Corporate Corruption News Articles

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Across the globe, as mining and oil firms race for dwindling resources, indigenous peoples are battling to defend their lands – often paying the ultimate price. It has been called the world's second "oil war", but the only similarity between Iraq and events in the jungles of northern Peru over the last few weeks has been the mismatch of force. On one side have been the police armed with automatic weapons, teargas, helicopter gunships and armoured cars. On the other are several thousand Awajun and Wambis Indians, many of them in war paint and armed with bows and arrows and spears. The Indians this week warned Latin America what could happen if companies are given free access to the Amazonian forests to exploit an estimated 6bn barrels of oil and take as much timber they like. After months of peaceful protests, the police were ordered to use force to remove a road block near Bagua Grande. In the fights that followed, at least 50 Indians and nine police officers were killed, with hundreds more wounded or arrested. The indigenous rights group Survival International described it as "Peru's Tiananmen Square". "For thousands of years, we've run the Amazon forests," said Servando Puerta, one of the protest leaders. "This is genocide. They're killing us for defending our lives, our sovereignty, human dignity." Peru is just one of many countries now in open conflict with its indigenous people over natural resources. Barely reported in the international press, there have been major protests around mines, oil, logging and mineral exploitation in Africa, Latin America, Asia and North America. Hydro electric dams, biofuel plantations as well as coal, copper, gold and bauxite mines are all at the centre of major land rights disputes.

Note: Click on the link above to read this important article in its entirety. It reports on numerous struggles around the world by indigenous people to protect their livelihoods and traditions from corporate and governmental predation.

The most stunning and least reported news about President Obama's press conference with health industry executives this week wasn't those executives' willingness to negotiate with a Democrat. It was that Democrat's eagerness to involve those executives in a discussion about health care reform even as they revealed their previous plans to pilfer $2 trillion from Americans. That was the little-noticed message from the made-for-TV spectacle administration officials called a health care "game changer": In saying they can voluntarily slash $200 billion a year from the country's medical bills over the next decade and still preserve their profits, health care companies implicitly acknowledged they were plotting to fleece consumers, and have been fleecing them for years. With that acknowledgment came the tacit admission that the industry's business is based not on respectable returns but on grotesque profiteering and waste - the kind that can give up $2 trillion and still guarantee huge margins. Chief among the profiteers at the White House event were insurance companies, which have raised premiums by 119 percent since 1999, and one obvious question is why - why would Obama engage those particular thieves? It's a difficult query to answer, because Obama is a health care mystery, struggling to muster consistent positions on the issue. Listening to a 2003 Obama speech, it's hard to believe he has become such an enigma. Back then, he declared himself "a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program" - i.e., one eliminating private insurers and their overhead costs by having government finance health care.

Note: For lots more on health issues from reliable sources, click here.

The pressures were already immense when David B. Kellermann was promoted to the top financial position at the mortgage giant Freddie Mac last September. Mr. Kellermann's boss and other top executives were ousted when the Treasury secretary seized Freddie Mac and its sibling company, Fannie Mae; others left on their own and were not replaced. Early on Wednesday, Mr. Kellermann went to the basement of his brick home and hanged himself, according to people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to speak. His body was removed five hours later, through a throng of neighbors, television crews and others. "David was such an honest and humble person," said Tim Bitsberger, Freddie Mac"s treasurer until he left in December. "It just doesn't make sense," Mr. Bitsberger said. The roots and causes of suicide are often unclear. It is not known if Mr. Kellermann succumbed to the pressures of his job. But in the aftermath of his death, it is plain that at Freddie Mac, as at many of the companies in the center of this economic storm, there are forces so strong they can overwhelm almost anyone. Mr. Kellermann ... was at the intersection of some of the most difficult issues facing the company. Mr. Kellermann was also working in a poisonous political atmosphere. He was recently involved in tense conversations with the company's federal regulator over its routine financial disclosures. Freddie Mac executives wanted to emphasize to investors that they believed the company was being run to benefit the government, rather than shareholders.

Note: For a revealing archive of reports on the hidden realities underlying the Wall Street bailout, click here.

