"Remembering Ritalin," Dr. Lawrence Diller Revisits Former Patients 15 Years Later

Editor's Choice

Main Category: ADHD
Also Included In: Psychology / Psychiatry;  Pediatrics / Children's Health;  Mental Health
Article Date: 16 May 2011 - 1:00 PDT

In 1996 a bestseller"Running on Ritalin", by Dr. Lawrence Diller, a pediatrician from Walnut Creek, triggered a national and international debate onADHD diagnosis and treatments. Today, the same doctor in his new book - "Remembering Ritalin" - spoke to some of those patients he had in the 1990s, now in their twenties and thirties to see how they have developed and coped.

In his new book, Dr. Diller provides some findings that many parents, teachers and health care professionals often wonder about. Such as:

• When is an ADHD diagnosis legitimate?
• When is ADHD diagnosis an oversimplified and harmful label?
• Have psychiatrists been too eager to medicate or overmedicate children?

In his new book, along with his patients in the 1990s, the author explains his findings and some of the insights provided by his former patients.

Put simply, the main thrust of the book is "How are his former patients doing now? 15 years later."

In his 1996 book Dr. Diller suggested that ADHD was being diagnosed too quickly in many cases. He believed that Ritalin was commonly being prescribed to children who might have responded effectively to tailored programs, home and school routines, and family therapy.

He warned that America's tolerance to many normal characteristics of childhood would narrow. Characteristics such as, forgetfulness, impulsivity, being easily distracted, daydreaming, and being unmotivated. Children may have those features without necessarily suffering from ADHD.

By being too eager to medicate a child, Dr. Diller wondered how many of them were being turned into lifelong patients unnecessarily.

There are approximately 4.5 million children with an ADHD diagnosis in the USA today, 5% of American children. Two-thirds of them are on some kind of medication to control their symptoms. A growing number of adults are now known as Generation Rx.

Dr. Diller says that about two in every ten of his former patients - now in their twenties and thirties - are significantly bothered with ADHD. He claims that a much higher percentage of his former patients graduated from college compared to some who were followed up in other studies and were prescribed Ritalin-type drugs.

Dr. Diller stresses he is not against medicines, he has been prescribing medications for over three decades. His concern is people's attitudes to accepting or prescribing just a pill, when perhaps diagnosis should be done more carefully, and other options should be considered either alongside the medication or as a first line of therapy.

"Remembering Ritalin"
Dr. Lawrence H. Diller

Written by Christian Nordqvist 

Princess Diana documentary to screen at Cannes

Keith Allen will debut his controversial film, ‘the inquest of the inquest’ of Princess Diana, at the festival as Unlawful Killing will not be shown in UK cinemas

Ben Child

guardian.co.uk, 10 May 2011, Guardian,  http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/may/10/princess-diana-documentary-cannes

‘What I found was horrifying’ … Keith Allen and Princess Diana. Photograph: Tim Rooke/Rex Features and Rex Features

Actor and film-maker Keith Allen will screen his controversial documentary about the death of Princess Diana in Cannes on 13 May.

Unlawful Killing, a labour of love developed over three years following extensive interviews with people who knew his subject, alleges that “dark forces” within the British establishment worked to cover up the true details of Diana’s death in 1997. It is described by Allen as “the inquest of the inquest” and has drawn controversy because it will show a photograph of the dying princess taken by paparazzi moments after her car crashed in a Paris tunnel.

The black-and-white image is reportedly so graphic that it was pixelated during the inquest into Diana’s fatal crash. It will not be shown in Britain because the film itself is not being shown in cinemas – due, Allen says, to lawyers who insisted on extensive cuts.

“Screening this film in Cannes for the world’s media will be both exhilarating and terrifying for me,” said the star of Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. “As far back as 2004, I had been intrigued by Mohamed Al Fayed’s unrelenting determination to seek answers to the questions surrounding the death of his son, Dodi and Princess Diana.

“By going ‘undercover’ at the inquest, I hoped to reconcile some of my own suspicions too – but what I experienced was horrifying. This film is, in short, the inquest of the inquest.”

Unlawful Killing will combine a recreation of the inquest and interviews with the late Tony Curtis, Howard Stern, Kitty Kelley, Mohamed Al Fayed, Piers Morgan and Michael Mansfield QC. Dave Stewart provides the original score.

