One Of The Worst Pharmaceutical Disasters In History Is Still Relevant Today

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One of the worst drug disasters in history is unfolding right before our eyes.

DES (diethylstilbestrol) is a synthetic estrogen that was given to pregnant women from 1940 through the early 1970s. DES was touted as a “wonder drug” that would prevent miscarriage and morning sickness. It was only after millions of women and fetuses were exposed to DES that it was recognized that DES was causing deadly cancers in both the women who took it and the children exposed to it in-utero. According to The Wonder Drug Movie, a documentary about DES:

The currently proven effects of exposure include a rare vaginal cancer in DES Daughters; greater risk for breast cancer in DES Mothers; possible risk for testicular cancer in DES Sons; abnormal reproductive organs; infertility; high-risk pregnancies; and an increased risk for breast cancer in DES Daughters after age 40. There are a number of other suspected effects, including auto-immune disorders, but many of these effects are still awaiting further research.

DES is considered to be one of the worst drug disasters in human history. The deadly cancers, infertility, and other health maladies that DES has caused have led to suffering, sickness, and death for thousands of people. Though the drug companies responsible have paid settlements of millions of dollars, they have never issued an apology or paid amounts sufficient to make up for the actual damage done.

This video shows some of the effects of DES on the women who were exposed to it in-utero:

The Effects on Future Generations

Many of the effects of DES are still being felt today, because they are transgenerational — meaning that if a pregnant woman took DES in 1950, her grandchild may suffer from negative effects today. Because of the time-lag between administration of the drug and its effects (many cancers take decades to show up in the people who were exposed to DES in utero), and because of difficulty studying transgenerational effects of drugs, many of the consequences of DES are only being uncovered today. It should be noted that the transgenerational effects of endocrine disrupting drugs seem to intensify with each generation, and people suffering from infertility, cancer, reproductive abnormalities, hormonal abnormalities, or autoimmune disorders should look in their family history for DES use.

Most of the research into the consequences of DES has focused on DES daughters — the women who were exposed to DES while in utero — in part because one of the first effects of DES discovered was the occurrence of a rare vaginal cancer called clear cell cancer in young women. Significantly less research has been done on DES sons — the men who were exposed to DES while in utero.

Can Endocrine Disrupting Drugs In-utero Cause Transgender?

Several researchers who have looked at DES sons have noted that a significant portion of the men exposed to DES in utero are either transsexual, transgendered, or intersexed, and it has been hypothesized that there is a connection between prenatal DES exposure and gender variance.

This news piece from WTSP in Tampa, Florida, explores the notion that DES exposure in utero may be responsible for gender variance later in life:

My apologies for not being able to access a video link! If you click on http://www.wtsp.com/news/health/can-a-drug-make-you-transgender/215234337 you will be able to read and view the news story.

Hugh Easton, a scientist and activist who self-identifies as having “an unusual partially feminine gender identity,” further explains sex and gender differences and how they may be affected by in-utero estrogen exposure (from DES, and birth-control pills used during pregnancy can have similar effects). He writes:

What few people appreciate is that it’s these very large differences between male and female hormone levels throughout life that are responsible for all the differences between being a man and a woman, not the X and Y chromosome. All the sex chromosomes do is determine whether you develop ovaries or testicles, it’s the fact that ovarian tissue produces mainly estradiol whereas testicular tissue produces mainly testosterone that is responsible for people being organized into the two distinct groups that we call men and women.

There are two main life stages when the sex hormones, testosterone and estradiol, are active. The first is an ‘organizational’ phase which starts around 6 weeks after conception and ends a few months after birth. The second life stage is puberty and throughout adult life, during which the sex hormones have ‘activational’ effects: they bring to life all the stuff that was laid down during the organizational phase, and transform you from a child into an adult man or woman.

A slight difference between the two phases is that, during the organizational phase, testosterone is the key hormone and estradiol plays no role in sex determination. Whether you develop as male or female depends purely on whether levels of testosterone (and DHT, a hormone derived from testosterone) are high or low. If the fetus develops neither testicles nor ovaries, the result is a female baby. During the activational phase, you need high levels of testosterone in order to mature into an adult man, but in order to mature into an adult woman, you need high levels of estradiol. If neither hormone is present, you’ll remain in an asexual, childlike state and never mature properly into an adult.

Unfortunately, the idea that sex is determined by X and Y chromosomes has become so deeply rooted in popular consciousness that even most doctors and scientists who don’t work in the field aren’t aware that it’s actually hormones and not genes that determine your sex. As a result, we’ve ended up in a situation where, as a result of medical treatment given to their mothers during pregnancy (and medical treatment given to newborns), there are several million people at least alive today who were exposed to hormones with testosterone blocking properties (or testosterone mimicking properties) during their organizational period. In theory, what this should do is produce people who’ve partly developed as male and partly as female, and judging what I’ve seen of the effects of DES, that is indeed exactly what happens. It’s just that, because all your physical sexual characteristics develop within a relatively narrow window of time during the first trimester, whereas most high dosage use of hormones tends to happen during the second and third trimesters, instead of causing physical abnormalities, it’s causing people to be born who’ve undergone intersexed or opposite-sexed brain development. The way this is often manifesting itself later in life is as transsexuality. Other effects (at least as far as DES exposure in genetic males is concerned) are that sperm counts are, on average, much lower than nonexposed men, and there seems to be a very high risk of developing hypogonadism as well.

Hormones are so widely used in medicine that the number of people who’ve been affected must surely be very large, and I think that the ones who’ve come out as transgender are likely to be just the tip of an even larger iceberg, of people with seemingly non gender related psychological problems caused by some of their brain regions having developed as male and some as female, or fertility problems and all manner of mysterious chronic ailments caused by their bodies not being able to regulate their hormone levels properly (this seems to be a very common side effect of these hormone exposures too).

