About a year ago, I <a href="https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1661477689767919617?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">covered</a> the very sudden rise of euthanasia in Canada. As of 2022, the most recent year we have <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications/health-system-services/annual-report-medical-assistance-dying-2022.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">data</a> available, euthanasia is now the fifth-leading cause of death in Canada, accounting for one out of every 25 fatalities. That&#8217;s ahead of common conditions like liver disease, influenza, diabetes, and Alzheimer&#8217;s.
The number of so-called &#8220;assisted deaths&#8221; rose by more than 30% year-over-year, although precise metrics are getting hard to track. That&#8217;s because, going forward, Canada <a href="https://x.com/StatCan_eng/status/1729539259076334034?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">says</a> euthanasia deaths won&#8217;t be recorded as deaths caused by euthanasia. Instead, whatever reason the patient provides for seeking euthanasia will be recorded as the cause of death. So if you have a doctor kill you because you have arthritis, in Canada, that&#8217;s now classified as a death due to arthritis.
This coverup, like everything that has ever been attempted by the Canadian government, has failed miserably. Euthanasia is such an obviously booming industry that funeral homes have started <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/canadian-death-cult#:~:text=In%202022%2C%204.1%20percent%20of,Parliament%20first%20introduced%20MAID%20legislation." target="_blank" rel="noopener">offering</a> so-called &#8220;turn-key&#8221; <a href="https://plus.lapresse.ca/screens/f514affe-77c3-4052-ba88-e327c9ec6dc5%7C_0.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bundles</a>, in which people can kill themselves and then have a burial, all for one low price. There&#8217;s no need to have a terminal illness, either. Some Canadians are killing themselves because they <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12248669/Euthanasia-tightens-grip-West-Shocking-rise-doctor-assisted-suicides.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">say</a> it&#8217;s easier than getting disability benefits. The Canadian state-owned media loves this, of course. They <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/medically-assisted-death-could-save-millions-1.3947481" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claim</a> that euthanasia can save &#8220;millions&#8221; in health care costs.
This isn&#8217;t just happening in Canada. All over the western world, euthanasia is now more common than it&#8217;s ever been. The number of British citizens who signed up for &#8220;Dignitas,&#8221; a Swiss nonprofit that <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47158287" target="_blank" rel="noopener">performs</a> euthanasia, increased by nearly 25% in 2023. In Switzerland, assisted deaths <a href="https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/life-aging/swiss-assisted-suicides-rose-11-in-2023/49198616" target="_blank" rel="noopener">jumped</a> by 11% last year. Meanwhile in Belgium, assisted suicide <a href="https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2024/02/27/euthanasia-cases-increase-by-15-per-cent-in-belgium-in-2023/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">increased</a> by more than 15%. Overall in Europe and Canada, euthanasia rates have increased by a quarter in just about 12 months.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1340-the-matt-walsh-show">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
Over in South Australia, &#8220;medical assistance in dying&#8221; was <a href="https://www.gogentleaustralia.org.au/south_australia_marks_one_year_of_voluntary_assisted_dying#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWe%20know%20from%20other%20states,died%2C%20110%20from%20VAD%20administration." target="_blank" rel="noopener">legalized</a> a year ago, and the numbers of death permits they&#8217;re issuing are <a href="https://www.gogentleaustralia.org.au/latest_figures_from_south_australia_show_steady_increase_in_vad_permits" target="_blank" rel="noopener">increasing</a> at a rate of around 20% per quarter. And those numbers are going to continue to rise, in part because the public broadcaster in Australia is running segments like this promoting euthanasia. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 Palliative Care" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Kc34jPG1xk?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Make a difference in someone&#8217;s life today, by killing them. Give them a little something &#8220;extra.&#8221; That&#8217;s the pitch in Australia, and it&#8217;s working.
As you&#8217;d expect, as euthanasia becomes more and more common all over the world, we&#8217;re hearing more disturbing stories.
For example, there was the Canadian woman who was <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/10118619/bc-cancer-agency-wait-times-surgery-united-states/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">diagnosed</a> with cancer, only to be told by her doctors that she should consider euthanasia. She refused and fled to the United States, where she paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to receive treatment. Those are the kind of stories that make you realize there are a lot of very sick people in countries like Canada who don&#8217;t have a lot of money lying around. And they&#8217;re probably killing themselves. 
It&#8217;s hard to imagine this trend getting any more bleak but somehow, it does.
There&#8217;s an incredible new <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/im-28-and-im-scheduled-to-die?r=8ivfe&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;triedRedirect=true">story</a> in the Free Press about a 28-year-old woman in The Netherlands named Zoraya ter Beek. She plans to have a medical professional kill her sometime in May. That&#8217;s not because she has any kind of terminal illness. Instead, she&#8217;s been diagnosed with depression, autism, and borderline personality disorder. And on that basis, even though she lives in a nice house, with her boyfriend and her cats, she wants to die.
This woman appears to mean what she&#8217;s saying. She&#8217;s been highly visible in the Dutch press for many years, going as far back as 2017. And every time she&#8217;s appeared since then, she&#8217;s been promoting the idea of euthanasia or dying in some way. 
For example, in 2017, a Dutch website profiled Zoraya, <a href="https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/editienl/laatste-videos-editienl/video/50121/zoraya-22-draagt-niet-reanimerenpenning-respecteer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writing</a>: 
<blockquote>Zoraya is 22 and does not want to be resuscitated if something happens to her. And of course she gets comments about that. More and more people are deciding to wear a do-not-resuscitate badge.</blockquote>
That same year, another Dutch outlet wrote an <a href="https://www.pzc.nl/bizar/zonder-juiste-medicijnen-wil-zoraya-22-uit-oldenzaal-niet-verder-leven~a6575e9e/?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2F" target="_blank" rel="noopener">article</a> about how Zoraya was planning her funeral.
Additionally, Zoraya has provided the Free Press with a photograph of the coffin she plans to use, including a picture of herself in the coffin. She also posted extensively about her plans on social media.
Confronted with all of this, Zoraya&#8217;s psychiatrists didn&#8217;t suggest any alternative. Instead, they told her she was doomed: 
<blockquote>[Zoraya] recalled her psychiatrist telling her that they had tried everything, that &#8216;there’s nothing more we can do for you. It’s never gonna get any better.&#8217;</blockquote>
It&#8217;s hard to sum up the agenda of the pharmaceutical companies and the medical industry any better than that one line. &#8220;There&#8217;s nothing more we can do for you. It&#8217;s never gonna get any better.&#8221; I&#8217;m sure that&#8217;s a paraphrase, but it&#8217;s horrifying. This is a woman who&#8217;s not even 30-years-old and who has no physical issues whatsoever. Every single problem she has is in her head — and very vaguely defined. 
A term like “borderline personality disorder” is one we’re accustomed to hearing — and that many people have been diagnosed with — but very rarely does anyone stop to ask any fundamental questions about it. Questions like: How exactly can you diagnose a “personality” as “disordered.” What is a properly ordered personality? What personality is this woman supposed to have? Well, never mind. Whatever these disorders are, her doctors have prescribed suicide to cure them.
Because this is what happens now if the antidepressant drugs don’t work. Now they have another drug to permanently &#8220;fix&#8221; the problem. And conveniently, the same companies selling the antidepressants are also making the drugs that help kill people who realize the antidepressants don&#8217;t work too well. A company called Valeant Pharmaceuticals, now known as Bausch Health, made the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2019/12/11/my-terminally-ill-mother-wanted-end-her-own-life-what-would-it-take-fulfill-her-last-wish/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">most commonly</a> used drug in physician-assisted suicides, called Seconal. As it happens, that same company also makes Wellbutrin, the 18th-most prescribed medicine in the United States, with millions of prescriptions. When it came out, it was billed as a second-line, heavy-hitting antidepressant that&#8217;s supposed to work where first-line SSRIs fail. But in the event the second-line antidepressant fails, now we know what the third line is. They&#8217;ll just kill you.
<h4><a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a></h4>
That should disturb most people. But it doesn&#8217;t — at least, not everywhere. One of the most revealing aspects of this Free Press article has been the reaction to it. In The Netherlands, there was outrage — not at the medical industry, but at the Free Press for covering the story. Zoraya shut down her social media accounts, claiming the Free Press article misrepresented her, without explaining how. A lot of her supporters in The Netherlands were also furious with the piece, saying it was a distorted view of what they call &#8220;medical assistance in dying.&#8221;
But in America, the reaction was different. Instead of writing puff pieces about Zoraya&#8217;s decision, many mainstream outlets presented it accurately — as a horrifying crime against humanity, and a betrayal of the most basic principle of medicine. 
Here&#8217;s how the author of The Free Press piece, Rupa Subramanya, <a href="https://x.com/rupasubramanya/status/1774949448956649542?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">put it on X</a>: 
<blockquote>I&#8217;ve been struck by the reactions so far, some of which I anticipated. North Americans generally tend to be horrified at the Dutch acceptance of the right to die even for someone who is not terminally ill or their acceptance that there should be a more humane to commit suicide even when euthanasia is legal. The Dutch I spoke to find North Americans very conservative and religious when it comes to life and death.
The Netherlands is a post-religious society, and the comments from there are 180 degrees from what I&#8217;m getting from people in North America. We&#8217;re living in two different epistemic worlds at the same point in time, in cultures that descend from fundamentally the same Western roots coming from the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Protestant Reformation. There is overwhelming support for euthanasia, assisted dying and a more humane way to commit suicide in The Netherlands than anywhere else in the Western world.</blockquote>
What this tells us is that the contagion that has now completely overtaken Europe, and in particular countries like The Netherlands, may be reversible in this country. It may not have completely taken hold here. And there are other signs of that, as well.
For example, late last year, the American Medical Association&#8217;s house of delegates <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/american-medical-association-retains-opposition-to-assisted-suicide" target="_blank" rel="noopener">considered</a> a resolution that would have officially endorsed the practice of euthanasia. Given the extent of the barbaric medical practices the AMA endorses already, it seemed likely that this resolution would pass. But as the National Catholic Register <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/american-medical-association-retains-opposition-to-assisted-suicide" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reports</a>:
<blockquote>The House of Delegates of the American Medical Association &#8230; rebuffed an effort to change the organization’s current stance in opposition to physician-assisted suicide, a development that drew praise from members of the Catholic Medical Association, which advocated against the change.</blockquote>
This is a victory, obviously. But the fact this resolution was even proposed, and seriously considered, tells us we&#8217;re not very far removed from The Netherlands. It suggests that, unless the underlying causes of this trend are resolved, it will overtake this country as well. And the underlying causes — the reason young people are killing themselves — is that hope and a sense of purpose are becoming rare in modern society. That&#8217;s true both here and in Europe.
Now that euthanasia offers a seemingly easy and &#8220;painless&#8221; way out, more and more people, at younger and younger ages, will take advantage of it. They&#8217;ll be put on antidepressants that don&#8217;t work, and then suicide drugs after that. Somehow, the drug companies will suggest that, even though they&#8217;ve sold SSRIs that accomplish nothing, you should still trust them when they say that their euthanasia drug is the solution.
This is a pitch that only works when people have been lied to for years, and become profoundly confused about this basic fact: Life is not easy. Nobody is happy all the time. But we are alive for a reason. If we feel like life is meaningless, it’s not because life has no meaning, it’s just that we struggle to see it. The solution is to help those people see the meaning in life.
Pharma companies like Bausch Health are not providing that solution. They aren’t trying to help people in their despair. They’re only trying to profit off of it.

