Our ongoing research will continue to quantify the morbidity, mortality, and financial loss due to:
In December 2000, a government scientific advisory panel recommended that synthetic estrogen be added to the nation’s list of cancer-causing agents. HRT, either synthetic estrogen alone or combined with synthetic progesterone, is used by an estimated 13.5 to 16 million women in the US.362 The aborted Women’s Health Initiative Study (WHI) of 2002 showed that women taking synthetic estrogen combined with synthetic progesterone have a higher incidence of blood clots, breast cancer, stroke, and heart disease, with little evidence of osteoporosis reduction or dementia prevention. WHI researchers, who usually never make recommendations except to suggest more studies, advised doctors to be very cautious about prescribing HRT to their patients.363–368
Results of the “Million Women Study” on HRT and breast cancer in the UK were published in medical journal The Lancet in August 2003. According to lead author Prof. Valerie Beral, director of the Cancer Research UK Epidemiology Unit, “We estimate that over the past decade, use of HRT by UK women aged 50–64 has resulted in an extra 20,000 breast cancers, estrogen-progestagen (combination) therapy accounting for 15,000 of these.” 369
We were unable to find statistics on breast cancer, stroke, uterine cancer, or heart disease caused by HRT used by American women. Because the US population is roughly six times that of the UK, it is possible that 120,000 cases of breast cancer have been caused by HRT in the past decade.
According to the article “Breast Cancer Risk Remains After Stopping HRT,” published on March 5, 2008,
Women who took estrogen plus progestin in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) trial of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) remain at higher risk of breast cancer three years after the trial was stopped, compared with those who took placebo. . . .
Dr. Gerardo Heiss (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) and colleagues report their findings in the March 5, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. . . . “What was not anticipated was the greater risk of malignancies overall. . . .” said Dr. Heiss.
The WHI trial of estrogen plus progestin included 16,608 postmenopausal women and set out to examine whether conjugated equine estrogens (CEE) plus medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA) prevented cardiovascular disease and fractures and to examine any associated change in the risk of breast cancer. The trial was stopped prematurely in 2002 when data indicated an increased risk of breast cancer and unexpected, higher risks of stroke, MI, and venous thromboembolism.
In the new analysis, Heiss and colleagues examined the risk/benefit balance of 15,730 of the participants after the trial was stopped in July 2002 out to March 2005. . . . The annualized event rates for the outcome “all cancers” was higher during the postintervention follow-up for the HRT group (1.56% per year) compared with the placebo group (1.26% per year). This was primarily due to a greater risk of invasive breast cancer: 79 women who took HRT developed breast cancer in the postintervention phase compared with 60 who got placebo. . . . “The hormones’ effects on breast cancer appear to linger,” says Dr. Leslie Ford (National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD). . . .
There is some evidence that HRT is associated with decreased survival in women with lung cancer.
Dr Elizabeth G. Nabel (director, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Bethesda, MD) also warns, “These findings also indicate that women who take estrogen plus progestin continue to be at increased risk of breast cancer, even years after stopping therapy. Today’s report confirms the study’s primary conclusion that combination hormone therapy should not be used to prevent disease in healthy, postmenopausal women.” Heiss agrees: “The balance of the benefits and risks of estrogen plus progestin therapy continues to be unfavorable after stopping therapy,” he explained to HeartWire. “As such, these findings confirm the results of the WHI study as originally published—this is not a preparation that ought to be used over long periods to prevent chronic disease. That’s it in a nutshell.
“Overall, the summary of benefits and risks appears to be unfavorable,” Heiss reiterates, “and this suggests that vigilance is required after the use of these preparations. Women should take care of their health and lifestyle. . . .”
The results of the WHI trial [include] increased risks for myocardial infarction, stroke, deep venous thrombosis, and breast cancer associated with active treatment. A global index suggested that the overall risks for hormone therapy outweighed any benefits.370
What has yet to be uncovered about this HRT is why the trials continued as long as they did with the women’s lives at stake. We do not recommend synthetic hormone replacement therapy.
The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was perhaps the US government’s last honest agency that critically reviewed the state of the nation’s healthcare system. The purpose of the OTA was to provide Congress with objective and authoritative analysis of complex scientific and technical issues. In its final critical report, the OTA concluded: “There are no mechanisms in place to limit dissemination of technologies, regardless of their clinical value.”
Shortly after the OTA released a report that exposed how entrenched financial interests manipulate healthcare practice in the United States, Congress disbanded the OTA.
Someone has said that healthcare is the only business where you keep paying whether you get good results or not. We do not tolerate poor service in the non-medical marketplace, yet we have accepted it for years in healthcare. For years, our nation has avoided responsibility for examining this major health crisis, to our own mounting peril. Now, we have an iatrogenic epidemic. More Americans are dying each year at the hands of medicine than all of our American casualties in the First World War and the Civil War combined.
Why would highly trained medical doctors continue to follow failing protocols year after year, producing negative results? The chemotherapy studies cited in this paper show that the cytotoxicity is damaging the quality of life and often causing death.
The reason the medical establishment can continue to betray the public trust is because there are no sufficient consequences for killing or maiming patients. The physician is rewarded for his efforts, not for his results. It is taken for granted that if you have chemotherapy, you will be maimed, and possibly killed. The patient even signs away his or her rights before surgery, so that the surgeon and hospital are protected even if they are negligent.
The proprietary interests connected with these approved protocols make them attractive for physicians and hospitals to follow. The pharmaceutical companies reward physicians who buy and use their drugs. Grants are offered to hospitals for research. Many financial incentives pave the way for acceptance of protocols that prove deadly and costly. Medical students are even offered incentives through sponsorship by drug companies to prescribe certain drugs as soon as they are able to do so.
