The Lisbon Reporter

WELCOME TO THE LISBON REPORTER. In an effort to keep our community informed of what is going on at local and Federal levels of government, we decided to create this on-line newspaper. It is our hope that this on-line newspaper will help you stay informed so that you can get involved and take action for the benefit of our ENTIRE community. Thank you for visiting and please check back frequently for information about what is happening in LISBON/LISBON FALLS, MAINE USA

Saturday, February 21, 2015

SPECIAL Introducing Dr. Mercola ~ "Health Liberty" ~ Documentary Reveals Shocking Extent of Government-Big Business Collusion to Eradicate Freedom of Choice

Dr. Mercola Discusses Health Liberty

The producers of this film are allowing a FREE viewing through 2/27.
To learn more about the film, watch the feature length version, or to purchase a DVD, please click here.

By Dr. Mercola

"America would be far, far healthier if the government had never told us what to eat." - Joel Salatin in "Freedom From Choice"

Life is about choice. Every day we make choices that determine how we want to live—what we eat, what we read, whom we elect, and so on. But what if these choices are just an illusion?

In an era when regulations and red tape rule every industry, with lobby groups and big business wielding more influence than ever before, your daily choices have become increasingly limited. And when your options are so deliberately handpicked, are you really making any choices at all?

These are the questions explored in the documentary "Freedom From Choice," which offers a glimpse at the myriad of ways your life is being secretly influenced and controlled, and who is profiting.

Milk is a perfect example of how your choices are being limited today. Raw milk is banned in many states on the basis of claims that it's unhealthy and may make you sick.

Yet toxic herbicides and pesticides are dumped on our crops by the tankful, and this is touted as perfectly safe. If this reasoning seems nonsensical, then your reality testing is intact.

Government and industry are marked by massive corruption that has permeated essentially all of the major regulatory bodies, from food to drugs to finance. The fight for food freedom isn't just for those who love raw milk—it's for everyone who wants to be able to obtain the food of their choice from the source of their choice.

Is FDA the Most Corrupt of All Government Agencies?

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) might be the ultimate avenue of corruption, as conflicts of interest are rampant among FDA advisors. Physicians and scientists with financial ties to the drug industry should not be permitted to participate in broad policy and public health recommendations, yet this routinely occurs. One recent study¹ reviewed how financial interests affected the voting behavior of nearly 1,400 FDA advisory committee members who took part in drug approval decisions between 1997 and 2011.

Members with financial ties to the company sponsoring the drug under review voted in favor of approval 63 percent of the time. Members without financial ties had a 52 percent chance of favoring approval. Committee members who served on a sponsoring firm's advisory board had a whopping 84 percent chance of voting in favor of the drug's approval.

A significant percentage of drugs have been approved in spite of the FDA's own scientist's safety objections, and as a result, drugs known to cause heart attacks, kidney and liver failure, and numerous other major health problems remain on the market today. Others, such as Vioxx, have remained on the market for years, killing millions of people before being removed. It's important to realize that the FDA accepts the drug industry's word that their products are safe but does no independent drug testing of its own.

Corporate Crime and the Corruption of Science

Nearly 20 percent of corporate crime is being committed by companies that make products for your health. Crimes committed by some of the top pharmaceutical companies include fabricated studies and hiding damaging research. A recent study concluded that a majority of American drug commercials—60 percent of prescription drug ads, and 80 percent of ads for over-the-counter drugs—are either misleading or outright false.

Drug companies operate much like an organized crime ring, essentially a pharmaceutical cartel, as Peter Gøtzsche (head of Nordic Cochrane Centre) discusses in his book, Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare:

"Besides peddling drugs known to be more dangerous than advertised, drug companies are also in large part responsible for the decimation of the very core of medical science, since they fund a great deal of the research. The source of funding has been shown to have a tremendous impact on the results of any study."
Corruption of science is one of the most dangerous forms of corruption. Doctors rely on published studies to make treatment recommendations, and large numbers of patients can be harmed when false findings are published. At present, the average lag time between the publication of a study and the issuing of a retraction is 39 months—and that's if the misconduct is caught at all. What's worse, about 32 percent of retractions are never published, leaving the readers completely in the dark about the fallacies in those studies.

Some drug companies are so corrupt that they published results of clinical trials they never actually conducted—they completely made them up! For example, Sanofi Aventis defrauded the US Food and Drug Administration by fabricating patients in a 400-person study for their drug Ketek, right down to forging signatures on bogus consent forms.²

Even more disturbing is that the FDA approved the drug anyway! In spite of knowing the company faked their data and the drug could kill people from liver damage, FDA gave their official stamp of approval. Corporate interests are the only explanation for why these regulators would choose to look the other way and knowingly put you and your family's life at risk.