1.                       While much “newness” was feigned at, there was not one bona fide new approach to the “problem” that he sees (which he has severely misdiagnosed, more later) it was just more of the same with a few more lies thrown in to make it seem more palatable to Republicans and Independents and Conservative Democrats.

B.     Bi-partisanship agreement was repeatedly suggested as obvious and true. What is obvious and true is that no Republican initiatives originally involved (such as complying with the Haynes act to prevent federal funding of abortion; such as complying with the “freedom of conscience provisions” that would NOT require a doctor to perform an abortion his conscience opposed; such as provisions requiring proof of citizenship and insisting that illegal aliens could not receive services; and most importantly Republican suggestions that HSA options for self-insurance be allowed and honored) . . . no Republican initiatives, not one of them, has been retained: all these crucial amendments have been removed by the Democratic majority in the various committees. 

E.      The ludicrous proposition that “prior conditions” can be mandated for coverage and private insurers can still survive . . . since this is a definite losing proposition under any conceivable actuarial conditions . . . this would guarantee the destruction of private insurance and the supremacy of the public option that Obama insists is “no big deal.”

F.      The biggest lie of all about Obamacare itself: “this is not a government takeover.” 1200 pages of new law is about to descend upon the people and their doctors . . . how much control and interference is needed, before someone calls it a “government takeover”? 

G.     The biggest omissions of all about Obamacare: its multiple "evil" purposes . . . to give much more control over health care to the liberal supporters of all things government spending boondoggle-wise;  and to obscure the fact that all five of the worst government spending and government interference boondoggles (GSBs and GIBs) created by the liberal left wing of the Democratic Party  brought us to the current mess:

1)      Medicare now is obligated for $34 TRillion it can never hope to repay and it will officially go bankrupt in 2016.  Obviously if these two simple facts can be brought to permeate the public consciousness . . . the likelihood of future GSBs and GIBs such as Obamacare itself will be dramatically reduced and much more limited government would result.

2)     Medicaid is functionally bankrupt

3)     Even though the bankruptcy date for Social Security is officially 2037, it too is functionally bankrupt . . . Obamacare is trying to do for Medicare what recent legislation did for Social Security    . . . push its day of reckoning so far into the future that connection to the liberal congresses that created these bills is never made

4)     Jimmy Carter’s 1977 mortgage-guarantee legislation led the nation to 19% inflation in 1980 and ACORN lawyer Barak Obama sued and extorted banks in 1995 and 1996 into making loans in line with the bill which, while required by law were utterly senseless and fiscally irresponsible.

5)     Bill Clinton’s 1998 mortgage-guarantee law combined with the ’77 laws put the country’s financial collapse on steroids.  By the way when the Bush administration sought to eliminate the weakest portions of the two weak bills, in January 2005, the Democrats outvoted them to allow the fledgling crisis to grow beyond control.

H.    The faulty assumption that the problem with Americans’ health and the present health care system is caused by people NOT having health insurance.  

1)      American physicians uniformly state that the problem actually lies with not being able to get health care to patients. For example, in the past doctors could give free care to the poor; or accept payment in kind from farm patients (over time eggs, vegetables, meat, etc.) but not this is forbidden in most cases. If a person of Medicare age is to be treated, all the paperwork must be filled out regardless and the Medicare laws must be followed even if they don’t apply or even interfere with doctor charity.

2)     Ex health-educator Rajjpuut, in his 26 blog series “A Far Better Health Care Alternative” has listed 44 factors that are far more important than health insurance:

For example . . .

a)     his #1 factor is elimination of the FDA totally, a corrupt government agency which rains pain, suffering and death upon American patients as described in his 16 Anti-FDA blog series

b)     42 other factors Rajjpuut mentions are not considered by Obamacare at all

c)      The only factor Rajjpuut and Obamacare did agree upon is “infant mortality.” 

However, Obamacare treats this factor as totally a problem with lack of health care or insufficient health care . . . Rajjpuut names 14 factors (health care is NOT mentioned but the fact that modern American women lead the world in smoking, drinking, using drugs, obesity, etc.  definitely are crucial) that contribute and then describes a cluster of social factors that trace the history of the problem to the breakdown in the American family (predominance of unwed mothers; predominance of single-parent families; predominance of families with no husband ever in attendance to help the mother; predominance of families without a second parent living below the poverty line; etc. which all arose as the altogether laudable women’s movement  was taken over and radicalized by the feminist movement.   In making his analysis, of the historical deterioration of the American family as the root cause of high infant mortality. Problems that didn’t exist in 1960 when America had one of the highest ranked health care systems in the world and infant mortality and life expectancy were the envy of most of the world suddenly became real and huge problems as America’s women changed their perspectives egged on by unenlightened radical feminism.

 Rajjpuut also debunked one of Obama’s crucial factors (America’s comparatively low life expectancy) and showed that the two factors (infant mortality and low life expectancy) because of the way the statistics are misused are really the same factor looked at twice . . . the implication is that when America solves its infant mortality crisis, life expectancy will jump markedly.

            Besides running three marathons and appearing and performing much younger than his age, Rajjpuut is a health educator with experience in the health insurance industry and is intimately in tune with the real factors in human health and with cost-containment.   Barak Obama and his cronies are politicos without the ghost of an idea about what’s best for the American health care systems. It is utterly damning that none or virtually none of the points brought up in the previous 20 blogs in this series has ever been mentioned, much less been considered a crucial factor in reforming the health care mess in this country. Which brings up another factor: the word “mess” is a technical term from Rajjpuut’s experience with Kepner-Tregoe management systems: the most effective in the world. Rajjpuut highly doubts that more than 1% of the politicians working on the health care initiatives have any effective management training.

