Drugs

Scientists stop the ageing process

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There is more to life. The human body was not designed to “fall apart”.

Nobel Prize winner Dr. Alexis Carrel was able to keep cells from a chicken heart alive and replicating new cells for 28 years, far outliving the life of a chicken which is 7 to 12 years. The cells did not die of aging they simply terminated the experiment.

“The cell is immortal. It is merely the fluid in which it floats that degenerates. Renew this fluid at regular intervals, give the cell what it requires for nutrition, and as far as we know, the pulsation of life can go on forever.” – Dr. Alexis Carroll, Nobel Prize Winner

Highly Recommended:
– The Biology Of Belief
– The Wisdom of Your Cells
– Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East

More here: (Health & Science) (Gesundheit & Wissenschaft)
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Clean bill of health: Scientists have shown that clearing damaged protein from the liver helps stop age decline in the organ (Source: iStockphoto)

Scientists have stopped the ageing process in an entire organ for the first time, a study released today says.

Published in today’s online edition of Nature Medicine, researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York City also say the older organs function as well as they did when the host animal was younger.

The researchers, led by Associate Professor Ana Maria Cuervo, blocked the ageing process in mice livers by stopping the build-up of harmful proteins inside the organ’s cells.

Read moreScientists stop the ageing process

Government Employees Caught Dealing Drugs

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OxyContin (Oxycodone) This prescription drug is classified as an opioid and is given to cancer patients and those suffering from chronic pain. OxyContin use often leads to physical dependence and addiction.
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MIAMI, Florida (CNN) — Fifty-six government employees — including a police officer, a felony court clerk, two corrections officers and 27 school bus drivers and attendants — were arrested in a scam that used health insurance information to fraudulently obtain prescriptions for the painkiller OxyContin, authorities said Wednesday.

Arrested as "recruiters" in the alleged OxyContin scam, are, clockwise: Janice Currington; Dwonvalyn Johnson; Barbara Miller Benaby; Guyton Wynell; Marcella Pierce; and Wanda McNeal.
Arrested as “recruiters” in the alleged OxyContin scam, are, clockwise: Janice Currington; Dwonvalyn Johnson; Barbara Miller Benaby; Guyton Wynell; Marcella Pierce; and Wanda McNeal.

Sixty-two people were arrested in total and all face charges including racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering and grand theft, according to the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office.

Read moreGovernment Employees Caught Dealing Drugs

Drug prices up 100% – or higher

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Drug companies are quietly pushing through price hikes of 100% – or even more than 1,000% – for a very small but growing number of prescription drugs, helping to drive up costs for insurers, patients and government programs.

The number of brand-name drugs with increases of 100% or more could double this year from four years ago, researchers from the University of Minnesota say. Many of the drugs are older products that treat fairly rare, but often serious or even life-threatening, conditions.

Among the examples: Questcor Pharmaceuticals last August raised the wholesale price on Acthar, which treats spasms in babies, from about $1,650 a vial to more than $23,000. Ovation raised the cost of Cosmegen, which treats a type of tumor, from $16.79 to $593.75 in January 2006.

Read moreDrug prices up 100% – or higher

Nigeria Issues Arrest Warrants for Top Pfizer Officials After Drug Experiments Conducted on Children

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(NaturalNews) A Nigerian state judge has issued arrest warrants for three top Pfizer officials, saying that they failed to appear in court to face charges of illegally conducting drug trials that led to the deaths of 11 children.

Read moreNigeria Issues Arrest Warrants for Top Pfizer Officials After Drug Experiments Conducted on Children

Hepatitis B Vaccine: Good for ‘Newborn’, Prostitutes and Drug Users?

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(NaturalNews) The Hepatitis B (Hep B) vaccine is considered one of the most controversial vaccines in the pediatric vaccination schedule. Why are we giving it to newborns and what are the adverse reactions associated with such an early vaccination?

What is Hep B?

Read moreHepatitis B Vaccine: Good for ‘Newborn’, Prostitutes and Drug Users?

Legal Drugs Kill Far More Than Illegal

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MIAMI – From “Scarface” to “Miami Vice,” Florida‘s drug problem has been portrayed as the story of a single narcotic: cocaine. But for Floridians, prescription drugs are increasingly a far more lethal habit.

