Podcasts about sovaldi

In this incredible episode, Mike Rea is joined by Dr. John L. LaMattina. John is the former Senior Vice President of Pfizer Inc and President of Pfizer Global Research & Development. Additionally, he is a senior partner at PureTech Health and an author. He talks about the misconception about Pfizer's profiteering from the pandemic and the drug pricing in America. John also discusses how Gilead's Sovaldi drug for hepatitis C became overpriced in the US and the effects of insurance companies on the drug market. Moreover, he talks about the misinformation about insulin and its pricing, NIH's role in drug discovery research, and the profitability of the pharma industry.Tune in! During this episode, you will learn about;[00:22] Introduction to the show[0:42] Know our guest; Dr. John L. LaMattina, and why he has authored his books[04:58] Misconception about Pfizer's profiteering from the pandemic[08:13] Drug pricing in America[12:35] Gilead's Sovaldi drug for hepatitis C and how it became overpriced in the US more than in other countries [19:57] The cost-effectiveness of PCSK9 in regulating (low-density lipoprotein) LDL cholesterol[21:42] Effect the insurance companies have had on the drug market [26:09] Value of  the ‘me-too' drugs [30:01] The inefficiency of the flu vaccines [33:03] The funding for early-stage mRNA vaccines [34:23] The input of the FDA and CDC in the manufacture of mRNA vaccines [37:46] What is NIH's role in drug discovery research?[38:13] The process and cost of drug discovery; from idea to getting the drug approved[42:39] Misinformation about insulin and its pricing [47:21] Is the value vs. affordability of medicines a reputation challenge or a  commercial challenge for the industry?[51:31] What's the profitability of the pharma industry?[59:48] Recommended reading [01:02:38] How to connect with us Don't forget to Subscribe, Rate, Review, Like, and Share! Resources MentionedBook; Pharma and Profits by John L. LaMattina Book; Devalued and Distrusted by John L. LaMattinaBook; Drug Truths by John L. LaMattinaBook; The Great American Drug Deal by Peter Kolchinsky  Let's Connect!Website: https://www.johnlamattina.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/john_lamattinaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-lamattina-2985a9b/ More Products Follow Mike Rea on;Website: https://www.ideapharma.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ideapharmaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bigidea/ To listen to more fantastic podcast episodes: https://podcast.ideapharma.com/

Episode 353. Topic: Sovaldi. Theme: Prescriptions. What is hepatitis? What causes it? How was the virus hepatitis C discovered and how can it damage the liver? Are there treatments or cures available?Twitter: @3minutelessonEmail: 3minutelesson@gmail.comNew episode every week day!

Merck's History of Crimes and Misdemeanors   Richard Gale and Gary Null Progressive Radio Network, March 18, 2021     As the Covid-19 pandemic wears on past a full year, several of the world’s top pharmaceutical companies have dominated the world headlines, notably Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, along with the smaller start-ups such Moderna and Novavax. Each is now vying to usurp the coveted Covid-19 vaccine market. Prior to the pandemic, the vaccine market worldwide was only a small slice of the overall $1 trillion pharmaceutical market at about $24 billion annually. Now sales of the new generation of vaccines to fight the pandemic are poised to exceed global vaccine sales exponentially. Ronny Gal at the market analysis firm Bernstein estimates that Covid vaccine sales will reach $40 billion this year. We believe this is a very conservative estimate as newer vaccines come on line and with companies making efforts to outdo each other on its efficacy and safety profile. Moderna and Pfizer together are expected to earn $32 billion this year and we are not taking into account Russia’s Sputnik-V vaccine and now five approved in China. The frenetic race is underway to vaccinate billions of human beings naively standing in line after drinking from the government health agencies’ and the mainstream media’s cattle trowels of vaccine hype and propaganda. What is certain is that a new era of drug discovery has begun and all will be driven by the surge in vaccines’ new celebrity status. The very definition of a vaccine is now being redefined and it is clearly predictable that we will be witnessing prophylactic and therapeutic drugs being reevaluated as vaccines to leap-frog regulatory hurdles and to escape legal actions for product injury and death.    It may be surprising that the world’s second largest vaccine maker Merck is missing from the Covid vaccine cash cow. Along with the other two of the top three global vaccine makers, Glaxo and Sanofi, Merck exited the Covid vaccine arena after its candidates flopped in generating sufficient neutralizing antibodies in Phase 1 trials. Instead the company has shuffled its resources to develop two new novel drugs that will target serious risks of the body’s over-reactive immune response to SARS-CoV2 infection. Although we will not likely see a Merck Covid vaccine any time in the coming years, it has nevertheless lucratively reaped rewards after selling its Moderna stock late last year when the price went out the roof. Merck has also partnered with J&J to increase production of the latter’s vaccine in order to meet demand.   Merck's legacy of lawsuits for crimes and misdemeanors goes back at least to the 1960s. In 1975, it was busted by the SEC for illegal payments to foreign government officials from "approximately" 36 nations. The scam was orchestrated through personal bank accounts with the sole purpose of advancing drug approvals through foreign nations' regulatory medical agencies.     One of the largest scandals in modern medical history was the company's anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx that resulted in fines above $4.8 billion for causing over a minimum 60,000 deathsfrom sudden heart attacks and over 120,000 serious medical injuries. At its height, Vioxx was earning over $2 billion in revenues annually and it is estimated that 25 million patients were prescribed the medication. The securities class action suit against Merck alone reached $1 billion, placing it in the top 15 securities lawsuits in US corporate history. The main criminal charge was Merck's intentional withholding of scientific data about the drug's adverse cardiovascular side effects.    Years after the settlement, Ron Unz, the publisher of The American Conservative, undertook his own investigation to validate Vioxx's death toll. Analyzing the drug's adverse effects over a longer time period, Unz estimated Merck may have been responsible for nearly half a million premature deaths in elderly patients, the drug's primary target group. That is roughly the same number of total civilian, military and terrorist deaths from the US's military escapades in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan combined.    Merck's settlement of 47,000 pending lawsuits for personal injuries and 265 class action cases was a small pittance for the harm Vioxx left in its wake. Merck executives were never properly punished for willingly concealing the drug's dangers in order to assure FDA approval.    In Australia, Merck's efforts to increase Vioxx profits employed other forms of malfeasance. The Australian government launched a class action suit against the drug maker on charges that employees allegedly schemed a fake scientific paper that was ghostwritten for a medical journal in order to put Vioxx into a positive light. Testimonies during the trial stated data was completely based upon "wishful thinking." Merck also founded the peer-reviewed journal Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine. The journal was a fraud; it was not properly peer-reviewed and its primary purpose was to promote Vioxx on the Australian continent.    Moreover, the class action lawsuit contained Merck emails accessed by Australian officials. The company's internal communications allegedly ordered select employees to draft up a hit list of physicians who were critical of Vioxx. According to the documents, these physicians were targeted to be "neutralized" or "discredited." Some, including Dr. James Fries at Sanford University's medical school, were clinical investigators who happened to speak out about the drug's shortcomings. One email stated, "We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live..."     But Merck's troubles with the dangers of its products, falsifying data about drugs' efficacy and safety and exaggeration of medical claims go back sixty years. In the 1960s, the FDA discovered that the drug maker's arthritis medication Indocin had not been properly tested for efficacy and its adverse effects were being completely ignored.  In the 1970s, Merck's drug dietheylstilbestrol (DES) prescribed for the prevention of miscarriages caused a flurry of vaginal cancer cases and other gynecological disorders. Merck had all along known that DES was carcinogenic based upon its own animal clinical trials. In 2007, its cholesterol drug Zetiawas shown to increase liver disease. Again Merck had known about Zetia's liver risks but withheld the clinical trial's damning results.    It would also appear that Merck has managed to hijack US courts. This includes an early 2019 ruling by Trump's corporate-friendly US Supreme Court to side with the drug maker and squash hundreds of lawsuits for failing to issue warnings that its osteoporosis drug Fosamax's may contribute to debilitating bone fractures. A federal court in California found that Merck committed perjury for lying in a patent infringement case against Gilead Sciences over the latter's blockbuster Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi. The judge ruled that Merck carried out a "systematic and outrageous deception in conjunction with unethical business practices and litigation misconduct."  It turned out that Merck's patent claims were a sham and orchestrated by its legal division.   Besides pushing through the FDA dangerous medications onto the market, the company has also found itself in the courtroom on many occasions for allegedly price-fixing, routinely defrauding and overbilling states' Medicare and Medicaid programs, and violating the Anti-Kickback Statute. In 2006, the IRS went after Merck for owing almost $2 billion in back taxes. According to the Wall Street Journal, Merck partnered with a British bank to create an offshore subsidiary in tax-friendly Bermuda to divert taxable revenue on its bestselling cholesterol drugs Zocor and Mevacor through a patent scheme. The company ran the operation for ten years before the FDA uncovered the racket.    Merck is America's leading vaccine manufacturer. Despite public perception and the ruse that vaccines are somehow safer and more effective than pharmaceutical drugs in general, it is the same industry and corporate culture that manufactures both. Currently Merck markets vaccines for Haemophilus B, Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B (individually and in combination), human papilomavirus (Gardasil), Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR), pneumococcal, rotavirus, varicella (chickenpox) and Zoster virus (for shingles). In 2010, Merck obtained exclusive rights to MassBiologics’ vaccine portfolio. The consequence is that Merck's Adult Vaccine Portfolio expanded to include 9 of the 10 vaccines on the CDC's adult immunization schedule. The company now holds almost a full monopoly on the government's recommended vaccines   On its website, the FDA assures the public that "Vaccines, as with all products regulated by the FDA, undergo a rigorous review of laboratory and clinical data to ensure the safety, efficacy, purity and potency of these products."  However, not a single one of Merck's vaccines has ever been tested in a scientifically viable double-blinded placebo controlled trial. In each case, the placebo in the control group was not inert, such as the use of sterile saline. Rather Merck only tested its vaccines with the viral component against a faux placebo containing the same ingredients, including aluminum, but minus the virus. Known as a "carrier solution," the standard scientific protocol does not designate it as a proper placebo for measuring the efficacy and disease risks of a drug. And in the case of Gardasil, the trial was statistical trickery to mask Gardasil's adverse effects. One placebo group received the company’s proprietary adjuvant amorphous aluminum hydroxyphospate sulfate (AAHS), a known neurotoxin. The adjuvant has yet to be properly tested for safety. One of the more serious risks of aluminum adjuvants is the triggering of an extreme autoimmune response, what Israeli immunologist Yehuda Schoenfeld has called “autoimmue/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants.”   In the Cochrane Database Collaboration’s 2016 analysis of Merck's Gardasil, the investigators were so alarmed they filed a complaint against the European Medical Agency for failing to adequately assess the vaccine's neurological harms. More recently, a meta-analysis published in Systemic Reviews journal concluded “HPV vaccines increased serious nervous system disorders and general harms.”   Robert Kennedy Jr is currently taking steps to sue Merck over the Gardasil deception. Kennedy's in-depth investigations through his Children's Health Defense organization has uncovered evidence that the vaccine increases birth defects in children conceived of HPV-vaccinated moms; miscarriages have increased 2000 percent above normal, and girls are experiencing serious reproductive complications, including infertility, at approximately ten-fold above the normal rate. During an interview on the Progressive Radio Network, Kennedy noted that there was 10 times greater risk of dying from cervical cancer among Gardasil trial participants compared to the general public. There is a 10-fold increase for ovarian failure, and 1 in 37 girls who receive the vaccine will experience an autoimmune disease after 6 months of receiving the series of injections. When we consider that 1 in 37,000 women have a chance of dying from cervical cancer, it puts HPV vaccines into a completely different light. Sadly, across the nation, politicians from both sides of the aisle in state legislatures, notably Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York, are seemingly doing Merck's bidding to mandate Gardasil for all girls and boys upon entering school.    Based upon Kennedy's research and documents received from Freedom of Information Act filings, during Merck's own Gardasil clinical trials, 2.3 percent of girls and women between the ages of 9 through 26 developed a serious autoimmune disease and crippling neurological disorders within seven months of vaccination. The most frequent adverse effects were arthritis and anthropathy, autoimmune thyroiditis, celiac disease, hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism, inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, Raynaud's Phenomenon, rheumatoid arthritis and uveitis. In other words, it was the aluminum adjuvant responsible for this enormous suffering. He stated that according to Merck's own statistics, girls are one hundred times more likely to experience a serious adverse effect from the vaccine than to be protected from cervical cancer.    In a 2012 article published in the Journal of Law and Medical Ethics, researchers at the University of British Columbia wrote that ever since Gardasil was approved in 2006, Merck has engaged in an "overly aggressive marketing strategies and lobbying campaigns aimed at promoting Gardasil as a mandatory vaccine."  One strategy Merck has employed is to take advantage of FDA loopholes to fast track its drugs. In the case of its expanded Gardasil-9 for adults between the ages of 27 to 45, the company applied for fast tracking two days after the Journal of Toxicological and Environmental Health published a study that the HPV vaccine was lowering the probability of pregnancy for women in their 20s.   Unfortunately, the media has indiscriminately colluded with Merck. Drug companies, according to Kennedy, pay $4.5 billion to the major media networks and publications to promote their drugs. And none of the media outlets are willing to sacrifice their profits for advertising drugs on moral and ethical grounds.    Another scandal erupted within Merck's vaccine business in 2010 after two whistleblowers gave testimony that the mumps' component in its Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine was based on fraudulent data about it's efficacy, and the company knowingly proceeded in order to corner the mumps vaccine market. Merck had been defrauding the US government, which purchases the MMR, for over a decade. The government and two Merck whistleblowers, virologists Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, filed a lawsuit against Merck for being in violation of the False Claims Act. According to the charges, Merck had "falsified its mumps vaccine test results to hit an efficacy rate of 95 percent. The company achieved this by adding "animal antibodies to a blood sample to give the impression of increased antibodies." This would certainly explain why mumps outbreaks in summer camps and on college campuses are found to occur among those vaccinated.    Merck has gained enormous political and social influence over the national perception about vaccines.  One example is Merck's behind the scenes aggression against the flim Vaxxed.  When the documentary film was officially selected to screen during the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan, we discovered in an earlier report that Merck left its fingerprints on the film's removal and censorship. The Alfred Sloan Foundation is the festival's largest sponsor; pro-vaccine advocate Bill Gates is also a notable contributor. One of the leading persons on the Foundation's board of trustees was Dr. Peter Kim.  Kim happens to be the former president of Merck's Research Laboratories who was directly responsible for the launch of Gardasil and Merck's other vaccines for the Zoster virus and rotavirus. The film presents a harsh indictment against Dr Julie Gerberding, the former head of the CDC who allegedly coordinated the cover up of data that confirmed thimerosal's role in the onset of autism. After managing the agency's operations to mine sweep the data and generate new studies with public funds to suggest thimerosal's safety, Gerberding accepted her reward from the pharmaceutical industry by becoming the head of Merck's vaccine division. In addition, according to the whistleblowing of a senior CDC scientist, Dr. William Thompson, Gerberding was allegedly responsible for destroying the CDC's research that showed African American boys were at a substantially higher risk of becoming autistic from Merck's MMR vaccine. Fortunately, Dr. Thompson, who was present during the order to shred documents, saved copies which he subsequently turned over to Congressman Bill Posy and an independent biologist Prof. Brian Hooker. Since then, Congress has refused to hold hearings thereby supporting the cover-up.    All told, these examples of Merck's culture of greed, deception, political maneuvering and aggression has collectively injured countless people. Its prime directive is selling drugs; its history of crimes and misdemeanors should indicate the company holds little integrity in its commitment to prevent and treat disease. The full extent of the casualties from Merck's drugs and vaccines may never be properly calculated. For firms such as Merck, Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson, injuries and deaths are the necessary collateral damage of getting poorly tested products on the market and as fast as possible.    Can we really trust such a company with such a criminal reputation to be forthright about its product’s safety records? Therefore we recommend people to support the efforts of Bobby Kennedy and the Children's Health Defense in its lawsuit against Merck's Gardasil. A victory may well weaken the entire edifice of vaccine pseudoscience and the public will realize that for decades it has been little more than a house of cards.

