Just as the H1N1 scaremongers machine did in 2009, the Ebola scaremonger machine goes into overdrive

Does anyone remember the dud fake H1N1 swine flu pandemic scare?  How about the dud fake bird flu pandemic scare?  Or maybe people remember the dud fake SARS pandemic scare [Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome] or maybe even the HIV/AIDS scare?  You know – HIV/AIDS with the 1980s TV ads telling everyone they were all going to die from having sex without a condom and billions of tax dollars diverted to a lot of pockets of “scientists” and drug companies promoting highly toxic drugs like AZT which killed people?  Great news for condom manufacturers too.

As hard as it is to believe, H1N1 was five years ago.  Bird flu was 7 years ago.  SARS was 12 years ago and HIV/AIDS started in the 1980s. HIV/AIDS is the weirdest long-running scare.  We in the West were all meant to die but what a crazy thing – how come it was only a big problem in Africa?  Surprise surprise – pretty much anyone still moving and who was sick in Africa was HIV positive and anyone no longer moving and dead died from AIDS. (It did not matter what really killed them – it was AIDS).

And no one in the West seemed to notice how weird that was or at least even care.  And how come it all happened in Africa?  And how come in the West it was just gay people and drug abusers?  No one seemed to notice the contrast with Clamidia infection spreading like wildfire even today from unsafe sex particularly in 10% of US and European teens but HIV/AIDS in comparison in the West was not.

These historical dud health scares are just like the latest money-spinning wheeze from the drug industry and health officials to hype how great they are at saving everyone – after all Homeland Security is saving us all from the latest flavor of the month terrorists to take our minds off how our own governments are the biggest threats to our health and world security.  So the health protection industry needs to have their own occasional bogey-men to make sure we keep paying their mortgages with their inflated salaries for mostly providing near worthless pointless services – like the US CDC criticized in a Congressional report which was:

A review of how an agency tasked with fighting and preventing disease has spent hundreds of millions of tax dollars for failed prevention efforts, international junkets, and lavish facilities, but cannot demonstrate it is controlling disease.

One thing we remember about these crankfest fake scares was just how crazy the crankosphere’s nutters and loonies were, attacking anyone who criticized these drug industry marketing opportunities to promote worthless snake-oil treatments and pointless public health campaigns spending billions of dollars to develop drugs and dangerous untested vaccines to be unleashed on citizens of the US and Europe using their own tax monies to do it.

Besides the usual paranoia that demonized these fake dud pandemics as wildfire killer diseases was other equally ridiculous fever dream nonsense, and there was the quackery.  And one you should remember quite well is the one where it was claimed that Tamiflu would save us all. Anything claiming otherwise was all conspiracy theories the nutters and loonies screeched on the blogs and in social media, like the Donald Rumsfeld financial interest in Tamiflu maker Hoffman La Roche. Or the Bush presidential interests in it:

President Bush sought to instil panic by telling us a minimum of 200,000 people will die from avian flu but it could be as bad as two million deaths in the US alone. This hoax was justified by the immediate purchase of 80 million doses of Tamiflu.’

These were truly eye-opening events, surpassing any others of well nearly 30 years’ experience of media mania manipulators and these barking crazy cranks. Remember we were told by the media to look out for the dead carcasses of migrating birds dropping from the skies?  That was the wackiest wackfest in wonderland with the media hype over just the one dead swan found in the whole of Europe which turned out not to be a bird flu bird.

The news that Baxter pharmaceutical released vaccines contaminated with live avian flu virus in the EU in vaccines when it should have been impossible under stringent laboratory protocols should have set the alarm bells ringing world-wide.  The virus turned out not to be the killer it was hyped to be but its release would have generated billions of dollars in vaccine sales and the vaccine would have been fast-tracked past any safety testing – instant wealth for Baxter Pharmaceutical.  The crankosphere would claim that is truly weapons-grade conspiracy mongering stupidity.   But wait … it happened.  It took place.  And what prevented the release?  In the whole of Europe just one Czech lab took the trouble to test it on animals – they died.

