Category Archives: Media censorship and propaganda

Wyeth and the Multibillion Menopause Industry

Posted on by
4

menopause

(Part I of a two part series on the dangerous and cancer causing campaign by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals to “medicalize” menopause for profit),

I have written previously (see The Multibillion Dollar Depression Industry and Drug Companies: Killing Kids for profit)  about the ingenious – and deadly – strategy by pharmaceutical companies of inventing fictitious illnesses to market highly profitable drugs that allegedly “treat” them. The technical terms for this are “medicalizing” or “disease mongering.” In her 2004 The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What To Do About It, Dr Marcia Angell talks about “generalized anxiety disorder,” “erectile dysfunction,” “premenstrual dysphoric disorder,” and “gastro-esophogeal reflux disorder (heartburn).” These are other common complaints that drug companies have reinvented as chronic illnesses requiring lifelong treatment.

Estrogen Deficiency Syndrome

Based on 30 years of research linking it to reproductive cancers, the marketing of so-called “estrogen deficiency syndrome” has been far more lethal. The condition is known as “menopause” in English-speaking countries. Other cultures have no word for it. The number of premature deaths from the so-called treatment – “hormone replacement therapy (HRT)” – is the millions.

In this case the culprit is a single company, Wyeth, which manufactures Premarin (conjugated estrogens extracted from pregnant mare urine) and Prempro, a combination of estrogen and progesterone (a second female hormone).

Estrogen, a hormone regulating the development and function of the female reproductive system, was first discovered in 1925. In the 1930s, the drug company Wyeth developed a process to extract conjugated estrogens from the urine of pregnant mares. They patented their product as the drug Premarin (PREgnantMAresurINe), which first appeared on the market in 1942.

From the beginning Wyeth marketed Premarin, not for temporary relief of menopausal symptoms, but as a lifelong treatment to help all women maintain “healthy” estrogen levels in later life. Obviously this is nonsense. A “healthy” or natural estrogen level in a post-menopausal woman is virtually zero.

Although the medical community (and Wyeth) have been aware of links between estrogen replacement and breast, uterine and ovarian cancer since the 1970s, this research was effectively concealed from the public. Until the frightening results of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study hit the front page in 2002. Between 1993 and 1995, the National Institutes of Health enrolled 161,809 women in the double blind WHI study. In 2002 the NHI shut down the study. Although it was originally scheduled to finish in 2005, it was painfully obvious that the women taking HRT were experiencing a 26% increase in breast cancer (with the risk doubling after five years), a 41% increase in strokes and a 29% increase in heart disease.

1975: the First Study Linking Premarin with Cancer

The first study linking Premarin with uterine cancer appeared in 1975. It was replicated by other researchers in 1977 and 1979. Wyeth responded to these worrisome studies by promoting a small 1980 study that taking progesterone, a second female hormone, reduced the risk of uterine cancer with estrogen replacement.

Sadly, most doctors fell for Wyeth’s slick PR campaign. Thanks to all the free pens, watches, clocks, lunches and trips to overseas conferences, they conveniently overlooked the failure of Wyeth’s 1980 study to at cancer rates in women who took no hormone replacement or to study the possible role of combined treatment in inducing other hormone sensitive cancers, such as breast and ovarian cancer. Wyeth’s success in selling doctors on combined treatment would lead them to launch Prempro, a combination of Premarin and progesterone, in 1995.

The earliest studies linking Premarin with breast cancer appeared in early 1980. According to Nik Ismail in “Hormone Replacement Therapy and Gynaecological Cancers,” between 1975 and 1995, there were at least fifty studies linking estrogen replacement (also known as HRT) with breast and uterine cancer. Some were cross cultural studies revealing American women had more than ten times the incidence of breast cancer than Asian women, who don’t take estrogen replacement.

