Podcasts about oxycontin

President Trump has been briefed on both the risks and benefits of bombing Iran's Fordo nuclear facility. CBS News has learned the president believes that if talks fail, disabling the facility will be necessary because of the risk of weapons being produced in a relatively short period of time, multiple sources told CBS News. A federal bankruptcy judge will decide on Friday whether to approve a nearly $7.5 billion settlement involving OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma. Severe storms are bringing thunder, lightning and heavy rain to parts of the East Coast. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this powerful and thought-provoking episode of Culture Uncut Podcast, DJ Nova and A-Tray Trey reflect on Father's Day, the Oxycontin settlement, and the racial disparities in drug policy that continue to impact communities today.From healthcare bias and the opioid crisis to war in the Middle East, the hosts unpack the headlines and give real-world commentary with their signature humor and authenticity. And just when it gets heavy... the Trump Mobile makes an entrance — and it's wild.

President Trump says he'll decide within two weeks whether the U.S. will join Israel's attacks on Iran's nuclear sites. Celebrating the end of slavery this Juneteenth. A judge mulls whether drugmaker's Oxycontin setlement should be put to a vote. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A historic and national $7.4 billion dollar settlement has been reached with Purdue Pharma, the maker of the opioid OxyContin that spurred a major start of the opioid epidemic. A prior settlement had been struck down by the Supreme Court. NPR'S national addiction correspondent, Brian Mann, joins Lisa Desjardins with more. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

A historic and national $7.4 billion dollar settlement has been reached with Purdue Pharma, the maker of the opioid OxyContin that spurred a major start of the opioid epidemic. A prior settlement had been struck down by the Supreme Court. NPR'S national addiction correspondent, Brian Mann, joins Lisa Desjardins with more. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Recently I was asked to review a forthcoming book for American Scientist magazine. The book was entitled, Sweet and Deadly: How Coca-Cola Spreads Disinformation and Makes us Sick. I did the review, and now that the book has been published, I'm delighted that its author, Murray Carpenter, has agreed to join us. Mr. Carpenter is a journalist and author whose work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and has been featured in places like NPR's All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Interview Summary So, let's start with your career overall. Your journalism has covered a wide range of topics. But a major focus has been on what people consume. First, with your book Caffeinated and now with Sweet and Deadly. What brought you to this interest? My interest in caffeine is longstanding. Like many of us, I consume caffeine daily in the form of coffee. And I just felt like with caffeine, many of us don't really discuss the fact that it is a drug, and it is at least a mildly addictive drug. And so, I became fascinated with that enough to write a book. And that really led me directly in an organic fashion to this project. Because when I would discuss caffeine with people, mostly they just kind of wanted the cliff notes. Is my habit healthy? You know, how much caffeine should I take? And, and in short, I would tell them, you know, if you don't suffer from anxiety or insomnia and you're consuming your caffeine in a healthy beverage, well, that's fine. But, what I realized, of course, is that by volume, the caffeinated beverage people consume most of is sodas. And so that led me to thinking more about sodas because I got a lot of questions about the caffeine in sodas. And that led me to realize just the degree to which they are unhealthful. We've all known sodas not to be a health food, but I think that the degree to which they are not healthy surprised me. And that's what led me to this book. Yes, there's some very interesting themes aren't there with addiction and manipulation of ingredients in order to get people hooked on things. So let's talk about Coca-Cola a bit. Your book focuses on Coca-Cola. It's right there in the title. And certainly, they're giants in the beverage field. But are there other reasons that led you to focus on them? Other than that, the fact that they're the biggest? They're the biggest and really almost synonymous with sodas worldwide. I mean, many people don't say ‘I want a pop, I want a soda.' They say, ‘I want a Coke.' I quote a source as saying that. You know, what that means is you want a sugar sweetened beverage. And it's not just that they're the most successful at this game, and the biggest. But as I started doing this research, I realized that they have also been the most aggressive and the most successful at this sort of disinformation that's the focus of the book. At generating these health campaigns, these science disinformation campaigns, we should say. This is not to say Pepsi and Dr. Pepper have not been at this game as well, and often through the American Beverage Association. But it is to say that I think Coca-Cola has been the most sophisticated. The most invested in these campaigns. And I would argue the most successful. And so, I really think it's a league apart and that's why I wanted to focus on Coca-Cola. That makes good sense. So, in reading your book, I was struck by the sheer number of ways Coca-Cola protected their business interest at the expense of public health and also the degree to which it was coordinated and calculated. Let's take several examples of such activities and discuss exactly what the company has done. And I'd love your opinion on this. One thing you noted that Coke acted partly through other organizations, one of which you just mentioned, the American Beverage Association. There were others where there was sort of a false sense of scientific credibility. Can you explain more about what Coke did in this area? Yes, and one of the organizations that I think is perhaps the exemplar of this behavior is the International Life Sciences Institute. It's a very successful, very well-funded group that purports to you know, improve the health of people, worldwide. It was founded by a Coca-Cola staffer and has, you know, essentially carried water for Coke for years through a variety of direct and indirect ways. But so front groups, the successful use of front groups: and this is to say groups that don't immediately appear to be associated, say with Coca-Cola. If you hear the International Life Sciences Institute, no one immediately thinks Coca-Cola, except for people who study this a lot. The International Food Information Council, another very closely related front group. This is one of the ways that Coke has done its work is through the use of front groups. And some of them are sort of these more temporary front groups that they'll establish for specific campaigns. For example, to fight soda taxes in specific areas. And they often have very anodyne names, and names again that don't directly link them to Coca-Cola or a beverage, the beverage industry. And the reason that this is so important and the reason this is so effective is journalists know if they were saying, Coca-Cola says soda isn't bad for you, of course that raises red flags. If they say, the International Life Sciences Institute says it's not bad for you, if they say the International Food Information Council says it's not bad for you. The use of front groups has been one of the very effective and persistent, strategies. It almost sounds like the word deception could be written the charter of these organizations, couldn't it? Because it was really meant to disguise Coca-Cola's role in these things from the very get go. That's right. Yes. And the deception runs very deep. One of the things that I happened onto in the course of reporting this book, Sweet and Deadly, is Coca-Cola two different times, organized three-day seminars on obesity in Colorado. These two attendees appeared to be sponsored by a press organization and the University of Colorado. They were funded and structured entirely at the behest of Coca-Cola. And it wasn't until after people had attended these seminars and reported stories based on the findings that they'd learned there. Much, much later did people find out that yes, actually these were Coca-Cola initiatives. So yes, deception, runs deep and it's a huge part of their public relations strategy. It's like reputation laundering, almost. Well, it is, and, you know, I make frequent analogies to the tobacco industry in the book. And I think one of the things that's important to remember when we're looking at tobacco and when we're looking at Coca-Cola, at the soda industry writ large, is that these are industries that are producing products that science now shows unequivocally are unhelpful. Even at moderate levels of consumption. So, in order for the industry to continue selling this product, to continue leading, they really have to fight back. It's imperative. It's a risk to their business model if they don't do something to fight the emerging health science. And so, yes, it's very important to them. You know, it's easy, I guess, to ascribe this kind of behavior to ill meaning people within these organizations. But it's almost written into the DNA of these organizations. I mean, you said they have to do this. So, it's pretty much be expected, isn't. It is. I think young people when they hear something like this, they often shrug and say capitalism. And, yes, there's something to that. But capitalism thrives also in a regulated environment. I think that's maybe a little bit too simplistic. But the aspect of it that does apply here is that Coca-Cola is in the business of selling sugar water. That's what they're there to do. Granted, they've diversified into other products, but they are in the business of selling sugar water. Anything that threatens that business model is a threat to their bottom line. And so, they are going to fight it tooth and nail. So how did Coca-Cola influence big health organizations like the World Health Organization and any equivalent bodies in the US? Well, so a few different ways. One of the ways that Coca-Cola has really extended its influence is again, through the use of the front groups to carry messages such as, you know, a calorie is a calorie. Calories and calories out. That's, that's one of the strategies. Another is by having allies in high places politically. And sometimes these are political appointees that happen to be associated with Coca-Cola. Other times these are politicians who are getting funding from Coca-Cola. But, yes, they have worked hard. I mean, the WHO is an interesting one because the WHO really has been out a little bit ahead of the more national bodies in terms of wanting soda taxes, et cetera. But there's a subtler way too, I think, that it influences any of these political entities and these science groups, is that Coca-Cola it's such an all-American beverage. I don't think we can overstate this. It's almost more American than apple pie. And I think we still have not sort of made that shift to then seeing it as something that's unhealthful. And I do think that that has, sort of, put the brakes slightly on regulatory actions here in the US. Let's talk about the Global Energy Balance Network, because this was an especially pernicious part of the overall Coca-Cola strategy. Would you tell us about that and how particular scientists, people of note in our field, by the way, were being paid large sums of money and then delivering things that supported industries positions. Yes. This was a Coca-Cola initiative. And we have to be clear on this. This was designed and created at the behest of Coca-Cola staffers. This was an initiative that was really an effort to shift the balance to the calories outside of the equation. So energy balance is one of these, sort of, themes that Coca-Cola and other people have, sort of, made great hay with. And this idea would be just calories and calories out. That's all that matters. If you're just balanced there, everything else is to be okay. We can talk about that later. I think most of your listeners probably understand that, you know, a calorie of Coca-Cola is not nutritionally equivalent to a calorie of kale. But that's what the Global Energy Balance Network was really trying to focus on. And yes, luminaries in the field of obesity science, you know, Stephen Blair at the University of South Carolina, Jim Hill, then at the University of Colorado's Anschutz Center, the Global Energy Balance Network funded their labs with more than a million dollars to specifically focus on this issue of energy balance. Now, what was deceptive here, and I think it's really worth noting, is that Coca-Cola developed this project. But once it developed the project and gave the funding, it did not want to be associated with it. It wasn't the Global Energy Balance Network 'brought to you by Coca-Cola.' It appeared to be a freestanding nonprofit. And it looked like it was going to be a very effective strategy for Coca-Cola, but it didn't turn out that way. So, we'll talk about that in a minute. How much impact did this have? Did it matter that Coke gave money to these several scientists you mentioned? Well, I think yes. I think in the broader scheme of things that every increment of scientific funding towards this side matters. You know, people talk about the science of industrial distraction or industrial selection. And, you know, partly this is this idea that even if you're funding legitimate science, right, but it's focused on this ‘calories outside of the equation,' it's sucking up some of the oxygen in the room. Some of the public conversation is going to be shifted from the harmful effects of a product, say Coca-Cola, to the benefits of exercise. And so, yes, I think all of this kind of funding can make a difference. And it influences public opinion. So how close were the relationships between the Coca-Cola executives and the scientist? I mean, did they just write them a check and say, go do your science and we will let you come up with whatever you will, or were they colluding more than that? And they were colluding much more than that. And I've got a shout out here to the Industry Documents Library at the University of California at San Francisco, which is meticulously archived. A lot of the emails that show all of the interrelationships here. Yes, they were not just chatting cordially - scientists to Coca-Cola Corporation. They were mutually developing strategies. They were often ready at a moment's notice to appear at a press conference on Coca-Cola's behalf. So, yes, it was a very direct, very close relationship that certainly now that we see the conversations, it's unseemly at best. How did this all come to light? Because you said these documents are in this archive at UCSF. How did they come to light in the first place and how did shining light on this, you know, sort of pseudo-organization take place? Well, here we have to credit, New York Times reporter, now at the Washington Post, Anahad O'Connor, who did yeoman's work to investigate the Global Energy Balance Network. And it was his original FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests that got a lot of these emails that are now in the industry document library. He requested these documents and then he built his story in large part off of these documents. And it was a front-page New York Times expose and, Coke had a lot of egg on its face. It's then CEO, even apologized, you know, in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. And you know, the sort of a secondary aspect of this is after this funding was exposed, Coca-Cola was pressured to reveal other health funding that it had been spending money on. And that was, I think over a few years like $133 million. They spread their money around to a lot of different organizations and in some cases the organizations, it was just good will. In other cases, you had organizations that changed their position on key policy initiatives after receiving the funding. But it was a lot of money. So, the Global Energy Balance Network, it is sort of opened a chink in their armor and gave people a view inside the machine. And there's something else that I'd love to mention that I think is really important about the Global Energy Balance Network and about that initiative. As Coca-Cola seems, and this became clear in the reporting of the book over and over again, they seem always to be three moves ahead on the chess board. They're not just putting out a brush fires. They're looking way down the road. How do we head off the challenge that we're facing in public opinion? How do we head off the challenge we're facing in terms of soda science? And in many cases, they've been very, very effective at this. Were Coca-Cola's efforts mainly to influence policies and things in the US or did they have their eyes outside the US as well? I focused the book, the reporting of the book, really on Coca-Cola in the US. And also, and I just want to mention this tangentially, it's also focused not on non-nutritive sweetened beverages, but the sugary beverages. It's pretty tightly focused. But yes, Coca-Cola, through other organizations, particularly the International Life Sciences Institute, has very much tried to influence policy say in China, for example, which is a huge market. So yes, they've exported this very successful PR strategy globally. So, the corporate activities, like the ones you describe in your book, can be pretty clearly damaging to the public's health. What in the heck can be done? I mean, who will the change agents be? And do you think there's any hope of curtailing this kind of dreadful activity? Well, this is something I thought about a lot. One of the themes of the book is that the balance of public opinion has never tipped against Coca-Cola. And we talked about this earlier, that it's still seen as this all American product. And we see with other industries and other products. So, you know, Philip Morris, smoking, Marlboro. Eventually the balance of public opinion tips against them and people accept that they're unhealthful and that they've been misleading the public. The same thing happened for Exxon and climate change, Purdue pharma and Oxycontin. It's a pattern we see over and over again. With Coca-Cola, it hasn't tipped yet. And I think once it does, it will be easier for public health advocates to make their case. In terms of who the change agents might be, here we have a really interesting conversation, right? Because the foremost change agent right now looks like it's RFK Jr. (Robert F. Kennedy), which is pretty remarkable and generates an awful lot of shall we say, cognitive dissonance, right? Because both the spending of SNAP Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funds for sodas, he's opposed to that. He has just as recently as the week before last called sugar poison. He said sugar is poison. These are the kinds of very direct, very forceful, high level, initiatives that we really haven't seen at a federal level yet. So, it's possible that he will be nudging the balance. And it puts, of course, everybody who's involved, every public health advocate, I think, who is involved with this issue in a slightly uncomfortable or very uncomfortable position. Yes. You know, as I think about the kind of settings where I've worked and this conflict-of-interest problem with scientists taking money and doing things in favor of industry. And I wonder who the change agents are going to be. It's a pretty interesting picture comes with that. Because if you ask scientists whether money taints research, they'll say yes. But if you ask, would it taint your research, they'll say no. Because of course I am so unbiased and I'm so pure that it really wouldn't affect what I do. So, that's how scientists justify it. Some scientists don't take money from industry and there are no problems with conflicts of interest. But the ones who do can pretty easily justify it along with saying things like, well, I can help change the industry from within if I'm in the door, and things like that. The universities can't really police it because universities are getting corporate funding. Maybe not from that particular company, but overall. Their solution to this is the same as the scientific journals, that you just have to disclose. The kind of problem with disclosure as I see it, is that it - sort of editorializing here and you're the guest, so I apologize for intruding on that - but the problem with disclosure is that why do you need to disclose something in the first place because there's something potentially wrong? Well, the solution then isn't disclose it, it's not to do it. And disclosing is like if I come up and kick you in the leg, it's okay if I disclose it? I mean, it's just, there's something sort of perverse about that whole system. Journals there, you know, they want disclosure. The big scientific association, many of them are getting money from industry as well. So, industry has so permeated the system that it's hard to think about who can have any impact. And I think the press, I think it's journalists like you who can make a difference. You know, it wasn't the scientific organizations or anything else that got in the way of the Global Energy Balance Network. It was Anahad O'Connor writing in the New York Times, and all the people who were involved in exposing that. And you with your book. So that's sort of long-winded way of saying thank you. What you've done is really important and there are precious few change agents out there. And so, we have to rely on talented and passionate people like you to get that work done. So, thank you so much for sharing it with us. Let me just end with one final question. Do you see any reason to be optimistic about where this is all going? I do. And I've got to say maybe you're giving scientists a little bit of short shrift here. Because, as the science develops, as it becomes more compelling and a theme of the book is that soda science really, over the past 15, 20 years has become more compelling. More unequivocal. We know the harms and, you know, you can quantify them and identify them more specifically than say, 15 years ago. So, I think that's one thing that can change. And I think slowly you're seeing, greater public awareness. I think the real challenge, in terms of getting the message out about the health risks, is that you really see like a bifurcated consumption of Coca-Cola. There are many people who are not consuming any Coca-Cola. And then you have a lot of people who are consuming, you know, say 20 ounces regularly. So, there is a big question of how you reach this other group of people who are still high consumers of Coca-Cola. And we know and you know this well from your work, that soda labeling is one thing that works and that soda taxes are another. I think those are things to look out for coming down the pike. I mean, obviously other countries are ahead of us in terms of both of these initiatives. One of the things occurred to me as you were speaking earlier, you mentioned that your book was focused on the sugared beverages. Do you think there's a similar story to be told about deception and deceit with respect to the artificial sweeteners? I suspect so, you know. I haven't done the work, but I don't know why there wouldn't be. And I think artificial sweeteners are in the position that sugary beverages were 10 to 15 years ago. There's a lag time in terms of the research. There is increasing research showing the health risks of these beverages. I think people who are public health advocates have been loath to highlight these because they're also a very effective bridge from sugar sweetened beverages to no sugar sweetened beverages. And I think, a lot of people see them as a good strategy. I do think there probably is a story to tell about the risks of non-nutritive sweeteners. So, yes. I can remind our listeners that we've done a series of podcasts, a cluster of them really, on the impact of the artificial sweeteners. And it's pretty scary when you talk to people who really understand how they're metabolized and what effects they have on the brain, the microbiome, and the rest of the body. Bio Murray Carpenter is a journalist and author whose stories have appeared in the New York Times, Wired, National Geographic, NPR, and PRI's The World. He has also written for the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, and other media outlets. He holds a degree in psychology from the University of Colorado and a Master of Science in environmental studies from the University of Montana, and has worked as a medical lab assistant in Ohio, a cowboy in Colombia, a farmhand in Virginia, and an oil-exploring “juggie” in Wyoming. He lives in Belfast, Maine. He is the author of Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us and Sweet and Deadly: How Coca-Cola Spread