What are the Major Planks?

2.    Elevation and expansion of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) (and its budget) by making it

a.    responsible for all aspects of health education in the country

b.    responsible for reduction in chronic death patterns in the country as well as its current emphasis on acute disease

c.     responsible for eliminating 80% of iatrogenic diseases

e.    responsible for dissemination of the “Seven Golden Rules of Health” throughout the educational system; and disseminating the Harvard study on exercise benefits to high schools, colleges and adult-education classes.

f.     Responsible for motivating adults and especially older adults to adopt healthier lifestyles and dramatically reduce the numbers and percentages of morbidly-obese; obese; pre-diabetics; and adult-onset diabetics in the nation

g.    Responsible for educating the public to recognize “emergency medical conditions” quickly; also responsible for doubling the number of CPR qualified and first-aid qualified people in the country over the next 15 years

h.    Creation of a new “basic food groups” paradigm (sorry but dairy doesn’t belong in adult diets except yogurt and occasional cheese) based upon significant research findings

3.    Establish an alternate national health insurance that is a “major-medical” plan which allows one physical exam and follow-up; one (every three years) health education conference with an NHF based up physical exam results . . . and provides lower deductibles to people who follow the Seven Golden Rules of Health and are not obese, pre-diabetic, etc.

a.     A psychological/psychiatric mental health resource

b.    A psycho-somatic mental health resource of apparent physical ills or physical limitations associated with underlying psychological factors

c.     A strictly medical health resource

6.     Eliminate the term “auto-immune” disease from the legal descriptives for all diseases and health insurance

7.    Eliminate virtually all palliative medicines

8.    Require all drug companies to add the phrase “First do NO harm” to their annual statement of mission objectives.

9.    So long as prices are reasonable, double the effective patent protection time for all new products that actually “CURE” something.

10. Allow 1/3 the present patent protection period for any medicine that is remotely “palliative”

11. Create a new agency (Nutrition?) whose primary function is to review studies of vitamins, minerals, nutrients and whole foods as disease preventatives

12.  Allow drug companies patent protection equal to the present law’s limits:  on combinations of two or more natural ingredients which have been shown to either effectively reduce disease contraction or to increase health measurably (e.g. lower blood pressure in older hypertensives, etc.

13.Require all medical schools to inititiate programs emphasizing health, prevention and health education and intervening earlier (at the first stage)in the process to head off disease and other problems rather than later when the process is more expensive and less effective (fourth stage) when, for example, chronic unhealthy conditions have lead to adult onset diabetes.

14.Require all medical schools to have programs of medical ethics where the sole emphasis is on “First do NO harm.”

15.Require all medical schools to have programs on iatrogenic diseases emphasizing

a.    Drug interactions

b.    Malpractice

c.     Defensible doctor mistakes that still could have been eliminated

16.Require all medical schools to have programs on proper nutrition and on the Seven Golden Rules of Health.

17.Require all medical schools to have programs in “bedside manner” and understanding malpractice

18.In so far as possible eliminate the practice of labeling diseases “incurable” and then putting patients upon a road of lifelong subscription to expensive, dangerous medicines that cannot cure them.

19.Provide pilot program money for groups like “Cancer Centers of America” and “Gerson programs” to expand their operations into other chronic disease problem areas.

20.Eliminate ALL practice of administering antibiotics unless the physician is 100% sure that NO viral condition exists.

21.Eliminate all presently dangerous drugs which either  kill on the one hand an/or don’t really help CURE anything on the other: the list could stretch out to 60-70 names but Ritalin; Avandia, statins, PPI’s etc. would be on the list.

22.Eliminate drug advertising from medical journals

23.Limit physicians to 44 patient contacts maximum per day.

24.Create a new malpractice category: iatrogenic deaths due to drug interactions and allow NO cap on malpractice by drug companies

25. Label any drug with a history of deaths or serious injury or illness resulting from use as (potentially dangerous) and allow NO cap on malpractice suits against doctors prescribing these drugs

26.Create a new malpractice law listing criminal penalties for “failure to inform” and allowing NO cap for failure to inform and “failure to diagnose” malpractice

27.Create a new malpractice law listing four categories of medical practice: 

a.    faultless and compassionate treatment

b.    defensible and mitigated malpractice

c.     defensible malpractice but inferior treatment (either lacking compassion or physically errant)

d.    indefensible malpractice.

28.Create a cap on “defensible and mitigated” malpractice

29.Create a higher cap on “defensible but inferior” malpractice

30.Allow NO cap on “indefensible” malpractice

31.After one malpractice suit, do not allow malpractice insurers to raise premiums for defensible and mitigated malpractice; and only 10% for defensible malpractice but inferior treatment.

32.Allow insurers to raise premiums as needed after a second successful malpractice suit has been brought against a doctor for category “c” malpractice.

33.Allow insurers to raise premiums as needed after a third successful malpractice suit has been brought against a doctor for category “b” malpractice.

