Tag: pfizer

Chantix Champix Kills: But Don’t Tell The Smokers!

The Canadian Lung Association fails to mention any serious side effects associated with Chantix Champix. This is a very serious omission, but it is no different from what most doctors are doing. The blog also informs us that The Canadian Lung Association received funding in the form of a grant from… Pfizer Canada, the Canadian arm of the global drug giant Pfizer, who make Chantix Champix.

by Chris Holmes

*Update: If you or a loved one has suffered a bad reaction to Champix and you are based in the U.K., you can report it to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) here. The more people do that the clearer the true picture will become. Protect others! Report it.*

 

The Real Threat to Doctors, Pharmacists and the Medical Profession

To learn the truth about Chantix Champix, all you have to do is Google “Champix suicides” (or Chantix suicides) and read all about it for yourself.

But why should smokers have to do that? Most smokers assume that their doctor or their pharmacist would warn them of any serious risks that their patient might be running if they take Chantix Champix. Some do: in fact, we have heard anecdotally of one or two doctors who have refused to prescribe it. However, these are the exceptions.

Reading around the blogs which are dealing with the Chantix Champix controversy it becomes frighteningly clear that most smokers are left completely in the dark by doctors and pharmacists about the serious side effects of Chantix Champix, and only warned about the minor ones. The fact that this negligence is leading to injuries and deaths must surely be actionable. We are talking about a medication that is currently under investigation by the FDA for serious and dangerous side-effects. It has been very clearly implicated in many suicide attempts and a considerable number of deaths. Many other people have had other horrible reactions that have left them hospitalised, terrified and emotionally damaged, and also Chantix Champix has wrecked relationships and families.

Your doctor and your pharmacist may decide, though, that they’d better not tell you that in case you decide not to take the damn stuff.

One recent contributor to this blog, Kath (see Champix 4: Enough Already. Comment No.98) – was particularly angry about that point, once I had explained that she was not alone. She said:

“Chris thank you for taking the time to respond to me. As I read your reply what really stuck out is that when I had a weird episode of behaviour at 4 weeks, I would have known where it was coming from if I knew that Champix has side effects. If my doctor had warned me to watch for behavioural changes I would have been off this drug much sooner, before it made me into a blubbering mess. That is what bothers me the most.

I was having a conversation with a friend today about how even the doctor makes money when he writes a script. That is really effed up. How can my doctor have a financial benefit to prescribing a drug? What the hell kind of world are we living in? How can we expect to get proper health care when the gp’s make money for giving us life-threatening drugs?”

How indeed. And this is the real threat to the future of the medical profession. It is obvious why Chantix Champix is getting the whitewash treatment, and it all comes down to money. Doctors are treated to free trips, lavish treatment at ‘conferences’ and all kinds of incentives to promote medications which can all be summed up in one simple word: Corrupt.

How complacent are you, all you medical professionals who are just sitting on your hands and pretending it is okay to keep taking the incentives and keep your mouths shut about killer drugs like Chantix Champix? You keep pretending nicotine replacement is a real medication even though you know it doesn’t work at all, you keep prescribing Prozac and Seroxat even though we all know now that they didn’t perform any better than placebos in the trials… Your professional credibility is rotting away even as I type this, and the stench of your corruption is making even the most conservative of patients wince. If you continue down this road there will BE no medical profession, it will all become Medico-Pharmaceutical Inc.

Think I’m exaggerating? Then have a look at this report by one of the few exceptions, a blog edited by practising Canadian pharmacists called Canada Pharmacy News. The story points out that The Canadian Lung Association fails to mention any serious side effects associated with Chantix Champix. This is a very serious omission, but it is no different from what most doctors are doing. The blog also informs us that The Canadian Lung Association received funding in the form of a grant from… Pfizer Canada, the Canadian arm of the global drug giant Pfizer, who make Chantix Champix. Only a few days ago, the Justice Department in the USA announced that Pfizer had been ordered to pay a record settlement of 2.3 billion dollars for “fraudulent marketing”. Nothing to do with Chantix Champix, that one, by the way. But this is (link).

