The Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel
Unethical Business Practices, Corruption, and False Product Claims
- A Public Health Threat -
by: Arthur M. Evangelista, PhD
former FDA Investigator
Research data, public records, and regulatory evidence indicates that false drug claims, and unethical or fraudulent pharmaceutical clinical practices and marketing practices create serious health threats for individuals (and their families) who use prescription or conventional OTC
(over-the-counter) drugs or health products.[1]
Deceptions in testing, clinical trials, product safety, and marketing may also occur in concert
with corrupted or negligent regulatory processes or from corporate-friendly political pressure greasing the "wheels of the regulatory process"; and sometimes all three occur simultaneously.[2] We coined a term: " Government and Corporate corruption, KILLS "
The Pharmaceutical Cartel
The term 'pharmaceutical cartel' is a descriptive name for the politically influential, profit-driven assortment of pharmaceutical-chemical, and biotech firms headquartered in the United States
and around the globe.
Interestingly, it seems that a few of these older, larger drug firms are 'quasi-offspring' from the dubious mold of the drug company, I.G. Farben, (circa 1920's Germany). Records show that I.G. Farben engaged in human experimentation and was a producer of chemical warfare and population control agents.[3] Firms, such as Monsanto (now Pharmacia-Pfizer), G.D. Searle, and Bayer appear to have historical ties to this pre-WWII drug firm. This connection includes ties to the U.S. Chemical Weapons Research Programs, as well.
FALSE CLAIMS, Public Manipulation, and CASH BACK ...
A review of financial statements from 1999, indicates that the global drug industry pocketed more than $ 471 billion (U.S) dollars[i], and profits are growing. Canadian 1999 drug sales, alone, were almost $ 9 billion.[ii] That's a lot of little pink pills, folks.
Before a drug is officially approved and then offered for clinical use or sale, prescription drugs (allegedly) undergo relevant, and stringent 'safety' and efficacy testing by the pharmaceutical manufacturers, themselves (or their subcontractors).
To support the large amount of profits involved with pharmaceuticals, we may see falsification or manipulation of drug data or product test methods to help "ease the adverse effects" associated with a particular formulation.[4]
A classic example of falsification of test data and deceptive marketing practices occurred in 1995 with the diet drug, Fen-Phen.[5] Basically, Fen-Phen affects serotonin levels in the brain, providing a slight elevation of mood.[6] As a diet drug for weight loss, it was not very effective.
About only 3% of the individuals taking Fen-Phen (Redux) experienced any weight loss.
What did happen, as reported in the August 8, 1977 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine (Dr. Heidi Connelly of the Mayo Clinic), was that users of Fen-Phen began experiencing pulmonary hypertension and heart-value damage.[iii] This resulted in
approximately 130 reported American deaths, and heart valve damage on a massive scale.
Sometimes deceptive marketing practices (false advertising) can make up for a products "secret failures". What a drug company cannot manipulate in the lab, it will manipulate in the press and medical journals, or through direct false testimony or claims about its product.[7]
Another product we have seen in many recent commercials, is Celebrex, an anti-arthritic drug. Promoted by its maker, Monsanto (Pharmacia), Celebrex was hyped as having lower gastrointestinal problems and complications. This marketing angle suggested that Celebrex had
a "proven" safety advantage over its older competition, diclofenac and ibuprofen.[8]
Written medical journal articles appeared, emphasizing the "favorable findings" to the medical community. This false journal information was provided by public relations 'spin doctors'
In addition to signing ghost-written promotional articles, sometimes medical professionals are bribed with a stipend to promote drug products, or paid to help enhance the drug firm's political or professional clout, influence, or public perception.
A subsequent investigation into Celebrex claims and test data revealed gatrointenstinal problems. Adverse reactions of gastrointestinal and stomach ulcers were instigated by Celebrex, showing no such safety advantage over the older medications. This further fueled concern "for less
obvious adverse effects from decreased blood flow to the heart".[11]
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Missing or Hidden Prozac Data Found !!
Report Indicates Lilly Knew of
Health Risks ...
Published January 1, 2005
LONDON -- A British medical publication said Friday that it had given U.S. regulators
confidential drug company documents suggesting a link between the antidepressant
Prozac, and a heightened risk of suicide attempts and violence.
The British Medical Journal reported in its latest issue that documents it received
from an anonymous source indicated that Prozac's manufacturer, Eli Lilly and Co.,
was aware in the 1980s that the drug could have potentially dangerous or fatal
side-effects !!
The journal said the documents, reportedly missing for a decade, had formed part of
a 1994 lawsuit
against Eli Lilly on behalf of victims of a workplace shooting in Louisville.
Joseph Wesbecker,
the man who killed eight people and himself in 1989, had been prescribed Prozac a month
before the shootings, as others in more recent incidents resulting in death.
Eli Lilly won the case but later disclosed that it had reached a secret settlement with the plaintiffs
during the trial.
The journal said that one of the records, dated November 1988, reported that fluoxetine,
the generic name for Prozac, had caused extreme and dangerous "behavioral disturbances" in
clinical trials.
The journal said it had turned the documents over to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,
which had agreed to review them.
The journal said the office of Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.)
also was examining the documents to determine whether Eli Lilly had withheld data from the public
and possibly the FDA.
"This is an alarming study that should have been shared with the public from
the get-go, not 16 years later," Hinchey was quoted as saying.
Lilly representatives said it had always
been the company's objective to disclose data about the safety
and efficacy of Prozac.
"To our knowledge, there has never been any allegation of missing documents from the Wesbecker
trial or any other trial involving Lilly," the company said Friday in a statement.
Lily has said it has consistently provided regulatory agencies results from clinical trials and safety monitoring."Based on this, Lilly believes that there is no new scientific information to review on this topic," the company's statement said.