Dr. Aseem Malhotra — former BBC darling and now a fierce critic of Big Pharma — reveals the dark truths behind the pharmaceutical industry, vaccine rollouts, and media censorship. From statin drugs to the COVID vaccine controversy, Dr. Malhotra shares why he believes the system is “psychopathic” and how legacy media like the BBC and The Guardian helped shape the narrative. After a controversial appearance on Steven Bartlett's podcast and being targeted by mainstream outlets, Dr. Malhotra breaks his silence about what he discovered: drug trials designed by Big Pharma, doctors unaware of true side effects, and vaccines that, according to his analysis, caused more harm than the virus itself. We dive deep into: - How prescribed medications have become the third leading cause of death worldwide. - Shocking truths about statins, OxyContin, and the COVID-19 jab's link to heart inflammation. - Media manipulation and government cover-ups before major elections. - Why the medical establishment is stuck in a dangerous blindspot. - The psychological tactics used to demonize the unvaccinated. Follow Dr. Malhotra: https://x.com/DrAseemMalhotra/ Go to his website: https://www.metabolicreset.co/ Join the 30k heretics on my mailing list: https://andrewgoldheretics.com  Check out my new documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@andrewgoldinvestigates  Andrew on X: https://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok   Insta: https://www.instagram.com/andrewgold_ok Heretics YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@andrewgoldheretics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did a marketing campaign lead to one of the worst public health disasters in American history?  In this episode, I investigate the rise and fall of the Sackler family, the pharmaceutical empire they built, and the marketing tactics that got millions addicted to opioids. You'll learn: How reframing turned OxyContin from a last resort into a “safe” everyday drug. Why a vague letter (not a study) became the foundation for Purdue's 1% addiction claim. How the Sacklers used doctors, pain groups, and celebrities to exploit authority bias. Why repeating a false claim makes it more believable (feat. the mere exposure effect). How behavioural science helped sell a deadly drug—and what we can learn from it. --- Shatterproof non-profit: https://shatterproof.org/ Empire of Pain:  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612861/empire-of-pain-by-patrick-radden-keefe/ Sign up to my newsletter: https://www.nudgepodcast.com/mailing-list Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phill-agnew-22213187/ Watch Nudge on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nudgepodcast/ --- Sources: ABC News. (2025). Purdue Pharma, Sackler family to pay $7.4 billion opioid settlement [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n2uuX1NaQo LastWeekTonight. (2016). Opioids: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pdPrQFjo2o CBS News. (2019). OxyContin maker facing over 2,000 opioid death-related lawsuits [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwGGlEFKrSs ABC News. (2019). Local governments file lawsuit against the family behind OxyContin [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlSDhuhLedg CBS News. (2022). Trump Organization's accounting firm cuts ties over financial statements [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csAS4WLvMao BBC News. (2013). Serpentine Sackler Gallery Opening [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YThcpSZIN0c CBS New York. (2021). Metropolitan Museum Of Art Will Remove Sackler Name From Galleries [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_u29BL2CQE CBC News. (2019). Dozens Storm The Guggenheim Museum In Protest Of Donor [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci_yOI3Wyto CBS News. (2019). Protestors stage a “Die In” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYVvIwbxX2I CNBC Television. (2020). Would have done ‘nothing' differently in opioid crisis: Kathe Sackler says [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRl-Zjyf2UE STAT. (2017). 1998 Purdue Pharma marketing video [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaxlJXpwkzs GoLocal LIVE. (2019). Purdue Pharmaceutical Commercial 1998-Oxycontin [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCOl1exq3IM CBS News. (2017). Behind Purdue Pharma's marketing of OxyContin [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-jxKPpMvmA LastWeekTonight. (2019). Opioids III: The Sacklers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaCaIhfETsM LastWeekTonight. (2021). McKinsey: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiOUojVd6xQ CBS News. (2018). Whistleblower: Purdue Pharma continued deceptive sales practices after guilty plea [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5qQf3Po31M Washington Post. (2019). Inside the opioid industry's marketing machine [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIlpd40CpT0 CBC News. (2018). How One Man Made The Opioid Crisis Possible [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2AUIBB34nI CBC News. (2019). Nan Goldin ‘Blizzard of Prescriptions' Sackler Pain Guggenheim Protest & Die-In 2/9/19 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2A4Tb8cOxE Keefe, P. R. (2021). Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty. Doubleday.  Cialdini, R. B. (2006). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Revised ed.). Harper Business.

Joe Lawler explains how he built a million-dollar Oxycontin empire, the power it gave him, and how it all crumbled when the feds came knocking. #OxycontinCrisis #PillMill #DrugTrafficking #LawEnforcement #FederalPrison #CrimeAndPunishment #PharmaScandal #TrueCrime Thank you to LUCY for sponsoring today's episode: Let's level up your nicotine routine with Lucy. Go to HTTP://LUCY.CO/IANBICK and use promo code (IANBICK) to get 20% off your first order. Lucy has a 30-day refund policy if you change your mind.  Connect with Joe Lawler: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juno_2627/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@laceup617 Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: https://convictclothing.net/collections/convict-clothing-x-ian-bick Timestamps: 00:00:00 Joe's Experience in "The Town" and Federal Prison 00:06:16 Growing Up in White Irish Catholic Neighborhoods 00:12:52 Reflection on Family and Personal Growth 00:19:55 Growing Up with Horror Stories and Societal Expectations 00:26:31 Growing Up with Old Sayings and Lessons 00:33:08 Embracing Authenticity and Facing Consequences 00:39:44 Overcoming Resentment and Finding Self-Acceptance 00:46:31 Overcoming Personal Challenges and Resilience 00:53:30 A Night of Impulse and Reflection 01:01:27 Life Decisions and Loyalty: The Price of Friendship 01:06:32 Reflections on Crime and Guilt 01:15:28 Richie and Stevie's Dynamic Duo 01:20:31 Confrontation and Its Consequences 01:26:37 Personal Growth and Perception Changes 01:33:28 Understanding the Struggle with Addiction and Sobriety 01:40:16 Confronting Gambling Addiction and Recovery Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

'Snapt' creator Logan Dulien has lived nine lives in the space of 40-odd years. Surfer. Filmmaker. Manager. Husband. Father. Addict. Caregiver. Vigilante. Surfer (again). In this chat, we learn about his early years hanging with Andy and Bruce, becoming a band manager for Mickey Avalon, getting addicted to prescription opiates, then finally crawling back from the depths of hell and reinvigorating the independent surf film.

Dr. Richard Morgan: The Life-changing Pill | The Hopeaholics PodcastWelcome back to the Hopeaholics podcast, where we dive deep into the realities of mental health and addiction. In this episode, we are honored to have Dr. Richard Morgan as our guest, who shares his powerful journey through addiction and recovery. Dr. Richard Morgan recounts a journey of addiction that begins during medical school, where he starts writing prescriptions for himself. This eventually leads to his arrest by federal agents on May 15, 2007, for conspiracy to distribute OxyContin—ten years after he first takes a pill. Despite coming from a respected background as a physician, he faces the same addiction challenges as others, noting that "addiction doesn't know any boundaries." He shares his experiences in rehab and his ongoing efforts to recover by educating future doctors about the power and responsibility they hold in prescribing medications. Dr. Morgan emphasizes the importance of seeking help, recalling how his addiction affects his life, including losing his family and job. By sharing his story with students, he aims to raise awareness about addiction and promote compassion for those affected. #TheHopeaholics #redemption #recovery #AlcoholAddiction #AddictionRecovery #wedorecover  #SobrietyJourney #MyStory #RecoveryIsPossible #Hope #wedorecover Join our patreon to get access to an EXTRA EPISODE every week of ‘Off the Record', exclusive content, a thriving recovery community, and opportunities to be featured on the podcast. https://patreon.com/TheHopeaholics Follow the Hopeaholics on our Socials:https://www.instagram.com/thehopeaholics https://linktr.ee/thehopeaholicsBuy Merch: https://thehopeaholics.myshopify.comVisit our Treatment Centers: https://www.hopebythesea.comIf you or a loved one needs help, please call or text 949-615-8588. We have the resources to treat mental health and addiction. Sponsored by the Infiniti Group LLC:https://www.infinitigroupllc.com Timestamps:00:01:46:20 - The Turning Point00:12:31:06 - The Reflection on Choices00:17:59:13 - The Power of Mindfulness00:24:41:20 - The Fight for Innocence00:29:04:06 - The Loss00:29:27:01 - The Importance of Connection00:29:45:14 - The Unique Truths00:33:06:13 - The Agent of Change00:35:53:21 - The Arrest00:40:07:21 - The Awakening00:42:12:12 - The Journey of Self-Discovery00:43:02:23 - The Realization of Self-Love

Former drug trafficker Jason Votrobek shares his wild journey from moving ounces as a teenager to smuggling 100-kilo shipments of cocaine and running a multi-million-dollar Oxycontin empire in South Florida. From working with Mexican and Colombian cartels to near-death encounters, undercover drops, high-seas smuggling tactics, and ultimately getting busted and serving time in prison—Jason breaks down the game like no one else. His story is raw, unfiltered, and packed with real-life lessons from inside the drug world. Go Follow Jason! TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@UC8RSJB1iwlO4gSVOape_oiw IG: https://www.instagram.com/8upjay/ All Other Links: https://linktr.ee/jasonvotrobek?utm_source=linktree_profile_share<sid=84999dcc-6e96-46b1-b23e-b044cf791660 Help our brother Matyas overcome a difficult time and donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/qnpshd-matyas-retten-hws-cci-behandlung This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following Download the Ava app today, and when you join use promo code CONNECT to get your first month FREE! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"The Sacklers: The Billionaire Family Behind the Opioid Crisis" – Once known for philanthropy, the Sackler family built their fortune on OxyContin, a drug that fueled addiction and devastation. This is the story of how they made billions, avoided accountability, and left a lasting mark on America.Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@themediahijacked?lang=enReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theMediaHijacked/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Lbqa8NqieSOZpTCtxshQwT-Shirts “NOW AVAILABLE”https://www.themediahijacked.com/Every Tuesday @3PM PST/6PM EST Join us on twitch.tvFollow us on Twitch.tv: https://www.twitch.tv/mediahijackedFollow us on www.kick.com/themediahijackedBilly: https://www.instagram.com/youneak/Chris: https://www.instagram.com/sarkastik_jones/Don't forget Rate and Subscribe!! Thanks!!

