A Remarkable Week for Corporate Crime

The 10 Ten Stories

by RUSSELL MOKHIBER

 

It’s been a remarkable week in corporate crime.

And it’s only Wednesday.

This week drives home the reality – corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined.

Once again, it’s not the black kid with the hood on the street.

It’s the corporate executive with the lawyer in the suite.

So, without further ado, let’s go to the Top Ten Corporate Crime Stories of the Week.

Number Ten: Sunoco to Pay $2.2 Million to Resolve Double Dipping Charge. The Massachusetts Attorney General alleges that the oil company falsely sought reimbursement from a state reimbursement fund when it was also seeking reimbursement from its insurers.

Number Nine: Merck to Pay $322 Million Criminal Penalty. A federal judge in Boston ordered Merck to pay a $322 million criminal penalty for improperly marketing its Vioxx painkiller a decade ago.

Number Eight: Pharmacy Fraud Kills Three. Gary D. Osborn and his corporation, ApothéCure Inc., pled guilty in federal court in Dallas to criminal violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). The pleas are in connection with ApothéCure’s interstate shipment of two lots of misbranded colchicine injectable solution that led to the deaths of three people in the Pacific Northwest.

Number Seven: Walgreens to Pay $7.9 Million to Settle Whsitleblower Lawsuit. Walgreens, the largest drugstore chain in the nation, has paid the United States and participating governments $7.9 million to settle allegations that it paid kickbacks to illegally induce the transfer of prescriptions to its pharmacies.

Number Six: Minnesota AG Takes Down Medical Debt Collection Agency. The Minnesota AG said that Accretive – one of the nation’s largest medical debt collectors – overstepped its bounds by embedding debt collectors as employees in emergency rooms and demanding that patients pay before receiving treatment.

Number Five: Military Contractor Rips Off the Army. ATK Launch Systems will pay $36,967,160 to resolve allegations that ATK sold dangerous and defective illumination flares to the Army and the Air Force.

Number Four: Freeport-McMoRan Pays $6.8 Million to Settle Pollution Charge. Freeport-McMoRan Morenci will pay $6.8 million to settle allegations that it polluted areas around its Morenci copper mine in southeastern Arizona. Federal officials alleged that surface waters, terrestrial habitat and wildlife, and migratory birds have been injured, destroyed or lost as a result of releases sulfuric acid and metals at the site.

Number Three: Giant Construction Company Ripped Off NYC. Australian construction giant Lend Lease Construction LMB Inc. – formerly Bovis Lend Lease LMB Inc. – and James Abadie, the former executive in charge of Bovis’s New York office, were criminally charged in a major fraud scheme. The company will pay $50 million and get a deferred prosecution agreement. Federal officials alleged that Abadie explicitly and fraudulently directed his subordinates to carry out the practice of adding unworked hours to labor foremen’s time sheets, knowing that these unworked hours were billed to clients who were unaware that they were the victims of fraud. Affected projects included – the United States Post Office/Bankruptcy Court in Brooklyn, New York, the Bronx Criminal Courthouse in the Bronx, New York, Grand Central Terminal, the Deutsche Bank building deconstruction in New York, New York, Citifield in Queens, New York, and the very United States Courthouse in which Bovis was charged and Abadie pled guilty.

Number Two: First Criminal Prosecution in BP Case is an Individual, not a Corporation. Kurt Mix, a former engineer for BP plc, was arrested on charges of intentionally destroying evidence requested by federal criminal authorities investigating the April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon disaster. David Uhlmann, the former head of the Environmental Crimes Section at he Justice Department is puzzled why the government has yet to bring criminal charges against BP and the other companies involved. “The government has a slam dunk criminal case against BP, TransOcean and Halliburton for the negligence that caused the Gulf oil spill,” Uhlmann told Marketplace Radio yesterday “They should bring those criminal charges.”

Number one: Wal-Mart Bribery. The number one slot goes to Wal-Mart. In a shocker, New York Times reporter David Barstow penned a major investigative report on Wal-Mart bribery in Mexico. Paying $24 million in bribes to fuel Wal-Mart expansion in Mexico is a big deal. How Wal-Mart covered up the bribery in Mexico is a big deal. Wal-Mart had a state of the art anti-bribery compliance program. The New York Times story will likely put an end to the Chamber of Commerce’s drive to weaken the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and drive public support for more corporate crime prosecutions.

One lesson after living through this week in corporate crime?

Support your local police. Urge a crack down on corporate crime.

Chinese Melamine or American Vioxx: Half a million dead and no questions asked

Valuing Human Life in China and the U.S: Take Your Pick

by RON UNZ

In contrasting China and America, pundits often cite our free and independent media as one of our greatest strengths, together with the tremendous importance which our society places upon individual American lives. For us, a single wrongful death can sometimes provoke weeks of massive media coverage and galvanize the nation into corrective action, while life remains cheap in China, a far poorer land of over a billion people, ruled by a ruthless Communist Party eager to bury its mistakes. But an examination of two of the greatest public-health scandals of the last few years casts serious doubt on this widespread belief.  

What follows is an extraordinary report by Ron Unz, publisher of the American Conernative, part of his larger feature just published by the TAC,  “China’s Rise, America’s Fall. “ Ron makes the charge that perhaps 500,000 or more premature American deaths may have resulted from Vioxx, a figure substantially larger than the 3,468 deaths of named individuals acknowledged by Merck during the settlement of its lawsuit. And almost no one among our political or media elites seems to know or care about this possibility. 

Ron writes to us : “I remember back in 2005, I was reading my morning newspapers, as I always do, and noticed those tiny, buried items about the unprecedented drop in the American death rate.  Hmm I said, I wonder if that might have anything to do with all those other stories about that deadly drug recently taken off the market and all the resulting lawsuits.  I never got around to looking into it, and apparently nobody in the media did either.  

“Then, a few weeks ago, I was talking to Dan McCarthy the TAC Editor, complaining to him about how totally incompetent and dishonest the MSM was, and mentioned the totally ignored 2005 mortality drop as an excellent example.  He’d obviously never heard of it and had also completely forgotten about the Vioxx scandal, but said I really should think about writing something up.  So I decided to combine it with some of those other things about China I’d been complaining that the MSM tended to distort or ignore.  

“When I went to the CDC website, it only took me about 10 minutes to get the public data confirming that just as I’d guessed, Vioxx had probably killed around 500,000 Americans, but virtually nobody in the whole country knew or cared.  It’s a little like if a meteor destroyed Pittsburgh and killed everyone there, but the media never reported it, would anyone really notice?  From a philosophical perspective, if nobody knows about it, did it even really happen?” 

First, consider the details of the Chinese infant formula scandal of 2008. Unscrupulous businessmen had discovered they could save money by greatly diluting their milk products, then adding a plastic chemical compound called melamine to raise the apparent protein content back to normal levels. Nearly 300,000 babies throughout China had suffered urinary problems, with many hundreds requiring lengthy hospitalization for kidney stones. Six died. A wave of popular outrage swept past the controlled media roadblocks and initial government excuses, and soon put enormous pressure on Chinese officials to take forceful action against the wrongdoers.

China’s leaders may not be democratically elected, but they pay close attention to strong popular sentiment. Once pressed, they quickly launched a national police investigation which led to a series of arrests and uncovered evidence that this widespread system of food adulteration had been protected by bribe-taking government officials. Long prison sentences were freely handed out and a couple of the guiltiest culprits were eventually tried and executed for their role, measures that gradually assuaged popular anger. Indeed, the former head of the Chinese FDA had been executed for corruption in late 2007 under similar circumstances.

