Joslin – Enough is Enough

joslin1It is time to say “enough is enough!”.

Enough greed, corruption and money influencing our dietary guidelines.

Millions suffer everyday while a relative few profit.

Big Pharma and Big Food contribute 100’s of millions of dollars to influence nutritional guidelines of the disease protocol groups ( ADA, ACS, AHA, etc) and not to mention the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. (Formerly the American Dietetics Ass.)

 

It is SUPREMELY NAIVE to assume that the ‘contributions’ do not influence nutritional guidelines… supremely naïve.

#EnoughIsEnough

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Joslin has been a promoter of a high carb, grain based meal plan for as long as I can remember.

In the previous post I highlighted Amy Campbell… (a Joslin employee)  who wrote in an article for Joslin’s blog suggesting a person with a 350 g of carbs per day meal plan could work with their dietitian and diabetes treatment team to determine what that person could eat.

1) I eat 10-15g of carbs on average per day.  And I thrive!

2) I don’t require someone to show me what to eat. And I thrive!

3) I do not take any drugs nor insulin… unlike the patients that Amy Campbell is ‘counseling’.
Note: I need no one to tell me what to eat, how to live!!   When I say I thrive by that I mean, I have normal blood sugars for non-diabetics!

I am drug, insulin, sickness and illness FREE!!!

The plan of everyone in healthcare should be to encourage people to leave the ‘drug culture’ and to wean patients off being reliant on the medical industry… NOT encourage the continued and even heavier reliance on both!!

It really angers me when I see people who know that carbs raise blood sugars… promoting a meal plan that RAISES BLOOD SUGARS!!!

 

Back To Joslin

After the post on Amy Campbell I decided to do some digging around…. kind of like an investigative reporter… :)

I could not find any information on the total contributions by the corporate donors for Joslin on their website.

I want to know how much money Joslin receives from Big Pharma.  I searched their website far and wide and could not find the data.  So yesterday I asked them … on twitter. Their account is not a busy account… they read this first request…

joslina

 

They ignored me…

So today I tried again…  and even sent another tweet to their ‘sister’ account @JoslinNews.

joslin b
Joslin ignored me. I know they ignored me because their twitter account is not that active.    Oh well… I began to dig around a little on my own.

Using a link from Pro Publica I began to look and see what payments Big Pharma may have made to the actual researchers. … before we get into the meat of the situation let me say…

Pro Publica only has ‘contributions’ from 15 drug companies.

 As of 2012, 15 companies published the information, most because of legal settlements. 

In other words the courts made the drug companies report their contributions.  I’m sure the courts wanted to expose a little light to the situation…

The companies disclosed their payments on different schedules, and some only started reporting payments last year.

Last quote …

Only the 15 companies that have disclosed payments on their websites are included. Their combined prescription drug sales amounted to about 43 percent of the U.S. market in 2012. Though a substantial share, the data may not be wholly representative of the industry. Several dozen other drug companies have not reported payments.

 

Point I want to drive home here… this is the tip of the iceberg.  This is in NO way a comprehensive listing it’s more of a sampling of the payments.   Lastly, the Pro Publica database only includes doctors so those without doctorates like the aforementioned Amy Campbell will not be represented in the database.  We know that Big Food and Big Pharma love to wine and dine the nutritionists, dietitians and diabetes educators as much as they do doctors… but those numbers are not represented here.

By the way, you should bookmark the Pro Publica link and make sure to check out your doctors as well. See if they may have conflict of interests. I did. :)

 

Joslin’s Researchers/Investigators/Employees

In the database there were 14 researchers who received money from Big Pharma.

The dollars of this ‘sample’ totaled $985,806 … almost a million DOLLARS!!!

 

1) Create a debt. I know how sales works.  Even a paid lunch can be a powerful influence over doctor’s drug/product recommendations. Imagine how much influence drug companies can buy with almost a MILLION dollars.

Do you think this would influence research?  Maybe cause them to fudge the numbers a little bit? Or maybe influence decisions on what to actually study?

Recently I have seen studies suggesting honey bees can tell if someone is diabetic.  Another study was … now get this… the study said that obesity has something to do with the diabetes epidemic.   I know…right!

With all the pain and suffering going on today… and we have these two studies going on?  Something to think about.

2)  Three in the top management within the Research department received  $293,328 from Big Pharma.

Osama Hamdy, C Ronald Kahn and George L King.

It’s one thing to bribe… ooops… I meant to ‘contribute’ to a lowly researcher, it’s a totally different level of influence to contribute to a manager.  The level of influence is so much greater.

It is supremely naive to assume this kind of money being thrown around does not influence decision making.

 

In Closing

 

I want to find out how much Big Pharma donated to Joslin … in the worst way.  If you can help me.. please leave a comment or send me an email. cooksey.steve@gmail.com.   If Big Pharma paid the researchers at Joslin almost $1 million … I wonder how much they paid Joslin?

We have that information on the American Diabetes Association … Big Pharma donated $31 million in 2012. I wrote a post about it, “31 million“.

The disease protocol groups  American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, the American Cancer Association all receive millions and millions of dollars from Big Pharma alone!  As does the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.  I’m sure they receive millions from Big Food as well.

With hundreds of millions of dollars being ‘contributed’ to these groups …  we should not be surprised when these same disease protocol groups promote a meal plan that benefits it’s corporate sponsors…. to the detriment of those they are to support.

The fact that these researchers accept money from drug companies… is shameful and unforgivable.  It’s why Joslin promotes a meal plan that harms diabetics…

Question everything… especially if someone profits from the advice.

Joslin … the premiere diabetes research center… my ass.  Enough is Enough.