durée : 00:14:22 - Superfail - par : Guillaume Erner - Superfail revient cette semaine sur la mise sur le marché d’un puissant antiviral, le Sovaldi, permettant de soigner définitivement les malades d’Hépatite C. Seul problème ? Son prix, s’élevant à 41 000 euros en France, qui oblige le gouvernement à rationner ce médicament. - réalisation : Vivien Demeyère, Louise Loubrieu - invités : Olivier Maguet

Merck’s History of Crimes and Misdemeanors Merck’s History of Crimes and Misdemeanors   Richard Gale and Gary Null Progressive Radio Network, Which private corporation has likely been responsible for the deaths of more innocent people than any terrorist organization or military regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and elsewhere?  For us, the answer is evident:  Merck and Company. Iatraogenic medicine, or medical error, is now the third leading cause of death in the US after cardiovascular disease and cancer. The majority of these deaths are caused by FDA approved drugs’ adverse effects and from patients taking multiple medications without thorough clinical research to determine the safety of their synergistic effects.  Consequently our health agencies’ oversight and monitoring of drugs on the market is dismal.   One of the worst corporate deals the US government may have ever made in modern history was to acquire the American subsidiary of the German pharmaceutical firm Merck and Company during the first world war. Later in 1953, Merck acquired a competitive drug maker Sharp and Dohme, thereby establishing itself as America’s largest drug developer and manufacturer. Since then this corporate Medusa has ensnared thirteen other drug firms, including Scherring Plough, which it acquired for $41 billion. The two pharmaceutical giants had earned $47 billion in combined sales at the time the merger was finalized in 2009.   Merck’s life of criminal behavior was observed back in the 1970s. In 1975, it was busted by the SEC for illegal payments to foreign government officials from “approximately” 36 nations. The scam was orchestrated through personal bank accounts with the sole purpose of advancing drug approvals through foreign nations’ regulatory medical agencies.   One of the largest frauds in recent medical history was the company’s anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx that resulted in fines above $4.8 billion for causing over a minimum 60,000 deaths from sudden heart attacks and over 120,000 serious medical injuries. At its height, Vioxx was earning over $2 billion in revenues annually and it is estimated that 25 million patients were prescribed the medication. The securities class action suit against the company alone reached $1 billion, placing it in the top 15 securities lawsuits in US corporate history. The centerpiece of the crime was Merck’s intentional withholding of scientific data about the drug’s adverse cardiovascular side effects.   Years after the settlement, Ron Unz, the publisher of The American Conservative, undertook his own investigation to validate Vioxx’s death toll. Analyzing the drug’s adverse effects over a longer time period, Unz estimated Merck may have been responsible for nearly half a million premature deaths in elderly patients, the drug’s primary target group. That is roughly the same number of total civilian, military and terrorist deaths from the US’s military escapades in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan combined.   Merck’s settlement of 47,000 pending lawsuits for personal injuries and 265 class action cases was a small pittance for the harm Vioxx left in its wake. Merck executives were never properly punished for willingly concealing the drug’s dangers in order to assure FDA approval.   In Australia, Merck’s efforts to increase Vioxx profits employed other forms of malfeasance. The Australian government launched a class action suit against the drug maker on charges that employees schemed a fake scientific paper that was ghostwritten for a medical journal in order to put Vioxx into a positive light. Testimonies during the trial stated data was completely based upon “wishful thinking.” Merck also founded the peer-reviewed journal Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine. The journal was a fraud; it was not properly peer-reviewed and its primary purpose was to promote Vioxx on the Australian continent.   Moreover, the class action lawsuit contained Merck emails accessed by Australian officials. The company’s internal communications ordered select employees to draft up a hit list of physicians who were critical of Vioxx. According to the documents, these physicians were targeted to be “neutralized” or “discredited.” Some, including Dr. James Fries at Sanford University’s medical school, were clinical investigators who happened to speak out about the drug’s shortcomings. One email said, “We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live…”   Efforts to target critics for harassment is not limited to Merck. Earlier, Monsanto earned a similar reputation. The Monsanto’s parent company Bayer had to release a public apology for the discovery of a Monsanto hit list of 200 French journalists and politicians who opposed glyphosate and its GMO crops. It has acted similarly in other countries including the US, according to veteran journalist Carey Gillam.  The list originated from the multinational public relations firm Fleishman Hillard. Merck has also employed Fleishman Hillard as well as Monsanto’s other notorious PR firm Ketchum. One of Merck’s Executive Directors, Ian McConnell, earlier served as a vice president at Fleishman. The PR firm’s senior adviser on healthcare Dr. Lukas Pfister, was at Merck for 25 years in its government affairs unit. Merck’s revolving door is not limited to our federal health agencies, but also fully infiltrates some of the world’s most shadowy international PR firms that specialize in whitewashing the public images of executive elites, corporations and in the case of the PR firm Burson-Marsteller even dictators. Following the Vioxx case, Merck had hired B-Marsteller to clean up its public image. MSNBC reported back in 2009, “When evil needs public relations, evil has Burson-Marsteller on speed dial.”   But Merck’s efforts to conceal the dangers of its products, falsify data about drugs’ efficacy and safety and exaggeration of medical claims go back sixty years. In the 1960s, the FDA discovered that the drug maker’s arthritis medication Indocin had not been properly tested for efficacy and its adverse effects were being completely ignored.  In the 1970s, Merck’s drug dietheylstilbestrol (DES) prescribed for the prevention of miscarriages caused a flurry of vaginal cancer cases and other gynecological disorders. Merck had all along known that DES was carcinogenic based upon its own animal clinical trials. In 2007, its cholesterol drug Zetia was shown to increase liver disease. Again Merck had known about Zetia’s liver risks but withheld the clinical trial’s damning results.   It would also appear that Merck has managed to hijack US courts as well. This includes an early 2019 ruling by Trump’s corporate-friendly US Supreme Court to side with the drug maker and squash hundreds of lawsuits for failing to issue warnings that its osteoporosis drug Fosamax’s may contribute to debilitating bone breaks. A federal court in California found that Merck committed perjury for lying in a patent infringement case against Gilead Sciences over the latter’s blockbuster Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi. The judge ruled that Merck carried out a “systematic and outrageous deception in conjunction with unethical business practices and litigation misconduct.”  It turned out that Merck’s patent claims were a sham and orchestrated by its legal division.   Besides pushing through the FDA dangerous medications onto the market, the company has also found itself in the courtroom on many occasions for price-fixing, routinely defrauding and overbilling states’ Medicare and Medicaid programs, and violating the Anti-Kickback Statute. In 2006, the IRS went after Merck for owing almost $2 billion in back taxes. According to the Wall Street Journal, Merck partnered with a British bank to create an offshore subsidiary in tax-friendly Bermuda to divert taxable revenue on its bestselling cholesterol drugs Zocor and Mevacor through a patent scheme. The company ran the operation for ten years before the FDA uncovered the racket.   Merck is America’s leading vaccine manufacturer. Despite public perception and the ruse that vaccines are somehow safer and more effective than pharmaceutical drugs in general, it is the same industry and corporate culture that manufactures both them. Currently Merck markets vaccines for Haemophilus B, Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B (individually and in combination), human papilomavirus (Gardasil), Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR), pneumococcal, rotavirus, varicella (chickenpox) and Zoster virus (for shingles). More recently it has jumped into the coronavirus vaccine race. In 2010, Merck obtained exclusive rights to MassBiologics vaccine portfolio. The consequence is that Merck’s Adult Vaccine Portfolio expanded to include 9 of the 10 vaccines on the CDC’s adult immunization schedule. The company now holds almost a full monopoly on the government’s vaccines   On its website, the FDA assures the public that “Vaccines, as with all products regulated by the FDA, undergo a rigorous review of laboratory and clinical data to ensure the safety, efficacy, purity and potency of these products.”  However, except for Gardasil, not a single one of Merck’s vaccines has ever been tested in a scientifically viable double-blinded placebo controlled trial. In each case, the placebo in the control group was not inert, such as the use of sterile saline. Rather Merck only tested the vaccine with the viral component against a faux placebo containing the same ingredients, including aluminum, but minus the virus. Known as a “carrier solution,” the standard scientific protocol does not designate it as a proper placebo for measuring the efficacy and disease risks of a drug. And in the case of Gardasil, the trial was statistical trickery to mask Gardasil’s adverse effects. Therefore the FDA’s claim is patently false. None of Merck’s vaccines have ever undergone a “rigorous review” prior to regulatory approval.   Although not completely innocent from internal unfairness and conflicts of interest, the Cochrane Database Collaboration arguably remains the most reliable resource for analysis of drugs, vaccines and medical devices in the evidence-based medical establishment. In its 2016 analysis of Merck’s human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil, the investigators were so alarmed they filed a complaint against the European Medical Agency for failing to adequately assess the vaccine’s neurological harms.   