Corporate Corruption News Stories

Excerpts of Key Corporate Corruption News Stories in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

The 110th Congress opened with the passage of sweeping new rules intended to curb the influence of lobbyists by prohibiting them from treating lawmakers to meals, trips, stadium box seats or the discounted use of private jets. But it didn't take long for lawmakers to find ways to keep having fun while lobbyists pick up the tab. In just the last two months, lawmakers invited lobbyists to help pay for a catalog of outings: lavish birthday parties in a lawmaker's honor ($1,000 a lobbyist), martinis and margaritas at Washington restaurants (at least $1,000), a California wine-tasting tour (all donors welcome), hunting and fishing trips (typically $5,000), weekend golf tournaments ($2,500 and up), a Presidents Day weekend at Disney World ($5,000), parties in South Beach in Miami ($5,000), concerts by the Who or Bob Seger ($2,500 for two seats), and Broadway shows such as "Mary Poppins" and "The Drowsy Chaperone" (also $2,500 for two). The lobbyists and their employers typically end up paying for the events, but within the new rules. Instead of picking up the tab directly, lobbyists pay a political fundraising committee created by an individual politician and, in turn, the committee pays the lawmaker's way. Lobbyists say that the rules might even increase the volume of contributions flowing from K Street, where many lobbying firms have their offices, to Congress. Members of Congress are becoming more and more creative in finding ways to engage lobbyists to help pay for their campaigns.

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine the UN climate change report. Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute, an ExxonMobil-funded think tank with close links to the Bush Administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of the report. Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered. The institute has received more than $1.6 million from ExxonMobil - which yesterday announced a $50 billion annual profit, the biggest ever by a US company - and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush Administration. A former head of ExxonMobil, Lee Raymond, is the vice-chairman of the institute's board of trustees.

Note: Why wasn't this important story covered by any major media in the U.S.? For an answer, click here.

The world's largest publicly owned oil company announced yesterday the largest corporate profit ever, but news of its near $40-billion (U.S.) windfall in 2006 sparked an angry backlash, coming on the eve of a major report blaming the use of fossil fuels for wreaking devastation on the planet. Exxon shares have risen by about 20 per cent in the past year. Exxon wasn't alone in unprecedented oil earnings. Royal Dutch Shell PLC, an Anglo-Dutch company, and U.S.-run Marathon Oil and Valero Energy, also posted best-ever annual results yesterday. And ConocoPhillips Co., also American, last week posted its highest profits. Profits at the five companies together totalled $91.1-billion -- in a year when drivers paid record prices for gasoline. Both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have also urged Exxon to end its funding of organizations that deny the existence of -- or minimize the seriousness of -- human-made global warming. Scientists yesterday accused the conservative American Enterprise Institute, which receives funding from Exxon, of offering scientists up to $10,000 for articles that undercut a report to be released today from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Last month, the Union of Concerned Scientists ... said that Exxon has spent $16-million over the past 10 years financing organizations that deny the seriousness of climate change. Alden Meyer, a strategist with the group, compared Exxon's efforts to discredit the science of global warming to the tobacco companies' efforts to sow doubts about the link between smoking and lung cancer in order to protect their profits.

Note: Compare this Canadian article with the New York Times reporting of this record profit, or that of any other major U.S. newspaper. The U.S. press barely mentions that oil company gouging which took dollars from your pocket is what led to record profits. To understand why the U.S. press behaves in this way, click here.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday it would make organizational changes to improve internal communication about potential risks that emerge after a new drug reaches the market. The move is part of the agency's response to an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report that sharply criticized the FDA's drug safety oversight and called for more staffing, funding and power to police the drug industry. The September 2006 report also found a "dysfunctional" FDA structure that hindered the agency's ability to protect public health. The IOM experts said they found FDA officials had trouble managing scientific disagreements among staff and downplayed some concerns by safety reviewers who monitor drugs after they win approval. On Tuesday, the agency said it was "making specific organizational and management changes to increase communications among FDA review staff and safety staff." The announcement came as lawmakers prepare to debate critical funding legislation for the agency that could become a vehicle for drug safety reforms. The FDA had requested the IOM report after it came under harsh criticism for its handling of Merck & Co. Inc.'s withdrawn arthritis drug Vioxx and other medicines. Merck pulled Vioxx from the market in 2004, five years after its approval, because of a link to heart attacks and strokes.

