Pfizer fined for bribing foreign doctors and health care professionals

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Pfizer with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act after finding various subsidiaries bribed doctors and other health care professionals employed by foreign governments in order to win business.
Read article at pharmalot.com

Patients at risk from inadequately trained doctors

See Daily Express article.

About finding a dead mouse in a loaf of bread

If you were to publicise about finding a dead mouse in a loaf, no-one would dream of writing to say that they had had a loaf from the same bakery and it hadn’t had a dead mouse in it! And the bakery from which you had bought the bread would not explain that most of their loaves didn't contain dead mice. And trainee bakers wouldn't explain that bakers work long hours and so you can't expect all the loaves to be perfect and you should be reasonable and accept that obviously some of them will contain dead mice, but it's nothing to do with carelessness or incompetence or negligence or malice; it's just one of those things, a matter of statistics, and there should be a system of 'no-fault' compensation for anyone who has the temerity to complain about being gravely harmed by the effects of the dead mouse in the loaf.

The strange scenario I have outlined in my first paragraph is not an inappropriate analogy to the responses that tend to follow from complaints about doctors or medical negligence or the Health Service. - What a cheek to complain about dead mice! - Just get over it!

A website that rates doctors, with ratings and reviews by their patients.

http://iwantgreatcare.org/

This may be useful to people who have moved house and are wanting to register with a practice in the new area, or to people who would like information about consultants and surgeons.

When a doctor robs you of your most precious possession - your health - he/she takes from you that which is valueless to others.

When a doctor robs you of your most precious possession - your health - he/she takes from you that which is valueless to others.

When a doctor prescribes for you a drug with grave side-effects that he/she has not bothered to check out and therefore he/she has not given you necessary/vital information and does not bother to monitor you in the way detailed in the protocol associated with the drug I'd consider this medical negligence, wouldn't you? - And even more so if the prescribed dose is a high dose...)o:

If you have been prescribed a drug KNOWN to cause sodium retention and water retention/fluid retention/weight gain and you have become obese as a result, and your doctor did not not warn you that because the drug causes sodium retention you should strenuously avoid salt and salty food while taking the drug, then I consider that you are a victim of medical negligence, especially as the obesity brings many attendant health problems - high blood pressure, high cholesterol, risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, risk of stroke and heart attack and countless other adverse consequences.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

prescribed steroids and HRT

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions

See FAT RETENTION

British doctors are concerned over rights of nurses to prescribe drugs

Concern over rights of nurses to prescribe drugs - Guardian

Extract:

"Medical practitioners today expressed 'serious concerns' over the rights of nurses to prescribe complex medicines after new figures showed a big increase in the practice.

The number of prescriptions issued by independent nurse prescribers has risen by 49% since new rules allowing nurses to prescribe complex medicines to patients were introduced last year, according a report in Pulse, the newspaper for GPs.

The figures have prompted a row among medical practitioners over whether nurses and pharmacists should have the right to prescribe a wide range of drugs in a bid to speed up patient treatment.

Professor Hugh McGavock, visiting professor of prescribing science at the University of Ulster and a former member of the Committee on Safety of Medicines, told Pulse he had "serious concerns" about the rule change.

He said: "Nurses' knowledge of diagnosis is pathetically poor. It takes medical students five years to be competent to make a differential diagnosis. Only a country with not enough doctors would go down this cheapy line.""

Hollow laughter here...)o: - Could there be any health professionals worse at diagnosis and at prescribing than NHS doctors? - Not in my experience! - Their reckless and inappropriate prescribing of powerful drugs when they have wholly inadequate knowledge of the adverse side-effects of the drugs beggars belief! If that were not the case, I would not be a steroid victim, and nor would the scores of other steroid victims in this country.

Remember, friends, whenever, in any country, doctors go on strike, the death rate goes down...(o: (Check it out on the internet.) - There's a lesson for us all.

Plus we have a pathetic system of regulating drugs. - http://www.mhra.gov.uk/ - This is the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency - surely a euphemistic title if ever there was one!

