Archive for the ‘Alternative Science’ Category

by Jonathan Benson, NaturalNews

The more that researchers truly study the effects of antidepressant drugs on depression patients, the more it becomes painfully obvious that these mind-altering medications are utterly useless. A new study conducted by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has revealed that antidepressant drugs work no better than talk therapy, placebo pills, or basically anything else, at relieving depression.

Funded in part by the drug industry, the new study follows the same pattern as several other recent studies that, even though they were not intended to do so, actually expose antidepressant drugs as a scam. Though the study’s authors and various commentators were quick to dismiss the findings as not necessarily indicative of the fact that antidepressants provide no medical benefits, any reasonable person looking at the study with an open mind can clearly see that this is, in fact, the case.

For the study, which was published in theJournal of Clinical Psychiatry, researchers randomly assigned 156 depression patients to either take the antidepressant drug Sertraline (Zoloft) daily for 16 weeks; a form of psychotherapy called supportive-expressive therapy twice a week for four weeks, then weekly for 12 weeks; or take inactive placebo pills for 16 weeks.

At the conclusion of the study period, researchers reported virtually no difference at all among the groups in how depression patients responded to their treatments — roughly 25 percent from each group saw an improvement in their depression symptoms, while the rest continued to struggle with their symptoms.

“I was surprised by the results,” said lead researcher Jacques P. Barber, dean of the Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York. “They weren’t what I’d expected.”

And to those who put their faith in Western medicine’s drug-based solutions for depression, how could the results not be surprising? After all, a study such as this one is an embarrassment to both the drug and mental health industries, as it shows that their so-called solutions are no better at treating depression symptoms than taking a sugar pill.

It’s not that the drug doesn’t work, it’s that everything works, including the drug!

And in trying to gloss over the results, some outside commentators inadvertently admitted that virtuallyanythingcan work to treat depression — yes, anything. Dr. David Mischoulon, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, for instance, actually told Reuters Health that, rather than disprove the effectiveness of antidepressants, the study actually shows that “everything seems to work to some degree.”

So when a scientific study proves that a certain pharmaceutical drug fails to live up to its hype, experts trying to defend that particular drug just have to claim thateverything, including that drug, can be helpful in treating a condition, and voila, it is still effective. This is, of course, an amazingly unscientific and absurd way of looking at the findings, but it is the only way apart from scrapping the useless drug that its defenders can (very poorly) try to justify its existence.

Sources for this article include:

http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111221/hl_nm/us_antidepressant

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/034625_placebo_depression_antidepressants.html#ixzz1jfzITsLo

by Todd Bishop, Geekwire

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen makes the case for broader sharing of scientific data — an “open science” model – in a newly published opinion piece (subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal, drawing from the experiences of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle.

Allen explains that the institute initially considered charging for access to its online database, before deciding to make the research freely available, with no registration required and a terms-of-use agreement “about 10% as long as the one governing iTunes,” as Allen puts it.

The piece is also interesting from a historical perspective, given Microsoft’s intense focus on protecting its intellectual property, and its longtime aversion to open-source software, even though that stance has since softened in many respects.

Allen writes of the Brain Institute, “Most important, we generate data for the purpose of sharing it. Since opening shop in 2003, we’ve had 23 public releases, or about three per year. We don’t wait to analyze our raw data and publish in the literature. We pour it onto the public website as soon as it passes our quality control checks. Our goal is to speed others’ discoveries as much as to springboard our own future research.”

He concludes with a call for foundations and funders of scientific research to help promote open science by asking about the researchers’ policies and practices on sharing data before writing a check.

Update: Try searching for “Paul Allen Open Science” in Google News for a free pass to read the full piece behind the Wall Street Journal firewall.

An epidemiologic study conducted amongst middle and high school students in Michigan showed that an alarming 1 in 5 of them have abused prescription drugs in the past year.  The study shows that abuse rates amongst adolescents are as high as they are for young adult and adult populations, highlighting concerns that Rx medications are now the drug of choice.

This adolescent age group is a particularly vulnerable one, said Sean Esteban McCabe, PhD, research associate professor at the University of Michigan Substance Abuse Research Center and Institute for Research on Women and Gender in Ann Arbor, and the study’s lead author. “Adolescence represents an important period to monitor controlled medications because individuals often become responsible for their own medication management during older adolescence,” Dr. McCabe said in an email to Pain Medicine News. “In addition, adolescents serve as the leading diversion source for their adolescent peers and many adolescents report using their own leftover medication nonmedically.”

