Showing posts with label healthcare. Show all posts

   The British NHS is showing more of it's true colors. The Prime Minister has announced that he wants to release medical data to the drug companies. This dangerously treads on corporatism (a form of fascism) where the drug companies are favored over your rights to informed consent and privacy. This is also announcing a impersonal form of healthcare which will makes people feel that more people will receive health care, but will simply lead to a more mechanized form of pre-packaged care with little help. We will see many people die from inattentive care which will miss or put off treatments for various problems deemed necessary or treatments decided to not be cost effective.  Can we truly trust the government to be able to keep all data anonymous. It is inevitable that those who report poor health practices will be subject to higher scrutiny and bureaucratic harassment in order to lower health care costs. This in the land that birthed modern eugenics. It is always dangerous to lose privacy to the government. You won't be able to ask for it back.

Everyone 'to be research patient', says David Cameron

The PM says it will mean all those who use the NHS in England will be helping in the fight against disease.
He hopes the result will be that patients get faster access to new treatments and Britain's life sciences sector will become a world leader.
But critics say commercial interests are being put ahead of patient privacy.
In a speech in London Mr Cameron said he would consult on changing the NHS constitution, which governs how the the health service is run, so that all patients' data is used for medical research unless they want to opt out.
'Anonymous data' He also announced that three million patients with chronic illnesses like diabetes or heart conditions are to get hi-tech equipment to monitor their health at home.
The Prime Minister said it was "simply a waste" to have a health service like the NHS and not to use the medical data it generated.
"Let me be clear, this does not threaten privacy, it doesn't mean anyone can look at your health records, but it does mean using anonymous data to make new medical breakthroughs.
"The end result will be that every willing patient is a research patient and every time you use the NHS you are playing a part in the fight against disease at home and around the world."
The government believes that as a result Britain can become a world leader in the field of life sciences - an industry already worth £50bn a year and employing 160,000 people - because of the expertise within the NHS and its strong university-based research.
"The end-game is for the NHS to be working hand-in-glove with industry as the fastest adopter of new ideas in the world," he said.
Methods 'stink' That would act as a "huge magnet to pull new innovations through, right along the food-chain - from the labs, to the boardrooms, to the hospital bed".
The "tele-health" drive will allow vital health checks to be carried out and sent electronically to GPs without the need for patients to make an appointment or visit a clinic.
"We've trialled it, it's been a huge success, and now we're on a drive to roll this out nationwide," he said. "The aim - to improve three million lives over the next five years.
"This is going to make an extraordinary difference to people. Diabetics taking their blood sugar levels at home, and having them checked by a nurse.
"Heart disease patients having their blood pressure and pulse rate checked, without leaving their home."
Patient Concern said it had real worries about the proposal to make patients' medical data available to private firms as the information would include postcodes and age profiles which would be possible to trace back to the individuals concerned.
"The aim is laudable... but the methods, they stink frankly," Joyce Robins, the organisation's founder, said.
"Our records should not be passed around by the Department of Health as they see fit or sold to private companies without our permission."
Data should only be made available on the basis of patients' "informed consent", she added.
Labour has said it will not allow Mr Cameron to "throw away essential safeguards" in his desperation to develop a credible industrial strategy.
But the pharmaceutical industry said "robust" safeguards were already in place and it was impossible to trace back anonymised data to individuals.
"We need people to understand that the benefits for all of us - our children and people who have got illnesses - are absolutely essential when it comes to using health records for research," said Neil Patel, from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
The NHS had a "unique resource" of medical records dating back to the 1940s, he added, and these had already been widely used in furthering understanding of conditions such as HIV and lung cancer.