An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.

Law enforcement officials said that the shift toward prescription-drug abuse, which began here about eight years ago, showed no sign of letting up and that the state must do more to control it.

“You have health care providers involved, you have doctor shoppers, and then there are crimes like robbing drug shipments,” said Jeff Beasley, a drug intelligence inspector for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which co-sponsored the study. “There is a multitude of ways to get these drugs, and that’s what makes things complicated.”

The report’s findings track with similar studies by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which has found that roughly seven million Americans are abusing prescription drugs. If accurate, that would be an increase of 80 percent in six years and more than the total abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and inhalants.

The Florida report analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids – strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin – caused 2,328.

Drugs with benzodiazepine, mainly depressants like Valium and Xanax, led to 743 deaths. Alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug, appearing in the bodies of 4,179 of the dead and judged the cause of death of 466 – fewer than cocaine (843) but more than methamphetamine (25) and marijuana (0).

Read moreLegal Drugs Kill Far More Than Illegal

VA testing drugs on war veterans

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Experiments raise ethical questions

The government is testing drugs with severe side effects like psychosis and suicidal behavior on hundreds of military veterans, using small cash payments to attract patients into medical experiments that often target distressed soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, a Washington Times/ABC News investigation has found.

Related articles:
– Military suicide rate increased again
– America’s Medicated Army
– Vaccines and Medical Experiments on Children, Minorities, Woman and Inmates (1845 – 2007)

In one such experiment involving the controversial anti-smoking drug Chantix, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) took three months to alert its patients about severe mental side effects. The warning did not arrive until after one of the veterans taking the drug had suffered a psychotic episode that ended in a near lethal confrontation with police.

James Elliott, a decorated Army sharpshooter who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after serving 15 months in Iraq, was confused and psychotic when he was Tasered by police in February as he reached for a concealed handgun when officers responded to a 911 call at his Maryland home.

For photos, video of James Elliott, official FDA documents and more, visit the interactive site for the Disposable Heroes report.

Mr. Elliott, a chain smoker, began taking Chantix last fall as part of a VA experiment that specifically targeted veterans with PTSD, opting to collect $30 a month for enrolling in the clinical trial because he needed cash as he returned to school. He soon began suffering hallucinations and suicidal thoughts, unaware that the new drug he was taking could have caused them.

Just two weeks after Mr. Elliott began taking Chantix in November, the VA learned from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that the drug was linked to a large number of hallucinations, suicide attempts and psychotic behavior. But the VA did not alert Mr. Elliott before his own episode in February.

In failing to do so, Mr. Elliott said, the VA treated him like a “disposable hero.”

“You’re a lab rat for $30 a month,” Mr. Elliott said.

Brightcove Video

Play Disposable Heroes – Part 1

Brightcove Video

Play Disposable Heroes – Part 2

One of the nation’s premier medical ethicists said the VA’s behavior in the anti-smoking study violated basic protections for humans in medical experiments.

“When you’re taking advantage of a very vulnerable population, people who have served the country, and the agency that’s responsible for their welfare isn’t putting their welfare first, that’s a pretty serious breach of ethics,” said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Read Full Article Here

Audrey Hudson
Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Source: The Washington Times

Flawed St. John’s Wort Study on ADHD Failed to Use Active Form of Herbal Extract

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(NaturalNews) On the heels of shocking revelations that top psychiatric research Dr. Joseph Biederman secretly took $1.6 million from drug companies while conducting psychotropic drug experiments on children, it has been learned that Dr. Biederman is now one of the key collaborators behind the latest efforts to discredit St. John’s Wort. In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and widely reported in the mainstream media, Dr. Biederman and fellow cohorts “concluded” that the St. John’s Wort herb is useless in treating ADHD in children.

What’s astonishing about this study, as you’ll learn in this article, is that all the children used in the study were given inactive forms of the St. John’s Wort herb where the active ingredients had been oxidized and rendered useless! In other words, this clinical trial, which was widely reported in the mainstream media with headlines like “St. John’s Wort Found Useless!” didn’t test the herb’s active ingredients at all! It sort of makes you wonder about the agenda of the people running the study, doesn’t it?

