Send a Tweet
Most Popular Choices
OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 7/5/19

Wikipedia: Silicon Valley's Cult of Medical Misinformation

By       (Page 1 of 4 pages)   2 comments
Author 33708
Message Richard Gale

Reprinted from prn.fm

Copyrighted Image? DMCA

Richard Gale & Gary Null
Progressive Radio Network

Americans are spending more money on diagnostic tests, surgeries and other medical procedures than ever before.

They are also consuming more pills and medications and will receive more treatments than at any other time in US history. Daily we are inundated with television drug advertisements with the reassuring message, "you don't have to fight this battle alone. We are with you." Commercials project image of laboratories, medical research, a handsome physician and sanitized clinics with happy patients in order to strengthen viewers' faith that medical science is progressing. We are left with the feeling that the big drug companies are diligently working on our behalf to discover new and promising cures for life-threatening diseases.

As pharmaceutical public relations and the mainstream media keep this visual charade burnt into our minds, the US is spending a minimum of $3.5 trillion on healthcare. Then there is the citizens' and the economy's burden of an additional $1.5 trillion loss in work and wages due to illness. Five trillion dollars total. Approximately 18 percent of the US GDP. On top of this debt, tens of millions of additional dollars will be spent advertising Big Pharma's message.

And herein lies the fundamental problem. There are more doctors, more hospitals, more drugs and medical procedures than ever before and yet we have not conquered nor made any significant progress in curing any major disease. Instead of making efforts to fund disease prevention and educate the public, prevention has been abandoned altogether. There are volumes of excellent peer-reviewed studies documenting research and clinical experience showing a healthy diet, nutrient supplementation as needed, physical exercise and stress and anxiety management regimens can either completely prevent illnesses or be incorporated into medical treatment protocols successfully. However, there is no profit to be made in prevention.

It is understandable that the pharmaceutical industry would make every effort to keep our medical regime in the forefront; what is less comprehensible on the face value is why Silicon Valley firms such as Google, Wikipedia and Facebook, and the mainstream media, are in league with the drug companies and the CDC to promulgate a false message about health through the internet.

How did we reach this threshold where trillions of dollars have been tossed into an abyss? One reason is that few voices have been able to reach the public to address the widespread corruption in corporate science, especially medicine, agriculture, and environmental issues. Honest, independent science is ignored in favor of proprietary pharmaceutical drugs and genetically modified foods. Fraudulent research has been used to justify nuclear power as a clean green energy. Political officials working on behalf of fossil fuel interests convince us with junk science that hydro-fracking poses no health risks and is environmentally friendly. A single Big Pharma corporation with thousands of employees and billions of dollars in sales and profits is deeply connected to investors, public relations firms, federal health officials and the media. All these external invested parties are in turn dependent upon corporate revenue streams. Money is spent to dominate medical schools to push the conventional drug agenda's regime, or to front groups and foundations to buy off so-called experts to debunk critics. Revenues and pay-to-play donations received by Wikipedia and others are one crucial incentive to account for the corruption and deceit in these Silicon firms. Similarly, drug advertisements to mainstream media networks are little more than payoffs to assure drug companies that objective reporting is negligible that would otherwise put the pharmaceutical company and its medical products into a bad public light.

The benefit Big Pharma receives from hijacking the federal regulators and legislators is protection from the nation's judiciary.

So, when a drug like Merck's anti-arthritic Vioxx conservatively kills over 60,000 patients and injures an additional 130,000, there is no immediate FDA recall and deaths are permitted until the crisis reaches a tipping point and health officials are forced to step in. However, seldom are drug executives prosecuted. Vioxx sales earned $18 billion and Merck only had to pay a $5 billion settlement. Everyone who knew Vioxx was a defective product had engaged in malice aforethought with no deleterious consequences. The company merely paid a fine and returned to business as usual. And the media simply whitewashed the seriousness of Merck's crimes about Vioxx.

Science creates new solutions through genetic engineering of crops, viruses, bacteria, artificial intelligence, geoengineering, 5G wireless technology, etc. These are held in the public's eyes as great achievements. On the other hand, you will not find Wikipedia nor the mainstream media ever highlighting their flaws and greater risks above advertised benefits; and certainly, private corporations will never leak evidence about their risks and dangers. In the medical field, there are FDA requirements that a drug maker provide all the clinical trial results for a new drug or vaccine. If twenty trials are conducted and only five are favorable for getting the product approved, that is all the company is required to provide. The remaining 15 can be kept sealed and hidden.

We are also led to believe that if a scientific invention or studies for a new drug appear in the peer-reviewed literature, they have reached a gold standard. Any controversy has been settled. Consequently, a peer-reviewed paper becomes a scientific law unto itself. However, now it has been confirmed repeatedly that the peer-reviewed journal system is also corrupt. In fact, as we will recount, it is filled with fraud, and it will worsen without any efforts made to reform it. Quite simply there is no concerted will nor ethical standard to improve the peer-reviewed system because too much profit is generated.

Wikipedia editors take full advantage of flawed medical literature if the conclusions serve their purpose and agenda. Google, through its algorithmic modeling to censor voices challenging private medicine's status-quo leave people with no way to determine whether scientific literature is bogus or not. Nor whether the science supporting evidence that a natural product can contribute to treating a disease or that studies and analysis implicating vaccines with a wide range of neurological disorders are accurate. Conclusions, regardless of how unsound and erroneous, is all that matters for Google to protect the global medical regime - not just private drug companies but also government health bodies and international organizations such as the World Health Organization.


During the past six years, Google's parent company Alphabet has launched two pharmaceutical companies. In 2013, it founded Calico, run by Genentech's former CEO Arthur Levinson. Calico operates an R&D facility in the San Francisco Bay Area for the discovery of treatments associated with age-related diseases. Two years later, Alphabet founded Verily Life Sciences (previously Google Life Sciences). Both pharma companies are partnering with other drug corporations. Recently, Verily has partnered with the European pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline to form a new drug company, Galvani Bioelectronics for the development of "bioelectronic medicines." The collaboration is costing the companies $715 million, and the new firm is being chaired by Glaxo's former chairman of its global vaccines business.

In January 2019, Google's president of Customer Solutions Mary Ellen Coe joined Merck's Board of Directors. Formerly at the corporate consulting McKinsey and Company, her role at Google includes overseeing the firm's global advertising for contracted companies. Merck's chairman Kenneth Frazier remarked in a press release that Coe "will be a significant asset to Merck."[01]

The conflicts of interest are obviously clear. As the world's most advanced search engine, Google has gained control over the internet's most technically sophisticated surveillance systems and algorithms. Therefore, the company has positioned itself as becoming a potential threat to human health.

Next Page  1  |  2  |  3  |  4



Must Read 1   Interesting 1   Valuable 1  
Rate It | View Ratings


Producer, Gary Null Show (NPR and Pacifica radio stations), nation's longest talk show on health and nutrition Executive Producer, Progressive Radio Network Co-Founder, Chief Editor, Elixir Magazine Author, journalist, poet, spiritual activist
Go To Commenting
Writers Guidelines
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.


Daily Weekly     OpEdNews Newsletter
   (Opens new browser window)


Wikipedia: Silicon Valley's Cult of Medical Misinformation

The Moral Panic of the Woke Generation

Awakening from a Culture of Adolescent Wokeness

To View Comments or Join the Conversation: