Fascism is defined, in part, as "any movement, tendency or ideology that favors dictatorial government, centralized control of private enterprise repression of all opposition." (Encarta World English Dictionary) The situations described below easily demonstrate the reality of medical fascism in the United States today.

Forget Vioxx. What is now gradually emerging is a disaster several levels of magnitude more destructive. However, for a number of interconnected reasons, this disaster is unlikely to feature as even the tiniest blip on the radar screens of the mass media. Indeed, so far, it hasn’t registered at all.

In the midst of what may be the biggest season for the manufacturers of over-the-counter (OTC) painkillers, North America’s favorite medications are a hot topic around the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Health Canada, as well as at such public-interest groups as the National Consumers League in Washington. After decades of no-questions-asked distribution, reports of adverse drug reactions to OTC pain medications are filling a dossier.

August 19 was a dark, rainy day in New York, and I was sitting, staring, thinking of my mother, who died precisely six years earlier. I usually don’t absorb anything of the goings-on in the world on that particular anniversary, but when I saw the news headline announcing the Merck verdict, I blinked, stood up, and went over to turn on CNBC. The words “BREAKING NEWS” flashed across a fiery orange backdrop and the newscasters had the look of grim catastrophe on their faces. The decision had just been announced: a jury had awarded $253 million in damages, mostly punitive, to the widow of Robert Ernst in the first Vioxx wrongful death lawsuit tried in a Texas court (which will uncork tens of thousands of others already pending).

‘The sheep and the wolf have a different definition of freedom. The sheep defines freedom as permission to live in peace. The wolf views freedom as permission to eat the sheep.’ Abraham Lincoln

In the last few weeks, I have become increasingly depressed by a series of tales about pharmaceutical company wrong-doing. Vioxx, Propulsid, Zyprexa, Seroxat… They all follow a well trodden path.

If you haven’t had a drink before you read this, as you read it, you’ll think you have.  And you will certainly need one after reading it.

Every medic on earth knows there are adverse reactions to medicines, including vaccines.  It is common knowledge and common sense.

Fifty years ago, it wasn’t unusual to find products sold in the drug store with a "Skull and Crossed Bones" on the label. Tincture of Iodine was one product that most seniors are familiar with. It is long gone and replaced with branded products that cost a lot more.

And there was a time in the past when a great wailing went up from the shareholders of Merck. For it had been revealed to them that the wondrous Vioxx didst most verily wipe out many thousands of patients with the apoplexy, and clutching at the breast, and falling down most dead.

And so, the great wise men of the FDA smote Dr Graham, one of their own, and didst telleth everyone that said Dr Graham was a fool and a scoundrel and couldst not be believed when he warned of the great dangers of Vioxx. Which seemethed strange, as he was the one amongst them who stoodeth up to be counted. But we shall sweepeth this most ungracious behaviour swiftly under the carpet.

(It’s not a plane, it’s not a train, it’s super-Celebrex-researcherman)

Studies on thousands of patients are not all the same, but they do have one thing in common. They take a damned long time. Major studies take months, or years, to set up. They then take years to do, and more months pass as the paper is written. The paper then takes several more months to go through the journal peer review system, re-writes etc. Then the results of the study get published.

Imagine waking up and having no recollection of anything that happened the day before. All memory, wiped, gone. You find a letter written by yourself that you can’t remember writing. You go out to buy a present only to find, when you get home, that you had already bought it. Your next-door neighbour asks for his wheelbarrow back, the one he lent you yesterday, you look at him blankly and say you haven’t got it.

And so the Cox II, Celebrex, story rumbles on. I have cut a chunk from an on-line journal for the pharmaceutical industry known as FirstWord. You can register here. It’s an interesting read, and provides very up to date news about goings on across the pharmaceutical industry world. I never miss it.

Anyway, read on:

See also ALAS POOR VIOXX I KNEW IT WELL

Somewhat earlier that even I expected, it turns out that another drugs in the same class as Vioxx has been shown to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. I think the words ‘I told you so’ can be applied with great smugness. (See previous article ‘Alas poor Vioxx I knew it well’)

For now Bextra (valdecoxib) another COX II inhibitor in the same class as Vioxx (rofecoxib), has been discovered to cause exactly the same sort of problems as Vioxx. I include a little quote from the BMJ on the matter…

And so we lament the passing of Vioxx, the wonder drug. I have to say that Merck did act reasonably well in this case, in so far as they jumped before they were pushed. Although there can be no doubt that the push was not far away. Can we learn anything from this event? Possibly, but it may not be what you think.

The first thing that has to be said about Vioxx is that thinking behind it was good; at least it seemed so at the time. Non Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs), known to doctors as aNother Stupid Aspirin In Disguise (NSAIDs) have been used for many years to control pain and inflammation in arthritis, and related, diseases. The main problem is that they also cause stomach ulcers.

The memory of a drug reaction my son experienced many years ago when he was four years old still unnerves me.

It all started with a case of chicken pox. Usually this disease is self-limiting and children have little or no problem with it. However my son suffered from dermatitis and his skin was vulnerable to infection. So, his chicken pox got infected, and we went to the paediatrician who wrote a prescription for ceclor, which is a second generation cephalosporin drug.

On March 19, 2000 my fifteen year old daughter Vanessa died suddenly after taking as directed a widely prescribed Johnson and Johnson drug- Prepulsid.

NO NEED TO RELY ON A TOXIC DRUG

In March 2000, The Lancet published a favorable clinical trial of the GlaxoWellcome anti-diarrhea drug Lotronex. It had been licensed a month earlier. By November 2000, Glaxo voluntarily withdrew the drug following reports of five deaths. Yet soon thereafter, the FDA leadership worked closely with the manufacturer to bring the drug back, and set up an advisory committee meeting to do so last summer.