Amanda Hall sheds light on the opioid crisis, her personal struggles with addiction, and her mission to help others break free. #OpioidCrisis #AddictionAwareness #TrueCrime #PublicHealth #OverdosePrevention #MentalHealthMatters #SurvivorStory #hope Thank you to LUCY & DRAFT KINGS for sponsoring today's episode: LUCY: Let's level up your nicotine routine with Lucy. Go to HTTP://LUCY.CO/IANBICK and use promo code (IANBICK) to get 20% off your first order. Lucy has a 30-day refund policy if you change your mind. DRAFT KINGS: New players can get FIVE HUNDRED CASINO SPINS ON A FEATURED GAME! Just sign up with code IANBICK and wager a minimum of five dollars to receive FIVE HUNDRED CASINO SPINS ON A FEATURED GAME. Connect with Amanda Hall: X: https://x.com/amandahall33?lang=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004998068732 Website: https://dream.org/ Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: https://convictclothing.net/collections/convict-clothing-x-ian-bick Timestamps: 00:00:00 Amanda's Journey to Connecticut 00:04:49 Growing Up in a Judgmental Community 00:09:33 Understanding Addiction and Its Impact 00:14:35 The Importance of Early Intervention and Counseling 00:19:28 Challenges of OxyContin and Addiction Recovery 00:24:38 Separation from My Children 00:29:43 Enhancing Your Nicotine Routine with Lucy 00:34:17 Overcoming Addiction and Family Relationships 00:39:34 Arrest and Detox Experience 00:44:11 Navigating the Challenges of Mandatory Drug Testing 00:48:45 First Shock of Prison Life 00:53:15 Life in a Kentucky Prison: Nicknames and Accents 00:58:00 Overcoming Incarceration: A Journey to Recovery and Education 01:02:53 Journey from Incarceration to Social Work 01:07:41 Foundations of Kentucky Smart Justice Advocates 01:12:32 Understanding the Re-entry Act for Medicaid 01:17:12 Amanda's Inspiring Journey and Best Wishes Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Gary Null provides a commentary on "Universal  Healthcare"       Universal Healthcare is the Solution to a Broken Medical System Gary Null, PhD Progressive Radio Network, March 3, 2025 For over 50 years, there has been no concerted or successful effort to bring down medical costs in the American healthcare system. Nor are the federal health agencies making disease prevention a priority. Regardless whether the political left or right sponsors proposals for reform, such measures are repeatedly defeated by both parties in Congress. As a result, the nation's healthcare system remains one of the most expensive and least efficient in the developed world. For the past 30 years, medical bills contributing to personal debt regularly rank among the top three causes of personal bankruptcy. This is a reality that reflects not only the financial strain on ordinary Americans but the systemic failure of the healthcare system itself. The urgent question is: If President Trump and his administration are truly seeking to reduce the nation's $36 trillion deficit, why is there no serious effort to reform the most bloated and corrupt sector of the economy? A key obstacle is the widespread misinformation campaign that falsely claims universal health care would cost an additional $2 trillion annually and further balloon the national debt. However, a more honest assessment reveals the opposite. If the US adopted a universal single-payer system, the nation could actually save up to $20 trillion over the next 10 years rather than add to the deficit. Even with the most ambitious efforts by people like Elon Musk to rein in federal spending or optimize government efficiency, the estimated savings would only amount to $500 billion. This is only a fraction of what could be achieved through comprehensive healthcare reform alone. Healthcare is the largest single expenditure of the federal budget. A careful examination of where the $5 trillion spent annually on healthcare actually goes reveals massive systemic fraud and inefficiency. Aside from emergency medicine, which accounts for only 10-12 percent of total healthcare expenditures, the bulk of this spending does not deliver better health outcomes nor reduce trends in physical and mental illness. Applying Ockham's Razor, the principle that the simplest solution is often the best, the obvious conclusion is that America's astronomical healthcare costs are the direct result of price gouging on an unimaginable scale. For example, in most small businesses, profit margins range between 1.6 and 2.5 percent, such as in grocery retail. Yet the pharmaceutical industrial complex routinely operates on markup rates as high as 150,000 percent for many prescription drugs. The chart below highlights the astronomical gap between the retail price of some top-selling patented pharmaceutical medications and their generic equivalents. Drug Condition Patent Price (per unit) Generic Price Estimated Manufacture Cost Markup Source Insulin (Humalog) Diabetes $300 $30 $3 10,000% Rand (2021) EpiPen Allergic reactions $600 $30 $10 6,000% BMJ (2022) Daraprim Toxoplasmosis $750/pill $2 $0.50 150,000% JAMA (2019) Harvoni Hepatitis C $94,500 (12 weeks) $30,000 $200 47,000% WHO Report (2018) Lipitor Cholesterol $150 $10 $0.50 29,900% Health Affairs (2020) Xarelto Blood Thinner $450 $25 $1.50 30,000% NEJM (2020) Abilify Schizophrenia $800 (30 tablets) $15 $2 39,900% AJMC (2019) Revlimid Cancer $16,000/mo $450 $150 10,500% Kaiser Health News (2021) Humira Arthritis $2,984/dose $400 $50 5,868% Rand (2021) Sovaldi Hepatitis C $1,000/pill $10 $2 49,900% JAMA (2021) Xolair Asthma $2,400/dose $300 $50 4,800% NEJM (2020) Gleevec Leukemia $10,000/mo $350 $200 4,900% Harvard Public Health Review (2020) OxyContin Pain Relief $600 (30 tablets) $15 $0.50 119,900% BMJ (2022) Remdesivir Covid-19 $3,120 (5 doses) N/A $10 31,100% The Lancet (2020) The corruption extends far beyond price gouging. Many pharmaceutical companies convince federal health agencies to fund their basic research and drug development with taxpayer dollars. Yet when these companies bring successful products to market, the profits are kept entirely by the corporations or shared with the agencies or groups of government scientists. On the other hand, the public, who funded the research, receives no financial return. This amounts to a systemic betrayal of the public trust on a scale of hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Another significant contributor to rising healthcare costs is the widespread practice of defensive medicine that is driven by the constant threat of litigation. Over the past 40 years, defensive medicine has become a cottage industry. Physicians order excessive diagnostic tests and unnecessary treatments simply to protect themselves from lawsuits. Study after study has shown that these over-performed procedures not only inflate costs but lead to iatrogenesis or medical injury and death caused by the medical  system and practices itself. The solution is simple: adopting no-fault healthcare coverage for everyone where patients receive care without needing to sue and thereby freeing doctors from the burden of excessive malpractice insurance. A single-payer universal healthcare system could fundamentally transform the entire industry by capping profits at every level — from drug manufacturers to hospitals to medical equipment suppliers. The Department of Health and Human Services would have the authority to set profit margins for medical procedures. This would ensure that healthcare is determined by outcomes, not profits. Additionally, the growing influence of private equity firms and vulture capitalists buying up hospitals and medical clinics across America must be reined in. These equity firms prioritize profit extraction over improving the quality of care. They often slash staff, raise prices, and dictate medical procedures based on what will yield the highest returns. Another vital reform would be to provide free medical education for doctors and nurses in exchange for five years of service under the universal system. Medical professionals would earn a realistic salary cap to prevent them from being lured into equity partnerships or charging exorbitant rates. The biggest single expense in the current system, however, is the private health insurance industry, which consumes 33 percent of the $5 trillion healthcare budget. Health insurance CEOs consistently rank among the highest-paid executives in the country. Their companies, who are nothing more than bean counters, decide what procedures and drugs will be covered, partially covered, or denied altogether. This entire industry is designed to place profits above patients' lives. If the US dismantled its existing insurance-based system and replaced it with a fully reformed national healthcare model, the country could save $2.7 trillion annually while simultaneously improving health outcomes. Over the course of 10 years, those savings would amount to $27 trillion. This could wipe out nearly the entire national debt in a short time. This solution has been available for decades but has been systematically blocked by corporate lobbying and bipartisan corruption in Washington. The path forward is clear but only if American citizens demand a system where healthcare is valued as a public service and not a commodity. The national healthcare crisis is not just a fiscal issue. It is a crucial moral failure of the highest order. With the right reforms, the nation could simultaneously restore its financial health and deliver the kind of healthcare system its citizens have long deserved. American Healthcare: Corrupt, Broken and Lethal Richard Gale and Gary Null Progressive Radio Network, March 3, 2025 For a nation that prides itself on being the world's wealthiest, most innovative and technologically advanced, the US' healthcare system is nothing less than a disaster and disgrace. Not only are Americans the least healthy among the most developed nations, but the US' health system ranks dead last among high-income countries. Despite rising costs and our unshakeable faith in American medical exceptionalism, average life expectancy in the US has remained lower than other OECD nations for many years and continues to decline. The United Nations recognizes healthcare as a human right. In 2018, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon denounced the American healthcare system as "politically and morally wrong." During the pandemic it is estimated that two to three years was lost on average life expectancy. On the other hand, before the Covid-19 pandemic, countries with universal healthcare coverage found their average life expectancy stable or slowly increasing. The fundamental problem in the U.S. is that politics have been far too beholden to the pharmaceutical, HMO and private insurance industries. Neither party has made any concerted effort to reign in the corruption of corporate campaign funding and do what is sensible, financially feasible and morally correct to improve Americans' quality of health and well-being.   The fact that our healthcare system is horribly broken is proof that moneyed interests have become so powerful to keep single-payer debate out of the media spotlight and censored. Poll after poll shows that the American public favors the expansion of public health coverage. Other incremental proposals, including Medicare and Medicaid buy-in plans, are also widely preferred to the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare mess we are currently stuck with.   It is not difficult to understand how the dismal state of American medicine is the result of a system that has been sold out to the free-market and the bottom line interests of drug makers and an inflated private insurance industry. How advanced and ethically sound can a healthcare system be if tens of millions of people have no access to medical care because it is financially out of their reach?  The figures speak for themselves. The U.S. is burdened with a $41 trillion Medicare liability. The number of uninsured has declined during the past several years but still lingers around 25 million. An additional 30-35 million are underinsured. There are currently 65 million Medicare enrollees and 89 million Medicaid recipients. This is an extremely unhealthy snapshot of the country's ability to provide affordable healthcare and it is certainly unsustainable. The system is a public economic failure, benefiting no one except the large and increasingly consolidated insurance and pharmaceutical firms at the top that supervise the racket.   Our political parties have wrestled with single-payer or universal healthcare for decades. Obama ran his first 2008 presidential campaign on a single-payer platform. Since 1985, his campaign health adviser, the late Dr. Quentin Young from the University of Illinois Medical School, was one of the nation's leading voices calling for universal health coverage.  During a private conversation with Dr. Young shortly before his passing in 2016, he conveyed his sense of betrayal at the hands of the Obama administration. Dr. Young was in his 80s when he joined the Obama campaign team to help lead the young Senator to victory on a promise that America would finally catch up with other nations. The doctor sounded defeated. He shared how he was manipulated, and that Obama held no sincere intention to make universal healthcare a part of his administration's agenda. During the closed-door negotiations, which spawned the weak and compromised Affordable Care Act, Dr. Young was neither consulted nor invited to participate. In fact, he told us that he never heard from Obama again after his White House victory.   Past efforts to even raise the issue have been viciously attacked. A huge army of private interests is determined to keep the public enslaved to private insurers and high medical costs. The failure of our healthcare is in no small measure due to it being a fully for-profit operation. Last year, private health insurance accounted for 65 percent of coverage. Consider that there are over 900 private insurance companies in the US. National Health Expenditures (NHE) grew to $4.5 trillion in 2022, which was 17.3 percent of GDP. Older corporate rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans argue that a single-payer or socialized medical program is unaffordable. However, not only is single-payer affordable, it will end bankruptcies due to unpayable medical debt. In addition, universal healthcare, structured on a preventative model, will reduce disease rates at the outset.    Corporate Democrats argue that Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a positive step inching the country towards complete public coverage. However, aside from providing coverage to the poorest of Americans, Obamacare turned into another financial anchor around the necks of millions more. According to the health policy research group KFF, the average annual health insurance premium for single coverage is $8,400 and almost $24,000 for a family. In addition, patient out-of-pocket costs continue to increase, a 6.6% increase to $471 billion in 2022. Rather than healthcare spending falling, it has exploded, and the Trump and Biden administrations made matters worse.    Clearly, a universal healthcare program will require flipping the script on the entire private insurance industry, which employed over half a million people last year.  Obviously, the most volatile debate concerning a national universal healthcare system concerns cost. Although there is already a socialized healthcare system in place -- every federal legislator, bureaucrat, government employee and veteran benefits from it -- fiscal Republican conservatives and groups such as the Koch Brothers network are single-mindedly dedicated to preventing the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid. A Koch-funded Mercatus analysis made the outrageous claim that a single-payer system would increase federal health spending by $32 trillion in ten years. However, analyses and reviews by the Congressional Budget Office in the early 1990s concluded that such a system would only increase spending at the start; enormous savings would quickly offset it as the years pass. In one analysis, "the savings in administrative costs [10 percent of health spending] would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage."    Defenders of those advocating for funding a National Health Program argue this can primarily be accomplished by raising taxes to levels comparable to other developed nations. This was a platform Senator Bernie Sanders and some of the younger progressive Democrats in the House campaigned on. The strategy was to tax the highest multimillion-dollar earners 60-70 percent. Despite the outrage of its critics, including old rank-and-file multi-millionaire Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, this is still far less than in the past. During the Korean War, the top tax rate was 91 percent; it declined to 70 percent in the late 1960s. Throughout most of the 1970s, those in the lowest income bracket were taxed at 14 percent. We are not advocating for this strategy because it ignores where the funding is going, and the corruption in the system that is contributing to exorbitant waste.    But Democratic supporters of the ACA who oppose a universal healthcare plan ignore the additional taxes Obama levied to pay for the program. These included surtaxes on investment income, Medicare taxes from those earning over $200,000, taxes on tanning services, an excise tax on medical equipment, and a 40 percent tax on health coverage for costs over the designated cap that applied to flexible savings and health savings accounts. The entire ACA was reckless, sloppy and unnecessarily complicated from the start.    The fact that Obamacare further strengthened the distinctions between two parallel systems -- federal and private -- with entirely different economic structures created a labyrinth of red tape, rules, and wasteful bureaucracy. Since the ACA went into effect, over 150 new boards, agencies and programs have had to be established to monitor its 2,700 pages of gibberish. A federal single-payer system would easily eliminate this bureaucracy and waste.    A medical New Deal to establish universal healthcare coverage is a decisive step in the correct direction. But we must look at the crisis holistically and in a systematic way. Simply shuffling private insurance into a federal Medicare-for-all or buy-in program, funded by taxing the wealthiest of citizens, would only temporarily reduce costs. It will neither curtail nor slash escalating disease rates e. Any effective healthcare reform must also tackle the underlying reasons for Americans' poor state of health. We cannot shy away from examining the social illnesses infecting our entire free-market capitalist culture and its addiction to deregulation. A viable healthcare model would have to structurally transform how the medical economy operates. Finally, a successful medical New Deal must honestly evaluate the best and most reliable scientific evidence in order to effectively redirect public health spending.    For example, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former Obama healthcare adviser, observed that AIDS-HIV measures consume the most public health spending, even though the disease "ranked 75th on the list of diseases by personal health expenditures." On the other hand, according to the American Medical Association, a large percentage of the nation's $3.4 trillion healthcare spending goes towards treating preventable diseases, notably diabetes, common forms of heart disease, and back and neck pain conditions. In 2016, these three conditions were the most costly and accounted for approximately $277 billion in spending. Last year, the CDC announced the autism rate is now 1 in 36 children compared to 1 in 44 two years ago. A retracted study by Mark Blaxill, an autism activist at the Holland Center and a friend of the authors, estimates that ASD costs will reach $589 billion annually by 2030. There are no signs that this alarming trend will reverse and decline; and yet, our entire federal health system has failed to conscientiously investigate the underlying causes of this epidemic. All explanations that might interfere with the pharmaceutical industry's unchecked growth, such as over-vaccination, are ignored and viciously discredited without any sound scientific evidence. Therefore, a proper medical New Deal will require a systemic overhaul and reform of our federal health agencies, especially the HHS, CDC and FDA. Only the Robert Kennedy Jr presidential campaign is even addressing the crisis and has an inexpensive and comprehensive plan to deal with it. For any medical revolution to succeed in advancing universal healthcare, the plan must prioritize spending in a manner that serves public health and not private interests. It will also require reshuffling private corporate interests and their lobbyists to the sidelines, away from any strategic planning, in order to break up the private interests' control over federal agencies and its revolving door policies. Aside from those who benefit from this medical corruption, the overwhelming majority of Americans would agree with this criticism. However, there is a complete lack of national trust that our legislators, including the so-called progressives, would be willing to undertake such actions.    In addition, America's healthcare system ignores the single most critical initiative to reduce costs - that is, preventative efforts and programs instead of deregulation and closing loopholes designed to protect the drug and insurance industries' bottom line. Prevention can begin with banning toxic chemicals that are proven health hazards associated with current disease epidemics, and it can begin by removing a 1,000-plus toxins already banned in Europe. This should be a no-brainer for any legislator who cares for public health. For example, Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, notes that "the policy approach in the US and Europe is dramatically different" when it comes to chemical allowances in cosmetic products. Whereas the EU has banned 1,328 toxic substances from the cosmetic industry alone, the US has banned only 11. The US continues to allow carcinogenic formaldehyde, petroleum, forever chemicals, many parabens (an estrogen mimicker and endocrine hormone destroyer), the highly allergenic p-phenylenediamine or PBD, triclosan, which has been associated with the rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria, avobenzone, and many others to be used in cosmetics, sunscreens, shampoo and hair dyes.   Next, the food Americans consume can be reevaluated for its health benefits. There should be no hesitation to tax the unhealthiest foods, such as commercial junk food, sodas and candy relying on high fructose corn syrup, products that contain ingredients proven to be toxic, and meat products laden with dangerous chemicals including growth hormones and antibiotics. The scientific evidence that the average American diet is contributing to rising disease trends is indisputable. We could also implement additional taxes on the public advertising of these demonstrably unhealthy products. All such tax revenue would accrue to a national universal health program to offset medical expenditures associated with the very illnesses linked to these products. Although such tax measures would help pay for a new medical New Deal, it may be combined with programs to educate the public about healthy nutrition if it is to produce a reduction in the most common preventable diseases. In fact, comprehensive nutrition courses in medical schools should be mandatory because the average physician receives no education in this crucial subject.  In addition, preventative health education should be mandatory throughout public school systems.   Private insurers force hospitals, clinics and private physicians into financial corners, and this is contributing to prodigious waste in money and resources. Annually, healthcare spending towards medical liability insurance costs tens of billions of dollars. In particular, this economic burden has taxed small clinics and physicians. It is well past the time that physician liability insurance is replaced with no-fault options. Today's doctors are spending an inordinate amount of money to protect themselves. Legions of liability and trial lawyers seek big paydays for themselves stemming from physician error. This has created a culture of fear among doctors and hospitals, resulting in the overly cautious practice of defensive medicine, driving up costs and insurance premiums just to avoid lawsuits. Doctors are forced to order unnecessary tests and prescribe more medications and medical procedures just to cover their backsides. No-fault insurance is a common-sense plan that enables physicians to pursue their profession in a manner that will reduce iatrogenic injuries and costs. Individual cases requiring additional medical intervention and loss of income would still be compensated. This would generate huge savings.    No other nation suffers from the scourge of excessive drug price gouging like the US. After many years of haggling to lower prices and increase access to generic drugs, only a minute amount of progress has been made in recent years. A 60 Minutes feature about the Affordable Care Act reported an "orgy of lobbying and backroom deals in which just about everyone with a stake in the $3-trillion-a-year health industry came out ahead—except the taxpayers.” For example, Life Extension magazine reported that an antiviral cream (acyclovir), which had lost its patent protection, "was being sold to pharmacies for 7,500% over the active ingredient cost. The active ingredient (acyclovir) costs only 8 pennies, yet pharmacies are paying a generic maker $600 for this drug and selling it to consumers for around $700." Other examples include the antibiotic Doxycycline. The price per pill averages 7 cents to $3.36 but has a 5,300 percent markup when it reaches the consumer. The antidepressant Clomipramine is marked up 3,780 percent, and the anti-hypertensive drug Captopril's mark-up is 2,850 percent. And these are generic drugs!    Medication costs need to be dramatically cut to allow drug manufacturers a reasonable but not obscene profit margin. By capping profits approximately 100 percent above all costs, we would save our system hundreds of billions of dollars. Such a measure would also extirpate the growing corporate misdemeanors of pricing fraud, which forces patients to pay out-of-pocket in order to make up for the costs insurers are unwilling to pay.    Finally, we can acknowledge that our healthcare is fundamentally a despotic rationing system based upon high insurance costs vis-a-vis a toss of the dice to determine where a person sits on the economic ladder. For the past three decades it has contributed to inequality. The present insurance-based economic metrics cast millions of Americans out of coverage because private insurance costs are beyond their means. Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University political economist, has called our system "brutal" because it "rations [people] out of the system." He defined rationing as "withholding something from someone that is beneficial." Discriminatory healthcare rationing now affects upwards to 60 million people who have been either priced out of the system or under insured. They make too much to qualify for Medicare under Obamacare, yet earn far too little to afford private insurance costs and premiums. In the final analysis, the entire system is discriminatory and predatory.    However, we must be realistic. Almost every member of Congress has benefited from Big Pharma and private insurance lobbyists. The only way to begin to bring our healthcare program up to the level of a truly developed nation is to remove the drug industry's rampant and unnecessary profiteering from the equation.     How did Fauci memory-hole a cure for AIDS and get away with it?   By Helen Buyniski   Over 700,000 Americans have died of AIDS since 1981, with the disease claiming some 42.3 million victims worldwide. While an HIV diagnosis is no longer considered a certain death sentence, the disease looms large in the public imagination and in public health funding, with contemporary treatments running into thousands of dollars per patient annually.   But was there a cure for AIDS all this time - an affordable and safe treatment that was ruthlessly suppressed and attacked by the US public health bureaucracy and its agents? Could this have saved millions of lives and billions of dollars spent on AZT, ddI and failed HIV vaccine trials? What could possibly justify the decision to disappear a safe and effective approach down the memory hole?   The inventor of the cure, Gary Null, already had several decades of experience creating healing protocols for physicians to help patients not responding well to conventional treatments by the time AIDS was officially defined in 1981. Null, a registered dietitian and board-certified nutritionist with a PhD in human nutrition and public health science, was a senior research fellow and Director of Anti-Aging Medicine at the Institute of Applied Biology for 36 years and has published over 950 papers, conducting groundbreaking experiments in reversing biological aging as confirmed with DNA methylation testing. Additionally, Null is a multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker, bestselling author, and investigative journalist whose work exposing crimes against humanity over the last 50 years has highlighted abuses by Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, the financial industry, and the permanent government stay-behind networks that have come to be known as the Deep State.   Null was contacted in 1974 by Dr. Stephen Caiazza, a physician working with a subculture of gay men in New York living the so-called “fast track” lifestyle, an extreme manifestation of the gay liberation movement that began with the Stonewall riots. Defined by rampant sexual promiscuity and copious use of illegal and prescription drugs, including heavy antibiotic use for a cornucopia of sexually-transmitted diseases, the fast-track never included more than about two percent of gay men, though these dominated many of the bathhouses and clubs that defined gay nightlife in the era. These patients had become seriously ill as a result of their indulgence, generally arriving at the clinic with multiple STDs including cytomegalovirus and several types of herpes and hepatitis, along with candida overgrowth, nutritional deficiencies, gut issues, and recurring pneumonia. Every week for the next 10 years, Null would counsel two or three of these men - a total of 800 patients - on how to detoxify their bodies and de-stress their lives, tracking their progress with Caiazza and the other providers at weekly feedback meetings that he credits with allowing the team to quickly evaluate which treatments were most effective. He observed that it only took about two years on the “fast track” for a healthy young person to begin seeing muscle loss and the recurrent, lingering opportunistic infections that would later come to be associated with AIDS - while those willing to commit to a healthier lifestyle could regain their health in about a year.    It was with this background that Null established the Tri-State Healing Center in Manhattan in 1980, staffing the facility with what would eventually run to 22 certified health professionals to offer safe, natural, and effective low- and no-cost treatments to thousands of patients with HIV and AIDS-defining conditions. Null and his staff used variations of the protocols he had perfected with Caiazza's patients, a multifactorial patient-tailored approach that included high-dose vitamin C drips, intravenous ozone therapy, juicing and nutritional improvements and supplementation, aspects of homeopathy and naturopathy with some Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic practices. Additional services offered on-site included acupuncture and holistic dentistry, while peer support groups were also held at the facility so that patients could find community and a positive environment, healing their minds and spirits while they healed their bodies.   “Instead of trying to kill the virus with antiretroviral pharmaceuticals designed to stop viral replication before it kills patients, we focused on what benefits could be gained by building up the patients' natural immunity and restoring biochemical integrity so the body could fight for itself,” Null wrote in a 2014 article describing the philosophy behind the Center's approach, which was wholly at odds with the pharmaceutical model.1   Patients were comprehensively tested every week, with any “recovery” defined solely by the labs, which documented AIDS patient after patient - 1,200 of them - returning to good health and reversing their debilitating conditions. Null claims to have never lost an AIDS patient in the Center's care, even as the death toll for the disease - and its pharmaceutical standard of care AZT - reached an all-time high in the early 1990s. Eight patients who had opted for a more intensive course of treatment - visiting the Center six days a week rather than one - actually sero-deconverted, with repeated subsequent testing showing no trace of HIV in their bodies.   