Looking back on my relationship with mainstream medicine, it has done some nice things for me, made me feel good on a few occasions, but it has also beat the crap out of me. And my children.
Yet I cannot leave it. I keep going back. Only to be disappointed.
Long story short, Chandler has developed vocal tics. Docs tell us to live with it and figure out a way make it work. Which is what I knew they would say going in. Because that is what they always say. Which makes me wonder why I still go.
Cause I know it is only a matter of time until it beats me up again, and it has been a long, long time since it has done anything nice for me.
AAP, Every Child by Two and Paul Offit have begun to get the public scrutiny from a mainstream medial outlet on the huge sums of money they get from pharmaceutical companies and how those conflicts of interest (both disclosed and undisclosed) should call into question their claims of 'independence' and their claims of vaccine safety. These three sources are almost always portrayed in the media as reliable sources for vaccine safety information that are only working in the interests of children that parents should turn to for advice. Their Pharma ties are almost never mentioned.
Sharyl Attkisson was generous to these three vaccine promoters in her piece. She didn't even mention Offit's scolding by congress for his serious ethics breaches and conflicts of interest during his time on the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Nor did she mention the absurd safety statements that the incoming head of the AAP, David Tayloe, has been making, as he did on Good Morning America. Really there is enough here for hours of in depth news magazine coverage or even a book or two.
I hope that this story will lead to some more in depth coverage of the shenanigans that are going on in the relationships between Pharma, health authorities, professional organizations and the medical industry and get the media to examine with new eyes the evidence for the vaccine/autism connection. I hope that parents will consider these huge cash payouts before taking the word of these people as gospel.
And I ESPECIALLY hope that wise pediatricians who do want to make balanced, informed vaccine recommendations for their patients will stop listening to these very questionable sources and begin to do their own research into vaccine safety, rather than taking the AAP's word. We are never going to bring balance to the vaccine program or transparency to the vaccine/autism relationship until those who are making bank off shots stop calling the shots and influencing the process.
Someone email this to Amanda Peet before she does those ads for Every Child by Two. She has already sullied her self by considering calling Paul Offit as "doing her research", and she needs to know who she is getting into bed with.
My Dear Husband's comments: "That is the first interview Paul Offit has ever turned down."
Earlier this month the AAP got their hinder handed to them by... well everyone... for recommending that children as young as eight years old be put on cholesterol lowering meds. From Pharmalot:
"The American Academy of Pediatric guidelines released this week recommend that some children as young as 8 years old be given cholesterol meds is, predictably, causing controversy. Why? A lack of evidence, for one thing. Nicolas Stettler, an assistant professor of pediatric epidemiology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the AAP panel defends the decision by saying extrapolating data from adults using cholesterol meds makes sense. Not everyone agrees.
“To be frank, I’m embarrassed for the AAP today,” Lawrence Rosen of Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, and vice chairman of an academy panel on traditional and alternative medicine (see photo), tells The New York Times. “Treatment with medications in the absence of any clear data? I hope they’re ready for the public backlash."
Today we have learned that the Pediatrics article in which the recommendation was made did not include the conflicts of interest of the writers. Shocker.
From the Center for Science in the Public Interest:
Pediatrics Fails to Disclose Industry Ties in Lipid Guide for Kids . . .
The American Academy of Pediatric’s new cholesterol guidelines for children did not reveal the industry ties of three of the six authors despite its policy requiring conflict of interest disclosure in its flagship journal. The recommendations, which appeared in the current issue of Pediatrics, caused a national uproar by recommending statin drugs for children as young as eight if suggested dietary interventions, including the use of foods fortified with fiber, stanols, and sterols, proved ineffective in lowering lipid levels in overweight children.
The lead author, Stephen R. Daniels, a professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, has served as a consultant to Abbott Labs and Merck. Abbott makes baby food, while Merck markets Mevacor, a statin. Co-author Nicolas Stettler, an assistant professor at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia , consults for numerous firms including Wyeth Nutritional and the Dannon Institute, a non-profit wholly funded by Dannon Yogurt.
Co-author Jatinder Bhatia, a professor at the Medical College of Georgia, has commercial ties to Mead Johnson, Ross Labs, Forest Laboratories, Dey Labs, and Inhibitex. Mead Johnson, a unit of Bristol-Myers Squibb, produces fortified foods for infants and young children.
So parents if your elementary school child has high cholesterol and is overweight, don't bother changing him to a diet of whole, unprocessed foods like organic fruits, veggies and naturally raised meat bought straight from farms that use healthy farming practices or taking him off the processed foods made for you by the good people at Dannon. Just put them statins made by Merck, who is totally sure that their Gardasil is not killing your daughters.
I can't believe that anyone (Amanda Peet) is questioning whether or not the medical industry is capable of "conspiracies". They are in the press practically every day! All they have to do to is just not give you important information like, 'Oh yeah.. we are all getting paid by companies that will profit from our recommendations', or '...and when we say there is no proof that chelation will improve autism, by that we mean that we have never looked into it' and of course it would be helpful for parents decision making if they actually said, "What I mean by 'there is no convincing evidence that vaccines are a cause of autism, what I am really saying is that there is lots of evidence that vaccines cause autism, but we won't read it and therefore we don't allow ourselves to be 'convinced' by it'.
