Thursday, April 21, 2011

J&J Tells S.C. "Nobody Has Been Harmed" So We Shouldn't Have To Pay So Much

Fierce Pharma has:


Now that a South Carolina jury has decided that Johnson & Johnson's Risperdal marketing violated consumer-protection laws, the state and the company are wrangling over an appropriate punishment. J&J lawyers asked Circuit Judge Roger Couch to impose a "small penalty," while the state has urged a $5,000 penalty for each violation of the South Carolina Unfair Trade Practices Act--a judgment that could amount to billions of dollars, Bloomberg reports.


J&J says the state has exaggerated the impact of its infractions. "We have a case here where nobody has been deceived and nobody has been harmed," attorney Edward Posner argued on behalf of J&J. "At most a small penalty should be imposed."


Ed: (???)


However, lawyers for the state's Attorney General Alan Wilson said J&J deserved a big penalty for the misleading promotional letter it sent to 700,000 doctors in the U.S., including 7,194 in South Carolina. The company later corrected the letter--after FDA took issue with "false and misleading claims" that overstated Risperdal's superiority to competing drugs and minimized the potentially serious risks.


The state's lawyers have totted up hundreds of thousands of potential violations--722,000 Risperdal prescriptions written, 183,144 sales-rep visits to doctors, and 496,565 boxes of samples distributed--saying that J&J should fork over the $5,000 penalty for each violation the judge decided to count. "He determines the number of violations, and he determines the amount of penalty per violation," attorney Donald Coggins told Bloomberg. "He may pick some violations and assign hundreds of dollars to them, or he may pick some and assign $5,000 per violation. If he assigned $5,000 to every violation, it would be billions of dollars."


Not surprisingly, J&J's lawyer said the judge shouldn't consider every filled prescription as a violation of the consumer protection law. "There's no evidence, no evidence at all, that the letter caused a single Risperdal prescription to be written," Posner argued.


Both sides now have to wait for an answer. After hearing the various arguments, Couch delayed his ruling on the damages.


- get the Bloomberg story
- see the
article at GoUpstate


Related Articles:
SC jury finds J&J letter violated consumer laws
J&J 'lied' about Risperdal's safety, S.C. lawyer alleges
J&J faces trial in $1B Risperdal influence case
Louisiana jury tags J&J with $257M Risperdal verdict


Thank You Ms Staton



Here's more on the South Carolina legal action which inspired this "nobody has been harmed" jaw dropper.


South Carolina Sues J&J/Risperdal For $360 Million.



You also might want to revisit how "nobody got deceived and nobody has been harmed" in Texas by J&J with their Risperdal:

J&J's Risperdal Unit were the Ringleaders of the Texas Medication Algorithm Project - No science, None, just Opinions - which has spread all Over America from State to State vacuuming Billions out of State Medicaid programs, causing untold harm to our Federal Medicare program, and crippling & killing Citizens in all of President Obama's 57 States. (He ought to know, He's visited them all.)
Allen Jones Full Whistleblower Report is yours' for a free click. At least file it away for later if your too busy to read it now. If you Don't, and "nobody has been harmed" sneaks in under Your roof, you'll wish you Had read it.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Drunken/Hung Over Physicians, In Surgery

Fierce Healthcare has:
Study: Even 24 Hours Later, Surgeons Who Drink More Prone To Mistakes



Hospitals or healthcare organizations may want to consider putting rules into place on how much alcohol a surgeon may consume on the day before working in the operating room, suggests a new study in the Archives of Surgery.

"Historically, the medical profession has had a reputation for high rates of alcohol consumption," wrote the researchers from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. "It is likely that surgeons are unaware (???) that next-day surgical performance may be compromised as a result of significant alcohol intake."

To study the situation, a virtual reality system--and not real patients--were used. To evaluate the degree of that impairment, the researchers invited eight surgeons and 16 students out for a dinner: Half the students and the eight surgical professionals were encouraged to drink as much they wanted until they felt drunk. The rest of the students were not allowed to drink.

The following day, all participants went to a lab to perform laparoscopic surgerical procedures. At 9 a.m., the participants who drank made about 19 errors on average, while those who did not drink made eight errors. This difference had not been reported before the night out.

The errors gradually faded over the day. However, a higher rate of errors still was observed among those who had been drinking--even by 4 p.m. During that time, though, only one of the surgeons had detectable blood alcohol levels.