As an experienced clinical researcher himself, Null recognized that any claims made by the Center would be massively scrutinized, challenging as they did the prevailing scientific consensus that AIDS was an incurable, terminal illness. He freely gave his protocols to any medical practitioner who asked, understanding that his own work could be considered scientifically valid only if others could replicate it under the same conditions. After weeks of daily observational visits to the Center, Dr. Robert Cathcart took the protocols back to San Francisco, where he excitedly reported that patients were no longer dying in his care.    Null's own colleague at the Institute of Applied Biology, senior research fellow Elana Avram, set up IV drip rooms at the Institute and used his intensive protocols to sero-deconvert 10 patients over a two-year period. While the experiment had been conducted in secret, as the Institute had been funded by Big Pharma since its inception half a century earlier, Avram had hoped she would be able to publish a journal article to further publicize Null's protocols and potentially help AIDS patients, who were still dying at incredibly high rates thanks to Burroughs Wellcome's noxious but profitable AZT. But as she would later explain in a 2019 letter to Null, their groundbreaking research never made it into print - despite meticulous documentation of their successes - because the Institute's director and board feared their pharmaceutical benefactors would withdraw the funding on which they depended, given that Null's protocols did not involve any patentable or otherwise profitable drugs. When Avram approached them about publication, the board vetoed the idea, arguing that it would “draw negative attention because [the work] was contrary to standard drug treatments.” With no real point in continuing experiments along those lines without institutional support and no hope of obtaining funding from elsewhere, the department she had created specifically for these experiments shut down after a two-year followup with her test subjects - all of whom remained alive and healthy - was completed.2   While the Center was receiving regular visits by this time from medical professionals and, increasingly, black celebrities like Stokely Carmichael and Isaac Hayes, who would occasionally perform for the patients, the news was spreading by word of mouth alone - not a single media outlet had dared to document the clinic that was curing AIDS patients for free. Instead, they gave airtime to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, who had for years been spreading baseless, hysteria-fueling claims about HIV and AIDS to any news outlet that would put him on. His claim that children could contract the virus from “ordinary household conduct” with an infected relative proved so outrageous he had to walk it back,3 and he never really stopped insisting the deadly plague associated with gays and drug users was about to explode like a nuclear bomb among the law-abiding heterosexual population. Fauci by this time controlled all government science funding through NIAID, and his zero-tolerance approach to dissent on the HIV/AIDS front had already seen prominent scientists like virologist Peter Duesberg stripped of the resources they needed for their work because they had dared to question his commandment: There is no cause of AIDS but HIV, and AZT is its treatment. Even the AIDS activist groups, which by then had been coopted by Big Pharma and essentially reduced to astroturfing for the toxic failed chemotherapy drug AZT backed by the institutional might of Fauci's NIAID,4 didn't seem to want to hear that there was a cure. Unconcerned with the irrationality of denouncing the man touting his free AIDS cure as an  “AIDS denier,” they warned journalists that platforming Null or anyone else rejecting the mainstream medical line would be met with organized demands for their firing.    Determined to breach the institutional iron curtain and get his message to the masses, Null and his team staged a press conference in New York, inviting scientists and doctors from around the world to share their research on alternative approaches to HIV and AIDS in 1993. To emphasize the sound scientific basis of the Center's protocols and encourage guests to adopt them into their own practices, Null printed out thousands of abstracts in support of each nutrient and treatment being used. However, despite over 7,000 invitations sent three times to major media, government figures, scientists, and activists, almost none of the intended audience members showed up. Over 100 AIDS patients and their doctors, whose charts exhaustively documented their improvements using natural and nontoxic modalities over the preceding 12 months, gave filmed testimonials, declaring that the feared disease was no longer a death sentence, but the conference had effectively been silenced. Bill Tatum, publisher of the Amsterdam News, suggested Null and his patients would find a more welcoming audience in his home neighborhood of Harlem - specifically, its iconic Apollo Theatre. For three nights, the theater was packed to capacity. Hit especially hard by the epidemic and distrustful of a medical system that had only recently stopped being openly racist (the Tuskegee syphilis experiment only ended in 1972), black Americans, at least, did not seem to care what Anthony Fauci would do if he found out they were investigating alternatives to AZT and death.    PBS journalist Tony Brown, having obtained a copy of the video of patient testimonials from the failed press conference, was among a handful of black journalists who began visiting the Center to investigate the legitimacy of Null's claims. Satisfied they had something significant to offer his audience, Brown invited eight patients - along with Null himself - onto his program over the course of several episodes to discuss the work. It was the first time these protocols had received any attention in the media, despite Null having released nearly two dozen articles and multiple documentaries on the subject by that time. A typical patient on one program, Al, a recovered IV drug user who was diagnosed with AIDS at age 32, described how he “panicked,” saw a doctor and started taking AZT despite his misgivings - only to be forced to discontinue the drug after just a few weeks due to his condition deteriorating rapidly. Researching alternatives brought him to Null, and after six months of “detoxing [his] lifestyle,” he observed his initial symptoms - swollen lymph nodes and weight loss - begin to reverse, culminating with sero-deconversion. On Bill McCreary's Channel 5 program, a married couple diagnosed with HIV described how they watched their T-cell counts increase as they cut out sugar, caffeine, smoking, and drinking and began eating a healthy diet. They also saw the virus leave their bodies.   For HIV-positive viewers surrounded by fear and negativity, watching healthy-looking, cheerful “AIDS patients” detail their recovery while Null backed up their claims with charts must have been balm for the soul. But the TV programs were also a form of outreach to the medical community, with patients' charts always on hand to convince skeptics the cure was scientifically valid. Null brought patients' charts to every program, urging them to keep an open mind: “Other physicians and public health officials should know that there's good science in the alternative perspective. It may not be a therapy that they're familiar with, because they're just not trained in it, but if the results are positive, and you can document them…” He challenged doubters to send in charts from their own sero-deconverted patients on AZT, and volunteered to debate proponents of the orthodox treatment paradigm - though the NIH and WHO both refused to participate in such a debate on Tony Brown's Journal, following Fauci's directive prohibiting engagement with forbidden ideas.    Aside from those few TV programs and Null's own films, suppression of Null's AIDS cure beyond word of mouth was total. The 2021 documentary The Cost of Denial, produced by the Society for Independent Journalists, tells the story of the Tri-State Healing Center and the medical paradigm that sought to destroy it, lamenting the loss of the lives that might have been saved in a more enlightened society. Nurse practitioner Luanne Pennesi, who treated many of the AIDS patients at the Center, speculated in the film that the refusal by the scientific establishment and AIDS activists to accept their successes was financially motivated. “It was as if they didn't want this information to get out. Understand that our healthcare system as we know it is a corporation, it's a corporate model, and it's about generating revenue. My concern was that maybe they couldn't generate enough revenue from these natural approaches.”5   Funding was certainly the main disciplinary tool Fauci's NIAID used to keep the scientific community in line. Despite the massive community interest in the work being done at the Center, no foundation or institution would defy Fauci and risk getting itself blacklisted, leaving Null to continue funding the operation out of his pocket with the profits from book sales. After 15 years, he left the Center in 1995, convinced the mainstream model had so thoroughly been institutionalized that there was no chance of overthrowing it. He has continued to counsel patients and advocate for a reappraisal of the HIV=AIDS hypothesis and its pharmaceutical treatments, highlighting the deeply flawed science underpinning the model of the disease espoused by the scientific establishment in 39 articles, six documentaries and a 700-page textbook on AIDS, but the Center's achievements have been effectively memory-holed by Fauci's multi-billion-dollar propaganda apparatus.     FRUIT OF THE POISONOUS TREE   To understand just how much of a threat Null's work was to the HIV/AIDS establishment, it is instructive to revisit the 1984 paper, published by Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute, that established HIV as the sole cause of AIDS. The CDC's official recognition of AIDS in 1981 had done little to quell the mounting public panic over the mysterious illness afflicting gay men in the US, as the agency had effectively admitted it had no idea what was causing them to sicken and die. As years passed with no progress determining the causative agent of the plague, activist groups like Gay Men's Health Crisis disrupted public events and threatened further mass civil disobedience as they excoriated the NIH for its sluggish allocation of government science funding to uncovering the cause of the “gay cancer.”6 When Gallo published his paper declaring that the retrovirus we now know as HIV was the sole “probable” cause of AIDS, its simple, single-factor hypothesis was the answer to the scientific establishment's prayers. This was particularly true for Fauci, as the NIAID chief was able to claim the hot new disease as his agency's own domain in what has been described as a “dramatic confrontation” with his rival Sam Broder at the National Cancer Institute. After all, Fauci pointed out, Gallo's findings - presented by Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler as if they were gospel truth before any other scientists had had a chance to inspect them, never mind conduct a full peer review - clearly classified AIDS as an infectious disease, and not a cancer like the Kaposi's sarcoma which was at the time its most visible manifestation. Money and media attention began pouring in, even as funding for the investigation of other potential causes of AIDS dried up. Having already patented a diagnostic test for “his” retrovirus before introducing it to the world, Gallo was poised for a financial windfall, while Fauci was busily leveraging the discovery into full bureaucratic empire of the US scientific apparatus.   While it would serve as the sole basis for all US government-backed AIDS research to follow - quickly turning Gallo into the most-cited scientist in the world during the 1980s,7 Gallo's “discovery” of HIV was deeply problematic. The sample that yielded the momentous discovery actually belonged to Prof. Luc Montagnier of the French Institut Pasteur, a fact Gallo finally admitted in 1991, four years after a lawsuit from the French government challenged his patent on the HIV antibody test, forcing the US government to negotiate a hasty profit-sharing agreement between Gallo's and Montagnier's labs. That lawsuit triggered a cascade of official investigations into scientific misconduct by Gallo, and evidence submitted during one of these probes, unearthed in 2008 by journalist Janine Roberts, revealed a much deeper problem with the seminal “discovery.” While Gallo's co-author, Mikulas Popovic, had concluded after numerous experiments with the French samples that the virus they contained was not the cause of AIDS, Gallo had drastically altered the paper's conclusion, scribbling his notes in the margins, and submitted it for publication to the journal Science without informing his co-author.   After Roberts shared her discovery with contacts in the scientific community, 37 scientific experts wrote to the journal demanding that Gallo's career-defining HIV paper be retracted from Science for lacking scientific integrity.8 Their call, backed by an endorsement from the 2,600-member scientific organization Rethinking AIDS, was ignored by the publication and by the rest of mainstream science despite - or perhaps because of - its profound implications.   That 2008 letter, addressed to Science editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts and copied to American Association for the Advancement of Science CEO Alan Leshner, is worth reproducing here in its entirety, as it utterly dismantles Gallo's hypothesis - and with them the entire HIV is the sole cause of AIDS dogma upon which the contemporary medical model of the disease rests:   On May 4, 1984 your journal published four papers by a group led by Dr. Robert Gallo. We are writing to express our serious concerns with regard to the integrity and veracity of the lead paper among these four of which Dr. Mikulas Popovic is the lead author.[1] The other three are also of concern because they rely upon the conclusions of the lead paper .[2][3][4]  In the early 1990s, several highly critical reports on the research underlying these papers were produced as a result of governmental inquiries working under the supervision of scientists nominated by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. The Office of Research Integrity of the US Department of Health and Human Services concluded that the lead paper was “fraught with false and erroneous statements,” and that the “ORI believes that the careless and unacceptable keeping of research records...reflects irresponsible laboratory management that has permanently impaired the ability to retrace the important steps taken.”[5] Further, a Congressional Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations led by US Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan produced a staff report on the papers which contains scathing criticisms of their integrity.[6]  Despite the publically available record of challenges to their veracity, these papers have remained uncorrected and continue to be part of the scientific record.  What prompts our communication today is the recent revelation of an astonishing number of previously unreported deletions and unjustified alterations made by Gallo to the lead paper. There are several documents originating from Gallo's laboratory that, while available for some time, have only recently been fully analyzed. These include a draft of the lead paper typewritten by Popovic which contains handwritten changes made to it by Gallo.[7] This draft was the key evidence used in the above described inquiries to establish that Gallo had concealed his laboratory's use of a cell culture sample (known as LAV) which it received from the Institut Pasteur.  These earlier inquiries verified that the typed manuscript draft was produced by Popovic who had carried out the recorded experiment while his laboratory chief, Gallo, was in Europe and that, upon his return, Gallo changed the document by hand a few days before it was submitted to Science on March 30, 1984. According to the ORI investigation, “Dr. Gallo systematically rewrote the manuscript for what would become a renowned LTCB [Gallo's laboratory at the National Cancer Institute] paper.”[5]  This document provided the important evidence that established the basis for awarding Dr. Luc Montagnier and Dr. Francoise Barré-Sinoussi the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of the AIDS virus by proving it was their samples of LAV that Popovic used in his key experiment. The draft reveals that Popovic had forthrightly admitted using the French samples of LAV renamed as Gallo's virus, HTLV-III, and that Gallo had deleted this admission, concealing their use of LAV.  However, it has not been previously reported that on page three of this same document Gallo had also deleted Popovic's unambiguous statement that, "Despite intensive research efforts, the causative agent of AIDS has not yet been identified,” replacing it in the published paper with a statement that said practically the opposite, namely, “That a retrovirus of the HTLV family might be an etiologic agent of AIDS was suggested by the findings.”  It is clear that the rest of Popovic's typed paper is entirely consistent with his statement that the cause of AIDS had not been found, despite his use of the French LAV. Popovic's final conclusion was that the culture he produced “provides the possibility” for detailed studies. He claimed to have achieved nothing more. At no point in his paper did Popovic attempt to prove that any virus caused AIDS, and it is evident that Gallo concealed these key elements in Popovic's experimental findings.  It is astonishing now to discover these unreported changes to such a seminal document. We can only assume that Gallo's alterations of Popovic's conclusions were not highlighted by earlier inquiries because the focus at the time was on establishing that the sample used by Gallo's lab came from Montagnier and was not independently collected by Gallo. In fact, the only attention paid to the deletions made by Gallo pertains to his effort to hide the identity of the sample. The questions of whether Gallo and Popovic's research proved that LAV or any other virus was the cause of AIDS were clearly not considered.  Related to these questions are other long overlooked documents that merit your attention. One of these is a letter from Dr. Matthew A. Gonda, then Head of the Electron Microscopy Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute, which is addressed to Popovic, copied to Gallo and dated just four days prior to Gallo's submission to Science.[8] In this letter, Gonda remarks on samples he had been sent for imaging because “Dr Gallo wanted these micrographs for publication because they contain HTLV.” He states, “I do not believe any of the particles photographed are of HTLV-I, II or III.” According to Gonda, one sample contained cellular debris, while another had no particles near the size of a retrovirus. Despite Gonda's clearly worded statement, Science published on May 4, 1984 papers attributed to Gallo et al with micrographs attributed to Gonda and described unequivocally as HTLV-III.  In another letter by Gallo, dated one day before he submitted his papers to Science, Gallo states, “It's extremely rare to find fresh cells [from AIDS patients] expressing the virus... cell culture seems to be necessary to induce virus,” a statement which raises the possibility he was working with a laboratory artifact. [9]  Included here are copies of these documents and links to the same. The very serious flaws they reveal in the preparation of the lead paper published in your journal in 1984 prompts our request that this paper be withdrawn. It appears that key experimental findings have been concealed. We further request that the three associated papers published on the same date also be withdrawn as they depend on the accuracy of this paper.  For the scientific record to be reliable, it is vital that papers shown to be flawed, or falsified be retracted. Because a very public record now exists showing that the Gallo papers drew unjustified conclusions, their withdrawal from Science is all the more important to maintain integrity. Future researchers must also understand they cannot rely on the 1984 Gallo papers for statements about HIV and AIDS, and all authors of papers that previously relied on this set of four papers should have the opportunity to consider whether their own conclusions are weakened by these revelations.      Gallo's handwritten revision, submitted without his colleague's knowledge despite multiple experiments that failed to support the new conclusion, was the sole foundation for the HIV=AIDS hypothesis. Had Science published the manuscript the way Popovic had typed it, there would be no AIDS “pandemic” - merely small clusters of people with AIDS. Without a viral hypothesis backing the development of expensive and deadly pharmaceuticals, would Fauci have allowed these patients to learn about the cure that existed all along?   Faced with a potential rebellion, Fauci marshaled the full resources under his control to squelch the publication of the investigations into Gallo and restrict any discussion of competing hypotheses in the scientific and mainstream press, which had been running virus-scare stories full-time since 1984. The effect was total, according to biochemist Dr. Kary Mullis, inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) procedure. In a 2009 interview, Mullis recalled his own shock when he attempted to unearth the experimental basis for the HIV=AIDS hypothesis. Despite his extensive inquiry into the literature, “there wasn't a scientific reference…[that] said ‘here's how come we know that HIV is the probable cause of AIDS.' There was nothing out there like that.”9 This yawning void at the core of HIV/AIDS “science" turned him into a strident critic of AIDS dogma - and those views made him persona non grata where the scientific press was concerned, suddenly unable to publish a single paper despite having won the Nobel Prize for his invention of the PCR test just weeks before.  10   DISSENT BECOMES “DENIAL”   While many of those who dissent from the orthodox HIV=AIDS view believe HIV plays a role in the development of AIDS, they point to lifestyle and other co-factors as being equally if not more important. Individuals who test positive for HIV can live for decades in perfect health - so long as they don't take AZT or the other toxic antivirals fast-tracked by Fauci's NIAID - but those who developed full-blown AIDS generally engaged in highly risky behaviors like extreme promiscuity and prodigious drug abuse, contracting STDs they took large quantities of antibiotics to treat, further running down their immune systems. While AIDS was largely portrayed as a “gay disease,” it was only the “fast track” gays, hooking up with dozens of partners nightly in sex marathons fueled by “poppers” (nitrate inhalants notorious for their own devastating effects on the immune system), who became sick. Kaposi's sarcoma, one of the original AIDS-defining conditions, was widespread among poppers-using gay men, but never appeared among IV drug users or hemophiliacs, the other two main risk groups during the early years of the epidemic. Even Robert Gallo himself, at a 1994 conference on poppers held by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, would admit that the previously-rare form of skin cancer surging among gay men was not primarily caused by HIV - and that it was immune stimulation, rather than suppression, that was likely responsible.11 Similarly, IV drug users are often riddled with opportunistic infections as their habit depresses the immune system and their focus on maintaining their addiction means that healthier habits - like good nutrition and even basic hygiene - fall by the wayside.    Supporting the call for revising the HIV=AIDS hypothesis to include co-factors is the fact that the mass heterosexual outbreaks long predicted by Fauci and his ilk in seemingly every country on Earth have failed to materialize, except - supposedly - in Africa, where the diagnostic standard for AIDS differs dramatically from those of the West. Given the prohibitively high cost of HIV testing for poor African nations, the WHO in 1985 crafted a diagnostic loophole that became known as the “Bangui definition,” allowing medical professionals to diagnose AIDS in the absence of a test using just clinical symptoms: high fever, persistent cough, at least 30 days of diarrhea, and the loss of 10% of one's body weight within two months. Often suffering from malnutrition and without access to clean drinking water, many of the inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa fit the bill, especially when the WHO added tuberculosis to the list of AIDS-defining illnesses in 1993 - a move which may be responsible for as many as one half of African “AIDS” cases, according to journalist Christine Johnson. The WHO's former Chief of Global HIV Surveillance, James Chin, acknowledged their manipulation of statistics, but stressed that it was the entire AIDS industry - not just his organization - perpetrating the fraud. “There's the saying that, if you knew what sausages are made of, most people would hesitate to sort of eat them, because they wouldn't like what's in it. And if you knew how HIV/AIDS numbers are cooked, or made up, you would use them with extreme caution,” Chin told an interviewer in 2009.12   With infected numbers stubbornly remaining constant in the US despite Fauci's fearmongering projections of the looming heterosexually-transmitted plague, the CDC in 1993 broadened its definition of AIDS to include asymptomatic (that is, healthy) HIV-positive people with low T-cell counts - an absurd criteria given that an individual's T-cell count can fluctuate by hundreds within a single day. As a result, the number of “AIDS cases” in the US immediately doubled. Supervised by Fauci, the NIAID had been quietly piling on diseases into the “AIDS-related” category for years, bloating the list from just two conditions - pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma - to 30 so fast it raised eyebrows among some of science's leading lights. Deeming the entire process “bizarre” and unprecedented, Kary Mullis wondered aloud why no one had called the AIDS establishment out: “There's something wrong here. And it's got to be financial.”13   Indeed, an early CDC public relations campaign was exposed by the Wall Street Journal in 1987 as having deliberately mischaracterized AIDS as a threat to the entire population so as to garner increased public and private funding for what was very much a niche issue, with the risk to average heterosexuals from a single act of sex “smaller than the risk of ever getting hit by lightning.” Ironically, the ads, which sought to humanize AIDS patients in an era when few Americans knew anyone with the disease and more than half the adult population thought infected people should be forced to carry cards warning of their status, could be seen as a reaction to the fear tactics deployed by Fauci early on.14   It's hard to tell where fraud ends and incompetence begins with Gallo's HIV antibody test. Much like Covid-19 would become a “pandemic of testing,” with murder victims and motorcycle crashes lumped into “Covid deaths” thanks to over-sensitized PCR tests that yielded as many as 90% false positives,15 HIV testing is fraught with false positives - and unlike with Covid-19, most people who hear they are HIV-positive still believe they are receiving a death sentence. Due to the difficulty of isolating HIV itself from human samples, the most common diagnostic tests, ELISA and the Western Blot, are designed to detect not the virus but antibodies to it, upending the traditional medical understanding that the presence of antibodies indicates only exposure - and often that the body has actually vanquished the pathogen. Patients are known to test positive for HIV antibodies in the absence of the virus due to at least 70 other conditions, including hepatitis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, syphilis, recent vaccination or even pregnancy. (https://www.chcfl.org/diseases-that-can-cause-a-false-positive-hiv-test/) Positive results are often followed up with a PCR “viral load” test, even though the inventor of the PCR technique Kary Mullis famously condemned its misuse as a tool for diagnosing infection. Packaging inserts for all three tests warn the user that they cannot be reliably used to diagnose HIV.16 The ELISA HIV antibody test explicitly states: “At present there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence and absence of HIV antibody in human blood.”17   That the public remains largely unaware of these and other massive holes in the supposedly airtight HIV=AIDS=DEATH paradigm is a testament to Fauci's multi-layered control of the press. Like the writers of the Great Barrington Declaration and other Covid-19 dissidents, scientists who question HIV/AIDS dogma have been brutally punished for their heresy, no matter how prestigious their prior standing in the field and no matter how much evidence they have for their own claims. In 1987, the year the FDA's approval of AZT made AIDS the most profitable epidemic yet (a dubious designation Covid-19 has since surpassed), Fauci made it clearer than ever that scientific inquiry and debate - the basis of the scientific method - would no longer be welcome in the American public health sector, eliminating retrovirologist Peter Duesberg, then one of the most prominent opponents of the HIV=AIDS hypothesis, from the scientific conversation with a professional disemboweling that would make a cartel hitman blush. Duesberg had just eviscerated Gallo's 1984 HIV paper with an article of his own in the journal Cancer Research, pointing out that retroviruses had never before been found to cause a single disease in humans - let alone 30 AIDS-defining diseases. Rather than allow Gallo or any of the other scientists in his camp to respond to the challenge, Fauci waged a scorched-earth campaign against Duesberg, who had until then been one of the most highly regarded researchers in his field. Every research grant he requested was denied; every media appearance was canceled or preempted. The University of California at Berkeley, unable to fully fire him due to tenure, took away his lab, his graduate students, and the rest of his funding. The few colleagues who dared speak up for him in public were also attacked, while enemies and opportunists were encouraged to slander Duesberg at the conferences he was barred from attending and in the journals that would no longer publish his replies. When Duesberg was summoned to the White House later that year by then-President Ronald Reagan to debate Fauci on the origins of AIDS, Fauci convinced the president to cancel, allegedly pulling rank on the Commander-in-Chief with an accusation that the “White House was interfering in scientific matters that belonged to the NIH and the Office of Science and Technology Assessment.” After seven years of this treatment, Duesberg was contacted by NIH official Stephen O'Brien and offered an escape from professional purgatory. He could have “everything back,” he was told, and shown a manuscript of a scientific paper - apparently commissioned by the editor of the journal Nature - “HIV Causes AIDS: Koch's Postulates Fulfilled” with his own name listed alongside O'Brien's as an author.18 His refusal to take the bribe effectively guaranteed the epithet “AIDS denier” will appear on his tombstone. The character assassination of Duesberg became a template that would be deployed to great effectiveness wherever Fauci encountered dissent - never debate, only demonize, deplatform and destroy.    Even Luc Montagnier, the real discoverer of HIV, soon found himself on the wrong side of the Fauci machine. With his 1990 declaration that “the HIV virus [by itself] is harmless and passive, a benign virus,” Montagnier began distancing himself from Gallo's fraud, effectively placing a target on his own back. In a 1995 interview, he elaborated: “four factors that have come together to account for the sudden epidemic [of AIDS]: HIV presence, immune hyper-activation, increased sexually transmitted disease incidence, sexual behavior changes and other behavioral changes” such as drug use, poor nutrition and stress - all of which he said had to occur “essentially simultaneously” for HIV to be transmitted, creating the modern epidemic. Like the professionals at the Tri-State Healing Center, Montagnier advocated for the use of antioxidants like vitamin C and N-acetyl cysteine, naming oxidative stress as a critical factor in the progression from HIV to AIDS.19 When Montagnier died in 2022, Fauci's media mouthpieces sneered that the scientist (who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2008 for his discovery of HIV, despite his flagging faith in that discovery's significance) “started espousing views devoid of a scientific basis” in the late 2000s, leading him to be “shunned by the scientific community.”20 In a particularly egregious jab, the Washington Post's obit sings the praises of Robert Gallo, implying it was the American scientist who really should have won the Nobel for HIV, while dismissing as “

