Bob Shrum, of the Firm “Gall and Wormwood”

DLC Mastermind and GOP camp-follower Bob Shrum actually had the balls to go on last night’s Daily Show and refer to himself as a progressive. And not just a progressive, but a leader of the progressive movement over 25 years.

It would appear that the Republicans aren’t the only ones living in BizarroLand.

Ready for a third party now?

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Privatizing Medicine: Big Pharma Trains Doctors

The corporate privatization of education in general but particularly at the university level is a continuing scandal to which no one is paying any attention that I can see. Turns out it’s gone a lot further than that, even. Pharmaceutical companies have been allowed to hijack the training of our doctors.

THE revelation that the diabetes drug Avandia can potentially cause heart disease is the latest in a string of pharmaceutical disappointments. Vioxx was pulled from the market in 2004 because it doubled the risks for heart attacks and strokes. Eli Lilly recently paid $750 million to settle lawsuits alleging that Zyprexa causes diabetes. Many have criticized the Food and Drug Administration as being too lax about monitoring drug safety.

While those criticisms have merit, there is another culprit: the transformation of continuing medical education into an enterprise for drug marketing. The chore of teaching doctors how to practice medicine has been handed to the pharmaceutical industry. As a result, dangerous side effects are rarely on the curriculum.