The newspapers recently reported on a woman who, with the help of her boyfriend, used her 17-year-old daughter as a prostitute in order to get money for drugs. Such abhorrent behavior deserves the maximum penalty our system of justice is capable of imposing. So we should ask, what is the big difference between the actions of that mother and the actions of the male and female members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints who groom their 13 and 14-year-old daughters for marriage to 45 and 55-year-old-men?
If the many witnesses who have spoken about the cult are to be believed, these child-brides become part of harems for church elders who eject young men from the sect so that they will not have any competition for the young girls’ attention. The wives and children of these men are raised and brainwashed to believe that it is God’s commandment that they surrender their virginity and freedom to older men in order to propagate the sect.
But it is not God’s commandment. It has nothing to do with God. It has nothing to do with religion. It is the raw exercise of power by dirty old men who want to enjoy sex with young virgins. It is rape.
I have nothing against these nitwits practicing polygamy if that is what they want to do. There should be no laws against polygamy. My problem is with elders and parents compelling their children to take part in such a sick culture. Most states in the union forbid sex between adults and children under the age of consent. In Texas the age of consent is 17. In most states it is 16. There is a good reason for treating children under 16 or 17 as being unable to consent. Most children under 16 or 17 do not have the fortitude to resist the impositions of adults and do not have sufficient understanding to assent to such impositions. The twisted individuals who prey upon young girls on the internet deserve to have the book simultaneously thrown at them and shoved down their throats.
It does not matter that this form of child-abuse is institutionalized as a religion. They can call it anything they want, but it is nothing more than parental pimping. It has been going on for ages and has always been common in primitive societies. In parts of Africa and Asia it has proceeded hand-in-glove with the genital mutilation of young girls. The freedom of women from mistreatment and exploitation is an important part of the story of civilization. We in America may have a long way to go to be thoroughly civilized, but we do not have to tolerate this kind of beastly behavior.
You need only look at the women from this cult to see what damage can be done by brainwashing. They come on television in their grotesque hairdos and pioneer dresses and complain in robotic voices about the loss of their children. You could say that they should not be punished because they have obviously been hammered by the abuses of the men of the cult, but they are adults, and however brain-damaged they may be, they are answerable to the law for their transgressions. Any adult that would let her 14-year-old daughter marry an older man is a pimp and deserves no sympathy.
It seems apparent that despite denials, the practice of forcing underage girls into polygamous marriages is widespread in the cult. For this reason, the proper thing to do is to permanently take all of the children in the sect away from their biological parents. These people look upon the cult as one large “family.” They live communally. The children call all of the women their “mothers” and all of the men their “uncles.” As in any abusive family, when some of the children are being abused the government must take all of the children out of the household.
We should not be moved by the fact that the children express the wish to return to their homes. I’m sure that most children of sexually abusive parents would say the same thing. These children need to be taken away from the primitive environment where men wield absolute power over women. But taking the children away is not enough. These abusive parents should be prosecuted for child abuse, child endangerment, and statutory rape.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Torture and America
When American POWs came home from the Korean War, we learned about the torture and brainwashing inflicted upon them by the Communists. American prisoners of war were isolated in cold cells, stripped of their clothing, deprived of sleep, forced to endure constant loud noises and harsh lights, and subject to severe, interminable interrogation. Some broke under the strain and collaborated with the enemy. The media contrasted the Communists’ barbaric behavior with the humane treatment given by American guards to enemy prisoners. It made us proud to be Americans. That was long before the administration of George W. Bush and his sinister “Eminence Grise,” Dick Chaney.
When the story of Abu Ghraib prison broke, Americans were shocked to discover that American solders in Iraq were inflicting the same kind of torture on prisoners as had been inflicted on American prisoners in Korea. While many of the tortures at Abu Ghraib were painful, the tortures were designed primarily to break-down the will of the Iraqi prisoners by subjecting them to profound humiliation.
At Abu Ghraib, detainees were urinated upon and assaulted with snarling dogs. They were required to strip, masturbate, climb on top of one another, and commit homosexual acts in front of female American guards. Other tortures included beating and sodomizing detainees with a metal baton, pouring phosphoric acid on detainees, and tying ropes to detainees’ penises and dragging them across the floor.