   Surgeons in America are possibly about to get a new set of guidelines as far as organ donation is concerned. If these new guidelines are adopted the definitions of death and patient rights will be redefined. In our modern society the rights of the individual are overshadowed by the rights and dictates of the experts. With the current organ donor regulations there are a number of tests and consents that need to be performed in order to confirm death before organs can be taken from a patient for donation. The new regulations being considered will destroy the rights of sick patients, and even possibly lead to undue deaths and (horrifically) organ harvesting. The question is how long will it take doctors to begin to weigh the benefits of the profits of an organ donation/transplant or struggling to keep a patient alive, possibly saving their life. The new guide lines would include:

• After the donor's heart has stopped surgeons will not have to wait to make sure it doesn't start beating again before removing organs
• Ban on considering anyone to be a potential donor before doctors and family members have independently decided to stop trying to save them will be eliminated
• Confirmatory tests will no longer have to be performed to assure the family and the hospital professional staff that the patient is dead

Are we moving closer to a society like China's (which I've covered earlier) where fresh organs become an industry for the wealthy?
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Surgeons won't have to wait to make sure a heart has stopped beating before harvesting organs under new guidelines

Surgeons retrieving organs to be transplanted just after a patient's heart has stopped beating will no longer have to wait to make sure it doesn't start up again if new proposals are adopted.
At present when doctors are retrieving organs they have to wait at least two minutes to ensure it doesn't spontaneously start again.
Critics now fear seriously ill patients could be viewed more like tissue banks than sick people if the plans to change rules about organ donation go ahead.
There is currently a ban on considering anyone to be a potential donor before doctors and family members have independently decided to stop trying to save them.
That is poised to be eliminated if the plans by the group that co-ordinates organ allocation in the United States are adopted.
The proposed changes by the United Network for Organ Sharing, the Richmond nonprofit organization that coordinates organ donation under a contract with the federal government, are part of the first major overhaul of the 2007 guidelines governing “donation after cardiac death,” or DCD, which accounted for 6% of the 28,000 organs transplanted in 2010.
Champions of the proposals claim the changes strengthen the transplant system because they align the rules with other regulatory bodies and better ensure that the wishes of donors and their loved ones are honoured without sacrificing necessary protections.
Charles Alexander, a former president of UNOS, said: 'The ultimate goal is to facilitate the dying wishes of patients who wish to be donors and save the lives of the 112,000-plus patients who are in need. We are always very aware of our public trust.'
Critics, however, say the move heightens the risk that potential donors will be treated more like tissue banks than like sick people deserving every chance to live, or to die peacefully.
Michael A. Grodin, a professor of health law, bioethics and human rights at Boston University, said: 'This is another step towards this idea of hovering, hovering, hovering to get more organs. The bottom line is that they want to do everything they can to increase organ donation.'
The 16-page proposal has resurrected the controversial debate over what it means to be dead.
It was drafted over a year by the 22-member UNOS organ procurement organization committee.
The UNOS board will convene in November in Atlanta to finalize the revisions, which include officially shifting the guidelines from 'model elements' to 'requirements.'
'We want the process to happen the way it’s supposed to happen to avoid any questions or problems,' Alexander said.
Donation after cardiac death involves surgeons taking organs within minutes of respirators and other forms of life support have being cut off from patients who still have at least some brain activity.
DCD had been the norm for organ donors before 'brain death' became the standard in the early 1970s. Since then, most donors have been brain-dead.
But as the number of people needing transplants rose, doctors in the 1990s began reviving what was then called 'non-beating heart' donation.
DCD has become a growing source of organs as the gap between the number of patients waiting for transplants and the number of available organs has widened.
About 6,000 Americans die each year while waiting for donated organs. There were almost 14,000 transplants between January and June this year with just under 7,000 donors.
The current waiting list for transplants stands at more than 112,000 people.

Got to love the things that happen when the government regulates the health industry....

Doctors admit to practising 'slow euthanasia' on terminally-ill patients

By Daniel Martin
Last updated at 3:20 AM on 29th October 2009

One in five doctors admit to keeping the terminally-ill heavily sedated until they die, in what critics have dubbed 'slow euthanasia'.
A poll of nearly 3,000 doctors found that 18.7 per cent had administered drugs to keep patients suffering from painful conditions such as cancer unconscious for hours at a time.
Subjected to 'continuous deep sedation', many slip into a drug-induced coma before dying - perhaps days earlier than they would have done. It is often given without the patient or the family being fully appraised of the consequences.
The survey found that GPs and hospital consultants who were not palliative care specialists were more likely to report using high doses of sedatives or painkillers to keep patients unconscious.
Experts have called for all doctors to be properly trained in the care of dying patients.
The study in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management also found that those who were strong supporters of assisted dying were 40 per cent more likely to use deep sedation to ease the final stretch of a patient's life.
But those with strong religious beliefs were less likely to use sedation to ease a patient's pain.
Usually the drugs were used for just a short period of time right at the end of someone's life. But in 8 per cent of cases, deep sedation was used for more than a week.
Continuous deep sedation was used more frequently in the hospital or in people's homes than in care homes or hospices, the poll shows.
There was no evidence it was used more often amongst vulnerable groups of patients, such as older people or those with dementia. It was sued more frequently to treat younger men with cancer.