Writing in the Guardian, Allen said: “Unlawful Killing is not about a conspiracy before the crash, but a provable conspiracy after the crash. A conspiracy organised not by a single scheming arch-fiend, but collectively by the British establishment – judges, lawyers, politicians, police chiefs, secret services, even newspaper editors – all of whom have been appointed to their positions because they are ‘a safe pair of hands’.

“Just as compass needles all point north without being told to, so these people instinctively know what is expected of them when the state’s interests are under threat and they act accordingly, quietly suppressing uncomfortable evidence or undermining the credibility of witnesses whose evidence contradicts the official narrative.”


******It seems that the second video, undergoes "difficulty" from time to time. 

"What Adults Can Learn from Kids" by Adora Svitak

WONDERFUL!!!!!

Child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids' big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups' willingness to learn from children as much as to teach.

About Adora Svitak

A prolific short story writer and blogger since age seven, Adora Svitak (now 12) speaks around the United States to adults and children as an advocate for literacy. Full bio and more links

"The Filter Bubble": What the Internet Is Hiding from You ~ Eli Pariser

and....What Do Google and Facebook Have in Common?

MoveOn wouldn't be possible without the open Internet. But according to our own Eli Pariser, the Internet itself is changing. His book on the topic, The Filter Bubble, comes out this week (you can check it out here).

In March, the TED conference invited him to preview the argument. When I talked to Eli beforehand, he was really nervous—in the audience were top executives from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and a number of other companies he critiques. But his call for an open, ethical Internet—he actually called out the Google founders and Bill Gates in the audience by name—got a standing ovation. And it's been burning up the TED website ever since.

We're sharing it today because we think it's a really important point. Increasingly, the Internet is hiding things from us, and we don't even know it. Take a moment to watch Eli's TED talk today:

The Filter Bubble, Eli's book, has been getting good reviews, too. Here's a particularly good one from author and 350.org organizer Bill McKibben:

"You spend half your life in Internet space, but trust me—you don't understand how it works. Eli Pariser's book is a masterpiece of both investigation and interpretation; he exposes the way we're sent down particular information tunnels, and he explains how we might once again find ourselves in a broad public square of ideas. This couldn't be a more interesting book; it casts an illuminating light on so many of our daily encounters."

If you're interested in the book, you can check it out by clicking on the image to the left or this link—all of Eli's profits from this email will go to MoveOn.org Civic Action.

It's not a given that the Internet will remain fertile ground for democracy. We need to make sure it does, and Eli's argument is an important part of that fight.

Thanks for all you do.

–Daniel and the MoveOn.org Civic Action Team

"Discipline" is not Gingrich's Biggest Problem-from Tim Murphy/Mother Jones

"Discipline" is not Newt Gingrich's Biggest Problem

— By Tim Murphy

| Wed May. 18, 2011 7:54 AM PDT

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has had a bad week. On Sunday, he criticized GOP Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to phase out Medicare as "social engineering," prompting party leaders to declare his candidacy dead only days after he officially announced it, and forcing Gingrich to personally apologize to Ryan. On Tuesday, Politico reported that Gingrich at one point had a six-figure tab at Tiffany's, the high-end jewlery store. He had a box of glitter dumped on his head at a fundraiser for the anti-gay group Minnesota Family Council. And he co-starred in aviral video clip in which an Iowa Republican encourages him to get out of the race "before you make a bigger fool of yourself."

Not good times, in other words, if you're Newt Gingrich.

So how did things get so bad so fast? 

The emerging consensus seems to be that Gingrich's problems stem from a lack of discipline—his tendency to flip from one idea to the next, possibly contradictory idea, without properly explaining himself. As Rich Galen, a former Gingrich aide, told Mike Allen: "This is what people in Washington knew would be the great weakness of a Newt presidential campaign: that he would say whatever came into his head, the moment it came into his head."

That's true-ish; Gingrich is not incredibly disciplined. But the more fundamental problem is this: The things that Newt Gingrich says are very frequently kind of nuts, and members of both parties seem to agree. The problem isn't so much that he can't keep straight whether the country is under assault from a "gay and secular fascism" or an atheist–Islamist agenda; it's that he thinks either one of those is a distinct possibility. There's a real tendency in covering electoral politics to blame campaign implosions on "discipline." Writing last week on former Virginia GOP Sen. George Allen's comeback bid, for instance, the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza explained that Allen's famous use of the obscure racial slur "macaca" demonstrated "a lack of discipline on Allen's part." (Another way of looking at it, given that Allen once kept an actual noose in his office, is that George Allen has, or at least had, a race problem.)