Who was responsible for these atrocities? Was this just the rogue behavior of a group of uncontrolled guards, or were these practices approved in higher circles? Several of the guards were court-martialed. But what of the higher-ups? It now appears that these tortures were the result of an atmosphere promulgated by the CIA and emanating from the Bush Administration. How did this come about?
Beginning in 2001, in dozens of top-secret meetings, high-level White House officials, including Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Alberto Gonzalez, and others met in the Situation Room of the White House and approved specific harsh methods of interrogation of prisoners by the CIA. In an interview with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, President Bush admitted that he was fully aware of these meetings and of what went on. One participant in the meetings, then Attorney General John Ashcroft, was apparently deeply disturbed by the meetings and is quoted as saying: “History will not judge this kindly.”
In March 2003, just months before the Abu Ghraib atrocities, John Yoo, deputy legal counsel at the Justice Department, submitted a detailed written memo advising his superiors, and ultimately the President, that the President had broad legal power during wartime to authorize harsh interrogation methods and that any laws restricting that authority were unconstitutional.
As a result of the Yoo memo, the Cheney group and the President felt that they had legal authority to authorize “enhanced” interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, shackling prisoners in uncomfortable positions, painful slapping, and other pleasantries. The abuse at Abu Ghraib came months after the Yoo memo was submitted.
Photos of the Abu Ghraib barbarity spread around the world and caused fury among the insurgents and terrorists. There followed pictures of Americans being beheaded in retaliation.
Waterboarding is a nasty torture in which the detainee is laid on a board with a cloth over his mouth and made to feel like he is drowning while having water poured over the cloth. Two retired generals, Charles C. Krulak, former Marine Corps Commandant, and Joseph P. Hoar, former Commander of American forces in the Middle East, have described waterboarding and other interrogation methods as “euphemisms for torture.” They have written that these techniques amount to “conduct we used to call war crimes,” and have warned that such methods place American soldiers in jeopardy.
It is meaningless to get into a discussion of whether torture by the CIA or the military is legal or effective. That is not the question. The question is whether we are or are not a civilized nation. I realize that all of us were deeply angered by the 9/11 attacks, and most of us wanted to strike-back at the terrorists. But there has to come a time when we dust-off our common humanity and look at ourselves. What do we stand for as a people? Are we no better than our enemies? Are we still a beacon of freedom, decency, and morality, or have we lost our bright shining righteousness and integrity?
When the story of Abu Ghraib prison broke, Americans were shocked to discover that American solders in Iraq were inflicting the same kind of torture on prisoners as had been inflicted on American prisoners in Korea. While many of the tortures at Abu Ghraib were painful, the tortures were designed primarily to break-down the will of the Iraqi prisoners by subjecting them to profound humiliation.
At Abu Ghraib, detainees were urinated upon and assaulted with snarling dogs. They were required to strip, masturbate, climb on top of one another, and commit homosexual acts in front of female American guards. Other tortures included beating and sodomizing detainees with a metal baton, pouring phosphoric acid on detainees, and tying ropes to detainees’ penises and dragging them across the floor.
Who was responsible for these atrocities? Was this just the rogue behavior of a group of uncontrolled guards, or were these practices approved in higher circles? Several of the guards were court-martialed. But what of the higher-ups? It now appears that these tortures were the result of an atmosphere promulgated by the CIA and emanating from the Bush Administration. How did this come about?
Beginning in 2001, in dozens of top-secret meetings, high-level White House officials, including Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Alberto Gonzalez, and others met in the Situation Room of the White House and approved specific harsh methods of interrogation of prisoners by the CIA. In an interview with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, President Bush admitted that he was fully aware of these meetings and of what went on. One participant in the meetings, then Attorney General John Ashcroft, was apparently deeply disturbed by the meetings and is quoted as saying: “History will not judge this kindly.”
In March 2003, just months before the Abu Ghraib atrocities, John Yoo, deputy legal counsel at the Justice Department, submitted a detailed written memo advising his superiors, and ultimately the President, that the President had broad legal power during wartime to authorize harsh interrogation methods and that any laws restricting that authority were unconstitutional.