Surgeon, physician performs surgical operations, anesthetist or anesthesiologist holding patient’s hand ffor checking state of mand or support in ER room, Medical healthcare concept

The Euthanasia Business Is Booming As Western Civilization Gives Up On Itself

Assisted Suicide

Big Pharma

Canada

Death

Euthanasia

Health Care

Matt Walsh

Opinion

Readers Pass

Social Issues

Big Pharma is getting more aggressive with its tactics to gain control. Why? Because it’s threatened by the increasing number of people who are becoming more aware of their ploys. Not everyone trusts their doctors quite like they did before. COVID led to the collapse of the medical mirage, so people have questions. And people want answers. We are prodding the narrative: What exactly are its intentions with our children? What is going on with the number of vaccines? What is going on with pharmaceutical care? Big Pharma is answering by passing legislation as to whether you should — or should not — have access to your children’s medical records, decisions, and medicines. <a href="https://www.carolinacarerx.org/#:~:text=CarolinaCARE%20is%20the%20home%2Ddelivery,Learn%20about%20CarolinaCARE" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CarolinaCARE</a> is the first of what I’m sure will be many instances to come of medical professionals deeming children as adults so parents lose access to their children’s medical records.
CarolinaCARE is a home-delivery pharmacy service owned by Atrium Health and based out of North Carolina. But CarolinaCARE serves multiple states that have different laws pertaining to access to health information, which includes prescriptions, so <a href="https://www.carolinacarerx.org/Documents/CarolinaCARE_Age_of_Majority_FAQs.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">they have sent out a notice</a> to their clients because they are making a change “to remain compliant with laws in all the states CarolinaCARE services to ensure continued privacy of your child’s prescription records.” 
Privacy from whom? From you, the parent. 
Starting November 1, children who are 12- to 17-years-old must create new accounts on their website so they have access to their prescriptions and medications because their parents will no longer have access. That’s correct: Parents cannot view or manage their children’s prescriptions. Written in black and white on their notice read the following words: “The laws are intended to allow minors to receive prescription medication for sensitive issues, without worrying about how their parents may react.” If you have questions, you are encouraged to read their FAQs.
<div id="attachment_646739" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-646739" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-646739 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/Carolina-Care-text.png" alt="" width="512" height="388" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/Carolina-Care-text.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/Carolina-Care-text-300x227.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />Screenshot: CarolinaCARE</div>
I have a lot of questions, the first being, how is that even plausible? How is it legal to essentially tell parents they are no longer parents? By making this change, CarolinaCARE is basically saying a 12-year-old is able to make a decision in terms of what prescriptions they are putting in their body. How does that happen? Children cannot do certain things until they are 18-years-old, when they become adults. So it completely defies logic that they would be able to make decisions pertaining to what prescription they should be on — prescriptions that have real-world implications. Of course, a parent should be in the room with a doctor when deciding whether or not their children should be on medication because parents are thinking about their child’s future. Adults can consider the possible impact and effects of prescriptions, whereas a child does not yet have that capability. That’s why they are children and why children have parents. Why would they do this?
My best guess is that because many adults are recognizing they should have never been put on drugs as a child, the move is going to be to take the medical decision-making power away from those adults. There has been public debate among adults about having been put on medications as a child, whether it be medications like Adderall or medications to transition them. More and more adults are openly speaking out against drugs, saying they have ruined their lives. Big Pharma knows that once people become adults, they can see that more clearly — because they aren’t 12.
<h4><a href="https://get.dailywire.com/candace/convicting-a-murderer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Candace Owens&#8217; &#8220;Convicting A Murderer&#8221;</a></h4>
<div id="attachment_646743" style="width: 522px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-646743" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-646743" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/CAM-advert.png" alt="" width="512" height="288" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/CAM-advert.png 512w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/CAM-advert-300x169.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />DailyWire+</div>
Yet CarolinaCARE is essentially signaling to 12-year-olds that they are now adults and can make adult decisions. So if a child professes they feel as though they are in the wrong body, a doctor could give that child prescription drugs to transition — drugs that will render that child infertile in their adult years. These are the same drugs given to pedophiles to castrate them. But children are not going to know that because they exist and think in the moment. They don’t consider what their adult life might be like; they don’t even consider what the next day will be like. They will fall prey to believing they can feel safer from their parents in making these decisions alone. 
To make matters worse (if that’s even possible), the state is getting involved because they want to further this. If this is successful and they are allowed to treat 12-year-olds as though they are adults and put them on medications that can potentially harm them in the future, they are inevitably going to be inundated with massive lawsuits against CarolinaCARE in the years to come. And I hope that there are massive lawsuits because this is absolutely despicable.
If a child turns 12 after November 1, this change will automatically take place. While this is hard news to digest, it’s news you need to be aware of, especially if you are a parent. Because while CarolinaCARE may only be in certain states now, it will be coming to a state near you.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a>

