Is Congress under the thumb of Big Pharma?

Dr. Joseph Mercola, advocate for the rest of us, has sent out a troubling postingabout Big Pharma. He provides data that shows the big pharmaceutical companies are pouring oceans of money on Congress and doctors to get its way, and muzzling the media too in this day of struggling newspapers and the sunset of investigative journalism.

What is Big Pharma’s way? making more money for Big Pharma, of course. Specifically, cranking out more and more vaccines, angling for government mandates for vaccines, and spreading the dubious word that if you don’t get the latest vaccine for some obscure disease, and have your children stuck at a young age, you are endangering the world. Also, spreading the word that vaccines have been proven safe, which is totally untrue.

And where does that leave you and me? Struggling against the media, the mainstream medical community, and the government. We and our children are guinea pigs. If the new vaccines cause enormous trouble, they’re withdrawn, but not before many of us have received irreparable harm. And if they’re causing harder-to-trace trouble, like possibly autism, the strategy is to browbeat the victims (us) into submission with ridicule and more.

I was very troubled about Mercola’s description of Big Pharma’s relationship with Congress:

In a CBS News video’ crooked lobbyist Jack Abramoff explains how he influenced Congress for years, and how this kind of corruption still continues. He spent $1 million dollars a year on concert and sporting event tickets alone, and even had two full-time members of his staff devoted to booking tickets!

If vacations, private jets, fancy dinners and other perks weren’t enough to sway Congress, Abramoff’s group would offer members of Congress a job when they leave Capitol Hill, at double or triple the salary. As Abramoff says in the video, once they accepted that offer that was it:

” … We own them … everything that we want, they’re gonna do.” …

The pharmaceutical industry spent $1.5 billion lobbying Congress in the last decade, and in so doing has manipulated the government’s involvement with medicine and secondarily reinforced our dependence on them, through government policies.

So I wrote letters to my congressman and senator challenging them on this. They are Cong. Russ Carnahan and Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri. I’ll keep you posted on what they say. Here’s my letter:

Dear Congressman/Senator,

I would like to know whether you are accepting campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies, or have been promised a job by them, and what you are doing to foster independent investigation of the causes of autism.

I am a parent of two on the autism spectrum. My brother is also autistic. I am very concerned about the way the drug companies seem to be paying off members of congress to protect their interests at my expense. I would certainly appreciate it if you would read Dr. Joseph Mercola’s recent post about this and respond (see link at end).

My Aspie daughter is 24, and I have seen absolutely no progress in conventional medicine during the 12 years I have known her diagnosis toward finding a cure. I believe the pharmaceutical companies are attempting to deflect attention from study of vaccines as a possible environmental hazard. Something environmental became very different around 1990, triggering this epidemic. My daughter was caught in the beginning of it, and my son, five years younger, in the middle of it. What became different in 1990? At about 1990, the number and frequency of suggested vaccines became much more pronounced. Maybe there were other things too. I think that use of plastics went way up, as “better” plastics additives were found. Perhaps these are to blame.

A very simple test to see whether vaccines should be investigated further would be to compare autism rates in populations that are vaccinated with populations that are not. There are some unvaccinated populations, such as Amish, and a home-birth medical practice in Chicago of 30,000 people. (Reputedly, autism does not occur in these populations.) This study could be done. But no one is funding it, because Big Pharma controls the funding. And guess who would stand to lose megabucks if vaccines were found to be a problem?

Before you brush me off and say that studies show that vaccines are safe, let me say that the studies in question address two very tiny pieces of a big puzzle. The studies address 1. mercury in vaccines (since mostly removed) and 2. the measles virus in the MMR vaccine. They appear to show that neither of these, by itself, is causing autism, though the results are disputed. Many in the media and elsewhere generalize these two findings and conclude that vaccines do not cause autism. I hope you can see the logical fallacy, generalizing from the particular. Vaccines could indeed be causing autism. Very little has been proven.

These studies do not address the “too many, too soon” hypothesis which notes that tiny children as old as 1 day are now required to take a vaccine, and starting a few months later many vaccines on the same day. Their immune systems are not ready for this onslaught. Could this be causing autism? Could a combination of vaccine-related factors be causing autism?

In fact, the pharmaceutical companies when bringing a vaccine to market do not test the vaccine in realistic conditions. They do not test tiny children, nor do they test a vaccine given at the same time as multiple other vaccines. They just test the one, in someone with a more mature immune system. So the population at large is really taking part in the big experiment. And the results are being ignored and denied.

We the people need an advocate against Big Pharma. Are you the one? I will put your answer on my blog.

Here is the link to Mercola’s summary of Big Pharma influence. If you aren’t following Mercola, you should be. He is a voice for the people in this health care wasteland.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/12/18/journalism-in-drug-industry.aspx?e_cid=20111218_SNL_Art_1

Phyllis Wheeler