The study was published in the August issue of the journal Archives of Pediatric Medicine (2011; 165:729-735) and it covered four classes of prescription drugs: pain, stimulant, sleeping and anti-anxiety.  It asked specific questions regarding the medicines’ use, including misuse and diversion.  It also included the DAST-10 and CRAFFT mnemonic, both measures of drug or alcohol dependence.

18% of those responding were prescribed the medication in question and 22% of those misused the prescription within the past year.  Close to 10% said they used their prescription meds to intentionally get high or increase the effect of other drugs or alcohol.

Overall, students abused pain drugs more than any other, but these were the least popular (9.8%) for intentionally getting high – that class of drug was actually least used for this purpose.  That dubious honor goes to sleeping pills (17.1%) and anti-anxiety drugs (15.8%).  Not surprisingly, those who abuse prescription drugs are also more likely to abuse other substances like alcohol.

Since the mid-1990s, all four of the drug types in question have been prescribed to younger and younger people.  Given the penchant for older populations to abuse these drugs the more they’re prescribed, seeing children doing it is not surprising. They have both role models (young adults, adults) doing so and easier access.

The use of complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) has been extensively studied globally among adult and paediatric populations. Parents, as a group, had not been studied to assess their knowledge and attitude to CAM and general medicine use.

This study is necessary since parents’attitude to medicine use is known to influence their child’s attitude to medicine use later in life. We therefore aim to assess the extent and types of CAM use among Finnish parents, and to determine the factors that promote the CAM use.

Also, we aim to determine parents’attitude to general medicine use.

Methods: Children less than 12 years old, as of spring 2007, were identified from the database of the Finnish Population Register Centre and were selected by random sampling. The parents of these children were identified and a questionnaire was sent to them.

Only the parent who regularly takes care of the child’s medicine was requested to fill the questionnaire. Cross-tabulations and Chi-square test were used to determine the associations between categorical variables.

CAMs were defined as natural products that are not registered as medicines, such as homeopathic preparations, dietary food supplements, and traditional medicinal products.

Results: The response rate of the survey was 67% (n=4032). The use of CAM was 31% in the preceding two days.

The most commonly used CAM products were vitamins and minerals, followed by fish oils and fatty acids. Prescription and OTC medicines were used concomitantly with CAM by one-third of the parents.

CAM was frequently used by parents over 30 years (33%), female parents (32%), highly educated parents (35%), and parents with high monthly net income (3000-3999 euros, 34%). The users of CAM had more negative attitudes towards medicines than non-users of CAM.

Conclusions: Our findings are in accordance with those of previous studies that women over 30 years of age with a high education and income typically use CAMs.

Finnish parents seem to use CAMs as complementary rather than alternative to medicines. Health care professionals should take into consideration both the concomitant use as well as the negative attitudes among CAM users in encounters with the parents.

Author: Katri Hameen-AnttilaUlla NiskalaSanna SiponenRiitta Ahonen
Credits/Source: BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2011, 11:107

by PF Louis, NaturalNews

There are many interlocking financial conflicts of interest between Big Pharma and medical institutions. Many members of major medical groups, universities, and medical journals also have financial ties with pharmaceutical companies.

These Big Pharma connections push dangerous drugs into the collective consciousness while keeping safe and inexpensive non-drug health solutions out of public awareness.

Medical Journals and Big Pharma

Dr. Marcia Angell, author ofThe Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It,issued this statement after her tenure withThe New England Journal of Medicineas Editor in Chief: “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published.”

Pharmaceutical companies even hire ghost writers to concoct favorable product reports. Then those companies pay corrupt doctors or researchers to sign those biased reports that are then published in medical journals.

There have been occasions of medical journal reports claiming successful medical drug trials, but no one tried the drugs! These were totally faked trial reports. Yet they were published in medical journals and quoted by medical practitioners who prescribed them.

This sort of dishonesty was part of selling Vioxx, the heart medicine that killed more than it cured for a few years before finally being withdrawn from the market.

Funding Medical Societies

The AMA (American Medical Society) is not the only medical society. It’s the largest and most encompassing one. But there are as many medical societies as medical specialists. Medical equipment and drug manufacturers infiltrate those specific specialty groups to sell their wares.

An interesting recent expose on one such group, The Heart Rhythm Society with its 5000 plus mostly cardiologist membership, received half of last year’s $16 million budget from companies that make drugs and devices to treat arrhythmia.