The flu vaccine with a counted confirmed number of 800 European child victims of narcolepsy confirmed in the British Medical Journal, an unknown number of uncounted and with that cataplexy too and other adverse vaccine reactions and vaccine maker GlaxoSmithKline standing to gain US$480,000,000 from causing it with its flu vaccine.  And for causing a problem that required the EU to take emergency measures over the health problem for European children.

Or how about the Dutch Parliament’s failed investigation into the financial interests of the single Dutch “scientist” who was documented as the single person responsible for sparking off SARS and the numerous swine and bird flu scares from his position on the World Health Organisation’s scientific committee responsible for investigating and reporting  such threats.

Yes, pandemics and epidemics do bring out the worst in people, as far as critical thinking goes. This time around  it’s Ebola virus disease. This has been hyped to such a degree using mainstream media that the bozosphere’s looney toons will claim that to the average person, Ebola is way more scary than H1N1.  They claim H1N1 had the potential to infect and potentially kill far more people – even though for around a decade that has just not happened despite the efforts to hype and spread it.

But wait.  The notorious “Science Based Medicine” crank Dr David Gorski just cannot help himself and dived in with both feet.  This is “Science Based Medicine” at its best.  Gorski teaches us all what Science Based Medicine is: repeated direct contradiction paragraph after paragraph in polemical diatribe, just like the fictional British journalist Glenda Slagg brought to life by satirical magazine, Private Eye [fag is British slang for ‘cigarette’]:

Glenda Slagg and Polly Filla

Two of the leading women columnists in journalism today. Glenda is very much old-school; fag in one hand, opinion in the other. Or rather opinions, because Glenda’s prime asset is her ability to effortlessly contradict herself. Polly is a much younger model; the new breed of hack who can Free Tibet, get the Romanian au pair to do the children’s homework and fit in Pilates before brunch in Hampstead; all on just 150K a year.

Now that cases of Ebola virus disease have been reported in the US, the panic has been cranked up, even though this is at the same time as the crankiest of cranks of the crankosphere admitting the risk of an epidemic in the US or Europe is minimal. He Dr David Gorski along with the rest of the drug and vaccine brigade even go so far as to claim that longstanding known health treatments and prophylaxis like vitamins and healthy eating are of no use whatsoever against this new hyper super-sized killer zombie disease hyped health threat.  The quackery of Science Based Medicine is breathtaking.

Now, given how afraid everyone is of Ebola they want you all to support a vaccine against the disease claiming “a vaccine likely represents the best hope for bringing the current epidemic under control with as little loss of life as possible” [God help us all – ooh we’re all doomed]. Certainly if such a vaccine were to be developed, it will be fast-tracked past all safety precautions as usual and likely be available relatively soon (at least in terms of drug or vaccine development time), given the urgency the hyper hype is generating that wasn’t there before.   With all this history these loons and nutters say “you’d think that a vaccine would be welcomed with open arms“.  Barking mad.

But the US and CDC in particular look incompetent at best and potentially crooked at worst.  We are also told an experimental Ebola vaccine is being fast tracked into human trials and promoted as the final solution.  Then there is the supposed alternative of ramping up testing and production of experimental drugs which have allegedly already saved the lives of several Ebola-infected Americans.  Just like Tamiflu it will be hailed the new saviour of mankind.

But wait did the cook of the crankiest crankfest of the crankosphere, Dr David Gorski on his Scienceblogs comic strip of a blog actually questions whether experimental wonder drug ZMapp actually did save the lives of those Americans who survived Ebola?  Yep – he claimes “It might have. It might not have. We need more data and a clinical trial to tell if ZMapp is as effective as we all hope it is. It might have been that those patients would have recovered anyway with supportive care alone.“

Oh, no wee Dr Davy Gorski.  What an own goal for Science Based Medicine.  First he tells some of the dunderhead disciples how serious Ebola is as a world threat and then he says people might just recover on their own.  But wait a nanosec or three, to Gorski it is quackery and heresy indeed to suggest good nourishment to keep the immune system working in top order and maybe a shovel load of vitamins might do any good.  And to cap it all we need clinical trials – hey Davy, whatever happened to the “need” to fast-track and ignore safety which tomorrow you will tell everyone is essential?