It is an executive agency of the Department of Health and the MHRA website makes the grandiose claim that: "We enhance and safeguard the health of the public by ensuring that medicines and medical devices work, and are acceptably safe." - Well they make a lamentable job of this!

There are no warnings for patients that they should eat no salt or food containing salt when taking certain drugs, most importantly many quite commonly prescribed steroids, HRT, other drugs containing oestrogen, amitriptyline and many other anti-depressants and anti-psychotics, and some other drugs, because these drugs can and often do cause sodium and water retention and therefore, potentially, morbid obesity and a host of other serious health problems.

If the MHRA were doing its job properly they would have long ago curbed the recklessly excessive over-prescribing of these drugs, many of which have been being prescribed for over 50 years, and implemented a mandatory monitoring of patients taking these drugs, in order to prevent morbid obesity, etc developing. - As it is, because of their failure to do their job properly, there are many thousands of obese and morbidly obese people in this country as a direct result of taking drugs prescribed by NHS doctors.

I'd trust a pharmacist ahead of a doctor for knowing about drugs, and I'd trust a prescribing nurse ahead of a doctor for taking the trouble to look up a drug to check the side-effects.

Doctors have got a good PR machine, but it's not matched by their performance...)o:

Doctors and nurses may be banned from dating former patients

No-dating rules for doctors and nurses - Telegraph

Extract:

"Doctors and nurses may be banned from dating former patients unless the professional contact with them was minimal, under new draft guidelines on sexual behaviour between clinicians and patients.

The proposals, the first of their kind, will affect all health-care professionals and are expected to go before ministers for approval in June, says Nursing Standard magazine.

The guidance comes after a number of high-profile cases in which doctors and other health-care staff have sexually abused patients, such as that of the psychiatrists Dr William Kerr and Michael Haslam, both of whom abused vulnerable patients in Yorkshire."

Patricia Hewitt's attempt to find a solution to the junior doctors' training fiasco at risk from surgeons' anger

Surgeons' fury over trainee fiasco - Guardian

Extract:

"Patricia Hewitt's attempt to find a solution to the junior doctors' training fiasco was at risk last night after England's top surgeons threatened to pull out of negotiations.

Bernard Ribiero, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said: "I will not see a generation of highly qualified, experienced and committed surgical trainees exposed to the vagaries of an untested and clearly flawed system." If a government review committee did not act today to rescue medical trainees from "a professional lottery", the surgeons would take matters into their own hands and make the appointments independently."

All-party public accounts committee of MPs reports financial mismanagement and lack of control over NHS billions

MPs expose lack of control over NHS billions

Extract:

"A devastating insight into financial mismanagement at all levels of the NHS - from Government ministers down to hospital bureaucrats - is provided by a committee of MPs today.

The report by the all-party public accounts committee exposes how billions of pounds of taxpayers' money is being poured into a health system with inadequate financial controls and low levels of accounting expertise.

The MPs conclude that NHS structures are so inadequate that the Department of Health has no idea what the effect of last year's total deficit of £570 million is having on patient care.

The deficit was recorded despite a massive rise in NHS spending from £69.7 billion in 2004-5 to £76.4 billion in 2005-6. In this financial year the amount being pumped in will soar again to £92.6 billion.

Edward Leigh, the chairman of the committee, said "weak control of finances" and "lack of interest" by doctors in the sums they were spending were to blame for many of the deficit problems.

In no less than one in three NHS organisations, auditors had raised concerns "about the financial management capabilities of general management".

In one in four they were worried about the financial performance of non-executive directors.

The committee said that while the Department of Health had no "overall picture" of the effect of deficits on services to patients, it was clear they were adversely affecting the level and quality of care."

UK's failed drugs policy has to change - article in The Telegraph today.

Our failed drugs policy has to change

Extracts:

"Drugs policy has failed. Do not take my word for it. That was, essentially, the conclusion of the Prime Minister's strategy unit in a report published last year after initially being suppressed. The aim of drugs policy over the past four decades has been to reduce demand and curb supply. It has done neither. Crime associated with drug-taking is as rife as ever. A new way needs to be found."

