$3 Billion… and the Stock Price Went Up When GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) paid a record $3 billion to settle violations of the False Claims Act including concealing data about fatal cardiovascular risks linked to its diabetes drug Avandia you might expect outrage. Or at least financial consequences. Instead? The company’s stock price rose to near a 52-week high. Investors understood something sobering: Even billion-dollar fines are simply absorbed as a cost of doing business. The Numbers Tell a Disturbing Story According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the pharmaceutical industry is the largest defrauder of the federal government under the False Claims Act measured by total settlement amounts. Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen tracked the escalation: 1991–2010: Nearly $20 billion in fines Nov 2010–mid 2012: $10 billion more First half of 2012 alone: $6.6 billion Fines aren’t slowing misconduct. They’re scaling alongside profits. When penal…

Have you ever won a stare-down with a tray of Christmas cookies?  You’ve probably heard that people gain an average of five to ten pounds between Thanksgiving and New Years. The good news is that the real average is more like one to two pounds. The bad news is that most of that weight is never lost. And people who are already overweight tend to gain pounds faster than normal-weight individuals do. Whether you are following the Beyond Health lifestyle to lose weight, or to get well and stay well, the next few months may challenge your resolve like no other time of year. The holiday season—for many now stretching from Halloween to the Superbowl—is a marathon of festive celebrations with friends and family that attempt to bring cheer to what might otherwise be a cold and gloomy time of year. The Challenge of Cheer It’s always harder to maintain your diet when you leave your house, but during the holidays, there is a whole lot of leaving the house. And the ten…