In an earlier statement issued to the British journal, Lilly said Prozac
"has helped to significantly improve millions of lives." (...while killing others...)
"It is one of the most studied drugs in the history of medicine and has been prescribed for more
than 50 million people worldwide in 2002. The safety and efficacy of Prozac is well studied,
well documented and well established," that statement said.Then why are we having this conversation ??
In October, the FDA ordered that all antidepressants carry warnings that they "increase the risk of
suicidal thinking and behavior" in children.
Prozac Chemical Make-Up
This is why Fluorides are a key ingredient of Prozac and many other psychiatric drugs. Prozac, scientific name Fluoxetine, is 94% fluoride.
Toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix demonstrated in the mid-1980's that rats given fluoride as youngsters or adults became passive, underactive and lethargic. This explains, in part, the obesity issue in our country. This subsequently makes you think about why the American people are so "laid back" about rampant corruption in our fascist or corporate-government. If you wanted to take over a country and its citizens, what would be the easiest way to do it ?
Drug the population; poison them; and keep information hidden from them...just what the government is doing right this very minute !!! Its time to wake up people...
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PROZAC CHEMICAL DESCRIPTION
Fluoxetine hydrochloride is an antidepressant for oral administration; it is chemically unrelated to
tricyclic, tetracyclic, or other available antidepressant agents.
It is designated (±)-N-methyl-3-phenyl-3-[(a,a,a-trifluoro-p-tolyl)-oxy]propylamine hydrochloride
and has the empirical formula of C17H18F3NO•HCl. Its molecular weight is 345.79.
Fluoxetine hydrochloride is a white to off-white crystalline solid with a solubility of 14 mg/ml in water. Each Prozac Pulvule contains fluoxetine hydrochloride equivalent to 10 mg (32.3 mcmol), 20 mg
(64.7 mcmol), or 40 mg (129.3 mmol) of fluoxetine.
The Pulvules also contain starch, gelatin, silicone, titanium dioxide, iron dioxide, and other inactive ingredients. The 10 mg and 20 mg Pulvules also contain FD&C blue no. 1, and the 40 mg Pulvule also contains FD&C blue no. 1 and FD&C yellow no. 6. Each Prozac tablet contains fluoxetine HCl equivalent to 10 mg (32.3 mmol) of fluoxetine.
The tablets also contain microcrystalline cellulose, magnesium stearate, crospovidone, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, titanium dioxide, polyethylene glycol, and yellow iron oxide. In addition to the above ingredients, the 10 mg tablet contains FD&C blue no. 1 aluminum lake, and polysorbate 80.
Psychopharmacology of fluoride: a review.
Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago Medical School, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Although the blood-brain barrier is relatively impermeable to fluoride, it does not pose an absolute barrier and fluoride has the ability to enter the brain. The literature was examined to assess the quality of the evidence for cerebral impairment occurring due to exposure to fluoride from therapeutic or environmental sources.
Several surveys of persons chronically exposed to industrial fluoride pollution reported symptoms related to impaired central nervous system functioning with impaired cognition and memory. Examination of individual case reports showed the evidence for etiological relationships between symptoms and fluoride exposure to be of variable quality.
The evidence was seen as being suggestive of a relationship rather than being definitive. The difficulties with concentration and memory described in relation to exposure to fluoride did not occur in isolation but were accompanied by other symptoms of which general malaise and fatigue were central. Possible mechanisms whereby fluoride could affect brain function include influencing calcium currents, altering enzyme configuration by forming strong hydrogen bonds with amide groups, inhibiting cortical adenylyl cyclase activity and increasing phosphoinositide hydrolysis.
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The Drugging Of America with Fluoride:
American soldiers who entered Germany at the end of World War 2 made the liberating of POW camps a priority. At camp after camp, they found stockpiles of fluoride stored near the water supply. When they asked what the fluoride was used for, they were told that the Germans used the substance as an additive to the prisoners water, to make them docile. This is the first known incidence of intentionally fluoridating drinking water.
This practice was soon adapted to American use. By the time General Patton took his Third Army to Berlin, the US Army was adding it to the soldiers water to keep them calm and passive. Patton strenuously objected, and refused to allow fluoridation of his troops. (Patton was later killed when his jeep was struck by an Army truck. This accident injured the General, but it didn't kill him. On the way to the hospital, another Army truck hit him, this time resulting in his death.
The mysterious death of America's great General Patton will be the subject of a future story here.)
Within a few years, most of the drinking water in the United States had been fluoridated, in the interests of preventing tooth decay. All of our major brands of toothpaste contain fluoride. Most beverages and foods contain sodium fluoride. This is not a naturally-occurring phenomenon - it is intentionally introduced. The most important question becomes "does fluoride do what it claims to do - prevent tooth decay?" The answer is that it does not.
Not only is there no proof that fluoride prevents tooth decay, there is powerful evidence to the contrary.
The largest study ever taken on the matter was conducted in Tucson, Arizona in 1992. 26,000 elementary school students were involved in the study, which produced empirical evidence that the more fluoride a child consumes, the more cavities will appear!
The study was conducted by the University of Arizona under the supervision of world-renowned Professor Emeritus Cornelius Steelink.
Of course, most of the countries on Earth rejected fluoridated water years ago. Only the United States and a small handful of countries under our influence continue to add this toxin to their public drinking water supplies. China discontinued the practice after finding that fluoride in the water lowers the ability of children to learn.
There is also scientific evidence that osteoporosis, Alzheimers Disease, and other aluminum-related diseases are caused by fluoride - an aluminum by-product.Research chemist Charles Perkins said, "Repeated doses of infinitesimal amounts of fluoride will in time reduce an individual's power to resist domination, by slowly poisoning and narcotizing a certain area of the brain, thus making him submissive to the will of those who wish to govern him.
