"Good medicine demands that you protect the patient. That's the issue here, and not the drug, and not the profit margin," stated Dr. Dennis Mangano, the San Fransico doctor who conducted the largest study to date concerning the dangers of the anti-bleeding drug Trasylol. Dr. Mangano offered these comments during a scathing report featured on 60 Minutes which revealed that Trasylol's manufacturer, Bayer, hid studies from the FDA which showed a clear link between the drug and heart and kidney failure. Other doctors interviewed by CBS suggest that Bayer was aware of dangerous side effects from Trasylol as early as the 1980's.
Trasylol is an anti-bleeding drug that is given to approximately 1/3 of patients undergoing heart surgery. Trasylol was heavily marketed by Bayer and was projected to be the next billion-dollar drug in 2008. Fortunately, Dr. Mangano's efforts set into motion a chain of events that would eventually put a stop to Bayer's ability to profit (and profit a lot) from other's misfortunes.
After following 5,065 patients in 17 countries, Dr. Mangano found that patients given Trasylol were more likely to experience death and kidney failure after heart surgery.
This study was then published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which prompted other doctors to speak out regarding the deadly drug. According to Dr. Juergen Fischer, director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine at the University of Cologne, Bayer was not interested in his results from studies conducted in the 1980's that showed severe kidney damage in animals given Trasylol. Dr. Nicholas Kouchoukos also received the cold shoulder from the pharmaceutical company for his human study in 1992 that showed that patients given Trasylol were more likely to experience kidney failure after surgery.
Kouchoukos called this study a "red flag", but explained that safety studies are generally not taken seriously until they involve thousands of participants. Since Bayer did not conduct a large-scale investigation of the drug following these complaints, the proof was not available to pull the drug from the market. Consequently the FDA approved Trasylol in 1993--noting kidney problems as a potential side effect from the drug.
Thankfully, Dr. Mangano's 5,065 patient study in 2005 was sufficient to finally catch the FDA's attention. The FDA scheduled a meeting with Bayer executives to discuss the issue eight months after the report was issued. As a result, Bayer went on the defense and set out to conduct a study of it's own to dispute Dr. Mangano's study. Their plan backfired. Bayer's study confirmed Dr. Mangano's findings that Trasylol may have been responsible for thousands of deaths and serious injuries in the United States.
What Bayer decided to do with this information next, in my opinion, proves the company's clear disregard for patient safety. Bayer hid their study from the FDA. They acted as though it never took place. It wasn't until a whistleblower from Bayer contacted the FDA regarding the proven dangers of Trasylol that the true findings from the report were made public. Following this disclosure, Canadian researchers attempted to perform their own Trasylol study, but had to stop because too many people were dying.
So what are the consequences of Bayer's lack of scientific testing and honesty regarding Trasylol? According to Dr. Mangano, "Between my study and November 5, when it was taken off the market, there were approximately 431,000 patients who received the drug. As I calculated, 22,000 lives could have been saved. It's about a 1,000 lives saved per month delay in taking that drug off the market."
Sad. And while the story reads like a bad novel, real people's lives have been ruined by this drug. Loved ones have died or were forced to go on dialysis after otherwise routine procedures. Livelihoods were stolen as injured patients struggle just to pay the bills with their meager disability check. Ironically, Bayer walks away with millions of dollars and no consequences from the FDA. And I can almost guarantee that the politicians in Washington will turn a blind eye as well. After all, they need a paycheck too and who do you think funds the campaign that allows them to stay in office? The pharmaceutical companies of course. What politician in his right mind would bite the hand that feeds him?
Clearly, the only remedy for patients that have experienced side effects from Trasylol is to file a lawsuit against Bayer. It's more than just money-it's the only way to change the system. Complaints to the FDA do not work. Letters to Washington do not work. Pharmaceutical sales are big business driven by the desire for profit at any cost. To change the system, the American people have to take what matters the most from these companies-their profit. When they finally realize that they will have to pay for hurting people, maybe they will invest some of their billions into better scientific testing and personnel to handle investigations before drugs like Trasylol, Vioxx and now Heparin take the lives of trusting people who depend on this medicine to make them better, not worse.
