. . . but it’s just one more cost of doing business When GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) paid the government a record $3 billion last July in settlement of numerous violations of the False Claims Act (FCA), including concealing data on fatal cardiovascular side effects of their diabetes drug Avandia, it was just business as usual. In fact, Sidney M. Wolfe, MD, of Public Citizen, reports that on the heels of the huge pay-out’s announcement, GSK’s stock price rose to a near 52-week high. Investors knew that even billion-dollar fines are a drop in the bucket compared to the multi billion-dollar profits enjoyed by the drug industry. According to the US Department of Justice, the pharmaceutical industry is the biggest defrauder of the federal government under the FCA, as measured by the size of civil and criminal settlements reached yearly. Consumer advocate organization Public Citizen, which has been tracking fines paid by Big Pharma, found that the amounts of these fines have been escalating…

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…