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WSJ, September 13, 2005: Cancer Surgery May Lead To Cancer Return
"Doctors have long noted that the rate of recurrence for women with breast cancer is highest during the first two years after surgery to remove the tumor. Now a group of researchers say they have found a reason why: the surgery itself."
Karl Note: Pieces of the truth keep leaking out, as if they were just part of the "old data." In fact, what was denied last year is quitely introduced as if it had been true all along. This is what has been going on about cholesterol. In the field of cancer, too, some of the truth which I wrote about decades ago and which, then, were contrary to politically correct medicine -- these truths are creeping back into the "accepted science" of today. They are treated in today's news as if they had always been true -- most reporters would never go back to see if these data were denied to be valid just a few years ago.
WSJ, July 29, 2005: Disagreement On Science -- A Sign of Moral Disagreement?
In a dispute reflecting heightened concerns about the control and credibility of medical information, the American Society of Hypertension said it is severing its 16-year relationship with the American Journal of Hypertension.
But the journal's editor, John H. Laragh, said he had beaten the society to the punch by announcing in an editorial being published in the July edition that it was ending its relationship with the society.
Ms. Daugherty and millions of other consumers are shopping at Whole Foods and other such markets, demanding healthier, tastier, more sophisticated foods -- and they're willing to pay for it. Many are also growing wary of the very feature upon which Big Food built itself: mechanized food production and highly technical innovations to create "better than natural" processed food.
[Karl Note: The real story here is NOT that some generic drug makers might get the right to make a terrible drug, but that Lilly, very well known for dirty tricks and fraud, has gotten caught again -- they are on the losing side of morality with this drug, and also in their business practices. Also, see how the New York Times spreads the false psychiatric mantra.]
Heightening interest in the suit is the fact that in 2001, Lilly lost a high-profile patent case involving its antidepressant Prozac. Prozac was Lilly's top-selling drug at the time. Despite having a promising new-drug pipeline, Lilly couldn't easily sustain another such loss anytime soon.
But the two patent cases differ in a fundamental way. In the Prozac litigation, Lilly's original patent had expired in August 2001, and Lilly had sought to use an additional patent to extend its sales exclusivity. In the Zyprexa suit, the fight is over the original patent on the chemical compound, issued in 1993 and good until 2011.
Generics companies enjoy a high success rate in patent litigation, winning nearly 75% of cases, according to a study by the Federal Trade Commission last year. But many of those cases turned on patents that didn't cover the drug molecule itself but other characteristics, such as dosage form. The odds are stacked high against the generics makers in the Zyprexa case because the patent being contested covers the drug molecule. Meanwhile, neither has yet won approval for its generic versions of Zyprexa.
The Health Savings Accounts that President Bush recently signed into law may well be the most important piece of legislation of 2003. These new tax and medical insurance rules have the potential to transform health-care finances, bringing costs under control and making health care reflect what patients and their doctors really want. It is remarkable that this legislation has received so little public attention.
Health care has declined in quality just as it has increased in cost. Both trends showed no slight chance of stopping -- until President Bush snuck this one by the Democrats. It isn't that the Democrats want socialized medicine, it is that they want a society in chaos so that they can then "reinvent" the "great society." I don't think they have any thought of what the "great society" might look like, but they are hell-bent on creating the chaos that would allow that change in our national character to force sanity out of public office.
Some schools are finally making moves to get soft drinks out of schools -- but often the replacement drinks they choose are just as bad or worse.
Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics called on its members to push schools to remove soft drinks from school vending machines as a big step toward improving childhood nutrition and curbing the obesity epidemic.
[Karl Loren: I'm going to go looking for this right away -- I had quit eating pork because it had no taste -- now I know why!!]
After two decades in which pork chops got nearly as lean as chicken breasts, a new type of fattier, darker and tastier pork is starting to hit store shelves and restaurant menus. The pricier meat's biggest selling point: It tastes like pork used to taste -- before pig farmers bred their hogs to produce meat that's 30% leaner than it was 20 years ago.