As we have recently witnessed with Monsanto’s Roundup and Bayer’s settlement of $10 billion to cover 80,000 lawsuits, Gardasil may very well become the company’s Achilles heel. The Gardasil scandal may very well begin to topple the vaccine regime and raise the public’s already increasing awareness and distrust in the official mantra that vaccines are safe and effective. The development, scientific rationale, fraudulent clinical trials and data reporting, and inside negotiations with federal health officials to market the vaccine to pre-teen and teen girls and boys, is a story riddled with misconduct. Today it is Merck’s third largest revenue-generating drug after its cancer drug Keytruda and diabetes drug Januvia, earning $3.1 billion in 2018. Its MMR vaccine is fifth having earned $1.8 billion. Gardasil’s success has nothing to do with the prevention of an urgent national health need. Instead it was a business strategy through Merck’s influence over our nation’s regulatory agencies and state politicians whose election campaigns it funds.   In 2018, a French oncologist, Dr. Gerard Delepine, stumbled upon a correlation between the increase of cervical cancer rates with the rising rates of Gardasil vaccinations. Delepine also compared France, which was deliberating on whether to mandate HPV vaccination, with other countries that relied upon pap smears as a preventative measure against cervical cancer. He observed that in all countries that prioritized pap smears, cervical cancer rates were decreasing; whereas, in those countries with higher HPV vaccination compliance, the rates increased. In his letter to the French government in defiance of Merck’s lobbying efforts, Delephine stated:   “A compulsory health measure should not be based on faith in vaccination or hidden conflicts of interest, but on proven facts, verifiable by every citizen. However, the facts established by the official records of cancer registries show that HPV vaccination does not protect against invasive cancer of the cervix, but seems rather to maintain its frequency at a high level and sometimes even increase it.”   An article published in the French journal Agoravox noted that other national health ministries are coming around to acknowledge that Gardasil is an extremely unsafe vaccine. Japan, Austria and Denmark no longer promote it due to is trail of injuries with fatal consequences. Public demonstrations against Merck’s Gardasil have occurred in Japan, Colombia, and Ireland.   Yet none of these efforts to warn the public about Gardasil’s risks have reached the American media. Hopefully this may change. Medical researchers at the University of South Alabama presented their paper at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology’s annual conference. There is great disparity between HPV vaccine compliance across Alabama counties, which range anywhere between 33 and 66 percent. Yet the epidemiological data suggests there is no evidence that Gardasil lowered cancer rates in counties with higher vaccine uptake. Moreover, there is zero chance of pre-teens and teens getting cervical cancer. The average age for the onset of the cancer is 50 years. Nor has the vaccine been on the market long enough to determine whether it protects a woman when she reaches even close to that age. Its product insert for physicians states the vaccine “may not result in protection in all vaccine recipients” and it “has not been demonstrated to prevent HPV-related CIN 2/3 [abnormal pre-cancerous cervical cells] or worse in women older than 26 years of age.” Consequently, there is no scientific rationale for states to mandate the HPV vaccine for schoolchildren let alone even vaccinating them in the first place. In addition, the federal agencies and Merck market the vaccine under a false pretext that HPV infection is the leading cause of cervical cancer; correctly, only a third of cervical cancer cases are caused by the virus.   Robert Kennedy Jr is currently taking steps to sue Merck over the Gardasil deception. Merck’s first effort to have the class action suit dismissed was overturned by the court. Kennedy’s in-depth investigations through his Children’s Health Defense organization has uncovered evidence that the vaccine increases birth defects in children conceived of HPV-vaccinated moms; miscarriages have increased 2000 percent above normal, and girls are experiencing serious reproductive complications, including infertility, at approximately ten-fold above the normal rate. During an interview on the Progressive Radio Network, he noted that there was 10 times greater risk of dying from cervical cancer among Gardasil trial participants compared to the general public. There is a 10-fold increase for ovarian failure, and 1 in 37 girls who receive the vaccine will experience an autoimmune disease after 6 months of receiving the series of injections. When we consider that 1 in 37,000 women have a chance of dying from cervical cancer, it puts HPV vaccines into a completely different light. Sadly, across the nation, politicians from both sides of the aisle in state legislatures, notably Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York, are doing Merck’s bidding to mandate Gardasil for all girls and boys upon entering school.   Based upon Kennedy’s research and documents received from Freedom of Information Act filings, during Merck’s own Gardasil clinical trials, 2.3 percent of girls and women between the ages of 9 through 26 developed a serious autoimmune disease and crippling neurological disorders within seven months of vaccination. Among the 10,700 who received the actual vaccine, 245 (2.3%) had an autoimmune disorder; among the 9,412 who received either an “AAHS Control” — the aluminum hydrophosphate sulfate adjuvant solution with other ingredients minus the HPV virus vectors, there were 218 (2.3%) life-threatening injuries. The most frequent adverse effects were arthritis and anthropathy, autoimmune thyroiditis, celiac disease, hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism, inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, Raynaud’s Phenomenon, rheumatoid arthritis and uveitis. In other words, it was the aluminum adjuvant responsible for this enormous suffering. He stated during the Progressive Radio Network broadcast that according to Merck’s own statistics, girls are one hundred times more likely to experience a serious adverse effect from the vaccine than to be protected from cervical cancer.   In a 2012 article published in the Journal of Law and Medical Ethics, researchers at the University of British Columbia wrote that ever since Gardasil was approved in 2006, Merck has engaged in an “overly aggressive marketing strategies and lobbying campaigns aimed at promoting Gardasil as a mandatory vaccine.”  One strategy Merck has employed is to take advantage of FDA loopholes to fast track its drugs. In the case of its expanded Gardasil-9 for adults between the ages of 27 to 45, the company applied for fast tracking two days after the Journal of Toxicological and Environmental Health published a study that the HPV vaccine was lowering the probability of pregnancy for women in their 20s.   Unfortunately, the media has indiscriminately colluded with Merck’s scam. Drug companies, according to Kennedy, pay $4.5 billion to the major media networks and publications to promote their drugs. And none of the media outlets are willing to sacrifice their profits for advertising drugs on moral and ethical grounds.   Another scandal erupted within Merck’s vaccine business in 2010 after two whistleblowers gave testimony that the mumps’ component in its Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine was based on fraudulent data about it’s efficacy, and the company knowingly proceeded in order to corner the mumps vaccine market. Merck had been defrauding According to the charges, Merck had “falsified its mumps vaccine test results to hit an efficacy rate of 95 percent. The company achieved this by adding “animal antibodies to a blood sample to give the impression of increased antibodies.” This would certainly explain why mumps outbreaks in summer camps and on college campuses are found to occur among those vaccinated.   Merck’s has gained enormous political and social influence over the national perception about vaccines.  One example is Merck’s behind the scenes aggression against the flim Vaxxed.  When the documentary film was officially selected to screen during the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan, we discovered in an earlier report that Merck left its fingerprints on the film’s removal and censorship. The Alfred Sloan Foundation is the festival’s largest sponsor; pro-vaccine advocate Bill Gates is also a notable contributor. One of the leading persons on the Foundation’s board of trustees was Dr. Peter Kim.  Kim happens to be the former president of Merck’s Research Laboratories who was directly responsible for the launch of Gardasil and Merck’s other vaccines for the Zoster virus and rotavirus. The film presents a harsh indictment against Dr Julie Gerberding, the former head of the CDC who coordinated the cover up of data that confirmed thimerosal’s role in the onset of autism. After managing the agency’s operations to mine sweep the data and generate new manipulated studies with public funds to suggest thimerosal’s safety, Gerberding accepted her reward from the pharmaceutical industry by becoming the head of Merck’s vaccine division. In addition, according to the whistleblowing of a senior CDC scientist, Dr. William Thompson, Gerberding was responsible for destroying the CDC’s research that showed African American boys were at a substantially higher risk of becoming autistic from Merck’s MMR vaccine. Fortunately, Dr. Thompson, who was present during the order to shred documents, saved copies which he subsequently turned over to Congressman Bill Posy and an independent biologist Prof. Brian Hooker. Since then, Congress has failed to hold hearings.   All told, these examples of Merck’s culture of greed, deception, political maneuvering and illegal aggression has collectively injured countless people. Merck is a global corporation. Its products, like Monsanto’s glyphoste, are marketed globally. To better understand Merck, the company should be perceived foremost as a cash cow for Wall Street. Its prime directive is selling drugs; its history of misdemeanors and criminal activities should indicate the company holds little integrity in its commitment to prevent and treat disease. The full extent of the casualties from Merck’s drugs and vaccines may never be properly calculated. For firms such as Merck and Monsanto, injuries and deaths are the necessary collateral damage of getting poorly tested products on the market and as fast as possible. A black box should be slapped on the Merck logo.   What is important at this moment is that many corporations are fast-tracking, without sufficient long-term animal and human clinical trials, Merck is now aggressively making efforts to beat out its competition with a Covid-19 vaccine.  Do we really want to trust such a company with this reputation with a Covid vaccine? Therefore we recommend people to support the efforts of Bobby Kennedy and the Children’s Health Defense in its lawsuit against Merck’s Gardasil. A victory may well weaken the entire edifice of vaccine pseudoscience and the public will realize that for decades it has been little more than a house of cards.

