Society's ChildS


Pills

BigPharma haul: Flood of new expensive drugs coming to market in U.S. and Europe

cost of drugs TTP
Drug companies have brought a host of expensive new medicines to market in the United States and Europe this year, figures show, another bumper haul for an industry often accused of over-charging.

Drug prices are set to be a major issue in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election next year, with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton having pledged to rein in costs in a country that has the world's highest prices.


Comment: The idea that Hillary will act to contain the pharmaceutical industry is laughable, considering that she has received more campaign cash from drug companies than any candidate in either party, even as she declares the industry is one of her biggest enemies.


The busy drug pipeline to the West also illustrates how the vast bulk of research cash is spent on developing money-spinning medicines for rich countries, rather than to tackle tropical diseases that kill millions in the developing world.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has so far approved 37 novel drugs in 2015, more than the 34 that had been cleared by this stage a year ago and just short of 2014's final total of 41, which was an 18-year high.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is also waving through more products, recommending a total of 84 new medicines so far, up from 75 in the first 11 months of 2014, according to data released on Friday. Unlike the FDA, the EMA includes generic drugs in its list.

Comment: With the approval of the TPPA, the profiteering of the pharmaceutical industry at the expense of the public will only get worse. The TPPA will enshrine a billions-over-millions trade-off: billions of dollars in profits will be made by patent-holding pharmaceutical corporations, and millions of people will needlessly suffer and die. TPPA is designed to block the sick and the poor from accessing affordable generic and biosimilar medicines.


Newspaper

Journalist who returned from Islamic State HQ reveals how jihadists can be defeated

Islamic State
© RT
RT spoke to Jurgen Todenhofer, the first Western journalist who was allowed to enter territory controlled by the so-called Islamic State. A year ago, he spent 10 days among the terrorists, also visiting Raqqa, the capital of the self-proclaimed caliphate.

To arrange the journey, Todenhofer held Skype discussions with Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL) for six months before they agreed to his visit.

Finally, the jihadists gave him official guarantee safety. "It was in their interest to fulfill their promises that I would come back alive - and I came back alive," he said.

After spending several days with ISIS militants, having long discussions with them and observing their daily life, the German journalist said: "They don't care if we call them terrorists."

Comment: This report shows one reason why jihadists may carry out terrorist acts in order to draw in Western or Russian boots on the ground.


2 + 2 = 4

Corporal punishment in schools has a significant negative impact on grades that persists for years

corporal punishment
Debates on whether the use of physical force to discipline children is ever acceptable have once again been reignited with legislation passed in Ireland in early November to remove the defence of "reasonable chastisement" for corporal punishment.

In new research conducted by the Young Lives study at the University of Oxford using longitudinal data from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam, we found that children who experienced corporal punishment performed worse in maths, four years later. The research was part of UNICEF's Multi Country Study on the Drivers of Violence Affecting Children.

The use of physical punishment, such as smacking, slapping or hitting with a hand or implement, is contrary to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been ratified by all states except the US. Yet only 47 countries have, like Ireland, introduced legislation to protect children from corporal punishment in all settings, including the home and school.

Corporal punishment excites strong points of view. Proponents argue that "mild" or "moderate" forms of corporal punishment are an effective and non-detrimental means of instilling discipline and obedience into children. When talking about my research on corporal punishment I often encounter the response: "I was hit and it never did me any harm". Opponents stress the hypocrisy of laws that do not extend the same protection to children as is afforded to adults.

Comment: Corporal punishment is child abuse. The research is very clear that corporal punishment can result in physical and emotional damage, and that there are always more appropriate ways to correct misbehavior.


Attention

Fake pesticides blamed for epic GMO cotton failure in India

India Bt cottom
© Reuters/Munish SharmaJaswinder Kaur, a farmer, removes whitefly pest from cotton pods after plucking them from her damaged Bt cotton field on the outskirts of Bhatinda in Punjab, India, in this October 28, 2015 file photo.
Millions of unsuspecting Indian farmers are spraying fake pesticides onto their fields, contaminating soil, cutting crop yields and putting both food security and human health at risk in the country of 1.25 billion people.

The use of spurious pesticides has exacerbated losses in the genetically modified (GM) cotton crop in northern India after an attack by whitefly, a pest, say officials. If unchecked, some of India's roughly $26 billion in annual farm exports could be hit.

Made secretly and given names that sometimes resemble the original, counterfeits account for up to 30 percent of the $4 billion pesticide market, according to a government-endorsed study.

And they are gaining market share in what is the world's No.4 pesticide maker and sixth biggest exporter.

Influential dealers in small towns peddle high-margin fake products to gullible farmers, in turn hurting established firms like Syngenta, Bayer CropScience, DuPont, BASF, PI Industries, Rallis India and Excel Crop Care.

"We are illiterate farmers; we seek advice from the vendor and just spray on the crop," said Harbans Singh, a farmer in Punjab's Bathinda region, whose three-acre (1.2-hectare) GM cotton crop was damaged by whitefly this year.

"It's a double loss when you see the crop wilting away and your money is spent on pesticides that don't work."

Pills

Numbing the pain: The US is overwhelmed by "legal" drugs

drugs USA
The authorities and experts from a number of States are ringing the alarm bells: The United States is being swamped by the legal Prescription Drug Trade, that is drugs and drug-containing medications purchased at pharmacies on prescriptions from doctors (i.e., prescription drug-containing medications - PDCM). A great number of people are involved in this criminal business. According to the management of the country's only specialized task unit that combats violations in the sphere of PDCM, the Drug Diversion Unit of the Police Department in Cincinnati, the illegal sale of prescription drug-containing medications amounts to 30% of all drug trafficking in the United States.

Street sale of these medications is carried out by so-called 'doctor-shoppers" who visit a dozen or more doctors a day in order to get prescriptions for the purchase of such medicines.

Sometimes when visiting a doctor they simply steal prescription forms, and then purchase the drugs at pharmacies in any quantity.

Drug addicts buy 2-3 pills of different PDCM, and prepare a dose for themselves, the efficacy of which is equal to heroin, but costs them no more than 10 US Dollars.

Health workers themselves are also rather active participants in this illegal business. For example, employees of the health care system usually make up one third of those arrested for criminal violations in this sphere by the police of Cincinnati alone. Experts of the National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators (NADDI) conclude that if there are so many health workers arrested for PDCM violations in Cincinnati, the severity of the problem in other cities, where there are no specialized units to combat this type of crime, can hardly be imagined. However, despite the scale of the disaster becoming an epidemic, according to experts of the NADDI, the Heads of State Police Departments use only a minor part of their capabilities to tackle it and focus the efforts of their staff primarily on combating the illegal street trade of heroin and cocaine, pushing back PDCM to second place.

Comment: Who meets the demand and the growing appetite of Americans for drugs? Well there's a few names that come to mind.


Black Magic

Saudi Arabia (head of UN Council on Human Rights) gives death sentence to Palestinian poet for 'abandoning Islam'

S. Arabia poet condemned
© Ashraf Fayadh / YouTube Ashraf Fayadh
A Palestinian poet has been sentenced to death by a Saudi Arabian court for allegedly abandoning his Muslim faith, Human Rights Watch reports. The death sentence comes after an initial 2014 verdict that sentenced the poet to four years in prison and 800 lashes.

Poet Ashraf Fayadh was detained in Abha, southwest Saudi Arabia, in 2013 due to allegations by a prosecution witness, who claimed he heard Fayadh cursing God, the Prophet Mohammed and Saudi Arabia. Also, the prosecution alleged offenses based on a book of poems Fayadh had written several years prior to that.

The poet's friends, however, believe he was being punished for posting a video showing Saudi Arabia's religious police (mutaween) lashing a man in public.

"They accused me [of] atheism and spreading some destructive thoughts into society," Fayadh told The Guardian. The book, "Instructions Within," published in 2008, was "just about me being [a] Palestinian refugee ... about cultural and philosophical issues. But the religious extremists explained it as destructive ideas against God."

Human Rights Watch's Middle East researcher Adam Coogle, who says he has seen the trial documents, confirmed Friday that the death sentence handed down to Fayadh, a Palestinian national, was on charges of "apostasy."

Comment: Placing Saudi Arabia on the UN commission was the height of Western hypocrisy.


Fire

Coal mine fire in northeastern China kills 21

China coal fire
© Jason Lee/Reuters fileMiners at a coal mine of the state-owned Longmay Group on the outskirts of Jixi, China.

Sixteen underground workers managed to escape, say Chinese authorities, in disaster at Jixi, near border with Russia


A fire at a coalmine in China's north-eastern province of Heilongjiang killed more than 20 people, state media reported on Saturday.

The fire broke out late on Friday evening at a mine in Jixi city operated by the state-owned Heilongjiang Longmay Mining Holding Group, said Xinhua.

Rescue workers found the bodies of 21 miners and were searching for one more. Sixteen others had managed to escape when the fire broke out.

Jixi city is close to the border with Russia.

China - the world's largest producer of coal - is grappling to improve standards in the poorly regulated sector where profits are often put above worker safety. Accidents in Chinese coal mines killed 931 people in 2014, a top work safety official said in March.

In July rescuers pulled six men from a flooded coal mine in Heilongjiang after they survived a week underground following an accident that killed at least four others, according to state media.

Eye 2

Metropolitan police issue apology to women tricked into sexual relationships with officers deployed to infiltrate protest groups

Image
© Luke McGregor/Reuters
Police chiefs have issued an unreserved apology to seven women who were tricked into having long-term relationships with men who were later exposed as undercover police officers deployed to spy on protest groups.

The apology, issued on Friday, comes four years after the women began legal action against the Metropolitan police for causing emotional trauma. The police have also paid financial compensation to the women, some of whom were in relationships with undercover officers for up to nine years. The statement issued is part of an out-of-court settlement.

"Thanks in large part to the courage and tenacity of these women in bringing these matters to light, it has become apparent that some officers, acting undercover whilst seeking to infiltrate protest groups, entered into long-term intimate sexual relationships with women which were abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong," said Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Martin Hewitt.

"I acknowledge that these relationships were a violation of the women's human rights, an abuse of police power and caused significant trauma. I unreservedly apologize on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Service. I am aware that money alone cannot compensate the loss of time, their hurt or the feelings of abuse caused by these relationships."

In response to the apology, the women said they are "pleased" with the outcome. "Although no amount of 'sorry' or financial compensation can make up for what we and others have endured, we are pleased the police have been forced to acknowledge the abusive nature of these relationships and that they should never happen," they said in a statement. "By linking our cases together we have been able to evidence a clear pattern of abusive, discriminatory behavior towards women which amounts to institutional sexism by the Metropolitan Police."

Comment: For more on the history and role these cops played in these undercover operations, see:

COINTELPRO in the UK: Undercover British police officer was pivotal in extreme actions of environmental campaigners


Compass

Combat vet eviscerates 'xenophobic' conservatives: ISIS wins if you block refugees

Steve Russell
© www.rawstory.com"We will always have threats, but liberty, when lost, takes generations, if ever, to regain."
Republican Rep. Steve Russell of Oklahoma laid into his party for its stance on Syrian refugees, saying that turning away people seeking solace from violent terrorist groups hands victory to Islamic State jihadists.

Russell, a combat veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and 21-year career soldier with the Army, spoke Wednesday to Congress and decried anti-refugee rhetoric and moves by mostly-conservative state governors to bar fleeing migrants from settling in their states. "While I have tried to focus my comments on actions that we should take to eliminate ISIS, one action we should not take is to become like them. America is a lamp that lights the horizon of civilized and free mankind," he said on the House floor.

"The Statue of Liberty cannot have a stiff arm. Her arm must continue to keep the torch burning brightly," Russell continued. "If we use our passions, anger, and fear to snuff out her flame by xenophobic and knee-jerk policy, the enemy wins. We have played into their hands, period."

Russell also pointed out there is a multi-layer system in place for vetting refugees, and also noted that only 1,900 Syrian refugees have come to the United States in the last four years, most of whom are women and children. He then illustrated the similarity between many conservatives' current stance on refugees and the views held during World War II about people fleeing the Nazis in Europe.

Comment: "For all of our advancement in self-governance, the rule of law, and the betterment of people's lives, the world stands in crisis. Our actions toward evil, twisted brands of militant Islamic jihadism in the coming months will determine how humanity navigates the coming century."

Russell also goes on to say: "The most humane thing we can do to end suffering of hundreds of thousands of people is to cripple what ISIS draws its strength from. Destroy their infrastructure. Hammer their electricity capacity. Drop their transmission lines. Eliminate their cell towers where they draw their communications capacity. Destroy the bridges on their roads of ingress and egress. Hammer their oil refining installations they possess and fund themselves with. We have the ability to rebuild them later, but ISIS would be diminished financially by their loss. Put a different way, the most humane thing we can do to protect civilians is to disrupt ISIS' immediate ability to advance and recruit. If the U.S. leads, others will stand shoulder to shoulder. We need our President to be that man."

FYI: Lady Liberty is already fractured. Does he even know where ISIS originated?


Health

Ukraine fail: German lawmakers 'gladly deliver' humanitarian aid to Donetsk via Russia

Donestk shelling
© Sputnik/ Irina Geraschenko
Since Ukraine failed to guarantee security humanitarian aid was delivered to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic from Russian territory, Bundestag lawmaker Wolfgang Gerke said.

Representatives of the German Parliament had to deliver humanitarian aid to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic from Russia because Ukraine failed to guarantee safety and security, German lawmaker Wolfgang Gerke told journalists in Donetsk of Friday.