The Multibillion Dollar Wyeth Cover-up

Wyeth responded to the breast cancer studies with a new PR blitz. In addition to flooding doctors’ offices with literature claiming studies linking Premarin to cancer were “contradictory,” they promoted numerous company-funded studies allegedly showing that estrogen replacement prevents osteoporosis and hip fractures, dementia and heart disease. The spin Wyeth gave doctors was that the effect of reducing cardiovascular disease (heart disease and strokes) — the most common cause of death in Americans – outweighed the somewhat lower risk of developing breast cancer.

Ultimately the claim that Premarin and Prempro reduce elderly women’s risk of cardiovascular disease proved to be false. This was one of the main reasons the WHI study was stopped: the women in the Premarin/Prempro arm of the study were developing significantly more heart attacks, strokes and dementia.

The WHI points to some role for estrogen replacement in reducing osteoporosis. However no studies have ever controlled for long term fluoride ingestion or epidemic Vitamin D deficiency in elderly Americans – which both have a documented role in high US rates of osteoporosis and hip fracture.

The marketing blitz aimed at doctors was accompanied by an even more powerful PR campaign in Harper’s Bazaar, the Ladies Home Journal and other women’s magazines. The goal was to appeal to American women’s (largely manufactured) terror of aging by emphasizing the value of estrogen replacement in preserving sexual attractiveness by preventing the skin changes and vaginal drying associated with aging.

To be continued.

photo credit: tejamen1947 via photopin cc

How Nonviolence Protects the State

Posted on by
6

how nonviolence protects the state

(more from my research for A Rebel Comes of Age)

How Nonviolence Protects the State

Peter Gelderloos (2007 South End Press)

Book Review

How Nonviolence Protects the State takes up where Ward Churchill’s 1985 Pacifism as Pathology leaves off – expanding on Churchill’s basic premises (see previous blog) with more recent historical examples. Like Churchill, Gelderloos bemoans the determination of nonviolence proponents to impose their ideological views across the entire progressive movement. He blames this mainly on The Nation magazine and other “alternative” media outlets for falsely framing the debate as a question of “nonviolent” vs. “violent” organizing strategy. No one, he argues, endorses pure violence as a tactic.

Gelderloos divides his book into seven chapters. Each explores specific weaknesses of exclusive nonviolence as a political strategy:

Chapter 1 Nonviolence is ineffective – Here Gelderloos exposes the falsified history of “successful” nonviolent resistance movements – which he maintains are neither exclusively nonviolent or successful. In the case of Gandhi’s Quit India campaign, the Mahatma was elevated to fame by the British press. The latter chose to focus on his acts of civil disobedience, rather than the hundreds of freedom fighters who were planting bombs and assassinating British officials and native civil servants.

Gelderloos describes a parallel process occurring in the case of Martin Luther King’s nonviolent civil rights campaign. The mainstream media never reported on the Birmingham civil rights marches that degenerated into riots, which, in many cases, were the real trigger for both local and federal law changes.

He also contrasts the millions of peaceful demonstrators who were unable to stop the 2003 US invasion of Iraq – with the single 2004 train bombing that led Spain to withdraw their troops from occupied Iraq.

Chapter 2 Nonviolence is racist –  Gelderloos agrees with Churchill that the vast majority of dogmatic nonviolent proponents are privileged middle class whites, for whom the full repression of the capitalist state is never a genuine fear. Black looting (usually for food and basic necessities) is condemned as “violence.” In cntrast, white activists cut a chain fence to trespass on a military base are embraced as “nonviolent” and acceptable. White progressives are also quick to condemn third world autonomy movements, such as the Iraq and Afghan insurgencies against US occupation.

Chapter 3 Nonviolence is statist (i.e. serves the state) – Nonviolent activists share the fundamental view that the state (via police, FBI, CIA and military) should hold the monopoly on violence. In moments of conflict, they always line up with state authority. Among other examples, Gelderloos cites the Poor Peoples March at the 2004 Republican National Convention, where Mayor Bloomberg handed out badges to protestors who committed to nonviolent protest. When the police manhandled and arrested protestors (without badges) who were either black, covered their faces or refused to submit to arbitrary searches, white nonviolent marchers failed to come to their defense and blamed the arrestees for the police decision to target them.

