The National Institutes of Health is trialing a male birth control product on 420 test subjects. This topical gel, containing both nesterone and testosterone is designed to be applied to the shoulders and back, so that the individuals using this product had better not work too hard or sweat in the gym if they want any semblance of dose uniformity. Dose adjustments for body mass are not addressed. Nesterone, a progestin, is included to block testosterone production in the testes, so that sperm is no longer produced. This is then replaced by just enough testosterone so that the user is able to comply, in the event that sex is requested of him. Whether he’ll remember how it’s done is anyone’s guess. One would expect the effectiveness of this product to be largely dependent upon reducing the sex drive as well as fertility. It’s expected to meet the same limp market as all of the previous male birth control drugs, but might become a go-to product in extended care facilities.
Category: medical news
The Newer, Better Shingles Vaccine
The April Pharmacists Letter came out with some talk on the new Shingrix, shingles vaccine, which is said to be preferred by the CDC over Zostavax.
There’s another reason, besides markedly superior efficacy, to like the new vaccine offered by Glaxo SmithKline. Merck’s Zostavax is not so highly purified, and has the liability of having been developed with that MRC-5 strain of cells obtained from the pulmonary tissue of a 14 week, electively aborted, male human fetus.
If you prefer human organ and parts donations to be voluntary, then you have a few good reasons to choose Shingrix over Zostavax for preventing shingles. Shingrix is made using hamster ovary cells rather than a cell line from a killed human fetus. The GSK product is highly purified, has undergone extensive clinical trials, and is showing better efficacy and longevity of protection against shingles than Zostavax.
The source of the MRC-5 cell line is no secret. But you might want access to the drug information from Merck and Glaxo SmithKline to have certainty about how these vaccines are made. Click them, look for the section called DESCRIPTION and compare.
Remember the folks at cogforlife.org who keep a comprehensive repository of information about vaccines and other medical products which have ethically controversial origins, as well as available alternative products which can be used in their place.
Complaint Portal for Those Suffering Discrimination Based upon Religion or Conscience
Here’s where You Should File a Complaint if you are suffering discrimination based upon your religious or conscientious beliefs. This includes ALL health care professionals who are being pressured to do things (such as killing, maiming, or fraud) which violate their conscience.
Tired of those bogus state and federal morning after pill mandates?
Tired of those State mandates that you have to tell women where to get an abortion?
Though Pharmer focuses on health care professions, everyone else has First Amendment rights too. The Trump administration is much friendlier to people of conscience, and is listening.
Iowa Physicians Supreme Court Allows Suit for Wrongful Birth
Pamela and Jeremy Plowman, now divorced, filed separate wrongful birth lawsuits seeking damages because their son was born with ‘several medical issues, including cerebral palsy’. (Medically savvy readers would immediately note that cerebral palsy often results from complications during childbirth, rather than something observable prenatally.) A perusal of the court decision reveals claims that the child has a small corpus callosum, microcephaly, seizure disorder, does not walk, and is non-verbal. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled in favor of the appellants, noting that 23 other states allow such lawsuits. The suit specifically addresses damages to the parents resulting from the wrongful birth, and does not seek compensation to address the medical issues of their child.
There is a way for health care providers in Iowa to address this problem. In 2002, the courts came to a similar conclusion in France, resulting in a prompt response by physicians refusing to order ultrasounds to pregnant women. A law to protect physicians from damages if they were unable to diagnose a prenatal disability was very quickly passed. Even doctors who don’t disagree with killing the disabled could get on board with this action, since ultrasounds are far from infallible. Many false positive and false negative diagnoses result from the imperfect technology currently at hand. The current situation in Iowa will cost the lives of many babies with disabilities, as well as those who have no such difficulties, as health care providers increasingly recommend abortion to save themselves from this added liability.
How does DTP affect Mortality from Other Causes?
A recent study published in E Bio Medicine, grabbed data of a group of infants vaccinated with DTP and/or Oral Polio from 3 to 5 months of age. Vaccines were given out every three months, making it possible to grab data based on birth date, rather than health state of the infants, eliminating a significant source of bias that results from not vaccinating babies who are ill.
DTP protects infants from the diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus, but might be increasing mortality from other causes. Oral polio vaccine did not make things worse, but might have mitigated the problem, according to the data from this study, carried out from cases collected in the 1980s in an urban area of Guinea-Bissau.
This calls for more collection of data on how vaccines affect mortality from other causes than the diseases being prevented.
Check it out HERE.
Bugs R Us: imported STDs
Obama had already removed HIV from the list of 8 communicable diseases that could impede immigration. Three more STDs which are now on the welcome mat are:
-granuloma inguinale, (donovanosis) which is caused by Klebsiella granulomatis, an infection which locally destroys tissue as it spreads.
-lymphogranuloma venerium (Climatic bubo) caused by serotypes L1, L2, L2a or L3 of Chlamydia trachomatis. One end result of this disease is genital elephantiasis.
-Chancroid, (soft chancre) caused by Hemophilus ducreyi, which can cause swelling and rupture of inguinal lymph nodes. Only this latter one is monitored by the CDC.