Keep in mind that one of the study’s authors, Dr. Biederman, is not merely on the take from drug companies that sell competing pharmaceuticals, but that he also lied about how much money he was being paid by drug companies, hiding the truth about his income by underreporting $1.6 million he took from psychiatric drug companies. See my report on that here: http://www.naturalnews.com/023408.html

Dr. Biederman has a clear financial interest in promoting patented prescription drugs for brain chemistry disorders while discrediting competing natural alternatives such as St. John’s Wort. This blatant conflict of interest was not disclosed by JAMA, nor was it mentioned in the text of the study on ADHD and St. John’s Wort. It appears Dr. Biederman would prefer his financial ties to Big Pharma continue to remain secret, even while producing questionable studies that desperately attempt to show that herbs don’t work.

Testing Herbs to Treat Fictitious Diseases

Read moreFlawed St. John’s Wort Study on ADHD Failed to Use Active Form of Herbal Extract

Kiddie Prozac Docs Took Millions From Drug Makers

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Related articles:
– Antidepressant drugs don’t work – official study

– Tranquillisers putting children’s lives at risk

– Vaccines and Medical Experiments on Children, Minorities, Woman and Inmates (1845 – 2007)

– The REAL brain drain: Modern technology is changing the way our brains work, says neuroscientist

– America’s Medicated Army

Three prominent advocates of antidepressant use by children received millions of dollars from antidepressant manufacturers, casting into question the integrity of their already-controversial research.

The New York Times reported Saturday that Harvard University psychiatrists Joseph Biederman and Timothy Wilens received $1.6 million each from drug companies between 2000 and 2007. Thomas Spencer, another Harvard psychiatrist, received $1 million.

The payments were uncovered by Congressional investigators searching for conflict-of-interest violations. Federal law requires researchers who receive National Institutes of Health funding to report annual outside earnings above $10,000 to their universities. Biederman, Wilens and Spencer all took NIH money, but never reported the full extent of their drug company income.

That the researchers’ results were influenced by the payments isn’t clear, but the situation is ugly. Biederman has a very high profile; as the Times describes, he

is one of the most influential researchers in child psychiatry and is widely admired for focusing the field’s attention on its most troubled young patients. Although many of his studies are small and often financed by drug makers, his work helped to fuel a controversial 40-fold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder … and a rapid rise in the use of antipsychotic medicines in children.

Childhood antidepressant use is hotly debated by scientists: it’s not clear whether they work as well in kids as in adults, and the drugs may have profound effects on still-developing brains.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), leader of the Congressional investigation, has pushed for a national registry of commercial payments to researchers.

Image: Refracted Moments

See Also:

America’s Medicated Army

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“Nearly 40% of Army suicide victims in 2006 and 2007 took psychotropic drugs — overwhelmingly, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac and Zoloft.”

Seven months after Sergeant Christopher LeJeune started scouting Baghdad’s dangerous roads – acting as bait to lure insurgents into the open so his Army unit could kill them – he found himself growing increasingly despondent. “We’d been doing some heavy missions, and things were starting to bother me,” LeJeune says. His unit had been protecting Iraqi police stations targeted by rocket-propelled grenades, hunting down mortars hidden in dark Baghdad basements and cleaning up its own messes. He recalls the order his unit got after a nighttime firefight to roll back out and collect the enemy dead. When LeJeune and his buddies arrived, they discovered that some of the bodies were still alive. “You don’t always know who the bad guys are,” he says. “When you search someone’s house, you have it built up in your mind that these guys are terrorists, but when you go in, there’s little bitty tiny shoes and toys on the floor – things like that started affecting me a lot more than I thought they would.”

So LeJeune visited a military doctor in Iraq, who, after a quick session, diagnosed depression. The doctor sent him back to war armed with the antidepressant Zoloft and the antianxiety drug clonazepam. “It’s not easy for soldiers to admit the problems that they’re having over there for a variety of reasons,” LeJeune says. “If they do admit it, then the only solution given is pills.”