The women who took DES during their pregnancies were often taking doses that were up to 50,000 times the estrogen of today’s birth-control pills. Could exposure to such high concentrations of estrogen cause fetuses with XY (male) chromosomes to develop as females during some of the organizational periods of sex and gender development? It certainly seems plausible.

Birth-control pills also provide high doses of estrogen (and other hormones), and it has also been hypothesized that birth-control pills taken during pregnancy can also influence gender expression of the fetus. (For more information on this, please read Hugh Easton’s article, “Hormone Treatment During Pregnancy and Gender Variance in Later Life.”)

As more and more transgendered people physically transition to the gender that they identify with, it will become increasingly possible for researchers to explore the possible connections between DES and/or birth-control pill exposure in-utero and transgender expression later in life. It is a hypothesis that is worth exploring — not to assert that there is anything wrong with transgendered men and women, but to understand sex and gender differences in humanity, and to understand biology and hormones and the world we live in.

Recognition of Transgendered Advocates

Transgendered men and women have fought (are fighting) hard to be recognized as equally valid and entitled to the basic rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as cisgendered people. They deserve to be treated as valuable humans because they ARE valuable humans, and I hope that questioning how endocrine disrupting medications can influence gender expression is not interpreted as trying to find something wrong or diseased with transgendered men and women.

It should be noted that many of the scientists, activists, and concerned citizens making connections between DES and gender variance are transgendered themselves. Wanting to know why one’s gender is expressed as it is does not indicate a lack of self-appreciation; rather, it indicates an inquiring mind, and I hope that questions along these lines are encouraged. We live in a world that is full of endocrine disrupting chemicals (synthetic hormone pharmaceuticals, birth control, fluoride, fluorine-containing drugs, BPA, plastics, many pesticides and herbicides, etc.). It is reasonable to ask how those endocrine disrupting chemicals are affecting all areas of our lives — from cancers to gender expression.

I hope that transgendered people find this hypothesis to be liberating. If this hypothesis is correct, transgendered people are how they are not because of a choice, or even “just one of those things,” they are how they are because hormones determine gender just as much as chromosomes do, and exposure to hormone-changing chemicals at critical developmental periods can alter gender.

I’m a cisgendered, heterosexual woman, so maybe it’s not my place to write any of this. But, personally, if an endocrine-disrupting drug had influenced my gender identity, I would want to know. Perhaps some in the transgendered community feel the same way. The hypothesis that DES and other endocrine disrupting chemicals (especially the concentrated ones like birth-control pills) are causing people to become transgender should be explored, and maybe with knowledge can come empowerment.

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The Fed Launches A Facebook Page... And The Result Is Not What It Had Expected

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While it is not exactly clear what public relations goals the privately-owned Fed (recall Bernanke's Former Advisor: "People Would Be Stunned To Know The Extent To Which The Fed Is Privately Owned") hoped to achieve by launching its first Facebook page last Thursday, the resultant outpouring of less than euphoric public reactions suggest this latest PR effort may have been waster at best, and at worst backfired at a magnitude that matches JPM's infamous #AskJPM twitter gaffe.

Here are some examples of the public responses to the Fed's original posting: they all share a certain uniformity...

We wonder how long the Fed pulls a "blogger Ben Bernanke", and starts moderating, if not outright blocks, all Facebook comments.

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Congress and the DEA Share the Blame for Marijuana's Mystifying Misclassification

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Last week the Drug Enforcement Administration was widely criticized for refusing to move marijuana out of Schedule I, the most restrictive drug category under the Controlled Substances Act. But as I explain in my latest Forbes column, Congress shares the blame for marijuana's puzzling legal status because it created a classification scheme that defies logic:

Last week, when the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) rejected two petitions asking it to reclassify marijuana, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith did not try to conceal his contempt. "LSD, MDMA, a plant that grows in the yard—all one thing," he said sarcastically. "The DEA announced today it will keep marijuana on the list of the most dangerous drugs in all the world, along with heroin, LSD, and MDMA….Thanks, DEA, you've really got a lot of credibility."

Smith's dismay was echoed by activists, scientists, commentators, and members of Congress from both major parties, who said the DEA's decision was at odds with what we know about marijuana's hazards and benefits. There is a lot of truth to that critique, and the DEA can reasonably be faulted for stubbornly refusing to remove marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), a category that is supposedly reserved for drugs with "a high potential for abuse," "no currently accepted medical use," and "a lack of accepted safety for use…under medical supervision."

But bureaucratic intransigence is only part of the story. The other part is the CSA itself, a legal morass that leaves crucial phrases undefined, gives the DEA wide discretion to decide where drugs belong, and establishes arbitrary, inconsistent rules that make it impossible to properly classify many drugs.

Read the whole thing.

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Six Years & 1000s Of Deaths Later, UN Admits It Imported Cholera To Haiti

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Poor Haiti.

It is not enough to be the poorest country in the world and to be in the sphere of corruption from the Clinton Foundation after suffering a devastating earthquake in 2010, now the UN has admitted that its peacekeeping troops literally imported cholera bacteria in its efforts to help the nation.  

The only problem is those efforts have now cost the country thousands of deaths throughout the last six years.

According to the New York Times,

“the office of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has acknowledged that the United Nations played a role in the initial outbreak and that a “significant new set of U.N. actions” will be needed to respond to the crisis.”

Great. So after admitting that your help efforts actually were detrimental, you offer more of the same help. As a reminder, cholera victims suffer from dehydration caused by severe diarrhea or vomiting.

The NYT continues by stating,

“The statement comes on the heels of a confidential report sent to Mr. Ban by a longtime United Nations adviser on Aug. 8. Written by Philip Alston, a New York University law professor who serves as one of a few dozen experts, known as special rapporteurs, who advise the organization on human rights issues, the draft language stated plainly that the epidemic “would not have broken out but for the actions of the United Nations...