Throughout these events, American media coverage was extensive, with numerous front-page stories in our leading newspapers. Journalists discovered that similar methods of dangerous chemical adulteration had been used to produce Chinese pet food for export, and many family dogs in America had suffered or died as a result. With heavy coverage on talk radio and cable news shows, phrases such as “Chinese baby formula” or “Chinese pet food” became angry slurs, and there was talk of banning whole categories of imports from a country whose product safety standards were obviously so far below those found in Western societies. The legitimate concerns of ordinary Americans were fanned by local media coverage that sometimes bordered on the hysterical.

However, the American media reaction had been quite different during an earlier health scandal much closer to home.

In September 2004, Merck, one of America’s largest pharmaceutical companies, suddenly announced that it was voluntarily recalling Vioxx, its popular anti-pain medication widely used to treat arthritis-related ailments. This abrupt recall came just days after Merck discovered that a top medical journal was about to publish a massive study by an FDA investigator indicating that the drug in question greatly increased the risk of fatal heart attacks and strokes and had probably been responsible for at least 55,000 American deaths during the five years it had been on the market.

Within weeks of the recall, journalists discovered that Merck had found strong evidence of the potentially fatal side-effects of this drug even before its initial 1999 introduction, but had ignored these worrisome indicators and avoided additional testing, while suppressing the concerns of its own scientists. Boosted by a television advertising budget averaging a hundred million dollars per year, Vioxx soon became one of Merck’s most lucrative products, generating over $2 billion in yearly revenue. Merck had also secretly ghostwritten dozens of the published research studies emphasizing the beneficial aspects of the drug and encouraging doctors to widely prescribe it, thus transforming science into marketing support. Twenty-five million Americans were eventually prescribed Vioxx as an aspirin-substitute thought to produce fewer complications.

Although the Vioxx scandal certainly did generate several days of newspaper headlines and intermittently returned to the front pages as the resulting lawsuits gradually moved through our judicial system, the coverage still seemed scanty relative to the number of estimated fatalities, which matched America’s total losses in the Vietnam War. In fact, the media coverage often seemed considerably less than that later accorded to the Chinese infant food scandal, which had caused just a handful of deaths on the other side of the world.

The circumstances of this case were exceptionally egregious, with many tens of thousands of American deaths due to the sale of a highly lucrative but sometimes fatal drug, whose harmful effects had long been known to its manufacturer. But there is no sign that criminal charges were ever considered.

A massive class-action lawsuit dragged its way through the courts for years, eventually being settled for $4.85 billion in 2007, with almost half the money going to the trial lawyers. Merck shareholders also paid large sums to settle various other lawsuits and government penalties and cover the heavy legal costs of fighting all of these cases. But the loss of continuing Vioxx sales represented the greatest financial penalty of all, which provides a disturbing insight into the cost-benefit calculations behind the company’s original cover-up. When the scandal broke, Merck’s stock price collapsed, and there was a widespread belief that the company could not possibly survive, especially after evidence of a deliberate corporate conspiracy surfaced. Instead, Merck’s stock price eventually reached new heights in 2008 and today is just 15 percent below where it stood just before the disaster.

Furthermore, individuals make decisions rather than corporate entities, and none of the individuals behind Merck’s deadly decisions apparently suffered any serious consequences. The year after the scandal unfolded, Merck’s long-time CEO resigned and was replaced by one of his top lieutenants, but he retained the $50 million in financial compensation he had received over the previous five years, compensation greatly boosted by lucrative Vioxx sales. Senior FDA officials apologized for their lack of effective oversight and promised to do better in the future. American media conglomerates quietly mourned their loss of heavy Vioxx advertising, but continued selling the same airtime to Merck and its rivals for the marketing of other, replacement drugs, while their investigative arms soon focused on the horrors of tainted Chinese infant food and the endemic corruption of Chinese society.

This story of serious corporate malfeasance largely forgiven and forgotten by government and media is depressing enough, but it leaves out a crucial factual detail that seems to have almost totally escaped public notice. The year after Vioxx had been pulled from the market, the New York Times and other major media outlets published a minor news item, generally buried near the bottom of their back pages, which noted that American death rates had suddenly undergone a striking and completely unexpected decline.

The headline of the short article that ran in the April 19, 2005 edition of USA Today was typical: “USA Records Largest Drop in Annual Deaths in at Least 60 Years.” During that one year, American deaths had fallen by 50,000 despite the growth in both the size and the age of the nation’s population. Government health experts were quoted as being greatly “surprised” and “scratching [their] heads” over this strange anomaly, which was led by a sharp drop in fatal heart attacks.

On April 24, 2005, the New York Times ran another of its long stories about the continuing Vioxx controversy, disclosing that Merck officials had knowingly concealed evidence that their drug greatly increased the risk of heart-related fatalities. But the Times journalist made no mention of the seemingly inexplicable drop in national mortality rates that had occurred once the drug was taken off the market, although the news had been reported in his own paper just a few days earlier.

A cursory examination of the most recent 15 years worth of national mortality data provided on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website offers some intriguing clues to this mystery. We find the largest rise in American mortality rates occurred in 1999, the year Vioxx was introduced, while the largest drop occurred in 2004, the year it was withdrawn. Vioxx was almost entirely marketed to the elderly, and these substantial changes in national death-rate were completely concentrated within the 65-plus population. The FDA studies had proven that use of Vioxx led to deaths from cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and strokes, and these were exactly the factors driving the changes in national mortality rates.

The impact of these shifts was not small. After a decade of remaining roughly constant, the overall American death rate began a substantial decline in 2004, soon falling by approximately 5 percent, despite the continued aging of the population. This drop corresponds to roughly 100,000 fewer deaths per year. The age-adjusted decline in death rates was considerably greater.

Patterns of cause and effect cannot easily be proven. But if we hypothesize a direct connection between the recall of a class of very popular drugs proven to cause fatal heart attacks and other deadly illnesses with an immediate drop in the national rate of fatal heart attacks and other deadly illnesses, then the statistical implications are quite serious. Perhaps 500,000 or more premature American deaths may have resulted from Vioxx, a figure substantially larger than the 3,468 deaths of named individuals acknowledged by Merck during the settlement of its lawsuit. And almost no one among our political or media elites seems to know or care about this possibility. A recent Wall Street Journal column even called for relaxing FDA restrictions aimed at avoiding “rare adverse events,” which had been imposed after the discovery of “unanticipated side effects of high-profile drugs like Vioxx.”

There are obvious mitigating differences between these two national responses. The Chinese victims were children, and their sufferings from kidney stones and other ailments were directly linked to the harmful compounds that they had ingested. By contrast, the American victims were almost all elderly, and there was no means of determining whether a particular heart attack had been caused by Vioxx or other factors; the evidence implicating the drug was purely statistical, across millions of patients. Furthermore, since most of the victims were anyway nearing the end of their lives, the result was more an acceleration of the inevitable rather than cutting short an entire young life, and sudden fatal heart attacks are hardly the most unpleasant forms of death.

But against these important factors we must consider the raw numbers involved. American journalists seemed to focus more attention on a half-dozen fatalities in China than they did on the premature deaths of as many as 500,000 of their fellow American citizens.

The inescapable conclusion is that in today’s world and in the opinion of our own media, American lives are quite cheap, unlike those in China.

Outsourcing the Drug Industry

As "Blockbuster Drug" Bubble Bursts, Big Pharma Takes Jobs Overseas

by MARTHA ROSENBERG

It is no consolation to the roughly one out of 600 families who lost their homes in the U.S. but Wall Street made a lot of money slicing and dicing mortgages it knew would implode, while hiding risks. Financial giants, like AIG, are still buzzing along and neither penalties or new laws will prevent a future crash, say financial analysts, because the risky business models have not really changed.

A similar Big Pharma bubble, leavened with risky blockbuster drugs that also blew up, is now bursting. Like Wall Street’s bundled high risk loans, the “tide” created by Big Pharma’s high risk drugs raised many ships during the 2000s from advertising, public relations and medical communication agencies to TV and radio stations, medical journals and doctor/pitchmen who shoveled in its marketing budgets. But now the joyride is over and Pharma is shedding jobs and settling billions in claims without changing its risky business model, like Wall Street.