Adam Maguire, from the RTÉ Business Desk

Send us a textThis episode focuses on the FDA's approval of Journavx, a new class of pain medication that offers an alternative to traditional narcotics like OxyContin. Listeners learn about the significance of clinical trials, patient involvement, and the evolution of pain management strategies while emphasizing the need for informed discussions with healthcare providers. • Introduction to Jernovex and its pain management potential • Importance of clinical trials in drug development • Discussion on the practical implications for patients • Shift in medical policy around narcotic use • Overview of phase four trials and their significance • Resources offered by MedEvidence for reliable health information • Call to action for patients to engage with their healthcare providers regarding new treatment optionsBe a part of advancing science by participating in clinical research.Have a question for Dr. Koren? Email him at askDrKoren@MedEvidence.comListen on SpotifyListen on AppleWatch on YouTubeShare with a friend. Rate, Review, and Subscribe to the MedEvidence! podcast to be notified when new episodes are released.Follow us on Social Media:FacebookInstagramTwitterLinkedInWant to learn more? Checkout our entire library of podcasts, videos, articles and presentations at www.MedEvidence.comMusic: Storyblocks - Corporate InspiredThank you for listening!

Tony Hoffman: Leaving Prison with Purpose | The Hopeaholics PodcastTony Hoffman's story is a powerful testament to resilience, redemption, and the transformative power of recovery. In this inspiring episode of The Hopeaholics Podcast, Tony takes us through his incredible journey from addiction and incarceration to professional BMX racing, coaching, and creating a purpose-driven life.Tony opens up about his struggles with anxiety and depression growing up, which were compounded by feeling unseen in a workaholic household. Despite being a talented athlete, he battled social pressures and turned to substance use for relief. What started with marijuana and alcohol escalated to opioids like OxyContin and heroin, leading to destructive decisions, including a home invasion that landed him in prison.In prison, Tony had a life-changing spiritual awakening that set him on the path to sobriety. Upon his release, he returned to BMX racing, rising to the professional level and competing as a coach at the Olympic level. Tony also shares how he found purpose by creating a nonprofit organization focused on empowering youth and mentoring others in recovery.Through faith, hard work, and an unyielding commitment to change, Tony has transformed his life and uses his story to inspire others. Whether you're battling addiction, looking for motivation, or need a reminder of the power of second chances, this episode will leave you feeling hopeful and inspired.Follow us on all our social media platforms down belowINSTAGRAM : https://www.instagram.com/thehopeaholics/?igshid=Mzc1MmZhNjY%3DSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4diCrlmIyqrkE2e22mFgU1?si=2df7f5920f944098FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thehopeaholicspodcast/TREATMENT : https://www.hopebythesea.com

A new $7.4 billion settlement with states has been reached with Purdue Pharma and its Sackler family owners to settle lawsuits alleging that their drug OxyContin helped fuel the opioid crisis — but it still has to be approved by a U.S. Bankruptcy Court. We’ll learn more about all the deal entails. Then, we’ll discuss mortgage rates, job creation and immigration. And after, as Congress struggles with tech legislation, states aim to regulate online privacy

A new $7.4 billion settlement with states has been reached with Purdue Pharma and its Sackler family owners to settle lawsuits alleging that their drug OxyContin helped fuel the opioid crisis — but it still has to be approved by a U.S. Bankruptcy Court. We’ll learn more about all the deal entails. Then, we’ll discuss mortgage rates, job creation and immigration. And after, as Congress struggles with tech legislation, states aim to regulate online privacy

A new $7.4 billion settlement with states has been reached with Purdue Pharma and its Sackler family owners to settle lawsuits alleging that their drug OxyContin helped fuel the opioid crisis — but it still has to be approved by a U.S. Bankruptcy Court. We’ll learn more about all the deal entails. Then, we’ll discuss mortgage rates, job creation and immigration. And after, as Congress struggles with tech legislation, states aim to regulate online privacy

US states reach a $7.4bn settlement with the makers of OxyContin, a painkiller that fuelled a nationwide opioid epidemic. Also: President Trump tells international businesses to move to the US or face big tariffs.

In our news wrap Thursday, California firefighters are battling new fires in the Los Angeles area, Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma and the family who owns it will pay up to $7.4 billion to settle lawsuits stemming from the opioid crisis and the International Criminal Court's top prosecutor is seeking arrest warrants for two Taliban leaders over the repression of women in Afghanistan. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Comprehensive coverage of the day's news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice. UN marks World Clean Energy Day with call for phasing out fossil fuels to address climate crisis Senate committee votes advance Trump nominees to head Environmental Protection Agency, Interior Department, and Energy Department, with full Senate confirmation likely Purdue Pharma agrees to $7.4 billion settlement in lawsuit over company's OxyContin opioid marketing Federal judge temporarily blocks President Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship, calling the Trump order “blatantly unconstitutional” Trump pardons dozens of anti-abortion activists convicted for blocking and shutting abortion clinics   The post UN World Clean Energy Day calls for fossil fuel phaseout; Judge blocks Trump birthright citizenship order – January 23, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

AP correspondent Haya Panjwani reports on a settlement in the opioid crisis.