The credibility of pharmacists and doctors was originally based on hard science, but it has all been hijacked by the medico-mafia of the drug companies and their well-placed friends in the medical authorities, the medication approval bodies, academia and the press. Once you’ve lost that credibility in the minds of the public, Doc, you will never get it back.

practice website

The book that blew the whistle on the nicotine scam

New Poison For Old!

Now that Harvard University has confirmed Truth Will Out’s claim that Nicotine Replacement products don’t work at all, the race is on to find a new use for the drug giants’ poison factories. So look out for dodgy press tales of things nicotine “might” be useful for, released by the pharmaceutical industry!

Spurious New ‘Uses’ for Nicotine by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes 

Not so long ago this site was blasted in a blog written by one of the passionate converts to the new Electronic Cigarette. He took exception to my statement that nicotine is “just a poison”, and that it has no therapeutic use or any recreational use (there is no high), so it cannot qualify as a drug.

As a hypnotherapist specialising in smoking cessation – which is usually achieved in one session and without any withdrawal symptoms whatsoever – I already know that tobacco smoking is not a drug addiction but a compulsive habit, and that smokers’ cravings have nothing to do with nicotine at all. The reason I wrote the book is to explain this to the world and in doing so, rid the world of the nicotine myth which does a great deal to keep people smoking.

Naturally I did not expect to be congratulated by the drug companies which manufacture nicotine products, because what I am revealing is that their products are entirely based on a myth, which is why they don’t work. Nor was I surprised by the stony silence from the medical profession, many of whom already know that I’m quite right about that, but they cannot admit to being wrong about anything, in case that undermines their imaginary god-like status.

I don’t suppose I expected the tobacco industry to be too chuffed either, since these facts becoming common knowledge would end the vicious circle of smoking, trying the gum, smoking, trying the patches, smoking, trying the lozenges, smoking, trying the little inhalator-thingy… a money-go-round which has propped up many a smoking habit since NRT was invented back in 1984.

I didn’t really expect to be attacked by anyone from the Electronic Cigarette brigade though!

NRT Goes Electric!

You see, I have nothing against the Electronic Cigarette. According to the marketing, it looks like a cigarette, and it handles like a cigarette, but there’s no smoke. This means no nuisance or danger to other people, and as it doesn’t burn anything there is no fire risk. It delivers a little puff of vaporised nicotine when the ‘smoker’ draws on it, and that’s all it does.

Now, since governments all over the world officially endorse nicotine replacement products that do exactly the same thing, you might expect that they’d be all in favour of the Electronic Cigarette. It qualifies as harm reduction compared to smoking tobacco, just like NRT. Just like NRT, it eliminates the considerable fire risk of tobacco smoking. In fact, it simply IS a form of NRT. So Health Departments should be all in favour of it, yes?

Actually NO! And here we can see the corrupting influence of drug companies like Pfizer and GSK at its most blatant and blindingly obvious, because the Electronic Cigarette is not made by them, so there are political moves in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the U.K. to BAN it.
There is no logical reason for that that would not apply equally to all forms of NRT, which are heavily promoted and funded by the same governments. This has nothing to do with medical matters or health concerns, it is entirely an attempt by the makers of NRT products to pull every political string they can to protect their market against fair competition. It is a corrupt abuse of the political systems of all the countries where it is going on – so although the Electronic Cigarette is every bit as useless as any other form of NRT when it comes to long-term cessation success, I am all in favour of it remaining legal.

Nicotine Has No Use

What my attacker was actually objecting to was the fact that I challenged the notion that nicotine was a drug of any sort, and my assertion that it was actually only a poison. He didn’t bother to read my argument in full, he just picked up on that point and ridiculed it, so I took him to task about this. He then listed a whole bunch of spurious notions about supposed ‘benefits’ related to nicotine, some of which were just wrong but also quite a few which referred to recent scientific studies which ‘suggest’ that nicotine might have all manner of future ‘medical’ applications!

