For the past two decades, the U.S. healthcare system, including the American Medical Association representing physicians across the country, hospitals, nursing homes, outpatient facilities, the pharmaceutical industry and government regulatory and overseeing health agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers of Disease Control (CDC), has not reported, or gravely underreported, the virtually, totally PREVENTABLE overuse, or indiscriminate use, of highly toxic antibiotics that wipe out a patient’s healthy, large intestine (colon) bacteria colonies. And which, as a result, allow dangerous bacteria such as Clostridium difficile (C. diff.) to overrun the colon.
An event that can then lead to catastrophic injury, such as the need to remove the entire colon, or death from the bacterial toxins released from the bacteria that are allowed to breach the antibiotic-created, and now compromised, colon membrane, to then leach into the blood circulation to adversely impact other critical organs such as the kidney or liver. Obscured as “complications” of prior surgeries, or the result of routine hospital or nursing home admissions, these preventable healthcare-induced drug misuses have been responsible for, at minimum, 30,000 to 40,000 deaths per year.
And in addition to severe to fatal colon induced problems, the virtually unregulated use of these broad-spectrum antibiotics— specifically of the class of drugs called fluoroquinolones— have consistently, and for decades, shown to produce serious central nervous system disorders, as well as severe and irreversible tendon damage, due to their highly damaging effect on human cells.
And because of their specific, damaging effect on both bacterial and human DNA, these drugs have also led to increasing and dangerous mutated strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria, while their central manmade chemical structure— from which all fluorquinolones have been derived (such as Cipro, one of the most prescribed of these antibiotic drugs)— has been documented since 1998 as being carcinogenic to human cells (yet incredibly used in routine antibiotic treatments).
All this knowledge has been known to the U.S. FDA, and all this knowledge has been ignored for decades, so as to allow these best selling and most dangerous of broad-spectrum antibiotics to be criminally and indiscriminately used to amass billions of dollars in pharmaceutical profits, along with billions of dollars in healthcare profits to treat the disease symptoms created by these drugs in hundreds of thousands to millions of patients over the years.
At the base of the problem
So why are these highly dangerous pharmaceutical drugs sanctioned for use by the government’s drug regulatory agency, the FDA?
For those of the public “out of the loop” of how the American regulatory system has been progressively warped and corrupted over the past several decades to serve the interests of industry over those of the public it was originally designed to protect (because the public were doing their own jobs and were assuming the federal government was doing its), the pharmaceutical industry, for example— whose products the FDA is allegedly required to regulate under U.S. laws to protect the safety of the public’s health— bankrolls the FDA with roughly $600 million per year to finance the FDA’s new drug review boards that decide what new drugs will be released into the market (an amount that is set to increase to $1 billion in 2013).
Known as the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), this obviously, massive, financial conflict of interest policy, which was never intended to exist in the running of the FDA, but which now comprises roughly one fourth of the FDA’s yearly budget, was instituted in the early 1990s during the Clinton administration, by legislation supported by both Republicans and Democrats, and enthusiastically reinstated ever since.
One would think that the pharmaceutical industry would be the first to baulk at being “extorted” by user fees to green light its drugs into the market, but the pharmaceutical industry is the PDUFA’s most ardent supporter.
And while up to $1 billion in user fees may sound like a lot of money to the average American, this number constitutes about 0.3% of the nearly $300 billion in U.S. pharmaceutical sales and about 0.15% of the over $600 billion in global sales.
Meanwhile, the U.S. public, which consumes roughly half the prescription drugs used in the world, has the worst health of any other industrialized nation. And the PDUFA was specifically designed and sold to politicians to supposedly give Americans better access to supposedly more “needed” drugs, to supposedly improve their health.
The reality is that the ongoing depression of the public’s health has nothing to do with a lack of available pharmaceutical drugs, and everything to do with the public being chronically exposed to ever increasingly amounts of unregulated, biologically hazardous industry products: from chemicals and pharmaceuticals and bioengineered foods, to a wide range of (totally abnormal to human biology) manmade electromagnetic radiation sources, from computers, cell phones and other wireless devices, to billions of newly introduced compact fluorescent lights.
Further health hazards of CFLs, beyond the EMR (electromagnetic radiation hazards), including dangerous UVC emissions, toxic mercury vapor emissions (when the bulb breaks), blue wavelength light emissions depressing melatonin levels at night, and toxic flame retardant chemicals coating the hidden electrical circuitry of these bulbs, are more fully explained in The dangers and fraud behind the forced use of compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), also by the author, which can be accessed at http://www.mediafire.com/?sinin57dkkwd626,
Playing up to the ongoing fraud promoted by the healthcare industry— of a public apparently needing more healthcare services and products to stay healthy, and not more government regulation of the biologically hazardous products making them sick, of a public that is already consuming the most pharmaceutical drugs in the world (in 2011 the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) reported that nearly 50% of Americans take pharmaceutical drugs, and over 10% take 5 or more pharmaceutical drugs )— in October of 2011, President Obama issued Executive Order 13588: “Reducing Prescription Drug Shortages.”