34.Reestablish DDT as the mosquito killer of choice in this country and allow its manufacture again

35.  The following understanding be taught in medical schools:

           Five things should ALWAYS be kept in mind when dealing with patients and illnesses or other medical conditions: 

A. A certain percentage of patients, even left absolutely alone, will be healed: the body is a wise physician and works wonders on its own when not interfered with

B. A sugar pill or prayer or just having a doctor listen to them or touch them will suffice to cure others: this is the well-known "placebo effect" and rather than being something to laugh at or joke about . . . implies that healing is a mental/

psychological/spiritual and holistic phenomenon as well as corporeal

C. The elimination of pain is NOT the same as eliminating the underlying medical situation in 95% of instances. Pain, per se, is a good thing:   warning of problems . . . while eliminating or minimizing pain is a responsibility of the physician, item D (below next) is the crucial physician's charge. 

D. Because ot the truth of ABC above and the great wisdom that they imply, the physician's noblest commandment is the first one: "First Do No Harm" (the Hippocratic Oath) because anything that takes the patient further from conditions A and B above is taking the patient further from eventual wellness.

E. By necessity, medical benefit comes in varying "flavors."

1.The best medicine is preventative, keeping the patient healthy and avoiding conditions that would take the patient away from health. The most effective medicines in the world are still fresh air, good healthy food and drink, proper exercise, sleep and other rest, good eating habits and avoiding intake of destructive items like drugs, tobacco, alcohol and highly processed foods**.

2. The second best medicine is interruptive, catching negative conditions slightly before, or at, or near their onset when treatment is the cheapest, easiest, fastest and surest. 

3. The third best medicine is discovering sickness or debilitation in patients and then curing them. 

4. Setting the body in such condition that phenomena A and B above  and E1 immediately above can follow naturally, is the purpose of most of what is good and great in medicine. When the physician's surgical intervention returns the patient's body to a place where the body's resources can tak over, all has been done that medicine, per se, can ask.

5. Palliative medicine (masking syptoms without curing) is quackery which is not only below contempt, but very dangerous.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

The truest and most important words ever spoken about proper medicine are these: “First do NO harm!”  Obamacare hasn’t been listening . . .

Gardasil Puts Girls in Danger, but Is NOT 

Very Effective vs. Cervical Cancer 

After thirteen anti-FDA Rants and another fourteen Better Health Care Alternative series blogs, it still needs to be said: the FDA is the single biggest thing wrong with the American health care system as it now stands.

            Cars work much better if proper levels of oil, water, tire air, etc. are maintained. More importantly, don’t put eggs or sugar or potting soil in the gas tank. Doing what’s right is very important;  avoiding all the wrong things is even far more important. The human body is the same. Recognizing this Hippocrates, the father of medicine gave us this simple rule: “First, do no harm.” First don’t put eggs or sugar in the gas tank. First don’t put harmful substances into the human body. Rajjpuut’s parents died iatrogenic deaths. That means the systems in place expected, hopefully, to save them, killed them both. Iatrogenic illnesses, injuries and deaths come in three varieties:

A.     Doctors, hospitals, nurses, etc. make terrible mistakes and the patient suffers

B.     Prescribed medicines, approved by the FDA, from a doctor hurt the patient

C.    Combinations of A and B above

Looking at case B and case C above more closely . . . virtually 100% of these incidents are caused by the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) ineptitude or willful disregard of the nation’s health. You are ten times more likely to be hospitalized and four times more likely to die from a negative reaction to an FDA approved drug . . . than you are to be hospitalized or die from an automobile accident. 

Right now the two classes of medicines that are creating the most profit for the big pharmaceutical companies are called PPIs and Statins. Statins are cholesterol-lowering drugs. Statins barely work to lower cholesterol. They are basically prescribed till death. They cure nothing. They are “palliatives” which means they cover up or lessen symptoms. They are very expensive. They carry many disagreeable side effects including death. Most importantly statins treat a disease condition that does NOT exist . . . . 

Elevated cholesterol is NOT a cause of heart attacks. This has been suspected for roughly 43 years and known for a fact since 1975, 34 years ago. Science expects that people with the worst indicators of disease die much more often than people with the lightest symptoms. This is medical cause and effect. If high cholesterol levels were the main cause of heart attacks, than roughly 100% of those who died from heart attacks would show elevated cholesterol. Only 47% of them do. That, far from being cause and effect is worse odds than the Las Vegas casinos will give you on a zero/double-zero roulette wheel. The FDA knows this, that has not prevented them from allowing statins to be sold; and that has not prevented them from lying about the safety of these UNNEEDED drugs. No products in history have made drug companies more money. No products in history have done more harm in the last 43 years.

Today, statins are rivaled in harm by a new challenger: PPIs. PPI’s stand for “proton-pump inhibitors.” Proton pump inhibitors “treat” another disease that does not exist. Acid reflux disease is a creation of Madison Avenue in order to sell drugs. Supposedly if you suffer from constant “heartburn” you may be at risk for acid reflux disease which supposedly threatens your esophagus. There is in reality NO acid reflux disease. If you have heartburn . . . 90+% of the time you have too LITTLE stomach acid, not too much. Drugs that lower stomach acid are very dangerous and they don’t cure anything but indeed make it much worse in the long run. They are also highly addictive, dangerous and expensive.

One of the worst of the many dangerous side effects of PPIs is something called “c. dificile” which is 99.999% of the time an iatrogenic disease caused by too freely prescribing antibiotics (many doctors immediately prescribe an anti-biotic even when a virus is suspected even though viruses cannot be killed by antibiotics and the doctor knows this, he just wants you out of his office). Our friend c. dificile is an iatrogenic form of dysentery: like Montezuma’s Revenge on steroids – and worse, because it’s almost impossible to cure and utterly debilitating and often deadly. If, however, a doctor not only prescribes overly ambitious or unneeded antibiotics but does so in combination with PPIs (which Rajjpuut reminds you are ALWAYS unnecessary) the chances for c. dificile outbreaks not only multiply, but the illness once contracted becomes even more deadly and less easily cured.

Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

Rajjpuut Does It Better: 

A Workable Health Care

Alternative:   Part XIII

            Last time out in Part XII of this health care series, Rajjpuut reiterated that the FDA was the most dangerous part of the American health care system. The FDA needs to be either eliminated totally or completely revamped and made 100% accountable. The AMA and individual nurses, doctors and hospitals can do much to eliminate iatrogenic incidents but the FDA is the big iatrogenic killer. If a drug kills people, or harms people: the FDA bigwigs need to be fired and perhaps even fined or better yet imprisoned. The CDC, on the other hand (Center for Disease Control in Atlanta) was put forward by Rajjpuut as a big part of the answer to our problems as far as cost, as far as countering the nation’s big killer diseases and increasing the quality of Americans’ lives.

            In a nutshell Rajjpuut, the ol’ health educator, has created a plan that works because it does virtually everything the opposite of how the health care system has worked up to now. Instead of concentrating 95% of our resources, time, talent, money and effort on stage four: discovering a disease and treating it which is the most costly and least effective (from the patient’s point of view) way to practice medicine, Rajjpuut advocates entering the system at the health education and preventions stage, stage one. As mentioned last time the biggest single thing to educate people about were the Seven Golden Rules of Health and the 35 extra quality years that they can mean for the individual. Follow this link and see the bottom of the page for the foot note info about this amazing knowledge :

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2009/07/18/a_far_better_health_care_alternative_part_xii.thtml

            How exactly it would all work is covered in blog XII of the series, but here’s an example of attacking probably the single biggest problem but also illustrating the entangled nature of the health care mess. Let’s look at morbid obesity; obesity; and the disease and silent killer that often accompanies them both: diabetes. When it comes to older Americans, which now means the baby boomer generation and those who were born before them, 20% of them suffer from diabetes and pre-diabetes is noticeable in another sixty million older Americans. 

            Diabetes is a condition where blood sugar levels go out of control. The body uses the pancreas and its hormone insulin to control blood sugar. When the pancreas doesn’t product enough insulin or when the pancreas produces enough but the body can’t seem to use it effectively: diabetes results and it’s a killer and an incredible trouble-maker. It can blind you. It can cause you to lose limbs to amputation; it can cripple you and it can cause heart attacks and cancer and kill you. And, of course, it can dramatically limit the length and quality of your life. Most all of us are familiar with the specter of a diabetic victim needing to keep their insulin cold and taking their daily shot or shots of insulin. And insulin is a dangerous drug . . . it can kill you.   

            Diabetes can damage your very arteries, veins and capillaries, ruin your liver, and destroy your sex life. All this and the horrors mentioned in the previous paragraph are in large part preventable.

            For those who don’t understand what we’re talking about, Type I Diabetes is NOT what we’re talking about. Type I is genetic for the most part. We’re talking about Pre-diabetes and Type II or “adult onset diabetes” a condition that develops later in life and typically accompanies obesity. Sixty million Americans today are considered pre-diabetic and forty million have diabetes of one kind or another. We are also NOT talking about the form of diabetes that some pregnant women undergo, gestational diabetes, though the information revealed in this blog will presumably help the vast majority of women avoid gestational diabetes altogether. And we are not talking about any other diabetes complex, but just about adult onset diabetes and obesity . . . and especially about pre-diabetes and preventing all pre-diabetics from developing the full-blown disease.

            Adult onset diabetes is the perfect metaphor for what’s wrong with the American health care system. The disease is probably 99.999% preventable. Follow the seven golden rules and one American in 10,000 will become pre-diabetic and one in 100,000 will develop adult onset diabetes. The single most important steps are daily exercise; a good breakfast; several tiny meals; weight-control; and good nutrition . . . if you want to prevent the disease.

            Like virtually all of today’s drug culture, insulin and other drugs prescribed to diabetics do NOT cure anything. If you develop the disease, today’s medicine treats you with insulin every day for the rest of your life. You become a subscriber to a “palliative medicine,” that is a drug that “treats the symptoms” of the disease but can’t cure it. It’s expensive and as we’ve mentioned, insulin shock is a killer. Of course you could wait for a match and get a pancreas transplant, but those are rare and very seldom as effective as might be hoped and very, very expensive. All this danger can be removed by preventing the disease in the first place or undoing the disease if you are already diabetic or pre-diabetic. That involves with close doctor control, living the Seven Golden Rules of Health and good nutrition.

            If you want to prevent diabetes you have mostly to look at the waistline. Morbidly obese people are roughly 28 times more likely to develop diabetes and 150 times more likely to be pre-diabetic than someone who maintains a healthy normal weight. Those who are merely fat (obese) are about 11 times more likely to develop diabetes and about 54 times more likely to be pre-diabetic. Just starting mild exercise 40 minutes a day  (in extreme cases walking in a swimming pool is the very first exercise intervention most doctors will recommend), good nutrition and TIME will work virtual miracles.  What exact GOOD are we doing by these simple inexpensive steps? Check this out:

            Besides the desirability of preventing virtually all the human tragedy mentioned above, diabetes and obesity are extraordinarily expensive. Obesity is hard to detail solid numbers on, but diabetes costs rose 32% for treating adult onset diabetes between 2002 and 2007. Estimated diabetes expenditure today are $143 Billion in direct medical costs and $74 Billion in indirect costs (work loss, premature death, disability, etc.). This means that 11% of all health care money spent in the United States is associated with diabetes of one sort or another.