The public has accepted the Faustian bargain that his physician has made with the drug companies because the patient believes there is no other choice. He must take ten different prescription drugs if he is over 60. He must have invasive tests. He must have a CT scan with the power of 100 chest X-rays. He must respond to the direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising and ask his doctor to prescribe TV meds, despite the horrific side-effects warnings. The public now receives television messages that appear to be coming from avuncular doctors, but they are really coming from Big Pharma to get your money.
When it comes to choosing between prevention of disease, at least where a condition could be prevented, or treatment of disease, it is advantageous to the allopathic doctor to choose treatment. There is reward in choosing treatment because the drug companies offer incentives to doctors who buy their products. Prevention is more about vitamins and supplements and they are far less lucrative for pharmaceutical companies. There is now a campaign to raise the prices of these natural products that have few, if any, side effects. A prescription may be necessary soon to obtain the vitamins that are now so readily available at reasonable prices. We have the drug companies to thank for this.
For example, if an honest journalist wishes to do an article on the benefits of St. John’s Wort for minor depression, he may call several government agencies for a story. If the journalist presents evidence that St. John’s Wort is helpful, the FDA and the CDC may encourage the journalist to promote more proven therapies, such as expensive prescription anti-depressants. They may encourage or even pay the journalist to downplay any merits of St. John’s Wort. This is where the drug companies interfere with the public’s education about natural remedies. The far-reaching arm of the pharmaceutical company’s influence even extends to the falsification of nutrient studies, in order to promote prescription drugs instead. There is currently a systematic program to defame every natural vitamin, supplement, and health food throughout the world.
Corruption is rampant when legislators pay journalists to do a hatchet job on natural preventive remedies, so that the public will buy prescription drugs. Where honest scientists do exist, they have no power to override the corruption. The price they would pay for writing or speaking the truth about the drug company invasion into modern medicine, or for censuring a colleague for cause, is that the doctor or researcher would be alienated, unable to get grants, unable to publish, possibly even unable to work. That rare courageous doctor would have his career destroyed, though his good character would be intact.
The medical environment has become a labyrinth of interlocking corporate, hospital, and governmental boards of directors and advisors, infiltrated by the drug companies. There are even ghost writers who are drug company representatives who write glowing articles about pharmaceuticals, then they are signed by well-known physicians who are paid handsomely for their cooperation, though they may not know all of the adverse side-effects of the drugs they promote. The physicians are paid to give positive reviews of drug company studies; they are paid to endorse chemicals that may harm patients because there is a rush to get the drugs on the market. The most toxic substances are often approved first. Milder alternatives may be ignored for financial reasons.
Drug companies now control the dissemination of continuing education courses to doctors, and there may be some brainwashing going on; ads in medical publications are controlled by drug companies; information given to the FDA to promote is influenced by drug companies; drug companies may pay the FDA to review their studies favorably. Influence is for sale.
There are astronomical profits in cooperating with the drug companies. Drug companies are behind Medicare, so that people remain overmedicated; or they receive the proper medications at higher doses to sell more, with injury or death as a consequence.
Drug companies pay our legislators, our scientists, the NAS. Drug companies have propaganda campaigns launched through the CDC, such as a rush to vaccinate the moment a “bird flu” appears on the horizon. Vaccinate infants, children, teens, adults, elders, each one a potentially lucrative marketing niche, even an opportunity to sell drugs to otherwise healthy people. Why not make these vaccinations mandatory? Force us to pay for possible side effects, “for our own good.” Fright tactics are used to petrify the public into rushing to pay for vaccines that may prove debilitating or worse.
All of this is done with a wink and a nod. Not a cent is spent on prevention (except pseudo-prevention through toxic inoculations that do not really prevent disease, and may cause harm); instead, every dollar goes for treatment.
The media, scientists, professors, universities, hospitals, governmental agencies, such as the FDA, the EPA, and the CDC, are all having a banquet at the pharmaceutical table. This is not the way to practice medicine. Every so often, brave physicians like Drs. Graeme Morgan, Robyn Ward, and Michael Barton stand up and tell the truth, about cytotoxic chemotherapy, in this case, as in their article in Clinical Oncology, “The Contribution of Cytotoxic Chemotherapy to 5-year Survival in Adult Malignancies.” Curative and adjuvant chemotherapy is only 2.1% effective in America in this study; with no progress in the field over the past 20 years.
There are also a few thousand complementary physicians who are helping patients. Many complementary healthcare providers are denied publication through the intervention of pharmaceutical companies. If they, or their allopathic colleagues, do manage to speak out against corruption in the establishment, they are considered traitors to the medical brotherhood. This is not a scientific community; instead of objectivity and compassion, our medical system is powered by weakness, greed, envy, and fear. There are exceptions, such as Dr. David Graham of the FDA.
Medicine also has many spectacular breakthroughs and modalities for helping people to heal and survive—but let us continue to determine what does not work and request that improvements be made. Let us be honest about the causes of our illnesses. Your average doctor is not telling you that your lifestyle may be making you ill, and that you can do something economical to improve your health, and possibly reduce the need for costly medication he prescribes (never change your medication dosage without your doctor’s approval). You are your doctor’s “client.”
The cumulative daily effects of steaks, colas, pizzas, pollution, computers, cell phones, and pesticides place us in a toxic soup environment. Instead of cleaning this up, many turn to medication for help. Drug companies are paying our legislators, television and radio stations, schools, and news outlets to keep this information from you. You are Big Pharma’s “client.” BP wants your “account.” And they pay the quack busters to attack anyone who tells you the truth about what is really making you sick enough to seek expensive “care” from the number one source of fatalities in America, care that might readily kill you and your loved ones: death by medicine.