 

But it represents a significant shift after more than five years of high-level denial of any involvement or responsibility of the United Nations in the outbreak, which has killed at least 10,000 people and sickened hundreds of thousands.”

Perhaps it is time for more Clinton crony capitalism and intervention in the name of saving lives.

The cost, as we now know, is about 10,000 bodies every six years.

 

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Brazil Health Officials: Zika Virus Is NOT Responsible For Rise In Birth Defects, It’s Something Else

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Fear surrounding the threat of Zika virus has plagued the media, and its steady spread across Latin America and Pacific island nations — along with its inevitable arrival in parts of the continental U.S. — has many worried. The mysterious virus, suspected of causing birth defects, has provoked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to update its recommendations on pregnancy and sex. But there are plenty of skeptics wondering what we should and shouldn’t believe. Now, there seems to be a breakthrough.

Amidst the growing concerns, health officials in Brazil have admitted that Zika alone may not be responsible for the rise in birth defects in parts of the country.

The virus may be linked to the birth defect called microcephaly, but while Zika has been spreading at extremely high rates throughout Brazil, microcephaly has not.

“We suspect that something more than Zika virus is causing the high intensity and severity of cases,” explains Dr. Fatima Marinho, Director of Information and Health Analysis at Brazil’s Ministry of Health.

Here are some facts you should know:

Almost All Cases Of Brazil Microcephaly Took Place In The Northeast

Since last November, Brazil has seen more than 1,700 cases of microcephaly or other birth defects of the central nervous system. When the cases were first detected, health officials believed they’d witness “an explosion of birth defects” across the country, but that wasn’t the case. In fact, data compiled by Marinho and colleagues found that socio-economic factors may be involved, since the majority of the women who gave birth to babies with microcephaly were poor and resided in small cities or on the outskirts of big cities. The outbreak also occurred in extremely poverty-stricken areas of Brazil that use massive amount of banned pesticides. Environmental pollution and toxic pesticide exposure have been linked to many adverse health effects, including birth defects.

There Is Not Enough Data

Not enough data can rightfully link the Zika virus to microcephaly, and the data that does exist mainly comes from incomplete hospital reports, with tests to confirm the virus often not carried out.

It’s even been suggested that microcephaly may be the combination of Zika along with other infections such as dengue and chikungunya, with the Brazilian doctor who first reportedly established the link between Zika virus and microcephaly now claiming Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) may be involved.

Colombian Women and Zika Virus

The New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) followed nearly 12,000 pregnant Colombian women infected with Zika virus and found no cases of microcephaly, yet four cases of microcephaly were reported among women who had Zika infection with no symptoms and were therefore not included in the study.

According to NECSI:

This gives a consistent interpretation that there is no direct link between Zika and microcephaly except for random co-occurrence. We note that the base rate of microcephaly in the absence of Zika is 140 per year in Colombia, which is consistent with the approximately 50 microcephaly cases in the first 4 months of 2016, only 4 of which have been connected to Zika. When interpreting Zika as the cause, background cases must be subtracted.

WHO Expert Weighs In

According to Florence Fouque, a World Health Organization (WHO) expert on animals that carry viruses, the public response to the Zika virus is “completely hysterical.” She said the hysteria comes from the findings of the virus harming pregnant women, and that it can be sexually transmitted.

“It’s like AIDS,” she said. “People make this link and that’s why they are really afraid.

Oliver Brady, an epidemiologist with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who was asked by Brazilian officials to assess the Zika-microcephaly situation, also weighed in on the subject:

You see that with a lot of arboviruses [viruses spread by mosquitoes and other insects]. . . . They have pathogenic qualities and if you put them in the right tissue then they will cause some sort of damage. And they tend to be quite transmissible across a variety of barriers anyway. So it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s the mechanism that’s happening out there in the field, even if it does work in the lab.

The U.S. Is Ignoring Valuable Data

Among those jumping to conclusions is the U.S., which, despite the data, has rushed to launch a clinical trial of an experimental Zika vaccine without conclusive proof that Zika causes microcephaly.

The trial will involve 80 healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 35. These participants will be vaccinated with varying doses of the experimental vaccine, and placebos will be given.

There are concerns about such a vaccine, Dr. Scott B. Halstead, former senior adviser of the Dengue Vaccine Initiative and the founder of Children’s Vaccine Initiative, told the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy:

It’s happened. We have a vaccine that enhances dengue. . . . It’s clear as the nose on my face: Vaccine recipients less than 5 years old had five to seven times more rates of hospitalizations for severe dengue virus than placebo controls.

Halstead is specifically referring to a three-year study that suggested the vaccine causes antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). He said:  “Over time, you make and keep protective levels of antibody from the initial infection, but you lose the cross-reactive antibodies. . . . That allows a second dengue infection to cause severe illness.”

The University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy sided with concerns discussed by Dr. Philip K. Russell, the former director of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, as well as founding president and chairman of the Sabin Vaccine Institute: “Russell said that the fact that Zika is occurring in areas where dengue has been endemic hints at a serious potential problem with ADE and Zika vaccine development.” Russell himself noted, “The current epidemic of Zika, which is usually mild disease, is made a lot worse in these populations,” and “I think there’s a major effect, but the studies haven’t been done yet to sort that out.”

Toxic Exposures For Battling Zika

Due to the media frenzy, many areas have increased their pesticide use as a means for combating the Zika virus. And while a Clean Water Act permit is typically required to spray pesticides in areas where they might end up in water, the Zika virus has been used as an excuse to further harm the planet and its inhabitants.

The Zika Vector Control Act was passed by the House of Representatives, exempting pesticide applicators from needing a Clean Water Act permit, even when spraying near water. But opponents say the bill has nothing to do with battling Zika, claiming it has been on the table for years, with the majority fighting to slap any name on it to make it convenient to the time.

