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Today's
Stories
October 16
/ 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
October 15,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Where
Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting
of America
Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart
vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers
Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?
Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear
Hugo Chavez?
Robert Jensen
/ Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears
Leah Caldwell
From
Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse
Website of
the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism
October 14,
2004
Darcy Richardson
The
Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
Willliam A.
Cook
Turning
Myths into Truth
Laura Santina
Water, Women and War
Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug
Importation
Alan Farago
Lessons
from Nature
Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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Weekend Edition
October 16 / 17, 2004
Pot Shots
The
Flu Vaccine Question
By
FRED GARDNER
President Bush misstated the facts about
the flu-vaccine shortage in the Oct. 13 debate. Neither Senator
Kerry nor Bob Schieffer refuted him. Nor did any of the post-debate
pundits. It wasn't until the next day that Keith Olberman focused
on Bush's "errors" regarding the vaccine fiasco -and
his commentator, Craig Crawford, made light of it.
Schieffer had asked, "Suddenly
we find ourselves with a severe shortage of flu vaccine. How
did that happen?"
Bush answered confidently,
"Bob, we relied upon a company out of England to provide
about half of the flu vaccines for the United States citizens
and it turned out that the vaccine they were producing was contaminated.
And so we took the right action and didn't allow contaminated
medicine into our country." Actually, the suspect vaccine
was made by Chiron, which is headquartered in Emeryville, California.
Last month the British Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory
Agency, the equivalent of our FDA, closed the factory in Liverpool
at which Chiron was making flu vaccine for the U.S. market. The
MHRA impounded all the vaccine (while Chiron execs protested
that only a small percentage was contaminated and the FDA asked
for more information).
Chiron scientists had no experience
producing flu vaccine by the current method, which involves injecting
viruses into the embryos of eggs that then get incubated, hatched,
and processed. Chiron has a long-term plan to manufacture vaccines
by a yet-to-be-perfected cell-culture technique. To gain entrée
to the flu-vaccine market, they bought the Liverpool egg-embryo-culturing
facility in early 2003 and assumed responsibility for providing
half the U.S. supply (48 million doses).
In the summer of 2003 U.S.
FDA inspectors found "deviations" from good manufacturing
procedures at the Liverpool facility -equipment that wasn't sterilized,
variations in potency and stability, and high levels of bacteria
in some unfinished batches of vaccine. According to the Wall
St. Journal, "John Taylor, the FDA's associate commissioner
for regulatory affairs, said 'systemic quality-control issues'
led inspectors to conclude that Chiron wouldn't necessarily be
able to discover problems, identify the root cause and take steps
to prevent similar issues from arising again." But the FDA
wasn't moved to intervene, even after Chiron reported in August
of this year that finished batches of vaccine at the Liverpool
plant were contaminated with serratia, a bacteria that can cause
bloodstream infections. Good thing the MHRA was on the case.
Kerry has accused Bush of misinforming
the American people, but he missed a chance to pounce on a vivid
example. He wasn't in real debate mode. He ignored Bush's answer
-and Shieffer's question- and went straight into his own prepared
healthcare riff. As for Shieffer, he asked the question -wasn't
it his responsibility to know the relevant facts and hold the
candidates to them?
Bush went on to say "We
have a problem with litigation in the United States of America.
Vaccine manufacturers are worried about getting sued and so therefore
they have backed off from providing this kind of vaccine."
This was accurate -an accurate reflection of the manufacturers'
point of view. >From the citizens' point of view, we have
a problem with mercury in our vaccines.
It seemed as if the Republicans
had anticipated the vaccine question. By coincidence or design,
Sen. Majority leader Bill Frist was the spokesman they made available
to MSNBC after the debate. It was Frist who wrote the measure
inserted into the Homeland Security bill that protects Eli Lilly
from lawsuits alleging that a mercury-based vaccine preservative
causes autism.
Merckantilism
Merck was once an honored name.
The Merck Manual was relied on by every doctor, the Merck Index
by every chemist. To people in lab coats, Merck meant the exact
definition. Today Merck means Vioxx and spin.
Merck was spending $8.5 million
a month advertising Vioxx until the CEO announced a "voluntary
recall" in late September. Merck's prescription painkiller
was peddled so persistently on TV that "It's a beautiful
morning" must have been lilting into the ears of at least
a few arthritis sufferers as their Vioxx-induced heart attacks
and strokes onset. Maybe some were even humming along: "It's
a beautiful morn-AAARGH."
It's not funny, I know, it's
a form of assault, even murder. More than two million Americans
had been taking Vioxx, and thousands of them will suffer grave
consequences. Many already have. In 2003 Merck sold $2.5 billion
worth of Vioxx, accounting for 11% of their worldwide sales.
This is a drug for which there
was only a trumped-up need, and for which there would have been
no need whatsoever if the DEA allowed U.S. doctors to prescribe
codeine readily -not to mention cannabis.