Incredibly, a presidential executive order that further deregulates the FDA, to further fast track already irresponsibly fast tracked releases of dangerous and unsafe pharmaceutical drugs into an already saturated and highly hazardous pharmaceutical drug market. As an “alleged” solution to remedy the supposed “shortage” of pharmaceutical drugs available to the U.S. public.
And who has used his political influence to only further pad the massive profits of the healthcare industry by forcing the entire population to buy into universal healthcare insurance. Much of which will only go to further accessing the use of pharmaceutical drugs, which will have virtually nothing to do with making the public healthier. And, as epitomized by the indiscriminate use of broad spectrum antibiotics, will only be making the public sicker.
As for the FDA prescription drug user fees, not only are they minute for the pharmaceutical industry, but the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) system also allows the pharmaceutical industry to have direct “legitimate” inside access to the FDA— to manipulate its regulation procedures. Over and above the illegitimate, though widely accepted access of long condoned and corrupting “revolving door policies” that exist between FDA regulators and the pharmaceutical industry (as well as all other industries the FDA “regulates”), that shuffles FDA regulators back and forth between the pharmaceutical industry and the regulatory agency that is allegedly regulating it in the best interest of the public’s health and safety.
Apparently, no Democrat or Republican representative since the 1990s, and up until the present (since the PDUFA has been continually reinstituted over the last two decades, as the U.S. public’s health continues to plummet to all time lows), nor anyone from the “conventional” medical community, has bothered to give one iota of thought to the massive conflict of interest that would arise from the pharmaceutical industry financially supporting the FDA, and the resulting, obvious, adverse impacts that would befall the public’s health by compromised prescription drug safety.
A case in point documented by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, in its May 31, 2011 Quarter Watch report— a real non-profit, public interest organization documenting pharmaceutical hazards, out of Horsham, Pennsylvania.
The report, also published in the June 7, 2012 British Medical Journal, documented an outrageous 128,000 U.S. deaths in 2011 from prescription drug use (of which at least 30,000 were attributed to broad spectrum antibiotic misuse), as well as an equally outrageous two to four million having suffered “serious and disabling injuries” as a result of prescription drug use.
These numbers can be compared to just over 2,000 U.S. soldiers who have died fighting a war in Afghanistan over an 11 year period, from 2001 to 2012. Or over 60 times this amount are dying from prescription drugs “designed to help them,” in just one year.
At the foundation of the base of the problem
And what is at the foundation of a U.S. political and economic policy that chooses not to regulate the safety of industry products over industry profit priorities? Of a U.S. political and economic policy that places human health, and subsequently human life, as economic “market risks,” at far distant secondary considerations to unregulated economic profits? And which has directly resulted in the U.S. public having the worst health of any other industrialized nation— presently coming in 26th in the quality of American health among the world populations, right between Slovenia and Cuba.
Something called “modern” free market economic theory, which the U.S. government has been pursuing enthusiastically, and with reckless abandon, for the past 30 years.
And specifically, Milton Friedman-styled free market economic theory, which has as its central principle to deregulate industry— to reduce the government oversight of all industries, as much as possible— to allow industry and their Wall Street investors to make as much profit as possible (by not having to spend any money dealing with those “minor” regulatory issues, like making sure their products are safe before introducing them into the market).
This applied economic theory of the last three decades— supported by both Republican and Democratic Congresses and Administrations— aside from pushing for endless deregulation of industry products, from pharmaceutical drugs to carcinogenic chemicals to cell phones and other wireless technology, has continually pushed for corporate monopolies, outsourcing of jobs, along with other “global expansions projects” designed to enrich a never-ending escalation of corporate and Wall Street investor profits— at the ever increasing expense and protection of the public being exploited to support them.
A pro-corporate economic theory— regardless of which political party is running the country— that replaced decades of prior, far sounder, non-corporate-beneficial applied economic policies that actually had the best interest of the public’s health and economic security at heart. And which were promoted by long-term thinking, and grounded, but no longer “popular,” economists like the late Harvard economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, who had advised the Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
And why has nothing critical been said about the present, society-destructive and corporate and Wall Street enriching, economic course the country has been on for the last three decades?
Because the vast majority of politicians and media— those who are supposed to represent and protect the public— have themselves profited handsomely from Milton Friedman free market economic theory applications, by having been increasingly bankrolled by the corporate agendas that created the current economic policies.
