The Great Prescription Drug Hoax

Are Prescription Drugs Designed to Make People Sick?

A Deduction

By Owen R. Fonorow, Copyright 2004

"Dec 2003:  Senior executive Allen Roses, of GlaxoSmithKline, is quoted in a national newspaper as stating that more than 90% of drugs only work in 30-50% of people. "

Medicine, impersonating science, has co-opted the word "proof" to provide comfort to the gullible; in so doing it has tarnished the reputations of science as well as of medicine. When the medical profession pretends that there is such a thing as scientific proof, labeling their remedies as proven and decrying unproven alternatives, it doesn't seem to be aware that in physical science there are only guesses, hypotheses, theories and even a few laws. Only repeatable experiments determine truth.  To the degree that medicine relies on carefully conducted experiments and collects data without preconceived notions, (which can be duplicated and criticized by other scientists), it follows generally accepted scientific principles. Conclusions may be drawn, but to imply that there are proven methods for controlling disease, is to lie. 

WHEN MEDICAL PROOF MEETS REALITY

The problem with a medical system based upon “proof” is that, over time, people discover that unproven remedies work and  proven remedies may not. The common cold is a good example. Millions have discovered that there is a simple "cure" for the common cold, before the virus takes hold. [*] The public may not be able to verify for themselves whether or not medical "science" is right about the likes of heart disease and cancer, but thanks to Linus Pauling, many have discovered that it is easy to stop the cold virus in its tracks.

The public is becoming increasingly aware that something is rotten in the state of medicine. Generally, doctors are well-educated in the arts that do not directly compete with prescription drugs, e.g., diagnosis, surgery and trauma treatment.  Regrettably, doctors receive little or no training in non-prescription substances which are ignored by medical authorities as unproven. When proven remedies fail, and unproven remedies easily succeed, the reputation of all scientists is unfairly harmed. 

Linus Pauling is the prime example of a scientist whose reputation has been unfairly impugned. The void in medical school surrounding the therapeutic uses of nutrients, especially vitamin C, is conspicuous and can hardly be accidental. The result is that medical doctors are losing their good reputations and fewer patients are tolerating this nutrition-ignorance.  In 1998, the AMA revealed that Americans made more visits (above 100 million more) to alternative practitioners. [*]

Most people, and almost all medical doctors, still believe that prescription drugs are based in good science, and that pharmaceutical companies offer them in good faith.   The truth, however, is not difficult to uncover:  Many top selling prescription drugs are useless;  some even cause the disease for which they are prescribed. [*]

CLEANSING THE MEDICAL MIND

  Doctors take lives into their hands and people want to believe that medical care is infallible, despite all the evidence to the contrary. We wish to believe that science has proven remedies. It isn't pleasant to hear drug company senior executives (truthfully) tell the world that clinical trials are “generally useless” and that most drugs do not work on most people as advertised.  Nor is it pleasant to learn  that many common medical procedures were never “proven” before becoming adopted and generally accepted by the medical profession. 

It has been easy to condition the masses to accept much nonsense in the name of science. Those who believe that science has not discovered the cures for primary chronic diseases, probably believe that the following ‘truths’ are self-evident,  

1.  Cholesterol is the enemy.

2.  Medicine/Cardiology is based upon strict science.

  The problem is that doctors graduate from medical schools convinced that there is little or no proven therapeutic value to anything other than “scientifically tested” prescription drugs. Why is it that such bright people, skeptical about almost everything,  are not skeptical about the claims made for the drugs they push? Are deliberate prevaricators in control of medicine and medical curricula?  One thing is clear: Orthodox medical doctors do not offer better, more effective, safer and much cheaper options for treating chronic disease because they lack that particular training and have no respect for the value of "unproven" antioxidant, vitamin, mineral, amino acid, and enzyme supplementation.

  Any “conspiracy theory” implies that it has been possible to deceive an entire profession,  and to brainwash the public, simply by the frequent use of the word “science”. (There are the Quackbusters, who work to discredit alternatives to prescription drugs; including those who advocate such alternatives.  It is difficult to believe that the Quackbusters influence medical classrooms and texts.) It hardly seems likely that medical education could be so tightly controlled that all doctors are cut from the same mold.  In any case, the nutrition-vacuum in orthodox medical education is pervasive, serving more than one master. The legal right to prescribe drugs, after all, is what separates MDs from chiropractors and other physicians.

Whatever the reason, medical students truly believe that their education is based upon the pursuit of truth. However, the author has observed the mind-control techniques used in medical schools, most notably during classes on nutrition. These techniques are often adopted and used by medical authorities and writers in the media.

  The first technique is to present any benefit of any non-prescription substance in a way that casts doubt upon its value. Authorities always use the words “may” or “might” in conjunction with any nonprescription substance and a therapeutic value.  The positive clinical responses to drugs are rarely qualified, leading to a biased and highly distorted view of the medical universe.