Read moreAmerica’s Medicated Army

Italy is stealing cars

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Italy has begun confiscating the cars of people driving under the effect of drugs or alcohol in the latest attempt to lower one of western Europe’s highest rates of road casualties.

Two drivers in their early 20s, a woman under the influence of alcohol and a man who had smoked a cannabis joint, have had their cars seized in northern Italy since the legislation came into effect at the end of last month.

The new legislation states that any driver who tests positive for any illegal drug or has blood alcohol levels exceeding set limits can have their car confiscated, as well as toughening fines and jail sentences.

The cars are to be auctioned off or used by the police, as is already the case for vehicles confiscated from mafia offenders and drug dealers.

Breathalyzer testing is not frequent in Italy, where 5,669 people died on the roads in 2006, the most recent data available. National statistics bureau ISTAT said the authorities must focus on curbing drunken driving to make the roads safer.

Wed Jun 4, 1:09 PM ET

Source: Reuters

Cops & Customs Agents Caught Drug Smuggling

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New cases follow September 2007 crash of CIA plane containing 4 tonnes of cocaine

Following last September’s crash of a Gulfstream jet used by the CIA for torture flights that contained 4 tonnes of cocaine, more customs officials and cops have been caught in drug smuggling and drug dealing rackets.

Customs supervisor Walter Golembiowski and officer John Ajello face narcotics, bribery and conspiracy charges after they were arrested for helping smuggle drugs and contraband through New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

“The investigation has led to the indictment and prosecution of more than 20 people – “from distributors to overseas sources of supply” – and the seizure of more than 600 pounds of imported hashish and other drugs from the United States and France,” according to a CNN report.

Meanwhile in Texas, Cameron County Constable Saul Ochoa was arrested by the FBI yesterday morning for possession and distribution of marijuana.

Ochoa’s brother is Justice of the Peace Benny Ochoa III of Port Isabel and his cousin is Port Isabel Police Chief Joel Ochoa.

“The grand jury charged Ochoa with possessing five to 10 pounds of marijuana on four different days in May with the intent to distribute. Each of the four counts carries a maximum five years in prison and $250,000 fine,” according to a Brownsville Herald report.

While reports of customs agents and cops dealing drugs are almost routine, the real head of the hydra has always been CIA involvement in smuggling drugs that end up on America’s streets, a symbiotic process that also helps finance wars and terrorist groups to do the bidding of the U.S. government around the world.

The corporate media will report on lesser drug smuggling scandals involving cops and customs agents, but when it comes to the gargantuan sprawling CIA drug smuggling racket, the silence is deafening.

In September 2007, a Florida based Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA was forced to crash land in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula after it ran out of fuel.

After accident investigators arrived on the scene they discovered a cargo of nearly 4 tonnes of cocaine.

Journalists discovered that the same Gulstream jet had been used in at least three CIA “rendition” trips to Guantanamo Bay between 2003 and 2005.

Kevin Booth’s underground hit documentary American Drug War features footage of former DEA head Robert Bonner admitting that the CIA was involved in cocaine smuggling operations.

Former DEA agent Cele Castillo, who has appeared on The Alex Jones Show many times, personally witnessed CIA drug smuggling operations funneled through terrorists that were also involved in kidnappings and the training of death squads on behalf of the U.S. government.

Investigative reporter Gary Webb was instrumental in exposing CIA cocaine trafficking operations before his alleged suicide in 2004. In the You Tube clip below, Webb traces the history of Agency involvement in drug smuggling and its links to financing wars in central America.

Paul Joseph Watson
Thursday, May 29, 2008

Source: Prison Planet

Drug Cartels to Mexican Police: ‘Join Us or Die’

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Drug cartels are sending a brutal message to police and soldiers in cities across Mexico: Join us or die.

The threat appears in recruiting banners hung across roadsides and in publicly posted death lists. Cops get warnings over their two-way radios. At least four high-ranking police officials were gunned down this month, including Mexico’s acting federal police chief.

Mexico has battled for years to clean up its security forces and win them the public’s respect. But Mexicans generally assume police and even soldiers are corrupt until proven otherwise, and the honest ones lack resources, training and the assurance that their colleagues are watching their backs. Here, the taboo on cop-killing familiar to Americans seems hardly to apply.

