Whistleblower Terminated from Northwestern for Revealing Human Medical Experimentation
October 7th, 2013Via: CNN:
Why would a bright and promising cardiologist be fired from the University hospital that she had practiced at since 2000?
Apparently, protecting her patients is grounds for dismissal. At least, that is the case at Northwestern University in Illinois.
Despite being promoted to Valve Director in 2006, Dr. Nalini M. Rajamannan was terminated in 2008 after reporting the use of non-FDA approved, experimental medical devices being implanted in patients without their knowledge.
The doctor conducting these human experiments, Dr. Patrick McCarthy, was testing his own inventions, an IMR annuloplasty device and a Myxo annuloplasty device manufactured by Edwards Lifescience.
These devices had not been approved by the FDA and even now, many patients have no idea that they have these experimental devices in their bodies.
Pharmaceutical Firms Paid to Attend Meetings of Panel that Advises FDA
October 7th, 2013Via: Washington Post:
A scientific panel that shaped the federal government’s policy for testing the safety and effectiveness of painkillers was funded by major pharmaceutical companies that paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the chance to affect the thinking of the Food and Drug Administration, according to hundreds of e-mails obtained by a public records request.
The e-mails show that the companies paid as much as $25,000 to attend any given meeting of the panel, which had been set up by two academics to provide advice to the FDA on how to weigh the evidence from clinical trials. A leading FDA official later called the group “an essential collaborative effort.”
Patient advocacy groups said the electronic communications suggest that the regulators had become too close to the companies trying to crack into the $9 billion painkiller market in the United States. FDA officials who regulate painkillers sat on the steering committee of the panel, which met in private, and co-wrote papers with employees of pharmaceutical companies.
The FDA has been criticized for failing to take precautions that might have averted the epidemic of addiction to prescription drugs including Oxycontin and other opioids.
“These e-mails help explain the disastrous decisions the FDA’s analgesic division has made over the last 10 years,” said Craig Mayton, the Columbus, Ohio, attorney who made the public records request to the University of Washington. “Instead of protecting the public health, the FDA has been allowing the drug companies to pay for a seat at a small table where all the rules were written.”
Russia Planning ‘Near-Total Surveillance’ of Visitors, Athletes at Sochi Winter Olympics
October 6th, 2013HAHA. Warning, Americans, the Russians will be doing to you what the U.S. Government does to you 24/7.
Via: Telegraph:
Security measures at the Sochi winter Olympics will include such extensive electronic eavesdropping and surveillance that the US State Department has advised Americans headed to Russia to leave smart phones and laptops at home, an investigation has revealed.
Recovery: ‘Families Hoard Cash 5 Years After Crisis’
October 6th, 2013Voluntary simplicity, or, living well on very little money, kicks evil people in the nuts and gouges out their eyes… Doing this in the U.S. has a force multiplier effect because the U.S. is the largest source of the funds that keep the global ponzi scheme running. When people in wealthy countries opt out, the action causes major economic damage to the machine.
—Commentary on Voluntary Simplicity from 2007
This AP piece is remarkable:
Shunning debt and spending less can be good for one family’s finances. When hundreds of millions do it together, it can starve the global economy.
If families, acting in their own best interests, “Can starve the global economy,” something is very wrong with the global economy.
Via: AP:
Five years after U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, triggering a global financial crisis and shattering confidence worldwide, families in major countries around the world are still hunkered down, too spooked and distrustful to take chances with their money.
An Associated Press analysis of households in the 10 biggest economies shows that families continue to spend cautiously and have pulled hundreds of billions of dollars out of stocks, cut borrowing for the first time in decades and poured money into savings and bonds that offer puny interest payments, often too low to keep up with inflation.
“It doesn’t take very much to destroy confidence, but it takes an awful lot to build it back,” says Ian Bright, senior economist at ING, a global bank based in Amsterdam. “The attitude toward risk is permanently reset.”
A flight to safety on such a global scale is unprecedented since the end of World War II.
The implications are huge: Shunning debt and spending less can be good for one family’s finances. When hundreds of millions do it together, it can starve the global economy.