But if the drug needs trials and proper testing, the same must apply to the vaccine?  But Gorski’s Science Based Medicine is blind to details when he wants to scare and push a potentially dangerous and potentially useless fast tracked vaccine over a just as potentially dangerous and useless drug.  And if people might get better from Ebola all by themselves, as Gorski bizarrely claims whilst claiming the disease is a serious killer, the same should apply to a vaccine as to any claimed wonder drug, whether ZMapp, or the near useless Tamiflu?

Who would have known it?  Wee Davy Gorski has just driven the Quack-o-Meter so far off-scale the needle spun round like a coiled spring.  That’s Science Based Medicine for you.

That is how completely barking these people are.  In one blog post cherrypicking like crazy entirely contradictory positions as if no one will notice. And oh dear, is this drug not the world’s saviour after all?  Gorski dehypes it as “a humanized monoclonal antibody (like Avastin and Herceptin, for instance). Making such drugs is difficult, expensive, and can’t easily just be “ramped up” instantly.“

Is Davy a naive soul or someone driving an agenda of bullying and abusing those who stand up against corruption and fraud in the drug industry and by government health officials.  He really wants everyone to believe it is impossible that some people in industry, the government, and the World Health Organization do not want the Ebola outbreak to be confined to several nations in Africa because that would fail to create a lucrative global market for mandated use of fast tracked Ebola vaccines by every one of the seven billion human beings living on this planet.

But does he believe it himself?  What are the chances?

And that was when the question was being posed “Will there be an Ebola outbreak in America?“.  Well now we are being told Ebola has made landfall.  Hip hooray for the drugfest bonanza to follow.

Notice how it never occurs to Gorski that the best way to stop an outbreak of an infectious disease is through prevention like is done with smallpox – the most effective method proven over centuries is isolation. What?  Oh, it is being done with Ebola too?  Well you would never believe it.  Old tried and tested quack methods being used with all that hi-tech medicine ‘n all.

Gorski really wants the world to believe the money driven marketing machines of the drug industry would never sustain, or take advantage of the current Ebola “outbreak” in order to create a market for vaccines for its pharma overlords nor to create a lucrative market for ZMapp, whose early development Gorski confirms was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.  Well of course next Gorski will tell everyone that Rumsfeld and Tamiflu are like financial products – past performance is no guide to future performance – really Davy?  Is it really the rest of the world that is stupid like you claim or are you so stupid you actually believe that?

Well, that is what Science Based Medicine seems to be all about – a political polemical rhetorical device to claim “science is on our side” whilst attacking, deriding and abusing others on the internet just like manipulative rulers and warmongers would exhort their people that “God is on our side” to wage wars. 

Gorski is not quite as stupid as you might think from reading his dire fanatical blog posts.  He knows perfectly well what is true when attacking his opponents claiming the contrary.

But to Gorski on his blog just like the assassination of John F Kennedy, its all paranoid conspiracy theories with him citing real people on social media expressing real concerns justified over and over by history and him cherrypicking exchanges too like these:

@KaiHolloway I cant see any other agenda for the Ebola Feargasm on M$M…fuck I hope im wrong..

— Paul Schmidt (@psc96180_pablo) October 15, 2014

The seemingly unhinged Gorski with his bizarre cranky views claims the replies are equally unhinged:

@psc96180_pablo me too brother, but we have seen it coming… as a human being we are entitled to defend our selves. this is fkn bollox!

— no one special (@KaiHolloway) October 15, 2014

Gorski claims a drug industry with a long and repeated history of frauds bribery and corruption have no interest in the Ebola “feargasm” being used to promote toxic mass vaccination programmes.  Its all conspiracy theory, like the corruption investigations and criminal charges against companies like GlaxoSmithKline [latest example China]. He wants you to think no drug company nor health official would have any interest in using Ebola as a pretext for mass vaccination. Not surprisingly, history teaches that Gorski’s claims it is all paranoia and conspiracy theories is his usual crap scribbling.  Gorski surely cannot believe what he writes? Can he?  Really?  Can anyone really and truly believe that drivel? 

