surviveCANCER Foundation

As long as I am on a bent toward the pharmaceutical industry, here is another shot at them. Recently this was posted in one of the groups I participate in. Now understand that I am not anti-business. All businesses have one common goal: to make money. If they do not make money, the shareholders do not get returns on their investments, employees to not get paid and none of these things are good. Yet somewhere along the line, there appears to be a slight stretching of the common good for the sake of profit.

In a normal manufacturing arena where I spent many years of my adult work life, a typical markup from manufacturer to retail is in the 400%– 600% range. That much is needed to pay all the bills and give distributors and retailers a profit as well. If they do not make money on it, they will not sell the product. Now I fight for every last penny I spend by shopping sales, closeouts, etc… One of my favorite places to shop is EBAY, the 24 hour giant garage sale. Yet I do realize that everyone has to make a profit or there is no motive for things to be made and new products to be introduced to the marketplace. Profits are not evil. If there were no profits to be had, you would not have had a place to work. Every single person is the beneficiary of some type of manufacturing profit.

The following was taken from a LIFE EXTENSION FOUNDATION newsletter. Again, this was presented by someone else, but is certainly worth noting.

Did you ever wonder how much it costs a drug company for the active ingredient in prescription medications? Some people think it must cost a lot, since many drugs sell for more than $2.00 per tablet. We did a search of offshore chemical synthesizers that supply the active ingredients found in drugs approved by the FDA. As we have revealed in past issues of Life Extension, a significant percentage of drugs sold in the United States contain active ingredients made in other countries. In our independent investigation of how much profit drug companies really make, we obtained the actual price of active ingredients used in some of the most popular drugs sold in America.

NOTICE THE PERCENTAGE OF MARKUP. THIS IS ASTOUNDING! PROFIT IS ONE THING, BUT THIS GOES BEYOND THE PALE. THE PERCENTAGES ARE NOT, REPEAT NOT TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS!
NOTE: Xanax is king at 569,958%!

The data below speaks for itself:

Celebrex: 100 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $130.27
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.60
Percent markup: 21,712%

Claritin: 10 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $215.17
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.71
Percent markup: 30,306%

Keflex: 250 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $157.39
Cost of general active ingredients: $1.88
Percent markup: 8,372%

Lipitor: 20 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $272.37
Cost of general active ingredients: $5.80
Percent markup: 4,696%

Norvasc: 10 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $188.29
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.14
Percent markup: 134,493%

Paxil: 20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $220.27
Cost of general active ingredients: $7.60
Percent markup: 2,898%

Prevacid: 30 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $44.77
Cost of general active ingredients: $1.01
Percent markup: 34,136%

Prilosec : 20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $360..97
Cost of general active ingredients $0.52
Percent markup: 69,417%

Prozac: 20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets) : $247.47
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.11
Percent markup: 224,973%

Tenormin: 50 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $104.47
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.13
Percent markup: 80,362%

Vasotec: 10 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $102.37
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.20
Percent markup: 51,185%

Xanax: 1 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets) : $136.79
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.024
Percent markup: 569,958%

Zestril: 20 mg
Cons! umer pri ce (100 tablets) $89.89
Cost of general active ingredients $3.20
Percent markup: 2,809%

Zithromax: 600 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $1,482.19
Cost of general active ingredients: $18.78
Percent markup: 7,892%

Zocor: 40 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $350.27
Cost of general active ingredients: $8.63
Percent markup: 4,059%

Zoloft: 50 mg
Consumer price: $206.87
Cost of general active ingredients: $1.75
Percent markup: 11,821%

Hand in hand with the discussion on Herceptin is the topic of “creating” diseases that only the drug companies can cure. Would you believe….?

In the past 6 months or so, I have seen quite a number of articles on this very topic. Again, here today is yet another one dealing with “created illnesses” in order to bolster sales of drugs which are then marketed through grassroots sales campaigns by getting the end user (you) to ask your doctor to prescribe the drug in question. This short clip came from the PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE MEDICINE. Think about what is being posted here. It is irritating, disgusting and frankly borders on unethical. Yet we put up with this very thing day in and day out. We have our congressmen and senators in Washington actually sponsoring bills that would make this practice a protected entity, free from lawsuit and public scrutiny no matter what the consequences. This is not right. You need to be aware that we are being scammed.