While American consumers have been struggling, credit card companies have been enjoying a field day. Not only are most of them receiving federal bailout money, but they've been jacking up interest rates (there were rate hikes on nearly 25 percent of accounts between 2007 and 2008) and switching the terms of agreements with consumers. Why the rush to gouge consumers in the depths of a recession? In July 2010, the Federal Reserve will impose new, consumer-friendly disclosure and administrative restrictions on the credit card industry. Scrambling to get ahead of the deadline, the card companies have been raising interest rates, slicing credit lines and, in too many cases, simply dumping customers with little rhyme or reason. Defaults and delinquencies have skyrocketed - and consumers are livid. "It's off the charts in terms of their ire about paying higher interest rates, particularly when their money, as they see it, is being given to the banks to prop them up," said Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough. Speier's staff says her office has been "flooded" with calls from furious constituents. Speier is ... a co-sponsor of HR627, better known as "The Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights." The bill - which has the support of the Obama administration - would prevent card issuers from raising interest rates without advance notice and end the practice of "double-cycle billing" so that consumers do not have to pay interest on debts they've already paid.

Note: For a highly revealing archive of reports on the hidden realities underlying the Wall Street bailout, click here.

With economic activity contracting in 2009's first quarter at the same rate as in 2008's fourth quarter, a nasty U-shaped recession could turn into a more severe L-shaped near-depression (or stag-deflation). The scale and speed of synchronized global economic contraction is really unprecedented (at least since the Great Depression), with a free fall of GDP, income, consumption, industrial production, employment, exports, imports, residential investment and, more ominously, capital expenditures around the world. And now many emerging-market economies are on the verge of a fully fledged financial crisis, starting with emerging Europe. In the meantime, the massacre in financial markets and among financial firms is continuing. The debate on "bank nationalization" is borderline surreal, with the U.S. government having already committed--between guarantees, investment, recapitalization and liquidity provision--about $9 trillion of government financial resources to the financial system (and having already spent $2 trillion of this staggering $9 trillion figure). Thus, the U.S. financial system is de facto nationalized, as the Federal Reserve has become the lender of first and only resort rather than the lender of last resort, and the U.S. Treasury is the spender and guarantor of first and only resort. And even with the $2 trillion of government support, most of these financial institutions are insolvent, as delinquency and charge-off rates are now rising at a rate ... that means expected credit losses for U.S. financial firms will peak at $3.6 trillion. So, in simple words, the U.S. financial system is effectively insolvent.

Note: The author of this insightful analysis, Nouriel Roubini, has a very informative blog, available here.

What allowed some people to see the financial crash coming while so many others missed its gathering force? I put that question recently to Nouriel Roubini, who has come to be known as "Dr. Doom" because of his insistent warnings starting in 2006 that we were heading into a global firestorm. Roubini gave two kinds of answers. The first involves standard number-crunching of the sort that economists routinely do -- and that Roubini just did better and sooner. It's his second answer that's more interesting, because it goes to the heart of what we should take away from this crisis: Roubini decided to discard the assumption of market rationality that underlies most economics and to embrace the psychological insights of what's known as "behavioral economics." Everyone else had those same numbers. Why did Roubini act? The answer is that he decided to trust his gut, which told him there was trouble ahead, rather than Wall Street's "wisdom of the crowd," which -- as reflected in stock prices -- said everything was rosy. He concluded that the markets were not pricing in the degree of risk that was actually present in housing. "The rational man theory of economics has not worked," Roubini said last month at a session of the World Economic Forum at Davos. That's why he and other prominent economists are paying more attention to behavioral economics, which starts from the premise that economic decisions, like other aspects of human behavior, are influenced by irrational psychological factors.

Note: To visit Nouriel Roubini's highly informative blog, click here. For lots more on the financial crisis and bailout, click here.

The U.S. Treasury looks to have overpaid financial institutions to the tune of $78 billion in carrying out capital injections last year, the head of a congressional oversight panel for the government's $700 billion bailout program told lawmakers. Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor, said her group estimated the Treasury paid $254 billion in 2008 in return for stocks and warrants worth about $176 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Warren said the Treasury, under then-Secretary Henry Paulson, misled the public about how it would price them. "Treasury simply did not do what it said it was doing ... They described the program one way, and they priced it another," Warren said at a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee. She added that Paulson "was not entirely candid" in describing TARP's bank capital injection program. Neil Barofsky, another watchdog for the TARP program, told the Senate committee his office is turning to criminal investigations. "That's going to be a large focus of my office," he said. Warren told the banking committee that after three months on the job, her panel is still not getting enough answers from Treasury. She described the bailout as "an opaque process at best." Barofsky raised concerns about potential fraud in one of several programs funded by bailout money -- the Federal Reserve's Term Asset-Backed Loan Facility (TALF).

