40,000 signatures, plus a hundred orgs, have signed in the past few weeks, press coverage is massive, outside of the U.S.A. It is a hot topic, especially in the U.K., where the government stockpiled a billion dollars worth of Tamiflu, purchased from Roche, in a panic about one of those bird flu – swine flu frenzies that gets orchestrated every few years. In the case of Tamiflu, it was at the level of doctors and their patients that doubts about the usefulness of the drug started to grow. Approved by state regulators, approved by scientists, discovered to not live up to its promise, by doctors and patients. And for once, they were listened to, what with a billion dollars of the drug stockpiled in a government warehouse.

U.K. scientists found out that Roche had hidden the negative studies entirely and cooked the books on the rest, but Roche refused to release the data, and still today, several years later, no one except Roche has had access to the information needed; not even enough to compare it to other drugs.

Well, tempers heated up in the U.K., and they have put together about 100 investigations showing that falsifying the data and hiding thousands of entire studies is the norm, not the exception. Half of the studies in clinical trials are never published, and it just happens to be the half that says the drug is crap.
Well, after the scandal of the corruption in the world financial markets, the sub-prime derivative multi-trillion dollar transfer of bank debts to the taxpayers – there is anger in the streets, about fraud and greed and legalized theft, and that anger has now focused on the medical world, and Ben Goldacre’s campaign just hit the right place and the right time with the right tone, and it is blazing like wildfire.

Parkinson’s U.K. is in the middle of it, having signed the petition. This would be an opportunity for patient orgs in the U.S.A. to support Parkinson’s U.K. (Not so easy in other countries, Switzerland for example, the P.D. org there is partly financed by Roche, proud makers off Tamiflu, and some sort of levo-dopa)

You Yankees and Texans and what not are behind the curve on this one. It’s an opportunity to be Holy. And hey – 40,000 signatures in the first few weeks – did I never tell you that until I became a spastic, I was a salesman. I did a lot of work with the Inuit in the Arctic, and every one of them now has a refrigerator.

I think the American pd orgs should climb aboard this one, in co-operation with Parkinson’s U.K., so at least there will be fewer multi-national hissy fits at the world PD congress this October. Besides it would be the right thing to do, as quaint as that notion sounds in a world of mega-corruption and nastiness.

Lots of press: https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&g...iw=784&bih=412