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Birds of a Feather … Big Pharma Cohorts Now under Federal Scrutiny By Robert Carter/December 23, 2024 Profit continues to be revealed as a driving force in the Big Pharma conglomerate. Last week a Big Pharma consulting firm, McKinsey and Company, agreed to pay $650 million as a  settlement with the U.S. Justice Department so as to avoid their criminal prosecution for helping boost Purdue Pharma’s sales of its addictive opioid, OxyContin. This week the U. S. Justice Department released its civil complaint against CVS alleging their complicity in filling unlawful prescriptions of opioids and “trinity” prescriptions (a dangerous combination of an opioid, a benzodiazepine and a muscle relaxant). These two cases illustrate new legal forays by the Justice Department into those ancillary industries that have helped Big Pharma roll out death and addiction to so many unsuspecting users of their dangerous pharmaceutical concoctions. Opioids have been linked to 80,000 deaths per year, and in the early years of their distribution to the public most of these fatalities were from legal prescriptions. Since then drug makers and distributors have paid nearly $50 billion in settlements with governments to atone for their unethical and illegal practices in pushing these drugs. The net of justice is now expanding further as pharmaceutical consulting firms like McKinsey and Company and  pharmaceutical distribution centers such as CVS’s nine thousand pharmacies are coming into the sights of these Justice Department big guns. McKinsey has acknowledged its guilt in contributing to the opioid crisis and has agreed for the next five years not to work for the sale, marketing, or promotion of controlled substances. The firm’s senior partner, Martin Elling, has also pleaded guilty to obstructing justice after it was discovered he had deleted relevant files from his computer about his business relations with Purdue Pharma. “We should have appreciated the harm opioids were causing in our society and we should not have undertaken sales and marketing work for Purdue Pharma,” a company spokesperson said. CVS, on the other hand, is still protesting the current Justice Department accusations. “We will defend ourselves vigorously against this misguided federal lawsuit,” Amy Thibault, external communications director for CVS, wrote in a statement. According to the Justice Department complaint, CVS ignored substantial  evidence from its own pharmacists as well as from other internal and external data and sources that its pharmacies were dispensing controlled substance  prescriptions without any medical purpose from known “pill mill” prescribers. The Justice Department complaint also alleges that CVS sought reimbursement from federal health care programs for these  prescriptions, which is a violation of the U.S. False Claims Act. “Each of the  prescriptions in question was for an FDA-approved opioid medication,” CVS’s Amy Thibault went on to say, and it was “prescribed by a practitioner who the government itself licensed, authorized, and empowered to write controlled-substance prescriptions.” Yes, that’s right, Amy, and these guys are even more birds of a Big Pharma feather.

Gold Rush Mentality Surrounds Big Pharma Push for FDA Approval of Psychedelic-based Antidepressants      By Robert Carter/December 8, 2024      Even some psychiatrists have acknowledged that the last fifty years of their medicating those diagnosed with schizophrenia – the umbrella term for most mental illnesses – has not beenparticularly successful. Big Pharma is on board with that assessment and is now investing millions in research into “breakthrough therapy” psychedelic-based medication to treat any number of mental disorders.      LSD, psilocybin and MDMA are all being tested in preparation for the first FDA approved clinical trials for these hallucinogens to be used to treat depression and anxiety as well as other mental “disorders.”Never mind that all three drugs have been classified as illegal Schedule 1 drugs that have a “high potential for abuse” and are without any “currently accepted medical use in treatment”.      Even the United States Drug Enforcement Administration has reported that the use of LSD in psychotherapy largely has been debunked, and “drug studies have confirmed that the powerful hallucinogenic effects of this drug can produce profound adverse reactions, such as acute panic reactions, psychotic crises, and “flashbacks”, especially in users ill-equipped to deal with such trauma.”      In the 1950s psychiatrists used LSD research to try to replicate the effects of mental illness, and their infamous MKUltra experiments used LSD covertly on often unsuspecting subjects to develop workable mind control techniques.      So why are so many dollars now pouring into what should be questionable psychedelic research?      Because the psychedelic therapeutics market has been valued at $2 billion in 2023 and it is expected to grow to $7 billion by 2031.      Nonprofits like the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) — now valued at $97 million in assets, all through donations — are cashing in on this psychedelics research gold rush. They have even donated over $20 million themselves to other organizations studying the use of psychedelics for therapeutic applications.      