I am not saying that there is not a place for the pharmaceutical industry. I am saying that we need to be aware that their benevolence is not altruistic but profit motivated in a very, very excessive way. This is not right. We go to the medical profession to help us when we are truly in need. We do not need to be faced with more and more and more unnecessary poisons stuffed into our bodies simply for the profit concerns of a group of companies.

Be careful what you ask for, you may just get it!

According to a set of essays published in the Public Library of Science Medicine, drug companies are systematically inventing non-existent diseases, or exaggerating minor ones, in order to sell more of their products.

The practice turns healthy people into patients, and places many of them at risk of medically induced harm.
Minor, normal problems, such as the symptoms of menopause, have been "medicalized" into treatable illnesses, and risk factors like high cholesterol are being treated as diseases in their own right. Conditions including female sexual dysfunction, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and "restless legs syndrome" have all been exaggerated and promoted by companies hoping to sell drugs. Even ordinary shyness is often defined by drug companies as a social anxiety disorder to be treated with antidepressants.

Richard Ley, of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, pointed out that some countries, including Britain, have legal safeguards against drug industry "disease mongering." Most of the criticisms, he argued, apply primarily to countries like the United States, where drugs can be advertised directly to patients.

SOURCES:
Public Library of Science Medicine April 11, 2006; 3(4)

Times Online April 11, 2006

Lately there has been a lot of discussion in several of the medical groups I participate in dealing with prayer. Much has been said both pro and con about the power of prayer. To those of you who do not believe in God or are at best agnostic, this may seem like a foolish thing to discuss. Yet the power of prayer goes to the very heart of Christian belief (and many other beliefs as well).

From a Christian perspective, here are some of my thoughts. Most people tend to think with a very narrow focus, especially at times of great stress and cancer certainly can fall into that category. The question that begs to be answered is whether or not you are seeking the will of God or you are seeking a solution to your malady. On a broader scope, it becomes a question of whether the Christian population as a whole is praying for a specific solution or again for the will of God. So, what’s the difference? Lots. And, how does the decision you make about what you are praying for and/or what the corporate body of believers is praying for effect the healing process?

I do firmly believe that without the power of pray to support and uplift individuals and others such as the family members in a time of crisis, a very powerful aid and comfort is lost. In my own case, I look at not just how I researched and what I did to help put my cancer at bay, I consider that the choices I made were truly by divine intervention. By definition alone, a decision means that at least two choices were possible, if not more. How do you know what is right or wrong? Some things appear as black and white while most really are just shades of grey. So which do you choose? This is not like picking a piece of candy or the right color to paint your bathroom. We are down to the nuts and bolts of life, death, pain, suffering, success or catastrophic failure. Perhaps you rely upon your deductive powers. Perhaps you flip coins or do the “rock/paper/scissors” thing. No matter what, you come up with a means of choosing.

I simply ask for guidance. I am not so smart or so good or so conceited to think I know all the answers. Now I am not expecting a revelation like Nebuchadnezzar had with the finger of God writing upon a wall, but I do expect to have peace with the decision I make. When faced with a difficult choice and pray for help, I get help in the form of peace. When it does not feel right after prayerful consideration, I go with something else. Sounds silly or trite? Sound like I am a head case? According to the doctors, I died a year ago. Must have made some pretty good guesses to get this far. With no prior medical training, the odds on success for surviving what I have by the means I did it are pretty remarkable. I lay that to the power of prayer.

How you make your decisions is your business. Whether you believe in the power of prayer by yourself and others on your behalf is also for you and you alone. But to just shut out the possibility that God exists and prayer has power is a braver choice than I care to make.

What brought this up as a topic was as mentioned earlier, a discussion in several news groups about prayer. The heading of one of the posted comments read: “By now a lot of you will have seen mention of the new study of 1800 heart patients, which showed that intercessory prayer by Christian groups who did not know the patient was at best useless for recovery, and at worst positively damaging.”

On the face of it, this looks dire for those of us who believe in God and the power of prayer. But, you need to look further to understand exactly what happened.

The following article was part of that discussion. One of the things posted was this commentary by Jeffery Bishop, a UK lecturer in Medical ethics and law.