Government partnering with corporate agendas and selling out the public’s health
Under the guidelines of modern free market economic theory, only when all the corporate profit is satisfied (which is never satisfied), then and only then, are the “secondary” priorities apparently considered— like looking out for the public’s health and safety, or the environment’s stability, or the public’s economic security. “Secondary priorities,” that, according to the promoters of free market economic theory, are allegedly designed to take place by happenstance— out of the apparent goodwill, generosity, and inherent high social concern of U.S. corporations and their Wall Street investors.
And who has been the most ardent supporter of the present, corporate-friendly, free market economic theory policies that have been running the country’s economic and energy policies for the past 30 years, and which was introduced by the Reagan Administration in the 1980s? Not another Republican, but one of the most well-regarded, “modern” Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton.
During Clinton’s two terms, his “greatest domestic accomplishment” was to install a wide-reaching economic policy that promoted the “partnering of government with industry”— including all aspects of the healthcare industry, and particularly the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. With one of the outgrowths of that policy being the creation of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA).
Government pro-corporate “partnering” policies that have been supported, to this day, by every successive political administration, Republican or Democrat (including the present Obama administration).
Which, when they have not overtly supported the deregulation of industry and its oversight by U.S. government regulatory agencies, have supported it covertly. Just as they are doing now, by underreporting, or inaccurately reporting, public health issues that are placing a mostly UNAWARES public at criminal irresponsible risk of injury or premature death from a wide range of biologically hazardous industry products, that have been designed and marketed to enhance short-term corporate profits over any priority short- or long-term public health or safety concerns.
While the specific problem of unregulated antibiotic use— created by prioritizing unchecked pharmaceutical and healthcare profits over the protection of the public’s health— represents only one small example of how the present free market economic theory operates in reality— outside its public relations and propaganda distortions, promoted daily by the disconnected and insulated world of Washington think tanks and their political commentary media shows.
The antibiotic problem and the bacteria: Clostridium difficile (C. diff.)
In the August 16, 2012 edition of USA TODAY, reporter Peter Eisler wrote a very thorough and critical article on the broad spectrum antibiotic misuse hazard that has been going on for decades, and which has been given virtually no media coverage, and no public health warning by the U.S. healthcare system that has been in complete knowledge of the problem since its inception.
Peter Eisler’s front page article: “One bacteria, 30,000 deaths: An infection called C. diff is wreaking havoc in the USA’s hospitals, nursing homes and other medical facilities— and officials could be doing far more to stop it,” is an article well worth reading in its entirety.
And while the USA TODAY article covered most of the major points surrounding the C. diff bacteria problem, it lacked naming and explaining how the specific class of antibiotic drugs— fluoroquinolones— have created the lion’s share of the damages, and the lengths the healthcare community has gone to suppress the dangers posed to the public.
At the heart of the problem lies a study in (free market) misinformation. The focus of concern is placed on the bacteria itself, instead of on the irresponsible use of antibiotics that is causing the bacteria to become the problem.
Clostridium difficile (C.diff) are gram negative bacteria (which simply means the bacteria stain a certain way when viewed under the microscope). The bacteria have been around for thousands or more years and exist naturally in the soil, and are present in 5% to 20% of the population, without creating any problems. This bacteria does not exhibit any adverse effects when present in the human body (the human large intestine), because its numbers are kept in check by other “good” bacteria that normally exist in the colon (the large intestine), and which compete with C. diff and other “bad” bacteria for the available food sources in the colon.
This bacterial “balancing act” represents the fundamental principle of homeostasis, which exists universally throughout the human body. Homeostasis is a term that simply describes how the body’s cells and organ systems keep in balance (and subsequently keep the body healthy) by a complex series of interconnected and interdependent regulatory actions. And when they become out of balance— by, in the case of exposure to broad spectrum antibiotic use, knocking out the balance of good and bad bacteria in the colon, which forms the critically needed homeostasis environment here— disease complications develop.
And if there is one biological concept that every physician and scientist remembers from eight or more years of scientific education, it is this universal principal of homeostasis— and the upsetting of which leads to the development of disease conditions.
The critical point the U.S. healthcare industry DOES NOT want the public “to get”— because it indicts the healthcare industry’s actions— is that C.diff bacteria DOES NOT cause health problems on its own. It is the irresponsible use of antibiotics that wipes out its competition in the colon that creates the problem.
No one comes into the hospital or nursing home or outpatient clinic because they suddenly and mysteriously develop a C. diff related bacterial problem in the colon. They only get the C. diff bacterial problem after they enter a hospital, nursing home, outpatient clinic, etc. and after they are given a prescription dose of broad spectrum antibiotics that wipes out the colon’s natural protection from any C. diff bacteria that may be present in the colon, or which the patient picks up while at the hospital, nursing home, etc. (or from any abnormal and highly virulent C.diff bacterial strain created by antibiotic misuse in animals and later consumed by the public).
Additionally, the C.diff problem only began to surface in the late 1970s and early 1980s— coincidentally with the rise of pro-corporate Milton Friedman styled free market economic theory and its widespread encouragement of deregulating the safety of industry products, as a way of increasing, immediate, short-term industry and Wall Street profits.
And the problem only later became full-blown as it kept pace with the healthcare industry’s increasing adoption of the corporate selling model of a “one-size-fits-all” antibiotic to service the greatest percentage of its patients— regardless of the predictable hazards the healthcare industry knew would develop from such irresponsible, profit driven, motives. What the healthcare industry glibly forgot to consider is that the healthcare industry is not just another commercial industry selling services and products, no matter how much it would like to be.
Meanwhile, the medical/pharmaceutical industry has knowingly, and criminally irresponsibly, used broad spectrum antibiotics to create the very problem broad spectrum antibiotics had been specifically designed to counteract— as a last ditch effort to combat antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains that had been created by prior, irresponsibly used, manmade antibiotics.
Fluorquinolone (broad spectrum) antibiotics: How they work and why they should be banned from use
Fluoroquinolones are a class of broad spectrum antibiotics— which means they kill off all types of bacteria indiscriminately. And the reasons they are dangerous are two-fold. One, because they are inherently much more hazardous to the human body than prior broad spectrum antibiotics such as penicillin and erythromycin, and two, because they are far more irresponsibly used on patients for disease conditions they were never intended to treat.
The more commonly prior-used broad spectrum antibiotics, such as penicillin and erythromycin and tetracycline, act on the bacteria in a significantly different way than the new trend of broad spectrum antibiotics, epitomized by the fluoroquinolones. And because they do, they have not created the public health problems seen with modern broad spectrum antibiotic use.
Penicillin, erythromycin, etc. kill bacteria by destroying part of the bacterial cell wall (cell membrane), which then quickly kills the bacteria, and are relatively harmless to human cells. While fluoroquinolones attack elements of the DNA process in bacteria, which happens to be very similar to the DNA process in human cells, and subsequently can create serious damage in human cells, from DNA breakage to gene mutations— with both having the capacity to kill human cells, or mutate them into potential cancerous cells.
All this information has been known to the medical and pharmaceutical industry for at least the last two decades, and ignored, while fluoroquinolones have been allowed to become the most widely prescribed broad spectrum antibiotics in the healthcare community.
Flouroquinolones cause DNA damage in human cells, just like chemotherapy drugs
All fluoroquinolones are composed of a central carbon double ring chemical structure, known as a quinolone (fluoroquinolones have a fluorine atom attached to their structure), and all are derived from the first quinolone created in the laboratory, Nalidixic Acid.
This means that this drug is known to cause cancer in human cells— a certainty— and this is the basic chemical base from which all modern fluoroquinolones are derived.
Fluorquinolones almost always have the suffix “oxacin” in their name, such as Ciprofloxacin, more commonly known as Cipro, which is one of the most widely prescribed of the fluoroquinolones. And had the U.S. government and the U.S. healthcare system had its way in 2001, Cipro would have been distributed to nearly every American during the political and media induced hysteria surrounding the Anthrax scare of that year.
Meanwhile, in addition to having the potential to create cancer and to destroy the integrity of the colon, Cipro, along with other fluorquinolones, have also been linked to permanent tendon damage because they destroy collagen cells in tendons, by creating extremely volatile free radical reactions. And by additionally disabling a cell’s critical defense molecules designed to protect against free radical damaging reactions (leading for example to snapped Achilles’ tendons). In addition, a wide range of central nervous system disorders of varying severity have also resulted from fluorquinolone use, created by much the same method of free radical cellular damage.
Also connected to tendon damage and breakage is the increased risk of retinal detachment from fluoroquinolone use.
The retina is the inner most “covering” (of epithelial cells and nerve tissue) that surrounds the eyeball, starting from behind the lens, and connects into the optic nerve at the back of the eye. And if detached from the optic nerve, leads to blindness.
A Canadian study published in the spring of 2012 looked at nearly 1 million patients who saw an opthamalogist (eye doctor) from 2000 to 2007, and found that those taking fluoroquinolone broad spectrum antibiotics showed a 5-fold increased risk for retinal detachment from the optic nerve over those that had not taken fluorquinolones (3.3% versus 0.6%). http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1148331
Aside from the most popular known and prescribed fluoroquinolone, Cipro, other widely prescribed fluoroquinolones include: Levofloxacin (Levaquin), moxifloxacin (Avelox), and ofloxacin (Floxin).