In Europe, governments are no longer willing to pay the high prices for drugs that they once did say published reports and some countries are drafting laws making drug makers “prove their drugs are effective or risk having them dropped from the coverage list, or covered at a lower rate.” Imagine.

Germany has already saved 1.9 billion euros in 2011 by refusing to pay higher prices for drugs unless they are clearly superior to existing medicines, and Pharma worries that other countries will also get tough and want scientific proof for drug effectiveness instead of marketing and spin. 

In the U.S. and elsewhere, a drug only needs to be superior to no drug (placebo) to be approved by regulators–yet “new” is conveyed as “better than any drug to date” in advertising.  Some clinicians say Haldol, an inexpensive antipsychotic and lithium, a similar affordable bipolar drug are better than blockbuster antipyschotics and bipolar drugs that created Pharma’s 2000′s bubble.

Before the Vioxx scandal and major settlements over blockbuster drugs like Zyprexa, Bextra, Celebrex, Geodon and Seroquel, being a Pharma rep was probably the next best thing to working on Wall Street. Direct-to-consumer advertising did your pre-sell for you, and all you had to do was show up with your snappy Vytorin tote bag and samples case. Some Pharma reps had their own reception room with ice water, swivel chairs, and laptop ports at medical offices, and most waltzed in to see the doctor right in front of waiting and sick patients. (It didn’t hurt that reps were usually “hotties,” both men or women).

But, by 2011, the bloom had fallen off Pharma reps’ roses. The number of prescribers willing to see most reps fell almost 20 percent, the number refusing to see all reps increased by half, and eight million sales calls were “nearly impossible to complete,” reported ZS Associates.

Blockbuster drugs that were found to be unsafe after their big sales push or even withdrawn altogether, did not help the reps’ credibility with doctors. After the aggressively marketed hormone therapy was linked to high incidences of cancer, stroke and heart attack, Wyeth (now Pfizer) announced it was eliminating 1, 200 jobs and closing its Rouses Point, New York plant where Prempro products were manufactured.

As government and private insurers increasingly say, “You want us to cover what?” about expensive, dangerous drugs that are not even proven effective, Pharma bubble jobs are evaporating. Almost 20,000 jobs have vanished at AstraZeneca, Novartis and Pfizer in the last 12 months alone. (AstraZeneca scrapped 21,600 more since 2007). Meanwhile, Pharma is outsourcing more of its operations to poor countries.

Workers and people willing to be trial subjects are both a bargain in poor countries where many can’t understand drug risks or refuse them if they did (and most can’t afford the very drugs they help sell). In January the Argentinian Federation of Health Professionals accused drug maker GlaxoSmithKline of misleading participants and pressuring poor families into joining a trial for the Synflorix vaccine, which the company says protects against bacterial pneumonia and meningitis, reported CNN. In 2010, 10 deaths occurred during Pfizer and AstraZeneca drug trials at the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre which was ironically built for survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, reports MSNBC. 3,878 workers perished in Bhopal when chemicals leaked at a Union Carbide pesticide plant.

Outsourcing drug manufacturing to cheap venues also contributes to Pharma’s cascade of “quality control” problems in which drugs are mislabeled, contaminated or otherwise made dangerous. It is speculated that Johnson & Johnson’s CEO William Weldon “was pushed to retire because of all of the quality issues at McNeil as well as with the company’s hip implant products, which have resulted in a raft of litigation,” reports FiercePharma.

Like the Wall Street bubble, the Pharma bubble was built on products that industry, but not the public, knew were risky, sold for quick profits. Now regulators are examining some of these “assets” more closely and with disturbing findings. The FDA now warns that bestselling statin drugs like Lipitor and Crestor, even approved for children, are linked to memory loss and diabetes associated with. The equally well selling proton pump inhibitors like Nexium and Prilosec for acid reflux disease (GERD) are now believed to increase the risk of bone fractures by 30 percent.

In March, the FDA even rejected a Merck drug that combines the active drug in Lipitor with the active drug in Zetia and Vytorin, a drug that Forbes calls Son of Vytorin. Vytorin (the father) was advertised to treat both food and family “sources of cholesterol” until results from a study that Merck and Schering-Plough appeared to withhold from regulators showed the drug had no effect on the buildup of plaque in the arteries (believed to correlate with heart attack and stroke). There was such a gap between marketing and science, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked the General Accounting Office to investigate why the FDA was approving “drugs that appear to have little to no effect in protecting lives and increasing health.”

Yet even as clouds develop over Pharma’s top-selling drugs, some say the FDA is too hard on new drugs, not too easy. “The FDA is impeding useful innovations in the U.S.,” says former FDA deputy commissioner Scott Gottlieb in the a Wall Street Journal oped, and lagging behind other countries. Former FDA commissioner Andrew Von Eschenbach, also writing in the WSJ, agrees. The FDA should improve U.S. drug competitiveness by allowing drugs “to be approved based on safety, with efficacy to be proven in later trials,” while the public is already taking the drugs. Isn’t that what’s happening now? (Insane!--jef)

Drugmakers have paid $8 billion in fraud fines

By Kelly Kennedy, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – The nation's largest drugmakers have paid at least $8 billion in fines for repeatedly defrauding Medicare and Medicaid over the past decade, but they remain in business with the federal government because they are often the sole suppliers of critical products, records show.

Pfizer, the maker of drugs that help alleviate arthritis and other ailments, has paid almost $3 billion in fines since 2002 and entered into three corporate integrity agreements with the Department of Health and Human Services aimed at preventing future fraud. It and other companies are fighting attempts by Congress to exclude them from government business because of their history of fraud.  Pfizer spent $12 million lobbying Congress in 2011.

Merck, another pharmaceutical giant, paid $1.6 billion in fines since 2008, Medicare and Justice Department records show, to resolve claims it was not paying proper rebates to the government.

Pfizer's 2009 settlement was for improperly promoting the use of drugs for purposes other than those for which they were approved by the government. Merck's 2008 settlement involved claims the company paid illegal kickbacks to health care providers in exchange for prescribing its drugs.

Government investigators say their hands are tied with the tools they have. They can exclude Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies from providing medications to Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries as punishment for bad behavior, but that would leave beneficiaries without drugs patented through a particular company.

Or they can fine the companies and force them to enter corporate integrity agreements that require government oversight and a promise not to defraud the government again — a promise that often goes unkept.

"We're seeing some of the big companies a second and third time," said Gregory Demske, assistant inspector general for legal affairs for Health and Human Services. "The corporate integrity agreement is not sufficient to deter further misconduct."

In addition, the cases are labor- and cost-intensive as the companies fight often for years to avoid an exclusion, Demske said.

To try to change that trend, the government announced in 2010 that, rather than exclude an entire company, investigators would go after individuals within a company. Demske said his organization, the Justice Department and the Food and Drug Administration have come up with some ideas to use within the scope of the rules — such as taking away a company's patent rights as a condition of a settlement. That could begin with cases being investigated now, he said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced a bipartisan bill that would make it easier for the government to find a middle ground, saying the law now forces "the inspector general to use all-or-nothing, mandatory exclusion penalties against corporations that have committed fraud." The bill would allow the exclusion of individuals from working with the government even after they've left the company where the fraud occurred.

Pharmaceutical companies altogether spent more than $200 million lobbying Congress in 2011, including $12 million spent by Pfizer. At least 12 pharmaceutical and medical device companies are lobbying specifically against a House bill, HR 675, that complements Grassley's.

None of the pharmaceutical companies —Abbott Laboratories, Pfizer or Bristol-Myers Squibb— contacted by USA TODAY responded to questions about their response to the government's proposed enforcement actions.

The industry's trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, says excluding an individual should occur only when there is "significant wrongdoing" that the individual knew about and did nothing to stop, said Matthew Bennett, the group's senior vice president.