  Nutrients are often ignored entirely in medical school course materials, but if they must be covered the professor will phrase sentences that create doubt in the student's mind,  

  “Vitamin C may reduce endothelial dysfunction”

They cast little doubt as to the possible side effects of vitamins.

  “Vitamin C causes kidney stones.”

In an early nutrition class, there was a checklist on quacks included with the course materials. This material implied that anyone who prescribed more than the 10-times the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of a vitamin was, by definition, a priori a quack. (Vitamin C may be a poor example. The reason for taking another class was to learn 'therapeutic nutrition', however, vitamin C was not mentioned, ever, during the entire semester!)

Another common technique is to imply that large, extended and expensive studies are required before a medical finding becomes “proven.”  Medical students are told repeatedly that pharmaceutical medications are products of extensive research, and that only such findings should be trusted. 

  Professors and medical textbook writers express little doubt about positive clinical results of prescription drugs:

   “Cholesterol drugs are proven life savers.”

Again, even suggesting to medical students that anything can be “proven” in science is a lie to begin with, but this is what is taught. This conditioning by medical authority figures during schooling builds confidence in prescription drugs and reinforces the idea that medical education is scientifically based, and that the science of nutrition is second-rate or even fraudulent.  

To the medical student, remarkable claims for vitamins and antioxidants seem fantastic and are easily dismissed;  curiosity, fundamental to good science, is suppressed.  It is ironical medical doctors consider themselves firmly grounded in science believing they are generally looked upon as authorities in the field of human health.

These techniques work because no one wants to believe:  a) medical students are being brainwashed (certainly not those misinformed medical students), or   b) new graduates are incompetent, or   c) pharmaceutical companies would promulgate known untruths regarding matters so fundamental to human life and health.

This unfair treatment -- the absurd force-feeding of ‘selected’ information surrounding this main competitor to prescription drugs -- nutrition science, occurs in medical schools presently, and an enormous amount of dangerous legal drugs are sold as the result. 

This deliberate withholding of beneficial information has harmed all human beings. And it gets worse.    

FAKE PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

“The Big Lie is a finely tuned technique used with great success by totalitarian regimes.  A complete falsehood is repeated. People come to believe it, despite all arguments or evidence to the contrary. Repetition is essential.“

Most people believe it reasonable to think that science has failed, in that the cures for cancer and heart disease are unknown. There is a growing number of concerned scientists who question the claims being made regarding pharmaceuticals, which generally treat rather than cure disease. This skepticism of the interpretations of medical science used to sell drugs is bolstered from the observance that: Truth in prescription drug advertising would irreversibly erode sales. The dilemma facing pharmaceutical executives is real. They are forced to lie -- tell the truth, go out of business. Medical doctors, conditioned to accept pharmaceuticals as products of rigorous science, have become pawns of the pharmaceutical companies. Doctors that legitimize the marketing and sale of ineffective and dangerous prescription drugs, perhaps unknowingly, cause injury and death of millions.

ANTACIDS - ONE $20 BILLION MARKET BEGETS ANOTHER $20 BILLION MARKET

The popular antacid drugs which totally block the formation of stomach acid are an example of prescription drugs that may cause harm. Could the evolution of human beings be so imperfect that we require a drastic reduction or elimination of stomach acid?  Drugs such as PrilosecÒ and NexiumÒ earn their makers $20 billion. These “nuclear” acid-blockers cause additional health problems by interfering with normal digestion, problems that few would connect to the antacids.  

Research has substantiated the finding that antacids interfere with digestion, cause poor nutrient absorption and interfere with the “acid barrier” that keeps lower tract bacteria in the lower tract. Jonathan Wright, MD,  claims that acid-blocking drugs lead to increased rates of infection, nutrient deficiencies and possibly blindness. [*]

Whether intentional or not, poor absorption of minerals and other vital nutrients caused by the use of antacids creates another $20 billion market -- the antidepressant prescription drug market. For example, low stomach acid leads to poor vitamin B12 absorption. When vitamin B12 is not absorbed, depression is often the result.

GREAT STATIN DRUG HOAX

The most dangerous hoax has been the so-called “statin” cholesterol-lowering drugs.  These drugs are sold to more than 25 million people worldwide, earning  their makers more than $20 billion dollars annually. Touted as “life saving,” statin drugs cause heart disease. These drugs weaken muscle, leading to heart failure, and at high enough dosages without antioxidant support, to heart transplant. These drugs are the wrong prescription for anyone, much less heart patients. 

