Sunday, April 22, 2012 "They Pretend to Pay us and We Pretend to Dress"
You'd think with the scarcity of jobs today, people would "dress the part." But employees are continually downscaling their dress, say employers, either because of their shrinking clothing budget or shrinking respect for the job itself.
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, July 6, 2009 Sanford's Second Love After Cheating? Killing birds
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford when not "saying goodbye" to his Buenos Aires consort over Father's Day was dispatching mourning doves in Cordoba, Argentina.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, February 2, 2009 But Did You Do It, Blagojevich?
Who, seeing his vindication tour on ABC's "Good Morning America," NBC's "Today Show," CNN's "Larry King Live" and "The View"--even as police were outside his home and he was being impeached in Springfield--didn't think of Chicago area policeman Drew Peterson whose third wife was found dead in the bathtub in 2004 and fourth wife disappeared in October 2007?
I
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 25, 2020 Are You Participating in Greenback Friday?
Black Friday has less to do with the holiday spirit than consumerism, capitalism and mindless shopping. In six weeks landfills with be brimming with its aftermath.
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, March 12, 2010 Rabbit--It's What's For Dinner
The Bunny-It's-What's-For-Dinner article continues the Times' culinary Realpolitik of depicting chefs and locavores raising and slaughtering their own animals.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 26, 2011 Will Rahm Emanuel Misunderestimate "ChicagoSpeak"?
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley is known for meandering 90-second audio bytes that change verbs, tenses, subjects, stances, moods and pitch -- his voice rising with Vegas-like glissandos until he is an actual soprano -- that resemble Method acting.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 28, 2023 Be Scared Be Really Scared Says Drugmaker Pfizer To Sell Diseases
Not only is Pharma using a child actor to sell its drug, the many doctors with whom I work say RSV almost never occurs in adults--it is a mostly a risk that young children get! According to the CDC, RSV "causes mild, cold-like symptoms [and] Most people recover in a week or two."
(2 comments) SHARE Monday, January 21, 2013 Why is Violence-Linked Malaria Drug Still In Use?
The Air Force bans pilots from using Lariam and the Army says it is substituting a safer drug, but the Navy and Marine Corps have actually increased prescriptions for Lariam the Associated Press reported recently. And, "numbers could be higher still because prescriptions filled overseas are frequently not counted.
(6 comments) SHARE Thursday, June 5, 2014 Egg Scofflaw Finally Charged For Salmonella-Tainted Eggs
For more than 35 years the egg farms associated with Austin "Jack'' DeCoster have been accused of health and safety violations and worker, environmental and animal abuses but the charges have never stuck
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, May 30, 2009 Falling Cancer and Heart Disease Rates? We Can Fix That!
Would anyone believe a new study that found cigarettes are safe after all? Funded by cigarette manufacturers? New studies" proclaiming that hormone therapy or hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is safe after all, sponsored by hormone makers, are gaining traction.
(3 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 10, 2008 Downer Cow Meat Recall is Perfect Storm for New Ag Secretary Shafer
Now that people realize their children have been eating beef from the Hallmark/Westland Meat Company through the National School Lunch, Program Ed Schafer, the new Agriculture Secretary, has the perfect storm on his hands.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 3, 2012 Who Would Intentionally Kill Blackbirds?
Who intentionally set off fireworks under a blackbird roost in Beebe, Arkansas on New Year's Eve killing at least 200 birds? In some warped homage to last New Year's when at least 5,000 blackbirds perished?
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, February 4, 2016 Is the Public Losing its Stomach For Trophy Hunting?
Thanks to Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who killed Cecil the lion, the public may be losing its tolerance for gratuitous killing of exotic, wild game.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 28, 2012 Are Your Sleeping Pills Doing More Harm Than Good?
Many sleeping pills correlate with a three fold increase in the hazard of death say researchers in this week's British Medical Journal (BMJ) .
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, November 20, 2015 Humor--the Downside of Thanksgiving
It's the biggest travel period of the year with millions driving and flying to see family. But not everyone is a fan of Thanksgiving Series: cartoons (50 Articles, 53955 views)
SHARE Wednesday, November 1, 2006 Why are Americans overweight?
Many Americans were relieved to read recently that not getting enough sleep and too much air conditioning could contribute to obesity. But what if you get enough sleep and keep the a.c low? Here are some other cultural institutions to blame.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, December 15, 2007 Red Meat a Rich and Varied Source of Cancer
A new study finds red meat promotes esophagus, liver, lung and pancreas cancer. Second opinion? It also promotes colon and breast cancer.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, March 18, 2016 We Are Drinking What? What Municipalities Don't Want You to Know About Tap Water
The lead crisis in Flint, Michigan has drawn national attention to deadly and often underreported risks in the public water supply. Thanks to the chemical, agricultural and pharmaceutical industries and antiquated water systems, Americans are imbibing a witch's brew of drugs and chemicals often without realizing it.