As a result of the Yoo memo, the Cheney group and the President felt that they had legal authority to authorize “enhanced” interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, shackling prisoners in uncomfortable positions, painful slapping, and other pleasantries. The abuse at Abu Ghraib came months after the Yoo memo was submitted.
Photos of the Abu Ghraib barbarity spread around the world and caused fury among the insurgents and terrorists. There followed pictures of Americans being beheaded in retaliation.
Waterboarding is a nasty torture in which the detainee is laid on a board with a cloth over his mouth and made to feel like he is drowning while having water poured over the cloth. Two retired generals, Charles C. Krulak, former Marine Corps Commandant, and Joseph P. Hoar, former Commander of American forces in the Middle East, have described waterboarding and other interrogation methods as “euphemisms for torture.” They have written that these techniques amount to “conduct we used to call war crimes,” and have warned that such methods place American soldiers in jeopardy.
It is meaningless to get into a discussion of whether torture by the CIA or the military is legal or effective. That is not the question. The question is whether we are or are not a civilized nation. I realize that all of us were deeply angered by the 9/11 attacks, and most of us wanted to strike-back at the terrorists. But there has to come a time when we dust-off our common humanity and look at ourselves. What do we stand for as a people? Are we no better than our enemies? Are we still a beacon of freedom, decency, and morality, or have we lost our bright shining righteousness and integrity?
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Obama and Working-Class Voters
Politics has never been a business of straight talk. Political campaigns, even by the best people, are usually permeated with lies and smoke. We are too stupid to care about this. It is only when somebody tells the truth that we get upset. Barack Obama spoke the truth, and it is causing him problems. Obama was explaining his trouble winning-over small-town, working-class voters in areas where jobs are disappearing. He said: “It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Hillary Clinton and her staff jumped on this statement. Voters have always pegged Hillary as an elitist, a Wellesley and Yale graduate who put on the airs of a rich, intellectual feminist. Now her African American opponent seemed to be acting more elitist than she. She appeared at a bar in Indiana and tossed-down a couple of shots of liquor like a good-old-boy. She told about how her grandfather took her out behind the barn and taught her to fire a gun. Obama made fun of Hillary’s sudden incarnation as Joe Six-Pack and Annie Oakley, saying: "Around election time, the candidates can't do enough for you. They'll promise you anything, give you a long list of proposals and even come around, with TV crews in tow, to throw back a shot and a beer."
I am disappointed at Hillary Clinton’s swooping-in like a vulture to take advantage of Obama’s statement. I am sorry that Obama felt that he had to apologize for his statement. Perhaps America would be a better place if somebody could do what Senator Obama did; tell the truth.
Small-town blue-collar workers in areas that are losing jobs have always been frustrated. When jobs are gone, they are bitter. We do not like to think about class in America, even though we are fully aware of it. We like to think that in America everybody is equal and everybody has a chance to become wealthy and powerful. The truth is, however, that most people with aspirations to better themselves will not do much better than their parents. In a land of great wealth, this causes frustration. As Senator Obama said, they are likely to cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.
Middle-class people tend to be satisfied with slight advantages over their friends and neighbors. They buy shiny new cars, televisions, or new kitchens. They write Christmas letters bragging about vacation trips. It is pathetic. But these minuscule augmentations in status seem to satisfy their need for feelings of superiority. Working-class people, however, are more likely to live lives of quiet desperation.
Because they feel that many look down on them, working-class people look for others to look down on. Perhaps Senator Obama could feel this when he visited the factory and mining towns of Pennsylvania. No matter how poor, ignorant, or idle those people may have been, they probably projected the feeling that because Obama is Black, they are better than him.
As Senator Obama says, they cling to guns, alcohol, and religion. As I have previously written, guns help boost a man’s feelings of power and self-worth. One does not find many handguns owned by wealthy people. Hedge-fund managers on Wall Street may be in grave danger of homicide from their investors, but I doubt that many of them are armed with handguns.
Another way working stiffs enhance their feelings of self-confidence is with liquor. Alcohol blunts the harsh realities of closing factories and disappearing jobs. The fastest road to this nirvana is with shots and beer. One does not go into a bar in working-class Pennsylvania and order a banana daiquiri. I knew a guy who did so once and the bartender said: “You’ll drink a shot and beer like everybody else and like it.”