Police who take on the cartels feel isolated and vulnerable when they become targets, as did 22 commanders in the border city of Ciudad Juarez when drug traffickers named them on a handwritten death list left at a monument to fallen police this year. It was addressed to “those who still don’t believe” in the power of the cartels.

Of the 22, seven have been killed and three wounded in assassination attempts. Of the others, all but one have quit, and city officials said he didn’t want to be interviewed.

“These are attacks directed at the top commanders of the city police, and it is not just happening in Ciudad Juarez,” Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said at the funeral of the latest victim, police director Juan Antonio Roman Garcia. “It is happening in Nuevo Laredo, in Tijuana, in this entire region,” he said. “They are attacking top commanders to destabilize the police force.”

The killings are in response to a crackdown launched by President Felipe Calderon, who has sent thousands of soldiers and federal police across the nation to confront the cartels. Drug lords have hit back by sending killers to attack police with hand grenades and assault rifles.

Police are increasingly giving up. Last week, U.S. officials revealed that three Mexican police commanders have crossed into the United States to request asylum, saying they are unprotected and fear for their lives.

Read moreDrug Cartels to Mexican Police: ‘Join Us or Die’

Congressmen Highlight Mexican Commando Incursions Into U.S.

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Two representatives have urged Congress to take action to address the worsening situation on the southern border which has been described by reporters and activist groups as “an all out war.”

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, has urged the Congress to take action regarding the frequent incursions of military style Mexican commandos into the U.S. that has seen over 6000 deaths in the past two and a half years according to conservative estimates.

The Houston-area Republican told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that members of Mexico’s elite counter-narcotics teams, trained at Fort Benning, Ga., have defected and are now in the pay of drug cartels.

Poe highlighted the fact that the guerrilla-style commandos are regularly crossing the border into the U.S. and have been involved in violence and killings as far north as Dallas.

The San Francisco Chronicle has picked up the story:

He said the Department of Homeland Security had documented “over 250 incursions by suspected military forces” into the United States over the past decade.

“I was surprised to hear that the United States has trained Mexican forces and some of those have deserted and become the reason for these attacks,” Poe said.
Congressman Poe criticized the lack of oversight on current programs to assist law enforcement in Mexico and central America:

“It seems as though the United States has a history in some cases of giving support (to Mexico) and that support turns around and is used against the very people we’re trying to protect, in this case, us,” Poe said. “We have no assurance that the equipment we’re sending to Mexico won’t be turned over to the drug cartels and used against us.”

Another Congressman, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, called border drug violence “an imminent security threat right on our doorstep” and compared the urgency of situation to that of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Read moreCongressmen Highlight Mexican Commando Incursions Into U.S.

U.S.-trained forces reportedly helping Mexican drug cartels

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WASHINGTON – As many as 200 U.S.-trained Mexican security personnel have defected to drug cartels to carry out killings on both sides of the border and as far north as Dallas, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, told Congress on Wednesday.

The renegade members of Mexico’s elite counter-narcotics teams trained at Fort Benning, Ga., have switched sides, contributing to a wave of violence that has claimed some 6,000 victims over the past 30 months, including prominent law enforcement leaders, the Houston-area Republican told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The slaughter has gained urgency amid high-profile assassinations of law officers in Mexico since May 1, claiming six senior officers, five of them with the federal police.

Read moreU.S.-trained forces reportedly helping Mexican drug cartels

Detainees drugged against their will

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The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government’s forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the “pre-flight cocktail,” as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.

“Unsteady gait. Fell onto tarmac,” says a medical note on the deportation of a 38-year-old woman to Costa Rica in late spring 2005. Another detainee was “dragged down the aisle in handcuffs, semi-comatose,” according to an airline crew member’s written account. Repeatedly, documents describe immigration guards “taking down” a reluctant deportee to be tranquilized before heading to an airport.

In a Chicago holding cell early one evening in February 2006, five guards piled on top of a 49-year-old man who was angry he was going back to Ecuador, according to a nurse’s account in his deportation file. As they pinned him down so the nurse could punch a needle through his coveralls into his right buttock, one officer stood over him menacingly and taunted, “Nighty-night.”