While the study was too small to allow the researchers to say how long the surgeons should abstain from drinking before performing surgery, they suggested that, "given the considerable cognitive, perceptual, visuospatial, and psychomotor challenges posed by modern image-guided surgical techniques," abstaining from alcohol the night before operating may be a "sensible consideration for practicing surgeons."

For more information:
- see the
Archives of Surgery abstract
- read the
Los Angeles Times article
- read the
MedPage Today article


Thank You Ms Simmons


Now, ..... let's get Clear on what's actually going on, Shall We?

These Drunken Doctors are - according to their Own APA - Incurably 'Mentally Ill' and under the current paradigm unfit to be practicing Anything other than the Simpson's theme on a Kazoo, much Less remaining un-arrested for negligent homicide, ...... considering the level of Trust they expect from their clients.

What happens to an airline pilot who goes to work drunk or hung over? Oh, that's right; there aren't as Many airline pilots as there are surgeons, and They don't have a Trade Association with the Clout that the AMA has.


According to the American Psychiatric Association getting drunk is an 'Incurable Mental Illness' which requires the intoxicant be defrauded into a chemical lobotomy and State Police Registration (in California) because the caring those 'caregivers' with their infallible diagnostic infallibility inflict, has been the "primary suspect drug" causing violent homicides.

But you see, Physicians and Medical students are All Immune from those sorts of issues, because They are All Above The Law.

Newsweek (2008) has:
When Doctors Kill Themselves.
"So why aren't depressed docs seeking treatment for a common illness that millions of Americans have learned to manage with therapy and readily available medications? Because they worry—not without reason—that if they admit to a mental-health problem they could lose respect, referrals, income and even their licenses." .....
"One way to address physician suicide, says Reynolds, is to focus on medical students and residents, since depression often starts in young adulthood. Medical schools across the country have launched programs that, among other things, guarantee students who seek help that it will not appear on their records. , .....

....., "If we teach doctors to recognize depression in themselves," says Dr. Paula Clayton, the foundation's medical director, "they will recognize it in their patients." And then everybody will feel better."
So, it's Ok to be a Drunk, if you're a Physician because as Ms Simmons article points out, it's actually quite common, ...... or a Fireman, ...... so long as you have a Trade Association/Public Employees Union Protecting you.




Diagnostic criteria for 303.00 Alcohol Intoxication
A. Recent ingestion of alcohol.
B. Clinically significant maladaptive behavioral or psychological changes (e.g., inappropriate sexual or aggressive behavior, mood lability, impaired judgment, impaired social or occupational functioning) that developed during, or shortly after, alcohol ingestion.
C. One (or more) of the following signs, developing during, or shortly after, alcohol use:
(1) slurred speech
(2) incoordination
(3) unsteady gait
(4) nystagmus
(5) impairment in attention or memory
(6) stupor or coma
D. The symptoms are not due to a general medical condition and are not better accounted for by anothermental disorder.

But don't you worry about it. No Siree Bob, because the situation is being handled, by Professionals.



(Ed: Sorry that post's 1st direct link went away, ..... just like the one to SF RAMS Performance Audit Memo, ..... but, .......

Anderson Cooper 360 Still has it - from 2008 - for you.


"In California, the state Medical Board is planning to shut down the program as of July because it’s decided it “failed” to protect patients. Five audits of the program since 1982 found all kinds of failures. Even the drug testing of doctors wasn’t random. One auditor told me the doctors could anticipate on which days they’d be drug tested.

Still, even after all the patients who say they were disfigured as a result of this program, one powerful state agency, the California Medical Association, is fighting to keep the program running, and keep the names of doctors enrolled confidential. The association’s President, Joe Dunn, told me, “we believe very strongly this is the absolute best way to insure patient safety. We need to get physicians out of the shadows.”
Dunn believes if the program is shut down in July, doctors will still continue to feed their addiction “privately” and not get help. He argues, “Without a diversion program, no one knows. Patients don't know. Health professionals who could help don't know.”

Friday, April 15, 2011

Obama Admits We Can't Afford HIS America

Fierce Healthcare has;


by Ron Shrinkman

President Barack Obama rejected a Republican proposal to change Medicare to a voucher program and Medicaid into bloc grants to the states, report the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.


"These are the kind of cuts that tells us we can't afford the America that I believe in," Obama said Wednesday in a speech at George Washington University. "I believe it paints a vision of our future that's deeply pessimistic." Obama added that the plan proposed by Republicans and spearheaded by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) contained "nothing serious."


Instead, Obama proposed capping annual Medicare and Medicaid growth rates at just above the overall economic growth rate, which is typically two to three percent per year when it is not in recession. It was part of a proposal intended to cut spending by $4 trillion over the next 12 years. However, Obama also hinted that there would be additional federal investments in medical research.