Chapter 4 Nonviolence is patriarchal (i.e. supports male oppression of women and sexual minorities) – The nonviolent movement only permits women to use violence to defend themselves in individual cases of attempted rape. It’s not considerable acceptable in situations of ongoing domestic violence. Nor against the gradual systemic violence – for example the harmful corporate-produced chemicals in their breast milk – that is gradually poisoning their children.

Chapter 5 Nonviolence is tactically and strategically inferior – The nonviolent movement is totally focused on short term tactics and unable to show how any of these tactics will achieve their long term goals. When confronted with their inability to achieve goals, nonviolent advocates give the pat response: “Political change takes a long time and may not come in our lifetime.”

Gelderloo bemoans the millions of dollars wasted on grassroots lobbying, which is almost never effective. Even when Congress meets your demands on paper, they always backtrack. He gives the example of the School of the Americas (SOA) campaign, which sucked up years of organizing and nonviolent protests When enough public pressure built up, the Pentagon simply closed the SOA and reopened it under a new name.

He proposes the provocative question: ” Does it make more sense to blockade a bridge for a few hours by forming a human chain – or putting it out of commission for six months by blowing it up?”

Chapter 6 Nonviolence is deluded – The nonviolent movement is full of extreme contradictions. Nonviolent advocates support state violence all the time, simply by paying taxes. Activists from the privileged class need to understand what the rest of the world has known all along: neutrality isn’t possible. The question is which violence scares us the most and which side we will stand on.

Chapter 7 The alternative: possibilities for revolutionary activism – Gelderloos finishes with his vision of strategies that are most likely to succeed in dismantling corporate rule. He envisions building a loose confederation of local autonomous groups that will form non-corporate structures (free clinics, cooperatives, farmers markets, etc) to meet local needs. While he sees no need to convert everyone to anarchism, he warns of the need to be continually on guard against cooptation by the Institutional Left. And the need to learn self defense. If activists occupy a building to create a free clinic, they need to make sure the police can’t take it away from them.

A PDF of Gelderloos’ book can be downloaded free at zinelibrary

***

Rebel cover

In A Rebel Comes of Age, seventeen-year-old Angela Jones and four other homeless teenagers occupy a vacant commercial building owned by Bank of America. The adventure turns deadly serious when the bank obtains a court order evicting them. Ange faces the most serious crisis of her life when the other residents decide to use firearms against the police SWAT team.

$3.99 ebook available (in all formats) from Smashwords:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/361351

Pacificism as Pathology

Posted on by
6

pacifism as pathology

(more of my research for A Rebel Comes of Age)

Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America

By Ward Churchill (2007 AK Press)

Book Review

Pacifism as Pathology is a collection of essays centered around Ward Churchill’s original 1985 essay “Pacifism as Pathology: Notes on an American Pseudopraxis.” The premise of the essay is that the militant nonviolent stance assumed by the US progressive movement is based on irrational psychological reasons rather than strategic reasons or moral principle.

Viewpoints from a Range of Activists

The 2007 edition contains a preface by Derrick Jensen, who lays out compelling reasons for the necessity of “violence” in bringing about genuine political change in his 2006 book Endgame. Jensen’s argument, as in Endgame, is primarily ecological. Humankind is being systematically killed off by the capitalist class, via their poisoning of the air, water and food chain, as well as their heedless imposition of catastrophic climate change. Jensen poses the very reasonable question: are we willing to retaliate violently to save our own lives and those of our children and grandchildren?

The next essay is Ed Mead’s preface to the 1998 edition of Pacifism as Pathology, immediately following an 18 year prison term as a result of armed actions (bombings of state and federal buildings in Washington State) conducted by the George Jackson Brigade. Based on his experiences, he arrives at the following conclusions: 1)  pacifism as a strategy of achieving social, political and economic change can only lead to dead end liberalism – the most vicious and violent ruling class in history won’t give up privilege without a physical fight; 2) because 99.9% of practitioners of political violence will eventually confront death or imprisonment, it’s imperative that political violence be carried out in a manner calculated to win; and 3) although the George Jackson Brigade applied the tool of revolutionary violence when its use wasn’t appropriate, he feels pride that they erred on the side of making revolution instead of the alternative.

