Ms. Johann-Liang left her position as deputy director with the FDA on June 8, saying that her staff had recommended to her in February 2006 that she designate a “black box warning” for Avandia, the strongest warning the FDA can issue for a medication, without actually banning it. In response to this, she was instead reprimanded, and told to first clear any future drug safety recommendations with her director.

Over a year later now, new studies are linking Avandia to increased risks of cardiovascular disease. Additionally, Congress is holding inquiries into the FDA’s process for approving the drug. As a direct consequence of the increased scientific and political pressure, the agency is finally asking for black box warnings on both Avandia and another related diabetes drug, Actos.

Johann-Liang has been critical of the FDA for requiring a much higher standard of proof that a drug is unsafe, than is actually needed to approve a drug for sale. With diabetes drugs, for instance, the FDA merely requires clinical studies that suggest the drug lowers blood sugar… but there’s no requirement that the drug actually improves the quality or length of patients’ lives. Yet when further research shows that a drug is unsafe, the FDA is highly resistant to assessing those risks. After all, doing so would be an implicit admission of an inadequate approval process in the first place.

“I really advocate for drug safety, and a lot of times the agency doesn’t want to hear that there are problems,” Johann-Liang said. “I think, in general, there’s a culture of ‘the drug is always innocent.’”

This has led to serious safety issues, she states, and “people are continuing to be hurt.” Johann-Liang is alarmed that patients who are prescribed Avandia may blame their congestive heart failure symptoms on their diabetes — instead of identifying Avandia as the culprit — and actually take higher dosages of the very drug that is the underlying cause of the health problem in the first place.

Now, FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach has finally admitted: “Despite existing warnings, these drugs [have continued to be] prescribed to patients with significant heart failure.”

- Trevor K. Neuman

“Diabetes is a chronic, potentially debilitating and often fatal disease. The disease occurs as a result of problems with the production and supply of insulin in the body. Either the body produces no or insufficient insulin or the body cannot use the insulin it produces effectively.”

The fact is, this “potentially debilitating” disease will be chronic only as long as the root cause of diabetes doesn’t get fixed.

Unfortunately, our “modern” medical system doesn’t appear to be interested in solving these underlying causes.

They instead focus their efforts on “controlling” diabetes, by merely suppressing the symptoms associated with this disease through expensive medication and/or insulin… By artificially keeping certain diabetes indicators (such as glucose and insulin levels) within “acceptable” ranges, it appears as though the diabetes is being “managed”.

The truth, however is that underneath it all, the disease itself keeps getting — little by little — worse. That’s why virtually all diabetics keep getting more and more medications prescribed… to “control” the ever-increasing number of complications and serious “side effects”.

It’s also the reason why diabetics face a grim 80% risk of death by heart disease or stroke (in addition to a lengthy list of other grim complications), even when they continue to use drugs and/or insulin to “control” their diabetes.

- Trevor K. Neuman

Nonetheless, we shall meticulously and scientifically prove in this blog -– and many medical doctors, prominent scientists and top researchers have publicly documented these indisputable facts –- that sadly, this is indeed frequently the case.

For far too long, we the public have somehow allowed the very powerful and extremely profitable pharmaceutical giants, with their crafty commercials, to basically insult our intelligence, and attempt to treat us as a bunch of adolescents rather than rational adults. They somehow manage to turn symptoms into a disease with a label (i.e. “acid reflux disease” –- often the result of poor dietary habits).

Many people are then led to believe that their health, and possibly even their life, is somehow dependent upon these potentially dangerous and outrageously inflated drugs, or that they shouldn’t have to live with the pain. The proponents deviously evaluate exactly what it might be worth to a person to somehow make a particular symptom such as pain go away. The established retail price that the consumer is normally charged has little to do with the actual cost of producing the drug.

Also, according to a USA Today study, more than half of the experts hired to advise the FDA on the safety and effectiveness of medicine have financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that will be helped or hurt by their decisions.

The sincerest motives of the medical PROFESSION are derailed by the greed and power of the medical INDUSTRY.
For Example: if you are ever diagnosed with cancer, you need to know that your MD or Oncologist is legally forbidden from curing your cancer. Their hands are tied by the FDA and AMA, who have used their power to pass legislation forbidding any licensed MD from treating cancer with anything other than treatments that have never proven to work –- surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.
- Medical Truth

“The thing that bugs me is that people think the Food and Drug Administration is protecting them –- it isn’t. What the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it’s doing are as different as night and day.”
— Dr. Herbert L. Ley, former Commissioner of the FDA.