Discipline is a good quality for a candidate to have. But it only counts if you have a quality candidate.

Hold Senators accountable for voting to protect Big Oil subsidies!!!

Dear Friend,

On Tuesday night, 48 Senators, including three Democrats and all but two Republicans, put Big Oil before the American people and helped defeat a bill that would have ended tax breaks for the five biggest oil companies.

How could anyone vote against a bill that would have kept $21 billion of American taxpayers' money out of the pockets of cash-rich oil companies?

One big reason is oil money in our political process. A lot of it. Oil and gas companies spent $39.5 million lobbying congress in just the first quarter of this year, and have donated nearly $18 million to the 48 Senators who voted to protect oil subsidies.

I just signed a petition to hold these Senators accountable for putting Big Oil company profits and campaign contributions ahead of the American people. Join me by signing the petition now: http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/oil_subsidy_vote/?r_by=21125-3508588-kq8SX5x&rc=confemail 

---

Soldiers Waking Up

This video is intense, and compelling, in a powerfully irresistable way.... and a poignant testimony from some of our troops.


Soldiers Waking Up

The Republican War on Education

The Republican War on Education

The Patriarchy Is So Dada

The Patriarchy Is So Dada

The Narcissists Defending Dominique Strauss-Kahn

The Narcissists Defending Dominique Strauss-Kahn

The Unwisdom of Elites by Paul Krugman

OP-ED COLUMNIST

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: May 8, 2011

The past three years have been a disaster for most Western economies. The United States has mass long-term unemployment for the first time since the 1930s. Meanwhile, Europe’s single currency is coming apart at the seams. How did it all go so wrong?

Well, what I’ve been hearing with growing frequency from members of the policy elite — self-appointed wise men, officials, and pundits in good standing — is the claim that it’s mostly the public’s fault. The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness.

So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn’t just self-serving, it’s dead wrong.

The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess weren’t responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people — in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own catastrophic mistakes.

Let me focus mainly on what happened in the United States, then say a few words about Europe.

These days Americans get constant lectures about the need to reduce the budget deficit. That focus in itself represents distorted priorities, since our immediate concern should be job creation. But suppose we restrict ourselves to talking about the deficit, and ask: What happened to the budget surplus the federal government had in 2000?

The answer is, three main things. First, there were the Bush tax cuts, which added roughly $2 trillion to the national debt over the last decade. Second, there were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which added an additional $1.1 trillion or so. And third was the Great Recession, which led both to a collapse in revenue and to a sharp rise in spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs.

So who was responsible for these budget busters? It wasn’t the man in the street.

President George W. Bush cut taxes in the service of his party’s ideology, not in response to a groundswell of popular demand — and the bulk of the cuts went to a small, affluent minority.

Similarly, Mr. Bush chose to invade Iraq because that was something he and his advisers wanted to do, not because Americans were clamoring for war against a regime that had nothing to do with 9/11. In fact, it took a highly deceptive sales campaign to get Americans to support the invasion, and even so, voters were never as solidly behind the war as America’s political and pundit elite.

Finally, the Great Recession was brought on by a runaway financial sector, empowered by reckless deregulation. And who was responsible for that deregulation? Powerful people in Washington with close ties to the financial industry, that’s who. Let me give a particular shout-out to Alan Greenspan, who played a crucial role both in financial deregulation and in the passage of the Bush tax cuts — and who is now, of course, among those hectoring us about the deficit.

So it was the bad judgment of the elite, not the greediness of the common man, that caused America’s deficit. And much the same is true of the European crisis.

Needless to say, that’s not what you hear from European policy makers. The official story in Europe these days is that governments of troubled nations catered too much to the masses, promising too much to voters while collecting too little in taxes. And that is, to be fair, a reasonably accurate story for Greece. But it’s not at all what happened in Ireland and Spain, both of which had low debt and budget surpluses on the eve of the crisis.