Such episodes are among more than 250 cases The Washington Post has identified in which the government has, without medical reason, given drugs meant to treat serious psychiatric disorders to people it has shipped out of the United States since 2003 — the year the Bush administration handed the job of deportation to the Department of Homeland Security’s new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE.

Involuntary chemical restraint of detainees, unless there is a medical justification, is a violation of some international human rights codes. The practice is banned by several countries where, confidential documents make clear, U.S. escorts have been unable to inject deportees with extra doses of drugs during layovers en route to faraway places.

Related Article: Vaccines and Medical Experiments on Children, Minorities, Woman and Inmates (1845 – 2007)

Read moreDetainees drugged against their will

The REAL brain drain: Modern technology – including violent video games – is changing the way our brains work, says neuroscientist

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Human identity, the idea that defines each and every one of us, could be facing an unprecedented crisis.

It is a crisis that would threaten long-held notions of who we are, what we do and how we behave. It goes right to the heart – or the head – of us all.

This crisis could reshape how we interact with each other, alter what makes us happy, and modify our capacity for reaching our full potential as individuals.

And it’s caused by one simple fact: the human brain, that most sensitive of organs, is under threat from the modern world.


Video games are weakening the ability to think for ourselves

Unless we wake up to the damage that the gadget-filled, pharmaceutically-enhanced 21st century is doing to our brains, we could be sleepwalking towards a future in which neuro-chip technology blurs the line between living and non-living machines, and between our bodies and the outside world.

It would be a world where such devices could enhance our muscle power, or our senses, beyond the norm, and where we all take a daily cocktail of drugs to control our moods and performance.

Already, an electronic chip is being developed that could allow a paralysed patient to move a robotic limb just by thinking about it.

As for drug manipulated moods, they’re already with us – although so far only to a medically prescribed extent.

Increasing numbers of people already take Prozac for depression, Paxil as an antidote for shyness, and give Ritalin to children to improve their concentration.

But what if there were still more pills to enhance or “correct” a range of other specific mental functions?

What would such aspirations to be “perfect” or “better” do to our notions of identity, and what would it do to those who could not get their hands on the pills? Would some finally have become more equal than others, as George Orwell always feared?

Read moreThe REAL brain drain: Modern technology – including violent video games – is changing the way our brains work, says neuroscientist

Dirty Secret of Drug Industry: Their Pills are Made in China!

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“What it means is that U.S. drug companies contract with cheap, low-end Chinese chemical factories to manufacture their drugs at something like two cents a pill (which they can mark up to $20 a pill or more…), and then they import these Chinese-made pills and don’t even test them before selling them to U.S. consumers!”

“And finally, consider this: Big Pharma is now pushing the Supreme Court to grant the industry blanket immunity for all pharmaceuticals, a move that would immediately lift any and all testing requirements and quality control measures since the drug companies would no longer be liable for what’s in their pills! See this story for more details: http://www.naturalnews.com/023042.html
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(NaturalNews) Remember a couple of years ago how the FDA warned Americans not to buy prescription drugs from Canada because they might be “contaminated by terrorists?” I’m not making that up: That was the official announcement of an FDA spokesperson, and it was part of their fear strategy for enforcing a monopoly on U.S. consumers so that Big Pharma could continue engaging in rampant price fixing.

The implication in that warning is that drugs purchased in the United States are therefore safer, correct? What the FDA didn’t tell anyone, however, is that most pharmaceuticals purchased in the United States are manufactured outside the U.S.; many from China or Puerto Rico. So they’re not even made in the U.S. anyway, and drug companies are simply importing them from other countries just like a consumer might do if she drove across the border and bought her medications in Canada or Mexico.

But hold on: The FDA actually used to run full-page magazine ads warning consumers about the dangers of drugs being contaminated if they were bought from Mexico, Canada or — God forbid — the Internet! Those drugs were dangerous, the FDA warned us, because they were not subjected to rigorous quality control requirements. The implication in that warning, of course, is that brand-name pharmaceuticals sold in the U.S. at U.S. pharmacies must therefore NOT be contaminated.

