Tag: big pharma

CDC Advisers Ousted by RFK Jr. Voted on Vaccines Despite Conflicts

Multiple people who until early June served on a federal vaccine advisory committee cast votes on vaccines despite receiving or recently receiving money from pharmaceutical companies that stood to be affected by the votes, according to an Epoch Times review.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on June 9 removed all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines, citing issues such as conflicts of interest.

Dr. Helen Y. Chu, a professor of medicine and allergy and infectious diseases at the University of Washington, reported throughout 2024 receiving funds from Merck, among other pharmaceutical companies. In October 2024, in her first meeting as a member of ACIP, Chu voted in favor of expanding recommendations for vaccination against pneumococcal disease.

Merck manufactures multiple pneumococcal conjugate vaccines.

Chu did not submit any conflict of interest disclosures for the meeting, according to a CDC database.

ACIP members “are required to declare any potential conflicts of interest that arise in the course of ACIP tenure,” according to the CDC’s website. Members who declare perceived or actual conflicts of interest, the site says, “will be asked to recuse themselves from participating in the discussion and decision-making of the issues relating to that interest.”

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Second Patient Dies After Gene Therapy for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy: Company

A second patient has died after receiving the gene therapy Elevidys, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over concerns of staffers, according to the company that makes it.

The 15-year-old boy who died, and the 16-year-old boy whose death was reported earlier in the year, had both received Elevidys, the only gene therapy approved by the FDA for the treatment of a rare form of muscular dystrophy called Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), Sarepta officials said in a call on June 16.

The boys were both non-ambulatory and both died within 90 days of treatment, according to Sarepta.

The 15-year-old died from acute liver failure, Sarepta said in a statement on Sunday. Acute liver injury is listed as a side effect of the product.

Sarepta said it was investigating the cases independently and in relation to each other to identify any common risk factors. The company suspended its Elevidys sales forecast for this year and said it would provide an update with its second-quarter results.

Sarepta officials said the company is pausing shipments of Elevidys for non-ambulatory patients and halting a clinical trial while it develops an “enhanced immunosuppressive regimen,” utilizing the sirolimus drug. They said there is no timeline right now for resuming dosing for the population and that they would try to speak soon with FDA officials about the situation.

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TV Networks Face Advertising Apocalypse After Trump Admin Mulls Pharma Restrictions

Last week independent Senators Bernie Sanders (VT) and Angus King (ME) introduced legislation that would ban pharmaceutical companies from promoting prescription drugs directly to consumers – including through television, radio, print, digital platforms, and social media. 

Today, Bloomberg reports that the Trump administration is now ‘discussing policies that would make it harder and more expensive for pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to patients.’

The two policies the administration has focused in on would be to require greater disclosures of side effects of a drug within each ad — likely making broadcast ads much longer and prohibitively expensive — or removing the industry’s ability to deduct direct-to-consumer advertising as a business expense for tax purposes, these people said.

Although the US is the only place, besides New Zealand, where pharma companies can directly advertise, banning pharma ads outright could make the administration vulnerable to lawsuits, so it’s instead focusing on cutting down on the practice by adding legal and financial hurdles, according to people familiar with the plans who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

If this happens, it would mark a major victory for Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr., who says he believes Americans consume more drugs than people in other countries due to the ability of US drug companies to directly advertise to consumers. 

While running for president, Mr. Kennedy said he would issue an executive order removing pharmaceutical ads from television, citing overmedication and industry influence on news coverage.

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The Statin Wars

We shouldn’t have been surprised that the Covid experience was so marred by financial conflicts where pharmaceutical industry interests called the shots—too often to the detriment of our health.

Some of us weren’t surprised.

For decades, I’ve been unearthing unthinkable scandals inside our medical establishment. They are stories that I wouldn’t have believed myself had I not spoken to first hand sources and whistleblowers, and seen the proof in hard data and documents.

The Statin Wars is one such example.

I began covering issues regarding cholesterol-lowering statins and conflicts of interest around 2004 when I was an investigative reporter for CBS News.

I continued covering these issues on my independent Sunday television program “Full Measure.”

The statin controversy began when a panel of government advisers decided our cholesterol levels should be lower than we thought. It turns out nearly every one of the “experts” — was paid by statin makers. Yet none of them initially disclosed this financial conflict of interest!

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Vaccine Advisory Committee Dismissed By HHS Had Close Ties To Big Pharma, Donated To Democrats

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) just dismissed every voting member from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a group made up entirely of Biden appointees, many of whom have seemingly major conflicts of interest because of ties to large pharmaceutical corporations and histories of donating to Democrats.

ACIP, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has a history of rubber-stamping everything it comes across, with some members even voting in favor of major changes like recommending that children ages 5 to 11 receive a coronavirus “vaccine” booster shot without any data to support that intervention.

Other members have taken consulting fees and related payments from Big Pharma, donated to far-left Democrats, and appear to look uncritically at any item regarding vaccines.

“Today we are prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda,” Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a press release. “The public must know that unbiased science — evaluated through a transparent process and insulated from conflicts of interest — guides the recommendations of our health agencies.”