The Middle Ages had the Knights Templar. The 18th century had the Masons and the Illuminati. Our modern age has golf-playing businessmen. [Jon] Ronson, a 35-year-old British writer, humorist and documentarian, kept reading and hearing about the "tiny elite [that] rules the world from inside a secret room" -- so he decided to go in search of it. He met with extremists of many stripes: Ku Klux Klansmen with a PR bent, Muslim rabble-rousers ... and others convinced that a New World Order meant the end of the world. He sought out the industrialists of groups such as the Bilderberg Group and Bohemian Grove. He wrote about his experiences in "Them." Ronson's extremists seem rather normal. Some are very much aware of how their views marginalize them. The people of "Them" are people who are all too human -- even if they would deny others their humanity. As the saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone's not out to get you. Ronson doesn't deny that many of the extremists in "Them" are, well, extreme. Many have put together half-baked theories that blame the troubles of the world on wealthy businessmen, usually a code word for Jews. Ronson, who's Jewish himself, sometimes found it awkward to listen to their views. Conspiracy theorists tend to be fearful, less educated, less tied in to the power structure. Meanwhile, the leaders of corporations and countries do meet as part of conferences sponsored by organizations such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group. While researching a Bilderberg Group meeting, [Ronson] was chased through parts of Portugal by shadowy security men. He found out just how thin the membrane between "us" and "them" may be.

Note: Them is by far the most balanced, entertaining book you are likely to find on conspiracy theorists. It pokes a lot of fun both at the conspiracy theorists and at the powerful secret groups which he finds to be deluded almost as much as the conspiracy theorists themselves.

Secret emails reveal that the UK's biggest drug company distorted trial results of an anti-depressant, covering up a link with suicide in teenagers. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) attempted to show that Seroxat worked for depressed children despite failed clinical trials. And that GSK-employed ghostwriters influenced 'independent' academics. GSK faces action in the US where bereaved families have joined together to sue the company. As a result, GSK has been forced to open its confidential internal archive. Karen Barth Menzies is a partner in one of the firms representing many of the families. She has examined thousands of the documents which are stored, box upon box, in an apartment in Malibu, California. She said: "Even when they have negative studies that show that this drug Seroxat is going to harm some kids they still spin that study as remarkably effective and safe for children." An email from a public relations executive working for GSK ... said: "Originally we had planned to do extensive media relations surrounding this study until we actually viewed the results. Essentially the study did not really show it was effective in treating adolescent depression, which is not something we want to publicise." Seroxat was banned for under 18s in 2003 after the MHRA revealed that GSK's own studies showed the drug actually trebles the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviour in depressed children.

Note: For more reliable information on how the drug companies put profits ahead of your health, click here.

There are no magic bullets in the fight against cancer: that's the first thing every responsible scientist mentions when discussing a possible new treatment, no matter how promising. If there were a magic bullet, though, it might be something like dichloroacetate, or DCA, a drug that kills cancer cells by exploiting a fundamental weakness found in a wide range of solid tumors. So far, though, it kills them just in test tubes and in rats infected with human cancer cells; it has never been tested against cancer in living human beings. DCA ... is an existing drug whose side effects are well-studied and relatively tolerable. Also, it's a small molecule that might be able to cross the blood-brain barrier to reach otherwise intractable brain tumors. Within days after a technical paper on DCA appeared in the journal Cancer Cell last week, the lead author, Dr. Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta, was deluged with calls and e-mails from prospective patients—to whom he can say only, “Hang in there.” DCA is a remarkably simple molecule. It acts in the body to promote the activity of the mitochondria. Researchers have assumed that the mitochondria in cancer cells were irreparably damaged. But Michelakis wondered if that was really true. With his colleagues he used DCA to turn back on the mitochondria in cancer cells—which promptly died. One of the great things about DCA is that it's a simple compound, in the public domain, and could be produced for pennies a dose. But that's also a problem, because big drug companies are unlikely to spend a billion dollars or so on large-scale clinical trials for a compound they can't patent.