About John R. Mininno, Esquire
Attorney John R. Mininno is a licensed New Jersey and Pennsylvania attorney who represents clients in medical malpractice and other serious injury claims. His offices are in Collingswood, NJ and Philadelphia, PA. He also writes on patient safety issues and encourages patients to be their own "patient advocate." If you or a loved one has experienced heart or kidney failure from Trasylol, click here for further information on how to file a trasylol lawsuit
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Mininno
Showing posts with label martial law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label martial law. Show all posts
Monday, May 5, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
RFID Clothing Tags Would Not Be Private Labels
Imagine a time in the near future when you enter a mall for a day of shopping. As you enter that mall, a tiny RFID scanner near the entrance captures the pulse from the hidden RFID tag sewn into the jacket that you are wearing. The information captured by that scanner is sent to a transactional database and within seconds your complete identity, and the location and date that you purchased that jacket, is captured. As a result, the "mall" knows that you have just arrived and, through the use of other RFID scanners (located throughout the mall), begins to track your every movement.
Your first stop in the mall that day is to buy a new coffee maker. You decide that Wal-Mart is the retail establishment to shop at first. Through the RFID scanner and that hidden tag sewn into the label in your jacket, the information concerning your visit and your length of time in Wal-Mart will be captured by the readers located in the mall.
However, RFID technology is also used at Wal-Mart and the tracking of your every move will continue even after you leave the mall through Wal-Mart's in-store scanners. Upon entering the store, Wal-Mart knows you are there. A screen brings up your identity, transaction history, and profile. Soon, a store employee whom you have never met or seen before approaches you and welcomes you. He addresses you by your first name as though he has known you as a friend for years. He asks if he can help you today.
This store "greeter" has already seen through the (RFID) transactional database that you bought a Norah Jones CD the last time you were at Wal-Mart. He mentions that the store has just received her newest CD. He also knows, through a database analysis of millions of people with a buying history similar to yours, that a large percentage of people that listen to Norah Jones also enjoy music from Diana Krall and drink white wine. He suggests both items to you as good buys in the store today. He also offers to sign you up for the store credit card since he knows that you usually purchase items using cash.
As you move through Wal-Mart, every aisle that you visit continues to be monitored due to the communication between the in-store scanners and that hidden tag sewn into your jacket. Finally, you decide that you want to buy the Braun coffee maker that is on sale and that newly released Norah Jones CD. Since you have never had a drink of white table wine, you buy a bottle to try something new.
The store rings up the sale by scanning the RFID tags on the coffeemaker, wine, and CD. All of the data concerning these new purchases immediately becomes stored with all your prior purchases in the RFID transactional database. The database knows everything about these new purchases; the fact that you bought a Braun coffeemaker at Wal-Mart, how much you were willing to pay, and that you like to purchase products when they are on sale. It also captures the purchase of the new CD of Norah Jones as well as the bottle of white table wine. It knows that you paid for everything in cash.
After these purchases, you leave the store and the RFID readers in the mall resume tracking and recording your every retail browsing movement. In fact, the tracking of your retail experiences and purchases continues to go on in the same manner, day after day, week after week, store after store. Soon, the RFID transaction database can tell anyone who would like to know about all your buying preferences and shopping habits.
Your retail profile from that transaction database will capture what you like to eat, what brands of clothes,cologne, perfume, and shoes you prefer. It will know about the magazines and books you read, the stores you visit, and the length of your shopping time in each. It will also show how many items you bought that were on sale. In fact, an analysis of your buying habits compared with millions of other similar people in the database, could even be able to predict other things that you may like to buy.
Then, that retail information profile on you in the database can be used as a solicitation source. It could be used for target advertisements to your cell phone, landline telephone, email address, mailing address, or even after entering a store, through the personal solicitation from a store employee.
Of course many readers may by now be thinking that this is all too far fetched. Maybe someday in the distant future, but certainly not today. I will tell you that this future may be a lot closer than you think. This fact becomes clear when you look at the RFID patent requests of several large U.S. corporations that include IBM, NCR, American Express, and Proctor and Gamble. Based on their patent requests, it is clear that a future based on RFID tags may indeed become our reality very soon.