 Show Notes for Dopey Podcast Episode

SPONSORS: - Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app NOW and use code DANNYB On this episode of The Danny Brown Show, comedian Bert Kreischer joins Danny for a wild and hilarious conversation. They chat about Danny's rehab journey, their childhood experiences, and why they're perfectly fine not knowing how much money they have. The duo also dive into the art of constantly creating jokes and raps, Bert's unforgettable run-in with Gene Simmons (and how they patched things up), and his outrageous story of performing stand-up on OxyContin for a room full of rich people. Other highlights include: improvising sets mid-performance, the strange world of Russian trash streamers, and Bert's legendary butt-chugging adventure. Buckle up and enjoy! Have a question for Danny? Hit us up at danny@thedannybrownshow.com The Danny Brown Show Ep. 136 https://xdannyxbrownx.com https://store.ymhstudios.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ralph and team spend the entire hour with Israeli reporter, Gideon Levy, a singular voice in an otherwise compliant domestic press to discuss his book “The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe” a series of columns written before and after the October 7th, 2023 attacks that put this ongoing tragedy in historical context.Gideon Levy is a Haaretz columnist and a member of the newspaper's editorial board. He is the author of the weekly “Twilight Zone” feature, which covers the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza over the last 25 years, as well as the writer of political editorials for the newspaper. He is the author of The Punishment of Gaza, and his latest book is The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe.If you talk with me about a very broad scheme—not ending this war now in Gaza, but really for a long range, a real vision—the vision is only the choice between an apartheid state between the river and the sea, or a democracy between the river and the sea. There is no third way anymore, unfortunately. And we have to choose, and the world has to choose: Is the world ready to accept a second apartheid state, or is the world ready to act for having an equal democracy for Palestinians and Israelis living between the river and the sea?Gideon LevyWe have to stick to global, universal values: occupation is illegal, apartheid is immoral, and war is always cruel.Gideon LevyAfter the 7th of October, an iron curtain fell between Israel and any kind of human sentiments toward Gaza— the people of Gaza, the victims of Gaza, we don't want to hear, we don't want to know, we are not bothered, and we have the right to do whatever we want.Gideon LevyWe hear about the hundred hostages held by Hamas underground a great deal in the US media, but we don't hear much about the torture and the other mistreatment of thousands of Palestinians—some of them women and children—who were arrested, just arbitrarily kidnapped, and sent to Israeli jails.Ralph NaderNews 12/18/241. Our top story this week comes from Public Citizen Corporate Crime expert Rick Claypool, who reports that the Biden Department of Justice has opted to not prosecute McKinsey, the consulting firm that advised Purdue Pharma to “turbocharge” OxyContin sales even as the opioid crisis reached its peak. Instead, the DOJ announced they would enter into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the firm; in other words, the Biden administration is giving McKinsey a get out of jail free card for their role in perhaps the most expansive, destructive, and clear case of corporate crime this century. Claypool rightly calls this deal “Pathetic” and “A slap in the face to everyone who lost a loved one to the crisis.”2. On December 10th, a federal judge blocked Kroger's proposed $20 billion acquisition of Albertsons supermarkets, per the Wall Street Journal. According to the Journal, U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson sided with the Federal Trade Commission, which had sued to stop the merger, agreeing that this consolidation in the grocery store sector would “erode competition and raise prices for consumers.” This argument was particularly poignant given the soaring cost of groceries since the COVID-19 pandemic. In the aftermath of this decision, Albertsons has filed suit against Kroger alleging that the larger supermarket chain had resisted calls to “divest itself of a larger number of stores,” in order to stave off the inevitable antitrust actions federal regulators would bring against this merger. Albertsons filed this lawsuit, which seeks at least $6 billion in damages less than 24 hours after the ruling, per the Journal.3. On December 14th, the BBC reported 26-year-old OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. In October, Balaji exposed that OpenAI had flagrantly violated US copyright laws while developing its flagship AI program ChatGPT. Balaji's revelations form the underpinnings of lawsuits against OpenAI by news publishers, including the New York Times, as well as best-selling authors who allege their work was unlawfully used to train the company's AI models. The BBC reports that Balaji's death was ruled a suicide by the San Francisco medical examiner's office and that his body was discovered by police when they were called in to “check on his wellbeing.” This report does not include who called in the wellness check.4. According to intrepid independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, the New York Times has issued internal guidance directing staff to “dial back” its use of photos of Luigi Mangione's face. The reasons for withholding images of Mangione's face – bizarre in its own right given the inherent newsworthiness of such photos – is however just the tip of the iceberg. The Times has also directed its reporters to refrain from publishing Mangione's manifesto, despite having copies in their possession. As Mr. Klippenstein puts it “This is media paternalism at its worst, the idea that seeing the shooter's face too much, or reading his 262-word statement, will necessarily inspire copy-cat assassinations and should therefore be withheld from the public.” To his immense credit, Mr. Klippenstein has published the manifesto in full, which is available on his Substack – as are photos of Mangione's face.5. Turning to the Middle East, the diplomatic tension between Israel and Ireland continues to deepen. On December 11th, the Middle East Monitor reported that Ireland will “formally join South Africa's genocide case against Israel,” at the International Court of Justice, following formal approval by the Irish government. Ireland will reportedly ask the Court to “broaden its interpretation” of what constitutes genocide, according to the nation's Foreign Minister Micheal Martin. Martin went on to say that Ireland is “concerned that a very narrow interpretation of what constitutes genocide leads to a culture of impunity in which the protection of civilians is minimised,” and that the government has also approved joining the Gambia's genocide case against Myanmar. Just days later, Israel announced that the country would shutter its embassy in Dublin, accusing Ireland of “extreme anti-Israel policies,” including joining the genocide lawsuit and recognizing the state of Palestine, per CNN. Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris, facing harsh criticism from Israeli politicians, wrote “I utterly reject the assertion that Ireland is anti-Israel. Ireland is pro-peace, pro-human rights and pro-International law.”6. In more Palestine news, the Hill has published a heartrending op-ed by Hamid Ali, widower to Aysenur Eygi, the American citizen murdered in cold blood by the IDF during a protest in the West Bank in September of this year. This piece begins “What do you do with the clothes your wife was wearing when she was killed, now stained with her blood? How do you preserve them as evidence for an investigation that may never happen? What else can you do when your government has given no indication that it will hold her killer — a soldier in the army of a close ally — accountable[?]” Ali goes on to tell the story of how he met Aysenur, how they fell in love, and eventually got married – and recounts the eyewitness testimony that she was shot after “20 minutes of calm, sheltering behind an olive tree.” Ali also expresses his anger and frustration – both at the Israeli military's flimsy attempt to cover up the murder by falsely claiming she was “shot accidentally during a violent protest,” an assertion that, he notes, was swiftly debunked by major news outlets – and at the United States government, which has refused to hold the Israeli military accountable. Ali ends this piece by laying out how he and his family will meet with the State Department and members of Congress next week to “plead with them to do something about Aysenur's senseless killing…support our family's call for an independent U.S. investigation into her death and accountability for the soldier that killed her…[and] urge President Biden to prioritize this case in the last days of his administration and uphold justice for our family.”7. Last week, we reported on the so-called “mutiny” of younger Democrats against the old-guard poised to take the ranking member committee seats in the new Congress. Chief among these was AOC's bid to seize the ranking member slot on the Oversight Committee from Congressman Gerry Connolly, who is 74 years old and suffering from cancer. At first, it seemed like the young Congresswoman from Queens had successfully outmaneuvered Connolly – even going so far as to pledge that she would no longer back primary challenges against incumbent Democrats, a cornerstone of her outsider brand and appeal, POLITICO reports. Yet, with help from the Democratic power brokers including Nancy Pelsoi, Connolly was able to beat back this challenge at the Democratic Steering Committee. The final vote was a lopsided 131-84, per Axios.8. Our last three stories this week concern the legacy of the Biden Administration. First, progressives are calling on the president to pardon environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who has faced persecution as a “corporate political prisoner” per American University's Center for Environment Community & Equity for his role in suing Chevron over that company's environmental devastation in Ecuador. In a letter signed by 34 congressional Democrats, led by Congressman Jim McGovern and including Senators Bernie Sanders and Sheldon Whitehouse, along with Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Pramila Jayapal, and Jamie Raskin among others, the progressives write “Mr. Donziger is the only lawyer in U.S. history to be subject to any period of detention on a misdemeanor contempt of court charge…the legal case against Mr. Donziger, as well as the excessively harsh nature of the punishment against him, are directly tied to his prior work against Chevron.” This letter continues “Pardoning Mr. Donziger”…[would send] “a powerful message to the world that billion-dollar corporations cannot act with impunity against lawyers and their clients who defend the public interest.” We echo this call to pardon Donziger, particularly since President Biden's recent, highly-publicized pardons have consisted of corrupt public officials and his own troubled son Hunter.9. Next, Reuters reports that on December 11th, the Senate opted not to back President Biden's renomination of Lauren McFerran to the National Labor Relations Board. The upper chamber voted 50-49 against holding a confirmation vote, with the usual suspects – Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema – defeating the move. Had the Senate reconfirmed McFerran, the balance of the labor board would have remained tilted in favor of Democrats and their allies in organized labor. Now, incoming President Trump will be able to stack the board with his own nominees, expected to be much friendlier to business. Trump is also expected to sack NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who has been instrumental in leveraging the power of the NLRB in favor of workers.10. Finally, on a lighter note, Deadline reports the NLRB has ruled that contests on the Netflix dating show Love Is Blind are in fact employees under the law. This reclassification opens the door to widespread unionization throughout the unscripted television sector, which has long skirted the heavily-unionized Hollywood system. The fallout from this decision will have to be observed over time and the Trump NLRB could certainly seek to hold the line against unionization in that industry – of which Trump himself was a longtime fixture – but this decision could mean an almost unprecedented expansion of the Screen Actors Guild. We will be watching.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Podcast Description: Welcome to The Political Purple Breakdown, a podcast by US RESIST NEWS, a nonprofit dedicated to truthful reporting in an age of disinformation. Hosted by Radell Lewis, we dive into politics, justice, healthcare, tech, and global affairs with insightful discussions and analysis. Learn more at https://www.usresistnews.org.Episode Notes:Topics Covered:Caitlin Clark Controversy: WNBAs media spotlight sparks debate.Luigi Mangione Case: True crime, public support, and FBI involvement.Healthcare & Gender Policies: UK bans puberty blockers; Bidens anti-Islamophobia plan.Opioid Crisis: McKinseys $1B settlement for OxyContin promotion.Defense & Tech Updates: NDAA pay raises, Googles quantum chip, TikTok Supreme Court appeal.Trump Ventures: New products, lawsuits, and controversies.International News: Ukraines assassination of a Russian general and Israels buffer zone in Syria.Links:US RESIST NEWS: https://www.usresistnews.orgOpioid Crisis: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/settlementNDAA Updates: https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5035512-house-defense-policy-bill-ndaa/UK Policy Ban: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly2z0gx3p5oTikTok Appeal: https://www.reuters.comIsrael-Syria News: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/8/israel-seizes-buffer-zone-in-syrias-golan-heights-after-al-assad-fallsUkraine War: https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-war-general-assassinationStay informed with The Political Purple Breakdown!

Podcast Description: Welcome to The Political Purple Breakdown, a podcast by US RESIST NEWS, a nonprofit dedicated to truthful reporting in an age of disinformation. Hosted by Radell Lewis, we dive into politics, justice, healthcare, tech, and global affairs with insightful discussions and analysis. Learn more at https://www.usresistnews.org.Episode Notes:Topics Covered:Caitlin Clark Controversy: WNBA's media spotlight sparks debate.Luigi Mangione Case: True crime, public support, and FBI involvement.Healthcare & Gender Policies: UK bans puberty blockers; Biden's anti-Islamophobia plan.Opioid Crisis: McKinsey's $1B settlement for OxyContin promotion.Defense & Tech Updates: NDAA pay raises, Google's quantum chip, TikTok Supreme Court appeal.Trump Ventures: New products, lawsuits, and controversies.International News: Ukraine's assassination of a Russian general and Israel's buffer zone in Syria.Links:US RESIST NEWS: https://www.usresistnews.orgOpioid Crisis: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/settlementNDAA Updates: https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5035512-house-defense-policy-bill-ndaa/UK Policy Ban: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly2z0gx3p5oTikTok Appeal: https://www.reuters.comIsrael-Syria News: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/8/israel-seizes-buffer-zone-in-syrias-golan-heights-after-al-assad-fallsUkraine War: https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-war-general-assassinationStay informed with The Political Purple Breakdown!