Note: Read a 2010 follow-up by Dr. Michelakis with promising results and watch a 10-minute video. Explore the DCA website. Why didn't other mass media report this major story? Why aren't many millions of dollars being poured into research? Notice even Newsweek acknowledges the drug companies are not interested in finding a cure for cancer if they can't make a profit from it. Some suspect the drug companies have even suppressed cancer cures found in the past. See one amazing example of this. For more, see these major media articles on potential cancer cures.

Dr. Walter Bernard Coffey of San Francisco was again asking the State of New York's Department of Social Welfare permission to open a cancer research laboratory and clinic at Huntington, L. I. His cohorts surrounded him. Opposed were Dr. John Augustus Hartwell, president of the New York Academy of Medicine, spokesman for organized Medicine, and his cohorts. The simple question was: Should the State authorize the cancer clinic? But in the train of that simple question came a most extraordinary range of considerations—the nature and cause of cancer; the nature and authenticity of the Coffey-Humber cancer treatment; medical ethics, human nature, public policy, money, fame, and even national politics. Dr. Coffey ... is chief surgeon of Southern Pacific Co. He has 600 doctors working under him. They care for 70,000 railroad men and their families. Dr. John Augustus Hartwell, 61, president of the New York Academy of Medicine ... and most of his associates want Drs. Coffey & Humber and their cancer extract kept away from New York. They fear that the hope of a Coffey-Humber cancer cure will persuade the cancerous to abandon the orthodox treatment of surgery, X-rays and radium. Very quickly after a sufferer gets a Coffey-Humber injection, his pain quiets, and in 71% of the cases disappears. In most of the cases who do not die (Drs. Coffey & Humber will treat only the moribund, cases rejected as hopeless by at least two reputable doctors), the cancer becomes necrotic, ceases to smell, and sloughs off leaving a clean hole. That undeniably happens. Why that happens is debatable.

Note: To read how permission for the innovative cancer clinic was eventually refused, click here. If you want to understand how politics and big money prevented the legitimate study of promising cancer cures back in the 1930s, this article is a highly revealing "must read."

Drs. Coffey & Humber ... last year cautiously announced that they were alleviating hopeless cases of cancer by means of adrenal cortex extract derived from sheep. The Hearst press recognized the kernel of news in this announcement and puffed it so that thousands of cancer victims abandoned the orthodox treatment of surgery, X-rays and radium, rushed for the sure-cure. The two doctors were amazed, but nonetheless swam with the tide of publicity and patients. They opened auxiliary clinics at Los Angeles and Long Beach. They went before a Senate committee to argue for Government aid for cancer research. They gained a patent for their extract. Mrs. Grace Hammond Conners ... gave Drs. Coffey & Humber her $1,000,000 estate, "The Monastery," at Huntington, L. I. Although Dr. Hartwell & friends who last week opposed opening "The Monastery" as a clinic "do not for a minute question the sincerity of Drs. Coffey and Humber in believing they have something of value," the critics "do question the way they have handled their work." The New York men are certain that their San Francisco colleagues have had no training to qualify for research in "the most complex field that exists" in medicine. They do not believe that adrenal cortex extract will cure cancer or that it has value in cancer treatment. They fear that the Californians will experiment on New York humans, hence want them (or at least their methods; excluded, to remain in California where patients are "abundantly available." This was obviously a campaign to ostracize Drs. Coffey & Humber from Manhattan's vicinity. It was conducted ... "by persons who had their own methods, hospitals and funds."

Note: The doctors eventually not only were denied permission to open a cancer clinic for their promising work, they were stripped of the $1 million dollar estate donated to them (worth about $15 million in current U.S. dollars). For the full, fascinating story, click here.