“A clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science,” he continued. “ACIP’s new members will prioritize public health and evidence-based medicine. The Committee will no longer function as a rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas. The entire world once looked to American health regulators for guidance, inspiration, scientific impartiality, and unimpeachable integrity. Public trust has eroded. Only through radical transparency and gold standard science, will we earn it back.”

HHS plans to rebuild the advisory committee from scratch.

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FDA Approved Hundreds of Drugs With No Evidence They Work

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved hundreds of drugs over the last several decades with little to no evidence that they work, according to a new investigation by The Lever.

Many of the drugs are permitted to stay on the market, despite ample evidence that they don’t work and that they cause serious and irreparable harm.

The Lever’s two-year investigation into the FDA-approved drugs analyzed government reports, internal FDA documents, investigators’ notes, congressional testimony, court records and more than 100 interviews with researchers, federal officials and patients.

The investigation found that from 2013 through 2022, 73% of drugs approved by the FDA didn’t meet the agency’s four foundational standards required to show the drugs work as expected. Fifty-five of the approved drugs met only one of those four standards, and 39 met none of them.

More than half of drug approvals were based on preliminary data, which meant the pharmaceutical companies didn’t submit evidence that patients had fewer symptoms, showed improvement or had their lives extended.

The approval rate of such drugs has accelerated over the last decade, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General.

Cancer treatments, in particular, raised serious red flags. Only 2.4% of the 123 cancer drugs met all of the criteria, and 29 met none. The FDA approved 81% of cancer drugs based on preliminary data.

The report did not evaluate any vaccines.

The Lever wrote:

“These statistics come after billions of dollars and years of lobbying by the pharmaceutical industry and patient advocacy groups pressuring Congress to loosen the FDA’s scientific standards.

“The resulting seismic shift from proving drugs work before they are approved to showing they work only after approval — if ever — has been quietly accomplished with virtually no awareness by doctors or the public.

“Insurers and taxpayers effectively pay for research after drugs hit the market as pharmaceutical companies reap the profits. Patients serve as the unwitting guinea pigs — with very real consequences.”

The outlet also reported that an estimated 128,000 people are killed each year by side effects from prescription drugs prescribed as indicated.

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Liver Injuries Reportedly on the Rise: Common, FDA-Approved Meds Linked to Alarming Trend

As more people find themselves using more vitamins, supplements, and everyday medications, more related health issues keep cropping up.

And a recent spate of reports highlights a particular danger for one part of your body: the liver.

“As cases of drug-induced liver injury (DILI) are on the rise, experts are warning of the hidden dangers associated with some common medications and supplements,” Fox News reported Monday.

The outlet added, “Statistics show that DILI, also known as toxic hepatitis or hepatotoxicity — which is known to be a significant cause of acute liver failure — has been growing in Western countries since the 1960s.”

“Even medications that have been tested for safety and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can potentially cause liver injury in rare cases,” Fox reported.

Just days earlier, on May 27, NBC News had posted a similarly alarming report regarding these health ramifications.

The outlet spoke to Robert Grafton, a former medical technologist who noticed signs of liver failure in himself and largely traced it back to various supplements and vitamins he had been taking.

“I stopped taking everything, thank goodness,” Grafton said. “If I hadn’t known, if I was not in the medical field, I might have thought, ‘Oh, I think I’m getting sick. I need to take some more of these supplements to help me feel better.’”

Despite stopping, symptoms worsened and test results pointed toward devastating liver failure.

It turned out to be a case of DILI.

“It is estimated that between 13.9 and 19.1 cases of DILI occur for every 100,000 people, according to recent research published in the journal Toxicology Reports,” Fox noted.

The triggers of DILI can vary, from the vitamins and supplements that Grafton had been taking, mentioned above, to aspirin, the common over-the-counter painkiller.

Those with health conditions are more susceptible to DILI, but as Grafton — someone who began taking his health seriously after having children — shows, it can hit very healthy people, too.

Fox News medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel told his network that the unregulated nature of supplements could betray some of their purported health benefits.

“The biggest problem with herbal supplements is that the amount you are taking of active chemicals isn’t strictly regulated, so you don’t know exactly what you are getting,” he said. “And since several of the supplements are metabolized through the liver, there is now an increasing incidence of liver toxicity in users.”

According to the National Institutes of Health, “nearly all classes of medications” can cause DILI.

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Urgent health warning as the terrifying side effects of Ozempic emerge

Dozens of Aussie weight loss drug injection patients have complained of symptoms consistent with drug-induced hepatitis, sparking a warning from experts to get regular GP check-ups. 

Patients on GLP-1 agonists Wegovy and Ozempic reported flu-like symptoms, fatigue, abdominal cramps and vomiting, thought to be related to liver injury. 

The most severe cases were rushed to hospital after experiencing symptoms associated with inflammation of the liver. 

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has received three separate reports of hepatitis or liver injury associated with semaglutide medicine use – marketed as Ozempic and Wegovy. 

Two patients were on Ozempic while the other was using Wegovy. 

Patients on Mounjaro have also expressed concerns online.