Another means of overcoming the frustrations of the most marginal or underprivileged social groups is religion. People in lower economic, cultural, social, and intellectual classes need to believe that they are as good as, if not better than, others. They need to believe that they are among the elect few who practice the correct religion, and that however lucky other people may seem, those others are condemned to religious error on earth and to hell upon death. Their religion tends to be fundamentalist, evangelical, or Pentecostal. These people need to believe that somehow in the afterlife, God will level the playing field, and that they are not condemned for all eternity to being poor, backward, or ignorant.
Unfortunately for Barack Obama, he will not get many votes from those people in a general election against John McCain; but then, despite her acrobatic efforts to déclassé herself, neither will Hillary.
Hillary Clinton and her staff jumped on this statement. Voters have always pegged Hillary as an elitist, a Wellesley and Yale graduate who put on the airs of a rich, intellectual feminist. Now her African American opponent seemed to be acting more elitist than she. She appeared at a bar in Indiana and tossed-down a couple of shots of liquor like a good-old-boy. She told about how her grandfather took her out behind the barn and taught her to fire a gun. Obama made fun of Hillary’s sudden incarnation as Joe Six-Pack and Annie Oakley, saying: "Around election time, the candidates can't do enough for you. They'll promise you anything, give you a long list of proposals and even come around, with TV crews in tow, to throw back a shot and a beer."
I am disappointed at Hillary Clinton’s swooping-in like a vulture to take advantage of Obama’s statement. I am sorry that Obama felt that he had to apologize for his statement. Perhaps America would be a better place if somebody could do what Senator Obama did; tell the truth.
Small-town blue-collar workers in areas that are losing jobs have always been frustrated. When jobs are gone, they are bitter. We do not like to think about class in America, even though we are fully aware of it. We like to think that in America everybody is equal and everybody has a chance to become wealthy and powerful. The truth is, however, that most people with aspirations to better themselves will not do much better than their parents. In a land of great wealth, this causes frustration. As Senator Obama said, they are likely to cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.
Middle-class people tend to be satisfied with slight advantages over their friends and neighbors. They buy shiny new cars, televisions, or new kitchens. They write Christmas letters bragging about vacation trips. It is pathetic. But these minuscule augmentations in status seem to satisfy their need for feelings of superiority. Working-class people, however, are more likely to live lives of quiet desperation.
Because they feel that many look down on them, working-class people look for others to look down on. Perhaps Senator Obama could feel this when he visited the factory and mining towns of Pennsylvania. No matter how poor, ignorant, or idle those people may have been, they probably projected the feeling that because Obama is Black, they are better than him.
As Senator Obama says, they cling to guns, alcohol, and religion. As I have previously written, guns help boost a man’s feelings of power and self-worth. One does not find many handguns owned by wealthy people. Hedge-fund managers on Wall Street may be in grave danger of homicide from their investors, but I doubt that many of them are armed with handguns.
Another way working stiffs enhance their feelings of self-confidence is with liquor. Alcohol blunts the harsh realities of closing factories and disappearing jobs. The fastest road to this nirvana is with shots and beer. One does not go into a bar in working-class Pennsylvania and order a banana daiquiri. I knew a guy who did so once and the bartender said: “You’ll drink a shot and beer like everybody else and like it.”
Another means of overcoming the frustrations of the most marginal or underprivileged social groups is religion. People in lower economic, cultural, social, and intellectual classes need to believe that they are as good as, if not better than, others. They need to believe that they are among the elect few who practice the correct religion, and that however lucky other people may seem, those others are condemned to religious error on earth and to hell upon death. Their religion tends to be fundamentalist, evangelical, or Pentecostal. These people need to believe that somehow in the afterlife, God will level the playing field, and that they are not condemned for all eternity to being poor, backward, or ignorant.
Unfortunately for Barack Obama, he will not get many votes from those people in a general election against John McCain; but then, despite her acrobatic efforts to déclassé herself, neither will Hillary.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Duty, Honor, Courage, and Withdrawl
On April 8, 2008, President Bush awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously to Navy Seal Michael A. Monsoor, who sacrificed his life and saved the lives of his buddies by falling on a live grenade in Iraq. There are no words sufficient to commend such courage. Now that there are so many calls for us to pull-out of Iraq, the question arises: was Michael Monsoor’s death in vain? If we withdraw suddenly from Iraq, will the deaths of all the American soldiers who have died there have no meaning?