All these drugs work by attacking a key enzyme system involved in DNA replication in bacteria, which is very similar to the enzyme system involved in DNA replication in human cells. In bacteria, the enzyme involved is known as bacterial gyrase, and in human cells it is known as topoisomerase II.
These enzymes are critically important in directing correct DNA replication, and if destroyed, or turned into cell destructive free radical components, the DNA can be broken or abnormal gene mutations within the DNA can result.
Many chemotherapy drugs also attack this critically important DNA linked enzyme in human cancer cells, as a way of killing the cell.
How chemotherapy drugs work
For those who may not quite realize how chemotherapy drugs work: they are designed to attack fast growing cells in the human body— and cancer cells are very fast growing cells. The problem is that other normal cells are also fast growing (fast replicating), such as those of the digestive track and the hair— which is why people suffer from extreme gastrointestinal problems while on chemotherapy drugs and their hair falls out.
While in addition, it is not just fast dividing cells that are at risk, but also cells that are engaged in high cellular activity, which requires the continual production of proteins by the cell to run cellar functions, which in turn requires the cell’s DNA to be partially separated and exposed to produce the proteins (instead of fully separated during cell division).
And subsequently, when the partial DNA sections are exposed, they are equally vulnerable to highly toxic chemotherapeutic drugs entering the cell, or any other abnormal chemical or radiation impact penetrating the cells that can damage the exposed DNA and its genes directly, or the cell’s critical important enzymes designed to correctly direct and oversee DNA and gene functions, including repair.
In the process of killing human cells (cancer or normal), highly toxic chemotherapy drugs also mutate a fair number of human cells. And once the chemotherapy treatment is over, other cancers usually develop in these patients— from the chemotherapy treatment. And these cancers are usually far more dangerous than the original cancer that likely developed over a long period of time, instead of in a few years after highly toxic chemotherapy drug exposure.
So when doctors fraudulently claim that the “cancer came back,” what is actually happening is that a different and more dangerous cancer has now surfaced from the “therapy” that was given to the patient. And this usually takes around five years or less to show up, depending on the toxicity of the chemotherapy drugs used on the patient. The medical community knows all about the trajectory of this process, and it has used its massive public relations arm to take advantage of it, by declaring that a patient is “cured” or has “survived” if the patient lasts five years.
If cancer resurfaces in the patient after the five years are up, the patient is still labeled as having been “cured” in the medical statistics— which is just another way in which the medical community has been distorting the truth about the safety, and the alleged success, of this highly hazardous drug treatment.
Fluorquinolones act almost identically to DNA mutating chemotherapy drugs
In the case of fluoroquinolones, these most commonly prescribed broad spectrum antibiotics are designed to have similar results of chemotherapeutic drugs— while the information of their carcinogenic hazard to normal cells is kept confidential from the millions of patients who have been prescribed these drugs.
In 1992— two decades ago— a highly significant study was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, by researchers at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee: “Cytotoxicity of Quinolones towards Eukaryotic Cells (human cells),” and corroborated in research published in the same year by the Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research Division.
The Vanderbilt study clearly found that fluorquinolones are at least as, or more dangerous to human cells as drugs generally used for chemotherapy— for their destructive action on the human DNA enzyme, topoisomerase II.
Additionally, the Vanderbilt study, and others, found that fluoroquinolones are also very hazardous to human mitochondrial DNA, which is also critical for the cell’s survival, because the mitochondria provide energy molecules (Adenosine triphosphate, ATP) needed to run all cellular functions. And whether the nuclear DNA or the mitochondrial DNA is attacked, both can lead to the death of the cell, in addition to its potential mutation into a cancer cell.
The Vanderbilt study also responsibly concluded that, because of the serious dangers associated with the action of these drugs, fluoroquinolones should not be used until further research was performed.
A warning that was summarily ignored by the FDA, which at this point, in 1992, was forming the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) program, and was more interested in fast tracking drugs onto the market for pharmaceutical profits than being concerned about a, soon to be broadly used, class of antibiotics that had the potential to destroy or mutate normal cells in the millions of patients who would be exposed to these drugs over the next two decades, without being warned of their hazards.
Fluoroquinolones broad spectrum antibiotic MISUSE to create profits at the expense of the safety of patients
As if destroying or mutating human cells were not enough, fluoroquinolones have also been outrageously misused over the course of the past several decades, by being prescribed for conditions they were never meant to treat, or irresponsibly prescribed for bacterial infections that require far less powerful drugs, or more “narrow spectrum” drugs.