We have only given a few of large numbers of examples here from a long and undistinguished drug industry history, undistinguished save for its repeated heavy taints of murkiness and corruption. Davy is part of it too as anyone who reads his verbal vomitus soon realises.

Despite the huge own goal of the World Health Organisation over the 2009 swine flu feargasm showing how eerily similar what is happening now to the ones that sprang up five, ten and many more years ago, Gorski in his shrillest shill tones wants you all believe everything done is being done and will be done in the mass vaccination programs to be instituted by the US and other nations will be just to try to forestall Ebola’s “worst effects“.

Just like Glenda Slagg, Gorski does not believe what he writes and does not care about the contradictions, because some people will read and Believe, Allellujah because its Science, innit, yo babe. 

Gorski is under contract to write and so he writes six days a week just like Glenda Slagg.

Dr Ben Goldacre’s AllTrials Or AllLies? Hiding Info On Killer Medical Drugs For Pharma Profit & Misleading 80,000 Supporters About the AllTrials Campaign

This is about trying to keep children and adults safe from killer drugs in the UK, USA and worldwide.

Dr Ben Goldacre’s AllTrials campaign is looking more and more like a front to ensure Pharma can keep on killing people for money with dangerous drugs and cover up the scientific data which shows it.  On one side is Dr Ben Goldacre screaming like a shrill shill “its lies, all lies” and little else, [like facts to back his denials up].  All Dr Goldacre needs to do is avoid answering the criticisms to convince people “its true, all true“.

On the other side is drug safety expert Professor David Healy setting out facts on his latest blog with his take on them in a series on Goldacre’s “AllTrials” campaign which he likened previously to a Trojan Horse: Sense about Science: Follow the Lawsuit June 16, 2014.  

The impression Dr Goldacre gives is that he is little more than the drug industry’s front man.  Goldacre is supported by not-for-profit “Sense About Science” [which seems anything but sense about anything].  Sense About Science is an industry founded not-for-profit who are really running the AllTrials campaign and not Goldacre.  It looks like at least some of the 80,000 people who have subscribed as AllTrials supporters on the back of Dr Goldacre’s efforts and of those who donated over £40,000 [US$70,000] to Goldacre’s fundraising efforts for Sense About Science have been duped.

Goldacre has posted on Healy’s blog claiming repeatedly that Healy’s facts and conclusions are all lies.  Goldacre stamps his little foot  and screams and screams, showing himself up whilst in the process convincing the reader he has no answers to the criticisms.  [If Goldacre had any, you will not see them in his comments on Healy’s blog.  See Goldacre’s most recent comments here and here. So much for Goldacre’s claims to believing in scientific debate and peer review when he does not answer challenges with facts.]

Professor David Healy reveals information about how GlaxoSmithKline has been hiding information about killer drugs which it presents as safe and effective when they are not, like Paroxetine which causes children to commit suicide when supposedly meant to treat depression.   Professor Healy states:

Right now today GSK are refusing to tell the children who have been injured by their drug in Study 329 that they were injured by their drug.  Tomorrow GSK will do the same and tomorrow and tomorrow. ….. The reason GSK, Pfizer, Lilly and AbbVie don’t want anyone to get access to the data is so that no-one can access the damage.  No-one can find out about the Dan Markingsons who die or are injured in company trials.  They are not doing this out of a concern for Dan Markingson’s confidentiality.  They are doing it in order to avoid being sued.”

GlaxoSmithKline signed up to AllTrials on its own terms. GSK negotiated their way onto AllTrials by specifying what they would and would not reveal.

If you thought AllTrials was about getting all drug trial data published and so opened up to scientific scrutiny, like Dr Ben Goldacre and cronies want you to think, then you and 80,000 other individuals who publicly backed AllTrials on that basis and some who donated towards over £40,000 [US$70,000] at Goldacre’s exhortations, seem to be wrong, judging by the information Professor Healy reveals.

