News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
Beginning in 1997, Pharmacia, currently a subsidiary of Pfizer, sought to boost its sales of the drug Genotropin. To that end, the company illegally marketed the drug to spur growth in short children and as an anti-aging drug for adults looking for the fountain of youth. In a nutshell, the off-label marketing scheme included direct payments to doctors, all-expense paid junkets for doctors, financial incentives to distributors and phony consultant contracts to funnel payments for the off-label promotion. As a result of the scheme's success, sales of the Genotropin sky-rocketed and over the years, Medicaid and other public healthcare programs paid millions of dollars for its improper use. The full amount of damage to health care programs is not yet known. "But this much is certain," former Pfizer Vice President turned whistleblower, Dr Peter Rost, says, "Pharmacia turned Genotropin into a cash cow by illegally peddling a dangerous drug to make short kids tall and their grandparents young." Genotropin is a man made human growth hormone approved to treat a limited range of hormonal deficiencies. The FDA has never approved the drug to spur growth for children without hormonal deficiencies or to prevent aging. Dr Rost joined Pharmacia in June of 2001 as a VP of Marketing. On May 22, 2003, Dr Rost became aware of the pervasive nature of ongoing illegal activity. [He then] decided to file a lawsuit ... alleging fraud relating to the off-label marketing of Genotropin and delivered a copy of the complaint to the US Attorney's Office on June 4, 2003.
Note: Read an excellent article on Dr. Rost and other major whistleblowers from the pharmaceutical industry.
More than a half-dozen black churches have burnt to the ground in the American south since the killing of nine black people inside a historic African American church in Charleston, South Carolina, last month. Since the shooting, authorities have ruled at least three of the church fires to be arson. In the wake of those arsons, dozens of religious institutions and nonprofits have raised cash for those churches. To the surprise of some pastors, the recovery effort is being partially led by Jewish and Muslim leaders, who understand both the sanctity of houses of worship and the seriousness of attacks against them. Faatimah Knight, a 23-year-old black Muslim student, has helped organize a group of Muslim nonprofits including Ummah Wide, the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative, and the Arab American Association of New York. With one week left, the crowd-funded campaign has raised more than $58,000 from over 1,300 donors. Rabbi Susan Talve, who heads the Central Reform Congregation in St Louis, Missouri, says a broad coalition of more 150 religious institutions has raised more than $150,000 toward its $250,000 goal to help rebuild black churches. She says the groups involved with the Rebuild the Churches Fund began working together after the death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson. “We believe the church is the heart and soul of a community,” Talve says. “So we wanted to help them out. If you burn them down with hate, we’re going to build them back with love ... better and stronger.”
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Negative consequences, timeouts, and punishment just make bad behavior worse. But a new approach really works. Teachers and administrators still rely overwhelmingly on outdated systems of reward and punishment, rooted in B.F. Skinner's mid-20th-century philosophy that human behavior is determined by consequences and bad behavior must be punished. Far from resolving children's behavior problems, these standard disciplinary methods often exacerbate them. Psychologist Ross Greene, who has taught at Harvard and Virginia Tech, has developed a ... model [that] was honed in children's psychiatric clinics and battle-tested in state juvenile facilities. In 2006 it formally made its way into a smattering of public and private schools. The results thus far have been dramatic, with schools reporting drops as great as 80 percent in disciplinary referrals, suspensions, and incidents of peer aggression. Under Greene's philosophy, you'd no more punish a child for yelling out in class or jumping out of his seat repeatedly than you would if he bombed a spelling test. You'd talk with the kid to figure out the reasons for the outburst, then brainstorm alternative strategies for the next time he felt that way. The goal is to get to the root of the problem, not to discipline a kid for the way his brain is wired. The implications of this new wave of science for teachers are profound: Children can actually reshape their brains when they learn and practice skills. When students are told this is so, both their motivation and achievement levels leap forward.
Note: Ross Greene's inspiring model is detailed in his books The Explosive Child and Lost at School.