Nalidixic Acid, the original quinolone, from which each successive generation of fluoroquinolones have been built upon in the laboratory, was originally designed as a narrow spectrum antibiotic to treat only urinary infections. The broad spectrum label progressively developed over the years to allow this class of drugs to treat more unspecific bacterial problems (for increased profits), and to inevitably be abused.
While in those bacterial infection conditions that are treatable with antibiotics, such as pneumonia and ear infections, fluoroquinolones have been responsible for creating completely antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, due to their irresponsible overuse, and due to their effect on the bacterial DNA, which has the capacity to cause very swift genetic mutations, in as little as a few days of treatment.
Two studies, created and published a decade apart, clearly show the serious misuse problem of these drugs.
In 1994, a Harvard Medical School long-term care study looked at the most commonly prescribed fluroquinolone, Cipro, among the elderly— the most vulnerable group being prescribed these antibiotic drugs— and found that an incredible 75% of the prescriptions written for fluoroquinolones were unjustified, or were inappropriate, as well as the researchers citing the risks of the development of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains that would likely result from such irresponsible antibiotic use.
Nine years later, in 2003, an Emergency Room study (fluoroquinolones are used extensively in emergency rooms and outpatient clinics, as well as in intensive care and long-term care facilities) at the University of Pennsylvania repeated a similar study found that the situation had become even worse— that 99% of the fluoroquinoline drugs given to ER patients were inappropriate.
Looking at 100 consecutive patients receiving fluorquinolone antibiotics at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Emergency Room, 81 were inappropriately prescribed. Of those 81, 43 should have been given a less powerful antibiotic, 27 had no evidence of any bacterial infection, and in 11 patients, there was no assessment taken for the need of antibiotic therapy.
Of the 19 remaining patients “appropriately” prescribed fluoroquinolones, only 1 received the correct dose and the correct length of therapy. And this study is from data collected from one of the country’s better staffed Emergency Rooms.
Meanwhile, during this same period, from 1995 to 2002, fluoroquinolines were the most prescribed antibiotics in the U.S.— jumping 3-fold, from 7 million prescriptions filled to 22 million prescriptions filled, while at the same time the prescriptions for all other antibiotics remained the same, and actually declined from 12% in 1995 to 11% in 2002.
After 7 years of unregulated, irresponsible misuse— and as clearly predicted in the laboratory research and clinical observations going back a decade, and all blatantly ignored by the FDA— in 2003 some of the most virulent antibiotic resistant bacterial strains of Clostridium difficile began to show up and cause significant rises in fatalities in the United States and in Canada.
Meanwhile, there has been absolute silence of what might be occurring in the normal cells of patients who have been exposed to these highly toxic drugs over the years, and for which no studies have been produced.
Antibiotic-created C. difficile bacterial infections: the ineffectual and dangerous conventional treatment
When a patient is given a prescription dose of broad spectrum antibiotics, like fluoroquinolones, the “good” and “bad” bacterial colonies in the colon are nearly wiped out. While in addition, colonies of bacteria like Clostridium difficile (C. diff) are also mutated and survive (because they have developed certain evolutionary protective measures, such as creating extremely hardy “spore” configurations when under stress).
The remaining C. diff bacteria can then quickly overrun the colon, creating, at first, severe diarrhea, and later, destruction of the mucosal lining of the colon which can quickly lead to a condition where the colon becomes extremely swollen (a Super Colon). And so severely destroyed by the toxins released by the bacteria that, when untreatable by further drug therapy, “conventional” medical treatment suggests the colon’s partial removal— a colostomy, wherein the patient will be forced to defecate out of a hole surgically created in their abdomen for the rest of their life.
The mostly ineffectual conventional drug treatment of C. diff infection in the colon, is typical of nearly all “conventional approved” medical therapies.
When trying to solve a problem that was original created by the prior use of highly hazardous pharmaceutical drugs— that in some way severely upset the inherent homeostasis balance in whatever organ system was affected— more drugs are prescribed, which inevitably fail to solve the problem, and only create additional hazardous complications in the body.
For conventional C. diff therapy: the drug Metromizadole (Flagyl) is first prescribed. When that drug usually fails, the drug Vancomycin (Vancocin) is next used. And when that fails, a third drug is used, Rifaximin (Xifaxin). This combined drug therapy takes weeks to months, and throughout the period the patient is needless put through additional pain and suffering. All the while the infection in the colon is not properly addressed, because the drug therapy has not dealt with the obvious, required solution— the reintroduction of the proper bacterial environment into the colon that was there before it was destroyed by the first wave of broad spectrum antibiotics.