The highlighted links are to the original studies and other comments made about the relevance of prayer. What follows is the article by Jeffery Bishop which is worth the time to read.

By Jeffrey P. Bishop
(April 5, 2006)

God under the microscope: Prayer is not subject to scientific observation, says Bishop.

Related STNews articles

• Taking the STEP prayer study in context

• Prescribed prayer lacks punch

I must admit that I find studies that attempt to find correlations between intercessory prayer and health outcomes a bit odd. The Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer, or STEP, is only the most recent study on intercessory prayer, and while others have already attempted to show some sort of correlation between intercessory prayer and distance healing, we have only mixed results so far.

STEP claimed to be the largest prayer study ever conducted, and it used a sample of 1,802 cardiac bypass patients from six hospitals to measure the effects of intercessory, or third-party, prayer. It seems to be more rigorous and seems to address issues that the other studies do not, but I want to interrogate the dissonance between the philosophy of science that underpins such studies and the theological/spiritual construct that underpins the practice of prayer.

Clinicians engage in scientific research in order to improve diagnosis and treatment. So I would like to play out the scenarios in which this research proves useful. The point of scientific investigation is that we just do not know what we will find. With all such studies there are three potential outcomes: positive correlation, no correlation, or inverse correlation. In other words, STEP might have shown that prayer assists health outcomes, prayer has no effect on outcomes or prayer worsens outcomes.

What is the motivation behind these studies?

Let us suppose that STEP had shown that intercessory prayer has a positive correlation ¬ those for whom prayer is offered have fewer complications, statistically speaking. Would we then be in a position to offer prayer to a patient who is about to undergo coronary artery bypass grafting? What if the patient’s belief system is atheism, and they believe distance healing through the power of the mind to be wishful thinking and incompatible with current evidence? Would those of us who practice medicine still make the recommendation for this person to submit to intercessory prayer? Would we call a patient who refuses to have intercessory prayer non-adherent or non-compliant?

Clearly, there would be ethical problems to sort out if prayer has a positive correlation. Some patients will not want to enter into pre-modern practices like prayer, even if scientific evidence, which would still be weak, has shown some benefit.

Or suppose, as is true of all interventions, that prayer has really serious side-effects, or even that intercessory prayer is shown to have a correlation with worsening complications ¬ people pray for you and you do worse. Would it then be incumbent upon doctors to advise patients not to pray? Would those whose faith is more important than life itself be considered reckless for praying? Would we try to stop parents from praying for their children because this could potentially be harmful to them, at least to some percentage of them? I can imagine Child Protective Services getting involved to take children away from parents who persisted in such pre-modern practices shown by science now to be harmful.

Or let us suppose that there is no correlation between intercessory prayer and complications, which is in fact what STEP found. What now? Do we give our patients who pray that knowing smile that says, “Well at least it won’t hurt you if you pray?” Of course doctors would never do such a thing. But armed with scientific knowledge, doctors have done far more serious and grave things than looking askance at a patient’s odd, magical thinking.

I cannot imagine that those of us who practice medicine would change our practices based on any one of the potential outcomes of these sorts of studies. So then what is the purpose in doing them?

Perhaps these studies are done because some think that medicine needs to be a little more human. Certainly an openness to the patient’s belief system ¬ which often includes something like prayer ¬ might help to keep the humanity in medicine. But then, if that is true, showing that prayer works ¬ scientifically speaking ¬ would go against the very impulse to humanize, for to say that prayer is important only if it ”works” misses the point about the importance and coherence of patient belief systems to maintaining their dignity.

Or, perhaps these studies help to affirm the faith of those of us with religious faith ¬ or to put it more palatably for those secularists who prefer to be spiritual and not religious ¬ to those of us with spiritual longings or profound respect for the mystery of the world. Perhaps by showing that there is scientific evidence to what we have always believed, we feel vindicated before the judgment seat of reason or science. People of faith have often lived with a little embarrassment as faith is often claimed to be irrational, as if faith might need science to prove to us once and for all that we are not irrational ¬ as if science is the arbiter of all truth and wisdom.