A 9-year-old Ohio girl used a lemonade stand this week to help her raise money to buy an electronic tablet to help with schoolwork. Fourth grader Gabrielle Garcar was tending to her lemonade stand Monday at her grandmother's condo building when Zak Ropos stopped by for a cup. When the Lake County sheriff's deputy learned what the girl planned to do with the money she raised ... he headed to Best Buy and purchased [her] a brand-new electronic tablet. "She's 9 years old and she's willing to work for what she wants, and I found that very admirable of her," said Ropos, 22. "I knew her lemonade stand wasn't probably going to bring in enough money for a tablet, but seeing that she was willing to work for what she wanted, I was willing to help her. People have helped me out in my life, so it was kind of like a pay-it-forward type thing." He delivered the device to her the next day, meeting up with the family at the local high school where they were attending football practice for the girl's brother. Ropos, 22, has been with the sheriff's department for eight months. He said he's not sure why his act has garnered so much attention. He works among many generous officers: One of his lieutenants recently donated $200 to a needy family, and two fellow deputies just days ago purchased a bike for a boy who needed help getting to soccer practice. "That's how it is at Lake County. Everyone is caring here," he said.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
An elite group of security technologists has concluded that the American and British governments cannot demand special access to encrypted communications without putting the world’s most confidential data and critical infrastructure in danger. With security breaches and awareness of nation-state surveillance at a record high and data moving online at breakneck speeds, encryption has emerged as a major issue in the debate over privacy rights. Technology companies ... have been moving to encrypt more of their corporate and customer data after learning that the National Security Agency and its counterparts were siphoning off digital communications and hacking into corporate data centers. In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron threatened to ban encrypted messages altogether. In the United States, Michael S. Rogers, the director of the N.S.A., proposed that technology companies be required to create a digital key to unlock encrypted data. The [technology group's] new paper is the first in-depth technical analysis of government proposals by leading cryptographers and security thinkers. In the report, the group said any effort to give the government “exceptional access” to encrypted communications ... would leave confidential data and critical infrastructure like banks and the power grid at risk. With government agency breaches now the norm, the security specialists said authorities could not be trusted to keep such keys safe from hackers and criminals.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corrupt intelligence agencies that erode privacy rights in the U.S. and elsewhere
On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting. The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime. Terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming ... extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.
Note: An article in The Atlantic reveals that the US Congress takes a very strange stance on ISIS. Read more excellent information on the covert origins of ISIS in this revealing essay.
If you turned on US cable news at any point last week, you might have thought this July 4 holiday would be our last weekend on earth – the supposed terrorist masterminds in Isis and their alleged vast sleeper cell army were going to descend upon America like the aliens in Independence Day and destroy us all. CNN has led the pack in whipping Americans into a panic over the Isis threat, running story after story with government officials and terrorism industry money-makers hyping the threat, played against the backdrop of scary b-roll of terrorist training camps. Following the tragedy in Charleston, where a white supremacist terrorist killed nine innocent churchgoers, there was – finally! – widespread acknowledgement that the Islamic terrorism threat in this country is vastly exaggerated, and that white supremacists actually kill many more Americans than Muslim extremists do. As Glenn Greenwald wrote at the time, you are more likely to be struck by lightning, stung to death by bees or killed your own falling furniture on you than you are by a Muslim terrorist. Yet there we were, less than a week later, back to an “Isis is going to kill us all” mentality. Journalist Adam Johnson went back a decade and found 40 ... times the FBI and Homeland Security have issued similar threats around national holidays or major events, none of which actually was followed by a terrorist attack. It’s more than a little disturbing how much CNN and others have seemingly grown to rely on these nebulous warnings to keep viewers hooked.
Note: Read an excellent essay by a top US general exposing how war is a racket. Is this why terrorist fear-mongers always claim that it is the scariest time ever? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the manipulation of public perception.