I pointed out to the chap that my observation that nicotine HAS no medical application is in no way undermined by the possibility that one day it MIGHT have, so reference to such speculative, inconclusive studies certainly doesn’t prove me wrong, as he suggested it did. But it did alert me to the curious fact that quite a lot of research has been done over the last few years to see if the poison nicotine might possibly have some other application, as well as fraudulently posing as a medication (NRT) and leading poor, unsuspecting smokers a merry dance.

Now, do you suppose the drug companies – who plan and fund all of these ‘scientific’ investigations, of course – might be doing the same thing with cyanide, mercury, arsenic and a clutch of other poisons… just to see, you understand, if they might actually have some sort of medical application, despite the stark unlikelihood of it?

Probably not, eh? But they do have rather a lot of patch-making equipment and they already have the nicotine production-lines rolling, so just in case the smokers of the world suddenly realise that this mad hypnotist (that’s me, by the way) might be quite right about smoking not being a nicotine addiction after all, perhaps it would be a good idea to see if they can line up some other dubious ‘medical’ application for that worldwide poison factory.

So watch out for any stories popping up in the press reporting that “New studies SUGGEST that nicotine COULD help to prevent eyebrow hair from growing out of control, or gallstones from growing quite as fast as they otherwise would, or improve post-operative joint mobility…”

Anything, really. Absolutely any old use will do. Surely it must do something useful… what about memory, might it improve memory? Concentration? Appetite control? Tremor-reduction? Come on, THINK! We’ve got tons of the stuff, and all this machinery… those smokers aren’t going to be fooled by our misinformation forever! NICOTINE NEEDS A MEDICO-MAKEOVER, NOW! FOR GOD’S SAKE, THERE MUST BE SOMETHING USEFUL IT CAN DO!

Nope. Just a poison, mate. Just the same old useless poison. Give it up.

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was

The easiest, safest and most successful way to quit smoking tobacco

A Simple Test to Prove that Nicotine Isn’t Addictive

How to run a clinical trial using nicotine patches to prove that nicotine cannot possibly be an addictive drug.

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

I’ve noticed that on all the Champix blogs, where people are describing the suffering they are going through on that horrible ‘medication’, some bright spark will always pop up explaining that you should expect it to be difficult and traumatic, for after all, as we all know – don’t we? – nicotine is ‘the most addictive substance known to science’! The most addictive drug in the world, so of course this is withdrawal!

What rubbish. The tension and stress is real enough, but it has nothing to do with nicotine at all. If it did – if that were the inevitable physical result of nicotine being abruptly withdrawn – then a). it would happen to every smoker who ever quit by preference – which it doesn’t, as the U.S. Surgeon-General has already pointed out. Most ex-smokers in the world actually quit by themselves, and if there was any link with suicide attempts it would be obvious by now. It would be a routine observation, resulting in conversations like this:

“Did you hear? Ernie’s quit smoking!”

“Rather him than me! That’ll be another funeral then.”

“You reckon?”

“Oh, aye – just cast your mind back over the years, all those people you know who quit smoking one week, then they’re found hanging from the rafters the next…”

[That would be a laughable suggestion, Pfizer, if that cynical attempt to muddy the waters were not such cruel and self-serving dishonesty which will certainly lead to more suicides.]

…and b). smokers who quit with hypnotherapy would still feel like that too, since that is immediate cessation. In reality they feel perfectly normal: no withdrawal symptoms, no cravings, no mood swings, no over-eating and no weight-gain either.

A Serious Challenge for the Scientists

There is a simple way to test this, but you can bet your life that GlaxoSmithKline are never going to run this clinical trial! Here is the experiment to prove nicotine is not an addictive substance:

Take any number of non-smokers (with full consent of course). Apply nicotine patches daily to those people, for as long as you would expect any smoker to develop a habit if you were giving them cigarettes. Get them to keep a diary of how they feel from one day to the next, and see if they can perceive any benefit from nicotine at all. Then one day, tell them the trial is over. Watch for any signs of suffering.