The real story of Europe’s crisis is that leaders created a single currency, the euro, without creating the institutions that were needed to cope with booms and busts within the euro zone. And the drive for a single European currency was the ultimate top-down project, an elite vision imposed on highly reluctant voters.

Does any of this matter? Why should we be concerned about the effort to shift the blame for bad policies onto the general public?

One answer is simple accountability. People who advocated budget-busting policies during the Bush years shouldn’t be allowed to pass themselves off as deficit hawks; people who praised Ireland as a role model shouldn’t be giving lectures on responsible government.

But the larger answer, I’d argue, is that by making up stories about our current predicament that absolve the people who put us here there, we cut off any chance to learn from the crisis. We need to place the blame where it belongs, to chasten our policy elites. Otherwise, they’ll do even more damage in the years ahead.

Marc Gold travels Asia paying it forward through little acts of kindness

Marc Gold travels Asia paying it forward through little acts of kindness

Study: US Quietly Paid Families For Vaccine-Linked Autism Cases « CBS Los Angeles

Study: US Quietly Paid Families For Vaccine-Linked Autism Cases « CBS Los Angeles

Mother's Day with the Dalai Lama

5/10/2011 11:46:03 AM

by Margret Aldrich

With an impressive entourage of Tibetan monks, a Nobel Peace Prize, and the respect of millions around the world, it’s strange to remember that His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama was once just a kid at his mother’s side. But in his May 8 address “Peace through Inner Peace” at the University of Minnesota—which happened to coincide with Mother’s Day—he fondly invoked her memory. His Holiness shared stories of riding on his mother’s shoulders and mischievously “steering” by tugging her hair to the right or left, pouting if she didn’t obey.

He also gave her credit for shaping his compassionate nature. “My warm-heartedness originally came from my mother,” he said, an easy grin bringing the thousands of attendees in close. His Holiness went on to speculate that those who receive maximum affection from their mothers as children have much greater inner peace in their adult lives. (If it was Father’s Day, I like to think he would have included you, too, dads.)

According the Dalai Lama’s website, he was just two years old when he was recognized as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, partly because he was able to indentify the personal belongings of the previous Dalai Lama, exclaiming “It’s mine! It’s mine!” when presented with each. He began his monastic education and study of revelatory inner peace at the age of six.

Over the past week, I’ve been talking about peace with my own young children. Since the death of Osama bin Laden, we’ve driven past flocks of protestors holding up signs promoting nonviolence. Through my elementary explanations, four-year-old Abe has learned that peace means being gentle friends, and little brother Asher has learned that holding up two fingers in a “V” gets cheers from protest sign–holders. It’s a start.

In his Mother’s Day speech, the Dalai Lama taught listeners that respect, compassion, and nonviolence are key starting points for achieving peace. “Mentally, physically, emotionally, we are the same,” he said, no matter your religious background. He also advised that we should focus on secularism when discussing moral issues. “Secular doesn’t mean disrespect for religion,” he explained, “but respect for all religions—including non-believers.”

His Holiness took a few questions after his talk, and one came from a nine-year-old who asked, “If you could completely solve one problem, what would it be?” The Dalai Lama, with his amused, trademark chuckle, had a simple answer: “I don’t know.” What he knew without a doubt was that solving the world’s problems and achieving peace requires the cooperation of us all.

As for the mothers the Dalai Lama acknowledged, we can strive to embrace compassion and teach the warm-heartedness that might make our own kids pick up the quest for peace and say, “It’s mine.”

Image by IMs BILDARKIV, licensed under Creative Commons.

 

Is American Higher Ed Screwed? Conservatives Try to Privatize College As Tuition Soars | Economy | AlterNet

Is American Higher Ed Screwed? Conservatives Try to Privatize College As Tuition Soars | Economy | AlterNet

Big Pharma

A pertinent video from YouTube:

Dollars for Doctors How Industry Money Reaches Physicians

http://www.propublica.org/series/dollars-for-docs

Med Schools Flunk at Keeping Faculty Off Pharma Speaking Circuit

http://www.propublica.org/article/medical-schools-policies-on-faculty-and-drug-company-speaking-circuit

Big Pharma & Cancer: IS There A Cure?

From Zimbio.com   Written by skins on Sep-30-07 2:13pm

I'm going to take a break from my 9/11 articles here for a moment to discuss something that's been on my mind for a few days. Cancer. I know this is a touchy subject because a lot of you have had relatives succumb to the disease or know someone who's life has been affected by it, but what I have to say is just my opinion. Remember that...

