As the nation increasingly relies on sleeping pills, new information last week suggests they may not be as safe as thought. Continue reading
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Author Archives: Martha Rosenberg
Husbands, don’t commit these Valentine’s Day insults!
A recent poll revealed that while women plan their holiday gifts in advance, men often buy them at the gas station on the way to a family gathering. So it is no wonder that men’s Valentine’s Day gifts are often as inappropriate as their Christmas and birthday gifts. Here are some mistakes men repeatedly make on Valentine’s Day which you should avoid. Continue reading
Antibiotics injected directly into eggs and other Big Pharma secrets: Part II
It was not a great surprise that the FDA’s new cephalosporin livestock rules have the Agribusiness Seal of Approval. It was Big Pharma and Agribusiness lobbying that killed its stronger cephalosporin rules issued four years after. Continue reading
Are you eating antibiotics without knowing it? Probably!
So far, 2012 is bringing bad news for people who don’t want “free antibiotics” in their food. Continue reading
Did you fall for Big Pharma’s bone scam?
Women are in such danger of osteoporosis they need regular bone scans. That was conventional medical “wisdom” since the first lucrative bone drug surfaced over a decade ago. But an article in last week’s New England Journal of Medicine reveals that the warnings don’t apply to 90 percent of women who have been getting the scans–and the bone drugs the scans were designed to sell–for no reason. How did this happen? Continue reading
Would you take a drug because of celebrity advertising?
Some regret that they did.
There’s nothing like a celebrity endorsement to move a drug off the shelves and into the nation’s medicine cabinets. TV personality Joan Lunden and former baseball star Mike Piazza stumped for the allergy pill Claritin, ice skater Dorothy Hamill and track star Bruce Jenner for the pain pill Vioxx, and Sen. Bob Dole, of course, pushed Viagra. Continue reading
Who would kill blackbirds intentionally?
Who intentionally set off fireworks under a blackbird roost in Beebe, Arkansas, on New Year’s Eve killing at least 200 birds in some warped homage to last New Year’s, when at least 5,000 blackbirds perished? Continue reading
FDA critic stripped of voting rights at birth control pill hearings
It’s said that it takes 22 FDA safety officers to change a light bulb: 12 to defend the decision to install it, 8 to call it another “lighting option,” 6 to quote Big Pharma studies and one to say it doesn’t need changing, it just needs a better label. This month’s hearings into birth control pills Yaz, Yasmin, Beyaz and Safyral confirm the FDA’s dedication to pharmalateralism. Continue reading
Seven diseases Big Pharma hopes you get in 2012
It used to be joked that a consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you what time it is. These days, the opportunist is Big Pharma which raises your insurance premiums and taxes while providing you “low priced” drugs that you paid for. Continue reading
‘Sleep Eating’—a new gift from Big Pharma for the holidays
Does anyone remember the drug Tiger Woods allegedly cavorted with his consorts on? The same drug former Rhode Island Representative Patrick Kennedy had ingested and then crashed his car when he drove to Capitol Hill to “vote” at 2:45 AM? Continue reading
Are you spiritually fit for the holidays?
Interview with Ingrid Mathieu, PhD, author of “Recovering Spirituality: Achieving Emotional Sobriety in Your Spiritual Practice”
Anonymous, 12-Step programs have helped millions recover from addictions. Yet it is also possible to use the spiritual underpinnings of the programs to avoid addiction-related problems instead of dealing with them, says researcher and psychotherapist Ingrid Mathieu in her new book. We explored these topics in an interview. Continue reading
Are you taking these asthma drugs?
Big Pharma has been accused of selling drugs that are so dangerous they cause death and drugs that cause the exact conditions they’re supposed to treat. The popular asthma drugs Symbicort, Advair Diskus, Serevent Diskus, Dulera and Foradil do both and actually warn on their labels that they cause an increased “risk of death from asthma problems.” Continue reading
Should you take a psychiatric drug for simple pain?