Just who are these new gold rush carpetbaggers?      MAPS therapists were videoed in 2022 spooning and pinning down a Phase 2 clinical trial participant in one study for the use of MDMA for PTSD therapy, as reported by New York Magazine. After that session one of the therapists sexually coerced the patient and the patient moved in with the therapists for the next two years.      MAPS lists Vicky Dulai as one of its three member Board of Directors. She “advises philanthropists and foundations about emerging opportunities in psychedelic research, treatment, and therapist training.” Vicky is their (very successful) fundraiser.      In May, 2021 Vicky was alleged in a civil lawsuit of exploiting multi-millionaire venture capitalist George Sarlo, then in his eighties, to extract more than $4 million from him while acting as his “psychedelic therapist” and feeding him ayahuasca, MDMA, and Ketamine.      The two of them had started a romantic relationship before he had had his first psychedelic  experience.      Sarlo gifted her $1.4 million for a house that she, her husband and children, had moved into. He “loaned” $190,000 to her husband for a business investment and he gave her a $65,000 Porsche.      Vicky used $30,000 of Sarlo’s philanthropic funds for private schooling for her children, received a $5150 monthly salary as director of his charitable foundation, and in just the first quarter of 2021 withdreaw more than $300,000 from Sarlo’s personal checking account to fly with her family and Sarlo to Hawaii on a private jet that itself cost $75,000.      The civil case against Vicky was settled out of court and no criminal charges were ever filed. She and Sarlo often participated together in psychedelic fundraising and networking events, and after Sarlo made a $1 million donation to MAPS, Vicky was given her seat on the board of directors.      That’s who these carpetbaggers are.       Back in 1998, a United Nations report estimated that the illegal synthetic drug market at that time, which included psychedelics, was $60 million.      Today’s unscrupulous opportunists like Vicky Dalai are doing their best to ensure this new, legal psychedelic drug market is not far behind.

Psychiatrist and Chairman of Arkansas State Medical Board Hit with Medical Fraud Criminal Charges and over 100 Lawsuits      By Robert Carter/November 3, 2024      The trial of psychiatrist Brian Wyatt has recently been postponed to next spring because of his attorneys’ full schedule. Wyatt was arrested last year for two criminal charges of “large scale medical fraud” for billing Medicaid for appointments he never had with patients.      In early 2023 a confidential informant had reported Hyatt to the Arkansas medical authorities as director of Northwest Medical’s Behavioral Health in Springdale for “significant growth in the unit and likewise in the claims and billings submitted to Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurance” under his time at the helm. Hyatt was arrested eight months later for two counts of large scale Medicaid fraud.      Since then more than 100 of Hyatt’s ex-patients have filed lawsuits against him for “unlawfully coercing, abusing and holding patients against their will” within the Springdale, Arkansas, Behavioral Unit in order to receive greater reimbursement from Medicare between 2018 and 2022.      One patient was charged over $14,000 for a five day stay at the unit, for example, but he never once saw Dr. Hyatt himself. In fact, Hyatt is reported to have issued orders to his staff to mark out his name on his patients’ wristbands so they would not know his name.      William VanWhy, one of the patients filing a lawsuit against Hyatt through the Odom Law Firm, reported that “I stayed there for about five days under Dr. Hyatt’s care. I have never seen him in my life. I’ve never met him, even though I was under his care. I asked to leave every day for the last three days and they wouldn’t let me leave.”      VanWhy’s insurance was then billed for two in-person visits during his stay, per reports, with his total charges in the tens of thousands of dollars.      Matt Lindsay of the Odom Law Firm also reported that many of his clients were chemically restrained, but never got any help in the unit. “Beyond not getting help, they got much worse, and they are still every day living with the effects of what they went through at that facility,” Lindsay said.      The initial informant about Hyatt had also reported that the psychiatrist was only on the floor for a few minutes each day and that he had no contact with patients.       Hyatt has pleaded not guilty to the two Medicaid criminal fraud charges.      One can’t help but wonder how much the spectacular – if utterly fraudulent – growth of the Springdale Behavioral Health Unit under his tenure was a factor in Hyatt achieving the position of Chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board.      Certainly the psychiatrist did not arrive in that position because of his extraordinary and selfless care for his patients.