"Many of the drugs that are illegal do not necessarily cause any greater damage than alcohol or tobacco, both of which when taken to excess are debilitating or lethal. So if drugs cannot be eradicated, then the principal object of public policy, instead of trying to criminalise as many people as possible, should be to discourage their use on health grounds and mitigate the harm they cause. Furthermore, most of us felt, without being excessively libertarian about it, that if people are harming neither themselves nor others, the state has no reason to intervene."

I don't know much about illegal drugs, having had nothing at all to do with them ever. - But I do know that a far greater drugs problem is that of the ever-burgeoning quantities of prescribed drugs, which sometimes are of benefit to the patient but which all too often cause great harm. - The reckless prescribing of steroids and other drugs which cause sodium retention and thereby fluid retention and weight gain, are a major cause of obesity and its attendant host of other illnesses - hypertension, stroke, diabetes, most cancers, etc. Quite apart from all this needless and costly suffering to patients, many of these over-prescribed drugs find their way into the hands of the illegal drug-pushers.

Cavalier prescribing needs to be curbed BY LAW - and doctors who know so little of the side-effects of steroids that they do not warn their patients to avoid eating salt while on the medication should not be allowed to prescribe these powerful, dangerous drugs.

Obesity is NOT caused by overeating. It is caused by fluid retention, frequently because of taking prescribed medications, especially steroids such as prednisolone and HRT, and anti-depressants such as amitriptyline. Obesity can be easily reduced by seriously reducing your salt/sodium intake and eating plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. - It is important not to restrict calories. - 'Slimming' is unnecessary, ineffective and often harmful.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

"Doctors cannot expect job for life," says the UK government's deputy chief medical officer, Professor Martin Marshall.

Doctors 'cannot expect job for life'

Extract:

"Speaking on Channel 4 News, Professor Marshall said: "I do not think doctors should consider themselves as any different from any other walk of life.

"There is no right to get a job. There is no right to work in a particular part of the country. Medicine is a very competitive profession, it always has been and it always will be and personally I think the public will probably like it to remain that way.""




Obesity is not caused by eating too much. - It is caused/initiated by fluid retention. - Dieting is potentially harmful.
Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Save the planet - from doctors. - Huge "carbon footprint" left by the medical profession...

Save the planet - from doctors

Extract:

"Doctors are cardinal offenders, mainly because of the curious ritual of the international conference. Thousands of participants convene at some attractive venue to spend a couple of boring days listening to scientific presentations that, if of any merit, would soon be published anyhow.

And the score? Prof Julian Crane, of Otago University, did the calculations after attending the European Respiratory Society's 16th annual congress in Munich, along with a staggering 17,239 others. He inferred from the list of delegates their countries of origin and thus the "carbon cost" of attending the meeting. It worked out at 40 million kgs of carbon dioxide, which it would take 784,000 trees a year to absorb."



Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it!
See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Dirty Hands, Dirty Health Service (UK) - The reason we have MRSA and C Diff on hospital wards?

Dirty hands, Dirty Health Service

Extract:

"We are told that all the major advances in health in the last 100 years are the result of improved public sanitation and hygiene and not medicine and yet here I saw health practitioners and managers failing to do what they should have been taught as children.

Is it any wonder that we have MRSA and C Diff on our wards if hand washing is not practised in public conveniences let alone hospital corridors?"

Doctors who do not wash their hands after visiting the toilet should be severely disciplined. - I suggest that sacking them would be appropriate for a start...

Patricia Hewitt tells GPs to 'stop pocketing profits'

Hewitt tells GPs to 'stop pocketing profits'

Extract:

"Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, yesterday urged GPs to stop pocketing the profits they were making under lucrative new pay deals and start reinvesting the money in their practices.

Miss Hewitt said she was in talks with the medical profession to see if she could persuade more family doctors to plough money back into services.