An investigation by the German parliament is raising questions on whether the Obama administration not only spied on journalists in that country, but also interfered in the exercise of the free press. On Thursday, Germany's intelligence coordinator, Günter Heiss, testified before a parliamentary investigative committee of the German parliament, the Bundestag, focused on the activities of the U.S. National Security Agency's spying on Germany and whether the German intelligence agency BND had any knowledge of it. In 2013, the German magazine Der Spiegel ... first reported that the NSA was intercepting German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone communications. On Thursday, WikiLeaks released more information, presumably from that surveillance, from a conversation between Merkel and her personal assistant in October 2011. The WikiLeaks release also suggested that the NSA was spying on German ministers in addition to Merkel. Less observed this week was news that the NSA was eavesdropping not only on Merkel, but also in some capacity on Germany's free press, specifically Der Spiegel. "It feels bitter to learn that American intelligence agencies spied on reporters in another country and denounced alleged sources to the government," said one reporter involved, who asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions from his government or the U.S. government. "This is something I expected to happen in authoritarian states like Russia or China, but not in a democracy."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in the intelligence community and the manipulation of public perception.
Eric Holder has gone back to work for his old firm, the white-collar defense heavyweight Covington & Burling. Holder will reassume his lucrative partnership (he made $2.5 million the last year he worked there) and take his seat in an office that reportedly was kept empty for him in his absence. At issue is the extraordinary run Holder just completed as one of history's great double agents. For six years, while brilliantly disguised as the attorney general of the United States, he was actually working deep undercover ... as the best defense lawyer Wall Street ever had. After six years of letting one banker after another skate on monstrous cases of fraud, tax evasion, market manipulation, money laundering, bribery and other offenses [by] handing out soft-touch settlements to practically every Too Big to Fail bank in the world, [Holder] returns to a firm that represents many of those same companies: Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup, to name a few. Going by the massive rises in share price observed after he handed out these deals, his service was certainly worth many billions of dollars to Wall Street. Now he will presumably collect assloads of money from those very same bankers. It's one of the biggest quid pro quo deals in the history of government service. Holder ... institutionalized a radical dualistic approach to criminal justice, essentially creating a system of indulgences wherein the world's richest companies paid cash for their sins and escaped the sterner punishments the law dictated.
Note: The revolving door between Wall Street and government officials is well known. But in Holder's case, the corporate door remained wide open throughout his time as a public servant. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the corporate world.
JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay at least $125 million to settle probes by U.S. state and federal authorities that the bank sought to improperly collect and sell consumer credit card debt. The settlement also includes about $50 million in restitution. The nation's largest bank has been accused of ... going after consumers for debts they may not have owed and for providing inaccurate information to debt buyers. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), 47 states and the District of Columbia are expected to announce the settlements as soon as Wednesday. Mississippi and California are not expected to settle at the same time. Both have lawsuits pending against JPMorgan over debt collection practices. California Attorney General Kamala Harris sued in 2013, claiming the bank engaged in fraudulent and unlawful debt collection practices against 100,000 California credit card borrowers over some three years. The state claims the bank flooded state courts with questionable lawsuits, filing thousands every month, including 469 such lawsuits in one day alone. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood's lawsuit filed a similar lawsuit against JPMorgan in 2013. In September 2013, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered JPMorgan to refund $309 million to about 2 million customers for illegal credit card practices, including charging consumers for credit card monitoring services they did not receive.
Note: Read how JPMorgan Chase uses settlements like the ones described above to hide criminal wrongdoing while actually making money in "The $9 Billion Witness". For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about the systemically corrupt financial industry.
A report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last month found that hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas can lead, and has led, to the contamination of drinking water. It was the first time the federal government had admitted such a link. But Gretchen Goldman, a lead analyst at the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union for Concerned Scientists, told the Guardian that the EPA’s study – which is now open for comment – was nothing “more than a literature review” and called for the industry to be required to divulge greater data. Goldman says the EPA backed down from its initial promise to undertake prospective studies, which would have involved following a well site and testing its waters before, during and after fracking activities had begun. Such a study would have shed objective light on the fracking process and pushed scientific knowledge forward, she says. Even when companies were forced to share information through state regulations, they were still allowed to withhold ... the identity and mixture of chemicals that are injected into the ground through wells, together with water, at high intensity to fracture underground rocks and release oil or gas. In 2005 lobbying efforts by the oil and gas industry proved successful, with hydraulic fracturing activities exempted from certain sections of the Safe Drinking Water Act, including permit application.