Research has shown the detriments to such spraying, like the evidence presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies 2016 Meeting, which explained that aerial pesticide exposure is linked to an increased risk of developmental delays and autism spectrum disorder among children.

Mosquito Experts Know The Truth

Even mosquito experts suggest things aren’t right. According to Chris Barker, Ph.D., a researcher of mosquito-borne viruses at the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine: “I think the risk for Zika actually setting up transmission cycles that become established in the continental U.S. is near zero.” He anticipates the virus to mimic other tropical diseases spread by mosquitoes, like dengue fever and chikungunya, by making its way into the U.S. with small clusters of outbreaks in Southern states and not much activity elsewhere.

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Why A Deutsche Bank Whistleblower Turned Down A $8.25 Million Reward: In His Own Words

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At the height of the financial crisis, when risk assets were imploding and counterparties were in danger of overnight collapse, Deutsche Bank avoided failure and nationalization by fabricating the value of its $130 billion derivative portfolio of "leveraged super senior" trades.

Some history: back in 2005, these trades were seen as "the next big thing" in the world of credit derivatives, something which DB at the time was building a massive position in. They were designed to behave like the most senior tranche of a typical collateralised debt obligation, where assets such as mortgages or credit default swaps are pooled to give investors varying degrees of risk exposure. Deutsche became the biggest operator in this market, which involved banks buying insurance against the possibility of default by some of the safest companies, the FT writes.

There was just one problem: when it was building up its portfolio, Deutsche never accounted for the possibility of the financial world nearly collapsing. Which is why as the illiquid portfolio was careening, instead marking it to market - an act that would have resulted in the bank's insolvency - DB's risk managers misstated the value of the positions by anywhere from $1.5bn to $3.3bn.

Several years later, in 2012, the SEC found out about this, and in 2015 slapped a $55 million fine on Deutsche Bank for this criminal fabrication (nobody went to jail). “At the height of the financial crisis, Deutsche Bank’s financial statements did not reflect the significant risk in these large, complex illiquid positions,” said Andrew Ceresney, director of the SEC’s enforcement division. “Deutsche Bank failed to make reasonable judgments when valuing its positions and lacked robust internal controls over financial reporting.”

The reason why the SEC learned about DB's massive mismarked derivative exposure, is because two former employee whistleblowers, Matthew Simpson and Eric Ben-Artzi, told it: the duo alleged that if Deutsche had accounted properly for its positions, its capital would have fallen to dangerous levels during the financial crisis and it might have required a government bailout to survive. The highest estimate for the unaccounted loss was $12bn. Which explains why Deutsche Bank was desperate to manipulated the numbers.

End result: DB got its wristslap with a token fine, the SEC came out looking like it knew what it was doing, and - as we learned today - the two whistleblowers got major awards for helping the SEC collected the $55MM fine, amounting to 15% each. 

Only, something unexpected happened: as the FT writes, one of the whistleblowers who helped expose the false accounting at Deutsche Bank turned down a multimillion-dollar award from the Securities and Exchange Commission in protest against the agency’s failure to punish executives at the bank.

Eric Ben-Artzi, the former Deutsche risk officer, told the SEC he is declining his share of a $16.5 million payout — the third largest in the whistleblower program’s history — which represents 30% of the $55 million Deutsche Bank fine.

But why turn down enough money that most people, even ex-Wall Streeters, could comfortably retire on?  Ben-Artzi said the fine should be paid by individual executives, not shareholders, and suggested the “revolving door” of senior personnel between the SEC and Germany’s largest bank had played a role in executives going unpunished (understandably he had no comment about the spike in Deutsche Bank suicides in 2013-2014, particularly those emanating from its legal department).

“This goes beyond the typical revolving-door story,” Mr Ben-Artzi wrote in an opinion article for the Financial Times. “In this case, top SEC lawyers had held senior posts at the bank, moving in and out of top positions at the SEC even as the investigations into malfeasance at Deutsche Bank were ongoing,”

Which, incidentally, reminds us of a post we wrote back in May 2010, explaining why former Deutsche Bank General Councel, and then-SEC Director of Enforcement, "Robert Khuzami Stands To Lose Up To $250,000 If He Pursues Action Against Deutsche Bank." We were right: neither Khuzami, nor the SEC, nor anyone else, pursued any charges against Deutsche Bank in the early years after the financial crisis. In retrospect, now that the German bank has been revealed to have manipulated literally everything, such oversight on behalf of the SEC was even more criminal than what DB did over the years.

Six years later, the FT comments on this too:

"Robert Khuzami, director of enforcement at the SEC between 2009 and 2013, was Deutsche’s former general counsel for the Americas. Between 2004 and 2013 Robert Rice was a senior lawyer at Deutsche Bank, where he led an internal investigation into the valuation claims; he then went to the SEC as chief counsel.  Both Mr Khuzami and Mr Rice were recused from the investigation. Dick Walker was enforcement director at the SEC between 1998 and 2001 and then joined Deutsche, later becoming general counsel; he left the bank this year. All three declined to comment. "

Needless to say, there is zero risk to Khuzami's current job as partner in Kirkland's Government & Internal Investigations Practice Group, which he joined in 2013. But hopefully, one day there will be, and if so it will be partially thanks to op-eds such as the one - written by Eric Ben-Artzi, who is currently a vice-president of risk analytics at BondIT - published in today's FT and republished below.

For all those wondering why someone would turn down a $8.25 million whistleblower award, here is the explanation, straight from the source.

* * *

We must protect shareholders from executive wrongdoing 

Eric Ben-Artzi 

 

I turned down a whistleblower award, writes former Deutsche Bank employee Eric Ben-Artzi

 

I just got word from the Securities and Exchange Commission that I am to receive half of a $16.5m whistleblower award. But I refuse to take my share. My award, which comes from a fund allocated by Congress, amounts to 15 per cent of the $55m fine the SEC imposed on Deutsche Bank in May 2015 after I informed regulators that my colleagues at the bank had been inflating the value of its massive portfolio of credit derivatives.