‘Any of you on Mounjaro have had to stop taking it due to it affecting your liver? I’m currently in hospital with medication induced hepatitis and they’re positive it’s from the Mounjaro,’ one woman wrote.

Another commented: ‘Wegovy badly affected my liver and I had to stop, fortunately I didn’t end up in hospital’. 

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President Trump Pardons Former Governor Rowland – Did Big Pharma Target Him for His Psychiatric Drug Ban?

Recently Pardoned Former Governor John Rowland’s political downfall is often reduced to scandalous headlines about gifts and corruption, but the truth behind his resignation reveals a far more complex and troubling story—one that involves a fierce battle with Big Pharma, a controversial psychiatric drug ban for vulnerable children, and a corruption scandal that may not be as disconnected as it seems.

In the early 2000s, Governor Rowland took a rare and bold stand against the wrongful medication of children in state care by banning three powerful antipsychotic drugs from Connecticut’s drug formulary: Risperdal (risperidone), Zyprexa (olanzapine), and Seroquel (quetiapine). These medications were widely prescribed despite mounting evidence of severe side effects, including increased risks of suicide, diabetes, and violent behavior. The ban thrust Connecticut into the national spotlight when The New York Times ran a front-page article in 2004 exposing the widespread use—and potential dangers—of these psychiatric drugs in children under state supervision, sparking a nationwide conversation about the ethics and safety of medicating vulnerable youth.

That same year, National Public Radio (NPR) also covered Connecticut’s groundbreaking actions, highlighting the state’s efforts to protect children from inappropriate psychiatric drug use and the challenges faced in regulating these medications. The NPR coverage emphasized the growing concern over the off-label use of antipsychotics in children, the lack of adequate oversight, and the pushback from pharmaceutical companies.

Connecticut’s legislative and regulatory bodies responded with a six-month review of psychotropic medication use in children in state care, resulting in public acts aimed at establishing oversight mechanisms and protecting children from inappropriate drug use. This review was part of a broader effort to address systemic issues such as lack of informed consent and insufficient court approvals.

Across the country, states like New York, Florida, New Jersey, and Arkansas also made national news for confronting the rampant and often off-label use of antipsychotic medications in children in foster care. Investigations and lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly highlighted illegal marketing practices promoting these drugs for unapproved uses in children. Connecticut emerged as one of the front lines in this battle, with state legislators and child welfare agencies scrutinizing psychotropic drug use and seeking greater oversight and protections for children in care.

Rowland’s ban challenged powerful pharmaceutical interests. According to advocacy groups like AbleChild, representatives from Canadian pharmaceutical companies met with the governor behind closed doors, pressing him to reverse the decision. Within six months, the banned drugs were reinstated on the state formulary, raising urgent questions about the influence of Big Pharma on public health policy and the safety of children in care.

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New WHO Guidance Calls for Injectable Contraceptives for Kids

The World Health Organization (WHO) released a new guideline on preventing adolescent pregnancies in low and middle-income countries. The proposed framework advances a vision of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for young people that promotes controversial ideas, and norm changes inconsistent with what governments have agreed to.

Revised for the first time in over a decade, the guideline focuses almost exclusively on preventing adolescent pregnancies through increased and prolonged contraception use, including “self-administered injectable contraception,” and access to sexuality education.

In its recommendations, the WHO frames adolescents’ choice to discontinue “contraceptive use due to side-effects, and due to changing life circumstances and reproductive intentions” in a negative light and as an obstacle to overcome.

The framework calls on mobilizing “[p]olitical, governmental, religious, traditional and other influential leaders” to “support the access to, uptake of, and continued use of contraceptives.”

The guideline also asks policymakers to ensure that laws on age and consent related to sexual activities are designed in such a way as to promote adolescents’ access to contraception. Such a move could mean lowering the age of legal consent or making regulations more flexible to enable young people’s access to contraception without stigma.

Critics note that an exclusive focus on mass contraceptive use among adolescents monopolizes the discourse on how to best prevent adolescent pregnancies and undermines efforts to tackle the problem holistically.

The 112-page guideline does not mention the merits of raising awareness about the negative consequences of nonmarital sexual behavior through programs centered around abstinence and delay of sexual debut.

Critics also disagree with the WHO framing adolescents’ opposition to contraceptives due to side effects or religious beliefs as based on myths and misinformation.

Beyond its recommendations on contraceptives, the guideline promotes adolescents’ access to sex education, saying that “[m]any adolescents are unaware…[on how] to have sex safely and pleasurably.”

The document references the latest UN inter-agency technical guidance on comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), which has helped shape sexuality education curricula and materials in many countries around the world.

The technical guidance dedicates an entire section to the “Social Construction of Gender and Gender Norms,” teaching children aged 5-8 the difference between biological sex and gender and encouraging them to “reflect on how they feel about their biological sex and gender.” The same section says children aged 9-12 should be able to “explain how someone’s gender identity may not match their biological sex” and “acknowledge that masturbation does not cause physical or emotional harm.”

Another goal laid out in the CSE guidance is that children aged 12- 15 are able to state that sexual “fantasies and desires are natural and not shameful and occur throughout life.”

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