Frances Kelsey and the Thalidomide Scandal
In 1960, at the beginning of her pharmaceutical career, Dr. Frances Kelsey took a courageous stand against granting FDA approval to the drug thalidomide. In spite of pressure from manufacturers, her refusal to permit distribution in the United States was due to a lack of evidence supporting the drug’s safety. Kelsey’s protest prevented an international […]
Research Confirms Menstrual Cycle Bleeding Changes After COVID Shot
Last week, University of Illinois researchers published a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the journal Science Advances on menstrual cycle bleeding changes after COVID shots. The study featured a web-based survey of almost 40,000 individuals and found 42 percent of those who were menstruating reported unexpected heavy bleeding after receiving […]
WHO Does About-Face on Whether Pregnant Women Should Get Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine
In early January 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended against pregnant women receiving the Pfizer/BioNTech experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccine due to insufficient scientific data for that vulnerable population.1 On Jan. 26, the WHO recommended against pregnant women receiving the Moderna experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, with WHO director of immunization Kate O’Brien being quoted by […]
Many Health Care Workers Concerned About Safety of COVID-19 Vaccines
Story Highlights Many health care workers are hesitant to get the experimental COVID-19 vaccines. One of the most common reasons given by health care workers for not getting the vaccine is a lack of data on the long-term effects of the vaccine. The CDC reported that addressing vaccine hesitancy among health care workers is their […]
DES Tragedy Offers Cautionary Tale for COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates
The synthetic estrogen Diesthylstilbestrol (DES) was prescribed to pregnant women in the U.S. from 1938 to 1971 for the prevention of miscarriages and premature births. In 1953, published research showed that DES did not in fact prevent miscarriages or premature births. However, physicians continued to prescribe it until 1971, when the FDA warned that the […]
America’s ‘Good Medicine’ Mindset
The idea that you can give someone a disease, or something worse than that disease, by giving them a medicine designed to cure that disease or prevent the patient from contracting it and spreading it to others is so counter-intuitive, so unethical, so downright insane that it is unthinkable, unconscionable, unbelievable. After all, isn’t the first principle of medicine to “first, do no harm”? And yet… I think one of the greatest songs of all time is the one by…