The Creepy Ways Big Pharma Peddles its Drugs

Big Pharma uses ads that sow hypochondria, raise health fears and sell diseases to adults and their children. 

By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet
Posted on January 9, 2012

(Editor's Note: You can view the ads throughout the story and can click on the ad to enlarge it.)

It's no secret that advertising works. Big Pharma wouldn't spend over $4 billion a year on direct-to-consumer advertising if it didn't mean massive profits.

What is more unknown is why drug ads that sow hypochondria, raise health fears and "sell" diseases are often the most common--and effective--even when the drugs themselves are of questionable safety.

The nation's fourth most frequent drug ads in 2009 for were Cymbalta, making Eli Lilly $3.1 billion in one year, despite the antidepressant's links to liver problems and suicide. Pfizer spent $157 million advertising Lyrica for fibromyalgia in 2009, despite the seizure pill's links to life-threatening allergic reactions. The same year, it spent $107 million advertising the antidepressant Pristiq, even though it also had links to liver problems.

So, how does Pharma dupe us into using unsafe drugs? Today's drug ads, targeted directly to consumers since 1999, seem like they sell diseases and often cast women, children, the elderly and mentally ill in a bad light. But a quick look at ads before direct-to-consumer advertising (DTC) in medical journals shows that drug ads have always done so. It's just that patients didn't used to see them.

Here are some of Pharma's most offensive ad campaigns, then and now.

1. You're Sicker Than You Think

When psychiatric drugs first became popular for use in the general population, in the late 1960s, everyday personality problems became imbued with psychiatric labels. "Lady, your anxiety is showing (over a coexisting depression)," says a 1970 ad, showing an older, wrinkly woman in a bouffant wig with gigantic sunglasses and garish jewelry. "On the visible level, this middle-aged patient dresses to look too young, exhibits a tense, continuous smile and may have bitten nails or overplucked eyebrows," says the ad copy. "What doesn't show as clearly is the coexisting depression."

The ad, both sexist and ageist, suggests the woman needs the antidepressant and tranquillizer Triavil.

Another ad from 1968 shows a bored, upper-middle-class couple whose hauteur is also said to really be depression. "Do you have patients who try to hide frustration behind conformity?" says the ad for the antidepressant Aventyl HCl.

You'd think such demeaning ads would vanish with DTC advertising because people would be offended. But You're Sicker-Than-You-Think ads are alive and well since DTC advertising and even flowering.

A three-page consumer ad in the late 2000s similarly conveys that everyday psychological traits could actually be dire mental problems that require medication. If you are "talking too fast," "spending out of control," "sleeping less," "flying off the handle" and "buying things you don't need," you could be suffering from bipolar disorder said the ads, which appeared in magazines like People. And here you thought it was the coffee. Accompanying photos of a woman screaming into a phone and contorting her face are so extreme they could come out of the movie Halloween Part II, if the woman were holding a knife.

Psychiatric drugs are not just advertised for everyday personality problems. Pharma is pushing them for everyday pain conditions. Eli Lilly's original depression campaign for the antidepressant Cymbalta, "Depression Hurts," seems to anticipate its subsequent approval for pain conditions including back problems. Now ads tout Cymbalta as a "non-narcotic, once daily analgesic FDA approved for three indications across four different chronic pain conditions," as if it does not have severe controversial psychiatric risks including the suicide of volunteers who tested it.

And seizure and epilepsy drugs, known for major allergic and psychiatric reactions, are also becoming pain franchises. "What's causing your chronic widespread muscle pain?" asks an ad for the seizure and epilepsy drug Lyrica. "The answer may be overactive nerves," says the ad, even though "widespread muscle pain" and "over-active nerves," are not mentioned in the approved labeling for Lyrica, says pharmaceutical reporter John Mack. The military spent $35 million on seizure and epilepsy drugs in 2009 alone, including for migraines, headaches and pain.

And speaking of overkill, ads for genetically engineered injected drugs like Humira, approved to treat serious diseases like Crohn's disease, psoriatic arthritis and chronic plaque psoriasis look like they are designed to sell beer or beauty treatments, not immune suppressing drugs that invite cancers and lethal infections.

DTC ads don't just escalate everyday problems into psychiatric problems, they also escalate real psychiatric problems into irresponsible, sensationalistic stereotypes. Ads for the best-selling antipsychotic Risperdal, widely used in children, and in soldiers with PTSD, suggest that people with mental illness have hallucinatory fears about "boiling rain" and "dog women." The "dog woman" ad, showing a half-dog, half-woman crouched on her elbows, her eyes blackened, furthers the sensationalizing of mental illness with the tagline, "Because relapses are a living nightmare."

2. Your Kid Is Sick 

DTC ads don't just convince people they're in need of new drugs, but also that their kids may be, too. And it's been going on for decades.

Long before Pharma convinced parents, teachers and clinicians that millions of US kids had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), kids were said to suffer from "minimal brain dysfunction" (MBD) and "hyperkinesis," two conditions that were essentially the same as ADHD. In fact, so many kids had MBD by 1976 that an ad for the drug Cylert hailed the "Importance of single daily dose to the child, the parents and the teacher," because kids wouldn't have to be singled out anymore at pill time at school. (ADHD has been so huckstered, a YMCA ad spoofs it with the headline, "Before video games, before Facebook, before Ritalin, there was basketball.")

Yet neither Cylert--whose approval the FDA withdrew in 2005 because of liver failure and deaths--or the current ADHD drugs are safe. In 2009, researchers reported that kids are more likely to die sudden deaths while taking them and the American Heart Association recommends electrocardiograms (ECGs) before kids take them. And yet, combined sales of ADHD drugs continue to grow from $4.05 billion to $7.42 billion in 2010.

Thirty years ago, it certainly looked like kids were being overmedicated. They were given the antipsychotic Thorazine for their "hyperactivity," "hostility," sleep problems and even for vomiting. Picky eaters and kids who wet the bed were given tranquillizers. Kids with tics, stuttering and school phobia were given the tranquillizer Miltown.  

But today, ads promoting drugs for kids continue, and now they are aimed at parents. Sometimes, it's hard to tell the difference between ads for drugs or ads for sugary cereals! Pharma tells moms to give their kids the bubble gum-flavored ADHD med, LiquADD and the grape-flavored ADHD med, Methylin. The latter campaign, to parents, is "Give 'em the GRAPE!"

DTC advertising has also convinced parents their kids suffer from GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) otherwise known as acid reflux disease, which was barely a disease in adults much less kids, before consumer advertising. "GERD Can Be a Big Problem for Little Kids," say award-winning ads for Prevacid, which won a "RX Club" Silver award in 2004. In Europe, kids are treated for another "adult disease" and given chewable Liptitor to lower their cholesterol.

Some of Pharma's most aggressive advertising has been designed to convince parents their children's minor sniffles or wheezing are imminent asthma and require immediate and expensive drugs. To make the asthma drug Singulair (which also comes in a yummy chewable), the seventh most popular drug in 2010, Merck inked partnerships with the American Academy of Pediatrics and Scholastic, both of which parents consider neutral organizations and not Pharma mouthpieces. Merck also partnered with Olympic gold-medalist swimmer Peter Vanderkaay and NBA kid clubs to sell the asthma drug.

"A kid who's got what your kid's got is out doing what your kid's not," says one Singulair ad campaign. "Find out how you can help your child breathe a little easier."

If Singulair were not harmful, the huckstering would simply be a case of wasting money and overmedicating kids. But Singulair has been linked to both pediatric suicide and to emotional, behavioral and ADHD-like symptoms in kids, the latter likely inspiring parents to give their kids "the grape."