06_14_2021_CandaceOwens_ep14_BTS_00039

Big Pharma’s Shocking Move To Medicate Kids Without Parental Consent

Candace Owens

Children

Drugs

Parents rights

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/health-care" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rite Aid</a> reportedly plans to close hundreds of stores as it mulls how to get ahead of billions of dollars in debt and a slew of opioid-related lawsuits.
The pharmacy retail giant is looking at shuttering about 400 to 500 of its more than 2,100 stores in a bankruptcy process, The Wall Street Journal <a class="color-link" title="https://www.wsj.com/articles/rite-aid-planning-to-shut-down-hundreds-of-stores-in-bankruptcy-de7967db" href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/rite-aid-planning-to-shut-down-hundreds-of-stores-in-bankruptcy-de7967db" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" data-ga-track="ExternalLink:https://www.wsj.com/articles/rite-aid-planning-to-shut-down-hundreds-of-stores-in-bankruptcy-de7967db" aria-label="Wall Street Journal">reported</a>. Bondholders <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2023/09/27/drugstore-downsizing-cvs-walgreens-and-rite-aid-to-close-nearly-1500-stores/?sh=4ee32de6e560" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reportedly</a> want to close even more stores.
Rite Aid has <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/09/22/rite-aid-proposes-closing-about-a-quarter-of-its-stores-in-bankruptcy-report-says/?sh=4ea53cfe5796" target="_blank" rel="noopener">proposed</a> either selling the stores or handing them over to creditors, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the company&#8217;s bankruptcy negotiations.
The company is dealing with more than $3.3 billion in debt and more than a thousand federal lawsuits accusing Rite Aid of knowingly filling illegal opioid prescriptions.
One of those lawsuits <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-files-complaint-alleging-rite-aid-dispensed-controlled-substances-violation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">is from</a> the Justice Department, which alleges Rite Aid filled hundreds of thousands of illegal prescriptions, including those with &#8220;obvious red flags,&#8221; and intentionally deleted internal notes about suspicious prescribers.
“These practices opened the floodgates for millions of opioid pills and other controlled substances to flow illegally out of Rite Aid’s stores,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-files-complaint-alleging-rite-aid-dispensed-controlled-substances-violation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in March when the suit was filed.
Rite Aid has denied the allegations.
“Given the conversations remain ongoing, no decisions have been made at this time and we are focused on reaching an agreement with our financial stakeholders that will make Rite Aid stronger,” a Rite Aid spokesperson said, Forbes <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/09/22/rite-aid-proposes-closing-about-a-quarter-of-its-stores-in-bankruptcy-report-says/?sh=4ea53cfe5796" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
Rite Aid has been plagued by stores failing to generate profits in recent years and has struggled to compete with bigger chains like CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart&#8217;s pharmacies.
Last year, Rite Aid <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2022/04/14/rite-aid-expects-more-closures-of-unprofitable-stores/?sh=389cded16585" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> it would close 145 “unprofitable stores” as part of a plan to “significantly reduce costs.”
CVS and Walgreens, which operate around 9,000 stores each, do not have the same slate of problems as Rite Aid, but both pharmacy chains are also working on closing locations.
CVS <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/investing/cvs-store-closures/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in 2021 that it would close 900 stores by 2024. The closures <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/18/cvs-store-closures-to-shut-about-300-stores-a-year-over-next-three-years.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">were set</a> to start in the spring of last year at a rate of about 300 per year.
<a class="c-link c-link--focus-visible" href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://onelink.to/dwapp" data-sk="tooltip_parent">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a>
Walgreens <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/30/investing/walgreens-150-store-closings/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in June that it plans to close 150 locations across the country and even more abroad to cut costs.
Rising retail theft is another factor for pharmacies. Theft cost the retail sector $112.1 billion last year, 19% higher than in 2021, <a href="https://nrf.com/media-center/press-releases/retail-crime-accounted-over-112-billion-industry-losses-2022-according" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to a National Retail Federation report.
Shoplifting has become rampant in some cities <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/retail/2023/09/27/retail-theft-lost-inventory-statistics-2022/70975031007/#" target="_blank" rel="noopener">like</a> Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, and pharmacies have been a common target since the riots of 2020.
Some drug stores <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2023/09/27/drugstore-downsizing-cvs-walgreens-and-rite-aid-to-close-nearly-1500-stores/?sh=4ee32de6e560" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resorted</a> to putting products in transparent locked cases. However, this tactic often results in a sales drop of 15% to 25%, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurendebter/2022/04/02/stores-locking-things-up-rising-theft/?sh=67d4042511ca" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to the head of a company that sold security devices to Walgreens.
The security devices are an inconvenience since they require customers to flag down an employee and rely on them to unlock the product. They also indicate to customers that the store might not be safe.
Other factors are disrupting the chain pharmacy business model as well, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2023/09/27/drugstore-downsizing-cvs-walgreens-and-rite-aid-to-close-nearly-1500-stores/?sh=4ee32de6e560" target="_blank" rel="noopener">including</a> a rise in independent pharmacies, pharmacies in grocery stores, and online prescription filling.