 

I was a risk officer at the bank, and one of the three whistleblowers who in 2010-11 reported the improper accounting internally and to regulators around the globe.

 

The SEC attorney who oversaw the investigation told the New York Times: “It’s the only enforcement action where we allege that a major financial institution failed to properly value a significant portion of its portfolio of complex securities.”

 

But Deutsche did not commit this wrongdoing. Deutsche was the victim. To be precise, the bank’s shareholders and its rank­-and­-file employees who are now losing their jobs in droves are the primary victims.

 

Meanwhile, top executives retired with multimillion­-dollar bonuses based on the misrepresentation of the bank’s balance sheet. It is therefore especially disappointing that in 2015, after a lengthy investigation helped by multiple whistleblowers, the SEC imposed a fine on Deutsche’s shareholders instead of the managers responsible.

 

Compare this outcome with a contemporaneous SEC enforcement action against the less connected executives of a smaller firm, Trinity Capital, and its subsidiary Los Alamos National Bank. The violations at Trinity seem similar to Deutsche, but orders of magnitude smaller. Five executives at Trinity were charged, the chief executive settled and paid a fine, and litigation continued against two senior officers.

 

“We will hold senior executives liable when they misstate the company’s performance and fail to come clean with shareholders,” explained Andrew Ceresney, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.

 

So why did the SEC not go after Deutsche’s executives? The most obvious concern is that Deutsche’s top lawyers “revolved” in and out of the SEC before, during and after the illegal activity at the bank. Robert Rice, the chief lawyer in charge of the internal investigation at Deutsche in 2011, became the SEC’s chief counsel in 2013. Robert Khuzami, Deutsche’s top lawyer in North America, became head of the SEC’s enforcement division after the financial crisis. Their boss, Richard Walker, the bank’s longtime general counsel (he left the bank this year) was once head of enforcement at the SEC.

 

This goes beyond the typical revolving door story. In this case, top SEC lawyers had held senior posts at the bank, moving in and out of top positions at the regulator even as the investigations into malfeasance at Deutsche were ongoing.

 

This took place on the watch of Mary Jo White, the current chair of the SEC, whose relationship with Mr Khuzami and Mr Rice dates back 20 years. She bears ultimate responsibility for the Deutsche fine. In 2010 I joined Deutsche from Goldman Sachs as a vice­-president in the market­-risk department. I am a mathematician and had worked in risk­-modelling at other banks. When I joined Deutsche I was not made aware that an internal “investigation” was already under way into the inflated valuation of the bank’s $120bn portfolio of exotic credit derivatives.

 

Within a few months, though, I realised something was very wrong, and I called the internal hotline. That is when I met Mr Rice. He was then Deutsche’s top lawyer for compliance and regulatory affairs, and asserted that our conversations were subject to “attorney-client” privilege and could not be disclosed. I did not agree and was fired. My Wall Street career was ruined.

 

When I first helped the SEC investigation, the whistleblower award was a powerful incentive. My lawyers and ex-wife have a claim on a portion of my award, which I am not at liberty to reject.

 

Although I need the money now more than ever, I will not join the looting of the very people I was hired to protect. I never intended to turn a job in risk management into a crusade, but after suffering at the hands of the Deutsche executives I will not join them simply because I cannot beat them.

 

I request that my share of the award be given to Deutsche and its stakeholders, and the award money clawed back from the bonuses paid to the Deutsche executives, especially the former top SEC attorneys.

 

I would then be happy to collect any award for which I am eligible.

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Slobodan Milosevic: The Killing of an Innocent Man

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International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague quietly acknowledged the innocence of former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic. Ten years after the very suspicious death of the Serbian leader in a Dutch prison, the 1,300th…

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One Simple Chart Illustrates The Absurdity Of College Cost Inflation

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The simple chart below from the American Enterprise Institute beautifully illustrates the absurd inflation of college tuition and textbooks over the past 20 years.  In real terms, the cost of college has effectively doubled over that time period.  Now what would cause such massive inflation?  Could it be our government tripping over itself to provide cheap student loans for children to spend on vacations, iPads and kegs (i.e. "college"; see "What Student Loans Are Used For: Vacations, iPads, Kegs, Entertainment").  Or, per the Daily Caller, perhaps the issue is administrative bloat at our institutions of higher education:

The exact reason prices have increased so much has been hotly debated, but one critical factor at most schools is administrative bloat. While student to faculty ratios have remained relatively steady over time, the number of administrators and other non-teaching staff has exploded at schools across the country.

But we don't want to stress out our young Millennials too much.  We're quite sure the debt burden associated with your $200,000 anthro degree will be socialized very soon. 

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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/officials-on-benghazi-we-made-mistakes-but-without-malice/ Officials...

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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/officials-on-benghazi-we-made-mistakes-but-without-malice/

Officials on Benghazi: “We made mistakes, but without malice”
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Obama administration officials who were in key positions on Sept. 11, 2012, acknowledge that a range of mistakes were made the night of the attacks on the U.S. missions in Benghazi, and in messaging to Congress and the public in the aftermath.

The officials spoke to CBS News in a series of interviews and communications under the condition of anonymity so that they could be more frank in their assessments. They do not all agree on the list of mistakes and it’s important to note that they universally claim that any errors or missteps did not cost lives and reflect “incompetence rather than malice or cover up.” Nonetheless, in the eight months since the attacks, this is the most sweeping and detailed discussion by key players of what might have been done differently.

“We’re portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots,” said one Obama administration official who was part of the Benghazi response. “It’s actually closer to us being idiots.”