Of course, another kid-targeted campaign is for the vaccine against the sexually transmitted Papillomavirus or HPV, immortalized by Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann in hot exchanges this fall. Many object to the sexualizing of 9-year-olds, to government lining Pharma's pockets by promoting the vaccine (including overseas) and to the risks of the vaccines themselves. But the ads for Gardasil and Cervarix are also offensive.

Last spring, poster-sized ads for Gardasil on Chicago's commuter trains pretended to sell real estate in sought-after neighborhoods. A closer look revealed descriptions of women in those neighborhoods who thought they didn't need the HPV vaccine but did, positioning HPV not only as a general risk to the population, like flu, rather than an STD but as "hip."

HPV vaccine ads got even cooler when GSK rolled out Cervarix extravaganza TV ads and its "armed against cervical cancer" campaign with an Angelina Jolie-like model displaying a skinny arm with a Cervarix tattoo.

3. Be Like Me, and Can Your Beer Do This?

Prescription drugs may affect health, but they are still consumer products sold with the same marketing principles as toothpaste or beer. In fact, the wacky, "Can Your Beer Do This?" Miller Lite campaign of the 1990s, came back to life to sell the antidepressant Wellbutrin XR. In a glossy, color magazine ad, a young man rows his girlfriend on a scenic lake and lists the benefits of his Wellbutrin XR. "Can your medicine do all that?" he asks.

What does it say about the success of DTC advertising that people are assumed to have an antidepressant?

Experiential ads also sell prescription drugs like vintage ads for the "Kodak Moment," "Maalox Moment" and the old cigarette ads for the "L&M Moment" did. "Lunesta Sleep. Have You Tried it?" asks a 2007 ad in Parade magazine, elevating the experience to something akin to "designer sleep."

And just as celebrities move other consumer products, they have been deployed to sell prescription drugs. TV personality Joan Lunden and former baseball star Mike Piazza stumped for the allergy pill Claritin, ice skater Dorothy Hamill and track star Bruce Jenner for the pain pill Vioxx, and Sen. Bob Dole for Viagra. NASCAR figure Bobby Labonte also endorsed the antidepressant Wellbutrin XL in 2004. Yes, his medicine could "do all that."

But there has been a problem with celebrity drug endorsements, unlike product endorsements in which a celebrity like Tiger Woods or Martha Stewart could taint a product, a prescription drug can taint a celebrity! Did Dorothy Hamill know that Vioxx doubled the risk of heart attacks in users when she stumped for it? Did the model Lauren Hutton know that hormone replacement therapy causes a 26 percent higher incidence of breast cancer, a 29 percent increase in heart attacks, a 41 percent increase in strokes, and a doubling of the rate of blood clots when she shilled for it? Does actress Sally Field know that bone drugs like Boniva are linked to esophageal cancer, jaw bone death and the very fractures they are supposed to prevent as she pushes them?

Of course, good product marketing includes public relations. When Pharma sells a disease with no mention of the drug it is really selling, it's called "unbranded" advertising. Since DTC advertising, Pharma has invaded public service announcements (PSAs) that TV and radio stations confer for free, pretending their take-a-drug messages serve the public good, like messages to change smoke detector batteries or put kids in car seats.

One such "educational" "awareness" campaign called "Depression Is Real" saturated the radio air waves in 2011, funded by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which was investigated by Congress for its Pharma funding from Wyeth, part of Pfizer, and other groups. The high-budget ads, running for free, compare depression to diabetes because it doesn't go away and to cancer because it can be fatal.

4. One Kind of Ad You Won't See Anymore

Animal research at drug companies and the National Institutes of Health is a great scientific iceberg of which people only see a tip. In drug development, millions of animals die to prove a drug's "safety." At academic and medical centers, animal study grants from NIH provide millions to researchers and labs.

As sentiment grows against animal experiments and the government's gigantic National Primate Research Centers (new rules will limit the use of chimpanzees), the research is downplayed and even hidden. But there was a time when Pharma actually flaunted animal research.

"More than a decade of animal research on various animal species has suggested that Librium (chlordiazepozxide HCI) exerts its principal effects on certain key areas of the limbic system," says an ad from the 1970s, showing three monkeys crouching and dangling in cages as assorted experiments are conducted.

An ad for the diet pill Pre-Sate is even worse. It says, "one of the most sophisticated comparative animal studies ever conducted demonstrates direct action on the satiety centers," and shows five photos of cats in experiments. One shows a life-size white cat looking at the camera with a chain around its neck and invasive instrumentation embedded in its skull.

Today's consumers, it seems, wouldn't tolerate ads like these. (Or the experiments behind them.) Why do they tolerate derisive ads about "dog women" and ploys to market pharmaceuticals to kids as if it were candy?

Merck Pays a Pittance for Mass Deaths

 (Maybe the biggest corporate/political lie out there is that pharmaceutical companies are these hard working scientists toiling to find a cure for every ailment known to man. People believe pharma is here for us, to make us better when we get sick.  They are sanctioned drug dealers who can get away with anything they want because they have billions of dollars to throw at any problem that could arise, any politicians who can be bought for the right price, and any pusillanimous, pretend regulatory agency like the impotent FDA, manned by future employees of big pharma once they leave "public service." 

The biggest joke is on sick people who desperately need something to feel better, to heal, and they have no choice (it seems to them) but to put all their faith in big pharma's latest, newest drug trial. When people stopped taking the anti-psychotic Orap (Pimozide) due to its horrible side effects, its makers had it reclassified as an anti-depressant so that they could milk it for more profits. The side effects of it range from akathisia (inability to sit still or stay in one place), tardive dyskinesia (repetitive, uncontrollable body movements) , and,possibly, neuroleptic malignant syndrome to death. They prescribe it to people with delusions, too. 

The drug companies exist to make huge mountains of profits. There's no money in curing any disease because diseases are huge money makers, especially cancer. A drug company, hospital and insurance company can milk hundreds of thousands of dollars out of one cancer patient. Oh, and these guys are very generous donors to political campaigns...no one can offer as much money to a campaign except for the banks.

And finally my point: so is it any wonder at all to any reasonably thinking human being that Merck would actually be punished? No one goes to jail, no one loses their job--even though there were numerous deaths--maybe conspiracy to commit murder, or voluntary manslaughter. And we keep taking each and every new pill they shit down the pike... and that fine amounts to nothing t=for a company that routinely clears billions of dollars per year net profit.

"This one will work! Oh,no! Maybe this one? Ahhhhh nooo, well something's gotta work! how about this one? Ooooohhhh..." And it's obvious that they only make things worse. --jef)

The VIOXX Settlement

by FRED GARDNER

Q: Who killed more Americans —al Qaeda crashing airplanes into the World Trade Center, or Merck pushing Vioxx?
A: Merck, by a factor of 18.

One of the most downplayed stories of our time ended with a whimper this week.  “Merck has agreed to pay $950 million and has pleaded guilty to a criminal charge over the marketing and sales of the painkiller Vioxx,” the New York Times reported Nov. 23 (in the business section, where important medical news is usually found).  The pharmaceutical giant copped to a misdemeanor: urging MDs to prescribe Vioxx for Rheumatoid Arthritis prior to 2002, when the Food & Drug Administration approved its use for that disorder.

The FDA had initially approved Vioxx (after a hasty “priority review”) in May, 1999 to treat osteoarthritis, acute pain, and menstrual cramps.  By September 30, 2004, when Merck announced its “voluntary recall,” some 25 million Americans had been prescribed the widely hyped drug. Evidence that using Vioxx doubled a patient’s risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke —based on a review of 1.4 million patients’ records— was about to be published in Lancet by David Graham, MD, an FDA investigator.  The FDA director’s office, devoted valet of Big PhRMA, had contacted the Lancet in a futile effort to stop publication of their own scientist’s findings.

Graham’s data indicate that 140,000 Americans suffered Vioxx-induced heart attacks and strokes; 55,000 died, and many more were permanently disabled. The Merck executives’ real crime was conspiracy to commit murder.