Consider the abstract of the RFID pending patent request ( 20020165758 ) from International Business Machines called, "Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged items" as an example. The IBM abstract description reads: "A method and system for identifying and tracking persons using RFID-tagged items carried on the persons. Previous purchase records for each person who shops at a retail store are collected by POS terminals and stored in a transaction database. When a person carrying or wearing items having RFID tags enters the store or other designated area, a RFID tag scanner located therein scans the RFID tags on that person and reads the RFID tag information. The RFID tag information collected from the person is correlated with transaction records stored in the transaction database according to known correlation algorithms. Based on the results of the correlation, the exact identity of the person or certain characteristics about the person can be determined. This information is used to monitor the movement of the person through the store or other areas".
RFID technology is not new and has been used in the United States for many years in various business and military operations. RFID technology has been especially invaluable when utilized as barcodes in inventory control and management. Today, by using RFID tags (also known as microchips), you can even store your health records as an implanted chip inside your own body. In addition, government has proposed a future use of RFID tags in drivers licenses, passports, and even border crossing identification cards. These future applications of RFID tags could well compromise our personal security and be an invasion of our privacy in many aspects of our lives.
Indeed, it is the potential use of this next generation of RFID technology that is a concern from a security and privacy perspective. In the retail world, the intention is to place these enhanced RFID tags in all items including clothing. As a result, in the future, even the tags in our clothes could become a source of an invasion of our personal privacy.
For the retail industry, RFID tags would be an advertising and solicitation dream come true. However, for the consumer, it would fast become a security and invasion of privacy nightmare.
James William Smith has worked in Senior management positions for some of the largest Financial Services firms in the United States for the last twenty five years. He has also provided business consulting support for insurance organizations and start up businesses. He has always been interested in writing and listening to different viewpoints on interesting topics.
Visit his website at http://www.eworldvu.com
Your first stop in the mall that day is to buy a new coffee maker. You decide that Wal-Mart is the retail establishment to shop at first. Through the RFID scanner and that hidden tag sewn into the label in your jacket, the information concerning your visit and your length of time in Wal-Mart will be captured by the readers located in the mall.
However, RFID technology is also used at Wal-Mart and the tracking of your every move will continue even after you leave the mall through Wal-Mart's in-store scanners. Upon entering the store, Wal-Mart knows you are there. A screen brings up your identity, transaction history, and profile. Soon, a store employee whom you have never met or seen before approaches you and welcomes you. He addresses you by your first name as though he has known you as a friend for years. He asks if he can help you today.
This store "greeter" has already seen through the (RFID) transactional database that you bought a Norah Jones CD the last time you were at Wal-Mart. He mentions that the store has just received her newest CD. He also knows, through a database analysis of millions of people with a buying history similar to yours, that a large percentage of people that listen to Norah Jones also enjoy music from Diana Krall and drink white wine. He suggests both items to you as good buys in the store today. He also offers to sign you up for the store credit card since he knows that you usually purchase items using cash.
As you move through Wal-Mart, every aisle that you visit continues to be monitored due to the communication between the in-store scanners and that hidden tag sewn into your jacket. Finally, you decide that you want to buy the Braun coffee maker that is on sale and that newly released Norah Jones CD. Since you have never had a drink of white table wine, you buy a bottle to try something new.
The store rings up the sale by scanning the RFID tags on the coffeemaker, wine, and CD. All of the data concerning these new purchases immediately becomes stored with all your prior purchases in the RFID transactional database. The database knows everything about these new purchases; the fact that you bought a Braun coffeemaker at Wal-Mart, how much you were willing to pay, and that you like to purchase products when they are on sale. It also captures the purchase of the new CD of Norah Jones as well as the bottle of white table wine. It knows that you paid for everything in cash.
After these purchases, you leave the store and the RFID readers in the mall resume tracking and recording your every retail browsing movement. In fact, the tracking of your retail experiences and purchases continues to go on in the same manner, day after day, week after week, store after store. Soon, the RFID transaction database can tell anyone who would like to know about all your buying preferences and shopping habits.
Your retail profile from that transaction database will capture what you like to eat, what brands of clothes,cologne, perfume, and shoes you prefer. It will know about the magazines and books you read, the stores you visit, and the length of your shopping time in each. It will also show how many items you bought that were on sale. In fact, an analysis of your buying habits compared with millions of other similar people in the database, could even be able to predict other things that you may like to buy.