Note: Was the overpayment by Treasury to Wall Street banks for nearly-worthless assets they created a mistake? Or was it the real, hidden purpose of TARP to pay the banks more for the assets than they are worth? For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities behind the Wall Street bailout, click here.

The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $3.18 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis. When Congress approved the TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight. Now, as regulators commit far more money while refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return, some Congress members are calling for the Fed to be reined in. “Whether it’s lending or spending, it’s tax dollars that are going out the window and we end up holding collateral we don’t know anything about,” said Congressman Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican who serves on the House Financial Services Committee. “The time has come that we consider what sort of limitations we should be placing on the Fed so that authority returns to elected officials as opposed to appointed ones.”

Note: How is it possible that trillions of taxpayer dollars are being thrown around, yet Congress is not being told where the money is going? For revealing information on how the Fed manipulates government, click here.

The Treasury Department is dramatically expanding the scope of its bailout of the financial system with a plan to take ownership stakes in the nation's insurance companies, signaling new concerns about a sector of the economy whose troubles until now have been overshadowed by the banking industry, government and industry sources said. Insurers, including The Hartford, Prudential and MetLife, have pushed the Bush administration to include them in the plan. Many firms have taken losses from mortgage-related securities and other investments and are struggling to replenish their coffers. The new initiative underscores the growing range of problems that Treasury is scrambling to address with the $700 billion allocated by Congress this month. The shape of the plan has changed repeatedly since Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. introduced it last month as an effort to rescue banks by buying their troubled mortgage-related assets. That original mandate has now been pushed aside by a plan to take equity stakes in banks and insurance companies, and other businesses are lobbying to be included. The government has been forced to expand the plan partly because the federal guarantees previously given some institutions, such as banks, have put other companies and financial sectors at a disadvantage, making them less attractive to uneasy investors. The cost of saving the country's largest insurer continues to rise. Senior managers at troubled insurance giant American International Group warned the Federal Reserve yesterday that the company would probably need more taxpayer money than the $123 billion in rescue loans the government has provided.

Note: For lots more highly revealing reports on the Wall Street bailout, click here.

They do not seem the most likely classical music patrons: Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Boeing and Lockheed Martin. But together, these defense contractors are donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to the symphony orchestra in Johnstown, Pa., underwriting performances of Mozart and Wagner in this struggling former steel town. A defense lobbying firm, the PMA Group, even sprang for a champagne reception at the symphony’s opera festival last month. Company representatives say they are being generous corporate citizens. But the orchestra is also a beloved charity of Representative John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, whose Congressional committee hands out lucrative defense contracts, and whose wife, Joyce, is a major booster of the symphony. For the first time, corporations and their lobbyists are being required to disclose donations they make to the favorite causes of House and Senate members, and a review of thousands of pages of records shows the extent — and lavishness — of this once hidden practice. During the first six months of 2008, lobbyists, corporations and interest groups gave approximately $13 million to charities and nonprofit organizations in honor of more than 200 members of the House and Senate. The donations came from firms with numerous interests before the Congress, such as Wal-Mart, the Ford Motor Company, Kraft Foods and Pfizer, and were received by charities ... as well as local groups controlled by members of Congress or those close to them.

Note: For revelations of corporate corruption from major media sources, click here.

A former colleague of the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has pleaded guilty to funnelling millions of dollars in bribes to win lucrative contracts in Nigeria for Halliburton, during the period in the Nineties when Mr Cheney ran the giant oil and gas services company. Albert Stanley, who was appointed by Mr Cheney as chief executive of Halliburton's subsidiary KBR, admitted using a north London lawyer to channel payments to Nigerian officials as part of a bribery scheme that landed some $6bn of work in the country over a decade. Mr Cheney … led Halliburton from 1995 until returning to government in 2000. He had previously been Defence Secretary under the first President George Bush, and the links with Halliburton have been a constant thorn in the side of the current administration as the company has gone on to win billions of dollars of contracts in Iraq and other US military spheres. The corruption scandal … centres on more than $180m channelled into Nigeria via intermediaries between 1994 … and 2004. Prosecutors allege that the payments were vital to a KBR-led consortium securing a succession of construction projects related to a liquefied natural gas plant at Bonny Island, on the Atlantic coast of Nigeria.