Did you know? The average lifespan of the average American is 75 years, while the average lifespan of your MD is 58 years! Following your doctor’s advice can cost you 17 years of your life (if you’re lucky)!! Is there something our Doctors are not being taught?

In spite of our supposedly superior medical technology, the USA is #1 in the world in degenerative disease and the 20th in life expectancy.
– World Health Organization

“Heart disease, cancer, stroke are the top 3 killers in our country [Despite the fact that all 3 of these diseases have been curable for decades]. The 4th major killer in the US is prescription drugs.”
– USA Today

Any treatment that you can obtain and self-administer threatens to remove your doctor from the treatment program. Although your doctor may not object to this, the American Medical Association (AMA) is strongly opposed to such a trend. For this reason the American Medical Association has pushed for legislation to prevent the public from ever being exposed to alternatives.

It has come to light that the FDA and the Pharmaceutical Advertising Counsel (PAC), which represents some 35 major drug companies, have formed and co-funded a corporation under a joint letterhead, calling itself the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF). Under this questionable aegis, William Jarvis, MD, and Stephen Barrett, MD, and others, are paid to publicly discredit as unscientific or unknown any viable herbs, vitamins, homeopathic remedies or non-allopathic therapies, particularly those that are proven to have the most promise and present the greatest threat to the PAC members.
- Medical Truth

The FDA regularly approves dangerous, often lethal pharmaceuticals. Most of the time, the side effects of these drugs can only be fully discovered by widespread use.

Typically, after one of these highly publicized “wonder” drugs fails, causes death or serious side effects, no FDA official nor PAC member company president, research assistant, corporate official, company doctor nor testing lab will be subjected to raid, investigation, indictment or jail term as often happens to “alternative” practitioners.

Isn’t there something drastically wrong with this picture!?

- Dr. David W. Tanton

This research provides yet further proof of our warnings about the serious (even deadly) “side effects” of prescription medications. (Note that this study didn’t even examine the many other serious “side effects” of meds… only deaths.)

Even more alarming is the fact that the majority of this increase in deaths was attributed to 298 out of the 1,489 pharmaceutical drugs studied. This group of drugs accounted for 407,394 of the 467,809 events. In other words, 20% of the medications were responsible for 87% of these prescription-related deaths.

No question, this alarming research should have made front-page news…

Yet the pharmaceutical companies — nor did the FDA — made NO moves to withdraw these 298 drugs from the market… Neither did they make any attempts to make the public or media aware of the grave dangers these medications pose.

Even scarier is the fact that many top health experts concede that fewer than 10% of prescription-drug related deaths ever get reported. Some place those figures at 1%-2%. Thus, a conservative estimate would put the actual medication-related deaths at well over 1 million annually.

It would appear that the billions upon billions dollars of profit of the powerful pharmaceutical companies is more important than the lives of a “mere” million Americans each and every year…

- Trevor K. Neuman

Indeed, the situation has become alarmingly more grim.

Even much of the information and many of the guidelines offered by the major diabetes-specific organizations, such as the American Diabetes Association, have proven unhelpful in regulating glucose levels — a key component in keeping diabetes in check.

And government research funding programs have become so politicized, that the integrity of independent research has largely been destroyed.  Moreover, powerful lobby groups have become so influential, that any government grants actually achieve little in terms of practical value to suffering diabetics.

No wonder so many diabetics are becoming increasingly frustrated and disillusioned!

In a October 19, 2006 press release, Margaret O’K. Glavin, the FDA’s Associate Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs, says, “We will not tolerate practices that raise false hopes and bilk consumers of precious health care dollars. Diabetes requires effective treatments and aggressive management, not bogus and unproven products.”

And Lydia Parnes, Director of FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, states: “The Internet can be a great source of information, but it also is a billboard for ads that promise miracle cures for diabetes and other serious diseases.”

Clearly, the Internet offers tons of information — Google.com lists over 90 million webpages for the keyword “diabetes”. Yet…

How Can You Distinguish All The Mis-Information From The Facts?!?

That’s where this breakthrough research website comes in. The Diabetes12.com research team collects and analyzes Diabetes Types 1 & 2 research from literally hundreds of researchers and scientists world-wide… and then summarizes the most important information in an easy-to-understand format on this website via timely blog postings.

Further, the American Diabetes Association calculates there are 20.8 million diabetics in America; with another 54 million people having pre-diabetes (placing them at high risk for developing Type II diabetes). This equates to 75 million Americans having diabetes, or being at high risk.

