by Mike Adams
September 28 2009
Merck employees had "hit list" of doctors they sought to "neutralize", court documents reveal (opinion)
(NaturalNews) Previously secret documents that surfaced at a Vioxx court case in April of this year reveal pharmaceutical giant Merck maintained a "hit list" of doctors to be "neutralized" for speaking out against Vioxx. Although this story was reported on NaturalNews and other sites in April, Merck's involvement in the recent round of swine flu vaccines raises new questions regarding Merck's behavior towards its critics (see below).
As was reported in The Australian, documents that have surfaced in the Federal Court in Melbourne expose the criminal intent of Merck staffers who admitted they intended to "stop funding to institutions" and "interfere with academic appointments." (These actions are highly illegal, by the way.)
According to on-the-record testimony in this Australian trial, one Merck employee said, in referring to the doctors on the hit list, "We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live...
"That sounds a lot like a mob boss ordering a hit on a competing street thug, doesn't it?
At least eight clinical investigators were threatened or intimidated by Merck, the court heard in testimony. This is congruent with the many reports of academic intimidation by Merck that have already been published on NaturalNews.com and other news outlets. The picture of Merck that emerges from these revelations is a company run by thugs who deal with dissent by seeking to destroy the lives and careers of academics who dare to tell the truth about Merck's dangerous drugs.
A culture of criminality
Merck is a company steeped in a culture of criminality. Among its numerous questionable actions, Merck intentionally hid the liver-damaging effects of its cholesterol drug (http://www.naturalnews.com/024072_Zetia_Merck_cholesterol_drug.html),
it intentionally withheld the release of clinical trial data that showed the failures of another cholesterol drug (http://www.naturalnews.com/023889_Vytorin_Merck_Zetia.html),
it has dumped vaccine waste and manufacturing chemicals into the water supply (http://www.naturalnews.com/023124_water_Merck_chemicals.html),
it set up offshore banking accounts to avoid billions of dollars in U.S. taxes (http://www.naturalnews.com/021645_Merck_the_IRS_taxes.html),
and it was caught in a massive scheme of scientific fraud when it was revealed that the company used in-house writers to secretly author "independent" studies that were published in peer-reviewed medical journals
(http://www.naturalnews.com/023052_Merck_scientific_fraud_America.html)
And that's just the beginning of the real story on Merck. Read more astonishing news stories about this company here: http://www.naturalnews.com/merck.html
There's little question that Merck operates from a criminal mentality, resorting to tactics of deception and intimidation to accomplish what it could not achieve through honest means: An increase in sales of its pharmaceutical products.
So what does this have to do with the swine flu vaccine? Simply this: Almost no one in the industry of modern medicine has spoken out against the swine flu vaccines.
Are they being intimidated into silence by Merck and other vaccine makers?
Intimidating the scientists
Many who speak out against Merck products quickly find their credibility assaulted. If they are in an academic institution, they quickly find their research support drying up, and some end up blackballed by the pharmaceutical industry. What Merck has made perfectly clear over the last several years is that speaking out against Merck's products is academic suicide.
So how are honest scientists or doctors supposed to be able to raise concerns about the swine flu vaccines being manufactured by Merck and other companies? From watching the news, they already know that publicly questioning the safety of this vaccine could cost them their careers.
Is this what modern "science" (if you can call it that) has come to? A band of intimidated, frightened scientists too scared to raise their voices and question the safety of pharmaceutical products? And if so, how can anyone call this "scientific medicine" in the first place? It's more like gunpoint medicine, where you say what you're supposed to say because the big corporate players are holding a (metaphorical) gun to your head.
In terms of the swine flu vaccine itself, Big Pharma is already pumping the mainstream media full of "preemptive defense" stories, claiming that whatever side effects occur from the vaccines would have occurred anyway and the vaccines aren't to blame. Note that this story is being fronted before the vaccine is even in widespread use! They are, in essence, already predicting a wave of nasty side effects and trying to brainwash the American public into dismissing such concerns as mere coincidence.