Professor Healy also quotes evidence given by Tracey Brown of Sense About Science to an English Parliamentary investigation and another well-informed medical commentator also explains in detail here. 

Tracey Brown was asked by the Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee on 15 May 2013:

Ms Brown, just to be clear, is the aim of the campaign to have all four levels published?

Tracey Brown: No, …… What we are finding out is that “full” means something different for different people ….“

Different people?  Now who could she mean?  GSK signed up in February 2013 and this evidence was in May 2013. And Ms Brown says “What we are finding out“.  So Sense About Science [ie. Ms Brown] was in the process of finding out from GSK – an organisation instrumental in founding and originally funding Sense About Science and thus getting Ms Brown her job [after she abruptly jumped ship from Marxism to back capital following the end of the Cold War] that GSK do not want full scientific disclosure of the data.

If you gave money to Dr Ben Goldacre’s fund-raising campaign and feel you were duped are you going to email Dr Goldacre and ask for your money back?  How about unsubscribing from AllTrials?  What chance is there that Marxist Ms Brown will willingly let you do that?

Dr Ben Goldacre has cultivated a public image of a tousled unkempt irresponsible geeky young man to appeal particularly to the under 25 year-old childless males and the over fifty men who apparently predominantly populate the ranks on sites like Dr David Gorski’s ScienceBlogs blog and Dr Ben Goldacre’s BadScience Forum.  These are sites where you can see rampant untrammeled internet abuse, bullying and harassment of anyone who does not agree with them by one too many of those who infest those sites.

And now what we seem to be seeing, in our interpretation, is the cultivation of a particular image of Dr Ben Goldacre who seems to be fronting industry manipulation through the internet and social media by use of the such an image.  What else can it be?  Professor Healy has given Dr Goldacre numerous opportunities to comment and set the record straight. Dr Goldacre seems to respond with a lack of facts mixed with his brand of bullying and accusations and not much else.

To make up your own mind read yourself the exchanges between David Healy, Ben Goldacre of AllTrials, and Tracey Brown of Sense about Science and their own comments see Sense about Science: Follow the Rhetoric, Sense about Science: First Admit no Harm, Sense about Science: Follow the Lawsuit.  A major issue is GSK’s signing up to AllTrials and its appearance of being a Trojan Horse.

Here on CHS we declare an interest.  We do not believe anything Dr Goldacre has to say about these matters and we certainly do not trust him any further than a dead possum can throw him.

Counties sue narcotics makers, alleging ‘campaign of deception’ – Los Angeles Times

Shortlink to this post:

Counties sue narcotics makers, alleging ‘campaign of deception’ – Los Angeles Times

Two California counties sued five of the world’s largest narcotics manufacturers on Wednesday, accusing the companies of causing the nation’s prescription drug epidemic by waging a “campaign of deception” aimed at boosting sales of potent painkillers such as OxyContin.

Officials from Orange and Santa Clara counties — both hit hard by overdose deaths, emergency room visits and escalating medical costs associated with prescription narcotics — contend the drug makers violated California laws against false advertising, unfair business practices and creating a public nuisance.

In sweeping language reminiscent of the legal attack against the tobacco industry, the lawsuit alleges the drug companies have reaped blockbuster profits by manipulating doctors into believing the benefits of narcotic painkillers outweighed the risks, despite “a wealth of scientific evidence to the contrary.” The effort “opened the floodgates” for such drugs and “the result has been catastrophic,” the lawsuit contends.

Click below to read the full story:

Counties sue narcotics makers, alleging ‘campaign of deception’ – Los Angeles Times.

We are constantly being told that vaccines are approved by governments who have thoroughly tested them for both safety and effectiveness. Yet the same government regulators who approve vaccinations have also approved these drugs which are now the basis of a lawsuit in Los Angeles. How much can we trust what these officials tell us? Are vaccine safety and efficacy trials just more ‘tobacco science’? When will we see lawsuits by counties in the US and elsewhere due to the terrible toll caused by vaccine injuries and deaths? The answer is, we believe – it’s only a matter of time.