Drug companies shower medical school faculty members with pens, pricey dinners, free samples and other inducements to influence their prescribing patterns, an organization of U.S. medical students says. The med students are now trying to erase that pattern by grading their teachers. The American Medical Student Association issued its second annual report card ... on the conflict-of-interest policies maintained at 150 universities that grant a medical degree. California dominated the honor roll. UC Davis, UCSF and UCLA captured three of the seven A grades across the country. But only 15 percent of U.S. medical schools made the top of the class with a grade of A or B, based on their adoption of rules such as barring drug companies from distributing lavish gifts to physicians. Sixty of the schools, or 40 percent, got an F on the student association's 2008 PharmFree Scorecard. The American Medical Student Association started its PharmFree campaign in 2002 after members shared their concerns about interactions they observed between their medical professors and drug industry representatives. The Association of American Medical Colleges in April proposed that all med schools adopt policies to prevent drug marketing efforts from distorting the educational environment. The proposed rules would restrict industry funding of seminars, forbid companies from selecting the recipients of scholarships they fund and strongly discourage medical school faculty members from participating in industry-sponsored speakers' bureaus.

Note: For a treasure trove of important reports on health issues from reliable sources, click here.

A handful of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies are seeking hundreds of patents on gene-altered crops designed to withstand drought and other environmental stresses, part of a race for dominance in the potentially lucrative market for crops that can handle global warming. Three companies -- BASF of Germany, Syngenta of Switzerland and Monsanto of St. Louis -- have filed applications to control nearly two-thirds of the climate-related gene families submitted to patent offices worldwide, according to the report by the Ottawa-based ETC Group, an activist organization that advocates for subsistence farmers. Many of the world's poorest countries, destined to be hit hardest by climate change, have rejected biotech crops, citing environmental and economic concerns. Importantly, gene patents generally preclude the age-old practice of saving seeds from a harvest for replanting, requiring instead that farmers purchase the high-tech seeds each year. The ETC report concludes that biotech giants are hoping to leverage climate change as a way to get into resistant markets, and it warns that the move could undermine public-sector plant-breeding institutions such as those coordinated by the United Nations and the World Bank, which have long made their improved varieties freely available. "When a market is dominated by a handful of large multinational companies, the research agenda gets biased toward proprietary products," said Hope Shand, ETC's research director. "Monopoly control of plant genes is a bad idea under any circumstance. During a global food crisis, it is unacceptable and has to be challenged."

Note: For many disturbing reports on risks from genetic engineering from major media sources, click here.

Faced with an unfriendly Congress, the Bush administration has found another, quieter way to make it more difficult for consumers to sue businesses over faulty products. It's rewriting the bureaucratic rulebook. Lawsuit limits have been included in 51 rules proposed or adopted since 2005 by agency bureaucrats governing just about everything Americans use: drugs, cars, railroads, medical devices and food. Decried by consumer advocates and embraced by industry, the agencies' use of the government's rule-making authority represents the administration's final act in a long-standing drive to shield companies from lawsuits. Of the 51 regulations, 41 came from the Food and Drug Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA. Underlying this bureaucratic version of lawsuit reform is the concept of federal preemption. Rooted in the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, federal preemption refers to circumstances in which federal law and regulation trump state law, in this instance state laws that govern when one person may be held liable for another's injury. An expansive interpretation of preemption leaves little room for consumers to sue, and that is what the national trial lawyers group, the American Association for Justice, says is taking place. Jon Haber, AAJ's chief executive officer, says the agencies are engaging in "a brazen end run around Congress, the Constitution and the states in an effort to let negligent corporations off the hook and knowingly put consumers at risk."

Note: For lots more on government corruption from major media sources, click here.