Diana Brainard’s passion for understanding our stories and experiences initially led her to study comparative literature in college; but sometime during her junior year abroad in Lyon, she realized she could pursue her passion through medicine, a journey that’s taken her from academic infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital through her current role as Senior Vice President and head of virology at Gilead Sciences. Born in Chicago, Diana’s family moved to Brooklyn when she was one, then to the Connecticut suburbs when she was seven.  A precocious student, she skipped an early grade, found she loved the Montesorri school she attended in New York, but grew bored once she started school in Connecticut.  All this changed when she found her way to Hotchkiss Boarding School in 10th grade, and felt as if her mind was awakened – in large measure, she says, because of a number of exceptional teachers.  A former tennis player, she picked up squash, and was subsequently recruited by colleges for her skill (and would later become an “academic all-Ivy selection” for her abilities as both student and athlete). Like so many other Tech Tonics guests – including Zak Kohane, Atul Butte, and Ken Mandl — Diana attended Brown, and enthusiastically dove into advanced classes in a range of subjects.  The humanities, with its intimate seminars and engaged teachers, proved especially appealing, so she majored in comparative literature and late elected to spent her Junior Year abroad in France.  Diana started to envision a future in graduate school, and then perhaps as a literature professor. To her surprise and disappointment, Diana’s experience in France left her disillusioned and she found herself drawn, through literature, into medicine.  She was moved by Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and by the poetry of Williams Carlos Williams, and soon she began a correspondence with Harvard physician and author Robert Coles.  Diana ultimately applied to medical school, and attended Tulane, in New Orleans. Diana loved both the city and the medical school experience – in particular, the amount of responsibility  students were afforded during the clinical rotations at the famed Charity Hospital.  She found a similar sense of responsibility at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she continued her training, first in internal medicine (including a month taking care of patients at an understaffed clinic in Haiti), and ultimately specializing in infectious diseases. Diana’s interest in HIV in particular led her to noted physician-scientist Bruce Walker, under whose guidance she conducted complex translational research (studying HIV in mice she reconstituted with human immune cells).  She also helped set up a HIV research facility at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. Though initially contemplating a career in academic infectious diseases, and having earned a competitive K-08 NIH grant to support her efforts, she surprised many of her colleagues by deciding to join Merck, and focus on drug development.   Almost immediately, it seems, she knew she made the right decision, as she found herself surrounded by smart and talented colleagues who, like her, seemed to enjoy functioning in a culture that prized collaboration and multidisciplinary team effort rather than personal recognition. Diana’s career surged ahead at Merck, and she soon found herself with an opportunity to join an exciting clinical development team that luminary John McHutchison was just starting to assemble at Gilead, in California; she took it. Good call; Diana would serve as the clinical lead for the breakthrough hepatitis C product, Sovaldi, was one of three people at the company to present it to the FDA.  Sovaldi  turned out to be as transformative as anticipated and Diana would go on to lead the development and subsequent approval of several additional hepatitis C products.  In 2018, she was elevated to SVP of HIV and Emerging Viruses, and her remit was  expanded to include hepatitis B and C, and retitled Virology.  Just when it seemed like things couldn’t get busier, SARS-CoV-2 came along, and with it, her leadership of an explosive amount of clinical research around the Gilead product, remdesivir (Veklury).  It’s been a busy year. Full-disclosure:  Diana is also David Shaywitz’s wife – which is not only why we were able to book her, but also why we are especially delighted to welcome her to our show!  We are grateful to Manatt Health for sponsoring today’s episode of Tech Tonics.  Manatt Health integrates strategic business consulting, public policy acumen, legal excellence and deep analytics capabilities to better serve the complex needs of clients across America’s healthcare system. Together with its parent company, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, the firm’s multidisciplinary team is dedicated to helping its clients across all industries grow and prosper.