Where is the Benghazi cover-up Republicans promised?
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Full coverage: U.S. Consulate attack in Benghazi
The Obama administration’s chief critics on Benghazi, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., remain skeptical. They see a pattern, even a conspiracy, to deflect attention from the idea that four Americans had been killed by al Qaeda-linked attackers, on the president’s watch. “There is no conclusion a reasonable person could reach other than that for a couple of weeks after the attack, [the Obama administration was] trying to push a narrative that was politically beneficial to the president’s re-election,” Graham told CBS News.

The list of mea culpas by Obama administration officials involved in the Benghazi response and aftermath include: standing down the counterterrorism Foreign Emergency Support Team, failing to convene the Counterterrorism Security Group, failing to release the disputed Benghazi “talking points” when Congress asked for them, and using the word “spontaneous” while avoiding the word “terrorism.”

The emergency response: “I wish we’d sent FEST”
The Foreign Emergency Support Team known as “FEST” is described as “the US Government’s only interagency, on-call, short-notice team poised to respond to terrorist incidents worldwide.” It even boasts hostage-negotiating expertise. With U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens reported missing shortly after the Benghazi attacks began, Washington officials were operating under a possible hostage scenario at the outset. Yet deployment of the counterterrorism experts on the FEST was ruled out from the start. That decision became a source of great internal dissent and the cause of puzzlement to some outsiders.

Thursday, an administration official who was part of the Benghazi response told CBS News: “I wish we’d sent it.”

Benghazi timeline: How the attack unfolded
The official said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deputy, Patrick Kennedy, quickly dispensed with the idea. A senior State Department official Thursday told CBS News, “Under Secretary Kennedy is not in the decision chain on FEST deployment” but would not directly confirm whether Kennedy or somebody else dismissed the FEST.

Inside room of murdered U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens
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Inside room of murdered U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens
Whoever made the decision, it came amid sharp disagreement over the FEST’s true capabilities. Kennedy and others at the State Department view the team as one that primarily restores communications at besieged embassies. However, the FEST’s own mission statement describes a seasoned team of counterterrorism professionals who can respond “quickly and effectively to terrorist attacks… providing the fastest assistance possible” including “hostage negotiating expertise” and “time-sensitive information and intelligence.” In fact, FEST leader Mark Thompson says Benghazi was precisely the sort of crisis to which his team is trained to respond.

While it was the State Department that’s said to have taken FEST off the table, the team is directed by the White House National Security Council. Those officials expressed the same limited view of FEST’s capabilities when CBS News asked on Nov. 1, 2012, why FEST hadn’t deployed. The officials argued that FEST teams were “used in the past to re-establish infrastructure, communications, etc. after a devastating attack…That wasn’t the need here.”

As soon as word of the Benghazi attack reached Washington, FEST members “instinctively started packing,” said an official involved in the response. “They were told they were not deploying by Patrick Kennedy’s front office… In hindsight… I probably would’ve pushed the button.”

It’s unclear what assistance FEST might have provided on site in the hours and days after the Benghazi attacks. In the end, Obama administration officials argue that its quick deployment would not have saved lives because, while the U.S.-based team might have made it to Tripoli, Libya, before the attacks ended, they most certainly wouldn’t have made it to Benghazi in time.

Still, nobody knew at the outset how long the crisis was going to last. And officials familiar with FEST say it could have helped pave the way for the FBI to get into Benghazi much faster than the three weeks it ultimately took. Said one source, “I don’t see a downside to sending FEST…if for no other reason than so no one could ask why we didn’t.”

The Counterterrorism Security Group: Not convened
Under presidential directive, an interagency task force called the Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG) is to be convened when emergency terrorist events are suspected. According to a public military document, it’s part of a plan to “synchronize the efforts of all the government agencies that have a role to play in the Global War on Terrorism.” But on Sept. 11, 2012, the Obama administration did not convene this body of terrorism expert advisers.

One official associated with the State Department now acknowledges that the CSG would probably have advised decision makers that FEST “was not just backup generator and radios.” Said the official: “the CSG could have made the argument, they were upset that they weren’t heard.” Another former Defense Department official says he finds no merit to using the CSG. “I’d like to hear them say what they could have done.”

Last October, National Security Council (NSC) Spokesman Tommy Vietor told CBS News that the CSG wasn’t needed because consultations were quickly underway at the highest levels. He indicated that, under the Obama administration, the function of the CSG has become a “lower level group” that “does different tasks” than under the Bush administration. “From the moment [President Obama] was briefed on the Benghazi attack, the response effort was handled by the most senior national security officials in government. Members of the CSG were of course involved in these meetings and discussions to support their bosses,” said Vietor.

However, absent the CSG’s collective advice, there’s evidence that some high-level decision makers were unaware of all available resources. In October, on a phone call that included then-Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough (now White House Chief of Staff), Vietor initially told CBS News: “I don’t know what [FEST] is… it sounds antiquated.”

In-extremis Force: On a training mission
In an unfortunate turn of events, on Sept. 11, a special U.S. military force based in Europe, designed specifically for quick reaction to unforeseen emergencies, was off on a training mission in Croatia. By the time the so-called Commander’s In-extremis Force was diverted to an airfield at Sigonella, Italy, an hour’s flight from Benghazi, the attacks were over.

“They didn’t get there in time to have an impact, which is unfortunate,” said a Defense Department source who was involved in the Benghazi response.

Another administration source says, with the benefit of hindsight, everyone wishes U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the combatant command responsible for Libya on Sept. 11, had its own In-extremis Force.

That’s already been accomplished. In what turns out to be a stroke of terrible timing, AFRICOM was just a few weeks away from getting an In-extremis Force when the Benghazi attacks happened. The Force was in the U.S. finishing training on Sept. 11 and is now in place.