Windows cleaned by raindrops, white sofas immune to red wine spills, tiles protected from limescale buildup -- new products created from minute substances called nanoparticles are making such domestic dreams come true. Based on tiny particles 10,000 times thinner than a strand of hair, ... nanoparticles are showing up in everything from fabric coatings to socks to plush teddy bears. But some scientists are concerned that these seemingly magical materials are hitting the market before their effects on human health and the environment have been sufficiently studied. The few scientific reports available suggest that nanoparticles can pose a threat to human health and to the environment. For example, fish swimming in water containing modest amounts of fullerenes, soccer-ball-shaped nanoparticles made out of 60 carbon atoms, showed a large increase in brain damage. These are the same types of fullerenes being used in various skin products. From the skin, they can travel through the lymphatic duct system to lymph nodes and eventually end up in organs such as the liver, kidney and spleen. When inhaled, nanoparticles will go deeper into the lungs than larger particles and reach more sensitive parts. Because of that, scientists are particularly concerned about nanoparticles being used in spray products. "We have research showing that as a material shrinks in size, it becomes more harmful to the lungs. Nanoparticles tend to be more inflammatory to the lung, and it seems as if the lung has to work harder to get rid of them," said Andrew Maynard, chief science adviser at the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies in Washington.

Note: For a treasure trove of health reports from major media, click here.

The Food and Drug Administration has ordered Merck & Co. to correct numerous manufacturing deficiencies at its main vaccine plant. The agency ... released a warning letter sent to Merck's chief executive, Richard T. Clark, that states FDA inspectors determined manufacturing rules are not being followed at the plant in West Point, Pa., just outside Philadelphia. The plant, which recalled two vaccines in December over sterility problems, makes a number of children's vaccines and four for adults. The nine-page letter states FDA found "significant objectionable conditions" in the manufacture of vaccines and drug ingredients during repeated inspections from Nov. 26 to Jan. 17. According to the heavily redacted warning letter, Merck officials didn't thoroughly investigate when vaccine batches inexplicably failed to meet specifications, even if batches had been distributed, and some combination measles-mumps-rubella shots that failed "visual inspection for critical defects" were distributed anyway. Production of two vaccines made at West Point — PedvaxHIB, to prevent Haemophilus influenza type B, and Comvax, a combination vaccine for Haemophilus B and hepatitis B — stopped last year and 1.2 million doses of them were recalled after a sterility problem was discovered in October. The plant also makes ProQuad, which protects children against measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox; hepatitis A, hepatitis B and meningitis vaccines for children and adults; and Gardasil, to protect young women against cervical cancer.

Note: For further revelations from reliable sources on the dangers of vaccines, click here.

Last week, it was a $200 billion cash-for-bond swap for the banks. This week, it was a $200 billion bond-for-bond swap for the big investment houses. If they keep this up, pretty soon you'll be able to walk into any Federal Reserve bank and hock that diamond brooch you inherited from Aunt Mildred. Forget all that nonsense about the Bernanke Fed being too timid or behind the curve. In the face of what is turning into the most serious financial market crisis since the Great Depression, the Fed has been more aggressive and more creative in using its limitless balance sheet -- in effect, its ability to print money -- than at any time in history. We can argue till the cows come home about whether this is a bailout for Wall Street. It is -- but only to the extent that it is also a bailout for all of us, meant to prevent a financial and economic meltdown that drags everyone down with it. In broad strokes, we're going through a massive "de-leveraging" of the economy, wringing out trillions of dollars of debt that had artificially driven up the price of real estate and financial assets, and, more generally, allowed Americans to live beyond their means. Fed officials warn that this de-leveraging is nowhere near finished. It's anyone's guess how long this credit crunch will last, but the chances are that we'll have several more market meltdowns and Fed rescues before it's over, probably in the fall. Until then, the dollar will continue to get hammered and stocks will continue their fitful decline. And if the last two financially induced recessions are any guide, it will be well into 2009 before the economy hits bottom, followed by a couple of years of slow growth and "jobless" recovery.

Note: The title of this article is quite revealing. A bailout for the big banks is considered to be a bailout for everyone. If you believe this, we most highly encourage you to read our powerful two-page summary of the banking cover-up available here.