Read moreDirty Secret of Drug Industry: Their Pills are Made in China!

Marines ignore Taliban cash crop to not upset Afghan locals

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The Marines of Bravo Company’s 1st Platoon sleep beside a grove of poppies. Troops in the 2nd Platoon playfully swat at the heavy opium bulbs while walking through the fields. Afghan laborers scraping the plant’s gooey resin smile and wave.

Last week, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit moved into southern Helmand province, the world’s largest opium poppy-growing region, and now find themselves surrounded by green fields of the illegal plants that produce the main ingredient of heroin.

The Taliban, whose fighters are exchanging daily fire with the Marines in Garmser, derives up to $100 million a year from the poppy harvest by taxing farmers and charging safe passage fees — money that will buy weapons for use against U.S., NATO and Afghan troops.

Yet the Marines are not destroying the plants. In fact, they are reassuring villagers the poppies won’t be touched. American commanders say the Marines would only alienate people and drive them to take up arms if they eliminated the impoverished Afghans’ only source of income.

Many Marines in the field are scratching their heads over the situation.

Read moreMarines ignore Taliban cash crop to not upset Afghan locals

75 students arrested in San Diego State University drug bust

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Dozens of San Diego State University students were arrested after a sweeping drug investigation found that some fraternity members openly dealt drugs and one even sent a mass text message advertising cocaine, authorities said Tuesday.

Two kilograms of cocaine were seized, along with 350 Ecstasy pills, marijuana, psychedelic mushrooms, hash oil, methamphetamine, illicit prescription drugs, several guns and at least $60,000 in cash, authorities said.

Of the 96 people arrested, 75 were students. Eighteen of the students were arrested Tuesday when nine search warrants were executed at various locations including fraternities, said Jesse Rodriguez, San Diego County assistant district attorney.

The undercover probe, dubbed Operation Sudden Fall, was sparked by the cocaine overdose death of a student in May 2007, authorities said. As the investigation continued, another student, from Mesa College, died Feb. 26 of a cocaine overdose at an SDSU fraternity house, the DEA said.

Those arrested included a student who was about to receive a criminal justice degree and another who was to receive a master’s degree in homeland security.

Read more75 students arrested in San Diego State University drug bust

America’s Chemically Modified 21st Century Soldiers

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Armed with potent drugs and new technology, a dangerous breed of soldiers are being trained to fight America’s future wars.

Amphetamines and the military first met somewhere in the fog of WWII, when axis and allied forces alike were issued speed tablets to head off fatigue on the battlefield.

More than 60 years later, the U.S. Air Force still doles out dextro-amphetamine to pilots whose duties do not afford them the luxury of sleep.

Through it all, it seems, the human body and its fleshy weaknesses keep getting in the way of warfare. Just as in the health clinics of the nation, the first waypoint in the military effort to redress these foibles is a pharmaceutical one. The catch is, we’re really not that great at it. In the case of speed, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency itself notes a few unwanted snags like addiction, anxiety, aggression, paranoia and hallucinations. For side-effects like insomnia, the Air Force issues “no-go” pills like temazepam alongside its “go” pills. Psychosis, though, is a wee bit trickier.

Far from getting discouraged, the working consensus appears to be that we just haven’t gotten the drugs right yet. In recent years, the U.S., the UK and France — among others — have reportedly been funding investigations into a new line-up of military performance enhancers. The bulk of these drugs are already familiar to us from the lists of substances banned by international sporting bodies, including the stimulant ephedrine, non-stimulant “wakefulness promoting agents” like modafinil (aka Provigil) and erythropoietin, used to improve endurance by boosting the production of red blood cells.

Read moreAmerica’s Chemically Modified 21st Century Soldiers

UN troops armed DR Congo rebels

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Bullet casings found near human remains in Bogoro, DR Congo 2007
The FNI militia is accused of carrying out massacres of villagers in DR Congo

The UN has covered up claims that its troops in Democratic Republic of Congo gave arms to militias and smuggled gold and ivory, the BBC has learned.

The allegations, based on confidential UN sources, involve Pakistani and Indian troops working as peacekeepers.