Harvest Time: Canadian Government Takes Man’s Farm to Build Military Base
October 6th, 2013Via: Maclean’s:
In Frank Meyers’s eyes, the view from his dining room window is priceless. Literally. He can see the old wooden house where he lived as a little boy. The family barn, rebuilt with his talented hands. Rows and rows of sweet corn, sprouting from prime Ontario soil. No matter how many federal bureaucrats knocked on his door—or how much cash they offered to pay—the 85-year-old farmer refused, again and again, to sell his beloved land. As he likes to say: “You can’t eat the money.”
But as Frank Meyers learned today—in a heartbreaking moment he’d been dreading for years—you can’t stop the government, either. If the feds want your property (in his case, to build a state-of-the-art training ground for the Canadian military’s elite special forces commandos), fighting back is futile. “In other countries, they’re crushing you with bullets and guns and ammunition and tanks and explosives,” Meyers says. “Not in Canada. It’s pencil and paper here, and then they’ve got control.”
Treasury Will Run Out of Borrowed Money by October 17
October 6th, 2013“Or maybe it’s just a date in a video game”:
The Last of Us
😉
Via: USA Today:
The United States will run out of borrowed money “no later than Oct. 17” unless Congress raises the $16.7 trillion debt limit, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said in a letter to Congress Wednesday.
Lew’s letter marks the first time he has given a date certain for when the government would hit the debt ceiling and comes as Congress is at another impasse on how to keep the government running and pay its past bills.
STORY: Senate votes to avert government shutdown
It’s not a coincidence that Oct. 17 is a Thursday, said Steve Bell, economic policy director for the Bipartisan Policy Center.
That’s because the Treasury typically rolls over $100 billion in debt every Thursday, as old bonds mature and most investors simply use the proceeds to buy new bonds. Some bond holders may park their money elsewhere. Others may demand higher yields. “But at what price? That;s the big imponderable,” Bell said.
On the Possibility of Social Security Payments Not Going Out
October 6th, 2013I’m almost sure that they won’t let this situation hit the wall, but beware: If the dole train stops running for any reason, the U.S. will be facing a large scale internal collapse situation very fast.
Again, my guess is that the Social Security and Food Stamp band will keep playing on for now.
Via: Forbes:
In a speech in Rockville, Maryland today, President Barack Obama blew up the Democrat’s social-security “third rail” in eighteen words. Usually, Obama’s gaffes come off-the-cuff. Today’s remarks were, however, prepared; namely:
“In a government shutdown, Social Security checks still go out on time. In an economic shutdown — if we don’t raise the debt ceiling — they don’t go out on time.”
Cryptogon Reader Contributions in October
October 5th, 2013Thank you very much.
Pookie $75
DM $15
Banana Farmers $50
JB $30
RD $50
In addition to the financial support, people have sent lovely cards celebrating Niamh’s birth. We’ve made a little shrine out of all of these cards in our kitchen/living room area. The Banana Farmers also sent a heavy box of homegrown delicacies from their tropical paradise; Kona coffee, dried pineapple rings, dried bananas and insanely delicious dark chocolate.
So, yes, daytime updates on Cryptogon are currently being fueled by homegrown Kona coffee from the Banana Farmers. Wow! It’s remarkably smooth and delicious coffee. I normally drink coffee with milk, cream and sometimes about half a tea spoon of raw sugar. Not with this stuff. For me, black is the way to go to fully appreciate the flavors in this coffee.
September Earnings
October 5th, 2013Earnings in September totaled $1383.49, which is a fantastic result. Thanks very much to everyone who sent funds and conducted business via Cryptogon’s affiliate links.
Laurel Farm Creamery
October 5th, 2013Via: Laurel Farm Creamery:
Laurel Farm Creamery is a small farm outside Asheville, NC. For years we have raised dairy animals and made cheese, and we have finally decided that, since there’s nothing any of us enjoy more, we should be doing it for a living. This blog will chronicle our adventures as we make the transition from small family homestead to full fledged micro dairy.
We milk Jersey cows right now, but are doing a bit of cross-breeding for hardiness and steady production on grass. Our first Jersey/Red Poll cross will be on the ground in June. We don’t plan to ever milk goats again, though we love to buy goat milk to play with in the cheese kitchen. We have a lovely little flock of milky sheep that contribute milk in the summer.
We will sell cheese in and around Asheville, and from the farm for those adventurous souls who would like to come out and see us!