Is it possible that there is already a medical cure for cancer and that the pharmaceutical companies and governments of the world are keeping it from us? I believe that it is quite possible.

Cancer is multi-billion dollar a year INDUSTRY for pharmaceutical companies and the purpose of an industry is to drive revenue. And why not? For the government, pharmaceutical companies contribute over $100,000,000 (that's one hundred million dollars) a year in campaign funds. If there was a cure, it is in everyone's best interests to keep the sick--sick, in order to continue driving revenue into the business that in turn funds government campaigns. Do you really think the Global Elitists really care about how many lives they are destroying? No, they don't. All they are interested in is control and if they can keep us sick, they are at the advantage. Cancer kills more Americans and Canadians per year than World War 2 did. They are not interested in sharing a cure with the world, they are just interested in TREATMENT.

The World Health Organization says that 80% of Cancer is environmentally caused yet instead of putting the money towards prevention, it goes towards treatment. In an article in the New York Times on 7/12/05, it states that a new wave of drugs were being released that could extend a persons life by a few months. The cost is $100,000/year per patient. Therefore, even just 100 patients equals $10,000,000 in revenue. That's a staggering amount of money that will go to government campaign funding and more Cancer treatment.

So as you can see, Cancer is a very lucrative business for everyone involved. The more treatments they can come up with, the more money they can generate by keeping you alive longer so you can pay for them, which in turn keeps government campaigns funded and generates more revenue for the Cancer industry to come up with more treatments. It's really a vicious circle and they prey on our emotions to keep us line, so we will not only pay for treatments, but also we will give generously to donation campaigns.

It's no surprise that there is a direct correlation between medical breakthroughs and campaign drives. I saw 2 young girls the other day at the subway on my way to work holding their little donation boxes, asking people to donate money to help find a cure. After a little digging I found that just a couple of months ago there were some articles published that had to deal with a new medical breakthrough in Cancer treatment. There's that word again, treatment. Those girls should not have been saying, "Help us find a cure," they should have been shouting, "Help us find a treatment, suckers."

And yes, we are suckers. We buy into the lie that there couldn't possibly be a cure for this disease. Even though the first recorded case of Cancer was in 1500b.c., in ancient Egypt. It was recorded on papyrus and documented 8 cases of tumors occurring on the breast. You mean to tell me that in 3500 years, scientists haven't been able to find a cure? What are we paying these people for?

I'm not trying to make light of the situation here, I just think it's a very good possibility, based on all the time the pharmaceutical companies and the governments spend in bed, that a cure for this disease has already been found and is hidden. I'm not looking for a conspiracy here, I'm just looking at the facts and the facts tell me that Cancer is big business and anyone that owns a business never wants it to fail or go bankrupt.

Would you?

Study Details Scope of Big Pharma's Crimes

DAVID CALLAHAN

Public Citizen recently released the most authoritative study yet conducted on the stunning scope ofillegal activity by pharmaceutical companies. The study -- done by Sammy Almashat, Charles Preston, Timothy Waterman, and Sidney Wolfe -- looked at federal and state government settlements with these companies going back to 1991. It found that a total of "165 civil and/or criminal settlements of $1 million or more were made between the government and pharmaceutical companies from 1991 to 2010, with settlement amounts totaling $19.81 billion."

The data presented in the report is fascinating, and must reading for anyone interested in the chronic abuses of Big Pharma. But maybe the most important points of the study come in its conclusion:

Clearly, the continuing increase in violations by pharmaceutical companies despite such large financial settlements is an indication that the current system oenforcement is not working. The lack of criminal prosecution that would result injailing of company executives has been cited as a major reason for the continuing large-scale fraud, in addition to the fact that current settlement payouts may not be a sufficient deterrent. For example, GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer have paid out a combined total of $7.44 billion in financial penalties overthe past 20 years. These two companies made a combined $16.5 billion in global net profits in one year alone. Thus, these financial penalties, although increasing, remain a very small fraction of company net profits and therefore do not provide a sufficient deterrent against further violations. Increased punishments may be needed, such as significantly larger financial penalties and, if appropriate, felony prosecution—including jail—for company executives engaging in criminal behavior. . . .

