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Paxil Fraud Case: Children's Lives Worth Only a Seventh of Financial FraudSame case, same data: Punishment for money fraud is 7 times greater than for likely deaths of children.by Heidi Stevenson1 December 2010
GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) antidepressant drug Paxil causes suicide ideation in children. That is, is makes some children want to kill themselves. One of their researchers, Dr. Maria Carmen Palazzo, faked data in Paxil research. She enrolled children in a trial, claiming that they suffered from diagnoses they didn't have. She was charged with fraud, and for the money she cost Medicare, she was sentenced to 87 months in prison. For the loss of children's lives—how many isn't known—she was sentenced to 13 months. But it gets worse! Not only was cash valued at nearly seven times the lives of an unknown number of children who killed themselves because of Paxil, but the sentence for loss of lives will be served concurrently with the sentence for money fraud. So, Palazzo won't actually serve a single day in prison for the probable loss of children's lives. Our legal system values the money lost to fraud as seven times greater than children's lives lost to the same fraud. Is it any wonder modern medicine is so twisted that it's happy to press unnecessary and dangerous treatments and drugs on people, accept and partake of fraudulent drug trials, invent diseases, and twist the very concept of health? When the rewards are based on money, money is what's valued. It should surprise no one that modern healthcare is officially one of the greatest killers today. If we include the lives diminished by chronic disease and cut short by misuse and abuse of an enormous number of drugs, such as statins, steroids, antibiotics, and antipsychotics—deaths attributed to anything but the drugs that led to them—then it becomes obvious that modern medicine must destroy vast numbers of lives. But, hey! Just think of all the money that's being made! After all, that's what counts. Isn't it?
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