Thirty Years of Research Show No Gene Causes Schizophrenia Robert Carter/August 27, 2024 After reviewing almost thirty years of research by The Human Genome Project, prominent biological psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey has concluded that schizophrenia “does not appear to be a genetic disorder.” The Human Genome Project began in 1990 with the goal of determining all of the fundamental units that make up human DNA, and the human genome has approximately 3.1 billion of these base units. In August 2023 the final report was published by this publicly funded, multi-billion dollar project. The National Institute of Mental Health spent $8 billion in its own thirty year attempt to find a biological cause of various mental “illnesses” through the data collected in the Human Genome project. Schizophrenia was specifically targeted. After Dr. Torrey recently reviewed all of this research, though, he wrote that “not a single gene has been found that can be causally linked to schizophrenia and the research has produced no improvements in treatments.” The Human Genome Project is the largest collaborative biological research project ever done and its extensive research spans thirty years. If no gene has been found by the project which is shown to be a cause of schizophrenia, there is little likelihood one ever will be. Psychiatry’s theory of a “chemical imbalance” in the brain being the cause of a mental disorder is further debunked by this research, and Big Pharma’s subsequent launch of serotonin associated antidepressants to treat people’s “chemical imbalances” is shown to be, at best, foolhardy. Antidepressants sales in 2024 are estimated to be $17 billion. Quite a profit for Big Pharma. Not “foolhardy” for them.

Pfizer/GSK Takes Another Big Financial Hit for Its Pharmaceutical Greed      By Robert Carter/October 18, 2024      Big Pharma giant Pfizer/GSK agreed out of court this month to pay more than $2.2 billion to settle pending lawsuits against its product Zantac after the FDA pulled it from the market for being a possible carcinogen.      The culprit ingredient in Zantac, a heartburn medication, is ranitidine, a synthetic chemical concocted in one of Glaxo’s research laboratories in England in 1977. A “reverse pharmacology” approach was used to determine if modulating an existing biomolecule might have a therapeutic effect. This research technique might violate the “it’s not nice to mess with Mother Nature” axiom, but nevertheless the product was introduced to the market in 1981. By 1987 it had become the world’s biggest selling prescription drug.      It was not until almost thirty years later in 2019 that widespread reports — confirmed by an extensive Taiwanese study in 2022 showed evidence of ranitidine as potentially carcinogenic because of an inherent instability of the ranitidine molecule. The FDA ordered pharmaceutical manufacturers of products like Zantac which contained ranitidine to pull them from the market.      As the original patents for ranitidine had expired over the years, other pharmaceutical companies had entered competition for this lucrative market. Last month the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi paid $100 million in out of court settlements to plaintiffs suing the company for its ranitidine product. This month Pfizer/GSK followed suit and settled their own lawsuits out of court for $2.2 billion.      When the initial clinical trials of a new pharmaceutical product are rushed to be completed — either as they are conducted or as their findings are written up for the FDA — the safety of a product for public consumption can be at risk. When that happens, the public themselves begin participating – unknowingly – in what is then virtually an extended clinical trial for the product.      It took thirty years for enough broad evidence of cancer in ailing consumers caused by the Pfizer drug to surface and cause the FDA to ban the product.      That evidence also arrived in the form of 80,000 lawsuits from Pfizer/GSK’s ranitidine product Zantac. It should be noted that Pfizer/GSK did not publicly accept any responsibility for a “faulty” produce, but said that they were only settling these lawsuits to mitigate future legal expenses for their company.      