Adding to this influence, those same companies had 12 of the 18 Heart Rythm society’s board members on their payroll as consultants and lecturers. Do you see the revolving doors and dual membership conflicts of interest?

They are not rare. They are business as usual and common with Big Pharma and government agencies as well.

The Cancer and Vaccine Industries

According to Reshma Jagsi, M.D., D.Phil., assistant professor of radiation oncology at the University of Michigan Medical School, almost one-third of cancer research reports surveyed in the major medical journals hadobvious conflicts of interests. Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/026314_c…

The vaccine industry may be the most corrupt and influential aspect of Big Pharma yet. Health Ranger Mike Adams recently revealed a network involving the vaccine industry, the military, and the IOM (Institute of Medicine), a strange alliance at first glance.

But the more one knows of the dark side of vaccinations, the more it makes sense for those demanding covert depopulation efforts under the cover of humanitarian aid.

The IOM is as influential as it gets. Whatever they say goes with the mainstream media and authority figures in all levels of government. If the IOM says a vaccine is safe and effective, there is no further discussion. Read more at:http://www.naturalnews.com/033455_I…

Money Talks Way Too Much

We all need to make a living. But when money pervasively trumps truth and disregards health, there is no protection from the harm it causes.

Sincere health practitioners and MDs who step out the Big Pharma box are persecuted and prosecuted for healing without harm. Their lives are often ruined. The liars who falsely promote dangerous drugs make plea bargains or pay affordable fines, if caught, after many are harmed.

Sources for more information:

Jon Rappoport quotes Dr. Marcia Angell and elaborateshttp://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2…

Medical societies maintain secret financial ties to drug companies
http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/sto…

Big Pharma medical journal ghost writers write and doctors signhttp://www.naturalnews.com/029945_H…

http://www.naturalnews.com/033455_I…

http://www.naturalnews.com/026314_c…

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/033583_financial_ties_medical_societies.html#ixzz1YGGur3XS

Coming soon… a vaccine documentary that will leave no doubt in your mind that the “science” of vaccination is a fraud, that the moral decision to vaccinate is not what you thought, and that vaccines are one of the worse causes of illness, suffering, and death in the history of mankind.

Written and produced by: Clint Richardson

This movie is free, and will be posted soon at…

TheCorporationNation.com

by S.L. Baker, NaturalNews

Back in 2008, Mike Adams sounded an alarm about something the mainstream media seemed to know little about — Big Pharma companies had long been paying in-house writers to ghostwrite scientific research articles then paying (Adams called it “bribing”) doctors and high-level academics to pretend they were the authors (http://www.naturalnews.com/023074_g…).

Unfortunately, the use of ghostwriters and guest authored journal papers hasn’t gone away. But here’s good news:two prominent attorneys are speaking out that the practice is not just a sham but constitutes legalfraud.

So why be concerned aboutghostwritingin the medical profession? It turns out thatBig Pharmaand other medical industry sponsoredresearchhas been published with the names of academic “guest authors” tacked on — although these highly degreed “authors” may have made slim to no contributions to the so-called research.

Yet these very articles have been published in leadingmedical journalsand through the years have helped hype hormone replacement therapy, numerous anti-depressants and other potentially dangerous drugs including Vioxx, Neurontin and Fen-Phen. In turn, these articles are often cited by theirdrugcompany sponsors to promote off-label use of their products and bring in more millions to the prescription pharmaceuticalindustry.

The ghostwriting and guest authoring of industry-controlled studies clearly raise what the lawexpertscall “serious ethical and legal concerns, bearing on integrity ofmedical researchand scientific evidence used in legal disputes.”

It is such a breach of ethics that Professors Simon Stern and Trudo Lemmens of the University of Toronto law faculty have flat out called for “guest” authors of medical and scientific articles to be charged with professional and academic misconduct and fraud, even if the articles attributed to the “ghost” or “guest” writers contain factually correct information. The law experts compare the academic “ghostwriting” and tacked on bogus academic authorships to racketeering and even the world’s oldest profession.

In a media release about theirarticle(which was just published in the journalPLoS Medicine), the law professors stated: “Guest authorship is a disturbing violation of academic integrity standards, which form the basis of scientific reliability. The false respectability afforded toclaimsof safety and effectiveness through the use of academic investigators risks undermining the integrity of biomedical research and patient care.”