In order to get the most accurate impression of what nicotine itself actually does, without any pre-conceived notions in their minds (expectation), it is important that the volunteers are not told this is nicotine, and are not ex-smokers who might recognise the presence of nicotine. It is also important that they do not have to apply the patch themselves, nor do they know how long the trial will be. They should not be told what to expect, just asked for their genuine observations, if any.

N.B.: It is vital that the N.R.T. mode is PATCHES, not gum or lozenges. This is because smoking, sucking and chewing can all develop a compulsive-habitual element because they are physical activities that can become habitual through repetition, whereas patch-wearing is not an activity. So there is no behaviour, there is only the nicotine itself. Even the application of the patch in the morning cannot become habitual behaviour (like the impulse to put the kettle on in the morning, because that is what you do every morning), because someone else is doing it for them.

So we are down to nicotine itself. I predict the following outcomes: a). the subject will not enjoy the effect of nicotine in any way, although they may become accustomed to it. Conversely, they may react against it with something like an allergic reaction, b). they will be unable to describe any useful benefit from nicotine, and c). they will be quite happy to stop, and it will prove literally impossible to create a “nicotine addict” that way. This will prove once and for all that nicotine is not an addictive drug – nor is it medicinal, therapeutic or even a recreational drug. It is just a poison – one of many poisons in the smoke – and the wrong explanation for the compulsive smoking habit.

The key point here is that smokers’ cravings are not withdrawal symptoms, and are not connected to nicotine in any way. We get lots of cravings, they are not all about tobacco. They are impulses produced by the brain but routed through the body, so they are experienced as if they were a bodily need, or a desire. In reality it is a prompt, and what the impulse from the Subconscious mind is prompting the smoker to do is pick up a cigarette and light it.

If the smoker does that, the feeling disappears. Instantly. Notice that the smoker does not have to smoke the cigarette and get all the nicotine out of it for that impulse to go away, it vanishes the moment they light up. If they do not respond by lighting up, the Subconscious sends another, more insistent signal – assuming the first one went unnoticed – and these prompts will become more frequent and more insistent until the smoker finally responds. This can result in real, physical agitation and mental distress, with the smoker often convinced by the feelings that the ‘need’ has become desperate. Add to that the commonly-held belief that this agitation is the result of a drug addiction, and you have the seemingly helpless predicament of the modern habitual smoker.

In hypnotherapy we shut the craving signals down easily, and get rid of the false ‘addiction’ belief. Hey presto, one non-smoker. Yes, I know it sounds too easy: everything we do in hypnotherapy sounds too easy because hypnotherapy doesn’t involve any effort. Everything the Subconscious mind does is without apparent effort – which is interesting, because we are certainly aware of making conscious efforts. Like the conscious effort (willpower) to ignore craving signals sent by the Subconscious via the body. Guess which has the most clout, conscious or Subconscious? That’s right – hence the capital S.

Wouldn’t this Test make a great T.V. Documentary?

Anyone out there an independent documentary-maker? Want to make a fascinating programme that would be easy and cheap to make, which would interest millions of smokers in every country of the world, proving to all those smokers once and for all that they are not drug addicts at all? Not making wild claims – proving it! I’ve already been on TV with this, but that was just a live breakfast show where you get three minutes to talk about it before they move to the weather – you can’t prove much with that kind of slot. Although I did succeed easily with the challenge they set me to eliminate a smoking habit in a member of their staff. That wasn’t a stage trick by the way, it was a proper two-hour hypnotherapy session (see my blogpost from 28th March 2008 entitled Channel M Television). All craving signals wiped out in two hours. No urge to smoke, no extra eating, no weight gain. No ‘addictive drug’ involved.

want to quit the habit the easy way?