"Safety" was the
rationale for developing Vioxx (and Celebrex, now made by Pfizer
but developed by G.D. Searle, a Monsanto subsidiary). Aspirin
and other non-steroidal inflammatories such as ibuprofen (Motrin,
Advil) and naproxen (Aleve) are effective, but large doses can
cause gastrointestinal bleeding and peptic ulcers in some people.
(Tylenol isn't anti-inflammatory at all. It reduces pain and
fever while damaging the liver.) So the drug companies saw an
"easier-on-the-stomach" marketing niche that, given
the prevalence of arthritis and chronic pain -and the rationing
of codeine and prohibition of cannabis- could prove lucrative.
Aspirin and the other NSAIDs
work by inhibiting an enzyme called cyclooxygenase (Cox), that
helps make compounds called prostaglandins that facilitate the
inflammatory response and have other important functions, including
protecting the stomach lining and maintaining kidney function.
In the 1980s a team led by Searle researcher Philip Needleman
found that there are two forms of cyclooxygenase (Cox-1 and Cox-2).
Because the NSAIDS inhibited Cox-1 more than Cox-2, and because
Cox-2 was more prevalent in damaged tissues associated with arthritis,
it was hoped that a drug that inhibited only Cox-2 production
would reduce inflammation without gastric side effects.
So, billions were invested
in research and development, and the Cox-2 inhibitors were pushed
towards the market. One of Merck's early studies showed that
patients on Vioxx suffered more heart attacks than patients on
naproxen, but the company claimed, without evidence, that this
was due to some protective effect of naproxen, and the FDA bought
it. (Aspirin reduces heart attacks; naproxen doesn't.) People
with heart problems were excluded from subsequent clinical trials
of Vioxx. The goal of the large-scale study that revealed a 200%
increase in heart attacks and strokes was to show that Vioxx
reduced polyps in the colon! Merck was looking for an additional
marketing niche, not trying to answer ominous questions about
the safety profile of its #3 bestseller.
According to Marcia Angell,
MD, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, "It
is likely that many more people had heart attacks and strokes
from Vioxx than were saved from bleeding ulcers, given the high
prevalence of heart disease in the population that uses Vioxx
and the deliberate exclusion of those people in the trial...
Cox 2 inhibitors like Vioxx are no better than over-the-counter
drugs for relieving arthritis symptoms (they do not enable you
to skate like Dorothy Hamill), far more expensive and of only
limited effectiveness in preventing gastrointestinal complications."
Marcia hasn't always been an
angel when it comes to full and frank criticism of the medical
establishment. As editor of the NEJM she ardently vouched for
the safety of silicon breast implants on behalf of the manufacturers.
But now she's calling on the FDA to require long-term trials
of Celebrex and other Cox-2 inhibitors. (Celebrex is currently
being tested as an anti-polyp drug in two clinical trials and
to slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease in another. Pfizer
will report any safety problems.)
U.S. drug companies spent $3.8
billion last year on advertising aimed directly at consumers
-a practice that was illegal until the mid-1990s but now is upheld
as some sacred "consumers' right to know." Kerry and
Edwards have mentioned that direct-to consumer advertising of
pharmaceuticals drives up health-care costs, but don't expect
the corporate media, with so much revenue at stake, to publicize
the issue.
CEO Raymond Gilmartin was twitching
(probably due to a cannabinoid deficiency) when he announced
Merck's "voluntary" recall of Vioxx, but he managed
to take credit for conscientious corporate behavior -and the
media played along. The struggle is now on for the hearts and
minds of jurors who will decide what Merck owes to thousands
of victims. The company has begun the search for Gilmartin's
successor by auditioning several headhunter firms. Could you
design a system more irrational, wasteful, corrupt, unfair, and
inefficient than capitalism in this late, degenerate stage?
Fred Gardner can be reached at journal@ccrmg.org
Weekend
Edition Features for September 18 / 19, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Forgeries,
Fingerprints and Forensic Fakery
Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Bush's Mask of Anarchy
Patrick Cockburn
Into the Abyss: the Week Iraq's Dream of Peace Fell Apart
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Financial Torture (Asset Forfeiture)
Joe Allen
The Comrades Kerry Abandoned: the Real Story of Vietnam Vets
Against the War
George Corsetti
Poletown Revisited: Finally, Some Vindication
Scott Handleman
The Knock-Knock of a Sledgehammer: Sequestered in Nablus
Richard Ward
Two Weeks in Beit Arabiya
Conn Hallinan
Ashcroft and Indonesia
Lori Smith
Health Care in America: And Then I Got Sick...
Dave Zirin
Hold the Booyah!: SportsCenter Out of the Middle East
John L. Hess
Rather Will Take the Heat, As Bush's War Deteriorates
Brian J. Foley
W is for Wimp: So Why do Manly Men Love Him?
Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman and Osama bin Laden: Odd Juxtapositions
Poets' Basement
Vest, Landau & Albert
Website of the Weekend
Eye on the NYTs
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