In another move which should reveal the true intentions of Democrats, the Democrats' last shot at the citizens of California increased the danger to nutritionists and health food stores to offer help to people seeking an alternative to medical malpractice!
The language of this 2004 California Bill does not mention nutritionists or health food stores, but it can be used to prosecute them!
As usual the bill is cloaked in terms of protecting the consumer, but in fact it is just another pay off by the drug industry to the corrupt politicians in Sacramento.
In a finding that could open the door to a broad new understanding of heart disease, researchers have identified what they say is the first genetic mutation directly linked to heart attacks.
The mutated gene is an effect of the cause of free radical damage. Even the free radical "cause" is, in truth, a symptom (effect) of the causation of excess heavy (toxic) metals in the body -- which can be removed with oral chelation -- and cannot be removed with drugs.
So, the interesting news here is that science has found yet another "effect" and is calling it, like so many other times, the "cause."
For years, food companies have disclosed the amount of carbohydrates in their products according to a simple formula mandated by the Food and Drug Administration: subtract the protein, fat, moisture and ash content (minerals like calcium and phosphates) from the weight of the food. Whatever is left over is a carb, listed on food packages as "total carbohydrates."
Eager to exploit the latest diet trend, food companies are cooking up a menu of products for people who want to avoid carbohydrates. Reduced-carb versions of everything from ice cream and bread to tortillas and jelly beans are showing up on store shelves, including products from major companies such as H.J. Heinz Co. and Anheuser-Busch Cos.
Philosophically, the question could be whether earlier ignorance excuses a doctor from malpractice when later data shows he ignored the obvious signs. The question becomes more critical when it can easily be proven that the "earlier ignorance" was in the face of plenty of evidence that an Aneurism was a serious cause of death and was relatively easy to prevent with remedies which were loudly proclaimed but then ignored. My conclusion is, as it has often been that the "medical profession" is, indeed, guilty of criminal malfeasance. If this were the first or only one of very few such instances, we could balance the "good" with the bad of medical practices, and forgive the ignorance. I don't think the balance is in favor of medicine, but rather is in full proof of the ongoing fraudulent refusal to see the truth.
WSJ: September 26, 2003: Too Many Patients Never Reap The Benefits of Great Research
In April, I wrote about the gap between the remarkable successes that science has scored in curing lab rats and the treatments developed for humans. But it gets worse: Doctors often fail to pass on to patients the fruits of any discoveries. In other words, even when researchers parlay basic science into "best practices" -- treatments vetted by large clinical trials, the National Institutes of Health and groups such as the American Heart Association and American Diabetes Association -- the actual care for thousands of people falls short.
WSJ: September 11, 2003: Got Raw Milk? Not Unless You Own Your Own Cow
Aajonus Vonderplanitz, a popular author in the raw-milk underground, says he has cured himself of cancer and diabetes with an all-raw-food diet. Today, much of the appetite for raw milk is being whetted by the Weston A. Price Foundation, a Washington-based group that promotes traditional foods such as grass-fed beef and unpasteurized milk. The foundation, established in 1999, has quickly grown to 150 U.S. chapters with 3,500 members.
WSJ: September 11, 2003:Medicare Study May Cast Doubt On Projections of Soaring Costs
A healthy person reaching the age of 70 spends about the same amount on health care in his remaining years as a sickly person who reaches the same age, according to new research findings that may cast doubt on federal projections of surging Medicare expenditures.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, attempted to shed light on a debate among health-care economists and policymakers about the implications of longer life expectancies on health-care costs.
WSJ: September 12, 2003: The Big Secret In Health Care: Rationing Is Here
The nurse manager in intensive care, Ms. Micheletti makes daily battlefield decisions that influence whose lives should be prolonged and who should leave the ICU. As her hospital faces a cost crunch, she's under pressure to get patients out of the glass-walled unit quickly.