Note: For more along these lines, read this Los Angeles Times article about how fracking poisons drinking water, and see concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Hydraulic fracturing uses a host of highly toxic chemicals that could be contaminating drinking water supplies, wildlife and crops, according to a report released Thursday by a California science panel. The long-awaited final assessment from the California Council on Science and Technology said that because of data gaps and inadequate state testing, overwhelmed regulatory agencies do not have a complete picture of what oil companies are doing. The risks and hazards associated with about two-thirds of the additives used in fracking are not clear, and the toxicity of more than half, the report concluded, remains “uninvestigated, unmeasured and unknown. Basic information about how these chemicals would move through the environment does not exist.” Seth Shonkoff, lead author on the public health sections of the report, said he was surprised to learn during his research that recycled wastewater from oil fields was being used on crops. “We've got to know what to test for ... to know that what we are putting onto the crops is safe,” he said. “Until we have that data, I don't know how we can assure farmers and consumers that their food is safe.” Among the findings of the report: Oil operations in federal waters offshore are discharging wastewater directly into the ocean, against EPA regulations, more than half the produced water from fracked wells is disposed of in unlined pits, [and] about one-third of the oil field wastewater pits in the Central Valley are operating without proper permits.
Note: For more along these lines, read this Los Angeles Times article about how fracking poisons drinking water, and see concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
"I have a dream today." Those are the words that still echo to this day. But that dream was deferred by a gunshot in Memphis. The date was April 4th 1968. Reverend Charles Sherrod ... knew Martin Luther King Junior as more than a civil rights leader. "I got to know him as a person," said Sherrod. And he says he knows to this very day there's more to his murder. On that day in April at the Lorraine Motel, several people pointed to where the deadly gunshot came from. Reverend Jesse Jackson was one of them. "We were telling the police, you guys are coming this way but the bullet came from that way. Don't come here. Go there," said Jackson. The investigation led to the arrest of ... James Earl Ray. Ray maintained until his death that he took the blame but a man by the name of Raul actually killed King. So who did it? "The government," said Sherrod. Reverend Sherrod says King was getting more radical with his approach to civil rights and people wanted him quieted. "So what happens when he comes to Memphis? There was a breakdown, an intentional breakdown," said Sherrod. Shelby County Criminal Prosecutor John Campbell and a team of investigators spent four years re-examining evidence from the King murder. "We know that J. Edgar Hoover was doing all types of illegal things to Dr. King. We also know that Bobby Kennedy approved ... illegal wire taps. It's not a stretch to say if they were doing that they were certainly capable of killing him," said Campbell.
Note: Watch clips of this news report and a CNN program on a conspiracy surrounding the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination. Then watch an excellent six-minute video clip of a Canadian news program giving an excellent overview of the 1999 civil trial in Memphis which found the U.S. government guilty in the assassination.
Forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot down. The alleged assassin [was] a small time criminal on the run. Some of Dr. King's closest aides believe the full story has yet to be told. From his first days in the civil rights movement, Dr. King lived under the shadow of death - his house bombed in the Montgomery bus boycott, followers killed in Birmingham and Selma. He was stabbed once in Harlem at a book signing. Dr. King's electrifying speech at the March on Washington in August of 1963 had made him the ... the FBI's nightmare, according to the official paper trail. They called him in one of the FBI memos released later "the most dangerous Negro." Pulitzer Prize winner David Garrow ... discovered thousands of these memos while writing his book, "The FBI and Martin Luther King." The memos show an FBI obsessed. Director J. Edgar Hoover sent Attorney General Robert Kennedy [the] warning [that] communists were pulling Dr. King's puppet strings. Fellow minister Ralph Abernathy discovered an FBI bug while speaking at an Alabama church. Hoover ... called Reverend King "the most notorious liar in the country" in a rare 1964 press conference. When Dr. King won the Nobel Prize, the FBI mailed an anonymous package to Dr. King's office [containing sexually explicit recordings along] with an ominous note. There was nothing nervous about him that last day in Memphis. "I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man," King said. He probably never even heard the shot.