            Perhaps the most glaringly understated statistic in the whole health care mess is that diabetes is associated with 7% of American deaths. Most probably that number is more like 27% since diabetes contributes mightily to heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, cancers, etc. In the country with the most abundant presence of nutritious food, millions of fat Americans are also killing themselves with malnutrition. Add in a bit of fitness training to good nutrition and miracles are possible, however: The CDC statistics reveal that prevention, health education and safety education really does work.

• In the Diabetes Prevention Program study, lifestyle interventions reduced diabetes development in people at high risk by 58% over a three-year period -- and an even more impressive 71% in adults age 60 and older. In contrast, Metformin, the diabetes drug compared in one famous study to the lifestyle intervention, reduced diabetes risk only half as much, cost a lot, didn’t always work and carried with a whole host of side effects.

• Comprehensive foot care programs can reduce amputation rates by 45% to 85%.

• Blood pressure control reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke in people with diabetes by 33% to 50%, and the risk of microvascular complications (eye, kidney and nerve diseases) by approximately 33%.

• Lowering blood pressure can reduce the decline in kidney function in people with early diabetic kidney disease 30% to 70%.

• Detecting and treating diabetic eye disease with laser therapy can reduce the development of severe vision loss by about 50% to 60%.

• Controlling LDL cholesterol can reduce cardiovascular complications by 20% to 50%.

DIETS, STARVATION, FASTING, and food fads DO NOT WORK, don’t do them

Highly processed food: if the food doesn’t even resemble the place it came from, don’t eat it.

Fried foods

Foods with high trans-fat content; partly hydrogenated foods

Sodas, sugary drinks, alcohol

Cigarettes and tobacco products in general

Drugs

Processed foods: canned and boxed and frozen foods with long lists of chemical ingredients

“Thick foods” such as gravies, cream sauces, dips

Heavily sugared foods and desserts

Eat complex carbohydrates only: such as brown rice, whole wheat, pumpernickel bread, shredded wheat

Eat all the green vegetables you want; all the apples you want; all the carrots you want

And all the yellow vegetables, except corn, you want. Eat all the red and green cabbage you want

Eat a boiled egg every day

Eat half a good sized potato twice weekly

Eat a banana and a half grapefruit every other day

Eat a big breakfast and 3-4 smaller meals daily

Use all the salsa you want on meats, rice, potatoes

Squeeze a lemon over your salad for a dressing

Eat a big and varied salad with tomatoes, greens, carrots, cucumbers, radishes, celery and sunflower seeds once daily

Eat a half-cup of yogurt daily

Concentrate on good, nutritious, fresh fruits and vegetables whenever in doubt

Use a good multi-vitamin

Drink a large glass of water 20 minutes prior to each meal

Exercise aerobically daily

Do light muscle-building exercises 3-4 times weekly

Good luck,

Live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

No Drug Too Deadly for Approval

and Continued FDA Backing

            Many Americans find it difficult to believe that the FDA is a corrupt agency. Well “blatantly corrupt” is the mildest term appropriate for the FDA. As Rajjpuut has been saying all along through the eleven earlier anti-FDA rants, we know that health care change is coming this summer . . . if they only make one change let it be wholesale radical elimination or total reform of the Food and Drug Administration. The outrages continue to mount: Ritalin, Celebrex, Avandia . . . Thalidomide is back again approved by the FDA (Rajjpuut does not make these things up) despite the horrendous birth defects it instigated in the 60’s. COX-2 inhibitors are allowed again despite 60,000 deaths according to the British Journal of Medicine evaluating the FDA advisory panels decision. The online website naturalnews.com put it this way:

“The fact that a single COX-2 drug has reportedly killed more Americans than the entire Vietnam War is apparently not sufficient for the FDA to characterize it as unsafe.

“With this decision, a ‘ full safety approval’ by the FDA has now become meaningless. If the agency can put its stamp of public safety approval on a drug that has killed tens of thousands of Americans and that was removed from the market by its own manufacturer following the revelation of studies showing alarming increases in heart attack risk, then what, pray tell, could possibly be the FDA's definition of a dangerous drug?

“For the FDA to consider a drug dangerous, it apparently has to kill more than 60,000 Americans. I'm curious what threshold must be reached before the FDA actually does its job and seeks to protect the U.S. public. Do 250,000 people have to die before the FDA calls a drug unsafe? 500,000 people? How about a million people?”

“There can no longer be any doubt whatsoever about the FDA's true purpose. Regardless of what the agency publicly states, when it comes time to make key decisions about the safety of U.S. consumers, the FDA will side with drug companies every time. We've seen it time and time again: with the FDA's reluctance to pull obviously dangerous drugs off the market in a timely fashion (Rezulin, for example), with the FDA's attempts to silence its own drug safety scientists (censorship of Dr. David Graham, for example), and with the FDA's collusion with drug companies in suppressing clinical trials and other forms of evidence that raise safety questions about prescription drugs. Corruption runs deep at the FDA, it seems.

“This decision with Vioxx and other COX-2 inhibitors was a defining moment for the U.S. Fraud and Drug Administration. It was a moment where the agency could have sided with public safety and held fast to a position of responsibility and ethics. Instead, it chose to favor drug company profits and put its stamp of approval on a class of drugs that is arguably the most deadly drugs ever to hit the open market.