In this photo illustration the stock trading graph of Rite

Rite Aid To Shutter Hundreds Of Stores In Bankruptcy: Report

Business

Economy

Health

Opioid Crisis

When the government suddenly announces a recall, or even talks about pulling a product from the shelves, it&#8217;s normal to assume that some unexpected defect has recently been discovered. Maybe the feds have noticed that a car&#8217;s airbags don&#8217;t deploy during a crash, or that a certain brand of fish tank is prone to spontaneous implosion. Whatever the case, you&#8217;re inclined to think that some new information has come to light that necessitates the recall. And in most circumstances that&#8217;s true.
But there is one industry —Big Pharma — that has consistently been the exception to this rule. This is an industry that happens to enjoy a lot of special treatment from the federal government, including immunity from lawsuits. In the pharmaceutical industry, a recall doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean that some catastrophic defect has just been identified. Instead, it often means that there&#8217;s been a known problem for a very long time — one that&#8217;s been deliberately hidden from the public, until finally it&#8217;s impossible to deny any longer. After COVID, most of the country realizes that this kind of thing can happen. What they might not realize, because there&#8217;s a mountain of propaganda designed to hide this fact, is how common this is.
Here&#8217;s the latest example. Right now the pharmaceutical industry is debating whether to issue one of the biggest recalls in modern history. The recall would affect a wide array of over-the-counter cold medicines, including some products bearing the brand names Mucinex, Tylenol, Sudafed, NyQuil, and Benadryl. The reason? According to the government, these products <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/12/health/cold-medicine-decongestant-fda.html#:~:text=996-,A%20Decongestant%20in%20Cold%20Medicines%20Doesn%27t%20Work%20at%20All,time%20to%20substitute%20other%20ingredients." target="_blank" rel="noopener">don&#8217;t work</a>. At all. 
To be clear, as we&#8217;ll explain in a second, some Benadryl and Sudafed products still work, according to the government. We&#8217;re talking about a certain but very popular subset of these over-the-counter products that use a specific ingredient. At the same time, if you&#8217;re one of the hundreds of millions of people who have consumed these products over the past decade, this is a big headline. You paid money for a product that you thought worked, on assurances from the government and Big Pharma. You then ingested this product, based on those assurances. And now you&#8217;re being told that these pills had all the effectiveness of eating a cookie and drinking some warm milk.
One of the first questions you&#8217;d think to ask, under these circumstances, is when exactly the regulators and the pharmaceutical companies figured out that these products are completely ineffective. If you listen to most news reports on this subject, you&#8217;ll be left with the impression that some new information came out. That impression would be completely wrong, but it&#8217;s what they&#8217;re presenting. Here, for example, is CBS News:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="FDA committee says nasal decongestants don&#039;t work" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/57RtIN3CLqw?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
What&#8217;s left unmentioned in that report is that this significant alleged defect in these drugs — the fact that they don&#8217;t do anything — has been widely known for years. It&#8217;s not new information. Nearly a decade ago, in 2015, researchers at the University of Florida said they <a href="https://pharmacy.ufl.edu/2015/10/14/uf-researchers-ask-fda-to-remove-non-prescription-decongestant-from-the-market/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found</a> conclusive evidence that many non-prescription decongestants didn&#8217;t work. “Scientific evidence continues to show that the most popular products on the market containing phenylephrine are ineffective.&#8221; (Phenylephrine, to be clear, is used in certain drugs like over-the-counter Sudafed. It&#8217;s not used in the brand of Sudafed you have to get from the pharmacist.)
The researchers continued: &#8220;We think the evidence supports that phenylephrine’s status as a safe and effective over-the-counter product should be changed. We are looking out for the consumer, and he or she needs to know that science says that oral phenylephrine does not work for the majority of people.”
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1222-the-matt-walsh-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
This was back during the Obama administration. The findings raised a lot of uncomfortable questions, such as: Why would the FDA approve a drug that&#8217;s effectively a placebo? Why were regulators still allowing Big Pharma to sell it? Why were people continuing to buy drugs that didn&#8217;t do anything? And where are the prosecutors? Isn&#8217;t it fraud to advertise products that don&#8217;t work? Shouldn’t there be penalties for making billions of dollars off of something that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do?
By refusing to do anything about phenylephrine, the federal government dodged all of these questions. They also helped cover up their role in causing the problem in the first place. You rarely hear this discussed, but the supposedly useless ingredient in question, phenylephrine, wasn&#8217;t always used in medications like Sudafed. Twenty years ago, the key ingredient in the most popular form of Sudafed was a very different decongestant called pseudoephedrine. This ingredient, we can be reasonably confident, actually works.
But in 2006, the federal government made it a lot harder to get &#8220;real Sudafed&#8221; with this ingredient. Congress passed a law effectively requiring people to undergo background checks before they could walk out of the store with it. &#8220;Real Sudafed&#8221; was no longer an over-the-counter medication. The justification for this restriction, ostensibly, was stopping people from using the ingredient to make meth. We&#8217;ll be taking a lot of dangerous drug kingpins off the streets, they told us.
Once Congress passed that law, Big Pharma needed an alternative. Most customers don&#8217;t want to wait in line for a pharmacist every time they need a decongestant. So they&#8217;ll leave the CVS without making a purchase. So very quickly big pharma came out with a new form of Sudafed using a different ingredient, called phenylephrine. Big Pharma, and the federal government, told us it was the best of both worlds. This new form of Sudafed can&#8217;t be used to make meth. At the same time, we were assured, it&#8217;s just as effective as real Sudafed.
Shortly after that law was passed, there were reasons to doubt the narrative that the government was pushing. For one thing, because of all these changes, a lot of innocent people were <a href="https://reason.com/2006/12/24/man-arrested-for-allergies/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">arrested</a> for no reason. One of them was named Tim Naveau. He was charged with a federal crime for buying too much Claritin. He wanted to get some extra pills for his son, who was going away to camp. In response, local officials arrested the man. They didn&#8217;t care that he wasn&#8217;t making meth. They charged him anyway. They said he was collateral damage in the larger meth war, which this legislation would help the federal government win.
Nearly two decades later, we learn that nothing we were told turned out to be true. For one thing, meth has never been easier, or cheaper, to obtain in this country. It&#8217;s not coming from domestic meth labs, for the most part. Instead it&#8217;s coming from Mexico, across a border that the federal government has deliberately left open. And on top of that, according to the government, the substitute Sudafed and related drugs were not effective, as we were promised. It&#8217;s useless. The new narrative is that Big Pharma made billions of dollars every year selling products that did not work. They knew it. The federal government let them do it.
Why are they telling us now? Is anything they&#8217;re telling us true? That&#8217;s a question we can&#8217;t answer, because both Big Pharma and federal regulators have lied so routinely, so consistently, that there&#8217;s no reason to take anything they say at face value. If recent history is any indication, it&#8217;s probably not a good sign. Normally when the federal government says a drug doesn&#8217;t work, there&#8217;s two possibilities.
The first possibility is that they&#8217;re trying to drive up sales of some other drug. We saw that during COVID: &#8220;Don&#8217;t take that therapeutic; it&#8217;s horse tranquilizer. Take our shot instead.&#8221; In the case of these decongestants, there&#8217;s long been a push to require prescriptions. In various states, activists and politicians have said it&#8217;s not enough to hide these decongestants behind the counter, and to track their sale. They say it&#8217;s necessary to require people to get a prescription first. This has been going on for a while. Here&#8217;s one report in Indiana from a decade ago, for example:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Should a prescription be required for purchasing pseudoephedrine?" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/34TDQcVRqG4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
So this is the first possibility for why they&#8217;re pulling these drugs. Maybe it&#8217;s part of a larger effort to shift these decongestants to a prescription model, so that more people are seeing doctors and pharmacists — and there’s more money being made by everyone involved.
That&#8217;s one theory. The other possibility is that the FDA&#8217;s fraud simply couldn&#8217;t go on any longer, because the evidence that they&#8217;re lying about these drugs&#8217; effectiveness was becoming too overwhelming. If that&#8217;s the case, it wouldn&#8217;t exactly be the first time something like that happened. It was just a couple years ago that the FDA unanimously <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/11/1005567149/3-experts-have-resigned-from-an-fda-committee-over-alzheimers-drug-approval#:~:text=Three%20experts%20have%20now%20resigned,every%20member%20on%20the%20panel." target="_blank" rel="noopener">approved</a> an Alzheimer&#8217;s drug called Aduhelm that didn&#8217;t work. This is one of the most expensive drugs available on the market. It costs more than $50,000 per year, per customer.
But the approval process didn&#8217;t go as smoothly as the FDA and the drug maker, called BioGen, would have liked. Several of the FDA&#8217;s experts resigned in protest after the agency approved Aduhelm, even though there was no evidence it did anything to treat Alzheimer&#8217;s. Here&#8217;s one of the experts who quit:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="A new Alzheimer&#039;s drug brings hope, controversy" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VVM5a6D3l6U?start=297&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
As you just heard, the entire premise of the drug was that you can cure Alzheimer&#8217;s by removing so-called &#8220;sticky plaques&#8221; in the brain. But it later emerged the research supporting that theory, which appeared in Nature magazine, was <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/alzheimers-theory-undermined-accusations-fabricated-research-rcna39843" target="_blank" rel="noopener">doctored</a>. On top of that, serious side effects of the drug emerged, including brain bleeding.
So why did the FDA approve the drug? It turns out the agency had a <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-broke-protocols-approving-biogen-alzheimers-drug-congressional-rep-rcna63662" target="_blank" rel="noopener">close relationship</a> with the drug company, BioGen, throughout the approval process. This relationship, Congress later determined, broke the FDA&#8217;s own rules. But it worked out for BioGen. 
We see this phenomenon again and again. The federal government tells us that a drug works, and that they know exactly how it works. By the time we find out they&#8217;re lying, the drug company has made a ton of money. We saw something similar happen with SSRIs. For decades, we were told that low serotonin levels were linked to depression. Therefore, SSRI&#8217;s would fix that problem by allowing more serotonin in the brain. Even as mass shootings and depression and suicide rates all went up, we were assured by Big Pharma and the media that SSRI&#8217;s were working. That was what the science said, and if you disputed it, you&#8217;re a troglodyte. It only emerged last year that, in fact, low serotonin isn&#8217;t <a href="https://www.tpr.org/bioscience-medicine/2022-12-28/research-concludes-low-serotonin-does-not-cause-depression-what-does-that-mean-for-ssris" target="_blank" rel="noopener">linked</a> to depression at all.
Somehow that wasn&#8217;t a major scandal. SSRIs — which stands for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors — were never pulled from the shelves, even though the official position of the scientific community is that low serotonin doesn&#8217;t cause depression. There were no massive class-action lawsuits that bankrupted the companies that made billions of dollars from these SSRIs, just as BioGen hasn&#8217;t been held accountable for its worthless Alzehimer&#8217;s drug, and just as no one in the Sackler family went to prison for lying about the addictiveness of opioids.
For all those reasons, we can assume Big Pharma and the government will continue to lie to us. If they don&#8217;t face consequences, they have no reason to change what they&#8217;re doing. That&#8217;s why, at this moment, our political leaders are gearing up for a new round of COVID decrees. These decrees have already arrived in Canada, where public health officials are now calling for children as young as six-months-old to receive COVID shots.
There are no clinical trials or studies that demonstrate that it&#8217;s safe or necessary in any way to give COVID shots to six-month-old children. Not a single one. And, to be honest, even if they had conducted trials, there would be reason to doubt those, as well. We are now at the point where, whatever the class of drug we&#8217;re talking about — whether it&#8217;s Alzheimer&#8217;s treatments, COVID shots, SSRIs, even decongestants — you can assume you&#8217;re being lied to. If you consume drugs that Big Pharma and the federal government are pushing, you&#8217;re running the risk that ten or twenty years from now, you&#8217;ll learn what it&#8217;s actually doing, and what the actual side effects might be. Whatever you take, and whatever your kids take, you simply have to factor that doubt into the equation. You have to keep in mind that, if something bad happens down the line, you&#8217;ll be told it&#8217;s breaking news, and that no one could have seen it coming. Even though the people who made the drug, in fact, knew it was coming. 
Is this an ideal situation from a public health perspective? Of course not. But it&#8217;s the system we have. And if there&#8217;s any upside to the news this week, it&#8217;s that no one — not even people who are just shopping for a decongestant — can deny it anymore.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a>

Expensive pills

Big Pharma Once Again Makes Billions Off Of A Drug That Doesn’t Work

Big Pharma Once Again Makes Billions Off Of A Drug That Doesn't Work

Federal Government

Propaganda

A new study shows a significant amount of overlap between government and pharmaceutical jobs, leaving the government “vulnerable” to industry bias. 
The study, published in Health Affairs, <a href="https://healthpolicy.usc.edu/article/study-of-revolving-door-in-washington-shows-one-third-of-hhs-appointees-leave-for-industry-jobs/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">showed that</a> over half of appointees to the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/cdc" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a> and the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services left their government jobs to work in the pharmaceutical industry, which generally pays more. The study was conducted by the University of Southern California Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and Harvard University.
&#8220;Although there are understandable reasons for people to move between the public and private sectors, the study notes that such a revolving door could make government agencies more vulnerable to pro-industry bias,&#8221; the USC Schaeffer Center <a href="https://healthpolicy.usc.edu/article/study-of-revolving-door-in-washington-shows-one-third-of-hhs-appointees-leave-for-industry-jobs/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> of the project.
Overall, the study found that nearly a third of those appointed to the Department of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/health-and-human-services" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Health and Human Services</a> went straight from government work into pharmaceutical industry work. The authors, Genevieve Kanter of USC and Daniel Carpenter of Harvard, evaluated 766 HHS appointees.
“Of people appointed to the Department of Health and Human Services between 2004 and 2020, 15 percent had been employed in private industry immediately before their appointment. At the end of their tenure, 32 percent exited to industry,” an abstract of the study <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/abs/10.1377/hlthaff.2023.00418" target="_blank" rel="noopener">says</a>. 
They found no significant difference between party appointees leaving from government into the the pharmaceutical industry. 
The revolving doors can lead to conflict because of the key roll that federal agencies play in approving new drugs and treatments. 
&#8220;Laws passed by Congress get a lot of attention, but a lot of the real action actually happens at the regulatory level,&#8221; Kanter said. &#8220;Regulatory agencies can decide the fortunes of many companies.&#8221;
Kanter added that current law likely did not complete shield the government from bias, with only limited measures in place to prevent overlap. 
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-9096" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onelink.to/dwapp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1693504018745000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1RMMjCvCBOBYdpkw5O_njE">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>
&#8220;They do not broadly cover a lot of lobbying related to agency decision making – like regulations and drug authorizations – so they don’t necessarily deter that behavior,&#8221; she said. &#8220;The direction one might go is to expand the cooling off laws. But that’s a blunt instrument for a lot of subtle things that might be going on in terms of the effects of the revolving door.&#8221;
“What I am really concerned about is whether the personnel flow might lead to biases in government decision making,” she added.