Or is it really just that doctors need one more tool in their toolboxes. Perhaps these studies really are about finding all potential things that might help or harm patients. But it is not as though doctors need another tool ¬ prayer. Using prayer as an instrument reduces prayer to something it is not: a means to control the world. Certainly there are more effective tools than prayer, for if there had been a clear correlation between prayer and health outcomes, it would already be included in the toolbox.

Philosophy of science and the theological question

Motivation for studying intercessory prayer aside, there are still much deeper problems with attempts to study intercessory prayer. To understand this point, I shall have to engage in a little philosophical reflection on science, although doing so inevitably does injustice to the complexity of the philosophy of science.

The purpose of science is to say what is true across many instances. Science tries to say, this elephant is like that elephant, in order to say what is true in all elephants, or at least in a percentage of all elephants. In research into therapeutics, the scientist attempts to hold a myriad of variables constant in order to control for some intervention, be it a pill, a surgical intervention, or in this instance, prayer.

But what is most interesting to me is the theological point that follows this philosophical point. What people of faith believe is that if prayer works and someone is healed, we are dealing with a unique event unlike all other events and thus, by definition, it cannot be reproduced. People of faith have never used prayer to efficiently control the world. Sure, people of faith have most certainly prayed for help in times of trouble and illness and death. But people of faith have always understood that if God acts, it is by divine motivation. It is the graciousness of the action of God.

Moreover, to say that these studies on intercessory prayer have nothing to do with God, as STEP claims, means that they are not studying prayer at all, but some secularized and “scientized,” pale and pathetic remnant of it. To pull prayer out of its theological, religious and spiritual context is to pull something out that is not prayer. So just what is it that these scientists are studying? Whatever it is, it is not prayer as I understand it.

Jeffrey P. Bishop is principal lecturer in medical ethics and law, Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth (UK).

One of the keys to surviving cancer is the alteration of eating habits (nutrition). We are creatures of habit and that habit is primarily dictated by society. Any time you turn on a television, a radio, open a newspaper or magazine, you are assaulted by the “junk food” industry. Part of my past life was working as a store manager for several major chains. Prior to cancer, there were not many who ate more junk food than I.

I do not believe that the bad diet actually caused the cancer to happen, but I can assure you upon diligent research that my eating habits certainly fed the cancer in my body. No question about it.

The further I have followed the research, the more I have discovered that nutrition plays a very, very significant role in fighting all forms of disease in general. The actual statistics published by the AMA show that 73% of all diseases are directly related to nutrition. Yet, as noted on our website elsewhere, the average medical doctor receives a total of 2 ½ hours of coursework during his entire medical career studying nutrition and its effects.

I recently heard Andrew Weil speak on NPR. He too stated that while in Harvard Medical School, he received one lecture on nutrition that lasted approximately ½ hour. That was it! What is wrong with this picture? Who is kidding who? The very governing body of the medical profession says that ¾ of all diseases we get are related to our diets yet nobody is trained in nutrition.

I wish I had started counting earlier on in the process, but I have had literally SCORES of people tell me that their cancer doctors have told them that nutrition is not really important. A very large number of these same doctors have even gone so far as to tell people that eating right/well actually just feeds the cancer and makes it grow faster. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Hand in hand with this subject is the food we purchase from the local store. I just completed a very “unscientific” study of the keeping properties of “fresh” tomatoes. If you have ever gardened or purchased fresh tomatoes from a roadside stand that are naturally grown, you know that the storage life of really ripe, juicy tomatoes is measured in days. I went to the local grocery store and bought 6 Roma tomatoes and set them in the refrigerator. In 7 weeks, NOT days, two developed mold on one end and the balance just shriveled up. WHY , is the question to ask yourself.

Part of the answer lies in genetic alteration of what are known as heirloom stock. Heirloom seeds/plants are the original, unaltered, untreated plants as were grown for literally centuries. Today, however with the advent of hybrids, you can get faster growth, deeper color, and when gene alteration takes place or special treatment programs are introduced, you can literally alter the chemical makeup of the fruit itself. Newer is not necessarily better. Also adding to the issue is the use of commercially manufactured fertilizer.

For centuries, man used organic fertilizers (manure, composted vegetation, etc…) to replenish the soils. But with the rise of agribusiness replacing the small farmers starting in the 30’s with the depression, came the need to boost productivity and reduce costs. At least those were considered the driving forces to increased output. That increase in output brought a decrease in natural nutrients in the soil to feed the plants and the downward spiral began.