The GMC is Britain's medical ethics council that is currently trying Andrew Wakefield over alleged ethics violations in regards to his research on the MMR.
Apparently they are encouraging doctors to remove children who refuse the MMR from their list of patients to fraudulently raise the MMR uptake statistics.
The docs can then get payments for seeming to have met the governments MMR uptake goals.
So the GMC, whose job it is to maintain ethical medical practices, is apparently giving the nod for docs to commit fraud to prop up vaccine uptake stats and to get cash payments.
I am sure that Wakefield will get a fair hearing.
From UK Lawyer, Clifford Miller:
GMC Advises UK Docs To Commit Fraud over MMR
Is medicine institutionally corrupt? Here you will see the UK's General Medical Council advising UK medical doctors how to commit fraud on the UK's National Health Service for personal financial gain.
The GMC's role is to protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of the public by ensuring proper standards in the practice of medicine by medical doctors. This includes prosecuting UK medical doctors when their behaviour may bring the medical profession into disrepute. Dishonesty, financial impropriety and fraud fall within its purview. This link [1] provides an example of a decided case from its website.
The GMC is a statutory body independent (allegedly) of the NHS and of Government, with responsibility for maintaining the medical register for the United Kingdom. The GMC has statutory powers under the Medical Act 1983 to take action where there are concerns about the fitness to practise of a registered medical practitioner. Where the GMC finds that a doctor is not fit to practise, it has powers to erase that doctor's name from the medical register, to suspend the doctor from the register or to place conditions on the doctor's practice. These restrictions apply to practice in any sector of employment in any part of the UK. [2]
In the UK if doctors meet target levels for numbers of MMR and other vaccinations administered they can claim bonus payments for doing so. If they fail, they cannot claim those payments. One way of claiming the payments is to make a false return.
So how can it be that the GMC advises doctors on how to commit fraud? The GMC pose the question "Can GPs remove some children from their lists, temporarily, for the purpose of calculating the MMR target payment?" Here you will see that its currently available advice is to the effect that "it's OK provided you have patient consent" [3], [4]. It seems it also happens to be OK if it helps to increase the MMR uptake figures. The advice does not appear to be offered for other vaccinations.
And notice how they fail to make any mention of the financial and moral impropriety of doing so when they answer the question they pose like this:-
"This must not be done without the parents' agreement. Parents must be given a full explanation of what was proposed and why, their child's rights as an NHS patient, and the implications for their child's future care. Doctors working within the NHS must treat all patients entitled to NHS services on an equal footing. So temporarily removing a child from a GPs list must not adversely affect their care, for example in accessing secondary care and out-of-hours services, or in providing relevant information to ensure continuity of care and allow effective working with other agencies. Doctors must act honestly in their financial dealings. So GPs must ensure that any arrangement to remove a child from their list and re-register them for ‘immediately necessary treatment', or on some other basis, would be in line with their contractual obligations to the NHS."
Notice that provided the doctor does what the GMC advises and ensures "that any arrangement ... would be in line with their contractual obligations to the NHS" it is fine as "Doctors must act honestly in their financial dealings". Am I missing something or is this starting to look like we need the "men in white coats" to take away the men in white coats?
Not only that but the GMC advice is that if the evidence is available this is not contrary to GMC guidance on good medical practice:-
"Are temporary removals from a GPs list acceptable to the GMC? In the absence of evidence that ‘temporary removals' satisfy the concerns outlined at Q5, we cannot give any reassurance that such arrangements would be seen as consistent with our guidance on good practice."
GMC advice to UK doctors is that doctors "must not ask for or accept any inducement, gift or hospitality which may affect or be seen to affect the way you prescribe for, treat or refer patients." [7] But it seems the GMC do not mind when it comes to MMR, even where the inducement is so strong it encourages fraud on the NHS. But then, the GMC does not seem to mind about that either.
So now you know. If it concerns getting MMR uptake up, fraud is fine. But you had better make sure you implicate the parents and what better way to do that than to pressure them into agreeing their children become temporary patients possibly for emergency treatment only or else be dumped from the patient roster completely. Naturally, I am not saying that is happening nor am I saying the GMC advice is taken to suggest that be done - as it does not, but it could encourage that kind of behaviour. As a lawyer advising pro bono I have direct experience of patients being removed from an NHS doctor's roster after objections to childhood vaccinations.
The GMC has an agreement on cooperating and coordinating with the NHS Counter Fraud service [5]. And "GMC Today" newsletter carried a story ironically titled "Is the NHS immune to fraud?" about reducing and reporting fraud in the National Health Service [6]. The story gives a number to call the confidential NHS Fraud and Corruption Reporting Line and an email address too. It reports:-
"If you have a concern about a fraud taking place within the NHS, please call the confidential NHS Fraud and Corruption Reporting Line on 0800 028 40 60. All calls will be dealt with by trained staff and professionally investigated. Lines are open Monday to Friday 8 am–6 pm. You can also email us at nhsfraud@cfsms.nhs.uk at any time."