Then, that retail information profile on you in the database can be used as a solicitation source. It could be used for target advertisements to your cell phone, landline telephone, email address, mailing address, or even after entering a store, through the personal solicitation from a store employee.
Of course many readers may by now be thinking that this is all too far fetched. Maybe someday in the distant future, but certainly not today. I will tell you that this future may be a lot closer than you think. This fact becomes clear when you look at the RFID patent requests of several large U.S. corporations that include IBM, NCR, American Express, and Proctor and Gamble. Based on their patent requests, it is clear that a future based on RFID tags may indeed become our reality very soon.
Consider the abstract of the RFID pending patent request ( 20020165758 ) from International Business Machines called, "Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged items" as an example. The IBM abstract description reads: "A method and system for identifying and tracking persons using RFID-tagged items carried on the persons. Previous purchase records for each person who shops at a retail store are collected by POS terminals and stored in a transaction database. When a person carrying or wearing items having RFID tags enters the store or other designated area, a RFID tag scanner located therein scans the RFID tags on that person and reads the RFID tag information. The RFID tag information collected from the person is correlated with transaction records stored in the transaction database according to known correlation algorithms. Based on the results of the correlation, the exact identity of the person or certain characteristics about the person can be determined. This information is used to monitor the movement of the person through the store or other areas".
RFID technology is not new and has been used in the United States for many years in various business and military operations. RFID technology has been especially invaluable when utilized as barcodes in inventory control and management. Today, by using RFID tags (also known as microchips), you can even store your health records as an implanted chip inside your own body. In addition, government has proposed a future use of RFID tags in drivers licenses, passports, and even border crossing identification cards. These future applications of RFID tags could well compromise our personal security and be an invasion of our privacy in many aspects of our lives.
Indeed, it is the potential use of this next generation of RFID technology that is a concern from a security and privacy perspective. In the retail world, the intention is to place these enhanced RFID tags in all items including clothing. As a result, in the future, even the tags in our clothes could become a source of an invasion of our personal privacy.
For the retail industry, RFID tags would be an advertising and solicitation dream come true. However, for the consumer, it would fast become a security and invasion of privacy nightmare.
James William Smith has worked in Senior management positions for some of the largest Financial Services firms in the United States for the last twenty five years. He has also provided business consulting support for insurance organizations and start up businesses. He has always been interested in writing and listening to different viewpoints on interesting topics.
Visit his website at http://www.eworldvu.com
Bully Buttons - Big Brother's Latest Gadget
I would like to bring your attention to the new popular buzzword that is being promulgated as the panacea for all of society's ills: Accountability. In his classic work, 1984, George Orwell paints a futuristic society, Oceania, in which the government-"Big Brother"-watches over all. In other words, everyone is accountable to the government for all of their actions. While the populace is brainwashed into believing the government is their salvation, the government is really their enslaver and the cause of their misery. Its Department of Truth manipulates the language, Newspeak, to promote the government's agenda of total control.
We are increasingly headed in the direction of 1984, with the blessing of our own population, which loves to relinquish personal responsibility for our lives and hand it over to the government, in the naive belief that our government knows best and can take care of us better than we can take care of ourselves. Our latest Big Brother word is Accountability. What a great idea! Just make people accountable for their actions, and then they will do all the right things. All the ills of society will disappear when people are held accountable.
But people can't be held accountable for things that are not in their control. "No Child Left Behind" holds schools accountable for lack of students' academic success. But how can they be held accountable for this? Education experts have been endlessly trying to find ways to improve student achievement and the controversies over how to accomplish this never end. Is a law going to force learning to increase? What the law will do is encourage schools to figure out how to avoid getting in trouble with the law. So they creatively manipulate test scores to show educational improvement that isn't really happening.
Anti-bullying laws are holding schools accountable for the bullying that goes on between students. But how can schools be held responsible for making kids stop bullying each other when adults, even mental health professionals, don't know how to be free of bullying in their own lives, don't know how to get their own couple of kids at home to stop bullying each other? "Accountability" is not going to bring our society closer to Utopia. It will bring only bring it closer to Oceania.