Center For Disease Control Director Tom Frieden Addresses The Media On Ebola Case In U.S.

Government ‘Vulnerable’ To Pharma Industry Bias Due To Revolving Employment Door: Study

Health and Human Services

There is no such thing as a free lunch, but there are a lot of people out there who believe there is such a thing as free medicine. The case they make is that Big Pharma in the United States makes a lot of money.
It is true that there are a lot of problems with Big Pharma; there are drugs that are marketed as though they are amazing for people but aren’t, the most obvious example being OxyContin. But it is also true that every single drug you take was developed by Big Pharma. Every single medicine you take was developed by Big Pharma. Big Pharma is responsible for OxyContin — but they&#8217;re also responsible for Advil.
Big Pharma is responsible for the MMR vaccine that you didn&#8217;t want to take — but Big Pharma is also responsible for all of the chemotherapy medications that your mother may be taking. And the medical advances in the United States have led to a tremendous expansion of life expectancy in the United States; the five-year cancer survival rate in the United States is much higher than anywhere else on Earth, because we have better medicines than anywhere else on Earth.
We develop a huge number of medical patents right here in the United States. The reason for that is because when it comes to drug pricing, the United States is possibly the last country on Earth that actively allows patients and doctors to buy drugs at the price that Pharma is selling them, rather than the government cramming down particular pricing. This has been a bugaboo for a lot of politicians because they look at Canada, Germany, Europe, or any place else on Earth and say, “Well, they&#8217;re buying those American drugs for far less than we are paying for those American drugs.”
Yesterday, the U.S. government named 10 drugs that will be subject to the first-ever price negotiations by Medicare, taking aim at some of the most widely used and costly medicines in the country. The 10 drugs include many drugs fighting diabetes, an arthritis drug from Amgen called Enbrel, and the psoriasis drug from Johnson and Johnson.
Joe Biden is very excited about all of this. He says we pay much more for prescription drugs than any other economy in the world. That’s true, but — the reason that&#8217;s true is because the United States has allowed a bunch of other countries to free ride off the prices that Americans are paying.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-ben-shapiro-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
So what exactly would be the downstream effects of the feds getting involved in drug pricing? According to the Wall Street Journal, lower prices. Medicare would save an estimated $25 billion a year by 2031. The savings would mostly go to Medicare because it pays the bulk of the cost of the drugs. The reductions wouldn&#8217;t directly affect the price patients pay at the pharmacy counter. But the price cuts would have an indirect impact on people’s spending. Medicare plans to use the savings to put a $2,000 annual cap on how much members have to pay out of pocket for drugs starting in 2025.
This sounds like an unalloyed good, right? Everything is great. It&#8217;s awesome.
There&#8217;s only one problem: Medical innovation in the United States is about to crater. And when the government can cram down pricing in any particular area and remove the profit margin from the actual pricing mechanism, that means people are not going to invest the kinds of money necessary in order to create the drugs in the first place. This is similar to the way that rent control decreases the number of people building and constructing. Why would you build a new apartment knowing there&#8217;s no profit in it? The investment in the biotech sphere is going to utterly dry up if the government, via Medicare, continues to force policies like this one.
Here is the thing that people are not seeing: The amount of money that is put into Research and Development on developing and producing drugs is insane. The amount of money that is sunk into biotech to develop a working drug is totally crazy. If you remove the profit margin from these companies, there will just be less investment in this sphere. Drugs that would have been produced just will not be produced.
When the government simply names prices for drugs and then the price magically comes down, the prices on those drugs will indeed come down, but what you won’t see is the drugs that will never be developed.
In 2019 alone, the pharmaceutical industry spent $83 billion on research and development, according to one 2020 study, which covered 632 new therapeutic drugs and biologic agents approved by the FDA. The estimated median capitalized research and development cost per product was $985 million, counting expenditures on failed trials, which should count because the vast majority of drugs that are originally developed never make it to market. Somewhere between 85% and 90% of all drugs that enter phase one testing never make it through the FDA approval process. But they still cost a fortune.
That means, for every drug that actually hits the market — and it&#8217;s not that many drugs every year, maybe a dozen — it&#8217;s costing roughly $1 billion by some estimates, while others estimate the cost to be between $1.3. and $2.4 billion a year to develop each one of those drugs.
Why would the pharma companies spend billions creating a drug or risk hundreds of millions of dollars on drugs that aren&#8217;t ever going to make it out of phase three? The reason is that on the other end, there has to be some sort of way to earn back that money. What exactly would happen if Medicare gets away with cramming down this pricing structure? Drug development would plummet.
There&#8217;s another solution: Aggressively make other countries pay their fair share when it comes to American medication.
We could use every lever at our disposal in order to do that. This is where a trade war would be useful. Say to Canada or to the National Health Service, “You guys are going to pay American companies what we pay here in the United States.” America is subsidizing the rest of the world when it comes to drug creation. But the solution to that is not the American government cramming down a pricing mechanism on Big Pharma companies, drug companies, and medicine companies.  
When you do that, you get rid of all the innovation.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a>

Ben Shapiro Editorial Series 11 copy

Don’t Let The Feds Control Drug Pricing. That New Drug You Need Might Not Get Developed.

Ben Shapiro

Biden Administration

Medical

Medical Research

Medicare

A watchdog group has raised a red flag over a promise — from President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/joe-biden" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joe Biden</a>’s choice to head up the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/nih" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Institute of Health</a> — to not take any money or work for a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/big-pharma" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Big Pharma</a> company for four years after leaving her position. 
Monica Bertagnolli, Biden’s pick to head up the NIH, made the promise in a <a href="https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Bertagnolli%20Letter%20to%20Senator%20Warren%2008.2023.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> sent earlier this month to Massachusetts Senator <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/elizabeth-warren" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elizabeth Warren</a>. The promise, though, is “bogus” because it would still allow her research to be funded by pharmaceutical companies, according to the American Accountability Foundation. 
&#8220;Monica Bertagnolli is one of the worst nominees Biden has chosen. Her history of incompetence as a doctor and her tight relationship with Big Pharma make her unqualified for this position. Her attempts now to fool Congress with this bogus &#8216;ethics pledge&#8217; just reinforces this. Sen. Warren needs to reject this ploy and make Dr. Bertagnolli answer for her past,” said AAF President Tom Jones in a statement to The Daily Wire. 
Bertagnolli has faced opposition after her appointment three months ago, including from Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has been using her nomination <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/29/biden-elizabeth-warren-concession-nih-director-00113307" target="_blank" rel="noopener">to pressure</a> the White House over drug prices. 
“In response to our conversation, I am willing to voluntarily extend the recusal period from two years to four years for all particular matters involving companies with which I have a previous working relationship,” Bertagnolli wrote. “If confirmed as NIH Director, I will also further commit for four years following my tenure to not seek employment with or compensation from, including as a result of board service, any pharmaceutical company with annual revenues at or above $10 billion.”
Research associated with Bertagnolli, has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars, including tens of millions from COVID vaccine manufacturer Pfizer, <a href="https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/physician/114497" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Service&#8217;s Open Payments site. 
According to Open Payments, Pfizer gave over $30 million to research associated with Bertagnolli in 2022 and biotech company Seagen Inc. gave over $22 million that same year. Associated research is defined as funding “for a research project of study where the physician is named as a principal investigator.”
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a>
A <a href="https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-nih-biden-pfizer-cancer-882296155977" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fact-check</a> from the Associated Press on a social media posting about Bertagnolli’s ties to Pfizer said that the funding was not directly to her, but that much of the funding went toward a clinical trial for cancer treatment. 
“That may be accurate, but it misses the point. Monica Bertagnolli is profiting handsomely off of the pharmaceutical industry’s support for her research. Funds have flowed through to her salary at Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Dana Farber Cancer Institute where she is a researcher,” a memo from the AAF said. 
The AAF has also pointed to Bertagnolli’s previous ties to Natera, where she earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock and was on the board, before she joined the National Cancer Institute. Natera has been scrutinized in the media, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/01/upshot/pregnancy-birth-genetic-testing.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">including</a> the New York Times, who reported that Natera’s genetic testing products can often lead to false positives or negatives.