For much of history, the word 'epidemic' applied to infectious diseases. Large numbers of cases of disease caused by organisms such as bacteria and viruses that spread through water, air, or other means, sometimes transmitted from person to person, or back and forth between people and animals. Then came epidemics of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease - diseases occurring in very large numbers and created not by infectious agents, but by drivers in our day to day lives, such as a bad food environment. A new paper was just published in the PLOS global health literature that I found fascinating. It focuses on another use of the concept of epidemics: market driven epidemics. Let's find out what these are and find out a little bit more about their implications for our health and wellbeing. Our guests today are two of the authors of that paper. Dr. Jonathan Quick is a physician and expert on global health and epidemics. He is an adjunct professor at Duke University's Global Health Institute. Eszter Rimanyi joins us as well. She works on chronic disease and addiction epidemiology at Duke university. Interview Summary Access the PLOS article “Dynamics of combatting market-driven epidemics: Insights from U.S. reduction of cigarette, sugar, and prescription opioid consumption.” So, Jono, let's start with you. Tell us what you mean by market driven epidemics. The pattern is familiar to people. There is a product that that humans like and the business community says we can make a lot of money on this unmet need. And so they do that and they start selling a lot of it. And then people start noticing that this thing that the humans like is killing some of them. And so, the scientists do the public health. And then the business community says these scientists are going to kill the golden goose. They buy up other scientists and try to defend themselves. And then it goes on and on before we really bend the epidemic curves. This pattern of consumer products that have harmful effects, those products are major contributors to the root causes of at least a million deaths a year in the US, and over 20 million deaths worldwide. So, to try to look at this from an epidemic point of view, we first established a case definition. Our definition of market driven epidemic is a significant increase in death, disability and other harmful effects on humans and human health and wellbeing. It's arising from a consumer product whose use has been accelerated by aggressive marketing. Whose harmful effects have been denied or otherwise minimized by producers. And for which effective mitigation is possible but actively opposed by producers. So, we looked at the natural history of this, and we found five phases through which these epidemics pass. There's market development, either inventing a new product, developing a product like prescription opioids, or transforming an existing product like tobacco. Phase two is evidence of harm. First, there's suspicion, astute clinicians, whistleblowers, and then eventually proof of harm. Phase three is corporate resistance. Companies deny harm, seek to discredit accusers, commission counter science, manufacture doubt, mount legal challenges. All the while deaths and social upheaval and economic costs are mounting. And finally, our next phase four is mitigation. We get some regulatory efforts going, and there's a tipping point for the consumption and resulting deaths. And then finally, phase five of this is market adaptation. In a response to decreasing or threatened consumption, companies and consumers typically seek alternatives. Adaptations can be positive or negative. Some are healthier, some are equally or more harmful. Thanks very much for that description. It really helps explain what the concept is all about. You chose three areas of focus. You could have chosen others, but you chose cigarettes, sugar, and prescription opioid use. Why those in particular? We wanted to identify differences in these market driven epidemics in a few product categories. We wanted to look at distinctly different consumer experiences so we could see what worked and what didn't in terms of bending the epidemic curve. We picked nicotine delivery, food, and prescription medicine. And to choose within those categories we established five inclusion criteria. So, number one, the product had to have proven adverse health effects. Number two, there needed to be well documented histories of product development, marketing, mitigation efforts, and so forth. Number three, the product needed to meet the overall case definition. That is, companies knew they were doing harm, continued to do harm, and fought that harm. Number four, there needed to be long term data available for product consumption and associated impact. And number five, most important, we chose products for which mitigation efforts had already resulted in significant sustained reduction in product consumption. Based on these three criteria, cigarettes, sugar, and prescription opioids came out as the ones that we studied. Thanks. I really appreciate that description. And when we get to the punchline in a minute, it's going to be interesting to see whether the behavior of the industry in this natural history that you talked about is similar, given that the substances are so different. We'll get to that in a minute. So Eszter, I'd like to turn to you. What kind of information did you pull together to write this paper? I think I looked at over a thousand different documents. But there were two clear types that I interrogated to pull together all of our background data. The first category was publicly available data, so that could have been a clinical study, epidemiological study, advertisement by the company, CDC or other government reports, mortality data, etc. But then there was also a distinct different type of data that we really looked at and that was really useful for putting together these pictures of the natural history, which was internal documents. In some cases, these could have been leaked by an internal employee, which was the case with the so called 'brown documents' with tobacco. But it also came from sometimes court hearings or as a result of lawsuits that the companies had to release internal data. It was really interesting to compile together the different sides, of the outside look from CDC reports, and then the insider scoop from Purdue Pharma. So, it's a very well rounded, interesting way to find all this data. I admire your effort. It's a big job to do a normal scientific review where you might have 50 papers and you were looking at things that were much harder to obtain and a vast number of things that are really quite different in character. Boy, congratulations for just reading all those things. Tell us what you found. Gosh, so even though there's so many distinct differences between a lot of these epidemics, what we actually found was that there was a lot of narrative similarities. And because of that, we could really create this holistic, but also really well-fitting idea of market driven epidemics. A lot of the corporate strategies were either mirrored, imitated, or in some cases quite literally lifted over because of overlapping ownership between the companies. One of the things that we really wanted to hammer into our article was that producers not only created their product, but they also manufactured doubt. Which means that they created, on purpose, public hesitancy around their product even when they internally knew that it was harmful to health. They wanted the public to be on the fence about what the health impact of their product was. There was a lot of different ways that they achieved that goal. Sometimes it was through showing propaganda films in high schools. Which I still can't believe that happened and then that was legal. But also in different ways, like co-opting science, paying scientists to publish articles in their favor. I know a really famous example of this that has now been public is that two Harvard researchers in cardiovascular disease published saying that sugar was not harmful to health. So, there's a lot of different ways that they achieved it, but the goals overall were very similar by all the companies. You know, you mentioned overlapping ownership. And so, you might have been referring specifically to the ownership of the food companies by the tobacco companies. Correct. Because it happened a while ago, that's not something that was well known. But there's a fascinating history there about how the tobacco industry used its technology to maximize addiction and used that to develop food products and to change the DNA of the food companies in ways that still exist today, even though that ownership ended many years ago. I'm really glad you pointed that out. Yeah, exactly. I think there's this shared idea that there's a turning point for companies. Where they know internally that their product is causing harm. And what really tips them over into becoming market driven epidemics is not actually coming out and saying that there's an issue with their product or not improving it. But you know really digging that information into the dirt and saying no we're going to protect our product and keep giving this out to the public despite the harms. You know, maybe we can come back to this, but the fact that you're finding similarities between these areas suggests that there are contingencies that act on corporate executives that are similar no matter what they're selling. And that's helpful to know because in the future, you can predict what these companies will be doing because there are many more similarities than differences. Jono let me ask you this. You've talked about this appalling period of time between when there are known health consequences of use of some of these things and the time when meaningful action occurs to curb their consumption and to rein in the behavior of the companies. How long is this gap, and what explains it? Kelly, this is one of the most fascinating things about this study. And it really highlights the importance of taking an epidemiologic approach. This is a behavioral epidemic, not a viral one. But it has so many characteristics. One of the key points is that is how important time is. And we see that in any epidemic curve when things start going exponential. If we take cigarettes, okay, the harms of cigarettes had long been suspected. But the first credible scientific publication was by a US physician, Isaac Adler, in a 400-page 1912 book where he first associated cigarettes with cancers. Fast forward over 40 years to British scientists Doll and Hill, and they did the epidemiology which definitively and convincingly links cigarette cancer with smoking deaths. So that gap was incredible and so that's one of the first examples. Once those articles were published, others followed the initial one. It took about a decade until the 1964 Surgeon General's report on smoking and health. And that was quickly followed by a series of federal actions. So, 1964, '63, '64 was the tipping point. Five decades after the initial suspicion. For sugar, the journey from suspicion to compelling evidence was more complex. There was a big debate between researchers, clinicians, scientific journalists, that began in the '50s. A diabetologist from Britain John Yudkin, argued in the 1957 Lancet piece, it's sugar that's equal or larger than fats. An American physiologist, Enzo Keyes, says au contraire. He said it on the cover of Time Magazine. From 1950 to 2000, there was this debate back and forth. Finally, sugar consumption in the US peaked in '99 when a sugar wary group of researchers, journalists, and advocacy groups began becoming really vocal. And that was the tipping point. The actual compelling science, it came a few years after the preponderance of folks engaged said, no, it's sugar. You got to do something. And finally, with prescription opioids: 1997, rural doctors Art Van Zee and another fellow, alerted Purdue Pharma, the producer of OxyContin, about rising overdoses. A year later, there was a publication that said the sustained release version of OxyContin, which was a hydrocodone that was sustained release, that they first tried it with morphine, and they had evidence from there that the sustained release drugs were a problem. And again, it was over a decade later that mounting prescription opioid deaths in the US convinced CDC to declare an epidemic of [00:14:00] opioid prescribing. This gap, if you look at it, to summarize, for cigarettes, the journey from credible suspicion of harm to consumption tipping point, five decades. Sugar, four decades. Prescription opioids, fourteen years. But the key thing is that the power of collective action, because today, only one in eight Americans smoke, and it was nearly 50 percent at the peak. The US consumption of sugar, which increased by 30 pounds between the year 1950 and the year 2000, when all this debate was going on. We picked up an extra 30 pounds of sugar consumption per person per year, but within two decades, that was cut back. We gave back 15 pounds of that. And now prescription opioids have gone back to a medically defendable level, having risen to 8 to 10 times that in the peak of the prescription opioid epidemic. Hearing you talk about that, it's nice that there's sometimes light at the end of the tunnel. But boy, it's a long tunnel. And that you can count the, the number of deaths during that tunnel period of time in the millions. It's just unspeakable how much damage, preventable damage gets caused. Now, and I'd like to, when I come back to wind up this podcast, I'd like to ask each of you, what do you think might be done to help narrow that or shrink that time gap and to prevent these long delays and to help address these corporate determinants of health. But before I get there, Eszter, you know, I'd like to follow up on the conversation we had earlier. You know where it's clear that sugar and tobacco and opioids are all quite different substances, but the companies, the natural history of these things looks quite similar. And you mentioned in particular the industry attempt to plant doubt. To create doubt in the minds of people about the stories they were hearing of the dangers of these things, whether they were true or not. And were there other things that the industry was doing during that time that you noticed might have similarities across these areas? Oh my gosh, so many. I have to go through all the examples in my head and make sure that I have a very crisp message out of all of them One of the ones that is interestingly being employed today in a very different epidemic with firearms and guns, is this idea of whose choice is the consumer product in its use. And today there's a lot of ideas that were initially created by tobacco, and then used by food, that are currently being used by gun lobbyists talking about individual freedoms. So with some of the previous market driven epidemics, like tobacco and prescription opioids, it's a way easier argument to make that the individual at some level does not choose to use the product. Maybe in the beginning, the first couple uses were their individual choice, but then there's on purpose, a really strong withdrawal response in the body and socially. The individual kind of had to continue using the product. But some of those ideas are being used today with firearms. The idea that somebody has the liberty to use this product or to purchase this product, which undoubtedly causes harm. You know, it's probably not really good for public health if this argument exists. And, in the cases with firearms, which I think is a little bit ironic and sad, a lot of the people that buy guns for their own self-defense actually experience those guns turned around and used on them, usually by the perpetrators of aggression. These ideas of individual freedoms usually backfire to the people that are consuming the products. It's interesting to me that a lot of these ideas were initially created for very different products, but are being used in the current day. So interesting to hear you say that because here we have yet another area where there are similarities with the firearms. And the companion argument to that idea that it's your personal liberty to use these things is the argument that there's overreach by government, big brother, things like that. When government wants to, you know. Yeah. It's so interesting. So one point on that. The market economy was never meant to be a free for all. Because the reality is that the market economy has brought billions of people out of poverty and saved more lives than most health interventions. But the problem is, as I said, it wasn't meant to be a free for all. And it depends on having good consumer information and when companies are distorting it, they're basically taking away the informed choice, which is critical. The other part of it is, when they are purposely engineering their products for maximal addictiveness, which is done with clicks and social media, and was done purposefully with the nicotine content in cigarettes, then you don't have a real informed choice. The freedom of choice. You've had your brain pleasure center hijacked by, by purposely addictive products. Right, and you didn't mention food, but there's another example of substances that are created to hijack the reward pathway in the brain. Absolutely. I'd like to ask each of you, what in the heck can we do about this? I mean, you've pointed out a massive problem. Where the number of lives that are sacrificed because of corporate behavior, just enormous numbers. What can we do about it? Jono, I will start with you. And, you know, you've written this very highly regarded book called The End of Epidemics. And you've talked about things like bending epidemic curves and accelerating shifts. But tell us more. What do you think can be done in the case of these market driven epidemics like we're talking about? Well, I think it's important to realize that both kinds of epidemics, viral and behavioral, are communicable. Both involve a lot of rumor, blame, uncertainty. And as we've talked about both cause deaths in the thousands or millions. And we haven't talked so much about the significant social disruption, and the cost. Trillions of dollars in economic losses and additional health burdens. So let me focus on four kinds of key actors because when it comes down to it, it's groups that that really start acting against these things. The first is the research community and its funders. You won't be surprised given the time it takes to get the evidence because what's clear is without clear evidence of product associated harm, we're not going to move the political agendas. We're not going to get public support for epidemic curves. So, we have really good researchers working in these areas. They need to guard against groupthink. That's what happened with our salt sugar 50 years of chaos discussion. And conflict of interest because companies do try to undermine the database. The second is the funders of research, foundations and all, and national health services need to have an early warning system and an annual research roadmap in this area. I think Eszter will probably talk about the importance of public health leaders, because she's looked a lot at that. Another community though is the different civil society groups that are active. Because there's Mothers Against Drunk Driving, there's the Sandy Hook group on gun shooting, and there are a variety of interest groups. But what we realize is that there are lots of different strategies for how you move decision makers and all. So, more information sharing from those groups, civil society groups and all across. And finally, companies. It's actually in their interest to be more forthcoming earlier on. With tobacco, with prescription opioids, and now with baby powder, with talc, what we're seeing is companies at risk of bankruptcy paying billions of dollars. And if their CEOs aren't looking at that, then their board needs to be. Can I ask you a quick question about that? When the chickens come home to roost, and those bad things befall a company, you know, really seriously damaging lawsuits, or the possibility that perhaps sometime the executives will go to jail for corporate malfeasance. You know, the behavior that caused all the millions of deaths occurred 15 CEOs before them. So, if you're a CEO and you know you have a certain shelf life as CEO, you want to maximize profit during that time. And by the time anything happens negatively to the company, you're on vacation, you're retired, or you're gone. So how do you deal with that? Here's the thing, it's having criminal and civil liability that can go back to the individuals involved. From a different sector, an example. The German executive who was head of Volkswagen over a decade ago when they cheated on their environmental issues. He's been criminally charged today, a decade later. And I think that sort of personal accountability, it'll be hard to get, but that's the kind of thing that will make CEOs and their boards, if their boards also become responsible for hiding information in a way that it resulted in deaths. I think that, unfortunately, that kind of hammer, although it's going to be hard to get, that's probably what's needed. Okay, that makes good sense to me, and I'm glad I asked you that question. And I appreciate the answer. Eszter, anything you'd like to add to what Jono said about what could be done. Yes. One of the amazing things about market driven epidemics was when we were creating the paper, we created a table of all the different types of actors that could have very successful mitigation. And that table actually ended up being cut from the paper because it was so long that the editor said that it might distract from the rest of the paper. But that's actually a very positive message because there are so many actors that can have positive change, I'm going to highlight a couple of them because I think there's a few things here that are fairly good core messages that we can take away. One of the ones is the need for a trusted public health authoritative voice. I think nowadays there's a lot of commotion over how much we trust the government. And how much we trust, for example, the head of the CDC and the types of data they're talking about in terms of public health. But in the past, when we had a very trusted public health voice, that was really crucial in getting consumers to change their behavior. For example, in the 1964 Surgeon General's report, seemingly overnight changed people's behavior. Before then, smoking was a common, everyday social event. And after that, people started viewing it as a deadly, bad habit that some people had. And that type of change was really hard to get in the modern day. When we were talking about public health crises that were viral. So, I think one of the things that we really need to get again in the modern day is this trust between the people and public health voices so that when we have such good forthcoming information those statements actually mean something. So much so that the consumers change their behavior. Another thing is with us individuals who maybe aren't part of public health, we actually play a pretty big role in how much other people consume these different products. I remember when I was researching cigarettes in particular and the intersection with social media. I think if somebody under 18 saw a peer smoking and posted that to Instagram, that doubled their likelihood of trying out smoking for the first time. You have to be really careful with how you show yourself in the presence of others, and online too with a new digital age. Because you might tip the scale in somebody trying out a product for the first time. Which then if it has a very strong withdrawal effect, you know that person might have to might feel that they have to continue using that product to avoid withdrawal. I think as an individual, you can be more mindful about if you have a certain product use that you don't want others to also pick up, to maybe not do it or not show it as much so that other people aren't interested in doing that. Okay, the last really positive message I have is that I think as my generation gets into higher positions of power, even within corporations, I think Gen Z and Gen Alpha and other young people have the sense of responsibility for others and for the planet. And I think if there was a young person in power in a corporation and saw that oh no this product that we've had is now there's evidence that's harmful. I think there would be more accountability and more of a want to do something that's good for the planet and for people. I'm hopeful that, maybe 50, 60 years ago, if people were more in favor of kind of brushing things under the rug, then maybe the young generation won't be as into those ideas. And we'll actually want to be accountable and do what's right. BIOS Jonathan D. Quick, MD, MPH (“Jono”) is adjunct Professor of Global Health at the Duke Global Health Institute, where he teaches global health policy, serves on foundation grant advisory boards, and mentors students. Dr. Quick's current research and writing focuses on market-driven epidemics, from tobacco to opioids to social media.  He is also Affiliated Faculty in Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women's Hospital/Global Health & Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Quick is the author of The End of Epidemics: The Looming Threat to Humanity and How to Stop It  (Australian, Italian, Korean, South Asia, U.K. and U.S. 2018/2020/2021 editions), creator of MDS-3: Managing Access to Medicines and Health Technologies and an author of  The Financial Times Guide to Executive Health, Preventive Stress Management in Organizations, as well as more than 100 other books, chapters, and articles in leading medical journals.  Eszter Rimanyi is a chronic disease epidemiologist working with Dr. Jonathan D. Quick at the Duke Global Health Institute. Her research interest centers around Market-Driven Epidemics, including tobacco, sugar, opioids, and breastmilk substitute/infant formula. She is currently working on applying the market-driven epidemics approach to new epidemics, such as social media and firearms. Rimanyi has authored scientific papers in journals such as PloS Global Public Health and MDPI.

This Week on Dopey! The Kratom Craptacular! Everything you wanted to know about Kratom but were afraid to ask! I am extremely excited and proud of this new Dopey Kratom Show with Mountainside's Jana Wu and the Upful Life Podcasts' and Dopey Legend B. Getz - we learn so much about the phenomenon/scourge/harm reduction tool/recreational and super easily accessible gas station wonder drug - Kratom.  No matter how you pronounce it - Kratom is out there and affecting the world of addiction and recovery profoundly! So sit back and relax and consume this extra long extra informative super kratomy special of Dopey! PLUS voicemails, emails and more on this super new episode of the kinda old Dopey Show! Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/dopeypodcast DopeyWood Tickets: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/thedopeyfoundation/1484803   Here is what AI Said: Dopey Podcast: The Kratom Special

AP Washington correspondent Sagar Meghani reports McKinsey & Company has agreed to pay $650 million for helping Purdue Pharma boost OxyContin sales.

Merry Christmas! Our TMHS Christmas Series Special is focusing on recovery stories from three different guests. We are highlighting individuals that have overcome substance abuse and intense personal struggle to support others in recovery over the holiday. You are not alone. Welcome Todd Gross, our first of three guests sharing his grueling story of Oxycontin addiction and various substance abuse. Like many, while Gross was caring for his father he suddenly had access to painkillers eventually leading to nearly two decades of addiction. Todd shares how he ended up living in his car with the few belongings he could carry, and alone. He is now 14 months sober, has his life back, and sharing success in early sobriety. Mark Howley has over 30 years of sobriety and shares his own journey throughout the conversation. Listen or watch on Spotify, Apple, or Youtube.  If you or someone you know is struggling, please visit www.aa.org OR www.usa-na.org to find local support. Please call 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for immediate support 24/7. 

La segunda crisis de opioides en Estados Unidos se intensificó con la introducción de OxyContin en 1996, un analgésico basado en opioides promocionado por Purdue Pharma como una solución efectiva con una duración de 12 horas. Sin embargo, su alto potencial adictivo, sumado a la estrategia de marketing agresiva, resultó en una epidemia de abuso y dependencia que devastó comunidades enteras. Síguenos y visita nuestro sitio oficial: https://www.instagram.com/eldollop https://twitter.com/eldollop https://www.facebook.com/eldolloppodcast http://eldollop.com

In this episode of 'Hot for Your Health,' Dr. Vonda Wright sits down with Jimmy DeFalco, founder of The Awakened Father, a coaching program dedicated to helping men build strength, discipline, and resilience. Jim, a recovering addict, shares his extraordinary journey from addiction and injury to physical and mental transformation through fitness. This episode showcases Jimmy's candid story about his tough upbringing influenced by his father's struggles with substance use, his own battle with addiction to OxyContin and Xanax, and the spiritual awakening that became the turning point in his life. He discusses his recovery process, highlighting the role of faith, mindset shifts, and using physical training to rebuild both body and mind. Jimmy also offers actionable insights on overcoming excuses, building discipline, and setting achievable goals, while sharing how his commitment to fitness has set a positive example for his own children. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to transform their life and take control of their mental and physical well-being. ••• Connect with Jimmy DeFalco: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theawakenedfather/profilecard/?igsh=dHpibGJ5aDJyYXhx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jimmydefalco TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theawakenedfather?_t=8qvcDeV8KOQ&_r=1 ••• Make sure to follow Dr. Vonda Wright: Instagram: @drvondawright Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@vondawright Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drvondawright LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vonda-wright-md-ms-2803374 Website: http://www.DrVondaWright.com ••• If you enjoyed this episode, Subscribe to “HOT For Your Health” for more inspiring episodes. Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hot-for-your-health/id1055206993 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1Q2Al27D79jCLAyzp4hKBv?si=b62b374994884eed We'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode! Share your comments or join the discussion on social media using #HotForYourHealthPodcast.  

If you've been looking for safer options for pain relief, kratom — a Southeast Asian plant with at least 40 naturally occurring bioactive alkaloids — has probably popped up in your search results more than once.But, how do can you know the differences in quality, potency and safety between naturally sourced kratom products?Alexander Karp, chief scientific officer for ETHA Natural Botanics, describes his journey to find pain relief with kratom, the perils of an unregulated marketplace and why you should not mute the Pain Teacher this week on Spirit Gym. In the Members section of this podcast, legendary skateboarder Danny Way joins the conversation to share his experiences with kratom as a more effective pain reliever than all the previous ones. For Spirit Gym listeners: Save 15% on Element 115 kratom products developed by Alexander and Danny at Element 115 Botanicals or ETHA Natural Botanicals via the promo code PAUL15. (Special offers from Spirit Gym guests are time-sensitive and at their discretion to redeem after 30 days.)Sign up for your Spirit Gym podcast membership, so you can access members-only extended versions of the podcast along with exclusive Q&A opportunities with Paul.Timestamps5:10 Our lifestyles have evolved to be more processed and synthetic at the same time more natural treatment options have become demonized by the allopathic world.14:09 “Kratom and all of the alkaloids are like a symphony orchestra.”16:26 Are you muting the Pain Teacher?29:37 How Alexander became aware of kratom.34:50 “It was out of a personal need that I had severe pain, heard about kratom, tried it and it was a miracle.”40:44 Different alkaloids, different effects in kratom.48:22 The complications of an unregulated market.1:02:07 Taking a low dose of anything doesn't imply that it isn't a powerful one.1:17:23 “You don't want pain to go away 100 percent.”1:24:47 A review of the kratom-based products Alexander's ETHA Natural Botanicals sells.ResourcesPaul's Living 4D conversation with Eben BrittonThe work of Dr. Royal Lee and Dr. Chris McCurdyBiochemical Individuality by Roger WilliamsMitragynineTongkat aliFind more resources for this episode on our website. Thanks to our awesome sponsors:PaleovalleyBiOptimizers US and BiOptimizers UK PAUL10Organifi CHEK20Wild PasturesCHEK Institute's Black Friday giftWe may earn commissions from qualifying purchases using affiliate links.

