Shane Ellison is dedicated to stopping prescription drug hype in its tracks.
By education and by trade, I was a drug chemist. My passion for science motivated a successful career in drug design and synthesis – in both academia and industry. As a scientist, I witnessed first-hand the priorities of international pharmaceutical companies (Big Pharma), which ranked wealth first and health a distant second.
In the pharmaceutical industry, making money supercedes science. Science no longer prevails in medicine. Instead, modern medicine has been democratized. Drug approval is a simple matter of 51% telling the other 49% that a prescription drug is safe and necessary. The outcome: deadly drugs are approved for use among misinformed medical doctors and patients. Herein lies a story of deceit and a chemist’s abandonment of modern medicine.
My suspicion of modern medicine began while I was employed by Eli Lilly to design a new generation of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) drugs. Such drugs include tamoxifen and raloxifene. Initially, these drugs were thought to block estrogen receptors (excess estrogen can initiate cancer growth) and thereby halt cancer. As time progressed, though, it was learned that they were also capable of activating estrogen receptors. The end result was a biochemical environment favorable to cancer growth among users.(1)The Journal of the American Medical Association recognized this trend and stated “our data add to the growing body of evidence that recent long-term use of HRT is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer and that such use may be related particularly to lobular tumors.”
The risk of cancer associated with HRT drugs was obscured from doctors by drug companies. This can be seen by the fact that tamoxifen is the gold-standard used by medical doctors to fight cancer among their patients, particularly breast cancer. This explains why medical doctors might not notice its ability to cause cancer – the patient already has it.
At any rate, my task was made clear: Design HRT “knock-offs” that are effective without causing cancer.
My attempt to design safer alternatives was unsuccessful. And after one year, the project was ended. However, access to HRT drugs like tamoxifen was not. They remained on the market.
The fuel driving the continued use of HRT drugs was disinformation via Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) advertising. Since 1962, monitoring DTC advertising has been the sole responsibility of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But in a ghastly conflict of interests, the FDA granted the duty of DTC advertising to the pharmaceutical companies in 1997. Officially, this was done as a means of “promoting health awareness to ensure health and safety.” Unofficially, it was done to sell more drugs. DTC advertising dictated that all women over 50 should use HRT to remain healthy. Women scurried to their doctors to ask if “HRT was right for them.” My suspicion grew into conflict.
The disinformation campaign behind HRT drugs was not an isolated case. I learned that drug advertising and science are frequently in direct opposition to each other. For example:
DTC advertising dictates that lowering cholesterol prevents heart disease. Science proves otherwise.
DTC advertising dictates that an aspirin a day will keep heart attack away. Science proves otherwise.
DTC advertising dictates that depression is a disease that must be treated with prescription drugs. Science proves otherwise.
DTC advertising dictates that ADHD is a disease and that our children must be treated with amphetamines. Science proves otherwise.
DTC advertising dictates that infants must be vaccinated to prevent childhood illness. Science proves otherwise.
DTC advertising dictates that blood pressure must be controlled via a lifetime of servitude to prescription drugs. Science proves otherwise.
DTC advertising dictates that chemotherapy is your first line of defense against deadly cancer. Science proves otherwise.
DTC advertising dictates that Type II diabetes must be treated with daily insulin use. Science proves otherwise.
By spreading the aforementioned health myths, DTC advertising forges a belief among the general public which asserts that drugs – not lifestyle habits and nutrition – confer health and longevity. And although, in reality, medicine is only necessary for sick people in times of emergency, DTC advertising has been wildly successful in convincing people that being healthy requires a lifetime of prescription drug use. While it’s true that the advertising usually mentions the potential side effects of drugs, doctors tend to discount them. They simply regurgitate the pharmaceutical-company line that “the benefits of a drug outweigh the risks.” Don’t believe it.
Western Medicine’s plague of deception is deadlier than any virus, illicit drugs, and terrorism combined. Well-documented in scientific journals and reported by media outlets nationwide, FDA approved drugs are killing an estimated 106,000 people every year.(2) That equates to one individual dying every five minutes from “approved” drugs – 300 people dying every day. Which is twice as many deaths in a single year from “approved drugs” as the total number of U.S. deaths from the Vietnam War.(3) This does not count death by hospital medical error, which adds 98,000 deaths to the atrocity.(4) If not killed, an estimated 2 million people are victims of drug-induced illnesses.(5) These may include drug-induced obesity, cancer, kidney disease, autism, depression and heart failure.