U.S. doctors are not warned that artifical HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors (statins) also inhibit the synthesis of coenzyme-Q10.  With high statin dosages, serum levels of CoQ10 inevitably decline which causes muscle myopathy in many patients.  The Merck pharmaceutical company which sells Zocor Ò has several 1990 U.S. patents protecting the means to correct this serious problem. Canadian advertisements for Lipitor Ò and Zocor, but not U.S. ads, contain a warning about CoQ10 depletion. (Again illustrating the power of the huge pharmaceutical companies' influence in U. S. governmental agencies.)  Most medical doctors do not know what coenzyme Q10 is, so they don't know of its great importance in cardiovascular health. [*]

It's plain that the millions of statin users and their doctors are unaware that ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is important in the regulation of endogenous cholesterol synthesis in man. It has been known since 1986 that this vitamin, like the statin drugs, block the same HMG-CoA enzyme that is required for the body to mass-produce cholesterol. [*] Vitamin C deficiency induces the body to produce more cholesterol. In 1992, the world’s only twice-unshared Nobel Prize winner made a video where he has stated, “heart disease is a chronic vitamin C deficiency." Pauling's thesis is compelling and supported by conclusive laboratory experiments. His brilliant, patented, nonprescription cure for cardiovascular disease is readily available to the public. [*]

It is difficult for reasonable people, especially medical doctors conditioned to believe that prescription drugs are well researched, to believe that pharmaceutical companies would hide the truth about matters of life and death, or that the FDA would stand by and permit it.  But it is common sense to question the need for lowering cholesterol. As the human species evolved to produce cholesterol in large quantities, why does the liver make more cholesterol if the intake declines?   If these statin drugs are so beneficial, why is cardiovascular disease still the leading cause of death in the USA,  and why do the authors and researchers of the most recent statin studies keep their raw mortality data secret?

If one stops and considers these findings, he/she may realize that artificial cholesterol lowering, by itself, is unlikely to improve health or increase their longevity. Studies have shown that the so-called statin drugs, as is the case with many prescription drugs, do more harm than good. Better results occur with concurrent antioxidant usage, but this knowledge is deliberately kept clouded. Statin cholesterol lowering drugs are products of the best science money can buy. They seem to have been designed to create an even larger market for medical care. Their marketing, which doctors fail to question,  contains distortions, half-truths, and deceit.

 A BRILLIANT SUGGESTION FROM AN A -BOMB SCIENTIST

A true scientist and National hero, ninety-nine (99) year-old retired physics professor Theodore P. Jorgensen, Ph.D. (Harvard) worked at Los Alamos on the atomic bomb during World War II.  In 2003, Dr. Jorgensen presented his novel idea that would save the United States billions in prescription drugs and health care: Have the Federal Government provide ascorbic acid (vitamin C) free to all citizens.   Dr. Jorgensen writes in private correspondence,

  It was discovered that most animals produce their own ascorbic acid and that human beings, apes, monkeys, and guinea pigs could not make any at all. The conclusion of the thinking on this problem was that those animals which could not make ascorbic acid had a genetic defect involving one enzyme which was lost millions of years ago because ascorbic acid was so easy to obtain in the foods then available.

   “In order to obtain this amount of ascorbic acid a human being should have, work was done to find what other animals made for their own use. The result of this study put the value of ascorbic acid at 2.3 to 10 grams per 154 pound man in good health.

   “It is virtually impossible for any person to obtain this much ascorbic acid per day from ordinary or casual ways. This also indicates that human beings are living with dangerously low levels of ascorbic acid. The above information gives some idea of the reason our cost of health care is so high and our average age of death is so low. This problem is a national disgrace and should be attacked on a national basis. There are two reasons why this should be done.

  “One reason is that a free supply of ascorbic acid to every person would lower the cost of health care in a major way.” - Theodore P. Jorgensen [Full Text of Letter]

CORRECT MEDICAL TRAINING BEFORE MDs BECOME DINOSAURS

Organized medicine has created the public image that it is based upon “science” but apparently it does not understand the meaning of the word.  The misuse of the word 'proof' puts the work of trained scientists at a public-relations disadvantage; true scientists would never use that word as descriptive of remedies. Medical doctors trained in the United States should become skeptical and take action accordingly. Doctors should band together and bring legal action against their medical schools (before the entire profession is sued for mass murder.) Other culpable entities may include the medical professional societies, medical journals and the large pharmaceutical companies.  As long as the current medical curricula are influenced by pharmaceutical interests there is little hope of low-profit nutritional science getting a fair hearing in medicine.   One way to stir up the establishment is for doctors to sue their former schools on the basis of the cost of their eduction, but what they were not taught. The ignornance of nutrition promoted by U.S. medical schools breaches an implied contract and may constitute a legal definition of fraud. 

Owen Fonorow, Naturopath, Ph.D.
Vitamin C Foundation
PO Box 3097, Lisle IL 60532
www.VitaminCFoundation.org
630-416-1438