FDA Says Vaccine With Pig Virus DNA OK For Humans!

The Food and Drug administration, in a statement, said it was safe for doctors to resume giving patients Glaxo's Rotarix and continue using Merck's Rotateq. The agency said there was no evidence the contamination caused any harm and the vaccines were important in preventing hospitalizations and death.

Rotavirus can cause fatal diarrhea. Both vaccines target the virus, but pieces of DNA from porcine circovirus (PCV) have been found in both companies' products.

The FDA's decision follows a May 7 recommendation by its advisory panel, which ruled that the risk to humans from the pig virus was theoretical at best. It called for continued use of the vaccines, saying their benefits outweighed any potential risk.'

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Pharmagate: Big Pharma Researcher Admits to Faking Dozens of Research Studies for Pfizer, Merck

It's being called the largest research fraud in medical history. Dr. Scott Reuben, a former member of Pfizer's speakers' bureau, has agreed to plead guilty to faking dozens of research studies that were published in medical journals.

Now being reported across the mainstream media is the fact that Dr. Reuben accepted a $75,000 grant from Pfizer to study Celebrex in 2005. His research, which was published in a medical journal, has since been quoted by hundreds of other doctors and researchers as "proof" that Celebrex helped reduce pain during post-surgical recovery. There's only one problem with all this: No patients were ever enrolled in the study!

Dr. Scott Reuben, it turns out, faked the entire study and got it published anyway.'

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Vioxx - 27,785 Deaths Before Merck Finally Withdrew

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimates that Vioxx may have contributed to 27,785 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths between 1999 and 2003. The estimate is based on the number of prescriptions issued for Vioxx between 1999 and 2003.

Merck pulled Vioxx, a popular pain reliever widely used by arthritis patients, off the market in September, saying it was "putting patient safety first" but the Wall Street Journal reported earlier that company officials had fought for years to protect the highly profitable drug and to keep news of the health risks quiet.'

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Merck's Cervical Cancer Vaccine Ads are 'Inaccurate and Misleading'

Women's groups and doctors slammed advertisements issued by two pharmaceutical majors that claimed vaccination against human papilloma virus (HPV) was the best way of preventing cervical cancer.

The objection from Sama Resource Centre for Women and Health and Saheli Women's Resource Centre to Glaxo-SmithKline (GSK) India and Merck marketing HPV vaccines as a "protection against cervical cancer" comes a few days after the Central Drugs Standards Control Organisation (CDSCO) also took notice of the advertisements.'

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Former Head of CDC Lands Lucrative Job as President of Merck Vaccine Division

You've heard it before, how the pharmaceutical industry has a giant "revolving door" through which corporations and government agencies frequently exchange key employees. That reality was driven home in a huge way today when news broke that Dr. Julie Gerberding, who headed the CDC from 2002 through 2009, landed a top job with Merck, one of the largest drug companies in the world. Her job there? She's the new president of the vaccine division.

How convenient. That means the former head of the CDC was very likely cultivating a relationship with Merck all these years, and now comes the big payoff: Heading up a $5 billion division that sells cervical cancer vaccines (like Gardasil), chickenpox vaccines and of course H1N1 swine flu vaccines, too.

So what's the problem with all this? The problem is that private industry and government health offices such as the CDC or FDA should never be so cozy. When they are, it creates an environment of collusion between Big Government and Big Pharma. We've already seen this with the government-led push for swine flu vaccines that are manufactured (and sold) by drug companies like Merck.'

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Merck's Vioxx Scandal Widens: Drug Maker Knew Vioxx Was Deadly for Years Before Risk Was Made Public

The Vioxx scandal widened this week as new research published in the Archives of Internal Medicine reveals that Vioxx maker Merck held data for three years that proved Vioxx caused an alarming increase in the risk of heart attacks and strokes. And yet Merck chose not to release that data. In fact, it took three more years of patients dying from heart attacks before Vioxx was pulled off the market, and even then, Merck insisted the drug was not dangerous.'