Contrast these alarming figures to 100 years ago, when diabetes cases were so rare, most doctors never saw or diagnosed the disease even once in their entire medical careers.

And ten years ago, Type II diabetes was virtually unheard of in children. Yet now, numerous doctors and health professionals predict that by the year 2010, 50% of our children will have Type II diabetes before they turn 20!

Most doctors believe that diabetes is incurable… that’s what they’ve been taught. The best you could hope for – according to what they learned in medical school – is to “control” this disease with medication and insulin.

And they’re right… Diabetes is incurable… At least it’s incurable if you follow most doctors’ advice of merely suppressing your diabetes symptoms with pharmaceutical drugs.

That’s because most doctors’ advice – taking ever-increasing doses of medications – doesn’t solve the root problem of diabetes. These drugs merely attempt to “control” the symptoms of high glucose levels, insulin resistance, etc.

And because these medications cause other health problems (side effects), your doctor ends up prescribing more drugs to “control” those new symptoms… which cause yet further “side effects”… and/or render your original medications less effective, so your doctor doubles or quadruples your original dosages… and this vicious cycle just goes on and on…

You’re caught in the “Diabetes Trap”!

In fact, millions of diabetics are stuck in this trap of continually “needing” more and higher doses of medications. And what awaits them is an implicit death sentence of heart disease… stroke… obesity… kidney failure… debilitating nerve damage… blindness… impotence… and/or some of the many other seemingly inescapable diabetes complications.

Simply because the underlying cause of their diabetes was never addressed.

If we just learn the rules of health and show our body the respect it deserves, it is perfectly capable of efficiently managing the details, and there will be absolutely no reason to stress about all those levels.

Although many people tend to believe that disease is just the result of getting older, that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. Disease is normally the result of an unhealthy condition in the body, (not the result of our age), and something we all can control.

We just need to learn what our body really needs and then provide it, and stop abusing it with all those potentially dangerous and unnecessary drugs.

- Dr. David W. Tanton

And here are just a few more facts directly from the American Diabetes Association:

• Nerve Damage: 60% to 70% of diabetics are affected by diabetic neuropathy.
• Amputations: Diabetes is the #1 cause of non-traumatic amputations; diabetics have a 40 times greater risk of leg amputations than people with normal blood sugar levels.
• Kidney Failure: Diabetes is the #1 cause of kidney failure, and is responsible for 40% of all new cases.
• Blindness: Diabetes is the #1 cause of blindness; diabetics are also at increased risk for glaucoma and cataracts.
• Other Complications: Diabetes also increases the risk for infections, impotence, digestive problems, memory loss, dementia, periodontal or gum disease, and a host of other problems.

Additionally, according to numerous research studies, including a recent study of over 1 million people, diabetics are also about 30% more likely to develop, and die from, cancer.

And if these statistics aren’t bad enough for you, the American Diabetes Association puts the number of diabetics in America at 20.8 million; with another 54 million having pre-diabetes, which places them at high risk for developing Type II diabetes.

Worse, according to a new report from the National Institutes of Health, nearly half of American men today either have the disease, or are on the verge of developing it.

Since 1980, diabetic cases in the United States have sky-rocketed by an already alarming 47 percent, and this shocking trend is expected to go ballistic over the coming decade.

Pretty scary stuff…

- Trevor K. Neuman

If an M.D. chose to use a natural therapy (unapproved by the American Medical Association), he or she could help save a life… yet jeopardize their license to practice medicine in doing so. Conversely, if a patient dies as the result of a therapy or drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), it would be considered perfectly acceptable (since the doctor followed “proper protocol”).

Avoiding disease by prevention obviously makes much more sense, and thus should be our first line of defense, as well as the primary objective of medicine.

A friend of mine once told me, her doctor indicated that he was taking a statin (cholesterol lowering) drug just for prevention, even though his cholesterol was not elevated. He suggested that she also take the drug just for prevention.

That is definitely not preventative medicine! (Because statin drugs — like virtually all other medications — have a long list of serious “side effects”… definitely NOT something you want to gamble with your health.)

She decided that a change of doctors was in order (a wise decision, I might add).

Another concern regarding modern medicine today is the approximate 7-10 minutes many clinics allot doctors to spend with their patients, and they normally schedule appointments accordingly. It’s obviously very profitable, and certainly makes good business sense… but what about the patients’ welfare?

Although it doesn’t take long to write a prescription, it would normally take a medical doctor considerably longer to adequately diagnose and properly resolve a particular health issue, as well as evaluating the potential interactions of the drugs the patient might already be taking.