Hypnotized by DTC advertising, people are oblivious to the ill effects of prescription drug use. This is evidenced by their willingness to swallow whatever “the doctor ordered.” They drug their children, hop the borders to smuggle inexpensive prescription drugs back into the U.S., beg their congressman for discounts and pay a lifetime of insurance fees in order to snatch up these silent killers. The avalanche of DTC advertising has smothered common sense.
For the general public and medical doctors to fully grasp the effect of Modern Medicine’s Deceit, they have to judge the situation by what a drug is actually accomplishing, rather than what the drug company ads and pharmaceutically-compliant politicians insist. The health benefits of prescription drugs are illusory. Step away from the hypnotic drug ads, close the ghost-written medical journals, discard research studies dominated by statistical contortionists and give yourself a prescription-drug reality check: Very few prescription drugs have any value outside of emergency medicine and those that do can usually be replaced with safer and less expensive natural medicine. This was a troublesome lesson for me, as an aspiring drug chemist, to learn. Unfortunately, it was not the only one.
Humanitarianism among Big Pharma has been abandoned. The technical skills of chemists are not being used for humanitarian purposes. They are being used in a deadly game of profiteering. Those at risk are not the misinformed, high-paid medical doctors but rather their patients. Becoming aware of this ripple effect of DTC advertising led to my abandonment of modern medicine.
I had to face the cold, hard facts: Western Medicine has become a billion dollar empire not out of keen science, but rather deceit. The end result has been one nation under drugs. This subjugation has set a standard of health in America that, by definition, is sick care disguised as health care.
Forward thinking chemists recognize the deadly trend. But few have the luxury of speaking out or resigning. The majority of chemists in the U.S. are foreigners. Their career secures them the right to live and work in the U.S. This demands allegiance to their employer, regardless of the end result of their labors. Admittedly, that this is an intentional act of Big Pharma is speculative.
Individuals outside of the drug industry often question my conflict with Big Pharma. How can a single person denounce a philosophy adhered to by millions of medical doctors? That is simple: I ignore the majority thinking that is steeped in disinformation. I stand firm in science. Truth in science requires only one scientist to verify reproducible results in the face of pharmaceutical tyranny.
Science proves that habits, not drugs, create and eradicate disease. The current devastation of prescription drugs is a warning that healthy lifestyle and nutrition habits must replace blind worship of prescription drugs in the pursuit of life-extension. As people obtain better health intelligence and heed this warning, drug use will recede. A new model of health care based on common sense, not profiteering, will emerge.
About the Author
Shane Ellison is dedicated to stopping prescription drug hype in its tracks. To this end, he has made it his mission to introduce healthy lifestyle habits as well as safe and effective nutritional supplements to the public. With his keen ability to sift through scientific literature and weed out fact from fiction, Shane has empowered thousands to assert their health freedom by saying “no” to prescription drugs. Learn more at www.healthmyths.net
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- Sally, A. et al. Estrogen Plus Progestin and the Incidence of Dementia and Mild Cognitive Impairment in Postmenopausal Women. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2003;289:2651-2662.
Chen CL, Weiss NS, Newcomb P, Barlow W, White E. Hormone replacement therapy in relation to breast cancer. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2002 Feb 13;287(6):734-41.
Spurgeon, D. Long Term use of HRT Doubles Cancer Risk. British Medical Journal. 2003 Jul 5;327(7405):9
Yoneva T. Taniguchi K. Tsunenari T. Saito H. Kanbe Y, Morikaw K, Yamada-Okabe H. Identification of a novel, orally bioavailable estrogen receptor downregulator. Anticancer Drugs. 2005 Aug;16(7):751-6.
Labrie, F. et al. EM-652 (SCH 57068), a third generation SERM acting as pure antiestrogen in the mammary gland and endometrium. The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. 1999 Apr-Jun;69(1-6):51-84. - Starfield, Barbara. Is US Health Really the Best in the World? Journal of the American Chemical Society, July 26, 2000-Vol 284, No.4.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7503122/ - There were an estimated 58,000 U.S casualties in the Vietnam War
- Moride Y, Haramburu F, Requejo AA, Begaud B. Under-reporting of adverse drug reactions in general practice. British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 1997 43: 177-181.
- Tejal K. Gandhi. et al. Adverse Drug Events in Ambulatory Care. The New England Journal of Medicine. Volume 348:1556-1564. April 17, 2003. Number 16.
Author: Shane Ellison, M.Sc.
Date: 08/15/05
© 2005 Health Myths Exposed, LLC
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