President Joe Biden Signs PACT Act

Watchdog Says Elizabeth Warren Being Fooled By ‘Bogus’ Pledge From Biden Nominee On Big Pharma Payments

Elizabeth Warren

Joe Biden

This week, the Biden administration announced that Medicare would name some 10 prescription drugs it would subject to direct price negotiations. The drugs include Jardiance (diabetes), Entresto (heart failure), Imbruvica (blood cancer), and Stelara (psoriasis). If the companies that created the drugs refuse to kowtow to Medicare, they will be forced to withdraw from Medicare and Medicaid coverage or face a 95% excise tax.
The White House celebrated the decision as a win for taxpayers: after all, they pointed out, the 10 selected drugs were responsible for one-fifth of all Medicare Part D prescription costs between June 1, 2022, and May 31, 2023. “There is no reason,” Biden said in a statement, “why Americans should be forced to pay more than any developed nation for life-saving prescriptions just to pad Big Pharma’s pockets.”
Of course, that’s not what’s really happening.
First off, drug development is unbelievably expensive. In 2019 alone, the pharmaceutical industry spent $83 billion on R&amp;D. According to a 2020 study, which covered some 632 new therapeutic drugs and biologic agents approved by the FDA, the “estimated median capitalized research and development cost per product was $985 million, counting expenditures on failed trials.” The average cost was $1.3 billion (some drugs are much more expensive to develop than others). According to the National Institutes of Health, the success rate of drug development is just 10 to 15%.
Americans bear the brunt of this cost – largely because other countries get a free ride. But Americans also capture the industry upside of drug development in the United States. This is why, according to one 2010 study, the United States accounted for “42 percent of prescription drug spending and 40% of the total GDP among innovator countries and was responsible for the development of 43.7 percent of the [new molecular entities].” According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing industry is responsible for some 332,000 jobs. 
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-ben-shapiro-show">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
So, what would the new regulations do? If they are implemented, according to National Review’s Jeff Zymeri, drug development will drop off: “The CBO has predicted that the scheme provided for under the IRA would lead to a manufacturer-revenue loss of 15 percent. Such a cut in CBO’s predicted 45 new drugs per year would suggest around 6.8 fewer drugs per year, totaling around 121 lost over the 18-year horizon, as one report estimated.” The drugs most likely to disappear would be drugs that target rare conditions, and thus have less of a market. 
As an investor in biotech stock, I can say with confidence that investment will shift out of the sector and into other, freer sectors should the Biden administration move to quash profit margins in the sector. Why would investors sink money into a drug, only to find out that the more successful it is, the less profit there will be in it? 
There is another solution: force other countries to pay their fair share. This would ensure that Americans pay similar prices to those around the world, while also creating incentive for innovation. But that would require politicians to abandon their happy talk and deal in the real world. And that’s not something politicians are likely to do.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a>

Ben Shapiro 10 (1)

The Law Of Unintended Consequences Can’t Be Repealed

The Law Of Unintended Consequences Can't Be Repealed

The new Netflix series “Painkiller” has a lot in common with Hulu’s “Dopesick” in that they both seek to expose the origin and spread of the opioid epidemic. Both lay blame at the feet of the drug’s manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, and more specifically the Sackler family who owned the company. 
But for all the similarities, these two shows have a few significant differences. Ultimately, “Dopesick” gets to the heart of the story by investing more deeply in telling the stories of those affected by addiction while “Painkiller” spends a little too much time focusing on the wealth and excess of the Sacklers and Purdue drug reps who benefited from OxyContin’s popularity.
“Painkiller” starts off each episode by reminding viewers that the events depicted in the limited series are based on a true story but are ultimately fictionalized and may differ from the true story. This opening is especially impactful because the statement is read by mothers who all lost their children to opioid addiction. These participants clarify that “Painkiller” may not be 100% factual, but their pain certainly is.
“Painkiller” stars Matthew Broderick as Dr. Richard Sackler, the man running the company and the one responsible for bankrolling the creation of OxyContin and aggressively marketing the drug. Uzo Aduba plays Edie Flowers, a no-nonsense lawyer working for the U.S. attorney&#8217;s office in Roanoke. Flowers tries to bring a case against Purdue Pharma despite all odds being against her winning.
Taylor Kitsch plays Glen Kryger, a man whose addiction rips apart his family, which is another storyline that works well in the Netflix series. Watching Glen accept the prescription from his doctor after getting injured at work, and even participating in a promotional video for OxyContin, drives home the point that opioid addiction affects all kinds of people from all walks of life.
Hulu’s “Dopesick” premiered in 2021 and was based on the non-fiction book “Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America.” It was nominated for 14 Emmy Awards, with lead actor Michael Keaton winning the award for Outstanding Lead Actor. Keaton also won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Dr. Samuel Finnix. 
“Dopesick” opens in a Virginia mining town and follows several residents there who each experience the opioid crisis in a unique way. Series creators go in-depth with the characters, especially Dr. Finnix, who begins by prescribing OxyContin to residents before eventually succumbing to addiction himself. 
Critics appreciated the drama as well, with Ed Cumming of The Independent giving the miniseries 5 out of 5 stars. He <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/dopesick-opioid-crisis-kaitlyn-dever-b1955983.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> of the series, &#8220;It aims to explore the scandal from the Sacklers down, opening with the development of the drug in the 1980s, to show how greedy bosses and avaricious sales reps were able to hijack the good intentions of doctors all over the country.&#8221;
The characters in “Dopesick” are well developed, which leaves the audience more invested in the often tragic outcomes. Meanwhile, “Painkiller” takes a more surface level approach and spends an inordinate amount of time focused on the ruthless ambition and wild parties the sales reps were having. “Painkiller” could have packed a bigger punch if it spent more time with Glen or additional characters who had their lives ripped apart by OxyContin addiction.
Kitsch said joining the cast was a “no-brainer” and that even though Glen’s story was fictional, he could see a similar version playing out in real life. “Man, it’s pretty close to me, this thing,” he told Netflix of the project. “Unfortunately, I think we’re all one degree away from someone who’s an addict.”
Both “Dopesick” and “Painkiller” attempt to paint Dr. Sackler as a portrait of pure evil. Actor Michael Stuhlbarg gave the Hulu series an eccentric, creepily detached version of the man behind the drug while Broderick’s version goes a little off the rails. In “Painkiller,” Dr. Sackler is often seen conferring visions of his deceased uncle and getting uncomfortably close to his dog, whose huge testicles are often on prominent display. He’s also portrayed as over-the-top evil to the point of absurdity.
The two shows both depict drug reps tasked with getting doctors to prescribe the new wonder drug and once again, “Dopesick” takes the edge with their approach. Will Poulter plays Purdue Pharma rep Billy Cutler. Watching him slowly realize his complicity in helping spread the issue packs a real emotional punch. The naive sales rep in “Painkiller” is played by West Duchovny, who does an acceptable job with the role but pales in comparison to the depth of Poulter’s character development. 
Overall, “Dopesick” has a more serious approach to a weighty topic. The storytelling takes viewers on a journey through a regular small town and avoids delving into cliches, which “Painkiller” tends to do. The Netflix series, which premiered on August 10 of this year, currently has a 48% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 61% audience score. 
Peter Travers of ABC News <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/review-painkiller-works-best-cautionary-tale-users-abusers/story?id=102170097" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> of “Painkiller,” “Fictionalized takes on true stories are usually a problem for me. And ‘Painkiller,’ the six-part series streaming on Netflix, isn&#8217;t immune from condensing, compositing and exaggerating for so-called dramatic purposes. What feels real is the rage over the ongoing opioid crisis.”
“Painkiller’s mistake is to add a note of dark comedy to a story where no embellishment is required,” the Daily Telegraph <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2023/08/10/painkiller-netflix-review-matthew-broderick-sackler-drama/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">review</a> says. 
User reviews were not much better. 
“Awful, overly long TV drama based on truly tragic and harrowing events,” one person said, noting “not very many” details are true. “There&#8217;s a gripping and important story to be told here, of course, but 4.5 hours of fictionalized TV drama is a rubbish way to do it,” they continued.
“If you want to watch something that&#8217;s on the opioid epidemic, watch ‘Dopesick’ on Hulu&#8230;it&#8217;s a MILLION times better than this,” another person agreed.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a>

Special Screening And Q&A Event For Hulu’s “DOPESICK” – Arrivals

‘Painkiller’ Vs. ‘Dopesick’: Which TV Series Is Worth The Time?

'Painkiller' Vs. 'Dopesick': Which TV Series Is Worth The Time?