The all but avoided, nearly 100% effective, “non-conventional” CURE of C. Diff infections
The nearly100% effective solution to the problem that is almost never suggested by physicians to their patients— because it is “low tech,” and because it cannot create the profits that are made with additional drug therapies— is something called fecal bacteria replacement therapy, which has been known to the medical community since at least the early 1990s, and almost completely ignored.
Fecal replacement therapy is as simple and common sense as it sounds. It replaces the lost combination of “good” and “bad” bacteria in the colon to return it to its normal function.
The process requires a sample of fecal matter (stool) from a spouse or relative, or someone the patient lives with— the concept being that the donor will have a similar bacterial content in their colon as the recipient used to have before antibiotic treatment, because of similar eating and drinking habits— to be reintroduced in solution and administered through an enema or colonoscope into the patient’s colon, after first being screened for the usual potential problems of HIV, hepatitis, etc.
And while the process is somewhat obviously unpalatable, it is far less unpalatable than what the doctors and the drugs did to the patient in the first place that now requires it. And infinitely less unpalatable than what the doctors might do to the patient by permanently mutilating them by removing part, or all, of the patient’s colon.
Studies produced since the 1990s have consistently shown nearly 100% cure rates of C.diff infections by fecal bacterial replacement therapy, and in incredibly short amounts of time—within a few days. Typically success rates are 90% or more after a first infusion, and if a second infusion is needed, the success rate goes up to 98% — successful therapy rates unheard of in conventional therapy, and without any side effects.
In addition to ignoring virtually 100% effective fecal bacterial transplant therapy, the U.S. medical community also ignores the beneficial effects of probiotic and/or yogurt consumption, before, during, or after antibiotic treatments that obviously help in preventing or reversing the severity of C. diff infections by restoring many of the “good” bacteria to the colon.
To avoid using these and other alternative, effective and safe, natural based therapies— that enhance the body’s own regulatory or immune system processes to cure imbalances in the body that are creating disease symptoms— the medical community continually uses fraudulent stall tactics.
Employing the usual disingenuous claim that always more research needs to be performed before a “definitive decision” can be made on these “so-called, unproven” alternative methods. Yet this same medical community is more than willing to administer known carcinogenic drugs to the public to ineffectually treat bacterial infections, without a moment’s hesitation.
As for those citizens unlucky enough to find themselves in a situation where they are being given broad spectrum antibiotics, or know of others who are and/or would like access to the fecal bacterial replacement option, a very good one-page overview can be read in the editorial “‘Flora Power’— Fecal Bacteria Cure Chronic C. difficile Diarrhea” by Tomas J. Borody, M.D., published in Volume 95 of the 2000 issue of the American Journal of Gastroenterology.
And in the same publication, a more detailed article is also available for those seriously considering the treatment, by researchers Persky SE, Brandt LJ.: “Treatment of recurrent Clostridium difficile–associated diarrhea by administration of donated stool directly through a colonoscope”, Am J Gastroenterol 2000; 95: 3283–5, which can also be accessed through another overview of the process by Scottish researchers in the Oxford International Journal of Medicine.
The obvious incentive for conventional medicine to ignore the success rates of fecal bacterial replacement therapy is the $billions taken in for the conventional treatment of C. diff infections. Well over $3 billion a year ($3.2 billion was recorded in 2008, averaging $10,000 to $14,000 a patient, with nearly 350,000 “recorded” C. diff infections in 2010, which are probably underestimated).
The pattern of conventional medicine blocking safer and more effective alternative therapies, to increase its profits at the expense of the safety of its patients
Readily available, and safe, as well as highly more effective “alternative” therapies are routinely blocked from access to U.S. patients, creating criminally irresponsible pain and suffering and permanent damage to patients, while the basic principle of medicine, to “do no harm to the patient,” is being flagrantly ignored.
For the past seven years, an available dermatological process— developed two decades ago by scientist Marie Stoner and plastic surgeon Dr. Fiona Wood, of Perth, Western Australia, and having been perfected by Scottish plastic surgeon, Jeremy Rawlins— is capable of taking a “postage-sized,” or smaller, sliver of the upper layers of skin next to a burned or scarred area of the body, and after treatment with an enzyme to break down the sampled skin cells in solution, to allow that original sample to be increased to cover an 80-fold increased area of skin, so the patient’s own skin cells can be reapplied through a spray to cover the newly debrided wound area.
A process that takes about 30 minutes to prepare and which forms a new layer of skin within 5 to 7 days. And which, after several weeks to a few months of progressive and final healing, produces NO SCARRING— particularly critical in burn patients, and returns the damaged skin to the ORIGINAL COLOR AND TEXTURE that it was before it was injured.