(2 comments) SHARE Thursday, May 26, 2011 Your Brain on $4.50 per Gallon Gas
So many car commuters have converted to bus and train commuters, cities are reporting an 8 to 34 percent rise in public transit usage.
SHARE Wednesday, June 18, 2008 Can Wyeth Fool American Women Twice?
After the HRT hoax, will US women embrace a major psychiatric drug with possible liver and heart complication side effects for menopause manufactured by the same company at four times the cost of Premarin/Prempro?
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 6, 2022 Border Blues: Both Sides of Aisle Have an Immigration Agenda
402,000 migrants were released into the US last year by the Border Patrol though you have to dig deep to find such figures. Border reporting has disappeared in the last six months, no doubt because it is so contentious.
(7 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 11, 2008 Can In-Class Huckstering Make Milk Drinking Cool?
Is there anyone who hasn't posed with a milk mustache except O.J. Simpson and Phil Spector? And they may be looking at the paperwork now.
SHARE Saturday, November 27, 2010 Feeling Fat? Thanksgiving Is Only One Reason
Half of Americans were overweight in 1980 and now 70 percent tip the scales as overweight says the report. (And that's before Thanksgiving gluttony.) By 2020, three-fourths of Americans are expected to be overweight, says OECD, And in 2030? Eighty-six percent of Americans will be overweight says an 2008 article in the journal Obesity.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, June 7, 2013 Chicago Shooting Sprees Remembered
Every year at this time, thousands of walkers and runners in the Chicago area assemble for the Ricky Byrdsong Memorial Race Against Hate, honoring the legacy of the former Northwestern University Men's Basketball Coach, murdered in 1999.
SHARE Saturday, January 16, 2010 Holiday Dieting--An Oxymoron
f you over imbibe during the holidays you can fall back on Winston Churchill's famous riposte, "Ah but tomorrow, I shall be sober."
But if you overeat during the holidays, tomorrow holds no similar reprieve for you.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 27, 2019 A Fashion Trend Returns
Leggings, which replaced blue jeans for women about 20 years ago, have been a mixed blessing in our national fat epidemic. Yes, they got women out of pantyhose (clearly invented by men) but they never failed to "fit," allowing undetected weight gain. In fact elastic waistlines were once called "The Devil's Playground" for this reason.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 4, 2008 Publicly Funded Hunting Program Is Drowning in Red Ink--and Worse
Thanks to the Wall Street meltdown, Illinois citizens may be without jobs or cars soon but they can still take the kids to shoot tame pheasants that the state has hatched and raised for their outdoor recreational pleasure at Illinois state parks this fall.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, January 24, 2009 From Doghouse to White House; American Dog Changes Too
Columnist Erma Bombeck used to say dogs were the last of the optimists. They rush the door when the bell rings but it's never for them. And they can't wait to go for a car ride but they never go anywhere but the vet.
(Isn't doing the same thing and expecting different results also the definition of insanity?)
SHARE Wednesday, August 8, 2012 Thank you, NRA!
Thank goodness for the "civil rights" organization,
the NRA
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, September 24, 2008 After Road Rage, Train Rage
As gas prices rise and household income falls, more people are discovering the life of the strap hanger. Riding the train to work--if you still have a job and your city has a train--saves time and money and removes the daily irritants of driving in road traffic. Unfortunately, it brings new irritants.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 11, 2016 Is there anything Trump won't say?
Trump regularly verbally attacks women and minorities. Why does he get away with it?
(6 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 8, 2008 First They Take Your Gun; Then Your Bible Says a Reactivating NRA
Maybe it fears a President Obama. Maybe it feels enough time has elapsed since Robert Hawkins gunned down 13 Christmas shoppers at an Omaha mall. But the National Rifle Association is back on the legislative track.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, June 29, 2011 "Green" Buildings Still Wasting Water and Power in their Washrooms
he sensor-driven toilets "perceived" a need to flush every time people entered washroom stalls, closed the door or moved an air column. The new smart toilets, which saved users the "labor" of having to flush said the salesmen, flushed before, after and during people's use of them
(3 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 12, 2016 People Eat WHAT?
Why does the United States refuse to import seal skins? Why does it forbid whaling? Clearly there are forms of animal practices so egregious the federal government has stepped in
SHARE Tuesday, September 15, 2009 Does Your Dog Play Well With Others?
Why can't children--and their parents--get along as well as dogs and their owners on the dog beach?