Some 3,000 Americans died in the attack on the World Trade Center. The murders perpetrated by Merck executives were not as dramatic, obviously, but were every bit as intentional. An early clinical trial had alerted them to the fact that Vioxx caused coronary damage. Their response was to exclude from future trials anyone with a history of heart trouble!

Once Vioxx was approved, Merck spent more than $100 million a year advertising it.  (You may still remember the tune to “It’s a beautiful morning…”) Merck execs continued to ignore and suppress indications that their new blockbuster was causing strokes and heart attacks.

Sales hit $2.5 billion in 2003. And when brave Dr. Graham first presented his irrefragable evidence to an FDA advisory committee in February 2004, Merck argued that the “unique benefits” of Vioxx warranted its remaining on the market. The FDA committee voted 17-15 to keep it available with a black box warning. Ten of the 32 committee members had taken money from Merck, Pfizer or Novartis (which were pushing drugs similar to Vioxx) as consultants.  If these MDs had declared their conflicts of interest, Vioxx would have been pulled from the market by a vote of 14-8. By buying an extra seven and a half months, Merck made an extra billion or two, and killed 6,000 more Americans.

Worldwide, Vioxx was used by 80 million people. Assuming their dosages were similar to the 1.4 million Kaiser Permanente patients whose records Dr. Graham analyzed, the death toll exceeds 420,000.

The great selling point to doctors —and the original rationale for developing “Cox-2 inhibitors” such as Vioxx and Celebrex— was their supposed safety compared to aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatories such as ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil) and naproxen (Aleve), which can cause gastrointestinal bleeding and peptic ulcers in some people. (There was no evidence that Cox-2 inhibitors were more effective than NSAIDs at reducing pain and inflammation.)

The NSAIDs work by inhibiting production of an enzyme, Cyclooxygenase, that helps make compounds called prostaglandins that facilitate the inflammatory response and protect the stomach lining (among other functions).  In the 1980s a researcher named Philip Needleman discovered that the body makes Cyclooxygenase in two forms —Cox-1, found in normal tissue, and Cox-2, which is more prevalent in damaged tissues associated with arthritis. The drug companies hoped that a compound that inhibited only Cox-2 production would reduce inflammation without gastric side effects. With 40 million Americans suffering from some form of Arthritis, an easier-on-the-stomach painkiller would mean blockbuster sales. And so they invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the ’90s developing compounds that would inhibit Cox-2 production, and arranging clinical trials to convince the FDA that such drugs were an improvement over the existing alternatives.

And now a word from our sponsor
If Cannabis and Cannabis-based medicines had been among the alternatives, the market for Vioxx et al would have been much smaller. (And if codeine wasn’t semi-prohibited, the market would have been smaller still.) How many drugs would lose significant market share if Cannabis-based options were available? Enough so that the pharmaceutical industry would quickly follow the housing sector down the drain.  Which is why Wall Street cannot allow legalization of the plant for medical use.

It may turn out that a cannabinoid produced by the plant, cannabidiol (CBD), exerts its anti-inflammatory effects by means of Cox-2 inhibition. A recent study shows that Cox-2 plays a role in breaking down one of the cannabinoids produced by the body, 2-AG. The breakdown product is a precursor to neuroinflammatory prostaglandins.

Let the punishment fit the crime
In 2007 Merck paid out $4.85 billion to settle claims by 27,000 Vioxx victims and their survivors. “The reason ‘so few’ people filed lawsuits,” a physician explains, “is that there is a significant background rate of heart attack. People may not have recognized their event as being related to Vioxx.”  The survivors of people who smoked cigarettes, were overweight or had other risk factors would have been discouraged by lawyers from filing claims, he added, because they’d have a hard time convincing jurors that their loved ones’ heart attacks were brought on by Vioxx use.

“No person was held liable for Merck’s conduct,” Duff Wilson of the Times reported Nov. 23.

To be fair-and-balanced in an otherwise Merck-friendly story, he quoted Erik Gordon of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, commenting “It’s just a cost of doing business until a pharmaceutical executive does a perp walk.”

That sounds tough but it isn’t.  Marketing dangerous drugs would still be “just a cost of doing business” to profit-driven corporations if a few individual execs were made to do time at Camp Fed. Why shouldn’t they be charged with conspiracy to commit murder, along with every accessory to the crime that a thorough investigation could identify? (This could provide meaningful work for the currently useless Drug Enforcement Administration.) The Vioxx conspiracy involved researchers who skewed data and sales execs who framed false pitches and government officials who tried to silence whistleblowers and God knows who else… If somebody is killed in a botched robbery at a Seven Eleven, the kid driving the getaway car is charged with homicide. But Merck’s CEO throughout the Vioxx era, Ray Gilmartin, left the company in 2006 with a golden parachute and joined the Harvard Business School faculty. The class he teaches is called “Building and Sustaining Successful Enterprises.”

A more effective way to counter deadly corporate fraud would be for the government to simply stop doing business with entities convicted of major crimes. If MediCare and state Medicaid programs stopped buying Merck or Pfizer drugs for, say, five years, it just might produce the result that we, the people, require.

The day before the Vioxx settlement was reported, the Wall St. Journal ran a story (in the Marketplace section) under the headline “Pfizer Near Settlement on Bribery.”  The corporate boo-boo in this instance involved pay-offs to doctors who purchase drugs for state-owned institutions overseas. Johnson & Johnson recently settled a similar bribery case. Merck, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and GlaxoSmithKline are all in settlement negotiations with the government.

On the home front, Pfizer has paid $2.3 billion for violating the federal False Claims Act and bribing institutional purchasers in connection with Bextra, Lipitor, Viagra, Zithromax, Norvasc, Lyrica, Relpax, Celebrex, and Depo-provera.

The systemic corruption is getting worse.  In the 15 years between 1991 and 2005, according to Public Citizen, drug companies paid the government $5 billion in penalties and settlements in connection with kickbacks and false claims. In the five years between 2006 and 2010 the pay out was $14.8 billion.  Four companies accounted for more than half the blood money ($10.3 billion): Glaxo, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Schering-Plough.

In recent years the drug industry has surpassed the “defense” industry as the top defrauder of the federal government under the False Claims Act.

Where is zero tolerance when we need it?

FDA Rejects Merck’s Attempt to Expand Deadly Gardasil to Older Women

By Anthony Gucciardi
Activist Post

October 7, 2011

The Food and Drug Administration, a very pro-vaccine government organization, has stopped Merck’s attempts to increase the approved age range for death-linked HPV vaccine Gardasil to 45. It appears that even the FDA is concerned about the effects of the Gardasil immunization, which has been tied to over 49 deaths along with countless negative reactions that have led to hospitalizations and crippled health.

The FDA stated that clinical data presented by Merck, the creator of the vaccine, failed to show that Gardasil effectively prevented infections in women 27 to 45 years old. This is particularly shocking due to the fact that pharmaceutical companies oftentimes illegally alter the numeric turnouts of studies regarding the effectiveness and safety of their drugs and immunizations. What this means is that in the event Merck smeared the results, they were still unconvincing enough to pass by the FDA, an agency that allows for genetically modified foods to be consumed by United States despite the warnings of health experts and major studies worldwide.

The rejection will also lead to changes on the Gardasil label. The label will now state that the product ”has not been demonstrated to prevent HPV-related cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 2/3 or worse in women older than 26 years of age,” says Merck.

Gardasil is dangerous and ineffective at all ages

Gardasil, of course, is highly ineffective and unsafe at any age. One recently compelling piece of evidence against the Gardasil vaccine is the finding of rDNA inside the vaccine vials. SANE Vax, a vaccine research organization, tested vials of Gardasil to get a better understanding as to why the vaccine has resulted in so many deaths and adverse health reactions. What they found was that more than a dozen of the Gardasil vaccine vials studied were contaminted with the rDNA of the human Papillomavirus Virus (HPV).