This process is currently available in Europe, Australia, and Canada, but blocked in the United States. Why? Because it would take away billions of dollars in fees taken in by plastic surgeons in the U.S to treat burns and other scars conventionally— regardless if availability of an alternative treatment, allowing U.S. patients to avoid being unnecessarily subjected to irresponsible pain and suffering and permanent disfigurement, exists.
Another natural based procedure that has been barred from availability to U.S. patients for well over 30 years is the complete regeneration of the finger tip in children under the age of 10 or 11, who have suffered catastrophic injury to the finger tip, and/or have lost the finger tip in the course of an accident.
This process is covered in the article: "Trapped fingers and amputated finger tips in children" by trauma surgeon, Cynthia Illingworth in the 1974 Journal of Pediatric Surgery, Vol,9, p. 853-858. This article was accessible a month before publication of this article, but is no longer, (for free). The reader can access it for a fee at: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022346874802204).
Back in the 1970s, the English trauma surgeon, Cynthia M. Illingworth (along with Australian surgeons, and first recorded in 1932 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal) discovered that if the damaged finger tip of a child is left alone, and only lightly bandaged, it will COMPLETELY REGENERATE— down to the replacement of the finger print. This FACT has been known to the world for decades, yet this “unconventional” treatment is blocked from being practiced by any physician in the United States, so that plastic surgeons and orthopedic surgeons can continue to take in huge fees to ineffectually, “conventionally” fix these kinds of damaged finger tips.
Meanwhile, one the world’s most progressive physicians, the late orthopedic surgeon and researcher Dr. Robert O. Becker, who was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine, was able to achieve the exact same results in adults (at the start of teenage years, and the change of hormones, the body loses the ability to regenerate (or completely regenerate) the last joint of the finger).
By applying infinitesimally small electric currents to the finger injury, to mimic the “current of injury” that the body creates, and which sends nerve signals to the brain and back to the wound to “dedifferentiate” cells in the area to re-grow into bone, nerve, blood, skin, nail cells, etc., Becker was able to restore the (adult) finger tip to its exact, original anatomical form and function. A treatment that is also not being practiced by any physician in the United States.
In addition to his extensive work with bone healing and regeneration, Dr. Becker also sat on numerous scientific safety boards and testified in public interest lawsuits in the 1970s and early 1980s— to protect the health of millions of Americans from hazardous, low-level exposures from manmade electromagnetic radiation sources.
These included challenging a proposed plan by the U.S. Navy to bury a massive antenna system across the upper halves of the states of Wisconsin and Michigan, so it could conveniently stay in contact with its nuclear submarines by Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) radiation (in addition to contact through, already established, satellite, microwave frequencies)— a plan which would have placed millions of residents of these two states under significant increased risks for the development of heart disease and cancers.
(Though Becker opposed the massive installation, on the grounds of human health risks, the 100 mile-plus project was eventually constructed anyway. Known as Seafarer and then Project ELF, until its closing in 2004, until the military could transfer its facilities to Alaska and use the HAARP ( High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) and swich to radio frequency emissions to heat up and bounce radio and ELF signals off of the ionosphere, and create a whole new range of adverse environmental effects-- including global warming and the very compromise of the upper atmosphere layer that has protected life on earth since its inception.)
Becker also challenged the electrical utilities in New York state from constructing ultrahigh-voltage 60Hz (ELF emitting) power lines that would run through several townships and expose their residents to extremely high electromagnetic radiation that would also significantly increase their risks of cancer and other disease conditions.(See The Body Electric, by Robert O. Becker M.D., 1985, Chapter 8: Man-Made Electromagnetic Fields)
And how was Becker rewarded for such public service actions? His research lab under the auspices of the Veterans Administration in Syracuse, New York was shut down, despite his research having received the highest praises before he spoke out on the hazards of the military’s proposed, two-state-spanning, below ground antenna installation, while his research grants doled out by the National Institutes of Health— the government agency that provides research monies to all “qualified” scientists in the country— were “unofficially” stopped, after Becker had received continuous research funds from the government agency for the past prior decades.
Or in other words, the U.S. military and the U.S. government could not legally ban Dr. Becker from practicing medicine or performing research, since he was obviously more competent than well over 90% of the practicing physicians and scientists in the country, so they effectively shut him down by removing the funds to access his research work.
And while Becker survived and went into private practice and researched when he could, the real losers were the public, who lost an incredibly intelligent and creative scientist, whose research was leading into the area of understanding cancer, and not only how manmade electromagnetic radiation exposure turned normal cells into cancer cells, but potentially how to reverse that process.
End Part 1
Part 2: Addressing the corrupted U.S. regulatory system that has allowed C.diff and other serious health problems to continue to adversely affect the public’s health
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