This is the astonishing, contradictory mindset of Big Pharma: When any harm comes to a patient taking their drugs, that's just coincidence. But if any help comes their way and they see a health improvement, that's always due to the drugs alone, they claim. It is precisely this sort of selective, unscientific thinking that has caused the utter destruction of credibility for the pharmaceutical industry (and of those who push drugs and vaccines). Science has been outright abandoned, replaced with slick marketing, financial arm-twisting and blatant intimidation of anyone who steps outside the lines.
The truth isn't afraid of honest questions
Don't you find it odd that virtually no one in the conventional medical community has raised questions about the safety of the swine flu vaccines? Isn't it odd that these vaccines, having been long-term tested on no one at all, were suddenly approved by the FDA all on the same day and are now being advocated by doctors everywhere without a single question about their safety?
Now you know why this Merck court case in Australia is relevant: Knowing the way Merck operates, it's not unreasonable to suppose that doctors have been intimidated into silence about the vaccine. Questioning this vaccine is equivalent to committing professional suicide.
Vaccines are the core mythology of modern medicine, you see. Questioning their safety or efficacy is considered sacrilegious in the medical community. The entire mythology of western medicine is based on the (false) belief that chemical intervention is preferable to self-healing, and vaccines are the central fulcrum upon which that argument hinges. If vaccines fall, the whole philosophical facade behind which western medicine now hides will be shattered at the same time.
Protecting the profitability of western medicine necessitates the perpetuation of the vaccine myth. And since that myth can't be maintained based on pure science alone (because there's no real science backing it), it has to be supported through mob-style tactics of intimidation and bribery. That's why the bribery of physicians by drug companies is now routine. It's the way the "science" of pharmaceutical medicines is propagated through the machinery of our modern medical-industrial complex. Money buys what real science can't support: The idea that the world medical system must be based on chemical intervention (which just happens to financially benefit the drug companies perpetuating these myths).
Unraveling the fiction
These revelations about Merck threaten the mythology of modern medicine upon which so many billions of dollars of drug revenues are based. Even doctors don't want to talk much about Merck. Why? Because they realize that as one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, the ethics of Merck reflect on the ethics of western medicine as a whole.
Much of western medicine, after all, is based on pharmaceuticals. And believing that pharmaceuticals make you healthy requires that you also believe the drug companies are acting with integrity and looking out for the welfare of the people. But believing that little piece of mythology requires that the drug companies are believed to be benevolent, compassionate corporations that would never resort to unethical, dirty or illegal tactics to accomplish their aims.
This whole tapestry of pharmaceutical fiction begins to quickly unravel when you begin to see the truth about what really goes on inside Merck -- and that's what we've seen time and time again with previously secret documents that emerged through court cases or other means. The Merck culture is one that most reasonable people would describe as "thuggish" or "criminal" in nature. It has virtually no resemblance to the compassionate image the company tries to peddle through mainstream media advertising.
Besides, if Merck's products are really so good, why would it need to resort to intimidating and threatening researchers in the first place? If its drugs were really so good and so safe, wouldn't the science speak for itself?
Clearly, the intimidation of academics is only necessary when real science turns up answers that you don't want to hear. So intimidation is invoked to replace the science with fear.
And that's what our entire pharmaceutical system is based on today, folks: FEAR. The media won't report the truth about pharmaceuticals because they are afraid to lose their advertising dollars. Researchers won't report the real science about pharmaceuticals because they are afraid to lose their careers. Doctors won't tell you the truth about pharmaceuticals because they're afraid to lose their medical licenses. The entire system is held together by fear and intimidation rather than honest science.
Belief systems in which questions are suppressed and "truths" are reinforced at the end of a stick are called "dogmas." They cannot, by definition, be called "scientific." Anyone believing that modern drugs or vaccines are based on rigorous "science" does not understand the definition of the word.
Keep that in mind when you're deciding whether to get a vaccine shot. Remember that any researchers who voiced safety concerns about those vaccines might have already been "neutralized" or "discredited," to use the exact words of Merck's own employees.
And the "scientific" conclusions of today's pharmaceutical researchers can be no more believed than the testimony of a U.S. soldier who is captured and tortured by terrorists, then told to speak to the camera with a gun pointed at his head.
Additional sources for this story include:
TheAustralian:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25272600-2702,00.html
NaturalNews:
http://www.naturalnews.com/026420_Merck_Vioxx_doctors.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/027116_Merck_doctors_vaccines.html