The two sides in the debate over genetically modified crops issued warring reports assessing the first decade of the technology this week, as the industry's sunny view clashed with the darker vision of critics. The world's farmland planted with biotechnology crops reached 252 million acres in 2006, the industry-backed International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications calculated in a report ... that promotes the products as solutions for hunger and future fuel demand. The report concluded that biotechnology boosts crop yields and benefits the environment. That view was challenged by Friends of the Earth International and the Center for Food Safety in a report released Wednesday. The two groups argued that engineered plants don't produce larger harvests than conventional varieties, are often more vulnerable to drought and have increased the use of pesticides. The United States and Argentina host about 70 percent of the world's biotech crop acreage, both sides said. But adoption of the technology is growing at a faster rate in developing countries than in industrialized nations, according to the International Service. About 10 million farmers in 22 countries sow genetically modified crops, it said. The dominant biotech crop is soybeans, with 57 percent of world acreage, followed by maize, cotton and canola. Opponents said the crops are mainly a boon to agribusiness and big agricultural chemical companies trying to increase sales of seeds, weed-killers and bug sprays. Biotech crop seeds are often engineered to be resistant to the herbicides or pesticides sold by the same company.

Note: For reliable information showing that you may be eating genetically modified food every day which scientific experiments have repeatedly demonstrated can cause sickness and even death, click here.

In results that "astounded" scientists, an inexpensive molecule known as DCA was shown to shrink lung, breast and brain tumours in both animal and human tissue experiments. The study was published yesterday in the journal Cancer Cell. "I think DCA can be selective for cancer because it attacks a fundamental process of cancer that is unique to cancer cells," said Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the Edmonton university's medical school and one of the study's key authors. The molecule appears to repair damaged mitochondria in cancer cells. "When a cell is getting too old or doesn't function properly, the mitochondria are going to induce the cell death," lead study author Sebastien Bonnet said yesterday. Bonnet says DCA – or dichloroacetate – appears to reverse the mitochondrial changes in a wide range of cancers. "One of the really exciting things about this compound is that it might be able to treat many different forms of cancer because all forms of cancer suppress mitochondrial function," Michelakis said. Bonnet says DCA may also provide an effective cancer treatment because its small size allows easy absorption into the body, ensuring it can reach areas that other drugs cannot, such as brain tumours. Because it's been used to combat other ailments ... DCA has been shown to have few toxic effects on the body. Its previous use means it can be immediately tested on humans. Unlike other cancer drugs, DCA did not appear to have any negative effect on normal cells. It could provide an extremely inexpensive cancer therapy because it's not patented. But ... the lack of a patent could lead to an unwillingness on the part of pharmaceutical companies to fund expensive clinical trials.

Note: Even these scientists realize that though this discovery could be a huge benefit to mankind, because the drug companies will lose profits, they almost certainly will not fund studies. Expensive AIDS drugs with promising results, on the other hand, are rushed through the studies to market. For more reliable, verifiable information on how hugely beneficial health advances are shut down to keep profits high, click here and here.

Data supplied by tobacco companies strongly suggest that in recent years manufacturers deliberately boosted nicotine levels in cigarettes to more effectively hook smokers, Harvard researchers conclude in a study being released today. The companies increasingly used tobacco richer in nicotine and made design changes to give smokers more puffs per cigarette, according to the analysis from the Harvard School of Public Health. The report expands on a landmark Massachusetts Department of Public Health study issued last August showing that the amount of nicotine that could be inhaled from cigarettes increased an average of 10 percent from 1998 through 2004. A 1996 state law required cigarette makers to test the nicotine that could be inhaled from their products, and the state ordered the use of machines that simulate a typical smoker's puffing. The Harvard researchers, who corroborated the basic findings of the state study, wanted to determine why cigarettes were delivering more nicotine. "Industry says it's changed," said Greg Connolly, an author of the Harvard study. "They've changed -- maybe for the worse." The Harvard study relies on information supplied by the industry. "It was systematic, it was pervasive, it involved all the manufacturers, and it was by design," said Dr. Howard Koh, an associate dean at the Harvard School of Public Health and an author of the study. Another author said that the likelihood that the nicotine increase happened by chance was less than 1 in 1,000.