Merck's History of Crimes and Misdemeanors   Richard Gale and Gary Null Progressive Radio Network, June 1, 2020 Which private corporation has likely been responsible for the deaths of more innocent people than any terrorist organization or military regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and elsewhere?  For us, the answer is evident:  Merck and Company. Iatraogenic medicine, or medical error, is now the third leading cause of death in the US after cardiovascular disease and cancer. The majority of these deaths are caused by FDA approved drugs' adverse effects and from patients taking multiple medications without thorough clinical research to determine the safety of their synergistic effects.  Consequently our health agencies' oversight and monitoring of drugs on the market is dismal.    One of the worst corporate deals the US government may have ever made in modern history was to acquire the American subsidiary of the German pharmaceutical firm Merck and Company during the first world war. Later in 1953, Merck acquired a competitive drug maker Sharp and Dohme, thereby establishing itself as America's largest drug developer and manufacturer. Since then this corporate Medusa has ensnared thirteen other drug firms, including Scherring Plough, which it acquired for $41 billion. The two pharmaceutical giants had earned $47 billion in combined sales at the time the merger was finalized in 2009.   Merck's life of criminal behavior was observed back in the 1970s. In 1975, it was busted by the SEC for illegal payments to foreign government officials from "approximately" 36 nations. The scam was orchestrated through personal bank accounts with the sole purpose of advancing drug approvals through foreign nations' regulatory medical agencies.     One of the largest frauds in recent medical history was the company's anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx that resulted in fines above $4.8 billion for causing over a minimum 60,000 deaths from sudden heart attacks and over 120,000 serious medical injuries. At its height, Vioxx was earning over $2 billion in revenues annually and it is estimated that 25 million patients were prescribed the medication. The securities class action suit against the company alone reached $1 billion, placing it in the top 15 securities lawsuits in US corporate history. The centerpiece of the crime was Merck's intentional withholding of scientific data about the drug's adverse cardiovascular side effects.    Years after the settlement, Ron Unz, the publisher of The American Conservative, undertook his own investigation to validate Vioxx's death toll. Analyzing the drug's adverse effects over a longer time period, Unz estimated Merck may have been responsible for nearly half a million premature deaths in elderly patients, the drug's primary target group. That is roughly the same number of total civilian, military and terrorist deaths from the US's military escapades in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan combined.    Merck's settlement of 47,000 pending lawsuits for personal injuries and 265 class action cases was a small pittance for the harm Vioxx left in its wake. Merck executives were never properly punished for willingly concealing the drug's dangers in order to assure FDA approval.    In Australia, Merck's efforts to increase Vioxx profits employed other forms of malfeasance. The Australian government launched a class action suit against the drug maker on charges that employees schemed a fake scientific paper that was ghostwritten for a medical journal in order to put Vioxx into a positive light. Testimonies during the trial stated data was completely based upon "wishful thinking." Merck also founded the peer-reviewed journal Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine. The journal was a fraud; it was not properly peer-reviewed and its primary purpose was to promote Vioxx on the Australian continent.    Moreover, the class action lawsuit contained Merck emails accessed by Australian officials. The company's internal communications ordered select employees to draft up a hit list of physicians who were critical of Vioxx. According to the documents, these physicians were targeted to be "neutralized" or "discredited." Some, including Dr. James Fries at Sanford University's medical school, were clinical investigators who happened to speak out about the drug's shortcomings. One email said, "We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live..."     Efforts to target critics for harassment is not limited to Merck. Earlier, Monsanto earned a similar reputation. The Monsanto's parent company Bayer had to release a public apology for the discovery of a Monsanto hit list of 200 French journalists and politicians who opposed glyphosate and its GMO crops. It has acted similarly in other countries including the US, according to veteran journalist Carey Gillam.  The list originated from the multinational public relations firm Fleishman Hillard. Merck has also employed Fleishman Hillard as well as Monsanto's other notorious PR firm Ketchum. One of Merck's Executive Directors, Ian McConnell, earlier served as a vice president at Fleishman. The PR firm's senior adviser on healthcare Dr. Lukas Pfister, was at Merck for 25 years in its government affairs unit. Merck's revolving door is not limited to our federal health agencies, but also fully infiltrates some of the world's most shadowy international PR firms that specialize in whitewashing the public images of executive elites, corporations and in the case of the PR firm Burson-Marsteller even dictators. Following the Vioxx case, Merck had hired B-Marsteller to clean up its public image. MSNBC reported back in 2009, "When evil needs public relations, evil has Burson-Marsteller on speed dial."   But Merck's efforts to conceal the dangers of its products, falsify data about drugs' efficacy and safety and exaggeration of medical claims go back sixty years. In the 1960s, the FDA discovered that the drug maker's arthritis medication Indocin had not been properly tested for efficacy and its adverse effects were being completely ignored.  In the 1970s, Merck's drug dietheylstilbestrol (DES) prescribed for the prevention of miscarriages caused a flurry of vaginal cancer cases and other gynecological disorders. Merck had all along known that DES was carcinogenic based upon its own animal clinical trials. In 2007, its cholesterol drug Zetia was shown to increase liver disease. Again Merck had known about Zetia's liver risks but withheld the clinical trial's damning results.    It would also appear that Merck has managed to hijack US courts as well. This includes an early 2019 ruling by Trump's corporate-friendly US Supreme Court to side with the drug maker and squash hundreds of lawsuits for failing to issue warnings that its osteoporosis drug Fosamax's may contribute to debilitating bone breaks. A federal court in California found that Merck committed perjury for lying in a patent infringement case against Gilead Sciences over the latter's blockbuster Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi. The judge ruled that Merck carried out a "systematic and outrageous deception in conjunction with unethical business practices and litigation misconduct."  It turned out that Merck's patent claims were a sham and orchestrated by its legal division.   Besides pushing through the FDA dangerous medications onto the market, the company has also found itself in the courtroom on many occasions for price-fixing, routinely defrauding and overbilling states' Medicare and Medicaid programs, and violating the Anti-Kickback Statute. In 2006, the IRS went after Merck for owing almost $2 billion in back taxes. According to the Wall Street Journal, Merck partnered with a British bank to create an offshore subsidiary in tax-friendly Bermuda to divert taxable revenue on its bestselling cholesterol drugs Zocor and Mevacor through a patent scheme. The company ran the operation for ten years before the FDA uncovered the racket.    Merck is America's leading vaccine manufacturer. Despite public perception and the ruse that vaccines are somehow safer and more effective than pharmaceutical drugs in general, it is the same industry and corporate culture that manufactures both them. Currently Merck markets vaccines for Haemophilus B, Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B (individually and in combination), human papilomavirus (Gardasil), Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR), pneumococcal, rotavirus, varicella (chickenpox) and Zoster virus (for shingles). More recently it has jumped into the coronavirus vaccine race. In 2010, Merck obtained exclusive rights to MassBiologics vaccine portfolio. The consequence is that Merck's Adult Vaccine Portfolio expanded to include 9 of the 10 vaccines on the CDC's adult immunization schedule. The company now holds almost a full monopoly on the government's vaccines    On its website, the FDA assures the public that "Vaccines, as with all products regulated by the FDA, undergo a rigorous review of laboratory and clinical data to ensure the safety, efficacy, purity and potency of these products."  However, except for Gardasil, not a single one of Merck's vaccines has ever been tested in a scientifically viable double-blinded placebo controlled trial. In each case, the placebo in the control group was not inert, such as the use of sterile saline. Rather Merck only tested the vaccine with the viral component against a faux placebo containing the same ingredients, including aluminum, but minus the virus. Known as a "carrier solution," the standard scientific protocol does not designate it as a proper placebo for measuring the efficacy and disease risks of a drug. And in the case of Gardasil, the trial was statistical trickery to mask Gardasil's adverse effects. Therefore the FDA's claim is patently false. None of Merck's vaccines have ever undergone a "rigorous review" prior to regulatory approval.    Although not completely innocent from internal unfairness and conflicts of interest, the Cochrane Database Collaboration arguably remains the most reliable resource for analysis of drugs, vaccines and medical devices in the evidence-based medical establishment. In its 2016 analysis of Merck's human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil, the investigators were so alarmed they filed a complaint against the European Medical Agency for failing to adequately assess the vaccine's neurological harms.    As we have recently witnessed with Monsanto's Roundup and Bayer's settlement of $10 billion to cover 80,000 lawsuits, Gardasil may very well become the company's Achilles heel. The Gardasil scandal may very well begin to topple the vaccine regime and raise the public's already increasing awareness and distrust in the official mantra that vaccines are safe and effective. The development, scientific rationale, fraudulent clinical trials and data reporting, and inside negotiations with federal health officials to market the vaccine to pre-teen and teen girls and boys, is a story riddled with misconduct. Today it is Merck's third largest revenue-generating drug after its cancer drug Keytruda and diabetes drug Januvia, earning $3.1 billion in 2018. Its MMR vaccine is fifth having earned $1.8 billion. Gardasil's success has nothing to do with the prevention of an urgent national health need. Instead it was a business strategy through Merck's influence over our nation's regulatory agencies and state politicians whose election campaigns it funds.    In 2018, a French oncologist, Dr. Gerard Delepine, stumbled upon a correlation between the increase of cervical cancer rates with the rising rates of Gardasil vaccinations. Delepine also compared France, which was deliberating on whether to mandate HPV vaccination, with other countries that relied upon pap smears as a preventative measure against cervical cancer. He observed that in all countries that prioritized pap smears, cervical cancer rates were decreasing; whereas, in those countries with higher HPV vaccination compliance, the rates increased. In his letter to the French government in defiance of Merck's lobbying efforts, Delephine stated:   "A compulsory health measure should not be based on faith in vaccination or hidden conflicts of interest, but on proven facts, verifiable by every citizen. However, the facts established by the official records of cancer registries show that HPV vaccination does not protect against invasive cancer of the cervix, but seems rather to maintain its frequency at a high level and sometimes even increase it."   An article published in the French journal Agoravox noted that other national health ministries are coming around to acknowledge that Gardasil is an extremely unsafe vaccine. Japan, Austria and Denmark no longer promote it due to is trail of injuries with fatal consequences. Public demonstrations against Merck's Gardasil have occurred in Japan, Colombia, and Ireland.    Yet none of these efforts to warn the public about Gardasil's risks have reached the American media. Hopefully this may change. Medical researchers at the University of South Alabama presented their paper at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology's annual conference. There is great disparity between HPV vaccine compliance across Alabama counties, which range anywhere between 33 and 66 percent. Yet the epidemiological data suggests there is no evidence that Gardasil lowered cancer rates in counties with higher vaccine uptake. Moreover, there is zero chance of pre-teens and teens getting cervical cancer. The average age for the onset of the cancer is 50 years. Nor has the vaccine been on the market long enough to determine whether it protects a woman when she reaches even close to that age. Its product insert for physicians states the vaccine "may not result in protection in all vaccine recipients" and it "has not been demonstrated to prevent HPV-related CIN 2/3 [abnormal pre-cancerous cervical cells] or worse in women older than 26 years of age." Consequently, there is no scientific rationale for states to mandate the HPV vaccine for schoolchildren let alone even vaccinating them in the first place. In addition, the federal agencies and Merck market the vaccine under a false pretext that HPV infection is the leading cause of cervical cancer; correctly, only a third of cervical cancer cases are caused by the virus.    Robert Kennedy Jr is currently taking steps to sue Merck over the Gardasil deception. Merck's first effort to have the class action suit dismissed was overturned by the court. Kennedy's in-depth investigations through his Children's Health Defense organization has uncovered evidence that the vaccine increases birth defects in children conceived of HPV-vaccinated moms; miscarriages have increased 2000 percent above normal, and girls are experiencing serious reproductive complications, including infertility, at approximately ten-fold above the normal rate. During an interview on the Progressive Radio Network, he noted that there was 10 times greater risk of dying from cervical cancer among Gardasil trial participants compared to the general public. There is a 10-fold increase for ovarian failure, and 1 in 37 girls who receive the vaccine will experience an autoimmune disease after 6 months of receiving the series of injections. When we consider that 1 in 37,000 women have a chance of dying from cervical cancer, it puts HPV vaccines into a completely different light. Sadly, across the nation, politicians from both sides of the aisle in state legislatures, notably Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York, are doing Merck's bidding to mandate Gardasil for all girls and boys upon entering school.    Based upon Kennedy's research and documents received from Freedom of Information Act filings, during Merck's own Gardasil clinical trials, 2.3 percent of girls and women between the ages of 9 through 26 developed a serious autoimmune disease and crippling neurological disorders within seven months of vaccination. Among the 10,700 who received the actual vaccine, 245 (2.3%) had an autoimmune disorder; among the 9,412 who received either an "AAHS Control" -- the aluminum hydrophosphate sulfate adjuvant solution with other ingredients minus the HPV virus vectors, there were 218 (2.3%) life-threatening injuries. The most frequent adverse effects were arthritis and anthropathy, autoimmune thyroiditis, celiac disease, hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism, inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, Raynaud's Phenomenon, rheumatoid arthritis and uveitis. In other words, it was the aluminum adjuvant responsible for this enormous suffering. He stated during the Progressive Radio Network broadcast that according to Merck's own statistics, girls are one hundred times more likely to experience a serious adverse effect from the vaccine than to be protected from cervical cancer.    In a 2012 article published in the Journal of Law and Medical Ethics, researchers at the University of British Columbia wrote that ever since Gardasil was approved in 2006, Merck has engaged in an "overly aggressive marketing strategies and lobbying campaigns aimed at promoting Gardasil as a mandatory vaccine."  One strategy Merck has employed is to take advantage of FDA loopholes to fast track its drugs. In the case of its expanded Gardasil-9 for adults between the ages of 27 to 45, the company applied for fast tracking two days after the Journal of Toxicological and Environmental Health published a study that the HPV vaccine was lowering the probability of pregnancy for women in their 20s.   Unfortunately, the media has indiscriminately colluded with Merck's scam. Drug companies, according to Kennedy, pay $4.5 billion to the major media networks and publications to promote their drugs. And none of the media outlets are willing to sacrifice their profits for advertising drugs on moral and ethical grounds.    Another scandal erupted within Merck's vaccine business in 2010 after two whistleblowers gave testimony that the mumps' component in its Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine was based on fraudulent data about it's efficacy, and the company knowingly proceeded in order to corner the mumps vaccine market. Merck had been defrauding the US government, which purchases the MMR, for a decade. The government and the two Merck whistleblowers, virologists Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, filed a lawsuit against Merck for being in violation of the False Claims Act. According to the charges, Merck had "falsified its mumps vaccine test results to hit an efficacy rate of 95 percent. The company achieved this by adding "animal antibodies to a blood sample to give the impression of increased antibodies." This would certainly explain why mumps outbreaks in summer camps and on college campuses are found to occur among those vaccinated.    Merck's has gained enormous political and social influence over the national perception about vaccines.  One example is Merck's behind the scenes aggression against the flim Vaxxed.  When the documentary film was officially selected to screen during the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan, we discovered in an earlier report that Merck left its fingerprints on the film's removal and censorship. The Alfred Sloan Foundation is the festival's largest sponsor; pro-vaccine advocate Bill Gates is also a notable contributor. One of the leading persons on the Foundation's board of trustees was Dr. Peter Kim.  Kim happens to be the former president of Merck's Research Laboratories who was directly responsible for the launch of Gardasil and Merck's other vaccines for the Zoster virus and rotavirus. The film presents a harsh indictment against Dr Julie Gerberding, the former head of the CDC who coordinated the cover up of data that confirmed thimerosal's role in the onset of autism. After managing the agency's operations to mine sweep the data and generate new manipulated studies with public funds to suggest thimerosal's safety, Gerberding accepted her reward from the pharmaceutical industry by becoming the head of Merck's vaccine division. In addition, according to the whistleblowing of a senior CDC scientist, Dr. William Thompson, Gerberding was responsible for destroying the CDC's research that showed African American boys were at a substantially higher risk of becoming autistic from Merck's MMR vaccine. Fortunately, Dr. Thompson, who was present during the order to shred documents, saved copies which he subsequently turned over to Congressman Bill Posy and an independent biologist Prof. Brian Hooker. Since then, Congress has failed to hold hearings.    All told, these examples of Merck's culture of greed, deception, political maneuvering and illegal aggression has collectively injured countless people. Merck is a global corporation. Its products, like Monsanto's glyphoste, are marketed globally. To better understand Merck, the company should be perceived foremost as a cash cow for Wall Street. Its prime directive is selling drugs; its history of misdemeanors and criminal activities should indicate the company holds little integrity in its commitment to prevent and treat disease. The full extent of the casualties from Merck's drugs and vaccines may never be properly calculated. For firms such as Merck and Monsanto, injuries and deaths are the necessary collateral damage of getting poorly tested products on the market and as fast as possible. A black box should be slapped on the Merck logo.    What is important at this moment is that many corporations are fast-tracking, without sufficient long-term animal and human clinical trials, Merck is now aggressively making efforts to beat out its competition with a Covid-19 vaccine.  Do we really want to trust such a company with this reputation with a Covid vaccine? Therefore we recommend people to support the efforts of Bobby Kennedy and the Children's Health Defense in its lawsuit against Merck's Gardasil. A victory may well weaken the entire edifice of vaccine pseudoscience and the public will realize that for decades it has been little more than a house of cards.