The FDA, which approved the drug, is not funded exclusively by the U.S. government, of course. Forty-five percent of its annual budget comes from the fees Big Pharma pays to apply for approval for a new drug, and seventy-five percent of the FDA’s antidepressant approval department comes from Big Pharma fees.      Zantac’s annual sales grew to more than $1 billion within five years of its release to the public. That’s quite a return on the comparatively modest approval fee paid to the FDA.      Even the $2.2 billion just paid to settle these lawsuits is a small price to pay for those decades of profit from Zantac.      The far heftier price was paid by those hundreds of thousands of people suing these Big Pharma firms because of the cancer they had suffered from ranitidine

Biden’s White House: Victim of Big Pharma Propaganda By Robert Carter/September 25, 2024 This month President Biden signed the bill to ease access for mental health treatments to 175 million Americans with private health insurance. This addendum to the Mental Health Parity Act will make it easier for those people to bill their insurance for mental health help, but it will also significantly increase the flow of dollars into Big Pharma’s antidepressant manufacturers. Biden announced this Big Pharma windfall by stating that it ensures that “mental health coverage will be covered at the same level as other health care for Americans. There is no reason that breaking your arm should be treated differently than having a mental health condition.” His parroting of the Big Pharma myth of the “chemical imbalance” theory of biological causes for mental disorders shows the extent to which Big Pharma’s mental health propaganda has penetrated American culture. That’s not surprising. Last year alone, 2023, Big Pharma spent almost $400 million lobbying congress to support pharmaceuticals and other health products. In fact, Biden himself is listed on opensectrets.org as the top benefactor ever of Big Pharma’s extravagant donations to congressmen. Biden has received over $9 million in donations from Big Pharma. In fact, one of the initial sponsors for the original Mental Health Parity Act in 1996, Senator Domenici, himself received over $150,000 in Big Pharma donations during his congressional career. It is true that mental health issues and substance abuse seem to be on the rise in America, and the passage of this bill will offer more help to those needing it in today’s stressful world. But is pharmaceutical “help” truly a benefit to those suffering if it is based on a debunked “chemical imbalance theory? Even the former Director of the National Institute of Mental Health is dubious of the value of this kind of mental health treatment. In 2017 he stated, “I spent 13 years at NIMH really pushing on the neuroscience and genetics of mental disorders, and when I look back on that I realize that while I think I succeeded at getting lots of really cool papers published by cool scientists at fairly large costs — I think $20 billion — I don’t think we moved the needle in reducing suicide, reducing hospitalizations, improving recovery for the tens of millions of people who have mental illness.” Joanna Moncrieff, a consulting psychiatrist at the North London National Health Service and Professor of Psychiatry at University College London, has said, “It is always difficult to prove a negative, but I think we can safely say that after a vast amount of research conducted over several decades, there is no convincing evidence that depression is caused by serotonin abnormalities, particularly by lower levels or reduced activity of serotonin. The popularity of the ‘chemical imbalance’ theory of depression has coincided with a huge increase in the use of antidepressants. Many people take antidepressants because they have been led to believe their depression has a biochemical cause, but this new research suggests this belief is not grounded in evidence.” “This belief,” however, is grounded in huge profits for Big Pharma, which has spent untold billions convincing the public and politicians of the validity of this bogus theory.