The word for what Ms. Micheletti does every day at this 173-bed hospital is one of the big secrets of American health care: Rationing. Although the U.S. spends far more per person on health care than any other country, and it spends ever more each year, there aren't enough doctors, drugs and dollars to do everything for everybody. So who gets the care? And who makes these momentous, life-or-death decisions?
Cardiovascular disease is the nation's biggest killer, causing one of every 2.5 deaths. It is also the most costly, far outstripping cancer, the disease with the next highest level of spending, at $46 billion per year.
Treatment may start with cholesterol-lowering drugs, at $5,500 a year. Angioplasty to clear blocked arteries costs about $19,000. Bypass surgery to rebuild blocked arteries costs, on average, $44,300. Once extreme, but now increasingly common, a full heart transplant can run as high as $350,000.
Essentially, Medicare was introduced in the late 1960s as an open-ended, unrationed invitation to do anything medically possible to prolong life. In other countries, government-financed health care does not cover invasive surgery with small time horizons for recovery. For example, liver transplants and quadruple bypass surgery aren’t done on 80- or 90-year-olds, as they are in the U.S. Behavior is affected by costs and benefits.
HMO patients who need heart bypass surgery are more likely to have the operation in hospitals that have a higher-than-average death rate than patients with insurance that pays for each procedure separately.
Lower rates of use of resources have been reported for the treatment of hospitalized patients covered by Medicaid than for privately insured patients. Cost-containment policies may exacerbate such differences in the use of hospital resources. We studied patients with ischemic heart disease who received care at nonfederal hospitals in California in 1983 (the year a Medicaid cost-containment program was implemented), in 1985, or in 1988. Within this sample of patients, we compared the rates of coronary revascularization (coronary-artery bypass surgery or coronary angioplasty) among patients covered by Medicaid, patients with private insurance covering fee-for-service care, and patients enrolled in a health maintenance organization (HMO).
WSJ: September 10, 2003: Transformation of Heart Care Is Putting Specialists at Odds
Now new technologies are letting cardiologists handle an increasing number of cases that once required surgery. The most important is the stent: Cardiologists insert tiny metal scaffolds to prop open arteries after clearing them with angioplasty balloons, letting patients delay bypass surgery or avoid it entirely.
Karl Loren "suspects" that this news item is false, but will, nonetheless, investigate it thoroughly and then write more on this item.
If you believe the government propaganda that AIDS is hard to catch then you are going to die even sooner than the rest of us. The common cold is a virus. Have you ever had a cold? How did you catch it? You don't really know, do you? If the cold virus were fatal how many people would there be left in the world?
June 29, 2003, Press Times of India Market Forces Always Prevail Over "Managed" Care
In a bid to overcome the long waiting lists in Britain's National Health Service (NHS), some patients suffering from heart and lung ailments may be flown to India for surgery quickly and at almost half the cost, a media report said on Sunday.
Employees Gripe Those With Bad Habits Are Driving Up Insurance Charges for All
June 18, 2003, WSJ -- Getting Workers to Slim Down Is New Priority for Businesses
A group of big companies worried about health-care costs has opened an institute focusing on obesity, saying overweight workers are costing employers billions of dollars a year.
What is the value of a human life? That is the question vexing John Graham, the White House's regulations czar.
A death row prisoner in Oregon who has kidney disease could receive a transplant ahead of thousands of other patients because the operation would save the state money.
Your baby is born four months premature, weighs one pound and is deaf, blind and missing half its brain — a human thing that previously would have been allowed to die. But now a little known law insists your doctor keep the baby alive.
Health Care As Percentage Of GDP
As a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), health care spending is expected to reach 17.7 percent in 2012, up from 14.1 percent in 2001, after hovering just above 13 percent from 1993 through 2000. This increase reflects a combination of faster projected growth in health spending and slower GDP growth.
We Will Never Win The War On AIDS With Our Current Approach, Karl Loren
Health Insurance Is Disease Assurance, Karl Loren
Wrong Relations Are The Primary Cause Of Poor Health, Karl Loren
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