Lemmens, who is also a member of the University of Toronto’s school ofmedicinefaculty, had particularly hard hitting words for academics who participate in guest authorship which involves “lending” their names and receiving substantial credit where little or none is due. “It’s a prostitution of their academic standing,” said Lemmens. “And it undermines the integrity of the entire academic publication system.”

In their article, entitled “Legal Remedies for Medical Ghostwriting: Imposing Fraud Liability on Guest Authors of Ghostwritten Articles,” Stern and Lemmens argue that because medical journals, academic institutions, and professional disciplinary bodies have done little if anything to enforce effective sanctions against this practice of bogus authorship of research papers, a more successful effective approach would be to take legal action. Imposing liability on the guest authors “..may give rise to claims that could be pursued in a class action based on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).”

“The same fraud could support claims of fraud on the court against a pharmaceutical company that has used ghostwritten articles in litigation,” the law professors added. Moreover, that kind of claim could prevent the Big Pharma sponsor of “ghosted” and “guest authored” articles from presenting them asevidencein court, and could result in sanctions against attorneys who try to use any of these articles as legally valid evidence in a malpractice, drug injury or other case.

For more information:
http://media.utoronto.ca/media-rele…

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/033218_ghost_writers_medical_journals.html#ixzz1U5VDAMHj

Related articles

• Guest authorship, a form of ghost writing, constitutes legal fraud (esciencenews.com)
• Medical ghostwriters should be sued, lawyers argue (ctv.ca)
• Scientists credited on ghostwritten articles ‘should be charged with fraud’ (guardian.co.uk)

The following is a press release from the National Academy of Sciences.  I got this last week and neglected to post it.  There are some great resources and materials there for all kinds of scientific subjects.  Worth perusing!

The press release …

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The National Academies Press Makes All PDF Books Free to Download; More Than 4,000 Titles Now Available Free to All Readers

WASHINGTON — As of today all PDF versions of books published by the National Academies Press will be downloadable to anyone free of charge. This includes a current catalog of more than 4,000 books plus future reports produced by the Press. The mission of the National Academies Press (NAP) — publisher for the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council — is to disseminate the institutions’ content as widely as possible while maintaining financial sustainability. To that end, NAP began offering free content online in 1994. Before today’s announcement, all PDFs were free to download in developing countries, and 65 percent of them were available for free to any user.

 

“Our business model has evolved so that it is now financially viable to put this content out to the entire world for free,” said Barbara Kline Pope, executive director for the National Academies Press. “This is a wonderful opportunity to make a positive impact by more effectively sharing our knowledge and analyses.”

 

Based on the performance of NAP’s current free PDFs, projections suggest that this change will enhance dissemination of PDF reports from about 700,000 downloads per year to more than 3 million by 2013.

 

Printed books will continue to be available for purchase through the NAP website and traditional channels. The free PDFs are available exclusively from the NAP’s website, http://www.nap.edu/, and remain subject to copyright laws. PDF versions exist for the vast majority of NAP books. Exceptions include some books that were published before the advent of PDFs; books from the Joseph Henry Press imprint; and in cases where contractually prohibited, such as reference books in the Nutrient Requirements of Domestic Animals series.

The listed topics include …

Agriculture
Behavioral and Social Sciences
Biography and Autobiography
Biology and Life Sciences
Computers and Information Technology
Conflict and Security Issues
Earth Sciences
Education
Energy and Energy Conservation
Engineering and Technology
Environment and Environmental Studies
Food & Nutrition
Health and Medicine
Industry and Labor
Math, Chemistry and Physics
Policy for Science and Technology
Space and Aeronautics
Transportation and Infrastructure
Gifts and Apparel

Bookmark this. The NAP website with available books …http://www.nap.edu/

by Sebastian Sheppis and Justin Silver
from Issue #376 of the Health Freedom Network Newsletter

The cannabis plant is both a subject of wonder and of derision. The plant is so ingrained into western culture as “evil” that its ban was included in the charter for the League of Nations and later the United Nations.

The cannabis plant family includes several plants, some of which produce tetrahydrocannabinols (THC) in quantities large enough to be absorbed by humans. Most cannabis plants are actually benign – these are commonly known as “hemp” and have been grown for most of known human civilization. THC-producing plants are commonly called “marijuana” in the U.S. and have varying levels of THC in them according to their strain (hybrid type).