The real reason behind water fluoridation is not to benefit children's teeth. If this were the real reason there are many ways in which it could be done that are much easier, cheaper, and far more effective. The real purpose behind water fluoridation is to reduce the resistance of the masses to domination and control and loss of liberty."
So, what is fluoride anyway?
First of all, it needs to be stated that the 'substance' referred to as 'Fluoride' is a misnomer - there is no such substance listed in the periodic chart of the elements, nor in the prestigious CRC handbook, nor in the sacred 'bible' of the pharmaceutical industry - the illustrious 'Merck Index'. Instead, we find a GAS called Fluorine - and from the use of this gas in various industries such as aluminum manufacturing and the nuclear industry certain toxic byproducts are created which have 'captured' fluorine molecules.
One such toxic, poisonous 'byproduct' is called sodium fluoride - which according to the Merck Index is primarily used as rat and cockroach poison and is also the active ingredient in most toothpastes and as an additive to drinking water.
The proof that it is a toxic poison can be found by reading the warning label on any tube of toothpaste.
Sodium Fluoride is also one of the basic ingredients in both Prozac and Sarin Nerve Gas, as well as a host of anti-depressant drugs and commercial insecticides. Sodium Fluoride is a hazardous waste by-product of the nuclear and aluminum industries. In addition to being the primary ingredient in rat and cockroach poison, it is also a main ingredient in anesthetic, hypnotic, and psychiatric drugs as well as military nerve gas!
Historically, this substance was quite expensive for chemical companies to dispose of, but in the 50's and 60's Alcoa and the entire aluminum industry - with a vast overabundance of the toxic waste - sold the FDA and our government on the insane but highly profitable idea of buying this poison at a 20,000% markup and then injecting it into our water supply as well as into the nation's toothpaste.
When sodium fluoride is injected into our drinking water, its level is approximately 1 part-per-million (ppm), but since we only drink ½ of one percent of the total water supply, the hazardous chemical literally goes down the drain.
The chemical industry has not only a free hazardous waste disposal system - but we have also paid them millions of dollars in the process.
Independent scientific evidence over the past 50 plus years has shown that sodium fluoride shortens our life span, promotes various cancers and mental disturbances, and most importantly, makes humans stupid, docile,
and subservient, all in one neat little package. Honest scientists who have attempted to blow the whistle on fluoride have consistently been professionally black-listed, and their valid points never have received the ink they deserve.
In 1952 a slick PR campaign rammed the concept of 'fluoridation' through our Public Health departments and various dental organizations. This slick campaign was more akin to a highly emotional "beer salesman convention" instead of the objective, scientifically researched program that it should have been.
It has continued in the same vein right up to the present day - and now sodium fluoride use has now become 'usual and customary'. To illustrate the emotional vs. the scientific nature of this issue, just look at the response given by people (perhaps yourself included?) when the subject of fluoridation comes up.
You need to ask yourself, "Is this particular response based on emotions born of tradition, or is it truly unbiased and based instead on thoroughly researched objectivity?
"There is a tremendous amount of emotion attached to the topic of fluoride usage - but I can't find even one objective, double blind study that even remotely links fluoride to healthy teeth at any age. Instead, I hear "9 out of 10 dentists recommend 'fluoride' toothpaste".
Truly independent scientists who've spent a large portion of their lives studying this subject have been hit with a surprising amount of unfair character assassination from strong vested-interest groups who profit from the public's ignorance and illnesses.
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If your not Royally ticked off after you read this article ...... then what we are all being exposed to is working! But why! Why are we being poisoned? Is the human potential so great that we have to be covertly controlled?
What right do the governments of this world have to do this to us. What might we accomplish if we didn’t have these hidden poisons in most products on the market.
Its time to take a stand and shout,
WE’RE MAD AS HELL AND WE AREN’T TAKING THIS ANY MORE!!!
http://www.xpeditionsmagazine.com/magazine/articles/kathy/Flor.html
Over the past 50 years we have slowly been exposed to and consumed hazardous waste and we’re paying them to do it to us!
We deserve to live a healthly life. I personally am not going to give away my will or my health to anyone.
How do you feel about this??? Have you had enough? Let me know your thoughts after you have read this......
K.W.
It has been a long established joke about not drinking the water in Third World countries. Now it is here in America that the water has been declared unsafe to drink, and it is no joke. Whereas the greatest problem with water in the underdeveloped nations is usually such as amoebic dysentery, serious but reversible, in the U.S. it is rat poison one gets in the drinking water—and it is no accident!
Extensive studies, ignored with a yawn by those who believe they are being served well by the media and various dental associations, have shown that the consumption of fluoride in drinking water and prescription doses is extremely harmful and deleterious in a number of ways.
Reputable researchers from such as Harvard and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and numerable other research investigators, have shown that fluoridation of drinking water can result in brain and other physiological damage producing such abnormalities as:
· Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
· Hyperactivity or passive malaise—depending on whether exposure is pre- or postnatal
· Alzheimer’s disease or senile dementia
· The death of brain cells directly involved in the decision making processes
· Cracked, pitted and brittle teeth and bones not being considered as a potential leading cause of osteoporosis
· Higher hip fracture rates
· Reduction in intelligence and increased learning disability
The list goes on of primary and ancillary defects and damage caused by the addition of a substance used in rat poison.
In a 1997 copyrighted article once seriously considered for publication by The New York Times Magazine, investigative reporter Joel Griffiths followed a convoluted trail of once-secret documents stretching as far back as the Manhattan Project.