You cannot tie the meaning of soldiers’ deaths to the wisdom or righteousness of the wars in which they perished. We make a mistake when we ask such a question. We like to think that soldiers who die in war must have died for some noble cause in order for their deaths to have meaning. But no soldier who dies fighting for America in a war ever dies in vain.
I wish we could give a Medal of Honor to every soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have all shown their commitment to duty, honor, and courage, fighting a deadly war against a nasty, invisible enemy, in hot, hostile lands far from America.
Soldiers’ lives are not lost in vain, but wars are fought in vain. Soldiers bring honor to themselves when they die for their country even when the war they fight in is the mistaken enormity of wicked politicians. We have had several such wars. Vietnam was such a war. Iraq is such a war. If we were to say that soldiers who died in wrongful, mistaken, or misguided wars have died in vain, then many thousands of Americans throughout history would have died in vain. The heroism and dedication of soldiers is what gives their lives and deaths meaning, not the rectitude of the wars they fought.
We do not dishonor the lives of soldiers lost in Iraq if we withdraw our forces. We save the lives of other soldiers who might die in this vain and useless war. There is no way we can justify this waste of human life and treasure by continuing to fight on.
In his testimony before Congress on April 8, 2008, the US Commander in Iraq, General Petraeus, could not speculate as to when American participation in the conflict would end. While he was able to describe some progress, he acknowledged: “We haven’t turned any corners. We haven’t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel.”
General Petraeus testified that he intended by the end of July to withdraw the troops that were sent to Iraq in the current “Surge” That would leave the remaining 140,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely. That testimony, by itself, was a tacit acknowledgement that the “Surge” was unsuccessful. If the “Surge” had been a success, he would have been able to withdraw far more than the number of troops sent-in to solve the problem. While the “Surge” may have diminished some of the violence, all we need to do is read the daily papers to see that fighting there continues to rage.
In his testimony before Congress on April 2, 2008, Lt General William E. Odom, a retired U.S. Army 3-star general, former Director of the NSA under President Reagan, and Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, stated: “The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims….Violence has been temporarily reduced, but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented.”
General Odom discussed the fact that some Sunni tribal leaders have started cooperating with us against Al Qaeda: “The decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who …insist on being paid for their loyalty.” He offered an estimate that the cost in one small area of keeping the Sunni tribal leaders happy is $250,000 per day. The tribal leaders fight with one another, and their treatment of women is often no more liberal than was that of Al Qaeda.
President Bush has said that we will not leave Iraq until there is political stability and democracy there. Such a goal is obviously out of reach. The Administration originally set certain benchmarks as the basis for continued American presence in Iraq. It has now abandoned the benchmarks as a standard of progress.
General Odom testified: “The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order.”
Michael Monsoor did not die in vain. He covered himself with glory. But the politicians who persist in conducting this hideous war have steeped themselves in ignominy.
You cannot tie the meaning of soldiers’ deaths to the wisdom or righteousness of the wars in which they perished. We make a mistake when we ask such a question. We like to think that soldiers who die in war must have died for some noble cause in order for their deaths to have meaning. But no soldier who dies fighting for America in a war ever dies in vain.
I wish we could give a Medal of Honor to every soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have all shown their commitment to duty, honor, and courage, fighting a deadly war against a nasty, invisible enemy, in hot, hostile lands far from America.
Soldiers’ lives are not lost in vain, but wars are fought in vain. Soldiers bring honor to themselves when they die for their country even when the war they fight in is the mistaken enormity of wicked politicians. We have had several such wars. Vietnam was such a war. Iraq is such a war. If we were to say that soldiers who died in wrongful, mistaken, or misguided wars have died in vain, then many thousands of Americans throughout history would have died in vain. The heroism and dedication of soldiers is what gives their lives and deaths meaning, not the rectitude of the wars they fought.
We do not dishonor the lives of soldiers lost in Iraq if we withdraw our forces. We save the lives of other soldiers who might die in this vain and useless war. There is no way we can justify this waste of human life and treasure by continuing to fight on.