SHARE Sunday, August 9, 2009 John Hughes Not Ferris Bueller Like in Real Life
Hughes "going script" in the 1980's while other Lampoon editors were still thinking long form magazine article and book contract was as prescient as writers going online in the 1990s. His secret, he told me, was a...computer (!) which let him writes scenes and try them out in different sequences. Quite a concept for Wite-Out/correction tape-ridden writers of the 1980s.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, February 28, 2010 In Battle for Pubic Opinion and Appetites, Agribusiness Handed its Lunch
You'd think agribusiness would welcome Michael "rBGH" Taylor's promotion to deputy commissioner of foods last month.But Taylor's refusal to prep agribusiness about FDA support of The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA) which agribusiness therefore first learned of in House Rules Committee hearings last summer, angered some.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 31, 2010 Give Up Your Cell For Lent? Not on Your Ring Tone
doctors report having to wait to examine a patient while he or she says something urgent into a cell phone like "did you look on the bottom right shelf next to the bath towels?"
SHARE Wednesday, December 19, 2012 As Texas Goes; Martha Rosenberg interviews New York Times columnist Gail Collins about her new book
A native Ohioan, Gail Collins says her fascination with Texas began when she heard Gov. Rick Perry deliver an Alamo-like speech at a 2009 Tea Party rally. "We didn't like oppression then; we don't like oppression now," he roared. The problem was, says Collins, "this was a rally about the stimulus package
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, May 30, 2014 Humor--Plastic Surgeons Without Borders
Judging from US medicine, there is money to be made in addressing these international vanity problems
(5 comments) SHARE Friday, February 26, 2016 25 shot in six days
25 innocents shot thanks to our "guns everywhere for everyone" gun lobby.
SHARE Monday, December 31, 2012 New Year's Resolutions for the NRA
We admit that arming bad guys through such loose laws and then blaming them for the need for more firearms is like killing your parents and crying you are an orphan.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, April 18, 2006 Hormones Hard to Give Up--for Drug Companies That Make Them
Since federal researchers halted the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) hormone replacement therapy (HRT) study in 2002, three years early because the drugs were so dangerous, the sequence of events has played out almost like a joke
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 28, 2010 Pitchfork Wielder on Dairy Farm Receives Light Sentence
Billy Joe Gregg, in a red striped prison uniform, pled guilty in Marysville Municipal Court to six counts of animal cruelty -- he had been charged with 12 -- and received eight months in jail and a $1,000 fine,
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, January 8, 2013 Five States Now Ban Shark Fins, How About This Other "Delicacy"?
This month, Illinois became the first inland state to pass a comprehensive ban against the trade, sale or distribution of shark fins. But another cruel delicacy banned in Chicago for a short time in 2006, remains legal.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 22, 2008 A Second Red Sea Emerges as Canada Begins Killing Seals
Canada takes a surprisingly aggressive approach Canada takes surprisingly aggressive approach to this year's seal hunt, the world's largest marine mammal kill.
SHARE Saturday, January 19, 2008 Accused of Hiding Drug Dangers Again, Big Pharma Starts 2008 Defending Itself
The ink isn't even dry on the massive Vioxx settlement and already Big Pharma's been accused of burying clinical data, spinning journal articles and selling drugs that cause the conditions they're supposed to fix. Sound familiar?
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 2, 2016 Pets Weigh In on Super Tuesday
This year's crop makes you nostalgic for Herman Cain and Rick Santorum Series: cartoons (50 Articles, 53955 views)
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, February 9, 2010 Valentine Tips for Men: Drill Bits Are Not Romantic
A recent poll revealed that while women plan their holiday gifts in advance, men often buy them at the gas station on the way to a family gathering.
Other men who resist the gas station, consider the hardware store fertile gift buying territory since if they buy a tool for their wife, they will have a new tool.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, March 19, 2010 Interview with the "Wild Man" of Animal Protection, Steve Hindi
In the late 1980's I had heard about the Hegins pigeon shoot and thought the cruelty charges were propaganda. But when I saw it myself I felt like My God what are you doing? We hunters have enough bad press without something like this. These pigeons are captured from cities or purpose bred and put into shoe boxes which catapult them into the air. Sometimes they can't even fly when they come out. It is the ultimate canned hunt.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 29, 2009 Sarah Palin Excelling at "Chicago Speak"
when it comes to rogue pronouns and verbs and circumlocutions that never end up where they started, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and Daley seem separated--vocally--at birth.