Most natural practitioners normally spend approximately one hour on the patient’s first visit, and allow approximately thirty minutes on follow up visits. This approach may not be nearly as profitable, but is obviously much more effective. The same also applies to natural supplements versus drugs. The ingredients in natural supplements normally cost more than prescription drugs for the company, although they sell for far less to the consumer.

Serious Implications Associated With Many Drugs

I believe that many doctors are totally unaware of the serious implications associated with many of the drugs they prescribe daily.

The drug commercials imply that your doctor will know if you should be using their particular drug, and that he is basically an authority with all the answers. They then focus on convincing your doctor that many patients could benefit from their drug (even for unapproved uses).

There are more drugs being continually added, and many are just variations of the same basic class of drug. Although similar, they often vary in potency and potential for interactions with other drugs.

Unfortunately, your doctor is normally so busy with his practice, and dealing with many different patients on a daily basis that he has very little time left to research or evaluate the “side effects” of drugs, and the interactions of multiple drugs.

Natural medicine is in my opinion a true science, as the basic ingredients normally used were created by Our Creator, (who is much more brilliant than man), and whose major concern is our welfare, rather than the most profitable solution. Natural foods are far more complex than any drug produced in a laboratory, and organic (as is our body)… and therefore much less harmful to our bodies.

We must basically decide where we will place our trust, in man or in Our Creator who also created our body. He is obviously in a far better position to understand our body’s needs, and has provided many natural resources for our benefit.

Our body always knows exactly what it is doing and why. The only thing we need to concern ourselves with is providing adequate resources to allow it to do the job it was very efficiently designed by Our Creator to do. We must stop trying to second-guess our body’s intentions by using drugs to override our body’s very efficient functions.

Modern medicine seems to hypothesize that our body somehow has some major design flaws that must be suppressed and controlled at all costs through the use of high-tech drugs.

Our bodies were obviously designed to withstand a tremendous amount of abuse, but there is a limit. Unfortunately, we sometimes exceed that threshold, and many diseases continue to evolve as a result.

This basic problem will not go away unless we drastically change our course of action. One thing that should be obvious to all of us is: We cannot continue doing the same things, and somehow expect to get different results!

- Dr. David W. Tanton

All too often, drugs are prescribed in potentially dangerous combinations, where apparent oversight seems to be obvious.

Now, with the assistance of the late news anchor Peter Jennings, we will evaluate the opinions of some medical experts that appear to have a conscience.

These are medical doctors who are totally aware of the corruption in the very powerful and profitable (legal) drug industry, and are not afraid to express their opinion. The following excerpts were taken from the ABC News Special Report - Bitter Medicine: Pills, Profit and the Public Health. This report by Peter Jennings aired on Wednesday, May 29, 2004 on ABC.

Peter Jennings – …Dr. Drummond Rennie is an editor at The Journal of the American Medical Association. He says researchers who are critical get attacked all the time. Do you actually believe, Dr. Rennie, that drug companies are intent on keeping the consumer on drugs, which are not as good as older drugs, for the simple requirement of profit?

Dr. Drummond Rennie – Yes. Yes, very much so. Absolutely. …They’ve got to be prevented.

Peter Jennings – … The top 10 drug companies combined made profits of more than $37 billion in the year 2001. And you, the taxpayer, are subsidizing research that benefits the drug industry.

Peter Jennings – The majority of the drugs approved by the FDA are simply modifications of old drugs…Consumers spend $90 billion more on prescription drugs last year than was spent just six years ago. And are we $90 billion healthier? …But what critics call this ‘gaming of the system’ may have a much more damaging result.

Dr. Sharon Levine, Kaiser Permanente Medical Group – If I’m a manufacturer, and I can change one molecule and get another 20 years of patent life and convince physicians to prescribe and consumers to demand … then why would I be spending money on a lot less certain endeavor, which is looking for brand new drugs?

Peter Jennings – The pharmaceutical industry has more registered lobbyists than the number of senators and congressmen combined.

Dr. Jerry Avorn, Brigham and Women’s Hospital – I think there’s a sense that, for example, when the FDA approves a drug, everything that needs to be known about it is known. I think patients believe that. I think doctors sometimes believe that. And that is not true.

Dr. Matt Handley, Group Health Cooperative – I would personally wait years for long-term safety from the FDA’s monitoring program before I’d consider taking them. If they were free, I would do that same thing.

Peter Jennings – What does this say about the social responsibility of the pharmaceutical industry? Or is the pharmaceutical industry supposed to have a social responsibility?