美国吉利德科学公司，简称吉利德，成立于1987年6月。吉利德是地名，在中东的巴勒斯坦，圣经旧约里面有个用语叫做基列的乳香，意思是基列这个地方出产的乳香药膏疗效特别好。基列就是吉利德，乳香是古代人非常相信的药物，吉利德由此将公司品牌与人类制药的传统联系起来。吉利德目前是全球10大制药企业之一，它的主要特点有两个，一是采用生物制药的方法，二是专注于搞病毒药物研发。生物制药是相对于化学制药而言的。化学药物主要是合成物，分子式简单，性状稳定，而生物药分子结构复杂，性状不稳定。化学制药通过化学反应完成，生物制药往往是在中国仓鼠的卵细胞中培养出来的蛋白质。生物制药属于后起之秀，应用新兴的基因技术，市场价值比较高。吉利德的另一个特点是专注于抗病毒药物的研究。在上世纪80年代吉利德创建时期，最恐怖的病症就是艾滋病，它是一种病毒感染，传统的化学药物效果不佳，吉利德的主要产品就是治疗艾滋病的生物药。大家可能听说过一种治疗流感的药物达菲。非典的时候曾经认为达菲可以治疗非典，但实际上它主要对禽流感有效。由于近年来禽流感频频发生，所以生产这种药物的罗氏制药获利很多。在治疗受到新型冠状病毒感染的病人时，很多医院仍然会使用达菲。而达菲的专利是在1996年由吉利德卖给罗氏的。这也可以从一个侧面反映出吉利德在搞病毒方面的技术积累。不过，达菲还不算是吉利德的代表作。真正让吉利德在制药产业出名的是它的用来治疗丙肝和艾滋病的药物。丙肝一直被视为只能缓解而无法治愈的疾病，据统计全球有1.8亿丙肝病患。2013年吉利德的丙肝药物索非布韦Sovaldi上市，这款药物最大的优点是能够治愈丙肝，而且治疗过程简单，过去需要注射，现在每天口服一片就行。由于这些革命性的变革，索非布韦被称为丙肝神药。在第一代丙肝药物上市后，吉利德又改进推出了新版，从俗称的吉一代，现在已经有了吉四代。有了这款药物和制药技术，世界卫生组织也发出乐观的呼吁，到2030年在全世界范围内消灭丙肝。参考教材《战略管理》希尔、琼斯、周长辉著《管理学原理》第二版 韩瑞著《创业管理》吴何著《战略管理》（第2版）李振福、孙忠著《现代企业管理》（第2版）吴何著

美国吉利德科学公司，简称吉利德，成立于1987年6月。吉利德是地名，在中东的巴勒斯坦，圣经旧约里面有个用语叫做基列的乳香，意思是基列这个地方出产的乳香药膏疗效特别好。基列就是吉利德，乳香是古代人非常相信的药物，吉利德由此将公司品牌与人类制药的传统联系起来。吉利德目前是全球10大制药企业之一，它的主要特点有两个，一是采用生物制药的方法，二是专注于搞病毒药物研发。生物制药是相对于化学制药而言的。化学药物主要是合成物，分子式简单，性状稳定，而生物药分子结构复杂，性状不稳定。化学制药通过化学反应完成，生物制药往往是在中国仓鼠的卵细胞中培养出来的蛋白质。生物制药属于后起之秀，应用新兴的基因技术，市场价值比较高。吉利德的另一个特点是专注于抗病毒药物的研究。在上世纪80年代吉利德创建时期，最恐怖的病症就是艾滋病，它是一种病毒感染，传统的化学药物效果不佳，吉利德的主要产品就是治疗艾滋病的生物药。大家可能听说过一种治疗流感的药物达菲。非典的时候曾经认为达菲可以治疗非典，但实际上它主要对禽流感有效。由于近年来禽流感频频发生，所以生产这种药物的罗氏制药获利很多。在治疗受到新型冠状病毒感染的病人时，很多医院仍然会使用达菲。而达菲的专利是在1996年由吉利德卖给罗氏的。这也可以从一个侧面反映出吉利德在搞病毒方面的技术积累。不过，达菲还不算是吉利德的代表作。真正让吉利德在制药产业出名的是它的用来治疗丙肝和艾滋病的药物。丙肝一直被视为只能缓解而无法治愈的疾病，据统计全球有1.8亿丙肝病患。2013年吉利德的丙肝药物索非布韦Sovaldi上市，这款药物最大的优点是能够治愈丙肝，而且治疗过程简单，过去需要注射，现在每天口服一片就行。由于这些革命性的变革，索非布韦被称为丙肝神药。在第一代丙肝药物上市后，吉利德又改进推出了新版，从俗称的吉一代，现在已经有了吉四代。有了这款药物和制药技术，世界卫生组织也发出乐观的呼吁，到2030年在全世界范围内消灭丙肝。参考教材《战略管理》希尔、琼斯、周长辉著《管理学原理》第二版 韩瑞著《创业管理》吴何著《战略管理》（第2版）李振福、孙忠著《现代企业管理》（第2版）吴何著

美国吉利德科学公司，简称吉利德，成立于1987年6月。吉利德是地名，在中东的巴勒斯坦，圣经旧约里面有个用语叫做基列的乳香，意思是基列这个地方出产的乳香药膏疗效特别好。基列就是吉利德，乳香是古代人非常相信的药物，吉利德由此将公司品牌与人类制药的传统联系起来。吉利德目前是全球10大制药企业之一，它的主要特点有两个，一是采用生物制药的方法，二是专注于搞病毒药物研发。生物制药是相对于化学制药而言的。化学药物主要是合成物，分子式简单，性状稳定，而生物药分子结构复杂，性状不稳定。化学制药通过化学反应完成，生物制药往往是在中国仓鼠的卵细胞中培养出来的蛋白质。生物制药属于后起之秀，应用新兴的基因技术，市场价值比较高。吉利德的另一个特点是专注于抗病毒药物的研究。在上世纪80年代吉利德创建时期，最恐怖的病症就是艾滋病，它是一种病毒感染，传统的化学药物效果不佳，吉利德的主要产品就是治疗艾滋病的生物药。大家可能听说过一种治疗流感的药物达菲。非典的时候曾经认为达菲可以治疗非典，但实际上它主要对禽流感有效。由于近年来禽流感频频发生，所以生产这种药物的罗氏制药获利很多。在治疗受到新型冠状病毒感染的病人时，很多医院仍然会使用达菲。而达菲的专利是在1996年由吉利德卖给罗氏的。这也可以从一个侧面反映出吉利德在搞病毒方面的技术积累。不过，达菲还不算是吉利德的代表作。真正让吉利德在制药产业出名的是它的用来治疗丙肝和艾滋病的药物。丙肝一直被视为只能缓解而无法治愈的疾病，据统计全球有1.8亿丙肝病患。2013年吉利德的丙肝药物索非布韦Sovaldi上市，这款药物最大的优点是能够治愈丙肝，而且治疗过程简单，过去需要注射，现在每天口服一片就行。由于这些革命性的变革，索非布韦被称为丙肝神药。在第一代丙肝药物上市后，吉利德又改进推出了新版，从俗称的吉一代，现在已经有了吉四代。有了这款药物和制药技术，世界卫生组织也发出乐观的呼吁，到2030年在全世界范围内消灭丙肝。参考教材《战略管理》希尔、琼斯、周长辉著《管理学原理》第二版 韩瑞著《创业管理》吴何著《战略管理》（第2版）李振福、孙忠著《现代企业管理》（第2版）吴何著