SHARE Monday, May 26, 2008 All Over but the Litigation for Merck
Even as Merck seeks closure on its Vioxx nightmare by paying $4.85 billion to tens of thousands of plaintiffs who took the painkiller--not that it did anything wrong--the bad ink continues.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 30, 2008 More Problems for the Other White Meat As New Disease Spreads
It's hard to write a story about the 13 workers at the Quality Pork Processing slaughterhouse in Austin, MN who came down with a strange neurological disease in December without mentioning the Table.
(9 comments) SHARE Monday, February 19, 2007 NRA silent on yet another massacre
The NRA is silent, as usual, on the ten killed in Salt Lake City and Philadelphia on February 13 but it is defending the gun rights of felons in Florida.
SHARE Sunday, March 2, 2008 Meat Scandal Reaches the Hill
Two Congressional hearings probed the Hallmark meat scandal last week. But ag officials remain in denial about where downers come from. Rosen
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, February 16, 2008 Valentine's Day Massacre Courtesy of Legal Gun Owner
The gun lobby contends that existing gun laws are adequate and criminals don't procure guns legally, anyway. Unfortunately Dekalb shooter Stephen Phillip Kazmierczak and Baton Rouge shooter Latina Williams were legal gun owners.
SHARE Monday, September 24, 2007 Desperately Seeking NRA Approval
Even if a candidate made the grade, the NRA will need more than a pol in its pocket--its favorite concealed weapon--in the upcoming legislative sessions
SHARE Tuesday, July 28, 2009 Palin May Be Gone But Other Threats To The Language Remain
Now that we no longer have Sarah Palin to misunderestimate anymore let's do away with some other threats to the language like phone bots and public address system abuse.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, August 22, 2009 Back-to-School Shopping with $300
Despite the "recovery" our "healthy" economy is still predicated on buying things we don't need with money we don't have. Just listen to EZ mortgage ads which are back on the radio next to the Mercedes ads
SHARE Wednesday, July 4, 2012 The Inseparable E-Couple
An informal survey on a college campus found the majority of incoming freshmen were using their cells to talk to--anybody--Mom! not to make new friends.
SHARE Friday, September 14, 2007 Fashion Week or Fashion Weak?
Out of touch annual event is hurting not boosting the fashion industry's image
SHARE Friday, December 15, 2023 Is Your Audio Crawling with Drug Ads? It's Not Your Imagination!
For advertisers, the move from TV to audio brings "better targeting, personalization, and measurement" No kidding. Listen to audio today and you'll think you have somehow tuned into the "Pharma channel."
SHARE Thursday, December 10, 2009 Smart Technology--Anticipating Our Every Inconvenience
Which facilities purchasing genius made the decision to save women the "labor" of turning on the faucet or hand drier or flushing the toilet while wasting untold gallons of water and kilowatts of power? Who saved the doctors the "labor" of flipping on a light switch?
SHARE Sunday, March 10, 2024 The Fonz Is Pimping For Big Pharma
People of a certain age will remember the sitcom Happy Days and its leather jacket-clad mascot, "the Fonz." Aloof and ever-cynical, the Fonz epitomized late 1970's cool. But flash forward to today and the Fonz (who was played by the actor Henry Winkler) is now an uber earnest drug pitchman, pimping for Big Pharma.
SHARE Sunday, February 3, 2008 While Viewers Cringe at Slaughter Video, USDA Spins
You wouldn't think you could "spin" a video that shows slaughterhouse workers electric shocking downer cows and "water boarding" them, but USDA is trying.
SHARE Thursday, May 29, 2008 NPR 's Garrels Speaks on the Surge, Blackwater and Limits of Embedding
Garrels discussed the progression of the war, the effect of escalating violence and kidnappings on reporting and everyday life in Iraq and her personal experiences as a reporter and a woman at Northwestern University in Evanston, Il
SHARE Friday, December 8, 2023 Expensive New Drugs Prices Harm Us All
Drug makers are pricing new drugs at extortion costs and "buying" fast approvals. Congress should do something as Pharma beomes another arm of the government.
SHARE Sunday, December 16, 2007 A Pill for Every Mood and Spokesman for Every Pill
Psychoactive drugs don't cause mass shootings like the Omaha shopping mall says a leading psychiatrist--the real danger is kids being drug free
SHARE Monday, July 9, 2007 What Tech Shootings? NRA Storms Ahead
Less than three months after the Virginia Tech shootings, the NRA agenda surges ahead with help from compliant lawmakers
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, December 17, 2006 Kicking Wyeth Habit Saves Women's Lives--Study
Hormones have long been indicted for causing breast cancer but even the research community was shocked at the latest findings.
SHARE Monday, April 2, 2007 Armed and Sniveling
The NRA is still pushing its "bring your gun to work" agenda and bristling at the press releasing conceal and carry data at the same time