Her comments follow accusations that ministers blundered during negotiations that led to a deal in which the average earnings of thousands of GPs has risen above £100,000 a year.

The bill for the huge pay increases is now widely acknowledged as one of the key factors in fuelling the record £1.3 billion deficit run up by front-line NHS trusts last year.

While Miss Hewitt sought to defend the pay deal, she conceded yesterday that she was concerned that many GPs were taking a large proportion of their profits out of the practice rather than reinvesting in services."



Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Doctors' pay deal 'was so easy it was a laugh,' says Dr Simon Fradd, formerly a member of the GPs committee of the British Medical Association.

Doctors' pay deal 'was so easy it was a laugh' says Dr Simon Fradd.

Extract:

"His comments come as controversy continued over GPs' pay. Figures show that an average GP is now earning £102,000 per annum, a 30 per cent increase in a year.

Dr Simon Fradd said that when it was proposed that for not working "out of hours" at night or at weekends they would only forfeit six per cent of their pay, the GP negotiators were astonished. They had expected it to cost them much more.

Dr Fradd, who is not now a member of the GPs committee of the British Medical Association, told the BBC Radio 4 programme The Investigation, to be broadcast today, that doctors had never believed the Government would allow them to opt out of out-of-hours care.
So they were more surprised that the team, acting on behalf of the Government, was only asking for a small cut, he said.

"We got rid of it for effectively six per cent of the value of the contract. It was just stunning. Nobody in my position had ever believed we could pull it off but to get it for six per cent was a bit of a laugh," he said. "

Patricia Hewitt 'pleased' with doctor's wages. - Latest spin. - Hewitt must think/hope we're as foolish as she is!

Hewitt 'pleased' with doctor's wages

Extracts:

1) "Health secretary Patricia Hewitt has said that she is proud of the fact that doctors in the UK are some of the highest paid in the world.

Her comments came after concerns were raised over the fact that the current contract for doctors sees their wages uncapped.

This means that potentially doctor's earning powers are completely unlimited."

If there's one thing British doctors are really good at, it's negotiating pay-deals!

2) "a recently published report has claimed that diabetic children are at risk of losing limbs because the current NHS cash crisis has hit services."

The current cash crisis is largely the result of the massive levels of cash going into doctors' pockets.

To lower the risk of your children developing obesity and/or Type 2 diabetes it is important to ensure they eat food low in salt/sodium. - See low salt intake is good for children's health (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Another nice little earner for Britain's overpaid GPs! - GPs' piecework pay boosts chronic caseload

Extracts from an article entitled "GPs' piecework pay boosts chronic caseload" which appeared in the Telegraph on 14 Jan, 2007:

"New GP contracts could be open to exploitation by doctors, it is feared, after nearly 850,000 extra cases of chronic disease were diagnosed in England last year.

The rise follows the introduction of a contract which pays doctors when they identify diseases and provide treatment. It has seen their annual earnings rise 63% in three years to an estimated average of £118,000.

The greatest increase has been the number of patients with high blood pressure. An additional 371,000 cases were identified between the beginning of the contract in 2004/5 and 2005/6. As a result, the proportion of people officially suffering high blood pressure has risen from one in nine to one in eight, in a year.

At some GP practices, alarmingly high levels of disease have been identified. At one in West Yorkshire, one in 14 patients has been diagnosed with emphysema or chronic bronchitis, when on average only one in 71 patients in England is a sufferer. Bradford and Airedale Primary Care Teaching Trust admitted that the GP had "had difficulty in recording accurate data". At a practice in east London, one in 32 patients has been diagnosed with cancer when on average, only one in 143 patients in England has been diagnosed with the condition. The GP declined to comment.

Michael Summers, a spokesman for the Patients' Association said the findings were a cause for concern. "There appears to be a sudden onset of diseases that were not present one year ago. One could be forgiven for suspecting that in some cases, the sudden diagnoses were driven by the desire for a greater income. Some patients could be receiving treatment – and medication – unnecessarily.""