“A sane, ethical FDA would have not only banned COX-2 inhibitors outright, it would have put an end to direct-to-consumer advertising that ultimately led to the over-hyping and over-prescribing of these painkillers in the first place.”

Well said. The FDA does not even appear to be even making a pretense of doing the job it was created for. This once proud federal agency created immediately after the outcry following Upton Sinclair’s novel expose` “The Jungle” outraged the public in 1906 to demand protection from business charlatans in the food and drug industries. Nsaids, as a class are among the most dangerous, least necessary, most expensive and most hyped of any class of drugs.   COX-2 inhibitors are easily the most dangerous of the Nsaids.  Attacking nutrient supplements, FDA always claims “not enough evidence they’re safe;” when defending drugs they’ve let wallow onto the shelves “there’s never enough evidence to prove they’re dangerous” . . . regardless of all the deaths they cause.  This is one dozen rants now . . . the story ought to be clear.  Defend yourself from the protection of the FDA.

If the citizens of America with all the wealth of information about this most corrupt of agencies continue to stand for it, then they deserve the fruits of FDA decadence heaped upon them. Rajjpuut hopes we are a better more alert and informed people and will rise up and contact our elected officials about this most corrupt evil empire in our midst: The FDA.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

                In this series of rants against the ultra-corrupt FDA (Food and Drug Administration), Rajjpuut’s premise is that since health care change is coming almost certainly this summer . . . if there were only one improvement that could be made in the American health care mess, that would be to eliminate or totally revamp the FDA. Here we see the FDA at their very hypocritical worst . . . .

                The FDA, approver of the poisonous substances Ritalin and Celebrex which has refused to remove either one of those killer drugs from the market after FDA exaggerations of the two drugs' safety proved to be absolutely erroneous, has attacked cereal maker General Mills for revealing their scientific study showing Cheerios reduces cholesterol 4%.   “Only FDA approved drugs are allowed to make such claims,” is the official FDA lie, ‘er line, on the issue. General Mills, You believed our lies? Shame on you! We’ll bust you to private! 

                Staying true to form, the FDA which is single-handedly most responsible for boosting iatrogenic deaths in America into 4^th place among all deaths (iatrogenic deaths are those caused by medicines and medical treatment) in the nation, fails to mention that the simple fact is this: less than 47% of those who die from heart attacks have elevated cholesterol. The 33 year old lie that high cholesterol brings heart attacks makes statins (cholesterol  lowering drugs) the most profitable of all the billion dollar drug bonanzas in American history for the huge pharmaceutical companies and has probably killed, maimed and injured more Americans than all of our war dead from all the wars in our history, while costing individuals and the government hundreds of billions of dollars for these expensive, dangerous drugs that cure nothing and arguably make strokes much more probable.

                The FDA, which has not shown the courage to attack big food or big drug companies for their improprieties; or to stand up to its sister in corruption the USDA, has however a proven track record for attacking health food stores and individual doctors who have the temerity to prescribe vitamins, minerals or other nutrients for some of their patients’ problems and the FDA now is attacking the most popular semi-healthy cereal in the nation. CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! It makes me so proud to be an American.

                In hypocrisy of the highest audacity, the FDA goes on to say, “. . . Companies that make claims about their whole grain foods are supposed to mention that fruits and vegetables are also part of a fiber-rich diet” which Cheerios does not.    Why are they doing this? Imagine if Cheerios improves its product some day and can say confidently after confirmation from say fifteen studies, “Cheerios reduces elevated cholesterol an average of 32% with a nine week period.” If that were to happen and the statement were true, than there would be clinical study information backing the idea that food can make you healthy: a claim that the FDA adamantly (but wrongly) refutes, “There has never been a supplement or a food that has been proven to cure any disease.”  

Now you and I know that if the doctors find after a few days in the hospital that all your horrendous symptoms show that you have scurvy, they’re NOT going to start feeding you 16 oranges and citrus fruits every day. No, they will probably give you about twelve to fifteen times the RDA of Vitamin C tablets . . . but the FDA statement denies that, denies the experiences of Captain Cook and the epithet “limies” given to British sailors;  denies the Nobel Prize of Linus Pauling; and denies the recent Nobel Prize of Louis Ignarro. The FDA protects the food industry and its lies; the FDA protects the drug industry and its lies; the FDA protects itself and its own lies . . . the FDA attacks those whose products have never been proven to do anybody any harm when used in proper dosage. The FDA is a major cause of America’s health problems and needs to step out of the way, change or blow themselves up.  The FDA, once a great agency created in response to Upton Sinclair's monumental novel expose` "The Jungle" in 1906 certainly will not protect the American people.

Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

            Regular readers of Rajjpuut’s little rants will recognize a strong personal antipathy toward the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). That once great organization created in 1906, the very year that Upton Sinclair’s monumental novel/expose` “The Jungle” hit the bookstore shelves, has degenerated into the most corrupt federal organization in America. Rajjpuut, health educator he, believes that only a complete top-to-bottom remake of the FDA will allow any health care plan, now or in the future, any hope of success.

Americans believe health comes in drug bottles and the few in the medical community who know differently (they ALL should but are hypnotized by drug claims) aren’t advertising the truth.

 At the FDA they’ve long forgotten it’s the public they’re supposed to be serving.