The Politics of Pot

For centuries, cannabis has had known medicinal uses, but the scientific exploration of those uses has been stilted by political opposition and societal pressures against marijuana as a street drug. Although little evidence exists to show cannabis as a negative recreational substance – especially as compared to the effects of alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, and other drugs both legal and not – the push to keep it as an illicit substance remains.

Despite this, while illegal in all parts of the world, cannabis has been decriminalized in many areas and legalized as medication in others. Currently, cannabis as a medicine (or for personal use) is legal in Austria, Canada, Finland, Germany, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and 15 states plus the District of Columbia in the United States.

Cannabis In Science

The discovery of cannabinoids, receptors in most animals, including humans, that react specifically with the compounds present in cananbis, changed the way medical science looked at marijuana as medicine. This discovery in the 1990s lead to a wide scale research push into the beneficial uses (and possible synthesis) of cannabis and its active compounds. In 2010, more than 2,500 reputable scientific studies about cannabis were published world wide.

Cannabis has been found to be beneficial for the amelioration of nausea and vomiting, stimulation of hunger, lowering of intraocular eye pressure, for relief of muscle over-stimulation (spasms), and more. In fact, the studies showing the efficacy of cannabis and cannabinoids continue to grow daily.

The compounds in cannabis or the plant or resins it produces are used to treat side effects and symptoms in AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis and others.

Using Cannabis for Medication

Public perception commonly treats marijuana use as a “hippie” or “pot head” thing with visions of young people coughing thick smoke in rooms covered in psychedelic posters and drawings. The reality is that most medicinal cannabis users do smoke, but often they use vaporizers, water filtration systems (bongs or hookas), etc.

While the press seems enamored with the more creative (but generally less effective) cannabis intake methods such as “pot brownies” or THC-imbued candy and soda pop, many serious medical users are finding more potent and less debilitating ways to ingest their medication.

A growing number of medicinal users, however, are getting right to the compounds that do the most good by distilling or otherwise processing cannabis buds and resins to create pastes, cremes, tinctures, and other ways of using the medicine without smoking or even getting the associated high (psychoactive effects).

Pharmaceutical companies, by the same token, are working on both synthetic and naturally-derived options for isolating and distributing cannabinoids as pills. While the practice is controversial, it is lending some legitimacy to the idea of medical cannabis in the wider medical community.

The Future of Medical Marijuana

Although the current market and science behind cannabis as a medicinal plant is still young, the fundamentals behind how it works and why it works have been ironed out enough that refuting it as a medication is to ignore science. Yet those who continue to refute its medicinal properties are either in the scientific establishment themselves (often as medical practitioners) or attempt to cite scientific backing for their claims.

Although some side effects and psychological possibilities may exist for cannabinoids, these are far fewer and less severe than the same side effects for most pharmaceuticals that are legally on the market. Many of the so-called studies that claim marijuana has extreme adverse effects, such as schizophrenia in teenagers, are fraught with bad methodology or questionable conclusions and are what the medical industry calls “proof of preconception” – they are created merely to “prove” a preconceived notion.

Sadly, that latter event is something that happens all too often in today’s politically-charged science, especially in medicine.

Sebastian Scheppis and Justin Silver are the owners of CannaCentral.com, a medical marijuana directory and community website. The site features location-based search tools for strains and dispensaries, useful medical and clinic information and more.

 

from HealthFreedomNetwork

The United States Department of Agriculture has changed the rules for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) with a new program called the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Pilot Project.  This new program is for companies working with genetically modified organisms (GMO), genetically engineered (GE), or genetic modification (GM) who must complete an Environmental Assessment or an Environmental Impact Statement on their GMO/GE/GM food when requesting deregulated status.

The trouble is, this new program is set up so that all of the documentation and analysis is done by the organization attempting to get their GMO deregulated.  In other words, if a GM giant like Monsanto wants a new strain of GE what to be approved as a deregulated seed so that they can sell it to farmers, all they have to do is prepare their own assessment and analysis of the product’s likely impact, give it to the USDA, and receive approval through APHIS.

Obviously, these companies will be completely honest and forthcoming about the negative effects of their seeds and plants.  Right?  Ya, sure.

This entire process removes all semblance of objectivity from the support documents and scientific inquiry required for approval.  It basically tells the Monsantos of the world: “If you can spin it well enough so it looks legitimate, you’ll get approval.”

Want to try to stop this?  The Alliance for Natural Health is asking people to join an email flood to APHIS to force a change to this policy via public opinion.  You can send your own email through their system at this link.