THIS WEEK ON DOPEY! Truanon's Brace Belden is BACK! Brace is never not a pleasure on the show, and this week was no exception. We hear all about his experience at the Trump Rally, his election predictions and of course dive into his myriad of problems. Starting where we always start at: SLEEP. Brace is such a great guest because he is never afraid to be honest. Hear all about SEXOMNIA and how Brace copes with this affliction. PLUS 2 Dopey British Voicemails - one from Spiritualized - Greg Coulson! PLUS emails - notes - anniversaries and more! On a brand new episode of that good old DOPEY SHOW!   keywords: addiction, recovery, community, sobriety, therapy, personal stories, drugs, politics, music, art, addiction, pain management, sleep disorders, sexomnia, DopeyCon, recovery, opioids, mental health, personal stories, community, music, podcasting, personal loss, memory, politics, Trump, Kamala, predictions, social commentary summaryThis conversation delves into the complexities of addiction and recovery, exploring personal stories, the importance of community support, and the challenges faced during the recovery process. The speakers share their experiences with drugs, the role of therapy, and the significance of celebrating sobriety. Additionally, they touch on the intersection of politics and addiction, the impact of music and art in recovery, and reflections on personal growth. In this conversation, David Manheim shares his experiences with pain management, addiction, and the complexities of sleep disorders, including sexomnia. He discusses the challenges of navigating recovery while dealing with the aftermath of surgeries and the impact of sleep-related issues on his daily life. The conversation also touches on the community aspect of recovery, highlighted by reflections on DopeyCon and the connections made within the sobriety community. In this conversation, David Manheim and Brace Belden explore a range of topics from the intersection of music and podcasting to personal reflections on loss and memory. They delve into political engagement, observations from political rallies, and predictions for future elections, all while maintaining a candid and humorous tone. The discussion highlights the complexities of personal experiences and societal issues, providing listeners with both entertainment and insight. takeaways Addiction can manifest in various forms, and personal experiences vary widely. Community support is crucial for individuals in recovery. Celebrating milestones in sobriety fosters a sense of achievement and motivation. Early recovery can be challenging, but sharing stories helps normalize the experience. Therapy plays a vital role in developing coping skills and self-awareness. Experiences with drugs can lead to profound realizations about life and health. Political climates can affect the mental health of individuals in recovery. Music and art can serve as powerful tools for expression and healing. Personal growth often comes from navigating the complexities of recovery. Maintaining gratitude is essential for a positive recovery journey. Pain management can be a slippery slope for those in recovery. The transition from opioids to heroin is a common narrative. Sleep disorders can significantly impact daily functioning. Sexomnia is a real phenomenon that complicates personal relationships. Food cravings during sleep can be linked to emotional states. Community support plays a crucial role in recovery journeys. Understanding one's triggers is essential for managing addiction. The stigma surrounding sleep disorders can lead to embarrassment. Engaging with the recovery community can provide valuable insights. Personal stories of addiction can resonate with many, fostering connection. The connection between music and podcasting can be profound. Personal loss shapes our memories and experiences. Engaging with political events can be both enlightening and exhausting. Humor can be found even in the darkest topics. The impact of childhood experiences on adult behavior is significant. Political rallies reveal the complexities of public opinion. Predictions about elections are often based on gut feelings rather than data. The importance of understanding different political perspectives. Candid discussions about mental health can help others. Finding joy in shared experiences is essential. titles The Journey of Addiction and Recovery Finding Strength in Community Celebrating Sobriety: Personal Stories Overcoming Early Recovery Challenges The Role of Therapy in Recovery Reflections on Drug Experiences Politics and Addiction: A Complex Relationship The Healing Power of Music and Art Personal Growth Through Recovery Navigating the Path to Sobriety Navigating Pain and Addiction: A Personal Journey Sound Bites "Sober people need to have gratitude." "I don't know how you keep up with it." "I can't believe I can actually say this." "I was a raging drug addict." "I felt like death warmed up, man." "I feel a little drained sad." "I had to get a second one." "I called my sponsor." "I never did, I only did heroin." "I was 18 and I'd done other pills before." "I started buying Oxycontin 80s." "I got so angry when I saw the 30." "I would take an oxy, I would take Benadryl." "Sexomnia is crazy because..." "I have sexomnia, it's a real thing." "I think it's a libidinal thing." "I think you could do a Dopey game show." "I think she did." "I don't really bring it up a lot." "I think about killing herself almost never." "I don't remember her voice sounds like." "I think he's a net negative on the world." "I think he's going to win by a squeaker." Chapters 00:00Introduction to Addiction and Recovery 02:50The Role of Community in Recovery 05:49Celebrating Sobriety and Personal Stories 09:10Navigating Early Recovery Challenges 12:03The Importance of Therapy and Support 15:07Experiences with Drugs and Their Consequences 17:54The Intersection of Politics and Addiction 21:13Reflections on Sobriety and Personal Growth 23:46The Impact of Music and Art in Recovery 27:07Final Thoughts and Future Directions 37:48Navigating Pain Management and Addiction 44:26The Struggles of Sleep Disorders 51:47Exploring Sexomnia and Its Implications 56:51The Impact of Sleep on Daily Life 01:01:26Food and Sleep: A Complicated Relationship 01:08:55Reflections on DopeyCon and Community Engagement 01:16:31The Intersection of Music and Podcasting 01:22:38Personal Reflections on Loss and Memory 01:30:01Political Engagement and Observations 01:39:45Predictions and Perspectives on Future Elections

Send us a textAlex Price's journey from Pensacola to the bustling streets of Madison Avenue is nothing short of inspiring. Known for his electrifying presence as an emcee at the Tech Hub Gala in West Palm Beach, Alex sets a prime example of merging personal passion with professional purpose. As the leader of Mission Impact Strategies, he's making significant strides in addressing critical issues, such as the opioid crisis in Florida. Join us as we explore how his authentic leadership is transforming both companies and communities, proving that every brand has the potential to create real-world change.The fentanyl crisis isn't just a headline; it's a wake-up call to communities nationwide. We trace its evolution from the overprescription of drugs like Oxycontin to the emergence of fentanyl, which has devastated lives, especially among young adults. This episode emphasizes the importance of education, advocacy, and collaboration between diverse sectors—including healthcare, law enforcement, and nonprofits—to tackle this crisis head-on. Alex's commitment to community impact provides a compelling narrative on how personal branding can be a powerful tool for social change.There's also a profound exploration of personal branding and corporate philanthropy, where grief and purpose intersect to create impactful action. Reflecting on his personal journey, Alex demonstrates how channeling personal experiences into helping others can turn tragedy into a legacy. This conversation unveils the importance of emotional connections in philanthropy and social impact initiatives, which not only enhance brand identity but also enrich the employee experience. Listen in to discover innovative solutions for pressing issues like school safety and mental health, and how strategic storytelling empowers organizations to amplify their positive impact.Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest marketing trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates from us, be sure to follow us at 5starbdm.com. See you next time on Follow The Brand!

This week is about the evolution of drugs and the role of big pharma (#Capitalism) in creating and exploding the war on drugs. From Cannabis to Marinol to Spice/K2...From coca leaves to cocaine to crack...From willow tree bark to Aspirin to Ibuprofen...From eucalyptus to amphetamine to methamphetamine to Adderall...From PCP to Ketamine...From tea to barbiturates to benzos to SSRIs to glutamate drugs...From beer and wine to spirits and liquor....Something capitalistic has been driving our addictions. This isn't natural. This week I get back to the roots of the show: drugs. I discuss the evolution of drugs via capitalism, and the reason the drugs we used to take decades (and centuries) ago were natural, and, as such, safer and less addictive than the drugs we usually take today. Those old-school, natural drugs are now hard to find, replaced by more potent, cheaper, synthetic chemicals that can be patented by big pharma then shoved down our throats. Cocaine replaced coca leaves only to be replaced itself by methamphetamine. Heroin replaced opium gum only to be replaced itself by fentanyl(s). Cannabis was replaced by...35% THC Cannabis in the early 2000s only to be replaced by synthetic cannabis (Spice, K2). Article with Jacob Carlock: Crafting Convict Criminologists: An Invitation to Join us in Prison available in The Prison Journal. Episode 112: The Opium WarsRead more about David Carrillo here: https://www.chalkbeat.org/colorado/2024/04/11/david-carrillo-continues-to-teach-incarcarated-students-college-classes/Read more about the Returning Artists Guild (RAG) here: https://thereturningartistsguild.org/Read Captured Words/Free Thoughts here: https://clas.ucdenver.edu/communication/research-creative-work/captured-words-free-thoughtsDrop me an email at DrJunkieShow@gmail.com. Support the show

A wide-ranging discussion featured acclaimed author and podcaster Malcolm Gladwell. Michael Krasny began by exploring Malcolm's entry into podcasting. Malcolm shared his love for the medium and how his podcast, Revisionist History, showcases his "mischievous side." They discussed the success of podcasters Joe Rogan and Bill Simmons and the importance of curiosity and listening skills. Malcolm touched on his experience with Paul Simon and the cultural effects on cardiologists, as detailed in his latest book. The conversation covered diverse topics. These included elite schools and college admissions processes, a town with a suicide epidemic, and the homogeneity of cheetahs. Malcolm also spoke about OxyContin and COVID, his favorite published book, and his current writing project. He expressed a growing interest in character-driven writing and his admiration for journalist Janet Malcolm. The dialogue then shifted to the role of faith in Malcolm's writing and his thoughts on Kamala Harris and popular music. They explored the impact of popular culture on Holocaust discussions and Malcolm's views on Pastor Rick Warren. The importance of journalism and Malcolm's increasing skepticism were also addressed. The conversation concluded with topics like white flight, fame, and Malcolm's earlier work at The New Yorker.

I dive deep into the illusion of safety behind FDA approvals and doctor recommendations. I unpack the shocking reality that the FDA, the very agency tasked with protecting public health, is often funded by the same conglomerates it's supposed to regulate. From fast-tracked pharmaceuticals to harmful food additives like aspartame and glyphosate, I reveal how corporate interests and profit often overshadow genuine concern for our well-being. Exploring conflicts of interest embedded within the system, like the opioid crisis, I challenge the notion that “doctor-recommended” always means safe. I urge you to become your own health advocate, question the system, and reconnect with nature to truly reclaim your health. This episode is a must-listen for anyone ready to break free from blind trust in labels and take control of their wellness journey. Resources:  Puori Supplements discount code: HEALINGTHESOURCE for 20% off your order sitewide (don't miss out PW1 grass-fed protein powder and CP1 collagen!!) Follow the host, Claudia Gilani, here, and check out HealingTheSource.org

What if the root of America's deadly opioid crisis lies in a single pharmaceutical company's marketing strategy? Dr. Casey Grover takes you on a compelling journey through the origins and evolution of this epidemic. From Purdue Pharma's aggressive promotion of OxyContin to the alarming rise of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, we dissect how tolerance and dependence perpetuate the cycle of addiction. You'll also gain historical insights into heroin's early marketing by Bayer Pharmaceuticals as a "non-addictive" remedy, and hear personal stories that underscore the human cost of opioid dependence.We then shift our focus to the emergence of novel and perilous synthetic drugs that are infiltrating our communities. Discover why carrying Narcan has become essential and learn about the life-saving potential of deregulating buprenorphine. Dr. Grover also highlights the tragic story of Paul, whose life and artwork poignantly reflect the struggles of addiction. Paul's legacy serves as a stark reminder of the importance of effective treatment and education in combating this crisis. Tune in for an essential discussion on the urgent changes needed to address opioid use and overdoses in the United States.

How can a system meant to care for our most vulnerable turn into our worst nightmare? Join us as we kick off a special series of Love Conquers Alz episodes, inspired by our soon-to-be-released documentary, "No Country for Old People." We're honored to have Rick Mountcastle, former U.S. attorney and co-producer of our documentary, with us. Rick offers his eye-opening experiences prosecuting nursing homes for fraud and abuse.  Together, we hope to shed light on the urgent need for public awareness and collective action to combat the systemic neglect rampant in the long-term care industry. In this series, we will present personal narratives that serve as powerful calls to action, urging us to demand better care standards and advocate for systemic change. In this episode, we feature the poignant account of Jen Trejo, who faced unimaginable hardship after her son Christopher (whose story was featured in the Netflix limited series "Painkiller") was prescribed OxyContin. From a mother's gut-wrenching moment of signing surgery papers for her son, to the neglect suffered within skilled nursing facilities, her story uncovers the severe failings of our profit-driven healthcare system. Jen shares the struggle of finding appropriate care for a loved one with a history of drug addiction and the frustrations of a system that prioritizes financial considerations over patient care. Jen also talks about the poor conditions in certain facilities and the lack of support for patients with more intensive care needs are also examined.We also explore the transformative power of love and advocacy in these challenging times and how collective efforts have sparked progress, especially in addressing the opioid crisis and improving caregiving standards. From the emotional toll of dealing with addiction and inadequate medical care, to the relentless pursuit of improvement despite resistance, this episode underscores the importance of empathy, persistence, and the human spirit in driving change. Tune in and join us in our mission to make a real difference.FACEBOOK Instagram Support the showJOIN THE PEOPLE OVER PROFIT MOVEMENT FOR NURSING HOME REFORM! Visit the No Country For Old People Website for more information.YOU CAN ALSO SUPPORT THE COMPLETION OF OUR DOCUMENTARY "NO COUNTRY FOR OLD PEOPLE" BY MAKING A TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION THROUGH THE NATIONAL CONSUMER VOICE HERE or GO FUND ME Follow us on Twitter, FB, IG, & TiK Tok

Opioid deaths started skyrocketing when the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin hit the market. Purdue Pharma, the company behind the drug, has been found guilty of numerous charges. It is now featured in a new Netflix original, "Painkiller," highlighting the company's pushy sales tactics. For some viewers, like today's guest, the show hits a bit too close to home.Steven May joined Purdue as an OxyContin sales rep back in 1999. At first, he believed in what he was selling, but that changed quickly, and he became a whistleblower. Today, Steven shares his behind-the-scenes experience at Purdue during a time when the company was making huge profits as opioid addiction rates were spiraling out of control.The Emily's Hope Substance Use Prevention Curriculum has been carefully designed to address growing concerns surrounding substance use and overdose in our communities. Our curriculum focuses on age-appropriate and evidence-based content that educates children about the risks of substance use while empowering them to make healthy choices. Support the Show.For more episodes and to read Angela's blog, just go to our website, emilyshope.charityWishing you faith, hope and courage! Podcast producers: Casey Wonnenberg & Michael Geheren

After last month’s Supreme Court ruling, a judge weighs whether to allow new lawsuits against the Sackler family. Plus, waiting on word from Jerome Powell and the Fed, and what happens when an online DNA test kicks up complicated history.

After last month’s Supreme Court ruling, a judge weighs whether to allow new lawsuits against the Sackler family. Plus, waiting on word from Jerome Powell and the Fed, and what happens when an online DNA test kicks up complicated history.

EPISODE 400!! We delve into a crazy corner of the wrestling world, "death matches", with one of the true masters of the medium. He stabs people with broken lighting tubes, gets set on fire, and has even severed an artery, and "died" for seven minutes. He also loves his pills, and would do anything to get them, including robbing a bank, wearing the same bandana he wore to the wrestling ring. It's "Hardcore" Nick Gage!!Love the feel of extreme pain, smash the nearest person with a lighting tube, and "legally die" for a full seven minutes with Nick Gage!!Check us out, every Tuesday!We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!! Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman Donate at... patreon.com/crimeinsports or with paypal.com using our email: crimeinsports@gmail.com Get all the CIS & STM merch at crimeinsports.threadless.com Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things CIS & STM!! Contact us on... twitter.com/crimeinsports crimeinsports@gmail.com facebook.com/Crimeinsports instagram.com/smalltownmurderSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The opioid epidemic has been one of the biggest public health disasters in generations. The drug company at the heart of the crisis, Purdue Pharma, maker of the prescription painkiller OxyContin, agreed to a multibillion-dollar deal to settle thousands of claims against it — but that agreement would also grant the family behind the company, the Sacklers, immunity from additional civil lawsuits.Justices are now set to rule whether that settlement was legal. Abbie VanSickle, who covers the Supreme Court for The Times, explains what a decision either way could mean for the victims and for the people responsible.Guest: Abbie VanSickle, a Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading:What to know about the Purdue Pharma case before the Supreme Court.At the core of the matter: Who can get immunity in settlements?For more information on today's episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.