Drug Culture Created by the FDA

and Big Pharmaceutical Companies

Costs Government Programs Heavily

Obama plans to put a new health care system in place doomed to failure at huge expense, personal-healthwise and economically to the country . . .  as we mentioned in rant #4, there are four main reasons why: 

A.    Government spending programs seldom work. 

B.     The two earlier programs, Medicare and Medicaid, did not help and only made health and cost trends already in place much worse.

C.    And mostly because, the President is NOT expected to address FDA re-organization or clean up in his new program: huge mistake, HUGE!

D.    Additionally, as far as is known, the President is not expected to address a single one of the points brought up by health educator Rajjpuut in his blog series “A Far Better Health Care Alternative.”

          American medical scientists have time and time again concluded research that underlines the simple fact that there is absolutely NO need for new drugs that mask pain but do not help cure the underlying problems. There are enough old pain medications at large, and the newer ones are just far more expensive and much, much more dangerous. But the drug companies keep cranking them out and despite the best medical advice ever known (First Do No Harm!), the FDA keeps approving them. The pure cost in money; the cost in iatrogenic ailments (problems caused my errors from doctors, nurses or the hospital itself; or by reactions to medicine) in money and lives; and the cost to the U.S. government all demand that the FDA deny approval to about 90-95% of all such drugs.

          However, the FDA in its inanity and corruption (see Rajjpuut’s earlier FDA rants) doesn’t even deny approval to 10% of these dangerous new concoctions. Year after year the list of horrendous side-effects for new medications we hear advertised on TV grows longer and more virulent. 

          Drug companies then go out of their way to see that their dangerous, expensive concoctions become popular:

A.      Nurses are paid by drug companies for using their products when they have that discretionary power

B.      Schools get paid thousands of dollars monthly for every child they help get prescribed for psychiatric drugs like Prozac or Ritalin.

C.      Doctors routinely get visited by drug sales men with huge amounts of literature “pushing” their drugs and even kickback offers and bonus offers if certain “quotas” are

 met

D.      A, B, and C above are clearly abuses that endanger the patients and the government’s coffers. The FDA which has the power to stop A, B, and C above from happening

never does anything . . . never.

The biggest abuse of all, however, is that drug companies routinely pay scientists and doctors on government advisory panels to recommend their drugs. And often the payments even come for recommending their drugs in front of FDA evaluation hearings and the FDA condones the practice.

Drug companies can now legally bribe** the FDA to hasten their drugs onto the market. 

It’s all a huge pack of lies, deceit, shady practices and outright corruption that endangers the public and costs the government immense amounts of money every second of every day. The FDA knows but will not tell you that:

A.      An aspirin a day makes strokes much more likely

B.      Almost all sunscreens cause cancer but don’t do much to prevent skin cancer (since sunscreens have become common, American skin cancer rates have risen dramatically, far worse than people under the tropic sun typically encounter)

C.      Lowering cholesterol does nothing to stop heart attacks.  The 33-year old high-cholesterol lie is the most profitable charade in the history of medicine making all the quack medicine salesmen ever known look like Honest Abe.

D.      Estrogen therapy is an extraordinarily dangerous practice.

E.       Roughly 60% of the most frequently prescribed drugs for the elderly are found on lists of drugs NOT to be given to elderly persons.

F.       Every prescription drug has dangerous side effects, nevertheless 20% of them have NO printed warnings on the packaging.

G.      Average Americans consume fifty pounds worth of prescription, non-prescription, and over the counter drugs every year (400 times more than Rajjpuut does!)

H.      People who don’t need drugs are now going into their doctors and demanding certain drugs they’ve seen advertised on TV.

J.        The FDA could IMMEDIATELY stop every one of these sad situations, the FDA does nothing!

            At the FDA they’ve long forgotten it’s the public health they’re in the business of protecting; and the public they’re supposed to be serving but the President, congress, and the American Public needs to remember that key fact RIGHT NOW!

The first necessary step in any health care change is to UNDO, REDO and UNcorrupt the FDA.

Live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut   

**   the correct term is "bribe" but the FDA calls them "expedited evaluations" or "expedited reviews"

Regular readers of Rajjpuut’s little rants will recognize a strong personal antipathy toward the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). That once great organization created in 1906, the very year that Upton Sinclair’s monumental novel/expose` “The Jungle” hit the bookstore shelves, has degenerated into the most corrupt federal organization in America. Rajjpuut, health educator he, believes that only a complete top-to-bottom remake of the FDA will allow any health care plan, now or in the future, any hope of success.

The Hippocratic Oath says, “First Do No Harm” . . . indicating that 90% of the time, doctors could be sued for malpractice for prescribing drugs they know can do enormous harm according to the official list of side effects.

Drug Culture Created by the FDA

and Big Pharmaceutical Companies

Endangers Citizen’s Health

            We all know that Obama plans to put a new health care system in place. Most of us know that it’s doomed to failure at huge expense, (personally and economically) to the country . . . here are the reasons why: 

A.    Government spending programs seldom work. 

B.     The two earlier programs, Medicare and Medicaid, did not help and only made health and cost trends already in place much worse.

C.    And mostly because, the President is NOT expected to address FDA re-organization or FDA clean up in his new program: huge mistake, HUGE!

D.    Additionally, as far as is known, the President is not expected to address a single one of the points brought up by health educator Rajjpuut in his blog series “A Far Better Health Care Alternative.”