This more aggressive level of enforcement would be based on applying thedoctrine,” a legal precedent that holds top corporate executives liable for illegal conduct within their company, even if they didn’t know about or participate in it. The main purpose of employing this standard is to force companies to “…implement measures that will prevent [these] violations in the first instanceparticularly in cases where public safety is at risk. In addition to the prospect of jail time for individual executives, a felony conviction could result in their companies becoming ineligible for reimbursement from federal and state healthprograms, a critical source of pharmaceutical company revenues.

Holding actual individuals responsible is the usual response to crime sprees, except when those sprees are orchestrated by corporate executives. Until that changes, America's white collar crime epidemic will continue.

Rapidly Increasing Criminal and Civil Penalties

Big Pharma's Shameful Secret - Bloomberg News

Although this is a report from 2005, nothing has changed.  In fact the corruption in the pharmaceuticals industry has morphed into a much larger entity.

Most Clinical Trials Stopped Early for "perceived" benefit later turned out false - JAMA

Thu, 3 Nov 2005

A six part Special Report by Bloomberg News reveals that "Every year, drug companies spend $14 billion to test experimental substances on humans. Across the U.S., the centers that do the testing--and the regulators who watch them--allow scores of human test subjects to be injured or killed."

Big Pharma's Shameful Secret-- http://www.bloomberg.com/specialreport/ provides corroborating evidence to support our consistent criticism over the years about corrupt clinical trial practices and a dysfunctional system that protects itself while sacrificing both the integrity of research findings and the safey of human subjects--whether they are patients or healthy volunteers. See, for example, "dirty dozen" corrupt research review practices: http://www.ahrp.org/testimonypresentations/armymeddept.php

The Bloomberg Special Report: is a massive indictment of the pharmaceutical industry and its corrupt practices which would not be possible without the complicity of the stakeholders in government and academia. This report is an indictment of those who profit from the exploitation of desperate, poor, and disenfranchised people--immigrants, children, homeless people, and others who are used and abused as guinea pigs.

Drug Industry Human Testing Masks Death, Injury, Compliant FDA:
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=aspHJ_sFen1s&refer=home#

War Hero's Death at Houston Clinic Follows Years of FDA Neglect:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=specialreport&sid=aAC1o70dkzcI&refer=news#

North Carolina Artist Hobbled After Doctor Suggested Drug Test:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=specialreport&sid=aGp_iOhE1Mo4&refer=news#

Parents of Babies Who Died in Delaware Tests Weren't Warned:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=specialreport&sid=a13F_Mo6vzAs&refer=news#

Doctor Who Died in Drug Test Was Betrayed by System He Trusted:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=specialreport&sid=agPpkV1bu7OU&refer=news#

Miami Test Center Lures Poor Immigrants as Human Guinea Pigs:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=specialreport&sid=amgWGeDrNJtg&refer=news#

Company CEOs of 15 pharma companies refused to be interviewed.

The report also lays bare the utterly dysfunctional IRB gatekeeping system whose inherent conflicts of interest only members of the IRB community fail to recognize.

Indeed, Dr. Greg Koski, former head of OHRP, the federal agency that is supposed to oversee federally funded clinical trials, and the IRB system, now acknowledges: "It's not really a 'few bad apples' problem. We need to create a system that grows better apples."

The Bloomberg report focuses on commercial IRBs and their rubber stamping approval--i.e., service for pay. To illustrate but one example: Angela Bowen, who runs Western IRB, the largest commercial IRB in the country, oversaw clinical trials "for which doctors were criminally charged and jailed for lying to the FDA and endangering the lives of trial participants."

But no actiion was taken against Western. Owen told Bloomberg reporters that she "didn't see human safety issues in those trials."

This Special Report also takes a critical look at the FDA and its colossal failure to protect human subjects of clinical trials. Dr. Joanne Rhoads, director of FDA's Scientific Investigations acknowledges FDA's inability to monitor clinical trials for safety: "You cannot rely on the inspection process to get quality into the system. I know many people find this not OK, but that's just the truth."

Dr. Michael Hensley, a pediatrician who was an FDA investigator (1977-1982) says the agency "has become less active in clinical trial oversight in recent years....The folks at the FDA stopped enforcing the rules several years ago. The FDA's backbone has been Jell-O."