The above three sexually transmitted infections have been fairly rare in the U.S. but are expected to rise precipitously in frequency due to Obama’s welcome mat.
Government Health Care Incompetence on Display (Again)
Sen Cory Booker Puts Medical Incompetence on Display With Bill to Force Pharmacists to Dispense Birth Control
Senate Bill 2960 has been introduced to the 114th Congress by Sen Cory Booker, (D) New Jersey, to force pharmacists to dispense all drugs and devices approved by the FDA to “prevent pregnancy”. Many of these drugs work by multiple mechanisms, and a section of the bill forbids informing patients of the possible abortive mechanisms, labeling this as deceptive. Another section of the bill invites patients to sue the pharmacist who does not give them birth control. Clinical reasons for refusing to dispense are supposedly allowed, but pharmacists will need to be prepared to pay lawyers, court costs, fines, and argue these reasons out in a courtroom. A desire to avoid dispensing drugs which can act by abortive mechanisms, is not considered a valid reason for refusing to dispense birth control.
The morning after pills are addressed in this bill as drugs which must be dispensed, although they are ineffective in half of American women, who are too big for the dose to work, and poorly effective in additional portions of the female population. If they do stop pregnancy, this is more likely to be accomplished by mechanisms which occur after fertilization than beforehand.
Interestingly, Sen. Booker’s bill seems to allow that if a pharmacy does not stock any birth control in the normal course of business, it is not required to distribute the drugs. Conversely, if your pharmacy has some birth control pills, you would be expected to dispense these AND the fairly useless, morning after pills.
Lawsuits will abound if this bill passes, as its medical and regulatory basis is very poor, its constitutional basis is absent, and it leaves pharmacists liable to legal repercussions, even if they adhere to the letter of the law. Displaying medical and legal incompetence along with Cory Booker are Senators Baldwin, Blumenthal, Boxer, Brown, Feinstein, Franken, Gillibrand, Hirono, Kaine, Markey, Menendez, Merkley, Murray, Sanders, Shaheen, Warren, Whitehouse, and Wyden.
Pharmacists, check out S. 2960, and see if you think it’s time to leave retail pharmacy to the robots.
Bugs R Us: STD edition
Bummer. Another Drug Shortage. This time Bicillin L-A, the top drug used to inject sufferers of syphilis who come into the ER, is in shortage. It’s particularly important for pregnant ladies infected with the little corkscrew Treponema pallidum, as babies being born with the bug is the absolute WORST. Yes, it seems amazing that benzathine penicillin still works on syphilis after all of these years, and wouldn’t it figure that somehow Pfizer can’t make enough to meet demand. A ‘manufacturing delay’ is cited.
How about that Zika virus?? Now it is claimed that it can be a sexually transmitted disease, passed by just about any kind of sex.
Listen up. HIV isn’t impressive enough to chill people down just a little bit with with their risk taking behavior. Do you think they’ll care about Zika virus? Naaaaah. No one is going to give up SEX for that, however there is one bicyclist Teejay Van Garderen, who has decided to stay home from the summer Olympics in Brazil this summer because his wife is pregnant, and he doesn’t want to risk transmission.
Media Slip Reveals When Human Life Begins
This is WORSE than when Hillary said that the “unborn human being doesn’t have constitutional rights”, and the aborto-nauts freaked out over the terminology.
This Telegraph UK article is gaga over research showing what happens when sperm enzyme acts on the membrane of the oocyte. This had not been seen using human eggs in the past. A pretty fluorescence is visible as zinc ions exit the membrane during what would be the beginning of sperm penetration.
All over the article is reference to the BEGINNING OF LIFE. So there should be a screen shot of this before it disappears, after the aborto-nauts throw another hissie fit.
Unfortunately the main thing coming out of this research is a plan to use the intensity of the flash to evaluate which test tube embryos to keep and which to toss out.
Washington State has been persecuting Stormans, a family owned pharmacy business, whose employees oppose dispensing the morning after pill on the grounds that it can kill humans early in development. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a hearing of their case, leaving them with the option of complying with Washington’s coercive, totalitarian stance towards those who try to practice health care, or run a business in accordance with their consciences, or losing their livelihood.
Since 2011, when the research was published showing that Plan B doesn’t work for average sized American women (due to their size), more states have been trying to coerce the dispensing of this bogus drug. This underscores government incompetence in the field of health care. When Plan B does work, it can operate by post fertilization mechanisms – killing the early embryo, and killing is killing, ‘no matter how small’. Research shows that it doesn’t work to delay or stop ovulation during the women’s most fertile day of the cycle, (after the luteal peak). Yes, if you’re small enough for Plan B (levonorgestrel) to work, it can be an embryo killer (abortive).
Silver lining: The supremes at least didn’t rule that pharmacists in all 50 states have to dispense Plan B, which could have happened with this nutty court. The Stormans could close down and bring up a business elsewhere, if they haven’t already been drained of the financial means to do so, by the onerous, and unjust state. Unfortunately the state of Illinois, as well as the federal government are currently attempting to legislate that pharmacists must practice incompetently with respect to the dispensing of birth control to patients.
Here’s a related commentary, as well as the research pinpointing why Plan B is such a huge fail in America.