Note: Watch clips of this news report and a CNN program on a conspiracy surrounding the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination. Then watch an excellent six-minute video clip of a Canadian news program giving an excellent overview of the 1999 civil trial in Memphis which found the U.S. government guilty in the assassination.
Peter Rost is worked up. The ex-Pfizer senior executive turned blogger believes he has uncovered another instance of unethical marketing by Big Pharma. Rost's blog, Question Authority With Dr. Rost, is one part mocking rant, two parts investigative chronicle. He has also published an exposé of his years in the drug industry, "The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman." Trained as a physician in his native Sweden, Rost has worked in the drug industry for most of the past 20 years. He almost certainly never will again. Rost hopes that Question Authority - named after the Fortune column in which he was once featured - will help him create a new career. Rost's many critics would love to be able to dismiss him as an embittered crank. But they can't. The blog [is] a conduit for Big Pharma whistleblowers [that once prompted] a government probe into Pfizer's marketing activities. And a dispatch on dubious sales practices led to at least one sales director's ouster. For Big Pharma, whose public image is already battered, blogs are an added nuisance. The problem, says Robert Ehrlich, CEO of DTC Perspectives, a health-care marketing consultancy, is that most pharma companies are, "medically oriented and legally oriented ... but as an industry they are not consumer-oriented." For better or worse, the drug industry is going to have to get used to Dr. Peter Rost - and others like him.
Note: Read an excellent article on Dr. Rost and other major whistleblowers from the pharmaceutical industry. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing big pharma corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
Alex Deans has a lot to reflect on this summer. The eighteen-year-old Ontario, Canada native just graduated high school. He’s also changing the way blind people everywhere will be able navigate the world around them. For the past six years, Deans has been working tirelessly on a device now known as the iAid, a navigation system that uses ultrasonic technology and GPS technology to help the visually impaired get where they need to go. The belt-like structure comes with a joy stick and operates using four ultrasonic sensors, which send out sound waves that ricochet off objects and alert the user as to how far away that object is. The idea first came to him at age 12, when he went to help a blind woman across the street. All that was at her disposal was a cane and the option of a guide dog, which is often hard to come by. Dean told Good News Network, “Guide Canes tell you what’s directly in front of you, but they don’t help you figure out where you are in relation your destination and objects that are farther away.” The iAid helps users steer around objects in their vicinity and includes a joystick that swivels in their hands, pointing them in the direction they need to go in. As far as pricing goes, he estimates the device will only cost about $50-$70 per unit, if he can get the cost of materials down. He hopes his invention will one day replace canes and give blind people the ability to maneuver more easily on their own.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Food Forward: Urban Agriculture Across America is a half-hour, character-driven survey of urban farming across the country. John Mooney has a hydroponic rooftop farm on top of a ... building in the West Village of Manhattan. Next, Andrew Coté, President of the New York City Beekeepers Association hawks his honey at the Tomkin’s Square Farmer’s Market in lower Manhattan. Coté explains how urban beekeeping helps to pollinate the urban farms and community gardens scattered throughout the city. Leaving New York, we head to Milwaukee where ... Will Allen inspires a new generation of innovators. Will motivated the folks at Sweetwater Aquaponics into action, scaling up his Telapia farm to more of a commercial operation. We follow the flow of fish from 8,000 gallon tanks in an abandoned warehouse to plate at La Merenda restaurant. Moving on to West Oakland, we get an in-depth look at urban farmer Abeni Ramsey who came from the mean streets of West Oakland but is now running her own crew at City Girl Farms. Finally, we finish in the food deserts, Detroit, MI, where we spend time with eighteen-year-old Travis Roberts, who grew up in Detroit, watching the city watching the city struggle with increasing urban blight. In trouble and more than 100 pounds overweight, he was headed in the wrong direction. But since then, he’s discovered the city’s urban agriculture movement and found a new purpose in life and is out to become an urban chicken rancher.