Entertainment

Hulu

Netflix

Purdue Pharma

U.S. Bank and Bayer Pharmaceuticals appear to be among the corporations that participated in employee leadership training programs hosted by McKinsey and Company that banned white employees from participation on the basis of their race, according to videos posted online by the consulting giant.
High-level minority employees of both U.S. Bank and Bayer Pharmaceuticals were featured in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4hyNPc8KYk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">video</a> showcasing McKinsey’s “Connected Leaders Academy,” a career advancement program that bars white employees from participating in an attempt to “<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/People-and-Organizational-Performance/how-we-help-clients/mckinsey-academy/connected-leaders-academy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accelerate racial equity</a>” and “<a href="https://solutions.mckinsey.com/csd/events/sites/default/files/mck_paragraph_card/files/McKinsey%20Connected%20Leaders%20Academy%20-%20Deep%20Dive%20-%20Executive%20Leadership%20Program_Final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">diversify talent pipelines</a>,” according to McKinsey, the management consulting firm that once employed Pete Buttigieg.
“The programs are delivered through identity-based communities – Black Leadership Academy, Hispanic and Latino Leadership Academy, and Asian Leadership Academy,” McKinsey writes in its description of the video featuring the executives.
U.S. Bank&#8217;s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategy Manager Astrid Benedetto <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4hyNPc8KYk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">celebrated</a> the racially discriminatory program, stating that it helps the company think about “how we can equitably and fairly manage our talent pipeline.”
Allison Smith, the talent management lead at Bayer Pharmaceuticals, also <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4hyNPc8KYk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">praised</a> the Connected Leaders Academy in the video posted to McKinsey’s YouTube channel, stating that it “helps to really develop our employees for their next opportunity.”
Bayer VP of Strategy Nicolas Bahamon added in the video that the program “helps me as a leader to understand … different approaches I can engage with other Latin American colleagues.” Meanwhile, <a href="https://lk.linkedin.com/posts/christine-shyu_management-accelerator-part-of-asian-leadership-activity-7028465397972549633-yYzs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">multiple</a> employees of the major pharmaceutical company <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ganesan-srinivasan-ph-d-mba-728319138_leadership-essentials-part-of-asian-leadership-activity-7084916482664501248-pnCx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a> confirmation that they had participated in the program with the support and sponsorship of Bayer.
U.S. Bank and Bayer are just two of the companies that offered the discriminatory McKinsey programs to their employees. A report last week from O’Keefe Media revealed that Best Buy partnered with McKinsey and Company as well, with a document from the technology retailer stating that employees must “identify as black, Latino, Hispanic, or Asian Pacific Islander” to participate in the program.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
DISCRIMINATION: A Citizen Journalist has revealed Best Buy is partnering with McKinsey &amp; Company on a Management Training Program.
The program is not open to white applicants. “Candidates must meet the [racial] requirements below”
Any comment <a href="https://twitter.com/BestBuy?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BestBuy</a>? <a href="https://t.co/lxfivezCa6">pic.twitter.com/lxfivezCa6</a>
&mdash; O’Keefe Media Group (@OKeefeMedia) <a href="https://twitter.com/OKeefeMedia/status/1688983783620718592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 8, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&nbsp;
The report led to calls to <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/boycotters-vow-to-make-best-buy-the-new-bud-light/ar-AA1f1BAN" target="_blank" rel="noopener">boycott</a> Best Buy. America First Legal, a non-profit legal foundation that fights “equity-based exclusion,” <a href="https://twitter.com/America1stLegal/status/1688987290142486528?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">urged</a> Best Buy employees who were disqualified on the basis of their race to contact the organization for a potential lawsuit.
Insurance industry giant Liberty Mutual also participated in the McKinsey and Company program, and specified to employees that it was only being offered to those that identify as “Asian, Black or Hispanic/Latinx.” The company noted that the program seeks to “diversify talent pipelines” and “accelerate careers.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
BREAKING: <a href="https://twitter.com/LibertyMutual?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@LibertyMutual</a> partnered with the same company as Best Buy to offer a “management training program” which excludes white people. 
“Current program criteria include” not being white.
Liberty Mutual discriminates against white employees. <a href="https://t.co/ZROKdLULYL">pic.twitter.com/ZROKdLULYL</a>
&mdash; Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) <a href="https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1691110970410872832?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 14, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&nbsp;
U.S. Bank boasted of their involvement in the program in its <a href="https://ir.usbank.com/static-files/95a3c033-8152-43c0-a7e6-7738cc9fd7ff" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2022 ESG Report</a>, which states “we offer employees affinity-based development programs.” It specifically cited the “McKinsey Black, Hispanic, and Asian Leadership Academies,” which it defined as “a management accelerator program” and an “executive leadership program designed for senior executives looking to ascend to C-suite roles.”
A 2022 <a href="https://www.usbank.com/about-us-bank/company-blog/article-library/update-on-us-banks-efforts-to-help-people-build-wealth-close-persistent-racial-wealth-gap.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">press release</a> from U.S. Bank also noted that it “invested in more than 260 Black leaders who completed McKinsey Black Leadership Academy development training,” one of the offerings under the broader Connected Leaders Academy.
But McKinsey stated in its <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/spContent/bespoke/esg-2023-sean/pdfs/executive_summary_accessible-06202023_esg-report2022.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2022 ESG Report Executive Summary</a> that it has “engaged more than 67,000 Black, Asian, and Latino Professionals in our Connected Leaders Academy.” Its website also notes that <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/how-we-help-clients/mckinsey-academy/connected-leaders-academy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">over 900 organizations</a> have also participated in the program.
The program is split up into three “course offerings,” including “Leadership Essentials,” “Management Accelerator,” and “Executive Leadership,” McKinsey states.
The site also notes that the Connected Leaders Academy is “designed for cohorts of individuals through their organization” and that it “is not designed to be accessed directly by individuals.”
The program <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/diversity/overview/10-actions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">began</a> in 2020 with the Black Leadership Academy before McKinsey launched the Hispanic and Latino Leadership Academy and the Asian Leadership Academy.
US Bank, Bayer, and McKinsey did not respond to requests for comment.

McKinsey and Company

Major Bank, Pharmaceutical Giant Participated In McKinsey Training That Banned White People