The soil we raise things in has been depleted. That is why fertilizers are used today where 75 years ago, they were unheard of. If you farmed, you used manure from livestock, not chemicals out of a bag. It’s just like taking supplements and vitamins from a bottle rather than natural food sources. If you take in only vitamin C, for instance, rather than eating an orange, you still get the C. BUT you miss all the other phytonutrients and bioflavinoids that naturally occur that synergize with the C in the orange. The same thing happens when you replace natural nutrients in the soil with chemicals. The natural nutrients derived from dead/decaying plant matter have a plethora of other trace elements and microorganisms that no chemical can replicate. Those same trace minerals/elements are taken up into the plant and stored in each living cell. When you use chemicals, the chemicals are stored in those cells. Similar but definitely not matching.

Commercially grown vegetables can have over 1,500 chemicals sprayed on them or used in the nutrients to feed them that do not need to be reported. EVERY SINGLE CHEMICAL USED IS A HEALTH HAZARD! Every last chemical is a poison that is registered with poison control center as potentially fatal, some simply by contact.

There has been much written about this over the years, but for the most part, very few pay attention to it, myself included. Somewhere along the line, we as a culture and nation must wake up to the reality of what commercial farming has cost us health-wise. It will only worsen.

Point of interest on the subject of soil depletion and chemical fertilizers.

A farmer in New Zealand spent a great deal of time researching why a large number of his sheep were developing cancer. He was able eventually to pinpoint the cause of cancer in his sheep and that lead him to the cure. He was able to cause cancerous tumors in his sheep at will and he was able to make the tumors go away every time. The cause that he pinpoints is the simultaneous over-phosphating of the soil with artificial fertilizers and the simultaneous depletion of the trace mineral content of the soil. His book, Cancer: Cause and Cure, is a classic and I recommend it as a simple chronology of the events that led him to his conclusion.

I would never go so far as to make the claim that cancer in people is caused by the same factors, but it certainly is worth noting that here is an instance where soil depletion of essential nutrients and artificially rebuilding the soil with chemicals appears to be causing problems.

I have included a press release from the University of Texas, Austin dealing with this subject of soil depletion and its effect on nutrition.

March 1, 2006 - While modern farming techniques are producing larger and more perfect fruits and vegetables, the yield in terms of nutrients is declining.

Of the 13 major nutrients found in fruits and vegetables, six have declined substantially, according to a study by Donald Davis, a biochemist at the University of Texas at Austin.

Using data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Davis concludes that recently grown crops have shown decreases of up to 38% in protein, calcium, vitamin C, phosphorus, iron and riboflavin when compared with produce from past decades.

What accounts for this negative trend? Like any other competitive industry, farmers' attempts to drive up profits have led them to use new techniques to increase production, Davis said. The faster-grown fruits don't have as much time to develop the nutrients. "Farmers get paid by the weight of a crop, not by amount of nutrients," Davis said. He called this the "dilution effect": As fruits and vegetables grown in the United States become larger and more plentiful, they provide fewer vitamins and minerals. "It's a simple inverse relationship: The higher the yield, the lower the nutrients," he said. Davis said this happens because slower-growing crops have more time to absorb nutrients from both the sun and the soil. "Lots of agricultural scientists don't know about this, and the public doesn't know about this," he said.

Wheat Also Being Examined.

Jeff Cronin, at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said scientists and the USDA often overlook farming practices.

"Breeding plants to improve crop yield at the expense of all other things seems to be the problem, as well as depleting soil and not rotating crops properly," he said.

While Davis is not pleased about the decreasing levels of nutrients in produce, he still encourages people to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. "Even though amounts of nutrients have declined, fruits and vegetables are
still the richest source of protective nutrients, much better than eating highly refined foods such as white flour, sugars and fatty foods," he said.

Davis is currently researching the dilution effect in 14 varieties of wheat. His findings already suggest that, once again, the larger the yield of wheat, the lower the nutrients.

Related page:
The food, the bad < http://eartheasy.com/article_food_bad_ugly.htm > and the ugly - global warming may increase the size of fruits and vegetables, but the health benefits are diminished.