The political response: “Dream Team”
A former Obama administration official says they were so confident in, and pleased with, the team of experts they pulled together to brief Congress on Benghazi, they were nicknamed the “Dream Team.” The “Dream Team” consisted of: Maj. Gen. Darryl Roberson, Vice Director of Operations, Joint Staff; Matt Olson, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center; Andy McCabe, Assistant Director of Counterterrorism for the FBI; and Linda Weissgold from CIA.

Benghazi timeline: How the probe unfolded
But some Obama administration sources now concede that, outside the “Dream Team,” their post-attack communications and spin were riddled with missteps. Yet they insist that was the result of incompetence or confusion, and that no conspiracy was in play.

The talking points
The infamous Benghazi “talking points” were born out of a request on Sept. 14 from Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. CIA chief David Petraeus had just given a classified briefing to Ruppersberger and other Intelligence Committee members. A source who was present said that following the briefing, “Ruppersberger wanted to know ‘what can I say on TV’?”

The day before, on Sept. 13, the White House had asked the office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton if she would appear on the upcoming Sunday morning political talk shows. “She’d rather chew tin foil,” said someone who’s close to Mrs. Clinton. Instead, it was decided U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice would make the appearances. Ultimately, the talking points would serve two purposes: provide guidance as to what Congress could tell the public, and guide Rice for the talk shows.

One Obama administration official present for congressional briefings says the idea that the talking points were intended to hide the terrorist ties from Congress is absurd because Petraeus had already given House Intelligence Committee members full information on the suspected terrorist links.

On Sept. 14, the CIA’s early version of the talking points credited the CIA with providing warnings on Sept. 10, 2012, that the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, could come under attack and that Benghazi was in a precarious state. Others in the Obama administration saw this talking point comment as an instinctive, “knee-jerk cover your ass moment” on the CIA’s part and some officials remain bitter today.

One of them said, “We thought, ‘why are you guys throwing us under the bus?’ …They [CIA] made it seem like the State Department was given a warning they ignored. No specific warning was given.” Petraeus, who resigned amid a sex scandal days after Mr. Obama’s re-election, declined comment.

As the various agencies worked to edit and approve the talking points on Sept. 14, Mr. Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes emailed that there would be a Deputies meeting the next morning to work out the issues. “That’s polite code for let’s not debate this on e-mail for 18 hours,” said one official involved. (Ben Rhodes is the brother of CBS News President David Rhodes.)

Even today, nobody will say on the record, or even off the record to CBS News, who was at the Deputies meeting on the morning of Sept. 15, where the talking points were drastically pared down for Rice’s use. The approved version called the attacks “demonstrations” that “evolved” after being “spontaneously inspired” by protest at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. All mentions of terrorism, al Qaeda and previous warnings given by the CIA had been excised.

No “spontaneous protest”
In the view of some involved in the process at high levels, “spontaneous” was the wrong word for administration officials to use publicly when describing the attacks, because they say it didn’t translate well and it was taken out of context.

It’s unclear where the story about the Benghazi attacks growing from a protest or demonstration originated or how it gained such prominence in the Obama administration’s initial narrative. One source involved in the Benghazi response insists it wasn’t until the State Department debriefed the five surviving U.S. diplomatic security agents upon their return to the U.S. that Washington officials discovered there had been no protest.

The FBI had interviewed the survivors previously in Germany, but a source says the FBI agents didn’t type up or share their notes at the time because there was no “imminent danger” raised in the interviews. The Obama administration has resisted Congress’ demands to turn over FBI transcripts of the survivor interviews.

“Turning Point”
In the days after Rice’s Sunday talk show appearances on Sept. 15, there were building questions about the true nature of the attacks. Congress was demanding answers. On Sept. 20, a team of Obama administration officials with fresh information agreed to brief the House and Senate in closed sessions.

Amb. Rice insists Libya attack “spontaneous”
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Amb. Rice insists Libya attack “spontaneous”
There, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper revealed that Benghazi “had all the earmarks of a premeditated attack.”

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., stormed out of the room and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., says he uttered an expletive to a colleague sitting next to him. From the view of one Obama administration official who was present, “Something just snapped. [Senators] started yelling and screaming ‘Why did Susan [Rice] lie?'”

“It was a turning point,” said the Obama administration official. “It was just a stark shift from Sunday with no groundwork laid. [Senators] just snapped… Susan was done.”

“We should have released” talking points
In an effort to sort out who-knew-what-when, Congress asked for the talking point drafts and e-mails last November, but the Obama administration withheld them on grounds of national security and the idea that they’re deliberative materials not subject to public release. Congress continued to press and Republican senators even held up administration nominations. Finally, the administration allowed limited reviews of some of the materials but did not let members of Congress, or their staff, take documents from the room or make copies.

An Obama administration source familiar with the process now says the talking points should have been handed over much sooner. “We should have released them six months ago,” said the source, adding that the various federal agencies had agreed to do so but the White House counsel’s office was against it. In response, a White House official told CBS News that the agencies were in agreement on not releasing the materials in November, and in later providing the limited review. “The relevant Agencies and Departments concurred with that accommodation,” said the official.

Avoiding the word “terrorism”?
White House spokesman Jay Carney did not refer to the Benghazi attacks as suspected terrorism when he briefed reporters on Sept. 12, 2012. An administration official who was familiar with the messaging now says Carney should have.

Obama suspects Libya attack targeted Americans
Play VIDEO
Obama suspects Libya attack targeted Americans
A White House official responded saying: “It is easy to criticize and second-guess words nine months after the fact and with many more facts under our belt but the 100 pages of e-mails we released make abundantly clear that it in the immediate aftermath of the Benghazi attacks, the administration, including the CIA, was still working through understanding what happened in Benghazi, whether there were indeed protests, and who was responsible.”