For all those who thought Verichip only wanted to help with security of health records. Now you can see the aim of implantable chips go into the economic realm as well. With the government moving to control America's health care industry the combination of these two industries threaten government regulation and involvement in every aspect of life. Our economic activity is going to be under massive scrutiny soon by our governments across the world, in order to save the economy and environment. This will facilitate the government to do so with ease in the future.

VeriChip Buys Steel Vault, Creating Micro-Implant Health Record/Credit Score Empire

VeriChip (CHIP), the company that markets a microchip implant that links to your online health records, has acquired Steel Vault (SVUL), a credit monitoring and anti-identity theft company. The combined company will operate under a new name: PositiveID.
The all-stock transaction will leave PositiveID in charge of a burgeoning empire of identity, health and microchip implant businesses that will only encourage its critics. BNET previously noted that some regard the company as part of a prophecy in the Book of Revelation (because the HealthLink chip carries an RFID number that can be used as both money and proof of ID) or as part of President Obama’s secret Nazi plan to enslave America.
The most obvious criticism to be made of the deal is that it potentially allows PositiveID to link or cross-check patient health records (from the HealthLink chip) to people’s credit scores. One assumes that the company will put up firewalls to prevent that. PositiveID CEO Scott Silverman said:

“PositiveID will be the first company of its kind to combine a successful identity security business with one of the world’s first personal health records through our Health Link business. PositiveID will address some of the most important issues affecting our society today with our identification tools and technologies for consumers and businesses.”

Unless, of course, consumers don’t actually want to be implanted with chips, have their health records available over the internet, or have their medical records linked to their credit scores.

note: Lets keep another fact in mind. If you don't need to vaccinate for HPV, then you are introducing the virus on mass to a population that normally doesn't come in contact with the virus. The results could lead to mass infection down the road. By then I am sure this connection will be forgotten about and be blamed on poor health or diet....

Harper: Controversal Drug Will Do Little To Reduce Cervical Cancer Rates

By Susan Brinkmann, For The Bulletin

Dr. Diane Harper, lead researcher in the development of two human papilloma virus vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix, said the controversial drugs will do little to reduce cervical cancer rates and, even though they’re being recommended for girls as young as nine, there have been no efficacy trials in children under the age of 15.

Dr. Harper, director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research Group at the University of Missouri, made these remarks during an address at the 4th International Public Conference on Vaccination which took place in Reston, Virginia on Oct. 2-4. Although her talk was intended to promote the vaccine, participants said they came away convinced the vaccine should not be received.

“I came away from the talk with the perception that the risk of adverse side effects is so much greater than the risk of cervical cancer, I couldn’t help but question why we need the vaccine at all,” said Joan Robinson, Assistant Editor at the Population Research Institute.

Dr. Harper began her remarks by explaining that 70 percent of all HPV infections resolve themselves without treatment within a year. Within two years, the number climbs to 90 percent. Of the remaining 10 percent of HPV infections, only half will develop into cervical cancer, which leaves little need for the vaccine.

She went on to surprise the audience by stating that the incidence of cervical cancer in the U.S. is already so low that “even if we get the vaccine and continue PAP screening, we will not lower the rate of cervical cancer in the US.”

There will be no decrease in cervical cancer until at least 70 percent of the population is vaccinated, and even then, the decrease will be minimal.

Apparently, conventional treatment and preventative measures are already cutting the cervical cancer rate by four percent a year. At this rate, in 60 years, there will be a 91.4 percent decline just with current treatment. Even if 70 percent of women get the shot and required boosters over the same time period, which is highly unlikely, Harper says Gardasil still could not claim to do as much as traditional care is already doing.

Dr. Harper, who also serves as a consultant to the World Health Organization, further undercut the case for mass vaccination by saying that “four out of five women with cervical cancer are in developing countries.”