Justice Served as Supreme Court Overturns Purdue’s Bankruptcy Attempt to Protect the Sackler Family’s Opioid Fortune      By Robert Carter/September 18, 2024      The Sackler family lawyers are in the process of rewriting their bankruptcy filing because the Supreme Court has just overturned their first attempt to protect the Sacklers after they had moved $11 billion of the Purdue opioid profits into their personal accounts.      Justice Gorsuch wrote in the court’s ruling that “The Sacklers have not filed for bankruptcy or placed all their assets on the table for distribution to creditors, yet they seek what essentially amounts to a discharge. No provision of the code authorizes that kind of relief.”      Purdue Pharma has been facing a multitude of lawsuits for knowingly and fraudulently marketing OxyContin as non-addictive. In the first bankruptcy filing that was overturned, the Sackler family had offered to pay $6 billion in reparations for their part in creating the opioid epidemic, but Justice Gorsuch noted that they had sheltered their company’s opioid profits from the Purdue bankruptcy and had transferred $11 billion of company profit to their own personal account.      In exchange for the reparations, the original bankruptcy filing would have also shielded Purdue and the Sacklers from any future lawsuits against them. Paying $6 billion in reparations after pocketing $11 billion is a pretty small price to pay for that kind of immunity.      Between 1999 and 2021 nearly 650,000 people died from an opioid overdose, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has reported. Many states are still negotiating with other opioid manufacturers such as Johnson and Johnson, Teva and Allergan for settlements. Total payout from these settlements could reach $50 billion.      Purdue was the largest marketer of opioids to physicians and was particularly aggressive in itsbroad advertising of OxyContin. In 2001 alone it spent $200 million on marketing OxyContin despite knowing the dangers of the opioid. Purdue earned over $35 billion from total OxyContin sales.      “Today is a very good day for justice,” said Ed Bisch, whose 18 year old son overdosed on OxyContin in 2001. Bisch now directs Relatives Against Purdue Pharma. Unfortunately, no justice has yet been meted out to the FDA, which allowed those false claims by Big Pharma, which downplayed the risks of opioids, to continue for nearly twenty- five years without correction.      Big Pharma was motivated by profit. What was the FDA motivated by?      In 2021, 75 percent of the FDA drug division budget — $1.1 billion — was paid for by user fees that Big Pharma is charged when they apply for FDA approval of a medical drug or device. 45 percent of the total FDA budget is paid for by these same Big Pharma fees.      That’s probably pretty good motivation to maintain the FDA collusion with Big Pharma.

Jeffrey Epstein Associate, Psychiatrist Henry Jarecki, Sued for Sex Trafficking a Young Woman By Robert Carter/August 21, 2024 In June this year 91 year old billionaire psychiatrist and associate of Jeffery Epstein, Dr. Henry Jarecki, was sued by a woman sixty years his junior for raping her for years and turning her into a “modern day sex slave.” The woman, who the court has approved to remain anonymous, states that Epstein had referred her to the psychiatrist to whom he had regularly referred his sexual victims. The suit states that Jarecki often shared the medical records of these women with Epstein. Epstein told this victim that Jarecki was “the best doctor in New York City.” When she met him at his apartment for her first appointment, an “initial mental health consultation,” she discovered otherwise. Jarecki told the woman that he had something that would make her feel happy right away and presented her with an expensive wristwatch. Then he guided her into his bedroom and raped her. He then coerced her under threat of jeopardizing her immigration status to move into an apartment he set up for her nearby his home and forced her for the next three years to have sex with him and with others he sent there. He also took her to his private Virgin Island retreat, an island 14 miles from Epstein’s famous Little St. James, which he had purchased a year after Epstein bought his island in 1998. He sexually trafficked the woman there, as well.Jarecki has denied the accusations. “I had a consensual, non-secretive, and mutually respectful relationship when she was a successful professional in her late 20s,” he has claimed. Gloria Jarecki, the psychiatrist’s wife of 57 years, has not made any public comment about the lawsuit. Although Jarecki’s association with Jeffrey Epstein makes this case more newsworthy, sexual  exploitation or assault by psychiatrists is not all that uncommon. Ten percent of all psychotherapists have actually admitted to sexually molesting their patients. Some studies estimate that that figure is actually as high as 25 percent and one California estimated the figure at 48 percent. Psychiatrists also divorce more often than any other type of doctor, but apparently Gloria Jarecki has not gotten that memo.