Additionally, Obama proposed automatic tax and spending cut provisions if the deficit is not on a path to shrink from its current 10 percent of gross domestic product down to 3 percent.


Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the recent budget deal reduces the budgeting authority for the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education departments by $1.259 billion, although no specifics were immediately available.


For more:
- read the
New York Times article
- read the
Wall Street Journal article

Read the CBO report


Related Articles:
Obama to issue own plan on cutting Medicare, Medicaid

Obama's budget cuts discretionary spending at healthcare agencies

Obama supports states opting out of healthcare reform


Thank You Mr Shrinkman


"These are the kind of cuts that tells us we can't afford the America that I believe in," Obama said


How do you Top a revelation like that from the Captain of our Ship of State who has wasted us Deeper into Debt, as of the end of Feb 2010 than every President before him, Combined.

We CAN however afford to poison our own Military into Becoming a National Security Problem which has attracted the attention of the President of Russia:


Thanks in part to the ineffable Brilliance of the President's ally, former Madame Speaker and Her version of the Democratic process:



And while we're on this National Security Problem, What are we doing collaborating with Universities in Communist China and Russia, and palming off Mind Control infected with Their Influence on our Veterans at the San Francisco Fort Miley Veterans Hospital?


If you think That Communist China, and Russia, don't find us Lobotomizing ourselves so that everyone will 'Feel Better' to be amusing as All Hell, again, you haven't thought the issue through.


"Nations do not have friends. Nations have interests."
Sir Winston Churchill

And if you're not up on SF's mind gagging, Racially Preferential ineptitude:


And on pg 4 of;

http://argosysf.tripod.com/SFUSDbroch0708.pdf.

We find California's POLITICAL Objective being Redefined, ….. Right, ….. Out of the closet.

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICE ACT

Mental Health Service Act (Prop 63) Stipend Program Internship

….. A key objective of the MHSA is to increase the quantity and quality of trained persons available for employment inthe public mental health system and encouraging development of a diverse workforce. Toward this aim, California’s Department of Mental Health has partnered with the California Social Work Education Center (CalSWEC) to establish competitive stipend program for graduate students enrolled in schools of Social Work across the UC system.

That means PAYING More Social Workers like the 2 posing with Mr. Paramedic Tangherlini a STIPEND out of the Public’s Pocket, while they’re going to school in the UC System, in order to ensure a Majority of ‘Gratefulness’ gets Established back into the Ballot Box.

Change Agents: The California Un-Convention

President Obama's candor in this is refreshingly frank, for once.

Medicaid Expansion Ignores States Fiscal Crisis

We Can't afford HIS America: which is peddling Political Illnesses as Patronage Make Work feeding an Army of 100% Incompetents Billing the rest of America in trade for their ballot.

Buying votes with cigarettes and liquor is 'in your face' ugly enough to inspire widespread outrage. But pushing chemical lobotomies onto 1 in every 5 Americans, and on Uncle Sam's dime no less, Isn't?

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Psychiatric Drugs Are a US National Security Problem

Wounded Times has;


Weakness in U.S. Military Studied by Russian President Medvedev

February 10, 2011 posted by Chaplain Kathie · 8 Comments

Murder in Tampa studied by Russia?


What could be so interesting about a murder in Tampa that Russian President Medvedev would have the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences study it? There have been more horrible cases around the world involving a parent killing children. Julie Schenecker said she killed them because they were talking back. There have not been many reports locally on this story and even less nationally. The cable news shows have been doing their usual reporting on politics and Egypt as if there has been nothing “news worthy” to do any real reporting on.

It can’t be just about the drugs used by the military to address the mental health of the troops. While Medvedev may be interested in drugs used and the mental health state of our troops, this wasn’t about a soldier killing but just about a wife killing her teenagers. Is he interested because he is looking at weaknesses in our military? According to this report they have been paying attention to the reports on prescription drugs the troops are given. But why this case?

Julie Schenecker is unlike other parents because her husband is Colonel Parker Schenecker with Central Command.

Family Massacre In US Linked To American Military Murder Drugs

Posted by EU Times on Feb 9th, 2011









A chilling report prepared for President Medvedev by the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences (RAMS) says that a massacre in the United States committed during the past fortnight has as its “most likely cause” what are described as “murder drugs” being given by the millions to American Soldiers by their Military Leaders for the fighting of their Nations wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to this report, Julie Schenecker, the wife of US Army Colonel Parker Schenecker, shockingly murdered her two children, Carlyx, age 16, and Beau, age 13, in a sudden bloody rampage that has left family and neighbors stunned as to why a devoted wife and mother would point blank shoot her most beloved possessions to death.