In a subsequent article entitled, “Fluoride, Teeth, and the Atomic Bomb” Griffiths collaborated with journalist Christopher Bryson to piece together not only the origin of water fluoridation, but its secret rationale and the insidious reasoning behind the introduction into the drinking water of two-thirds of American cities of what is nothing more than a toxic waste product.
Griffiths told The WINDS that The New York Times Magazine had shown great interest in his original article to the point of suggesting specific rewrites resulting even in the submission of a final working draft. Then, according to Griffiths, their interested suddenly disappeared. Later when Bryson joined with Griffiths the two journalists had a similar experience with The Christian Science Monitor who had actually accepted their final co-authored work for publication but never put it in print and finally canceled.
The authors, who have worked for such as the BBC, New York Public Television, The Christian Science Monitor and others, boldly introduced their work by stating, “The following article exposes the biggest ongoing medical experiment ever carried out by the United States government on an unsuspecting population,” and continues with meticulously verified sources derived largely from documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. ***
“One of the most toxic chemicals known,” they claim, “fluoride rapidly emerged as the leading chemical health hazard of the U.S. atomic bomb program—both for workers and for nearby communities, the documents reveal.”
Other revelations include:
“Much of the original proof that fluoride is safe for humans in low doses was generated by A-bomb program scientists, who had been secretly ordered to provide ‘evidence useful in litigation’ against defense contractors for fluoride injury to citizens. The first lawsuits against the U.S. A-bomb program were not over radiation, but over fluoride damage, the documents show.”
Dr. John R. Lee, MD[2], was chairman of the Environmental Health Committee of his local medical association in Marin County, California when he came head-to-head with the fluoride issue. According to Dr. Lee, the county had continually pushed water fluoridation on the local ballot until it passed by a slim one per cent.
“The medical society was receiving a lot of phone calls from people who were wondering what the truth was about the benefit, or lack of benefit, of fluoride. As a result, they turned it over to the Environmental Health Committee.”
Dr. Lee was the perfect, unbiased investigator because, “Up until then,” he told The WINDS, “I didn’t know anything about fluoride, so our committee got the scientific references from both sides of the issue. We studied the references that led to more references—and we tracked it all down and found that the fluoride literature is mostly hogwash.
“Then,” he continues, “we asked the medical society if we could do a study to determine how much fluoride there already was in the food—because in Canada they had been monitoring that and found that there was a lot of fluoride in their food chain due to, among other things, processing with fluoridated water.
“Our study of the food that children eat determined that there was plenty of fluoride in it and there was really no reason to add more to the water because it already exceeded what the public health department determined was the maximum daily dose.
“That’s when I became aware of what was going on and went to testify at the State Board of Health. It was amazing to see these guys come out with their references that really aren’t references—statements taken out of someone else’s paper that wasn’t based on anything—a kind of circular, self-referencing research. [”Joe said it so now I can quote Joe, even though Joe was just quoting me.”]
They would take statements made in textbooks that were published before there was any fluoridation and food was not being processed with fluoridated water—and they would just change the dates.
We found all these tricks being played with the data. It was then that I discovered that it was not a scientific dispute but dishonest trickery. It was all a sham.”
When The WINDS asked Dr. Lee why, according to his research into the controversy, he thought there was so much political force driving the fluoridation movement, the physician/scientist said, “It’s a toxic waste product of many types of industry; for instance, glass production, phosphate fertilizer production and many others.
They would have no way to dispose of the tons of fluoride waste they produce unless they could find some use for it, so they made up this story about it being good for dental health. Then they can pass it through everyone’s bodies and into the sewer.” [A novel approach to toxic waste disposal—just feed it to the people and let their bodies “detoxify” it]. “It is a well coordinated effort,” Dr. Lee added, “to keep it from being declared for what it is—a toxic waste.”
This could cause one to wonder if the public were not already aware of the dangers of radioactive plutonium waste, what means the government would use to dispose of it.
Dr. Lee’s argument carries considerable credibility in light of the revelations proceeding from Griffiths’ and Bryson’s research into the previously classified documents. That research shows, as mentioned previously, that the idea of fluoride being good for people’s teeth originated with the atomic bomb’s Manhattan Project.
That “fact” that fluoride was beneficial constituted the government’s cardinal defense against lawsuits stemming from an environmental contamination that took place from the Du Pont chemical factory in Deepwater, New Jersey in 1944. “The factory was then producing millions of pounds of fluoride for the Manhattan Project, the ultra-secret U.S. military program racing to produce the world’s first atomic bomb.”
It should be noted here that, without exception, all scientists interviewed during the course of researching this article agreed upon one overwhelming motivation for the government’s vigorous promotion of water fluoridation and other dental applications of fluoride—though they’ve known since the mid 30’s of the highly toxic nature of the substance.
That unanimous opinion was that it ultimately posed a very tidy solution to the disposal of a very nasty toxic waste.
One EPA scientist quoted previously, Dr. William Hirzy, went so far as to conjecture that the red ink that would be produced by the fertilizer industry alone, if it were required to properly dispose of fluoride as a waste product, would exceed $100 million a year. As the legendary New York City Police Detective, Frank Serpico, was once warned, “With that kind of money you don’t [mess] around.”
The WINDS has obtained a copy of a letter dated March, 1983 on EPA letterhead, written by then U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Deputy Assistant Administrator for Water, Rebecca Hanmer. In that document Ms. Hanmer frankly admits that:
In regard to the use of fluosilicic acid as a source of fluoride for fluoridation, this agency [the EPA] regards such use as an ideal environmental solution to a long-standing problem. By recovering by-product [read that: toxic waste-product] fluosilicic acid from fertilizer manufacturing, water and air pollution are minimized, and water utilities have a low-cost source of fluoride available to them.