美国吉利德科学公司，简称吉利德，成立于1987年6月。吉利德是地名，在中东的巴勒斯坦，圣经旧约里面有个用语叫做基列的乳香，意思是基列这个地方出产的乳香药膏疗效特别好。基列就是吉利德，乳香是古代人非常相信的药物，吉利德由此将公司品牌与人类制药的传统联系起来。吉利德目前是全球10大制药企业之一，它的主要特点有两个，一是采用生物制药的方法，二是专注于搞病毒药物研发。生物制药是相对于化学制药而言的。化学药物主要是合成物，分子式简单，性状稳定，而生物药分子结构复杂，性状不稳定。化学制药通过化学反应完成，生物制药往往是在中国仓鼠的卵细胞中培养出来的蛋白质。生物制药属于后起之秀，应用新兴的基因技术，市场价值比较高。吉利德的另一个特点是专注于抗病毒药物的研究。在上世纪80年代吉利德创建时期，最恐怖的病症就是艾滋病，它是一种病毒感染，传统的化学药物效果不佳，吉利德的主要产品就是治疗艾滋病的生物药。大家可能听说过一种治疗流感的药物达菲。非典的时候曾经认为达菲可以治疗非典，但实际上它主要对禽流感有效。由于近年来禽流感频频发生，所以生产这种药物的罗氏制药获利很多。在治疗受到新型冠状病毒感染的病人时，很多医院仍然会使用达菲。而达菲的专利是在1996年由吉利德卖给罗氏的。这也可以从一个侧面反映出吉利德在搞病毒方面的技术积累。不过，达菲还不算是吉利德的代表作。真正让吉利德在制药产业出名的是它的用来治疗丙肝和艾滋病的药物。丙肝一直被视为只能缓解而无法治愈的疾病，据统计全球有1.8亿丙肝病患。2013年吉利德的丙肝药物索非布韦Sovaldi上市，这款药物最大的优点是能够治愈丙肝，而且治疗过程简单，过去需要注射，现在每天口服一片就行。由于这些革命性的变革，索非布韦被称为丙肝神药。在第一代丙肝药物上市后，吉利德又改进推出了新版，从俗称的吉一代，现在已经有了吉四代。有了这款药物和制药技术，世界卫生组织也发出乐观的呼吁，到2030年在全世界范围内消灭丙肝。参考教材《战略管理》希尔、琼斯、周长辉著《管理学原理》第二版 韩瑞著《创业管理》吴何著《战略管理》（第2版）李振福、孙忠著《现代企业管理》（第2版）吴何著

HAPPY NEW YEAR A Decade Marked By Outrage Over Drug Prices Martin Shkreli, the former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, who was called before Cummings' committee in2016. After hiking the price of an old drug for parasitic infections to $750 a pill from $13.50, Shkreli became the poster boy for pharmaceutical greed that helped define the past decade. Meanwhile, nearly 1 in 4 Americans has trouble affording prescription drugs, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Of relevance, perhaps to our NA members, Daraprim: An old drug gets a huge new price For decades, Daraprim has been the go-to medicine for treating toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection especially dangerous for people with compromised immune systems, such as people living with HIV and patients who've undergone organ transplants. The drug was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1953, and its patents expired long ago. But there wasn't a generic version available, and there was only one supplier in the United States. Even so, Daraprim cost just $13.50 a pill in early 2015. Then Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to the drug and raised its list price more than 5,000% overnight. Another company called Valeant did the same year when it bought two old heart drugs — Isuprel and Nitropress — that had little competition. Despite public outcry, Daraprim's price hasn't budged. Today, many health insurance companies won't pay for the drug, and it's too expensive for many hospitals to keep in stock, says Armstrong. As a result, she says, doctors have been forced to turn to cheaper alternatives that have more side effects and less proof that they work. Then there is EpiPen, used to counteract allergic reactions. By the time the EpiPen's list price reached $300 per auto-injector in 2016, its manufacturer, Mylan, had made more than a dozen price hikes in just six years. People clamored for a cheaper generic of the product, which injects a dose of epinephrine to counteract allergic reactions. Mylan had a virtual monopoly on it. In the spring of 2016, the FDA had rejected two applications from other firms that wanted to make generic versions. State and federal lawmakers took notice. For years, they had been passing laws that pushed for schools and other public places to have EpiPens on hand. Mylan started offering its own generic at half the price in December 2016 and left the price of its brand-name product where it was. Mylan's new version is called an authorized generic. These are usually introduced to undercut competition from other companies' generics — and eat into some of the competitors' profits. Next consider Sovaldi: a first-of-its-kind hepatitis C drug, priced at $1,000 per pill. To rid a patient of the hepatitis C virus would cost $84,000 per person. State health systems struggled to pay for the treatment, and health insurers denied the drug to all but the sickest patients. An investigation led by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden found that state Medicaid programs spent more than $1 billion on the drug in 2014, but less than 2.4% of Medicaid patients with hepatitis C got Sovaldi. Now, there are a few other brand-name hepatitis C cures on the market, creating some competition. Finally: Insulin After insulin was discovered nearly 100 years ago, the rights to it were transferred to the University of Toronto for $1 so that insulin could be made widely available at a low cost. But insulin prices have continued to creep upward at a rate that's higher than inflation. As a result, some patients have rationed their medicine, skipping doses or cutting them in half. In 2017, a group of patients sued the three major insulin-makers — Sanofi, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk — when they noticed that the companies were increasing their prices in lockstep. When Congress and the media took notice, the price hikes mostly stopped, but prices didn't drop. In December, the House passed a bill to lower prescription drug prices.

HAPPY NEW YEAR A Decade Marked By Outrage Over Drug Prices Martin Shkreli, the former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, who was called before Cummings' committee in2016. After hiking the price of an old drug for parasitic infections to $750 a pill from $13.50, Shkreli became the poster boy for pharmaceutical greed that helped define the past decade. Meanwhile, nearly 1 in 4 Americans has trouble affording prescription drugs, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Of relevance, perhaps to our NA members, Daraprim: An old drug gets a huge new price For decades, Daraprim has been the go-to medicine for treating toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection especially dangerous for people with compromised immune systems, such as people living with HIV and patients who've undergone organ transplants. The drug was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1953, and its patents expired long ago. But there wasn't a generic version available, and there was only one supplier in the United States. Even so, Daraprim cost just $13.50 a pill in early 2015. Then Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to the drug and raised its list price more than 5,000% overnight. Another company called Valeant did the same year when it bought two old heart drugs — Isuprel and Nitropress — that had little competition. Despite public outcry, Daraprim's price hasn't budged. Today, many health insurance companies won't pay for the drug, and it's too expensive for many hospitals to keep in stock, says Armstrong. As a result, she says, doctors have been forced to turn to cheaper alternatives that have more side effects and less proof that they work. Then there is EpiPen, used to counteract allergic reactions. By the time the EpiPen's list price reached $300 per auto-injector in 2016, its manufacturer, Mylan, had made more than a dozen price hikes in just six years. People clamored for a cheaper generic of the product, which injects a dose of epinephrine to counteract allergic reactions. Mylan had a virtual monopoly on it. In the spring of 2016, the FDA had rejected two applications from other firms that wanted to make generic versions. State and federal lawmakers took notice. For years, they had been passing laws that pushed for schools and other public places to have EpiPens on hand. Mylan started offering its own generic at half the price in December 2016 and left the price of its brand-name product where it was. Mylan's new version is called an authorized generic. These are usually introduced to undercut competition from other companies' generics — and eat into some of the competitors' profits. Next consider Sovaldi: a first-of-its-kind hepatitis C drug, priced at $1,000 per pill. To rid a patient of the hepatitis C virus would cost $84,000 per person. State health systems struggled to pay for the treatment, and health insurers denied the drug to all but the sickest patients. An investigation led by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden found that state Medicaid programs spent more than $1 billion on the drug in 2014, but less than 2.4% of Medicaid patients with hepatitis C got Sovaldi. Now, there are a few other brand-name hepatitis C cures on the market, creating some competition. Finally: Insulin After insulin was discovered nearly 100 years ago, the rights to it were transferred to the University of Toronto for $1 so that insulin could be made widely available at a low cost. But insulin prices have continued to creep upward at a rate that's higher than inflation. As a result, some patients have rationed their medicine, skipping doses or cutting them in half. In 2017, a group of patients sued the three major insulin-makers — Sanofi, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk — when they noticed that the companies were increasing their prices in lockstep. When Congress and the media took notice, the price hikes mostly stopped, but prices didn't drop. In December, the House passed a bill to lower prescription drug prices.

American scientists are on the leading edge of drug research and development—often funded by taxpayer dollars. So why are we overpaying for life-saving drugs? How did we get to this point? Dr. Abdul El-Sayed walks us through the story of the Hep-C drug Sovaldi to lay bear the inner workings of the pharmaceutical industry—and its glaring flaws.

Today in FirstWord:

More than 30,000 people die every year because of gun violence, and Dan, Rivka, and Rob discuss whether it makes sense to think about gun control as a public health issue. (Starts at 2:05.) They also debate the rising cost of pharmaceutical drugs and whether we're paying too much attention to Sovaldi and Martin Shkreli. (Starts at 17:25.) And they close the show with their electives, including their accidental tribute to the New York Times Upshot blog. (Starts at 26:15.)

