snake oil, by any other name

allergan, the makers of botox, wants to pitch their drugs for uses for which they have not been approved. they call this 'free speech'.

(we have some pills that we'd like to sell to you, too. they make you immortal. want some?)

jesus christ! isn't it enough that big pharma owns the fda without letting them sell their wares for conditions that they haven't even been tested on? isn't it enough that so many of the drugs that do get approved for a particular condition don't work at all, work poorly, or cause worse issues than they're meant to treat?

here's another one: there appears to be little good science behind the need for a swine flu vaccine, testing has been spotty, yet if something goes wrong and you have a bad reaction to the vaccine, you can't sue the drug maker. no matter how bad it gets. because congress says so.

we shit you not.

the campaign to kill health care

it's no secret that your insurance company did everything in its power to kill the public option in the recent healthcare bill, and to water down everything else to turn it to their advantage.

here's how they did it:

putting wolves in sheeps' clothing (to wit, the so-called 'blue dog' democrats - one of whom later showed his fangs and switched parties). and by feeding false information ('death squads') to the orwellians at fox 'news' (we use this term loosely). and some active blocking by the republicans using procedural techniques that would have shamed machiavelli.

so which of our senators did they pay off in order to make sure that we don't all have healthcare, and that our healthcare costs continue to skyrocket? here are some sources to help you find out.


so congratulations, if you didn't fight to get the public option and true healthcare reform to pass, and if you were taken in by these simple parlor tricks. you've guaranteed that you will eventually no longer be able to afford healthcare, and that we will continue to have children in the united states - the most wealthy nation in the world - that have no health insurance at all.

nice job!

fishing for rubes

one of the key facts not being discussed in the current health care debate is that we spend 11% of our out-of-pocket health care expenses on alternative medicine, such as supplements, many of which have never been scientifically proven to do anything more than empty your wallet.

are we really that over-comped? are we really such rubes? folks, somebody's buying all that extenze!

kids' foods 2 avoid

almost any foodstuffs marketed to kids are suspect, but time magazine has done us the favor of figuring out which ones will actually cause your kids to mutate into fat, cardiac-arrested toads. of course, almost everything that your kids will eat is on this list, but whose fault is that?

u.s. birth rate makes us look like a puppy mill

more babies were born in the u.s. in 2007 than any other year, ever, making the baby boom seem like nothing but a mild swelling (no pun intended). another item of note: 40% of those babies - heading speedily for half of them, for those of us that are math-challenged - were born out of wedlock.

why? and is this what we want? (we're just asking.)

if big pharma wants it, it's probably bad

big pharma is attempting to leverage recent grumbles about the safety of the food supply into a full-scale demolition of the fda.

look, we won't kid you: the fda sucks. big pharma all but owns it, and the recent spate of back-stepping tv ads and recalled drugs are enough to show that the handwriting is definitely on the wall. so how can it be a good thing if there is less oversight and a rush to get unproven drugs to market even faster (that is, before the lawyers can get them banned because they caused little timmy's head to become a puffball mushroom)?

does the fda need to be rebuilt? absolutely. but since when is it a good idea to let the fox design the henhouse?

if you think medical regulation is lax...

... and owned entiurely by the companies whose products are being regulated, here's your proof: govt investigators looking into the review process recently made up a fake medical product and got it approved for human testing.

(we'd say more, but we've got to get our elastic erection extender to market.)

is our food supply safe?

here's a dirty secret that the food industry doesn't want you to know: food producers in most states are not required to alert health regulators if internal tests show possible contamination at their plants.

holy crap, batman - no wonder toxic stuff keeps winding up in our groceries!

untested medical devices: is your mom at risk?

despite the fact that congress ordered the fda to clean up this mess, the fda approved 228 medical devices without a single full-scale review between 2003 - 2007.

why? who was presi... oh. yeah. duh.

of course, they're probably low-risk items like bandages and tongue depre... what's that? they include metal hip joints, external defibrillators, and electrodes for pacemakers?

oh.

so the real issue seems to be which companies made these items, and who in the bush regime they paid to ignore congress's mandate. anyone got the skinny on either or both?

the big c

in yet another bit of holiday cheer, the international agency for research on cancer predicts that the incidence of the big c will double by 2030 - less than 12 years away.

(and - like all such pronouncements - we recommend taking their pitch with a full shaker of salt.)

too little vitamin d = heart trouble

in our ongoing battle to keep you alive just long enough to purchase fabulous else-wear, we bring you the news that not getting enough vitamin d (whether through milk, supplement, or sunshine) can have an adverse effect on your ticker.

now go buy some t-shirts or something, already. you know - ho, ho, go.