Keeping in mind that the EPA considers a spill of more than twenty-five pounds of common table salt an environmental hazard or “incident”, in fairness it must be asked, first, is fluoride really effective in reducing tooth decay and, secondly, at the same time is it safe for drinking water?
The answer to the first question: not according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:
...Investigators have failed to show a consistent correlation between anticaries [cavities] activity and the specific amounts of fluoride incorporated into enamel.
...Since the 1970s, caries scores have been declining in both fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. ...National decreases have not occurred in all countries, notably Brazil and France where the caries scores have not changed, and Japan, Nigeria, and Thailand where the scores have increased.” [3] [Japan & Thailand report high dietary fluoride levels].
A TRAIL OF CASUALTIES
The political and financial forces surrounding the fluoride industry, according to Dr. Lee and others, are vicious and unrelenting in their assaults upon anyone daring to place themselves at odds with it. Dr. Lee briefly outlined cases with which he is personally acquainted where reputable doctors and scientists have had their careers either ruined or severely crippled as the result of trying to introduce truth into this darkness-shrouded global enterprise.
Cases in point:
· During the time of the election [to decide on whether or not to fluoridate the county’s water supply], Lee said the head of the Marin County Public Health Department was claiming “it was beneficial and perfectly safe. After the election, when I discovered all these things, I presented them to her, showing her all the tricks that had been used. She then asked the state public health department if she had the power to stop the fluoridation, realizing she had been mistaken. The next thing I knew,” Lee continued, “she had taken early retirement and left for New Orleans to take care of her mother. She told me that if she made any statement about it at all she would have lost all her retirement benefits.”
· Dr. Allan S. Gray, a British Columbia health officer, did a study of all school children’s teeth in that province, which is only about 15% fluoridated. He found that the teeth of those children in British Columbia where there was no fluoridation were in much better condition than in the fluoridated areas. His findings were published in the Journal of the Canadian Dental Association, entitled, “Time for a New Baseline?” [4]. So the message was that fluoridation did not provide any benefit to children and for publishing that research the top public health dentist in British Columbia was demoted and sent to Ottawa where he was put in a basement office and ordered to never speak to anybody about the matter again. If he did, he would lose his standing in the public health department of Canada and very likely all of his retirement benefits.
· Dr. John Colquhon, an Aukland, New Zealand dental researcher with a prominent university, performed studies on children’s teeth and the neighboring towns that were not fluoridated and discovered the children had no difference in cavity rate—they just all had fluorosed teeth [damage done by the presence of fluoride in their drinking water]. When he published his findings he was demoted and lost all of his retirement benefits and was forced to retire. As a Ph.D. he had to take a teaching position—all of the people he had considered his colleagues for thirty years suddenly didn’t recognize him any more.”
· Phyllis Mullenix, Ph.D., formerly of Harvard University experienced the wrath of the industry when she walked blindly into the fluoride fray as part of her research program with Harvard’s Department of Neuropathology and Psychiatry. While holding a dual appointment to Harvard and the Forsyth Dental Research Institute, Dr. Mullenix established the Department of Toxicology at Forsyth for the purpose of investigating the environmental impact of substances that were used in dentistry.
…..(continued) During that undertaking she was also directed by the institute’s head to investigate fluoride toxicity. That’s where, as she puts it, “things got weird.”
THE DARK ODYSSEY OF DR. PHYLLIS MULLENIX
While conducting interviews and gathering the data contained in this writing, this office was repeatedly referred by EPA scientists, university professors and physicians to Dr. Mullenix’s research at the Forsyth Dental Institute as a primary and seminal source of reliable scientific research on fluoride toxicity.
The Forsyth Dental Center is a highly respected research institution established in 1910 for the purpose of providing free dental care for the children of Boston. It is the largest and, considered by many, the most highly respected dental research institution in the world. All Harvard dental students are required to take a portion of their training at Forsyth.
It is interesting to note that the, then, director of the institute, Dr. Jack Hein, who was responsible for her assignment to fluoride toxicology studies was, according to Mullenix, instrumental in some of the original research that led to the introduction of fluoride into toothpaste while he was working for Colgate.
“I wasn’t too excited about studying fluoride,” Mullenix told this reporter, “because, quite frankly, it was ‘good for your teeth’ and all that, and I thought the studies would be basically just another control and I had no interest in fluoride.” However, because it was part of what she was hired to do, she said, and because she had just astounded the institute by achieving the unattainable—securing a grant from the National Cancer Institute to study the neurotoxicity of the treatments used for childhood leukemia—she decided to incorporate the fluoride studies into that research milieu. In fact, Mullenix claimed, “I was in the top four per cent in the country” for such funding. “The institute was tickled pink, but I really had no idea what a quagmire I was getting into.”
For her toxicology studies Dr. Mullenix designed a computer pattern recognition system that has been described by other scientists as nothing short of elegant in its ability to study fluoride’s effects on the neuromotor functions of rats.
THE “MIRACLE OF FLUORIDE” -or- A DIRTY INDUSTRY?
“By about 1990 I had gathered enough data from the test and control animals,” Mullenix continues, “to realize that fluoride doesn’t look clean.” When she reviewed that data she realized that something was seriously affecting her test animals.
They had all (except the control group) been administered doses of fluoride sufficient to bring their blood levels up to the same as those that had caused dental fluorosis [a brittleness and staining of the teeth] in thousands of children. Up to this point, Mullenix explained, fluorosis was widely thought to be the only effect of excessive fluoridation.