See also aboutsalt.blogspot 2006/09/01 archive

many doctors are failing their patients

sleaze in the medical profession

prescribed steroids - potential for grave harm

Sex and Power - Women remain seriously under-represented in senior positions

Sex and power

Extract from the report:

"A "sex and power" survey of women in senior positions across the public and private sector in Britain says that 30 years after the Sex and Discrimination Act, women should be sharing power more equally."

Well I've got a good idea to help with this problem: We need sexist attitudes to be eradicated from healthcare provision, ideally by meticulously thought-out legislation, banning medical sexist discrimination by statute. If women were to be treated with the same care and concern as men are by doctors and their retinues, then their health would be much better and that would remove one unnecessary obstacle to their advancement in the workplace.

In the '90s, Sheena McDonald presented television programmes about this, and The Times national newspaper carried detailed and serious articles highlighting with statistics and with personal testimonies the demeaning attitudes encountered by women patients consulting doctors, in contrast to male patients consulting them with the same symptoms. Men were much more likely to be taken seriously and to be examined and sent for tests; women were more likely to be considered to be exaggerating their symptoms or imagining them, and to be offered 'reassurance' or worse, and sent away, possibly with anti-depressants. There were, of course, grave consequences to this medical malpractice.

How we laughed - ruefully - when a typical greeting was parodied! - To a male patient: "Good morning. And what is the matter?" - To a woman patient: "Good morning. And what seems to be the matter?" - But the parody is still all too close to the truth, and the humour is all too black and all too many women are harmed by this nonsense...)o:

And if you think that sex discrimination in medical services is within the remit of the Equal Opportunities Commission, amazingly, you are wrong! - I brought up the matter with them in Manchester years ago and was told that although they do hear from women who know themselves to have received poor treatment from health professionals because of what I could these days call institutional sex prejudice, they cannot assist because medical services are outside their terms of reference.

So-called "self-inflicted" unhealthy 'face NHS cuts'

Self-inflicted unhealthy 'face NHS cuts'

Extract from this article:

"Obese people, those suffering from alcohol problems and smokers may not be first in line for NHS treatment if they do not make efforts to amend their unhealthy lifestyles, a newspaper report claims.The Independent warns that that those whose illnesses are 'self-inflicted' to some extent may not receive priority treatment due to the pressures their lifestyles place upon the NHS."

If obese people are to be 'punished' in this way it will be absolutely outrageous and a national scandal! - Obesity is NOT a self-inflicted disease. It is primarily an iatrogenic disease - i.e. it is caused by doctors, because for many many years doctors and other 'experts' have been giving entirely the wrong information about the causes of obesity and entirely the wrong advice about how to reduce obesity. - Obesity is NOT caused by over-eating; it is caused by fluid retention, and the most severe fluid retention tends to result from health professionals' inappropriate prescribing for steroids, HRT, tricyclic anti-depressants and certain other drugs, often in far too high a dose, and without the necessary warning to avoid eating salt or salty food while taking the drug. - See political considerations about responsibility for the high incidence of obesity - If you read the whole page you will find there are several groups responsible for the obesity 'epidemic', but they do not include obese people themselves, who are actually the victims of the medical profession et al.

Examples of Steroid Victims in the UK - Example Number 1

Examples of Steroid Victims in the UK - Example Number 1

Michael had had damaged kidneys and had patiently lived on a very low salt diet for years while waiting for a new kidney. Then he was overjoyed at last to receive a new kidney. The doctors in the hospital told him it would now be OK for him to eat an ordinary diet, not salt-restricted. And so while still in the hospital he was given an ordinary diet. At the same time they put him onto steroids. The consequences have been dire. He put on a lot of weight and his new kidney now has impaired function. He said to me that he would never go to a doctor again in his life - that he would rather die than have any further contact with doctors.

I believe that there are many damaged people who would rather die than have further contact with doctors...)o:

For details of the harm done by eating salty food while taking steroids visit http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ and click on the steroids link on the left of the page.