Banking

Diversity

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

It&#8217;s hard to think of any industry that&#8217;s enjoyed more success over the past twenty years or so than big pharma. More than 131 million people — that&#8217;s two-thirds of all adults in the United States — report that they&#8217;re taking at least one prescription drug. That&#8217;s a significant increase from the year 2000, when around half of American adults said they were doing so.
The percentage of people taking five or more prescription drugs has nearly doubled since the turn of the century. Spending on prescription drugs in that period has more than tripled. Drugs that supposedly treat psychological issues — like unhappiness, or a lack of self-control — have done especially well. From 1991 to 2018, SSRI prescriptions increased by over 3,000 percent. Roughly half the country either takes the potentially mind-altering drug Ozempic to lose weight, or knows someone taking it.
Given big pharma&#8217;s tremendous success, you&#8217;d think that by now, they would have solved a lot of the health problems facing Americans, or at least made progress in resolving them. But the opposite is true. Average life expectancy is declining. Suicide rates are up. So are the rates of obesity, drug addiction, and cancer among young adults. How is this possible? How is the pharmaceutical industry succeeding financially, while failing in every area that matters? How can they have so many people on so many medicines, and yet everyone is only getting sicker and less healthy? 
Part of the answer is that many drugs created by big pharma aren&#8217;t even intended to alleviate health problems anymore. They&#8217;re designed, instead, to cause more death and suffering. The pharma industry is churning out record amounts of sterilization drugs, abortion drugs, and suicide drugs — especially in Canada, where the government has begun putting down the undesirables who don&#8217;t even have a terminal illness. They are euthanizing human beings like stray dogs, and hardly anyone is objecting to it. More than half of all abortions are now performed using drugs from pharmaceutical companies. So-called puberty blockers, which can cause lifelong complications, are now prescribed to children under the age of 18 more than twice as often as they were just a few years ago.
The rest of big pharma&#8217;s catalog — the drugs that are at least allegedly beneficial to patients&#8217; health — have had a lot of marketing behind them. Other than New Zealand, we&#8217;re the only country that allows drug companies to market directly to consumers. This means that the pharmaceutical industry can sell not just the medication, but also the illness that the medication is supposed to cure. “Do you have such and such symptoms? Then you might have this disease. Here’s a drug that can help!” Diagnosis and prescription in one 30 second advertisement. How convenient. Fortunately for big pharma, the U.S. government has also granted them immunity from lawsuits, even when their products injure people. Which they quite often do.
Maybe the most important single reason for big pharma&#8217;s success, though, is media coverage, in particular media coverage that the drug companies have paid for. 
Pharmaceutical companies recently began spending more on advertising than research and development. In 2020, the year of the great pandemic, Pfizer spent $12 billion on marketing, compared to just $9 billion on R&amp;D. Companies like AbbVie and Johnson &amp; Johnson and Bayer and many other pharma companies posted similar numbers. What does all this money buy? If you turn on any cable or network news channel, you know the answer to that question. It buys incessant advertisements that air during every commercial break. And although the networks will never admit it, it also buys positive coverage. After all, if the networks criticize Big Pharma, they stand to lose millions in advertising dollars.
You might have noticed that the entire national news media is currently freaking out over the shortage of the drug Adderall. Adderall is manufactured by Teva Pharmaceuticals, although there are competitors that make other versions of the drug. All of a sudden, Adderall is hard to find.
Here&#8217;s one recent report from &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt8RHGE06hc" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ABC Action News</a>&#8221; on the shortage. You can also see the video clip on my show. Watch how they frame this:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Is ADHD Being Over Diagnosed?" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t6oPD_hRGiE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Yes, what will that 6-year-old do without her stimulants? This is a medical crisis. After all, the 6-year-old  has trouble sitting still to memorize sight words when she’s not drugged. Which makes her very similar to almost every other 6-year-old that has ever lived on the planet. But this mother wants her 6-year-old to be less like a 6-year-old, because it is very inconvenient to have a 6-year-old acting like a 6-year-old in the home. And that’s why she desperately needs the drugs. And by “she,” I mean the mother, not the child. The mother “needs” the child to be drugged so that the child is not such a burden on her, the mother. 
The anchor says that the shortage of ADHD medication is leaving parents wondering, quote, &#8220;if they are going to have enough pills to help their children,” but of course ADHD drugs for kids are really meant to help the parents. 
Think about what a revealing line that is, though, for a moment. The statement — from the &#8220;news&#8221; anchor — assumes, as a matter of fact, that the only possible way for parents to help their children is by giving them pills. What&#8217;s the scientific basis for that claim? Later on, &#8220;ABC Action News&#8221; provides an &#8220;expert&#8221; who affords legitimacy to the idea that 6-year-olds need ADHD medications. His name is Michael Ganio. He&#8217;s with the &#8220;American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.&#8221; He says that a lot of patients, quote, &#8220;require this medication just to function on a daily basis.&#8221; Therefore, he says, the ADHD shortage is &#8220;very difficult.” Soon we might have an epidemic of 6-year-olds not memorizing sight words. Think of the devastation. 
Now, what&#8217;s left unstated in that report is that the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists is sponsored by big pharma. They admit it, on their website.  Their most recent mid-year conference lists Pfizer as a &#8220;platinum&#8221; sponsor. These are the &#8220;experts&#8221; that the pharmaceutical industry launders through so-called &#8220;news reports,&#8221; in order to convince you that ADHD is a real disorder. This is the quality of &#8220;medical professional&#8221; they throw on television to tell you that your 6-year-old needs a lifetime supply of psychiatric medication so that she’ll be docile and compliant, as if that’s how a 6-year-old is supposed to be. But these experts are really PR people.
As if to prove that point, that same &#8220;expert,&#8221; Michael Ganio, popped up in a PBS News article on Adderall. It&#8217;s entitled, &#8220;A ‘perfect storm’ led to an ADHD medication shortage. Here’s why.&#8221; Once again, Ganio explains that the Adderall shortage is &#8220;really frustrating,&#8221; presumably because patients desperately need the drug. PBS agrees. They reported that &#8220;millions who rely on the drugs&#8221; have been left with &#8220;uncertainty, frustration and bureaucratic hassles.&#8221;
National Geographic was even more melodramatic. They wrote, quote, &#8220;As Adderall shortage continues, people with ADHD struggle to stay afloat.&#8221; The article quotes an adult who&#8217;s been diagnosed with ADHD as saying, quote, &#8220;It doesn&#8217;t take much for us to drown.&#8221; National Geographic added that, quote, &#8220;some adults with ADHD&#8221; are now &#8220;forced to navigate life while unmedicated.” 
Can you imagine? American adults are having to figure out how to navigate life without their regular dose of stimulants. God forbid. The horror. How can these people possibly live — and deal with normal distraction and boredom — without their chemical crutches? Of course, prior to the invention of ADHD medicine — and ADHD itself — everyone lived without these drugs and not one single person died because of it. Yet now a shortage of these drugs — the ones that everyone was fine without, since forever — represents some kind of existential crisis.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1197-how-big-pharma-s-marketing-machine-is-fueling-the-adhd-surge-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
The Biden administration, of course, agrees that this is a major problem. They want everybody hopped up on as many drugs as possible. Accordingly, CNN reports, the FDA and DEA are now calling on drugmakers to &#8220;boost manufacturing amid ongoing shortage of prescription stimulants.&#8221; CNN blamed the shortage on the, quote, &#8220;surge in demand for prescription stimulants during the Covid-19 pandemic, especially among adults.” Of course this is not the first time that there’s been a rush to manufacture and push out drugs allegedly because of the pandemic, and we all know how well it worked out the first time.
In any case, it&#8217;s the pandemic&#8217;s fault. They&#8217;re blaming the shortage of Adderall on the pandemic — just like they blame everything on the pandemic. But here&#8217;s the thing. If the pandemic increased “ADHD” by such an enormous degree, then that only shows that ADHD is not a real disease. It&#8217;s a concept invented by the medical industry in its never ending pursuit to medicalize and subsequently profit off of every inconvenient human trait and behavior. The fact that more people suddenly came down with ADHD when they were locked in their homes absolutely proves that this “disorder” is simply a way of categorizing normal boredom and restlessness — which is all extremely human and normal. 
That would explain why ADHD diagnoses somehow increased by two-thirds from 1998 to 2016. It would explain why these diagnoses increased again, during the pandemic, by roughly 20 percent for some demographic groups, including young women. It&#8217;s not like some new objective ADHD test was developed that explains these numbers. They&#8217;re just making up criteria that mean nothing, and diagnosing every patient that walks in the door.
Take a look at how the CDC defines &#8220;ADHD,&#8221; if you&#8217;re skeptical. The CDC says that children have ADHD if they do the following: &#8220;make careless mistakes or take unnecessary risks &#8230; daydream a lot &#8230;  forget or lose things a lot &#8230; squirm or fidget &#8230; and have a hard time resisting temptation.&#8221;
My goodness. The ADHD epidemic is worse than I thought. Apparently literally every child who has ever lived on Earth is infected. Apologists will try to claim that the diagnostic criteria isn’t this broad, that there are other ways of determining whether a child really has it or not. They’ll even claim that ADHD can be detected in the brain with brain scans. And yet you’ll notice that the “Disorder” is never diagnosed with brain scans. That’s because it is really as broad as it seems. Every child can be diagnosed with it. If you want your child to have it, they have it. If you want the drugs, you can get the drugs. Apart from the shortage, of course. You can indeed diagnose every kid on the planet with ADHD, just like you can diagnose every unhappy, masked middle-aged woman with &#8220;Long COVID.&#8221; The diagnosis is about as rigorous.
That&#8217;s because ADHD, like &#8220;Long COVID,&#8221; is not a real medical diagnosis. It&#8217;s a category error. It&#8217;s a made-up illness that&#8217;s used to describe normal human responses to a modern environment filled with distractions. The solution, which no one ever talks about because it wouldn&#8217;t make big pharma any money, is to either change your environment, or learn to deal with it. If everyone did that, it&#8217;s very possible that the pharmaceutical companies would lose money. But maybe the metrics that matter — like the suicide rate, life expectancy, drug overdoses and so on — maybe those would finally start moving in the right direction.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a>

Matt Walsh 2

How Big Pharma’s Marketing Machine Is Fueling The ADHD Surge

How Big Pharma's Marketing Machine Is Fueling The ADHD Surge

Abortion Drug

Pfizer

Prescription Drugs

Puberty blockers

A top official at the Drug Enforcement Administration has stepped down after reports indicated that he previously engaged in consulting work for the pharmaceutical industry. 
Louis Milione, who was appointed in August 2021 to be principal deputy administrator, the agency’s second-ranking position, resigned after the Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/opioids-oxycontin-fentanyl-purdue-pharma-dea-72726613cd30be246905fe1f171c2ed8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that Milione had consulted for several large pharmaceutical companies, including Purdue Pharma, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/health/purdue-sacklers-opioids-settlement.html#:~:text=Purdue%20Pharma%2C%20the%20maker%20of,address%20the%20deadly%20opioid%20epidemic." target="_blank" rel="noopener">defunct</a> company which was accused of helping to facilitate the opioid crisis. 
“Working for Purdue Pharma should not help you get a higher job in government,” Jeff Hauser, the executive director of the Revolving Door Project, told the AP. “Too much collegiality is a problem. It’s hard to view your past and potentially future colleagues as scofflaws. Any independent person would find this abhorrent.”
Milione first worked in the DEA from 1997 to 2017 before he left government work for the private sector. He was paid $600 an hour by Purdue Pharma to consult after they were sued by Ohio and Oklahoma over their marketing for the addictive painkiller OxyContin.
Other work in the pharmaceutical industry included giving testimony for drug wholesaler Morris &amp; Dickson, a company that faced scrutiny after a judge said it should lose its license to ship painkillers. The DEA did not move on that recommendation until four years later. 
In May, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/05/26/1178372700/dea-morris-dickson-drug-distributor-license-opioid-crisis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> the company failed to acknowledge &#8220;full extent of their wrongdoing &#8230; and the potential harm it caused.&#8221;
According to <a href="https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF14/20211202/114265/HHRG-117-IF14-Bio-MilioneL-20211202.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">his bio</a> from the DEA, Milione “is a recognized expert on a broad range of issues, including transnational illicit networks, the diversion of pharmaceutical controlled substances, narco-terrorism, America’s opioid epidemic and the threat of synthetic drugs.”
<a class="c-link c-link--focus-visible" href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://onelink.to/dwapp" data-sk="tooltip_parent" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-7029">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a>
The resignation was reportedly due to personal reasons and not recent reports. “I care deeply about the DEA, its mission and the brave men and women that sacrifice so much to protect the American public,” Milione said in a statement. 
He was first brought in through a loophole that meant that he would not have to be confirmed by the Senate. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said the news only raised more questions about the administration of the DEA. 
“DEA has demonstrated a willingness to take painstaking measures to avoid the Senate’s watchful eye – including by potentially using a technicality to shirk Senate confirmation of a key agency decision maker,” Grassley said. “Avoiding congressional oversight is a tired game the DEA can’t stop playing. It begs the question: What else is the DEA trying to hide?”

US-POLITICS-DEA

DEA Official Resigns After Reports On Former Big Pharma Consulting

U.S.

Menu