Dr. Sharon Levine – That’s a very good question that the American people need to answer, do we want to entrust critical elements of the public health to an industry whose purpose, whose mission is to earn return for shareholders?

Peter Jennings – Congress has never required the FDA to routinely compare new drugs with older drugs. This is costing consumers billions of dollars that we do not need to spend. And in some cases, it could be costing lives. …There is no law that says new drugs have to be proven 100 percent safe. … The government says they must be relatively safe, which means that every drug comes with risks. And the result of that is that sometimes new drugs turn out to be more dangerous than old drugs.

Dr. Jerry Avorn, Harvard Medical School – If patients were aware of the limitations that all of us physicians have in terms of what we know and what we wish we knew and what we don’t know, they would be more scared than they are at present. …The saying that a lot of doctors use sometimes in jest is, ‘Always wait a year before prescribing a new drug. And if it’s for a family member, wait five years.’ And that’s an awful thing to say, but it reveals a perception that we really don’t know as much as we would like to know about a drug until it’s been around. INSERT: In other words, tested on the public.

Peter Jennings – The fact is, drugs can be used for years before we really know how safe they are. …Dr. Drummond Rennie is an editor at The Journal of the American Medical Association. He says researchers who are critical get attacked all the time. Why do you think the industry is able to get away with what you have in the past called ‘bullying tactics’?

Dr. Drummond Rennie, Journal of the American Medical Association – Money. Because if the shareholders are happy, whom else do they have to answer for? These are multinationals. They have no masters.

Peter Jennings – Can we trust studies funded by companies that have a vested interest in the results? …Will the pharmaceutical industry do whatever it takes to get the results it wants from research?

Dr. Drummond Rennie – The temptation to spin those results is always there, and it’s frequently used. Frequently.

Peter Jennings – For nearly every drug on the market, doctors must wrestle with conflicting and sometimes inaccurate information.

Dr. Drummond Rennie – If only the good news about a drug is published, and never the bad news, then a false impression is given of the quality, effectiveness of that drug. It may be entirely false.

Peter Jennings – Does the drug industry, on occasion or regularly, suppress data?

Dr. Drummond Rennie – Oh, we suspect, and rather know, that this happens all the time.

Peter Jennings – Does a drug company ever not publish the results of a trial because it doesn’t like the results?

Dr. Drummond Rennie – Yes.

Peter Jennings – Do you actually believe, Dr. Rennie, that drug companies are intent on keeping the consumer on drugs, which are not as good as older drugs, for the simple requirement of profit?

Dr. Drummond Rennie – Yes. Yes, very much so. Absolutely. …They’ve got to be prevented.

Peter Jennings – There is one last thing this evening which we believe is important for all of us. The questions about what we are getting for our money cannot and must not be answered only by the drug companies. Virtually everyone we talked to for this broadcast agrees on that. The rules by which this hugely profitable industry operates do not always serve consumers adequately. And nothing is going to happen, no matter how angry consumers get, unless the Congress and the president decide that the time is come. The country can do better. I’m Peter Jennings. Thank you for joining us. Good night.

I can’t help but respect Peter Jennings for conducting the interview to help us better understand the corruption in medicine that I am fully aware of, although many in the nation are not. All too often we see announcements in the national news promoting the use of drugs in deceptive ways, and at times for unapproved uses.

A prime example is the woman who was interviewed on the national news, claiming that after stopping Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), she discovered that Paxil™ seemed to help reduce her hot flashes. That announcement was aired shortly after it was announced that HRT had many potential associated problems, so many women stopped their HRT drugs. Although there are natural supplements proven to resolve the hot flashes, taking Paxil™ is much more of a serious threat than HRT.

Paxil™ is a very serious antidepressant never approved for hot flashes, or anything other than depression. Paxil™ is the same basic class of antidepressants as Prozac™, but an even more potent version.

One woman was actually prescribed Paxil™ to help her stop biting her fingernails! She soon discovered that biting her nails was minor compared to the major problem she experienced from the use of Paxil™. For over a year she could no longer control her movements, and as a result was unable to work.

I would guess that after the interview on the national news indicating that Paxil™ might possibly help prevent hot flashes, many women likely asked their doctor if they could try Paxil™. Unfortunately, many doctors would likely accommodate them, and write a prescription for Paxil™, just like the doctor did for the lady who was biting her fingernails. Hot flashes are basically a walk in the park compared to the many potential side effects associated with this serious class of antidepressants (diabetes being just one of many).

- Dr. David W. Tanton