The scientist’s first hint that she may not be navigating friendly waters came when she was ordered to present her findings to the National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR) [a division of NIH, the National Institute of Health]. “That’s when the ‘fun’ started,” she said, “I had no idea what I was getting into. I walked into the main corridors there and all over the walls was ‘The Miracle of Fluoride’. That was my first real kick-in-the-pants as to what was actually going on.” The NIH display, she said, actually made fun of and ridiculed those that were against fluoridation. “I thought, ‘Oh great!’ Here’s the main NIH hospital talking about the ‘Miracle of Fluoride’ and I’m giving a seminar to the NIDR telling them that fluoride is neurotoxic!”
What Dr. Mullenix presented at the seminar that, in reality, sounded the death knell of her career was that:
“The fluoride pattern of behavioral problems matches up with the same results of administering radiation and chemotherapy [to cancer patients]. All of these really nasty treatments that are used clinically in cancer therapy are well known to cause I.Q. deficits in children. That’s one of the best studied effects they know of. The behavioral pattern that results from the use of fluoride matches that produced by cancer treatment that causes a reduction in intelligence.”
At a meeting with dental industry representatives immediately following her presentation, Mullenix was bluntly asked if she was saying that their company’s products were lowering the I.Q. of children? “And I told them, ‘basically, yes.’”
The documents obtained by authors Griffiths and Bryson seem to add yet another voice of corroboration to the reduced intelligence effects of fluoride. “New epidemiological evidence from China adds support,” the writers claim, “showing a correlation between low dose fluoride exposure and diminished I.Q. in children.”
Then in 1994, after refining her research and findings, Dr. Mullenix presented her results to the Journal of Neurotoxicology and Teratology [5], considered probably the world’s most respected publication in that field. Three days after she joyfully announced to the Forsyth Institute that she had been accepted for publication by the journal, she was dismissed from her position. What followed was a complete evaporation of all grants and funding for any of Mullenix’s research.
What that means in the left-brain world of scientific research, which is fueled by grants of government and corporate capital, is the equivalent to an academic burial. Her letter of dismissal from the Forsyth Institute stated as their reason for that action that her work was not “dentally related.” [Fluoride research—not dentally related?]
The institute’s director stated, according to Mullenix, “they didn’t consider the safety or the toxicity of fluoride as being their kind of science.” Of course, a logical question begs itself at this last statement: why was Dr. Mullenix assigned the study of fluoride toxicity in the first place if it was not “their kind of science”?
Subsequently, she was continually hounded by both Forsyth and the NIH as to the identity of the journal in which her research was to be published. She told The WINDS that she refused to disclose that information because she knew the purpose of this continual interrogation was so that they could attempt to quash its publication.
Almost immediately following her dismissal, Dr. Mullenix said, the Forsyth Institute received a quarter-million dollar grant from the Colgate company. Coincidence or reward?
Her findings clearly detailed the developmental effects of fluoride, pre- and postnatal. Doses administered before birth produced marked hyperactivity in offspring. Postnatal administration caused the infant rats to exhibit what Dr. Mullenix calls the “couch potato syndrome”—a malaise or absence of initiative and activity. One need only observe the numerous children being dosed with Ritalin as treatment for their hyperactivity to draw logical correlations.
Following her dismissal, the scientist’s equipment and computers, designed specifically for the studies, were mysteriously damaged and destroyed by water leakage before she could remove them from Forsyth. Coincidence?
Dr. Mullenix was then given an unfunded research position at Children’s Hospital in Boston, but with no equipment and no money—what for? “The people at Children’s Hospital, for heaven’s sake, came right out and said they were scared because they knew how important the fluoride issue was,” Mullenix said. “Even at Forsyth they told me I was endangering funds for the institution if I published that information.” It has become clear to such as Dr. Mullenix et al, that money, not truth, drives science—even at the expense of the health and lives of the nation’s citizens.
“I got into science because it was fun,” she said, “and I would like to go back and do further studies, but I no longer have any faith in the integrity of the system. I find research is utterly controlled.”
If one harbors any doubt that large sums of corporate money and political clout can really provide sufficient influence to induce scientists and respected physicians to endorse potentially harmful treatment for their patients, consider the results published in a January 8th article of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)[6].
The Journal revealed their survey of doctors in favor of, and against, a particular drug that has been proven harmful (in this case calcium blockers shown to significantly increase the risk of breast cancer in older women). “Our results,” the Journal said, “demonstrate a strong association between authors’ published positions on the safety of calcium-channel antagonists and their financial relationships with pharmaceutical manufacturers.”
When The WINDS asked Dr. Mullenix where she planned to take her research, she said that she is not hopeful that any place exists that isn’t “afraid of fluoride or printing the truth.”
The end result of the dark odyssey of Phyllis Mullenix, Ph.D., and her journey through the nightmare of the fluoride industry is, essentially, a ruined career of a brilliant scientist because her’s was not “their kind of science”.
PRIOR KNOWLEDGE
It has become evident, as the result of the once-secret documents obtained by Griffiths and Bryson that Dr. Mullenix’s research was not the first to discover the dangers of fluoride.
“The original secret version—obtained by these reporters—of a 1948 study published by Program F [the code name given fluoride studies] scientists in the Journal of the American Dental Association shows that evidence of adverse health effects from fluoride was censored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) -- considered the most powerful of Cold War agencies—for reasons of national security.” One would necessarily have to ask what the perceived threat was to national security if fluoride was found to be toxic by the American Dental Association. Did they perhaps perceive a potential threat as proceeding from the American people?
“...Up to eighty percent,” the Griffiths/Bryson article continues, “in some cities—now have dental fluorosis, the first visible sign of excessive fluoride exposure, according to the U.S. National Research Council. (The signs are whitish flecks or spots, particularly on the front teeth, or dark spots or stripes in more severe cases).”
