TV News LIES

Drug companies are spending millions of pounds every year on all-expenses-paid trips to conferences around the world for doctors and other hospital staff, in what critics say is a massive marketing exercise dressed up as medical education.

Consumers International (CI) said the lack of transparency was unacceptable. "When a medical professional speaks on a health issue, we assume that they are putting patients' interests first. If that person has a conflict of interest because they or their organisation are receiving funding from a drug company the least we should demand is the right to know about it," said Justin Macmullan, head of campaigns. "Pharmaceutical companies will tell you that what they are funding is medical education. But our concern is that this is really highly effective, well-targeted marketing. This throws any notion of impartiality out of the window and jeopardises a doctor's ability to make an informed, balanced decision about the most appropriate treatments."

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A list of 182 people believed to have been subjects of background checks from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer includes the Tennessean reporter who revealed the Highway Patrol's probe into the officer's unauthorized activities.

Brad Schrade, who has reported on the Highway Patrol for years and first reported the probe earlier this month, received a call Saturday morning from a Highway Patrol special agent who said that Lt. Ronnie Shirley, the subject of the probe, had accessed Schrade's background information.

"For a state police agency or one of its agents to investigate a reporter who has produced legitimate and critically important coverage of the agency smacks of the intimidation and retribution you would expect to find in a totalitarian state," Silverman said.

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Two new studies showing that vaccines increase the risk of diabetes have been published in the Open Pediatric Medicine Journal.

"Our results conclusively prove there is a causal relationship between immunization schedules and diabetes," J. Bartholomew Classen said at the time.

"The recent data shows that common childhood vaccines are especially dangerous to children with a strong family history of diabetes," Classen said. "Parents of a child with a strong family history of insulin-dependent diabetes ... should know that the administration of a full series of vaccines may have a greater than 5 percent chance of causing their child to develop diabetes."

Another study, published in the same issue of the Open Pediatric Medicine Journal, demonstrated a connection between the hepatitis B vaccine and Type 2 diabetes.

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A two-year-old letter by Vice President Dick Cheney that pushed a controversial Alaska natural-gas pipeline bill is getting renewed scrutiny because of recently disclosed evidence in the Justice Department's corruption case against Sen. Ted Stevens. In a conversation secretly tape-recorded by the FBI on June 25, 2006, Stevens discussed ways to get a pipeline bill through the Alaska Legislature with Bill Allen, an oil-services executive accused of providing the senator with about $250,000 in undisclosed financial benefits. According to a Justice motion, Stevens told Allen, "I'm gonna try to see if I can get some bigwigs from back here and say, 'Look … you gotta get this done'." Two days later, Cheney wrote a letter to the Alaska Legislature urging members to "promptly enact" a bill to build the pipeline. The letter was considered unusual because the White House rarely contacts state lawmakers about pending legislative matters. It also angered state Democrats, who accused Cheney of pushing oil-company interests. The former executive director of Cheney's energy task force had gone to work as a lobbyist for British Petroleum, one of three firms slated to build the pipeline.

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I don’t believe in capital punishment - as a rule. But I’m willing to make a few exceptions for our fearless leaders, indeed all the fearless leaders, who have so willingly prosecuted the totally bogus ‘war on terror’; who have, under the banner of peace, democracy and civilization, waged a ruthless campaign of war, terror and barbarism.

The ICC has recently made a big splash by indicting a world leader for war crimes. Bush and crew you say? Or perhaps their brown-nosing poodles and fellow conspirators Tony Blair and Gordon Brown? Or maybe some of their fellow NATO war criminal comrades-in-arms, busy little fascist bees that they are burning down their own domestic liberties whilst spreading militarism, empire and a new global arms race unto the very reaches of outer space? Maybe some of these goons?

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U.S. forces freed a cameraman for the Associated Press in Baghdad on Saturday after holding him for three months without charge, the news agency said.

Raziak's release comes two days after the military freed an Iraqi cameraman for Reuters, Ali al-Mashhadani, who was held for three weeks without charge after being arrested while renewing his credentials at a U.S. military press office.

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Bush has vowed to sprint through the final five months of his Administration, and you better believe him.

Because he is pulling all the bureaucratic levers in the Executive Branch to advance his right-wing agenda.

Unable to accomplish his goals legislatively, Bush is trying to get them done by fiat.

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A band of pre-eminent scientists and war-fighters has concluded that the nation's military might isn't powerful enough for the 21st Century; and so the National Research Council (NRC), an independent, congressionally-chartered body charged with assessing scientific issues, is urging the Pentagon and Congress to get cracking on developing a weapon capable of hitting any target in the world within an hour of being launched.

TVNL Comment: "Pre-eminent scientists and war-fighters?" So who do these scientists work for or who would they work for if their recommendations were followed?  And what the hell is a "war-fighter?"

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