This rDNA is not naturally occurring, and has serious implications. It is the result of genetically modified HPV virus, meaning a heavily altered form of HPV is actually added to the vaccine during its manufacturing process.

In addition, the vials were not only found within the United States. Vials were also collected from Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Poland and France.

Dr. Lee, the pathologist who ran the tests, explained:

Natural HPV DNA does not remain in the bloodstream for very long. However, the HPV DNA in Gardasil is not ‘natural’ DNA. It is a recombinant HPV DNA (rDNA) — genetically engineered — to be inserted into yeast cells for VLP (virus-like-particle) protein production. rDNA is known to behave differently from natural DNA. It may enter a human cell, especially in an inflammatory lesion caused by the effects of the aluminum adjuvant, via poorly understood mechanisms. Once a segment of recombinant DNA is inserted into a human cell, the consequences are hard to predict.

Children are being injected with genetically modified forms of the very virus that Gardasil seeks to “treat” with unknown consequence. With possible mutation of affected cells, the HPV rDNA may cause irrevocable damage to young bodies worldwide, in addition to the deaths and other side effects it has already been linked to. Stay away from this vaccine.

Why It Would Be Really Bad If Rick Perry Runs for President

Rick Perry hasn't officially declared his candidacy, but ads are already on the air in Iowa. Here's why you should be worried he might run for president.

By Sarah Jaffe, AlterNet

Posted on August  2, 2011

"Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention." - Molly Ivins

Texas Governor Rick Perry has been flirting with the idea of running for president for months now. While the three-term Republican has danced around an official announcement, ads calling him “a better option” are already airing on Fox News (naturally) in Iowa, funded by the political action committee “Jobs for Iowa.” Related super PACs have been created in South Carolina and Florida.

The governor Molly Ivins called “the Coiffure” has claimed he's brought jobs to Texas, passed a laundry list of conservative dream legislation, and managed to become the longest-serving governor in the history of the state. With a relatively lackluster—or outright strange--Republican field this year, Perry appears to have a better-than-most shot at capturing the nomination, bringing not only conservative and Christian credentials but a veneer of respectability and accomplishment that candidates like Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain lack.

As Perry oozes toward an announcement—he says he's waiting til after Labor Day—under the pretense that he's fixed Texas' economy and is a more moderate option than Michele Bachmann but a better evangelical base-pleaser than Mormon Mitt Romney, we thought it was a good time to take a look at the Texan. Here are 10 reasons Rick Perry is just as bad as Michele Bachmann—and a whole lot more likely to actually win the nomination.

1. Separation of church and state? What separation?

On August 6, Perry and right-wing evangelical leaders are sponsoring a a prayer rally in Houston's Reliant Stadium dedicated to “the One True God through his Son Jesus Christ.”

Perry's message on the event's website reads:

“Right now, America is in crisis: we have been besieged by financial debt, terrorism, and a multitude of natural disasters. As a nation, we must come together and call upon Jesus to guide us through unprecedented struggles, and thank Him for the blessings of freedom we so richly enjoy.”

Allan E. Parker Jr., the organizer who referred to the rally as for “The One True God,” also wrote that it would be “idolatry of the worst sort for Christians to gather and invite false gods like Allah and Buddha and their false prophets to be with us at that time.”

So much for religious tolerance.

Even Houston-area clergy members have spoken out against the rally's exclusive nature and the extreme figures involved in it, saying in a joint letter, “We are concerned that our governor has crossed the line by organizing a religious event rather than focusing on the people’s business in Austin.”

It's even more out of line if said governor wants to be president.

2. Secession

Before he makes up his mind about being president, Perry ought to decide whether he wants to be a part of the United States.

Back in 2009, during Perry's bumpy reelection race, the governor told a Tea Party crowd:

"There's a lot of different scenarios...We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

Rush Limbaugh was a fan of Perry's statements, and Texas Republicans too. Perry later affirmed his stance, saying:

“We are very proud of our Texas history; people discuss and debate the issues of can we break ourselves into five states, can we secede, a lot of interesting things that I'm sure Oklahoma and Pennsylvania would love to be able to say about their states, but the fact is, they can't because they're not Texas."

3. Keep your Rick out of my uterus

Just like Republicans in Congress and around the country, Rick Perry's opposition to “government intrusion” doesn't apply to women.

Not only that, but a bill to require all women to have an ultrasound before they can get an abortion was the first major bill debated in the House, and was declared an “emergency” by Perry himself.

As Texas State Representative Carol Alvarado noted in that session, the bill's author didn't understand how intrusive his own bill was. She gave the legislature an in-depth description of a trans-vaginal sonogram, which would be required for women eight to 10 weeks pregnant.

“This is not the jelly on the belly that most of you think, she said as she held up a vaginal probe. 'This is government intrusion at its best.'”

The bill has no provision for victims of rape or incest. It does, however, give Perry more social conservative credentials to trumpet on the campaign trail.

In addition to his changing concerns over government intrusion, Perry's also got a bit of a consistency problem where states' rights are concerned--once again, when it comes to women's bodies. Perry recently said he wanted Roe v. Wade overturned so states could decide for themselves. But then he declared his support for a federal constitutional amendment that would overturn Roe and ban abortion nationwide.

Consistency doesn't matter, apparently, when it comes to abortion. But Perry's  assault on female sexuality continued, this time on pre-teen girls:

 He signed an executive order mandating that all 11- and 12-year-old girls in Texas be given the vaccine Gardasil (Merck) for prevention of human papillomavirus (HPV), the most commonly transmitted sexual disease in the United States.

In 2007, the vaccine's manufacturer, Merck, immediately mounted a massive lobbying effort of state legislatures around the country to get Gardasil added to their respective lists of state-mandated vaccines. But in Texas, Gov. Perry chose to bypass the legislature and on Feb. 2, 2007, he issued an executive order making Texas the first state in the country requiring all sixth-grade girls to receive the three-shot vaccination series (which cost about $120 per shot). The move generated a fierce public debate. Conservatives slammed Perry for promoting what they saw as an intrusion by the state into private health decisions of parents and their children.

Many doctors, including Bill Hinchey, the president of the Texas Medical Association at the time, questioned the wisdom of rushing to mandate a drug that had been on the market for less than a year.

 The controversy over Perry's decision deepened as it came to light that his former chief of staff was a lobbyist for Merck and that his chief of staff's mother-in-law, Rep. Dianne White Delisi, was the state director of an advocacy group bankrolled by Merck to push legislatures across the country to put forward bills mandating the Gardasil vaccine for preteen girls.

Roughly 60 state lawmakers called on Perry to rescind the order. He refused. Just six weeks after Perry put pen to paper, the Texas House rebuked him on March 14, 2007, passing HB 1098, overturning his executive order by a vote of 119-21. The Senate followed suit the following month by a vote of 30-1.

"Just because you don't want to offer up 165,000 11-year-old girls to be Merck's study group doesn't mean you don't care about women's health, doesn't mean you don't care about young girls," Republican state Rep. Dennis Bonnen added.

And, in fact, two years later the National Vaccine Information Center issued a report raising serious questions over the harmful side effects of the drug. A few months after that, an editorial on Gardasil in the Journal of the American Medical Association declared that "serious questions regarding the overall effectiveness of the vaccine" needed to be answered and that more long-term studies were called for.

4. Voter ID, please

"This is what democracy really is all about," Perry said, signing Texas's new voter identification bill into law. "It's the integrity of every vote; that every vote counts. Today we take a major step in protecting the most cherished right of Americans."

The bill makes “illegal voting” a felony; it too was an “emergency” item for Perry's third term as governor. It requires a voter to present one of five forms of ID—a drivers' license, military ID, passport, concealed handgun license, or a state voter ID card that Texas must provide.