Ms. Robinson said she could not help but wonder, “If this is the case, then why vaccinate at all? But from the murmurs of the doctors in the audience, it was apparent that the same thought was occurring to them.”

However, at this point, Dr. Harper dropped an even bigger bombshell on the audience when she announced that, “There have been no efficacy trials in girls under 15 years.”

Merck, the manufacturer of Gardasil, studied only a small group of girls under 16 who had been vaccinated, but did not follow them long enough to conclude sufficient presence of effective HPV antibodies.

This is not the first time Dr. Harper revealed the fact that Merck never tested Gardasil for safety in young girls. During a 2007 interview with KPC News.com, she said giving the vaccine to girls as young as 11 years-old “is a great big public health experiment.”

At the time, which was at the height of Merck’s controversial drive to have the vaccine mandated in schools, Dr. Harper remained steadfastly opposed to the idea and said she had been trying for months to convince major television and print media about her concerns, “but no one will print it.”

“It is silly to mandate vaccination of 11 to 12 year old girls,” she said at the time. “There also is not enough evidence gathered on side effects to know that safety is not an issue.”

When asked why she was speaking out, she said: “I want to be able to sleep with myself when I go to bed at night.”



Since the drug’s introduction in 2006, the public has been learning many of these facts the hard way. To date, 15,037 girls have officially reported adverse side effects from Gardasil to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). These adverse reactions include Guilliane Barre, lupus, seizures, paralysis, blood clots, brain inflammation and many others. The CDC acknowledges that there have been 44 reported deaths.

Dr. Harper also participated in the research on Glaxo-Smith-Kline’s version of the drug, Cervarix, currently in use in the UK but not yet approved here. Since the government began administering the vaccine to school-aged girls last year, more than 2,000 patients reported some kind of adverse reaction including nausea, dizziness, blurred vision, convulsions, seizures and hyperventilation. Several reported multiple reactions, with 4,602 suspected side-effects recorded in total. The most tragic case involved a 14 year-old girl who dropped dead in the corridor of her school an hour after receiving the vaccination.

The outspoken researcher also weighed in last month on a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that raised questions about the safety of the vaccine, saying bluntly: "The rate of serious adverse events is greater than the incidence rate of cervical cancer."

Ms. Robinson said she respects Dr. Harper’s candor. “I think she’s a scientist, a researcher, and she’s genuine enough a scientist to be open about the risks. I respect that in her.”

However, she failed to make the case for Gardasil. “For me, it was hard to resist the conclusion that Gardasil does almost nothing for the health of American women.”

Here is a woman that sums up most of the swine flu hoax while showing us Quebec has put a mass vaccination campaign against the people.

Why does anyone need to keep track of who gets vaccines? We are so used to the idea of officials needing know everything about everything with statistics on everything, that we don't realize that this is so unnecessary. Why would you want to track these people? A person that is vaccinated should be safe from the flu. No need to come rescue them. No need to track. Unless you believe it may harm them and they would need treatment or medical monitoring. Maybe? We have already seen all the nasty things that are going into this swine flu vaccine. 

Now there is another group of people that you might want to single out by doing this; the un-vaccinated. Why would you want to do that? One thought might be to give them immediate medical care in case the epidemic sweeps through rapidly. Well, the sick will seek help when and from whom they desire to get treatment from in a free country. 

It could also be to identify the un-vaccinated as threats to the healthy. If we are going to draw the line at who has been vaccinated and those who haven't, IS IT NOT TRUE THAT ALL THOSE WHO ARE VACCINATED WILL BE SAFE FROM ALL THOSE WHO ARE POTENTIALLY SICK FROM THE DISEASE THEY ARE VACCINATED AGAINST? Here in lies that problem with the possibility of mandatory to get a vaccination. The disease is only a possibility. The vaccine is experimental and untested thoroughly. Why should you make anyone take this risk they are not willing to take if all those who do will be safe? What is it about this vaccine or any they make mandatory. 

If this plan comes here and I refuse to get the vaccine, I guess I won't be getting my bracelet. Maybe I will be getting a yellow Star of David patch to wear instead. Then maybe the trains will come to take all us brave people to a nice country retreat. Oh wait......that story sounds so familiar.......

Maybe not today or even tomorrow, but the tools of tyranny and genocide are ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS the same.