Dr. William Hirzy, an organic chemist and a senior scientist in Environmental Risk Assessment with EPA originally became involved in the fluoride issue “as a matter of professional ethics when one of the EPA scientists came to us and complained that he was being asked to write a Federal Register notice with which he has substantial ethical problems.” The scientist protested that “the agency wants me to write this notice that says it’s alright to have teeth that look like you’ve been chewing on rocks and tar balls. I have a real problem with that,” he told Hirzy.
To issue a notice of intended regulation in the Federal Register means that after a specified period of time the notice essentially becomes law and is entered into either the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) or the United States Code (USC). This process is a much used manner of creating law by circumventing the constitutional process of legislation. It becomes what is called “administrative law.”
“At that time,” Hirzy said, “EPA was revising its drinking water standards for fluoride and was about to issue a notice that four milligrams per liter was an acceptable level of fluoride for drinking water.” The great problem with that, Hirzy explained, “indicated that a substantial number of people who were exposed to that concentration would have teeth suffering from severe dental fluorosis eroded, cracked and pitted and stained....The agency [EPA] was saying that it was not a health effect, it was only cosmetic. Frankly,” Hirzy remonstrated, “it doesn’t seem to be a very ethical stance for us to say that if your teeth don’t work—if they’re cracked and pitted and falling out—that it’s not a health effect.
“The agency,” Hirzy told The WINDS, “was taking that position because of the peculiar wording of the Safe Drinking Water Act which says that EPA has to set standards that protect against adverse health effects with an adequate margin of safety.” So they wanted to say, according to Dr. Hirzy, that “severe dental fluorosis is not an adverse health effect.” If, in essence, you just say it is not an adverse health effect, you then effectively comply with the law by juggling the definition.
The great problem with the system, Hirzy explained, is that the EPA is not a constitutionally mandated organization and therefore cannot [or is not supposed to] make law but can only advise the executive branch of government.
The dilemma arises when whatever administration is in office comes to the agency and says, “We want you to write that the science supports this particular decision, whatever it may be, that’s where I draw the line and say ‘no dice, we’re not going to do that....You can’t make us lie about the science.’ It makes us complicit in deception. We do not want to have to invoke the Nuremberg defense,” (i.e., I was just doing what I was told).
Hirzy said that the EPA, in fact, got away with imposing a standard that effectually ruins the teeth of very many who drink fluoridated water because, though “widely known to cause severe fluorosis at four milligrams per liter, that is the standard in effect to this day.”
Of even more ominous portent, Hirzy said, is that, far from being merely cosmetic in effect, “what’s going on in the teeth is a window to what’s going on in the bones. What fluoride does in the hydroxy-epitite structure in teeth it does to the same structure in bone. It is well known now that fluoride produces faulty bone, more brittle, basically mimicking in the bone what is clearly visible in the teeth.” A kind of artificial osteoporosis.
“It’s an outrageous situation,” the EPA scientist claims, when you have fluoridated household drinking water in such concentration that the agency must inform parents that they “should not be allowing their children to drink four milligrams per liter of fluoride, and if they have that in their water supply they should go to an alternative source.” Does it not seem a little strange that the government authorizes the addition of a chemical to ostensibly help children’s teeth and then tells parents not to allow their children to drink it? We are most certainly not in Kansas anymore, Toto!
So toxic is the fluoride added to drinking water that, according to Hirzy, if one were to take a dose of it about half the size of that “500 mg vitamin C tablet you take in the morning, you’d be dead long before the sun went down. When you’re talking about something with that kind of potent toxicity,” he says, “it’s unrealistic to think that the only adverse effect it has is death. It must be doing something intracellularly to cause these effects.”
As evidence that the government has known for over sixty years that fluoride is a health hazard, Hirzy quoted from an article, “clear back in 1934 in which the American Dental Association plainly treats the subject very matter-of-factly. It calls fluoride a general protoplasmic poison.”
Robert Carton, Ph.D., twenty years with EPA and now employed as a scientist with the Army, claims that, on “July 7, 1997 the EPA scientists, engineers and attorneys who assess the scientific data for the Safe Drinking Water Act standards and other EPA regulations have gone on record against the practice of adding fluoride to public drinking water.
Question: if the Environmental Protection Agency possesses the clout to virtually confiscate a man’s land because some of it is a little soggy—calling it wetlands—why do they not exercise that power to enforce de-fluoridation of drinking water, which they have declared unsafe? Does money play any role in this?
Dr. Carton informed this office that fluoride itself is not the only major hazard stemming from its introduction into city water supplies. “A very real danger lies in the fact that fluosilicic acid leaches lead from plumbing. “There are a couple of places in the country,” Dr. Carton said, “Seattle being one and Thermont, Maryland...that when they stopped adding fluoride to their water the lead levels dropped in half.”
The problem with the data used to determine the safety of fluoride, Carton said, is that it is all based on the original figures presented by the chief scientist in charge of the Manhattan Project’s fluoride safety, Dr. Harold Hodge. He falsified or “cooked the numbers,” as Carton put it, to make his data fit what the government wanted.
In addition to the dental and skeletal damage caused by fluoride, Dr. Carton also cites research that claims that a specific antibody (immunoglobulin - IgM) that is missing from patients with certain types of brain tumors is also missing from the blood of those tested with elevated blood fluoride levels. This is leading many to theorize that such brain tumors are much more likely among individuals consuming fluoride compounds in their diet. Since most juice concentrates and food stuffs are processed with fluoridated water, such blood elevations are becoming much more common.
ENOUGH ALREADY? NOPE, THERE’S MORE—
In a study published last October in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences [7], Dr. Robert L. Isaacson makes a number of astounding revelations about this toxic waste in our water.
“Probably the most startling observation from our first experiment,” Isaacson states, “was the high mortality rate in the group of animals that received the lowest dose of AlF 3 [aluminum fluoride].