The Hippocratic Oath, which doctors swear to, says “First Do No Harm” . . . since study after study indicates that 70% of the expensive drugs Americans take actually have “no effect,” and all drugs created, that means 100% of them, have proven and listed side effects: arguably from 90%-100% of instances when a doctor prescribes a drug for a patient, he is at least technically, if not in fact, breaking the Hippocratic Oath. America is a drug culture. People believe health and happiness comes in bottles. The information found in this paragraph is highlighted because of whistle-blowers who in study after study say that internal memos and other documents generated by the drug companies themselves reveal pretty much those same two sad statistics.

            When it’s also considered that a huge percentage of drugs are only designed to mask or alleviate symptoms but NOT to cure any underlying conditions and all these drugs too have annoying, dangerous and/or deadly side effects . . . the magnitude of the problem becomes clear. The FDA, by approving these palliatives and their side effects is making America’s health problems worse. The fact that drug companies now have the option to legally bribe** the FDA to expedite putting the drugs on the market has exacerbated an already horrendous problem. 

Need Rajjpuut mention that statins are the single most profitable drugs of all time and PPIs are very nearly as profitable?????? Of course a more horrendous example of FDA corruption is the conflict of interest that lead to the Celebrex (used for osteoarthritis; rheumatoid arthritis and painful menstruation) disaster in the first place and that same conflict of interest has kept that deadly drug on the market right up to the present moment with extra warnings added to its packaging. “First Do No Harm,” indeed!

Live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut   

**   the correct term is "bribe" but the FDA calls them "expedited evaluations" or "expedited reviews"

Regular readers of Rajjpuut’s little rants will recognize a strong personal antipathy toward the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). That once great organization created in 1906, the very year that Upton Sinclair’s monumental novel/expose` “The Jungle” hit the bookstore shelves, has degenerated into the most corrupt federal organization in America. Rajjpuut, health educator he, believes that only a complete top-to-bottom remake of the FDA will allow any health care plan, now or in the future, any hope of success. 

At the FDA it’s not considered “conflict of interest” if the public doesn’t know

At more than 90% of evaluation and recommendation meetings at least one member has a conflict of interest

is NO Concern of the FDA

            Before a drug is approved for the public the FDA will listen to a presentation by the drug manufacturer and then listen to expert witnesses.  Federal law prohibits the FDA use experts with financial stakes riding on the FDA decisions. According to NY Times Best-selling author Kevin Trudeau, however, this is a rule that is quite commonly waived.  Trudeau says that the FDA keeps these meetings secret as well as which companies are involved, what the nature of the conflict is, and how much money may be involved. Your tax dollars at work protecting you!  Rajjpuut has heard that waiving the conflict of interest rule might happen nine or ten times a month. Reuters and USA Today has run articles that imply a far greater degree of financial involvement than that, however -- that well over half the experts the FDA calls upon for testimony have a direct financial interest in the drugs or subject matter being evaluated. With stock ownerships, grant money, consulting charges or other incentives involved, Rajjpuut believes that if three times in every hundred instances the “expert” testified against his own best financial interests that would be very surprising. 

At the FDA what the public doesn’t know, can’t hurt them (“them” being the FDA). According to Trudeau, once the experts have been heard from (and there’s only one side represented in 85% of instances) it’s very rare that the FDA rules against their advice in broad general matters. If a specific drug is the subject of evaluation, the FDA appears far less biased: at these meetings only 30% of the experts on average have financial conflicts.

            Does this “unbiased” FDA evaluation process work? Listen to the extensive list of side effects that get mentioned every time some drug is advertised on the air. And what happens when the side-effects are truly dangerous or even deadly? The FDA very seldom “pulls” a drug from the market. Instead they typically recommend including another warning on the packaging. Before 1990 less than 60% of drugs were approved today it’s over 80%. Before 1990 about 5% of the drugs approved by the FDA were brand new to the world. Since 1998 the FDA has made enormous amounts of fees approving drugs, 2/3 of them first-time drugs on the market. It is now also considered part of doing business normally for the drug company to legally bribe** the FDA to conclude it’s business much faster than unbribed examinations take. 

            The Celebrex story is one of the most infamous of FDA approved drug debacles, Celebrex is still on the market despite a horrendous record with deaths and injuries. Despite this when it was reviewed the FDA recommended it stay on the market.  According to Kevin Trudeau virtually every advisory panel member profited from the decision to keep it on the market. Statins (cholesterol lowering drugs) are dangerous, expensive and amount to a virtual life-subscription. Guess what? Only 47% of the people who die from heart attacks have elevated cholesterol readings.  The FDA was aware of studies showing that cholesterol had no cause-effect relationship with heart attacks back in 1976. For several years the FDA allowed eggs to be attacked as dangerous causes of high cholesterol and to this day allows drug companies to sell dangerous, expensive statins with utter impunity.

Acid Reflux medicines (proton pump inhibitors) are potions without a real disease. 90% of the time when heartburn strikes, the cause is too little acid, not too much. Acid reflux medicine actually makes heartburn worse.

Rajjpuut wants to puke when he thinks about the FDA and its horrendous corruption, but he’s afraid someone might give him some FDA recommended medicine – oh no!

Regular readers of Rajjpuut’s little rants will recognize a strong personal antipathy toward the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). That once great organization created in 1906, the very year that Upton Sinclair’s monumental novel/expose` “The Jungle” hit the bookstore shelves, has degenerated into the most corrupt federal organization in America. Rajjpuut, health educator he, believes that only a complete top-to-bottom remake of the FDA will allow any health care plan, now or in the future, any hope of success.