US media reports about Julie Schenecker describe a devoted wife to her career US Army Officer husband (who at the time of his family’s massacre was stationed in the Middle East) and loving mother to her children, all being described as the “perfect” all-American family.

Educated at the University of Iowa, Julie Schenecker had also accompanied her husband to the many US Military bases he served at around the world, including in Germany where she worked as a Russian linguist for the US Army in Munich.

In 2008, Julie Schenecker and her family moved to Tampa, Florida where her husband, by then a US Army Colonel assigned to the US Central Command which oversees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and began living a life described by her childhood friend Sylvia Carroll as being the “epitome of what wholesome is”.

The weekend before the January 27th massacre of the Schenecker children, however, their “wholesome” mother purchased a .38 caliper pistol complaining in a note found by police that the three-day gap between buying and taking the gun home would “delay the massacre.”

On the day of the massacre Julie Schenecker shot and killed her son Beau on the way to soccer practice, then drove to their upscale home and shot her daughter Carlyx in the head while she studied at her computer. When apprehended by police a bloodied Julie Schenecker told police she killed her beloved children for being “mouthy.”

Up until here the interest was about Julie Schenecker but now it switches to being about the drugs and suicides in the US military.

The same, however, cannot be said about her husband, US Army Colonel Parker Schenecker, who, like all American Military personnel heading towards their war zones in the Middle East and Asia, was “more than likely” given one, or a combination of the powerful psychotropic drugs Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil or Cymbalta, all of which carry mandatory “suicide warnings” and have been linked to nearly every single massacre in the United States for the past two-decades.

So prevalent have these psychotropic “murder drugs” become among the US Military that in November, 2010, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International issued an alarming report that, in part, says:
“In 2009 there were 239 suicides within the Army, including the Reserves, 160 active duty suicides, 146 active duty deaths from drug overdoses and high-risk behavior, and 1,713 suicide attempts, says the Army’s suicide report released in July.

More troops are dying from their own hands than in combat, says the Army report, titled “Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, and Suicide Prevention.” Thirty-six percent of the suicides were among troops who were never deployed.

Also astonishing is the psychoactive prescription drug rate among active duty-aged troops, aged 18 to 34, which is up 85 percent since 2003, according to the military health plan, Tricare. Including family prescriptions, since 2001, 73,103 prescriptions for Zoloft have been dispensed, 38,199 for Prozac, 17,830 for Paxil, and 12,047 for Cymbalta. All of the drugs carry a suicide-warning label.

In addition to the spike in SSRI antidepressant prescriptions, prescriptions for the anticonvulsants Topamax and Neurontin rose 56 percent in the same group since 2005, says Navy Times. The FDA warned last year that taking these drugs doubles suicidal thinking.

In fact, 4,994 troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., are on antidepressants right now, says the Fayetteville Observer. Six hundred and sixty-four are on an antipsychotic and “many soldiers take more than one type of medication.”
Troops may also be taking Chantix, an antismoking drug so linked to violence and self-harm that Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake was forced to defend its use before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs in 2008 even in drug trials.

So now we have a disinterested US media, even with 24-7 cable news coverage, soldiers given drugs by the military added to the fact that Russia is so interested in all of this they had the academy study it. This is more than a national disgrace on how we treat the troops and our veterans. This being studied by Russia is a National Security issue but few seem to care.

Thank You Wounded Times


And as we've pointed out, our VA already Knows, And ADMITS, that None of these drugs, therapeutic theories, and related mind-control, Bio-$cienced FRAUD have produced any positive outcome to date, None.

Dear Department Of Veterans Affairs, An Open Letter

http://www.mirecc.va.gov/visn3/education.asp

"Algorithms:


A review of existing algorithms, including VA National Guidelines, APA, the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP), and PORT was conducted. After careful consideration, a modified version of TMAP was selected, and named the New Jersey Algorithm.

The sequence includes two trials of atypical antipsychotics followed by a Clozaril trial. If no favorable response is observed, a third atypical neuroleptic is tried, followed by a typical neuroleptic, followed by a combination of antipsychotic medications. The consensus of the internal advisory committee was to provide a flexible algorithm that will allow for minor modifications as new research is disseminated. Though a positive outcome has not been observed with the NJ Algorithm to date, researchers suspect that a larger sample size might generate significant findings in the future.