Boston launches flu shot tracking

City to pinpoint areas of low rates of vaccination

Using technology originally developed for mass disasters, Boston disease trackers are embarking on a novel experiment - one of the first in the country - aimed at eventually creating a citywide registry of everyone who has had a flu vaccination.
The resulting vaccination map would allow swift intervention in neighborhoods left vulnerable to the fast-moving respiratory illness.
The trial starts this afternoon, when several hundred people are expected to queue up for immunizations at the headquarters of the Boston Public Health Commission. Each of them will get a bracelet printed with a unique identifier code. Information about the vaccine's recipients, and the shot, will be entered into handheld devices similar to those used by delivery truck drivers.
Infectious disease specialists in Boston and elsewhere predicted that the registry approach could prove even more useful if something more sinister strikes: a bioterrorism attack or the long-feared arrival of a global flu epidemic. In such crises, the registry could be used to track who received a special vaccine or antidote to a deadly germ.
"Anything you can do to better pinpoint who's vaccinated and who's not, that's absolutely vital," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy at the University of Minnesota
read entire article

When government begins to dictate spending and patient care regulations through laws and providing their own standard in health care doctors and hospitals are forced to take extreme measures to meet expectations from the government while still stuffing everyone's wallet. This leads to spending consideration and reallocation of scarce resources to more useful areas. This leads to even more insidious methods but for now here is an example happening now....

Report warns doctors snub families of the terminally ill amid growing use of 'death pathway'

By Daniel Martin
Last updated at 9:11 AM on 15th September, 2009
More than a quarter of families are not told when life support is withdrawn from terminally-ill loved ones, a report has found.
Experts warn that growing use of a controversial 'death pathway' is seeing some patients killed off prematurely.
They say the system can lead to 'backdoor euthanasia' by encouraging doctors to deny fluids and drugs to those deemed to be in their final throes.
Under the so-called Liverpool Care Pathway, which is used across the NHS and in many nursing homes, doctors can withdraw assistance from the terminally ill and sedate them continuously until death.
About 20,000 patients are thought to die this way each year.
But a national audit of the scheme found that 28 per cent of relatives were not informed that a loved one had been placed on the pathway.
Researchers from the Royal College of Physicians and the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute in Liverpool obtained details of almost 4,000 patients treated on the scheme last year.
Thirty-nine per cent suffered from cancer, while others had conditions such as pneumonia, stroke, organ failure and dementia. The average age of patients was 81 and they were typically on the pathway for 33 hours before death.
More than a third were given sedatives, and four out of five either did not need intravenous medication or fluids, or had them withdrawn. The study found that 76 per cent of families were told that a loved one 'had entered the dying phase'.
Read the entire article

            Sometimes the news gives us little clues within the headlines, if we are smart enough to realize what it is saying. Here they are saying that Obama needs to generate the feeling of a medical crisis within the country in order to revive his push for "Obamacare". Anyone should realize that a decision made under duress is not only likely to be a bad decision but also illegal. Duress includes moral pressure according original meanings. This article is in fact admitting to the most often used ploy by politicians. 
           We can not subcomb to fear. When you give into fear you tend to give up control of your life in exchange for a sense of alleviation of those fears. Government constantly attempts to play the role of public protector. Those who run the government know these techniques, and unless their intentions are as pure as the angels in heaven (which they can never be, only those who dream of control and power make it to the top of politics) this technique will be used to coerce the public to the ends which they desire for us.  As public servants they have only one opposition in life, the people. Only the people can take away their paychecks and positions of lofty power. That being the case it is us they need to coerce. 

 

Obama May Need Sense of Crisis to Revive Health-Care Overhaul
By Julianna Goldman and Nicholas Johnston

      Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama returns to Washington next week in search of one thing that can revive his health-care overhaul: a sense of crisis.
      Facing polls showing a drop in his approval, diminished support from independents, factions within his Democratic Party and a united Republican opposition, Obama must recapture the sense of urgency that led to passage of the economic rescue package in February, analysts said.
     “At the moment, except for the people without insurance, we’re not in a health-care crisis,” said Stephen Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Washington. “You do need a crisis to generate movement in Congress and to help build a consensus.”

Read the entire article

*note when reading this article ........ "there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics"