Drug Dealers Fund Doctors’ Education

Here is a classic example of Big Pharma controlling what doctors get to hear during “continuing medical education”. Big Pharma pays big money to have their logos appear below that of McGill, a presumed institute of higher learning that is tacitly approving of their drugs and the methods they use to promote them.

There is always the meaningless disclaimer about how the grants are “unrestricted”. Just try inviting a speaker who is at all critical of Big Pharma and see how fast the grant disappears.

How much does the McGill Faculty of Medicine receive? How much of the money goes into undergraduate education? Is the money also influencing what gets taught to medical students?

Write to the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Richard Levin,  and try to get his answers. Lots of luck.

Food Addiction

We were delighted to be notified of an upcoming symposium on food addiction. It has finally dawned on the obesity establishment that the pandemic of obesity is caused by the pandemic of food addiction. We have been criticized for even making the suggestion, illustrated in our photo essay on food addiction. Now they must start asking themselves why there is a pandemic of food addiction that began in the early 1980s, coincident with the beginning of the promotion of the cholesterol myth. The most likely explanation is the moral hazard effect of drugs for “treating” the symptoms of self-destructive lifestyles. The population has been indoctrinated in the belief that as long as one takes one’s pills for blood cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure, one is free eat anything in any quantity. In this regard, we would hope that the sponsor of the symposium, Merck-Frosst, a peddler of pills for those very symptoms, realizes its culpability in contributing to the problem.

Food addiction in children and an adult