The Food and Drug Administration is set to announce as early as next week that meat and milk from cloned farm animals and their offspring can start making their way toward supermarket shelves. The decision would be a notable act of defiance against Congress, which last month passed appropriations legislation recommending that any such approval be delayed pending further studies. Moreover, the Senate version of the Farm bill ... contains stronger, binding language that would block FDA action on cloned food, probably for years. The FDA has hinted strongly in the past year that it is ready to lift its "voluntary moratorium" on the marketing of milk and meat from clones and their offspring, saying that the science led them to that decision. But public opinion has been negative on the issue, with some saying that not enough safety studies have been conducted and others concerned about the health of the clones, which are far more likely than ordinary farm animals to die early in life. A handful of U.S. companies have pushed for marketing approval. Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group, said she had read the entire 678-page draft risk assessment and found it to be "long on assumptions and short on data, and especially short on the data that are directly relevant to food consumption safety." Of particular concern, she said, was that even though the vast majority of clones die either before birth or soon after, those that survive are deemed normal. She said the FDA should withhold approval at least until it has a regulatory plan in place that will give it an ability to track food from clones and watch for human health impacts. Others have called for mandatory labeling so consumers can avoid products from clones. The FDA has said that lacking any safety concerns, it will not demand such labels. The Agriculture Department has also declared that meat from clones cannot be deemed organic.

Note: For lots more reliable information on how big business takes huge risks with the food we eat, click here.

According to a former AT&T employee, the government has warrantless access to a great deal of Internet traffic should they care to take a peek. As information is traded between users it flows also into a locked, secret room on the sixth floor of AT&T's San Francisco offices and other rooms around the country -- where the U.S. government can sift through and find the information it wants, former AT&T employee Mark Klein alleged Wednesday at a press conference on Capitol Hill. "An exact copy of all Internet traffic that flowed through critical AT&T cables -- e-mails, documents, pictures, Web browsing, voice-over-Internet phone conversations, everything -- was being diverted to equipment inside the secret room," he said. Klein ... said that as an AT&T technician overseeing Internet operations in San Francisco, he helped maintain optical splitters that diverted data en route to and from AT&T customers. One day he found that the splitters were hard-wired into a secret room on the sixth floor. Documents he obtained [from] AT&T showed that highly sophisticated data mining equipment was kept there. Conversations he had with other technicians and the AT&T documents led Klein to believe there are 15 to 20 such sites nationwide, including in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego and Atlanta, he said. Brian Reid, a former Stanford electrical engineering professor who appeared with Klein, said the NSA would logically collect phone and Internet data simultaneously because of the way fiber optic cables are intertwined. He said ... the system described by Klein suggests a "wholesale, dragnet surveillance." Of the major telecom companies, only Qwest is known to have rejected government requests for access to data. Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, appealing an insider trading conviction last month, said the government was seeking access to data even before Sept. 11.

The medicines long used by parents to treat their children's coughs and colds don't work and shouldn't be used in those younger than 6, federal health advisers recommended. "The data that we have now is they don't seem to work," said Sean Hennessy, a University of Pennsylvania epidemiologist. The recommendation applies to medicines containing one or more of the following ingredients: decongestants, antihistamines and antitussives. In two separate votes ... the panelists said the medicines shouldn't be used in children younger than 2 or in those younger than 6. A third vote, to recommend against use in children 6 to 11, failed. The panel's advice dovetails with a petition filed by pediatricians that argued the over-the-counter medicines shouldn't be given to children younger than 6, an age group they called the most vulnerable to potential ill effects. The American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups back the petition. But FDA officials and panelists agreed there's no evidence they work in older children, either. Still, panelists held off from recommending against use in those 6 and older. And some said they feared such a prohibition wouldn't eliminate use of the medicines by parents. "They will administer adult products to their children because they work for them or feel they work for them," said the panel's patient and family representative, Amy Celento of Nutley, N.J. Some of the drugs — which include Wyeth's Dimetapp and Robitussin, Johnson & Johnson's Pediacare and Novartis AG's Triaminic products — have never been tested in children, something flagged as long ago as 1972 by a previous FDA panel. An FDA review found just 11 studies of children published over the last half-century. Those studies did not establish that the medicines worked in those cases, according to the agency.

Note: For a powerful exposé of corporate and government corruption in the health industry, click here.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.