The UN investigated some of the claims in 2007, but said it could not substantiate claims of arms dealing.

UN insiders told the BBC’s Panorama they had been prevented from pursuing their inquiries for political reasons.

Gold and ivory

The United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Monuc) is the global body’s largest, with 17,000 troops spread across the country.

It’s true they did, give us arms. They said it was for the security of the country
‘Kung-fu’
FNI leader

Meeting Kung Fu and Dragon

Spotlight on India and Pakistan

DR Congo: Key Facts

The BBC’s Martin Plaut, who returned to DR Congo to follow up his initial investigation into the allegations, says they have managed to bring a measure of stability since they were first established by the UN in February 2000.

They have also helped disarm the warring factions, run democratic elections and assisted with reconstruction.

But an 18-month BBC investigation for Panorama has found evidence that:

– Pakistani peacekeepers in the eastern town of Mongbwalu were involved in the illegal trade in gold with the FNI militia, providing them with weapons to guard the perimeter of the mines

– Indian peacekeepers operating around the town of Goma had direct dealings with the militia responsible for the Rwandan genocide, now living in eastern DR Congo

– The Indians traded gold, bought drugs from the militias and flew a UN helicopter into the Virunga National Park, where they exchanged ammunition for ivory

The UN looked into the allegations concerning the Pakistani troops in 2007.

It concluded that one officer had been responsible for dealing in gold – allowing traders to use UN aircraft to fly into the town, putting them up at the UN base and taking them around the town.

But the UN decided that “in the absence of corroborative evidence” its investigators “could not substantiate the allegation” that Pakistani peacekeepers supplied weapons or ammunition to the militia.

It did, however, identify “an individual who seemed to have facilitated gold smuggling”.

Read moreUN troops armed DR Congo rebels

Narco aggression

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“Since 2001, poppy fields, once banned by the Taliban, have mushroomed again. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghanistan produced 8,200 tonnes of opium last year, enough to make 93 per cent of the world’s heroin supply.”

U.S. foreign intelligence official: “The CIA did almost the identical thing during the Vietnam War, which had catastrophic consequences – the increase in the heroin trade in the USA beginning in the 1970s is directly attributable to the CIA. The CIA has been complicit in the global drug trade for years, so I guess they just want to carry on their favourite business.”

Russia, facing a catastrophic rise in drug addiction, accuses the U.S. military of involvement in drug trafficking from Afghanistan.


Afghan workers cutting open poppy bulbs, the first stage in the harvesting process,
in Jalalabad. Afghanistan produced 8,200 tonnes of opium last year, enough to make
93 per cent of the world’s heroin supply.

COULD it be that the American military in Afghanistan is involved in drug trafficking? Yes, it is quite possible, according to Russia’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov.

Commenting on reports that the United States military transport aviation is used for shipping narcotics out of Afghanistan, the Russian envoy said there was no smoke without fire.

Read moreNarco aggression

Feds Not Addressing Drugs In Water

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A White House task force that was supposed to devise a federal plan to research the issue of pharmaceuticals in drinking water has missed its deadline and failed to produce mandated reports and recommendations for coordination among numerous federal agencies, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

More than 70 pages of the task force’s documents, including e-mails and weekly reports, were released under the Freedom of Information Act as a Senate subcommittee prepares to convene a hearing Tuesday prompted by an AP investigation about trace concentrations of drugs in America’s drinking water.

Read moreFeds Not Addressing Drugs In Water

Tranquillisers putting children’s lives at risk

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· Anti-psychotics may cause long-term harm, say critics
· Youngsters under 6 being given unlicensed drugs

New evidence has shown children’s lives are being put at risk by a surge in the use of controversial tranquillising drugs which are being prescribed to control their behaviour, the Guardian has learned.

The anti-psychotic drugs are being given to youngsters under the age of six even though the drugs have no licence for use in children except in certain schizophrenia cases, the report says.

The number of children on the drugs has doubled since the early 1990s as the UK begins to follow a trend started in the US, but critics say they are a “chemical cosh” that could cause premature death.

Read moreTranquillisers putting children’s lives at risk