The book also contains an afterwards by Canadian Activist Mike Ryan describing his frustration after 20 years of nonviolent resistance as part of the Canadian peace movement – and his conclusion that violent resistance must be allowed as a tactic for genuine political change to occur.

Churchill’s Infamous Assault Rifle Workshop

Churchill explains, in his 1998 introduction, that Pacificism as Pathology was originally written in 1985 as part of a four year debate over a workshop “Demystification of the Assault Rifle” that he gave at a 1981 Radical Therapy conference. He was invited to give the workshop owing to an admission by many activists that their fear of weapons was chiefly responsible for their rejection of violence as a political strategy. The reaction of some conference participants was to pass a resolution banning similar workshops in the future, as well as the presence of firearms (except those of the police or military) at any Radical Therapy conference. Churchill was invited to write an article on his views for the magazine Issues in Radical Therapy, which was subsequently Xeroxed and distributed widely throughout North America. While Churchill acknowledges the right of all activists to personally reject violent strategies and tactics, he challenges the right of nonviolent proponents to condemn activists willing to embrace property destruction and/or armed self-defense among a diversity of strategies. As he points out, activists willing to engage in violent resistance wouldn’t dream of trying to force their views on nonviolent activists.

Armed Jewish Uprisings Under Nazi Occupation

For me, the most valuable part of the book is the first section about Bruno Bettelheim and Jewish armed uprisings, in the Warsaw and Bialystok ghettos and in numerous concentration camps during the second world war. This is an aspect of World War II history I was totally unaware if, as the work of Bettelheim and other scholars documenting armed Jewish resistance are carefully sanitized from the history textbooks served up to US high school and college students.

Bettelheim, who contrasts the Jews who resisted violently with the majority of Jews, who followed the Nazis passively to the camps and even to the gas chambers, makes a strong case for his belief that the persecution of the Jews was aggravated by the pervasive lack of fight back. He blames their failure to resist on strong psychological denial – a pathological need to cling to an illusion of “business as normal” – that ultimately overwhelmed their basic survival needs. The logical position would have been to accept the cold reality that their own lives were doomed and to use their deaths to save the life of other Jews by making the extermination more difficult. He points out that Jews had easy access to guns in 1930s and 1940s Germany, and there was no reason why every Jew that was arrested couldn’t take one or two SS officers with them.

Churchill describes how all the revolts inflicted significant damage on the Nazi machine. The revolt at Auschwitz killed 70 SS officers and destroyed the crematorium. Armed rebellions at Sorbibor and Reblinka were even more effective, and Sorbibor had to be closed following the uprising. There were also lesser insurrections at Kruszyna, Krychaw and Kopernik.

Militant Nonviolence: Racist, Deluded and Irrational

Churchill devotes the rest of the book to correcting historical distortions regarding Gandhi’s and Martin Luther Kings nonviolent resistance movements (which have been totally whitewashed by the ruling elite); a brief historical overview of the ineffectiveness of nonviolence in contrast to campaigns incorporating violent resistance; an analysis of the inherent racism implicit in the dogmatic nonviolence promoted by white upper middle class activists; and an outline of the irrational psychological motivations underlying militant nonviolence.

According to Churchill, the main reason white upper middle class activists reject violent resistance relates to intense ambivalence whether they really want to dismantle capitalism and give up their position of privilege.

Pacifism as Pathology can be downloaded free from Prison Legal News

Ward Churchill is a Native American author and American Indian Movement (AIM) activist. He was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1990 to 2007. His best known book is the 1990 Cointelpro Papers.

***

Rebel cover

In A Rebel Comes of Age, seventeen-year-old Angela Jones and four other homeless teenagers occupy a vacant commercial building owned by Bank of America. The adventure turns deadly serious when the bank obtains a court order evicting them. Ange faces the most serious crisis of her life when the other residents decide to use firearms against the police SWAT team.

$3.99 ebook available (in all formats) from Smashwords:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/361351