Signs suggest, unfortunately, that Australia is nearly there: A company there is now marketing a video recording system called Bully Buttons. When kids feel they are being bullied, they press the nearest Bully Button and cameras start filming. (Australia is taking bullying increasingly seriously, which is not surprising in light of a recent lawsuit in which a school was ordered to pay over a million dollars for failing to stop a child from being bullied.)
Of course everyone thinks this is a wonderful idea. That is the beautiful thing about Big Brother. It sounds so good that no one can see any reason to object to it. How nice to have a Big Brother always available to watch over us and protect us from each other. The company, of course, doesn't want to be seen as Big Brother, but the fact that the company feels the need to defend itself in advance from such accusations speaks for itself: "We don't want it to be too pervasive or Big Brotherish," the company manager is quoted as saying. I guess they only want it to be adequately "pervasive and Big Brotherish."
But what does it do to our freedom...to our moral development... to our social relationships? You are no longer free to learn from experience in treating people different ways. Even if you can't stand someone, you had better make believe you like the person because if you show any hostility, it's on tape and you get punished. Mainstream society upholds honesty as a major value, but its Big Brother anti-bullying policies are promoting forced phoniness. Anti-bullying policies are meant to get kids to treat each other morally. But is where is the morality when the purpose of your behavior is avoidance of punishment?
As an adult, would you like to have all of your interpersonal interactions under the scrutiny and control of government officials? Why start kids on a course in childhood that we detest as adults? What kind of a world are we preparing them for with these Bully Buttons?
We are increasingly headed in the direction of 1984, with the blessing of our own population, which loves to relinquish personal responsibility for our lives and hand it over to the government, in the naive belief that our government knows best and can take care of us better than we can take care of ourselves. Our latest Big Brother word is Accountability. What a great idea! Just make people accountable for their actions, and then they will do all the right things. All the ills of society will disappear when people are held accountable.
But people can't be held accountable for things that are not in their control. "No Child Left Behind" holds schools accountable for lack of students' academic success. But how can they be held accountable for this? Education experts have been endlessly trying to find ways to improve student achievement and the controversies over how to accomplish this never end. Is a law going to force learning to increase? What the law will do is encourage schools to figure out how to avoid getting in trouble with the law. So they creatively manipulate test scores to show educational improvement that isn't really happening.
Anti-bullying laws are holding schools accountable for the bullying that goes on between students. But how can schools be held responsible for making kids stop bullying each other when adults, even mental health professionals, don't know how to be free of bullying in their own lives, don't know how to get their own couple of kids at home to stop bullying each other? "Accountability" is not going to bring our society closer to Utopia. It will bring only bring it closer to Oceania.
Signs suggest, unfortunately, that Australia is nearly there: A company there is now marketing a video recording system called Bully Buttons. When kids feel they are being bullied, they press the nearest Bully Button and cameras start filming. (Australia is taking bullying increasingly seriously, which is not surprising in light of a recent lawsuit in which a school was ordered to pay over a million dollars for failing to stop a child from being bullied.)
Of course everyone thinks this is a wonderful idea. That is the beautiful thing about Big Brother. It sounds so good that no one can see any reason to object to it. How nice to have a Big Brother always available to watch over us and protect us from each other. The company, of course, doesn't want to be seen as Big Brother, but the fact that the company feels the need to defend itself in advance from such accusations speaks for itself: "We don't want it to be too pervasive or Big Brotherish," the company manager is quoted as saying. I guess they only want it to be adequately "pervasive and Big Brotherish."
But what does it do to our freedom...to our moral development... to our social relationships? You are no longer free to learn from experience in treating people different ways. Even if you can't stand someone, you had better make believe you like the person because if you show any hostility, it's on tape and you get punished. Mainstream society upholds honesty as a major value, but its Big Brother anti-bullying policies are promoting forced phoniness. Anti-bullying policies are meant to get kids to treat each other morally. But is where is the morality when the purpose of your behavior is avoidance of punishment?
As an adult, would you like to have all of your interpersonal interactions under the scrutiny and control of government officials? Why start kids on a course in childhood that we detest as adults? What kind of a world are we preparing them for with these Bully Buttons?
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