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Merck Scientist Admits Cancer & AIDS Came From Vaccines

This is an interview that was censored for obvious reasons. Dr. Maurice Hilleman who was a senior vaccine scientist at Merck reveals the real story behind AIDS and the SV40 virus which causes cancer and how they have been deliberately put in vaccines to infect people.

FDA OKs Death-Dealing Gardasil Vax For Boys

Merck & Co.’s Gardasil, a vaccine used to prevent cervical cancer in women, won U.S. regulatory approval for preventing genital warts in boys.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared the vaccine for use in males ages 9 to 26, Merck said today in a statement.

Approval in boys could add as much as $200 million and $300 million in annual sales, said Leerink Swann & Co. analyst Seamus Fernandez in a research report last month. Gardasil generated revenue of $1.4 billion last year.

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CDC Vaccine Advisor Pockets $29 Million Promoting Vaccines

Dr. Paul Offit of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) received at least $29 million from his share of royalties for Merck's Rotateq vaccine after using his position with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ensure that childhood vaccination with the vaccine became compulsory.

According to a report on the Web site "Age of Autism," a review of CHOP's royalties schedules reveals that Offit likely received between $29 million and $55 million for his work developing the Rotateq vaccine for rotavirus, which causes diarrhea in infants. Because the vaccine is jointly owned by CHOP and by the Wistar Institute but Offit is the only inventor listed on the patent from CHOP, he received 100 percent of inventor's rights payments from CHOP.

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FDA Floats Hydroxycut Scare to Discredit Yet Another Supplement Company

After tens of millions of doses of Hydroxycut were taken by consumers, one person died. This, along with reports of a few dozen liver-related side effects, caused the FDA to push for an industry-wide recall of virtually all Hydroxycut products. The thinking behind the warning? The risk of side effects is very low, but the FDA doesn't believe consumers should be exposed to such risks.

Not from a dietary supplement, anyway. When it's from a vaccine or a pharmaceutical, such risks are deemed "acceptable" by the FDA. Remember the outcry over the COX-2 inhibitor drug Vioxx and the testimony by Dr. David Graham of the FDA who calculated the drug killed over 60,000 Americans? That drug was voted "safe" by an FDA panel even after its own manufacturer voluntarily recalled it from the market!

When it comes to pharmaceuticals, you see, killing 60,000 Americans is no big deal. But when a dietary supplement is linked to a single death, that's more than enough for the FDA to spring into action with its spin machine to destroy the credibility of the dietary supplement in question.

The same thing happened with ephedra (ma huang), a perfectly safe Traditional Chinese Medicine that's been safely used for over 5,000 years in China. It's an important ingredient in all sorts of Chinese Medicine formulas, including anti-viral formulas that cave save lives during a pandemic. But thanks to the FDA, ephedra is now illegal to sell or prescribe in the United States, and anyone prescribing it to patients can be arrested and threatened with being shut down and put out of business.

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Merck Creates Fake Academic Medical Journal

There is very little about Big Pharma's manipulative, lies-as-marketing behavior that shocks me anymore, but this time out I am astounded: Merck has gone and created a fake academic journal, Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, according to The Scientist. Merck products such as Fosamax were featured in "studies" in the journal, which is reportedly published by Elsevier, a well-known academic journal publishing house. Both it and Merck have got a lot of explaining to do.

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Drug Company Had Hit List for Doctors Who Criticized Them

The international drug company Merck had a hit list of doctors who had to be "neutralized" or discredited because they had criticized the painkiller Vioxx, a now-withdrawn drug that the pharmaceutical giant produced.

Staff at the company emailed each other about the list of doctors. The email, which came out during a class-action suit against the drug company, included the words "neutralize," "neutralized" or "discredit" alongside some of the doctors' names.

The company is alleged to have used intimidation tactics against researchers, including dropping hints that the company would stop funding their institutions, and possibly even interfering with academic appointments."

We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live," a Merck employee wrote, according to an email excerpt read to the court.

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Is HPV Vaccine Safe?