Note: Don't miss the inspiring video on this exciting development at the link above.
Misshapen potatoes, multi-pronged carrots and past-their-prime apples are coming into vogue. Campaigns aimed at reducing food waste are bringing these fruits and vegetables, previously reserved for hogs, compost piles and landfills, to the forefront of our minds. Dan Barber, co-owner and chef of Blue Hill in Manhattan ... for three weeks this spring turned his prominent eatery into a pop-up he called Waste-ED featuring dishes such as charred pineapple core and “dumpster dive” salad. Forty percent of food in the United States goes uneaten, a statistic that has been widely circulated since the Natural Resource Defense Fund issued a report on the subject in 2012. Many nonprofits and government agencies link that excess to a sobering shortage: the one in six Americans who lack a reliable supply of nutritious food. Taken together, they’re arguably our food system’s worst dichotomy. “We think a for-profit business is the way to solve” food waste, said Evan Lutz, the 22-year-old chief executive and co-founder of Hungry Harvest, a ... program that delivers ugly and excess produce throughout the Baltimore-Washington region. The business spun off last year from a “recovered food CSA” run by the Food Recovery Network, a national nonprofit launched ... to divert food waste from college campuses to feed the hungry. As a for-profit business, Hungry Harvest still works on the hunger side of the equation by donating a pound of produce to food banks and shelters for every pound sold to customers.
Note: Check out the food waste movie.
Outgoing Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has taken the historic step of banning female genital mutilation, a move hailed by campaigners as “hugely important.” The law, which also prohibits men from abandoning their wives or children without providing economic support, was passed by the Senate on May 5 and signed by Jonathan as one of his final acts as president, as his successor, Muhammadu Buhari, was sworn into office on Friday. According to 2014 U.N. data, about a quarter of Nigerian women have undergone FGM, which can cause infertility, maternal death, infections and the loss of sexual pleasure. The practice was already banned in some states, but now it will be outlawed throughout the country. As one of Africa’s cultural and political powerhouses, campaigners are hoping Nigeria will influence other African nations, where FGM is still legal and widely practiced. An estimated 125 million women and girls worldwide — mostly in Africa and the Middle East — are living with the consequences of FGM. While stressing the importance of this new law, campaigners also urged caution, saying it was crucial that not just laws, but also attitudes, had to change in order to bring an end to the practice.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
What if your life depended on a drug that cost half a million dollars a year, every year, for the foreseeable future? That's the price of Soliris, one of the world's most expensive drugs. It is the only medicine available for people suffering from two ultra-rare diseases. And for both diseases, Soliris is not a cure, but ... patients can go back to living normal lives. But only if they can get the drug, and many can't, because it is priced beyond the reach of almost everyone. So how can one drug cost more than the annual income of all but a tiny percentage of households? The reason is ... orphan drug pricing, where actual research and development costs are carefully guarded secrets known only to drug company executives. "Orphan" in this context refers to rare diseases [for which] the patient population was too small to attract the interest of drug companies. But now medications to treat these ultra-rare diseases are becoming more profitable than traditional drugs, because of ... a business model based on extreme pricing. The extreme prices of these new orphan drugs are largely arbitrary, and have very little to do with the development and manufacturing costs. Most drugs are based on scientific discoveries made in publicly funded research labs, by academic scientists. In case of Soliris, most of the research and development was done by university researchers working in academic laboratories supported by public funds. Soliris is Alexion's only drug, but it's a blockbuster, earning revenues of more than $6 billion in just eight years, and making Alexion one of the fastest growing companies in the world.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on pharmaceutical corruption from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our Health Information Center.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.