There was a day when it seemed like everyone was on antidepressant “happy pills” like Prozac®, Paxil ® and Zoloft®. But then the pendulum began to swing. Patients objected to the weight gain and feelings of not being “themselves,” sexual side effects and the withdrawal symptoms. There were even reports and warnings about suicide and other “neuropsychiatric” effects. Continue reading
Are you mentally ill? If you drink too much you are, says Big Pharma
It’s no secret that Pharma is trying to replace its declining pill franchise with optional vaccines like the HPV vaccine, which Texas Gov. Rick Perry tried to mandate for all adolescent girls. Vaccines are expensive, can be mass marketed to vast swathes of the population and are usually immune to generic competition, pun intended. Continue reading
Is your green building wasting water like this one?
Administrators at the new, state-of-the-art green conference center couldn’t believe their water bill. The sensor-driven toilets “perceived” a need to flush every time people entered washroom stalls, closed the door or even moved an air column. The new smart toilets, which saved users the “labor” of having to flush (said the salesmen) flushed before, after and during people’s use of them. Some went into flushus epilepsis and flushed continuously for hours. Continue reading
Are you afraid to display a bumper sticker? You should be
Once upon a time, bumper stickers were a harmless way to engage other motorists on the merry way to work or a vacation in the Wisconsin Dells. But today, with road rage and polarizing politics, displaying a bumper sticker is more like establishing eye contact with a yard dog. A yard dog who doesn’t understand “never mind.” Continue reading
Employees: Does your disdain for your job show in the way you dress?
“They Pretend to Pay Us And We Pretend to Work” used to be attributed to the employment situation in the former Soviet Union. But in today’s “jobless recovery,” US workers are also performing low-wage jobs with no benefits, future and, sometimes, purpose. Jobs whose main perks are air-conditioning, access to the Internet and fidelity to the dictum that an already employed person is more likely to get hired elsewhere. Continue reading
Becoming trapped in Psychiatryland
Phillip Sinaikin, MD, is a Florida psychiatrist who has been in practice for 25 years. Author of Get Smart About Weight Control and co-author of Fat Madness: How to Stop the Diet Cycle and Achieve Permanent Well-Being. his new book, Psychiatryland, focuses on excesses and industry influence in the field of psychiatry. Continue reading
‘Pfizer’s Neurontin killed our husbands, we believe’
After being silent for more than six years, two women who say their doctor husbands died from undisclosed Neurontin risks have decided to speak out. Continue reading
Do you have depression? Here’s a new scare!
The discovery that many people with life problems or occasional bad moods would willingly dose themselves with antidepressants sailed pharma through the 2000s. A good chunk of pharma’s $4.5 billion direct-to-consumer advertising has been devoted to convincing people they don’t have problems with their job, the economy and their family, they have depression. Especially because depression can’t be diagnosed from a blood test. Continue reading
Is your sunscreen doing more harm than good?
Most people have enough fear of skin cancer and photo-aging to give tanning salons wide berth, pun intended. But how safe are sunscreens themselves? Weeks after the New York Times exposed the caprice in assignment of sun protection factors (SPF) last year, Sen. Charles Schumer (D- New York) called on the FDA to investigate reports that an ingredient in most sunscreens—retinyl palmitate—actually causes cancer. Continue reading
14 years of hooking patients, hiking premiums and squeezing docs: Television drug advertising
Can anyone remember life before Ask Your Doctor ads on TV? Continue reading
Proud, safe gun owners not proud or safe when names released
CHICAGO—Owning firearms is supposed to make you safe. Except when it doesn’t. Continue reading
Pharma’s war on kids
The patient was overweight and had Type 2 diabetes. He was on Crestor for cholesterol, Atacand for hypertension, the proton pump inhibitor Protonix for GERD (gastro-esophageal reflux disease), Axert for migraines and Singulair for asthma. The patient was 8 years old. Continue reading
Fur coats becoming gift you can’t wear anywhere
Posted on December 29, 2011 by Martha Rosenberg
CHICAGO, IL—Like Hollywood, set to ban the sale of fur in 2012, Chicago is no longer a fur capital. One reason is the annual Fur Free Friday parade held the day after Thanksgiving. For 25 years, the march has crawled down the Magnificent Mile, stopping at every furrier along the way. Some years the parade has attracted 800 marchers. Continue reading →