It wasn’t just the White House spokesman who seemed to be avoiding the word “terror.” Mr. Obama used the phrase “acts of terror” when speaking in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12, but not in direct reference to Benghazi. Instead, he referred to it as “an outrageous and shocking attack,” “senseless violence” and “brutal attacks.” He called the assailants “killers,” and “attackers,” but never “terrorists.”

After that event in an interview with Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes,” Kroft asked Mr. Obama about the verbiage.

KROFT: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word “terrorism” in connection with the Libya attack.
OBAMA: Right.

KROFT: Do you believe that this was a terrorist attack?

OBAMA: Well, it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans.

Likewise, Secretary Clinton did not call Benghazi a “terrorist act” in her speech at the ceremonial return of the bodies of Stevens and the three other victims on Sept. 12.

Clinton: Ambassador’s death a “senseless act of violence”
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Clinton: Ambassador’s death a “senseless act of violence”
She did quote a foreign official who called it “an ugly act of terror” but Clinton termed the event an “attack”, “assault,” “rage and violence… over an awful Internet video..” and referenced the terrorist attackers as “thugs,” “killers,” and a “mob.”

A White House official said this week, “It should be surprising to no one that in a place like Benghazi and in a situation like this, perfect information was simply not available to us in the days and weeks after the attack. What matters now is not talking points – what matters is how we can prevent an incident like this from happening again.”

Mistakes but not malice?
Several Obama administration officials said not using the word “terrorism” early on was not part of a conspiracy, but an “abundance of caution.” They reiterate that any misjudgments or mistakes in the Benghazi response and aftermath would not have changed the outcome.

Critics nonetheless see a pattern that points to a cover up. “Incompetence and malice are not mutually exclusive,” said Graham. “The storyline they chose to convey for a couple of weeks was politically the most beneficial one that could be told about Benghazi, and it’s no accident that story line was chosen.”

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said, “If not for Congress, they would still lead us to believe it was a video gone awry.”

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How Big Food Twists the Science

ORIGINAL LINK

Just like mosquitos are the vectors of spread for malaria, a landmark article published recently in one of the most prestigious medical journals described large food corporations as the vectors of spread for chronic disease. Unlike “infectious disease epidemics, however, these corporate disease vectors implement sophisticated campaigns to undermine public health interventions.” Most mosquitoes don’t have as good PR firms.

A key message was that “alcohol and ultra-processed food and drink industries use similar strategies as the tobacco industry to undermine effective public health policies and programs.” What they mean by ultra-processed is things like burgers, frozen meals, chicken nuggets, fish sticks, potato chips, doughnuts and soda pop.

But how is the food industry like the tobacco industry? The “first strategy is to bias research findings.” For example, Philip Morris implemented the Whitecoat project to hire doctors to publish ghost-written studies purporting to negate links between secondhand smoke and harm, publishing biased cherry-picked scientific reports to deny harm and suppress health information. In my video Food Industry-Funded Research Bias, you can see the actual industry memo describing the Whitecoat Project, designed to reverse the scientific “misconception” that secondhand smoke is harmful.

Similarly, funding from these large food corporations biases research. Studies show systematic bias from industry funding, so we get the same kind of tactics—supplying misinformation, use of supposedly conflicting evidence, and hiding negative data. 

The same scientists-for-hire that downplayed the risks of secondhand smoke are the same hired by the likes of the National Confectioner’s Association to say candy cigarettes are A-OK as well. Of course, they declared “no conflict of interest.”

The similarities between strategies used by the tobacco, alcohol, and food and drink corporations are unsurprising in view of the flow of people, funds and activities across these industries, which also have histories of joint ownership—like Philip Morris owned both Kraft and Miller Brewing.

So what’s their strategy? As a former FDA commissioner described:

“The tobacco industry’s strategy was embodied in a script written by the lawyers. Every tobacco company executive in the public eye was told to learn the script backwards and forwards, no deviation was allowed. The basic premise was simple— smoking had not been proven to cause cancer. Not proven, not proven, not proven—this would be stated insistently and repeatedly. Inject a thin wedge of doubt, create controversy, never deviate from the prepared line. It was a simple plan and it worked.”

Internal industry memos make this explicit, stating “doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the body of fact that exists in the mind of the general public.” The internal industry memos list objective number one as “to set aside in the minds of millions the false conviction that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer and other diseases; a conviction based on fanatical assumptions, fallacious rumors, unsupported claims and the unscientific statements and conjectures of publicity-seeking opportunists… [We need] to lift the cigarette from the cancer identification as quickly as possible, and to establish—once and for all—that no scientific evidence has ever been produced, presented or submitted to prove conclusively that cigarette smoking causes cancer,” similar to what’s now coming out from the food industry, from the same folks that brought us smoke and candy.

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This is part of a series of “political” blogs which includes my video, Collaboration with the New Vectors of Disease. Why don’t I just “stick to the science”? When there are billions of dollars at stake, the body of evidence can be skewed and manipulated. Funders can determine which studies are performed, how they’re performed and whether or not they get published at all. That’s why I think it’s important to take a broader view to account for the ways the scientific method can be perverted for profit.

Here are some examples:

• The McGovern Report
• Eggs and Cholesterol: Patently False and Misleading Claims
• Seeing Red No. 3 Coloring to Dye For
• BOLD Indeed: Beef Lowers Cholesterol?
• Who Determines if Food Additives are Safe?
• Who Says Eggs Aren’t Healthy or Safe?

In health,
Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my free videos here and watch my live, year-in-review presentations—2013: Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death, More Than an Apple a Day, 2014: From Table to Able: Combating Disabling Diseases with Food, 2015: Food as Medicine: Preventing and Treating the Most Dreaded Diseases with Diet, and my latest, 2016: How Not To Die: The Role of Diet in Preventing, Arresting, and Reversing Our Top 15 Killers.

Image Credit: stocking / 123RF Stock Photo

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