Merck Sued For Fraud And The Media Buries The Story

On June 22, 2012 The Wall Street Journal published an article that Merck lied about the true efficacy of its mump vaccine. Links to the story began to show up on the social media.

Suddenly all the links no longer worked. It almost looked like the story was never published by the Journal. One financial publication had it in its cache so it was still accessible.

There were two class-action lawsuits that had been filed on Merck’s mumps vaccine, which is part of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR vaccine). What Merck is being accused of is tampering and falsification of data that was done to hide the fact that the mumps vaccine had significantly declined in effectiveness. This information would threaten its monopoly over the vaccine market.

It turns out three days after the story appeared in The Wall Street Journal, there was a meeting of the Journals “elite” network of CFOs from the world’s top corporation and Merck’s CFO sits on the executive council. Was the pulling of the story and Merck being on the executive council tied together? Fortunately, the lawsuits are going forward even though the media is ignoring it.

(Reported Mercola.com 7/23/2012)

Tamiflu for Influenza (flu) – Does It Really Work?

You’ve probably seen the ads for the most popular Influenza (flu) antiviral – Roche’s Tamiflu. It’s supposed to reduce the duration of flu by around 21 hours if taken in the first 36 to 48 hours of illness.

It is also believed to reduce the risk of pneumonia and other complications.

While Tamiflu generates around $3.5 billion a year in sales, is it really as good as the amount of sales would lead you to believe?

The answer appears to be we don’t know.

The Cochrane Collaboration, a highly regarded independent organization that analyses medical research, and the British medical BMJ have been attempting to obtain key studies that are supposed to validate these claims.

Roche has not turned over the research materials. BMJ reported that 8 out of 10 clinical studies that supposedly support Tamiflu’s efficacy have never been published and the other two studies, which were funded and authored by Roche, could not be relied on.

Now, the question is a simple one – without seeing all the research, how can we be sure that Tamiflu does what it says it does or is it just a profit center for Roche?

Reported Health & Healing, Vol. 23, No. 1

Here are 5 things that Forbe’s says you should know:
The Myth of Tamiflu