However, the Bloomberg Report suffers from one major flaw--which is the illusion that academic IRBs are more reputable and reliable in ensuring the safety of human subjects than those not affiliated with academia. This illusion has been woven into the Report by several disingenuous academics who have themselves actively supported efforts of the research industrial complex--a tight and secretive partnership of stakeholers comprising pharma-government-and academia--to circumvent existing federal regulatory safeguards for human subjects.

For example, the Report cites academics who supported efforts aimed at redefining "consent" and "assent" to research by a minor. Assent is essentially an uniformed agreement by a child to do what grown ups tell him / her. Academics in public office and on government advisory committees supported efforts to circumvent parental authority and parental responsibility-- in order to facilitate research. Parental responsibility is to protect children from participation in research which in their judgement is not the children's best interest.

But academic research stakeholders rationalized as follows: "as we understandably increase the extent to which needed research is conducted on vulnerable populations, such as children, it may well be necessary to redefine our notions of consent and assent for purposes of recruiting subjects." Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (2000) 28:330-331 See:http://www.ahrp.org/children/RiskBearingChildren.php and Testimony submitted to OHRP (2001)http://www.ahrp.org/testimonypresentations/sharavCassidyOHRP.php

It can be argued that academic based IRBs deserve no less condemnation than do commercial IRBs--perhaps even more. Academic affiliations have been used to mislead the public into a false sense of trust. A case in point is the the government sponsored, multi-million dollar ARDS experiment that was conducted at academic based institutions belonging to the ARDS Network. In this controversial experiment 861 critically ill patients with acute lung injury were exposed to unjustifiable risks of death. The experiment violated the patients' fundamental human right to informed consent; as well as just about every federal research safeguard, resulting in preventable human casualties.

Thus, academia--which is under the influence of does not confer higher ethical standards in clinical trials-

USA Today reports (below) that an analysis by Dr. Victor Montori (Mayo Clinic) of 143 published randomized clinical trials that "were stopped early," whose investigators reported in joournal articles that the trials were stopped because "the treatment looked so effective"-- turned out NOT to be effective: "Unfortunately, what looks too good to be true often is".

Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice

By cgull8m

Canadian researchers find a simple cure for cancer, but major pharmaceutical companies are not interested.
Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada have cured cancer last week, yet there is a little ripple in the news or in TV. It is a simple technique using very basic drug. The method employs dichloroacetate, which is currently used to treat metabolic disorders. So, there is no concern of side effects or about their long term effects.


This drug doesn’t require a patent, so anyone can employ it widely and cheaply compared to the costly cancer drugs produced by major pharmaceutical companies.


Canadian scientists tested this dichloroacetate (DCA) on human’s cells; it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells and left the healthy cells alone. It was tested on Rats inflicted with severe tumors; their cells shrank when they were fed with water supplemented with DCA. The drug is widely available and the technique is easy to use, why the major drug companies are not involved? Or the Media interested in this find?


In human bodies there is a natural cancer fighting human cell, the mitochondria, but they need to be triggered to be effective. Scientists used to think that these mitochondria cells were damaged and thus ineffective against cancer. So they used to focus on glycolysis, which is less effective in curing cancer and more wasteful. The drug manufacturers focused on this glycolysis method to fight cancer. This DCA on the other hand doesn’t rely on glycolysis instead on mitochondria; it triggers the mitochondria which in turn fights the cancer cells.


The side effect of this is it also reactivates a process called apoptosis. You see, mitochondria contain an all-too-important self-destruct button that can't be pressed in cancer cells. Without it, tumors grow larger as cells refuse to be extinguished. Fully functioning mitochondria, thanks to DCA, can once again die.


With glycolysis turned off, the body produces less lactic acid, so the bad tissue around cancer cells doesn't break down and seed new tumors.


Pharmaceutical companies are not investing in this research because DCA method cannot be patented, without a patent they can’t make money, like they are doing now with their AIDS Patent. Since the pharmaceutical companies won’t develop this, the article says other independent laboratories should start producing this drug and do more research to confirm all the above findings and produce drugs. All the groundwork can be done in collaboration with the Universities, who will be glad to assist in such research and can develop an effective drug for curing cancer.


You can access the original research for this cancer here.


This article wants to raise awareness for this study, hope some independent companies and small startup will pick up this idea and produce these drugs, because the big companies won’t touch it for a long time.