Good news can be found in this episode! In July, eight bills were signed into law and none of them will make you want to flee the country. Topics covered include veterans and their health care, product warranties, transportation funding, and more. At the end of the episode, Jen shares some happy news. Please support Congressional Dish: Click here to contribute with PayPal or Bitcoin; click the PayPal "Make it Monthly" checkbox to create a monthly subscription Click here to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Laws H.R. 91: Veterans Identification Card Act of 2015 US Department of Veterans' Affairs Info Sheet: What is a Veteran Identification Card (VIC) and how do I get one? Discussed in CD101: Trade Away May Allows veterans who have honorably completed their service but who didn't "retire" or receive a medically-related discharge to request and pay for an ID card proving their veteran status. The fee for the card will be reassessed every five years. The cards would be available 60 days after the bill would be signed into law. Passed the House of Representatives 411-0. Passed the Senate with changes by Unanimous Consent Sponsored by Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida 3 Pages H.R. 615: Department of Homeland Security Interoperable Communications Discussed in episode CD094: A Damage-Free February Gives the Under Secretary of Management of the Department of Homeland Security the job of making sure that DHS departments can communicate with each other in emergencies. Passed the House of Representatives 379-0. Passed the Senate with changes by Unanimous Consent. Passed the House of representatives with Senate changes by Voice Vote. Sponsored by Rep. Donald Payne Jr. of New Jersey 3 Pages S. 971: Medicare Independence at Home Medical Practice Demonstration Improvement Act of 2015 Discussed in episode CD099: April Takes a Turn Increases the length of Medicare contracts for at-home care from 3 years to 5 years Passed the Senate and House of Representatives by Voice Votes. Sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon 1 Page H.R. 1531: Land Management Workforce Flexibility Act Passed the House of Representatives by Voice Vote. Passed the Senate by Unanimous Consent Creates a process for temporary employees at Federal land management agencies to become permanent employees Waives age requirements for eligibility for temporary employees seeking to become permanent employees. Sponsored by Rep. Gerald Connolly of Virginia 3 Pages S. 1359: E-Warranty Act of 2015 Allows manufacturers to provide warranty information online, as long as the warranty information is available at the location of the sale so people can see it before they buy. Passed the Senate by Unanimous Consent. Passed the House of Representatives 388-2 The two no votes were Rep. Dan Benishek of Michigan's 1st district and Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina's 3rd district. Sponsored by Sen. Deb Fischer 2 Pages H.R. 2499: Veterans Entrepreneurship Act of 2015 Passed the House of Representatives 410-1. Passed the Senate with changes by Unanimous Consent. Passed the House of Representatives with Senate changes by Voice Vote. Prohibits the Small Business Administration from charging a guarantee fee on loans made to veterans or their spouses. Exception: When the program doesn't pay for itself in the President's budget proposal, the fee can be charged to veteran's and their spouses the next year. Increases the amount of money than can be spent on business loans by $4.75 billion. Prohibits loan guarantees from being used by banks to get around their legal lending limits. Sponsored by Rep. Steve Chabot of Ohio 3 Pages H.R. 1138: Sawtooth National Recreation Area and Jerry Peak Wilderness Additions Act Protects land in Idaho as wilderness areas. Allows grazing that was already taking place to continue. Passed the House of Representatives by Voice Vote. Passed the Senate by Unanimous Consent. Sponsored by Rep Mike Simpson of Idaho 9 Pages H.R. 3236: Surface Transportation and Veterans Health Care Choice Improvement Act of 2015 Transportion Extends Federal highway funding until October 29, 2015. Reduces the tax rate for liquified petroleum gas starting in 2016. Banking Requires the banks to report more information about the status of mortgages starting in 2017. Ties the value of a deceased person's estate to the estimate on the deceased person's most recent tax return. Adjusts the tax return due date for partnerships and S corporations Veterans Orders the Secretary of Veteran's Affairs to develop a plan to consolidate all non-Department of Veteran's Affairs provider programs into one program called the "Veteran's Choice Program". Adds money to the fund for private health care for veterans, including $500 million for hepatitis C drugs Includes the text of the original Hire More Heroes Act of 2015, which said that veterans with government health care will not count towards the 50 employee Affordable Care Act threshold, which triggers a company's obligation to give employees health insurance. Passed the House of Representatives 385-34. Passed the Senate 91-4. Sponsored by Rep. Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania 25 Pages Sound Clip Sources Hearing: Veterans Affairs Health Care and Budget, House Veterans' Affairs Committee, July 22, 2015. Additional Reading Letter from Senators Ron Wyden and Charles Grassley to the Chairman and CEO of Gilead Sciences for justification of high Sovaldi price. Article: Obama Signs Alternative Fuel Tax Fix into Law by Joseph Bebon, Next-Gen Transportation News, July 31, 2015. Article: The VA's Hepatitis C Problem by Gerard Flynn, Newsweek, May 9, 2015. Article: VA to Outsource Care for 180,000 Vets With Hepatitis C by Dennis Wagner of the Arizona Republic (re-posted on USA Today), June 21, 2015. Article: Maker of Costly Hepatitis C Drug Sovaldi Strikes Deal on Generics for Poor Countries by Gardiner Harris, New York Times, September 15, 2014. Article: $1,000 Hepatitis Pill Shows Why Fixing Health Costs Is So Hard by Margot Sanger-Katz, New York Times, August 2, 2104. Article: Gilead's 2014 profit margin nears 50%, fueled by hep C drugs by Jaimy Lee, Modern Healthcare, February 3, 2015. Article: Gilead Profit Tops Estimates as Hepatitis C Drug Sales Surge by Caroline Chen, Bloomberg Business, July 28, 2015. Article: Gilead Sciences: A Profile in Congressionally Guaranteed Profiteering by David Belk, Huffington Post, February 9, 2015. Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio) Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations

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In April, the IMS Institute released a new report that U.S. drug spending in 2014 rose 13.1 percent to $373.9 billion, the largest single year increase in spending since 2001. A number of factors drove the increase including the launch of innovative new therapies such as Gilead's hepatitis C drug Sovaldi. We spoke to Murray Aitken, executive director of IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, about the new report, the confluence of factors that drove spending higher, and what the outlook is for 2015 and beyond.

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In this episode, we review historical and new treatment options for hepatitis C, including: peginterferon, rivabirin, boceprevir, telaprevir, sofosbuvir (Sovaldi), simeprevir (Olysio), ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir/dasabuvir (Viekira Pak), and ledipasvir/sofosbuvir (Harvoni). May 18, 2015 - Correction added in the beginning of the episode regarding Viekira Pak dosing regimen.

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El ministro de sanidad español, Alfonso Alonso, en una alarde de endémica falta de transparencia, se niega a hacer público el precio que ha acordado con la empresa Gilead para el suministro de los tratamientos de Sovaldi, el medicamento de nueva generación en base al principio activo sofosbuvir. La Plataforma de Afectados por la Hepatitis C amenaza con querellas y con la denuncia ante Europa de su situación, pero debemos recordar que, en el verano de 2014, la UE rechazó la propuesta francesa de crear una plataforma europea para abaratar el medicamento. - See more at: http://informativos.net/entrevistas/entrevista-a-xose-m-torres-la-solucion-a-los-abusos-de-las-farmaceuticas-pasa-por-la-emision-de-licencia-obligatoria_54771.aspx#sthash.nMoMtDTi.dpuf

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  In this healthcare-focused episode of Where The Money Is, healthcare analysts David Williamson and Michael Douglass discuss Gilead’s great news, the data breach at a major hospital system, and Wal-Mart’s newest foray into healthcare.

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-IL ROBOT OPERA ALLA TIROIDE SENZA SEGNI SUL COLLO Il robot chirurgo Da Vinci, 'telecomandato' dall2019équipe dell'Unità Operativa di Chirurgia Endocrina e Metabolica del Policlinico universitario A. Gemelli di Roma, diretta dal professor Rocco Bellantone, ha eseguito un intervento senza precedenti nel Lazio e nel Sud Italia: ha operato la tiroide di una giovane paziente senza lasciare alcun segno sul suo collo. Il robot ha raggiunto la ghiandola malata attraverso l'ascella. L'intervento eseguito al Policlinico Gemelli si chiama 'Tiroidectomia robotica trans-ascellare'. Si tratta di un'operazione al momento indicata in casi selezionati. L'intervento è stato effettuato lo scorso 17 gennaio su una donna di 37 anni affetta da gozzo nodulare. La giovane è stata dimessa in ottime condizioni il giorno dopo l'operazione. La tecnica della Tiroidectomia robotica trans-ascellare, messa a punto in Corea e attualmente in via di diffusione anche nei Paesi occidentali, consente di evitare ogni cicatrice sul collo rispetto alle tecniche convenzionale e mini-invasiva, che vengono eseguite con un accesso chirurgico cervicale. Col nuovo intervento la tiroide viene infatti raggiunta dall'ascella, con un accesso chirurgico nascosto e poco visibile. Attraverso la singola incisione ascellare vengono introdotte la telecamera e gli strumenti robotici, che sono manovrati dal chirurgo comodamente seduto alla consolle. Il sistema computerizzato consente una visione tridimensionale e ingrandita, nonché un assoluto controllo dei movimenti degli strumenti robotici. Queste caratteristiche tecniche facilitano e rendono molto accurata la dissezione chirurgica, garantendo l'assoluta sicurezza dell'intervento. La tiroidectomia robotica è attualmente indicata per il trattamento della patologia tiroidea nodulare benigna. È però in corso di validazione il suo impiego per il trattamento della patologia maligna in pazienti a basso rischio. -MICRO PUNTURA CONTRO I CALCOLI RENALI NEI BAMBINI All'Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù di Roma è possibile polverizzare i calcoli renali nei bambini con una 'puntura' indolore. Si chiama 'Micro-perc' la nuova tecnica mini-invasiva, sperimentata con successo per la prima volta su una bambina di 11 anni, che consente, attraverso strumenti miniaturizzati, di abbattere il rischio di danni ai reni e di ridurre di oltre il 50% i tempi di ospedalizzazione rispetto ai metodi tradizionali. Considerata una malattia tipica dell'adulto, la calcolosi renale colpisce 2 bambini su 100, rappresentando un problema anche per i più piccoli. La nuova metodica si avvale di un ago sottile (da 1,6 mm) dentro il quale scorrono una finissima fibra ottica (0,9 mm) e una fibra laser (da 270 micron) con cui si riesce contemporaneamente ad avere una visione diretta dei calcoli renali e a distruggerli. Le dimensioni miniaturizzate della strumentazione riducono di molto il rischio di sanguinamento e di lesioni al rene, permettendo di trattare una buona parte di calcoli senza ricorrere alle tecniche 'classiche', molto aggressive per l'organo. -NUOVO FARMACO PER EPATITE C La Commissione Europea ha concesso l'autorizzazione per l'immissione in commercio delle compresse da 400 mg di Sovaldi® (sofosbuvir), un analogo nucleotidico inibitore della polimerasi in mono-somministrazione orale giornaliera, per il trattamento dell'infezione cronica da epatite C (CHC) in soggetti adulti, in associazione con altri agenti antivirali: ribavirina (RBV) e interferone pegilato alfa (peg-IFN). L'autorizzazione giunge in seguito ad un processo di valutazione accelerato da parte dell'Agenzia Europea dei Medicinali. Sofosbuvir è stato studiato su tutti i genotipi dell'HCV 1-6. -APIXABAN PER LA FIBRILLAZIONE ATRIALE NON VALVOLARE Apixaban, anticoagulante orale inibitore diretto del fattore Xa, è ora rimborsato in Italia anche per la prevenzione dell'ictus e dell'embolia sistemica nei pazienti adulti affetti da Fibrillazione Atriale Non Valvolare (FANV) che presentino uno o più dei seguenti fattori di rischio: un precedente ictus o un attacco ischemico transitorio, età pari o superiore a 75 anni, ipertensione, diabete mellito, scompenso cardiaco sintomatico. Apixaban si è dimostrato in grado di ridurre in modo significativo il rischio di ictus, embolia ed emorragie e di ridurre il tasso di mortalità da tutte le cause. -XII CONFERENZA INTERNAZIONALE DISTROFIA MUSCOLARE DI DUCHENNE E BECKER E' in corso a Roma la XII Conferenza Internazionale sulla distrofia muscolare Duchenne e Becker, organizzata da Parent Project onlus, l'associazione di genitori di bambini affetti da questa patologia, attiva in Italia dal 1996. Come gli anni precedenti, la Conferenza Internazionale sarà l2019occasione per permettere ai pazienti e alle famiglie di incontrare gli esperti di tutto il mondo e di conoscere i progressi della ricerca e lo stato delle sperimentazioni nel campo. Nel 2002 Parent Project onlus ha organizzato per la prima volta in Italia la Conferenza Internazionale sulla distrofia muscolare Duchenne e Becker, e sin dalla prima edizione è diventato un momento focale sullo stato della ricerca scientifica e la gestione clinica della malattia. La conferenza ospita ogni anno oltre 600 partecipanti.