"I think it's about disenfranchising groups of people who do not historically vote for the Republican Party," State Rep. Dawnna Dukes said when the bill was passed. Black and Latino voters, the elderly and the poor—all typically Democratic constituencies—are disproportionately less likely to have one of those forms of ID and thus to encounter problems at the polls. In a state like Texas, with a large immigrant population, voter ID is not a neutral issue, but rather another obstacle making it less likely people will vote.

Like other governors around the country, Perry pushed for the voter ID bill despite a lack of any proof that “illegal voting” is actually a problem.

5. The great economy LIE

Rick Perry likes to claim—and conservatives like to believe--that Texas' economy is a shining beacon of hope for the country. And it is—if you like your hope low-wage, low-benefit and deficit-ridden.

Texan Jim Hightower wrote:

“...Perry-jobs are really 'jobettes,' offering low pay, no benefits and no upward mobility. In fact, under Rickonomics, Texas has added more minimum wage jobs than all other states combined! After 10 years in office, Gov. Perry presides over a state that has more people in poverty and more without health coverage than any other.”

A miracle!

Of course, that's exactly the kind of job growth the country as a whole is seeing now, and it's just fine with the big-money base of the Republican party. As Joshua Holland wrote in AlterNet recently, even as Texas added those “jobettes,” its unemployment rate magically increased to 8 percent from 7.7 percent—and 23 states have a better employment rate than the miraculous Texas.

So much for that economic miracle. Texas's economy is more of an example of the mess the entire country is heading for unless we see a dramatic change in priorities. 

6. Education

Back in March, the Texas state capitol in Austin saw thousands of protesters descend on the grounds for a rally against a proposed $10 billion—yes, billion—in education cuts to the state. Representatives from 300 school districts, students, teachers, parents, and others marched and called on Perry to use the state's “rainy day fund” to cover the shortfall in schools rather than lay off a projected 189,000 education workers.

Of course, the budget cuts are still coming.
Aside from the impact such layoffs will have on the economy, since a good chunk of the new jobs Perry touts as part of his economic miracle were in schools, there's the actual impact on the state's students. It's not just public schools that take a hit—universities will see their budgets slashed and financial aid eliminated for 43,000 students.

One Texas school attempted to trademark its mascot and sell advertising space on its school buses and Web site in order to raise desperately needed cash. The New York Times called Perry's impending cuts “the largest cuts to public education since World War II."

As Dana Goldstein noted, Texas is a right-to-work state where less than 2 percent of teachers are unionized. There's no big bad teachers' union to be the villain here. Just workers about to be out of jobs, and kids—and the economy--suffering the consequences.

7. Follow the money

The question voters should ask first of any candidate is “Where's the money coming from?” Particularly in the post-Citizens United age, with the birth of the new “super PACs,” groups that can accept unlimited donations from individuals and corporations to pay for political advertising and organizing, campaigns for office are getting expensive and someone's got to be footing the bill.

Since ads for Perry are already airing in Iowa before he's even made up his mind to run, it's worth a look at who's paying for Perry propaganda.

Jobs for Iowa, the PAC paying for the Iowa ads, was registered with the FEC on June 21. Its treasurer is Robert Jentgens, who formerly worked on Mitt Romney's 2008 campaign. Also registered are Veterans for Rick Perry and Americans for Rick Perry, as well as Texas Tea Party Patriots PAC (though after Rick Perry's primary challenge from the Tea Party-backed Debra Medina it might not be fair to assume that they have any interest in Perry).

Americans for Rick Perry raised $193,000 in just eight days in June, the majority of which comes from Harold Simmons, who Dave Montgomery at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram called “a Dallas multibillionaire who is developing a controversial nuclear waste disposal site in West Texas.” They claim another $207,000 in July.

Montgomery noted:

“Environmentalists say that Simmons' donations to Perry and state lawmakers helped fuel approval of the waste disposal site despite concerns over groundwater contamination, but a spokesman for the project said the application was rigorously vetted and approved only after added protections were included.”

Perry's last election campaign, his third, generated more than $77 million in contributions, as Texas allows unlimited individual donations as well. Montgomery wrote that Perry's donors are “the elite of Texas business and industry,” including Simmons and Houston builder Bob Perry (no relation).

Paul Blumenthal at the Huffington Post wrote that the Americans for Rick Perry PAC was the first time a super PAC had been used by supporters for a campaign that doesn't, technically, exist yet. If Perry's well-connected supporters in the energy and finance industries, among others, are this excited about him now, imagine the money that will flow if he actually announces.

8. Drill, baby, drill

Obviously the governor of Texas has some oil connections. But with Perry as a candidate, we're almost certain to have more of the sort of pro-oil, anti-environment rhetoric that suffused Sarah Palin's tenure on the Republican ticket.

After all, when the BP spill was still churning oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Perry called it “just an act of God” and warned against any “knee-jerk reaction” that might include things like halting deepwater drilling until the dangers could be assessed. Unsurprisingly, Perry also got $129,890 from the oil and gas industry for his last reelection campaign.

Increases in oil prices tend to be good for Texas—bringing jobs and a rise in GDP for the state—but they're a drain on the rest of the country. And the last thing the country needs is a president who's more interested in maintaining oil profits than preventing more oil-related disasters.

9. Flip-flopping on immigration

Texas' population has grown 20 percent during Perry's time in office, and much of that growth has been immigration from Latin America. Up until he began toying with the idea of a presidential run, Perry was a moderate on immigration.

Even last year, he criticized Arizona's SB 1070, and way back in 2001 he signed the state DREAM Act into law. So why the sudden change?

Shani O. Hilton at ColorLines writes:

“...Perry’s apparently positioning himself to be a social conservative darling. On immigration, he recently revived a bill that would crack down on so-called 'sanctuary' cities — localities where the government prohibits police officers from asking about the immigration status of legally detained residents.”

The sanctuary cities bill would allow police to inquire about immigration status of any person arrested or detained—even at a routine traffic stop.

It's worth noting that Perry's big business buddies oppose this legislation—and that his willingness to make them angry might just be the clearest sign yet that he's aiming for the national stage.

10. Executing an innocent man

Rick Perry has presided over the execution of 232 people, more than any other governor in history. (The previous record, 152, was held by George W. Bush.) Most of those are forgotten, but a few of them stick out.

Liliana Segura wrote:

“Outside of Texas, the name Cameron Todd Willingham did not mean much to most people until the fall of 2009. In a 17-page article published by The New Yorker magazine, a curious and brave woman, a brilliant fire expert, and an investigative journalist re-opened the case against this man who was put to death for killing his children. The 'classic arson case' was picked apart, revealed to have been based on junk science and a misguided sense of expert intuition. Proof of the flawed fire investigation had been rushed to Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole before the execution, to no avail. Five years later, the article uncovered new evidence to all but confirm what a number of people had suspected for years: That the state of Texas had executed an innocent man.”

Perry's utter lack of interest in examining the evidence of Willingham's innocence shows us something about the man, of course. (It won't be the first time a presidential candidate faces down a questionable execution on the campaign trail. Bill Clinton, back in 1992, interrupted his campaign in New Hampshire to fly home to Arkansas, where a severely mentally challenged man sat on death row. Clinton wasn't going back to stop the execution, though. He was going to preside over it. And one of George W. Bush's first acts as governor of Texas was to reject clemency for a man who had severe brain damage and an IQ of 60. He was executed the evening of Bush's inauguration.)

The Willingham execution might not even be the most controversial example of Perry's execution mania. Just last month, he executed Humberto Leal Garcia Jr., a Mexican citizen, over the objections of the Mexican government, his own president, and the International Court of Justice. Even George W. Bush, in 2005, ordered all states to comply with the international law mandating consular access to officials from their home country for foreign nationals. Rick Perry was the only one not to comply.

For conservatives, all of this is just more red meat. As Megan Carpentier wrote at the Guardian, this execution “won't harm Perry's political career one iota. Sadly, it might even help it.”