Different groups of rats had been given one of three levels of AlF3 in double distilled drinking water: 0.5 ppm, 5 ppm, and 50 ppm starting at about four months of age. A fourth group received only the distilled water.”
The experiment lasted only 45 weeks but, Isaacson stated, “Eighty per cent of the rats in the [lowest concentration group] died before the end of the experiment” which was the highest mortality rate of all. “Not only did the rats in the lowest dose group die more often during the experiment, they looked poorly well before their deaths. Even the rats in the low dose group that managed to survive until the end of the 45 weeks looked to be in poor health.
They had much thinner hair than those in the other groups and the exposed skin was bronzed, mottled and flaky. Their teeth and toe nails were excessively dark.” Follow-up studies, the scientist said, “showed the same high level of mortality.”
The study goes on to say that, in subsequent research, low levels of the same kind of fluoride that is added to city drinking water “also allows the enhancement of brain levels of Al.” (Aluminum is cited in Alzheimer's…reflect back to the "dumbing down of America"…easier for control !!)
Another prominent finding by Isaacson’s group was the significant reduction on the cells of the hippocampus, that part of the brain that acts like a central processing unit in a computer, telling other parts what to do and how to function. The hippocampus is the primary decision making part of the brain, damage to which causes the victim to become more submissive and less challenging to his environment. One could logically question if this is not a pivotal reason for the government’s push for universal fluoridation.
In the brain of his low dose test animals, Isaacson observed a tangling of capillary blood vessels, reduced oxygen uptake along with the peculiar crystalline structures, all of which are identical to those found in Alzheimer’s victims. Dr. Isaacson’s research indicates that the Alzheimer’s-like effects result from the transport of aluminum to the brain and the high death rates from the toxicity of the fluorine.
Aluminum has previously to this, of course, been implicated in Alzheimer’s, but how is the link made between fluoridation of human drinking water and the presence of aluminum fluoride?
According to Drs.Carton and Burgstahler, fluoride being the most electrochemically active of all the elements, it has a strong propensity to create metallic compounds with itself whenever fluoridated water comes into contact with such things as aluminum cooking vessels.
Ergo: there is created aluminum fluoride from cooking with such vessels using fluoridated water and not incidentally, according to Dr. Robert Carton, former EPA scientist, aluminum is used in city water treatment.
“An incidental observation of possible importance must be mentioned,” the research paper adds. “Pathologic changes were found in the kidneys of animals in both the AlF 3 and NaF [sodium fluoride] groups.” If all this weren’t enough, the research team observed a “general impairment in the immune capacities of the treated subjects.” They also found that the death rate increased among those animals treated with the aluminum fluoride where stress was elevated due to a training regime.
The research clearly indicates that not only does the presence of fluoride reduce the body’s ability to utilize oxygen and nutrients, but actively inhibits the system’s ability to rid itself of waste.
This creates an apparent synergistic assault upon the health by poisoning the body with its own toxic waste while impairing its effectiveness to use the nutrients that would help in the detoxification process.
In the face of overwhelming data proving that fluoride is not only not beneficial but extremely harmful; the reliable evidence that the government has known of this for over sixty years; the continuing press for fluoridation in the drinking water of American cities, makes all the more believable the portentous claim set forth in the Protocols:
“...We now appear on the scene as apparent saviors of the common worker, saving him from this oppression by enrolling him in the ranks of our various forces fighting for imaginary civil liberties. The upper class, which enjoyed by law the labor of the workers, was interested in seeing that the workers were well fed, healthy and strong. We are interested in just the opposite-in the diminishment, the killing out of the nations. Our power is in the chronic...physical and mental weakness of the worker. What that results in is his being made the slave of our will, and he will not find in the authorities of his own society either the strength or energy to oppose us.”
REFERENCES:
1. “Fluoride, Teeth and the Atomic Bomb”, Griffiths & Bryson, 1997. Author Griffiths indicated that this URL contains an accurate reproduction of their article.
2. John R. Lee, MD, article: “The Truth About Mandatory Fluoridation”, April 15, 1995.
3. “Review of Fluoride Benefits and Risks”, Department of Health and Human Services, February 1991, p. 7 & p. 31.
4. The Journal of the Canadian Dental Association, Vol. 53, pp 763-765, 1987.
5. “Neurotoxicity of Sodium Fluoride in Rats”, Mullenix, P. Neurotoxicology and Teratology”, 17(2), 1995.
6. The New England Journal of Medicine—January 8, 1998 -- Volume 338, Number 2 [SPECIAL ARTICLE] “Conflict of Interest in the Debate over Calcium-Channel Antagonists”, Henry Thomas Stelfox, Grace Chua, Keith O’Rourke, Allan S. Detsky.
7. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 825 “Neuroprotective Agents, Third International Conference.” Title: “Toxin-Induced Blood Vessel Inclusion caused by the Chronic Administration of Aluminum and Sodium Fluoride and their Implication for Dementia.” Robert. L. Isaacson, et al, p. 152-166.
Further reading:
FLUORIDE: Protected Pollutant or Panacea? ( URL: http://www.fluoridation.com ) A very extensive source for scientific papers published on fluoridation Robert J. Carton, Ph.D., Former EPA scientist. Article: “Corruption and Fraud at the EPA”
The following resources appear valid but I was unable to fully verify their authenticity and therefore make no claims for such, with the exception that this office has ascertained that Dr. William L. Marcus is currently employed by the EPA.
Richard G. Foulkes, M.D., Article: "Celebration or Shame? Fifty Years of Fluoridation (1945-1995)”
William L. Marcus, Ph.D., Senior Science Advisor, Office of Science and Technology, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Letter.
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