Matthew Perry: A Study in the Risks of Off-label Prescriptions By Robert Carter/August 17, 2024 Matthew Perry, star of the popular television show Friends, died last October from an overdose of ketamine, the Schedule III drug known as a “dissociative anesthetic hallucinogen.” Ketamine can lead to physical dependence, but it has an even higher potential for psychological dependence. Ketamine was approved in 1970 by the FDA for use as an anesthetic for certain diagnostic and surgical procedures. It was initially used as a veterinary anesthetic. Per reports, Perry spent $55,000 in cash to buy illegal vials of ketamine and had his personal  assistant inject him with it, apparently multiple times the day of his death. It is a sad story. The vials he purchased cost the suppliers $12.00 each, but he was paying nearly $3000 per vial. How did he get in such desperate shape to spend that kind of money to satisfy his addictive craving for the drug? He had been undergoing “legal” ketamine-assisted psychotherapy until the week before his death. In fact, he had begun having daily ketamine infusions as early as 2000. Today there may be as many as 750 ketamine infusion therapy clinics operating in the U.S. Each patient session typically costs between $600.00 and $1000.00. The exact infusion protocol is determined at each individual clinic, but patients usually start at a lower dose of ketamine and increase it if the lower dosage is not effective. It is all off-label drug use, and none of it is approved by the FDA. While the doctors who run the clinics are often anesthesiologists or psychiatrists, there is no standard protocol today for the administration of ketamine infusion therapy. By 2022 annual revenue for ketamine therapy was estimated to be $3.1 billion and projections suggest that figure could arise to $6.9 billion over the next six years. There’s a gold rush mentality within this burgeoning industry, and Googling “ketamine infusion therapy” brings you immediately to a host of sites ushering you toward local ketamine clinics poised and ready to start your off-label therapy immediately. How much of Matthew Perry’s desperate measures to feed his ketamine addiction the week of his death were the result of his increasing addiction to it, fueled by his long term ketamine therapy sessions? One can’t say. But given the black box warning for the drug, its lack of approval for this use by the FDA, the questionable protocol of its administration in today’s unregulated clinics, and at least one prominent example of its dangers in Matthew Perry’s case, and one can say that any current “legal” use of ketamine should be questioned. If ketamine addiction prompts the behavior we saw in Mathew Perry his final days, how many ketamine sessions at a ketamine clinic does it take to begin to move some other unsuspecting soul into the same desperate moves prompted by that addiction?

No Ecstasy for Lykos Therapeutics Right Now      By Robert Carter/August 9, 2024      Lykos Therapeutics announced today that the FDA has not approved their application for an MDMA based drug with psychotherapy to treat PTSD because of concerns about how the pharmaceutical company conducted its trials. Lykos Therapeutics was also cited for unethical conduct at one of its research locations after one of its therapists had been accused of practicing without a license and of sexually assaulting one of the participants in Lykos’ MDMA trials.      MDMA – more commonly known as Ecstasy or Molly — is an illicit, mind-altering psychedelic drug that can affect a user’s visual and time perceptions. While usually taken recreationally to chemically increase happiness and energy levels, MDMA can cause potentially severe “side effects” such as high blood pressure, vomiting, heart problems or liver damage, per the National Institute of Health.      MDMA is classified as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act and it has “no currently accepted medical use,” but it does have “a high potential for abuse.”      Despite that, and apparently prompted by anecdotal “evidence” that taking MDMA may for a few lead to a positive mental shift away from depression and anxiety, psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies are now trying to get FDA approval for its use those who have not had relief from taking standard antidepressants.      Such is the interest of this psychedelic avenue of approach that a $3 million professorship was established at Yale University last fall by Vikram Sodhi to study the value of DMT – an illicit derivative drug of the South American shaman potion ayahuasca — to psychiatric treatments for PTSD. Deepak Cyril D’Souza was named the inaugural Vikram Sodhi Professor of Psychiatry at Yale.      “We don’t, as yet, know how long a person needs to have psychedelic effects in order to be able to derive antidepressant effects,” D’Souza said. “Another question is how intense a psychedelic experience do you need order to be able to derive antidepressant effects?”      His questions seem a grim reminder of the MKUltra experiments with psychoactive drugs such as LSD which were carried out by the CIA in the nineteen-fifties to identify drugs that could be used during interrogations. Science Insider has reported that today at least two other pharmaceutical companies are also involved in clinical trials to evaluate the use of psilocybin – known on the street as magic mushrooms – to treat depression.      Despite the early momentum seen for these experimental trials, the Institute for Clinical and  Economic Review reported this year that insufficient evidence has been found for any benefits from the research which would outweigh the known risks of cardiovascular problems, worsening mental health problems, and suicidal thoughts that come from these drugs.