In his testimony before Congress on April 8, 2008, the US Commander in Iraq, General Petraeus, could not speculate as to when American participation in the conflict would end. While he was able to describe some progress, he acknowledged: “We haven’t turned any corners. We haven’t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel.”
General Petraeus testified that he intended by the end of July to withdraw the troops that were sent to Iraq in the current “Surge” That would leave the remaining 140,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely. That testimony, by itself, was a tacit acknowledgement that the “Surge” was unsuccessful. If the “Surge” had been a success, he would have been able to withdraw far more than the number of troops sent-in to solve the problem. While the “Surge” may have diminished some of the violence, all we need to do is read the daily papers to see that fighting there continues to rage.
In his testimony before Congress on April 2, 2008, Lt General William E. Odom, a retired U.S. Army 3-star general, former Director of the NSA under President Reagan, and Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, stated: “The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims….Violence has been temporarily reduced, but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented.”
General Odom discussed the fact that some Sunni tribal leaders have started cooperating with us against Al Qaeda: “The decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who …insist on being paid for their loyalty.” He offered an estimate that the cost in one small area of keeping the Sunni tribal leaders happy is $250,000 per day. The tribal leaders fight with one another, and their treatment of women is often no more liberal than was that of Al Qaeda.
President Bush has said that we will not leave Iraq until there is political stability and democracy there. Such a goal is obviously out of reach. The Administration originally set certain benchmarks as the basis for continued American presence in Iraq. It has now abandoned the benchmarks as a standard of progress.
General Odom testified: “The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order.”
Michael Monsoor did not die in vain. He covered himself with glory. But the politicians who persist in conducting this hideous war have steeped themselves in ignominy.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Dangerous Pharmaceutical Companies
Perhaps we should be grateful to the pharmaceutical industry for developing and marketing the medications that prolong our lives, alleviate our symptoms, and ease our pain. We could not persist as a modern society without them. And yet, one gets the impression that a cruel and cut-throat culture has seized control of the drug companies. There are a number of indications that there is an ethical black hole at the center of the pharmaceutical industry. Among the indications are tremendously overpriced drugs, constant price increases, enormous profits, and a ruthless, wealthy, powerful lobby. That lobby was able to impose its will on the Republicans in Congress in 2003 and force them to enact a Medicare Part D Drug Program that enriches the pharmaceutical industry while it short-changes senior citizens, the government, and the taxpayers.
For the past few years, television watchers have been bombarded with advertisements for Vytorin and Zetia, drugs used to lower cholesterol. The ads for Vytorin are very clever. They show some tasty food with a picture of Aunt Matilda and say that cholesterol comes from two sources, the food you eat and the genes you inherit from your relatives. Zetia advertises that it is an excellent alternative to statins. Thanks to the media blitz, Vytorin and Zetia have been among the most widely prescribed medicines in the United States, with sales of $5 billion in 2007.
Nevertheless, tests have now shown that the two drugs do not reduce plaque in the arteries as advertised. Although “Outcome Trials,” which are expensive, multi-year clinical trials with 10,000 or more patients, have shown that statins like Zocor and Lipitor reduce LDL cholesterol and lower the risk of heart attacks, there have been no such trials for Vytorin and Zetia.
The companies that manufacture Vytorin and Zetia did conduct a so-called “Enhance” trial of the two drugs, but failed to reveal the results until two years after it was completed. Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa has released information showing that the lead outside investigator on the trial accused Merck and Schering-Plough, the manufacturers of the drugs, of deliberately delaying the release of the trial results “to hide something.” When they were finally released, the trial’s results showed that Vytorin and Zetia did not reduce plaque in arteries. The results led a panel of cardiologists to recommend that the drugs be used only as a last resort.
Long after they had ample information about the ineffectiveness of Vytorin and Zetia, the manufacturers continued to blanket the airwaves with commercials extolling the benefits of these two virtually useless concoctions. What does that say about the consciences of the executives who run Merck and Schering-Plough? We are not talking about headache remedies here. We are talking about people’s lives. Millions of people took these remedies in lieu of life-saving statins. Who knows how many people died because they did not get the proper prescriptions?
Merck and Schering-Plough are not the only offenders of this kind. There are many useless or dangerous drugs foisted on the public by unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies. But Merck deserves special mention as a prime offender. It not only promoted and sold ineffective medications, it also continued to market a downright dangerous drug, Vioxx, long after its ill effects were apparent.
Vioxx is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that was FDA approved to treat rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, migraines, and other acute and chronic pain conditions. The danger of Vioxx had been a concern since it was first approved for use in the United States in 1999. Early tests showed that Vioxx users had higher numbers of cardiovascular side effects than users of another drug, naproxen.
In 2000, a study to test the effects of Vioxx on colon polyps had to be cut short after eighteen months because patients who had taken Vioxx were two times more likely to suffer heart attacks or strokes than patients taking a placebo or Vioxx alternative. The New England Journal of Medicine said in an editorial that Merck & Co., the maker of Vioxx, withheld data and information that would affect conclusions drawn in the study. Merck conducted further tests, but despite further evidence of the danger of Vioxx, did not pull the drug off the market until 2004. I wonder how many people died because of Merck’s callous indifference.
I don’t know how many Americans have been killed by terrorists in Iraq, but it may be that the number is smaller than the number of those killed by taking ineffective or unsafe medications in America.
For the past few years, television watchers have been bombarded with advertisements for Vytorin and Zetia, drugs used to lower cholesterol. The ads for Vytorin are very clever. They show some tasty food with a picture of Aunt Matilda and say that cholesterol comes from two sources, the food you eat and the genes you inherit from your relatives. Zetia advertises that it is an excellent alternative to statins. Thanks to the media blitz, Vytorin and Zetia have been among the most widely prescribed medicines in the United States, with sales of $5 billion in 2007.
Nevertheless, tests have now shown that the two drugs do not reduce plaque in the arteries as advertised. Although “Outcome Trials,” which are expensive, multi-year clinical trials with 10,000 or more patients, have shown that statins like Zocor and Lipitor reduce LDL cholesterol and lower the risk of heart attacks, there have been no such trials for Vytorin and Zetia.
The companies that manufacture Vytorin and Zetia did conduct a so-called “Enhance” trial of the two drugs, but failed to reveal the results until two years after it was completed. Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa has released information showing that the lead outside investigator on the trial accused Merck and Schering-Plough, the manufacturers of the drugs, of deliberately delaying the release of the trial results “to hide something.” When they were finally released, the trial’s results showed that Vytorin and Zetia did not reduce plaque in arteries. The results led a panel of cardiologists to recommend that the drugs be used only as a last resort.
Long after they had ample information about the ineffectiveness of Vytorin and Zetia, the manufacturers continued to blanket the airwaves with commercials extolling the benefits of these two virtually useless concoctions. What does that say about the consciences of the executives who run Merck and Schering-Plough? We are not talking about headache remedies here. We are talking about people’s lives. Millions of people took these remedies in lieu of life-saving statins. Who knows how many people died because they did not get the proper prescriptions?
Merck and Schering-Plough are not the only offenders of this kind. There are many useless or dangerous drugs foisted on the public by unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies. But Merck deserves special mention as a prime offender. It not only promoted and sold ineffective medications, it also continued to market a downright dangerous drug, Vioxx, long after its ill effects were apparent.
Vioxx is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that was FDA approved to treat rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, migraines, and other acute and chronic pain conditions. The danger of Vioxx had been a concern since it was first approved for use in the United States in 1999. Early tests showed that Vioxx users had higher numbers of cardiovascular side effects than users of another drug, naproxen.
In 2000, a study to test the effects of Vioxx on colon polyps had to be cut short after eighteen months because patients who had taken Vioxx were two times more likely to suffer heart attacks or strokes than patients taking a placebo or Vioxx alternative. The New England Journal of Medicine said in an editorial that Merck & Co., the maker of Vioxx, withheld data and information that would affect conclusions drawn in the study. Merck conducted further tests, but despite further evidence of the danger of Vioxx, did not pull the drug off the market until 2004. I wonder how many people died because of Merck’s callous indifference.
I don’t know how many Americans have been killed by terrorists in Iraq, but it may be that the number is smaller than the number of those killed by taking ineffective or unsafe medications in America.
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