In the late spring of 1933, concentration camps such as Dachau were generating headlines reporting great brutality. Nonetheless, GM and Germany began a strategic business relationship. General Motors World, the company house organ, covered [a 1934] May Day event glowingly in a several-page cover story, stressing Hitler's boundless affinity for children. The next day, May 2, 1934, after practicing his sieg heil in front of a mirror, [President of GM Overseas Corp. James] Mooney ... went to meet Hitler. As Mooney traversed the long approach to Hitler's desk, he began to pump his arm in a stern-faced sieg heil. This was ... one of many contacts between the Nazis and GM officials that are spotlighted in thousands of pages of little-known and restricted Nazi-era and New Deal-era documents. The biggest automotive manufacturer in Germany -- indeed in all of Europe -- was General Motors, which since 1929 had owned and operated the longtime German company Opel. A few weeks after the [Hitler meeting], General Motors World effusively recounted ... "Hitler is a strong man, well fitted to lead the German people. He is leading them, not by force or fear, but by intelligent planning." In 1937, almost 17 percent of Opel's Blitz trucks were sold directly to the Nazi military. That military sales figure was increased to 29 percent in 1938. In 1938, just months after the Nazi annexation of Austria, Mooney, head of GM's overseas operations, received the German Eagle with Cross, the highest medal Hitler awarded to foreign commercial collaborators and supporters.

Marcia Angell [is] a faculty member at the Harvard Medical School [and one of the] former editors of The New England Journal of Medicine. Her new book, "The Truth About the Drug Companies," is a sober, clear-eyed attack on the excesses of drug company power. How does the drug industry deceive us? It plies attending physicians with expense-paid junkets to St. Croix and Key West, Fla., where they are given honoraria and consulting fees to listen to promotional presentations. It promotes new or little-known diseases such as "social anxiety disorder" and "premenstrual dysphoric disorder" as a way of selling the drugs that treat them. It sets up phony front groups disguised as "patient advocacy organizations." It hires ghostwriters to produce misleading scientific articles and then pays academic physicians to sign on as authors. It sends paid lackeys and shills out onto the academic lecture circuit to ''educate" doctors about a drug's unapproved uses. It hires multinational PR firms to trumpet dubious studies as scientific breakthroughs while burying the studies that are likely to harm sales. It buys up the results of publicly funded research. It maintains a political chokehold on the American public by donating more money to political campaigns than any other industry in the country. For many years the drug industry has reaped the highest profit margins of any industry in America. In 2002, the top 10 American drug companies had profit margins of 17 percent; Pfizer, the largest, had profit margins of 26 percent. So staggeringly profitable is the drug industry that in 2002 the combined profits for the top 10 drug companies in the Fortune 500 were greater than those of all the other 490 companies combined.

Note: For an excellent 10-page summary of this revealing book written by the esteemed author, click here. For additional reliable information on the health cover-up, click here.

Dr. Marcia Angell is a former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine and spent two decades on the staff of that publication. Her new book is a scorching indictment of drug companies and their research and business practices. "Despite all its excesses, this is an important industry that should be saved - mainly from itself," she writes. Dr. Angell's case is tough, persuasive and troubling. "The Truth About the Drug Companies" ... is devoted to assertions of shady, misleading corporate behavior. In the past, drug discoveries made through government research remained in the public domain. Beginning in 1980 those breakthroughs could be patented, even if their research was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. As a consequence, Dr. Angell says, patent shenanigans have reshaped the drug business, as have the recent government regulations that expedite direct-to-consumer drug advertising. "Once upon a time, drug companies promoted drugs to treat diseases," Dr. Angell writes. "Now it is often the opposite. They promote diseases to fit their drugs." Why all the advertising? "If prescription drugs are so good, why do they need to be pushed so hard?" she asks. Dr. Angell is now a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School.

Note: For an excellent 10-page summary of this revealing book written by the esteemed author, click here. For more reliable information on the health cover-up, click here.

The combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together ($33.7 billion). Over the past two decades the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the US Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself. The great majority of "new" drugs are not new at all but merely variations of older drugs already on the market. Of the 78 drugs approved by the FDA in 2002, only 17 contained new active ingredients, and only seven of these were classified by the FDA as improvements over older drugs. [The] market would collapse virtually overnight if the FDA made approval of new drugs contingent on their being better in some important way than older drugs already on the market. Many medical schools and teaching hospitals set up "technology transfer" offices to ... capitalize on faculty discoveries. Medical school faculty entered into ... lucrative financial arrangements with drug companies, as did their parent institutions. One of the results has been a growing pro-industry bias in medical research—exactly where such bias doesn't belong. The industry ... fought the state of Maine all the way to the US Supreme Court, which in 2003 upheld Maine's right to bargain with drug companies for lower prices. This industry is taking us for a ride, and there will be no real reform without an aroused and determined public to make it happen.

Note: The above book and book review was written by Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of the prestigious The New England Journal of Medicine. For more reliable information on the health cover-up, click here.

Lockheed Martin doesn't run the United States. But it does help run a breathtakingly big part of it. Lockheed ... has built a formidable information-technology empire that now stretches from the Pentagon to the post office. It sorts your mail and totals your taxes. It cuts Social Security checks and counts the United States census. It runs space flights and monitors air traffic. Lockheed ... is best known for its weapons. But in the post-9/11 world, Lockheed has become more than just the biggest corporate cog in what Dwight D. Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. It is increasingly putting its stamp on the nation's military policies. Former Lockheed executives, lobbyists and lawyers hold crucial posts at the White House and the Pentagon, picking weapons and setting policies. War and crisis have been good for business. The company's stock has tripled in the last four years. Lockheed is creating robot soldiers and neural software - "intelligent agents" - to do their work. Israel spends much of the $1.8 billion in annual military aid from the United States to buy F-16 warplanes from Lockheed. Its own executives say the concentration of power among military contractors is more intense than in any other sector of business outside banking. AND, after 9/11 ... cost is essentially irrelevant. Former Lockheed executives serve on the Defense Policy Board ... and the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which help make military and intelligence policy and pick weapons for future battles. Lockheed's board includes E. C. Aldridge Jr. ... the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. To say that "war and crisis have been good for business" is quite an understatement. To read what one of the most highly decorated generals had to say about this, click here.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/10/11/MN20927.DTL

Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger is preparing a push to deregulate the state's electricity markets -- a move embraced by business leaders and some energy analysts but criticized by many Democrats and consumer advocates as a return to the failed policies that sparked California's energy crisis. "Deregulation has already cost the state $50 billion, give or take," said Mike Florio, senior attorney for The Utility Reform Network. "Why on earth anyone would want to do that again is mystifying to us." Florio also said he was suspicious of Schwarzenegger's idea because former Enron Corp. Chairman and CEO Ken Lay met with the actor and others in the spring of 2001, when Lay was pushing deregulation in California. Schwarzenegger has said he doesn't remember details of the meeting.

Note: What was Schwarzenegger doing meeting with the CEO of Enron well over two years before the recall vote which gave him the governorship of California? Could it be big business had plans for him?

ExxonMobil Corp. gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in an effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists asserted yesterday. The report by the advocacy group mirrors similar claims by Britain's leading scientific academy. Last September, The Royal Society wrote the oil company asking it to halt support for groups that "misrepresented the science of climate change." Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' strategy and policy director, said in a teleconference that ExxonMobil based its tactics on those of tobacco companies, spreading uncertainty by misrepresenting peer-reviewed scientific studies or emphasizing only selected facts. James McCarthy, a professor at Harvard University, said the company has sought to "create the illusion of a vigorous debate" about global warming.

Two UK-based academics have devised a way to invent new medicines and get them to market at a fraction of the cost charged by big drug companies. Sunil Shaunak, professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College ... calls their revolutionary new model "ethical pharmaceuticals". Improvements they devise to the molecular structure of an existing, expensive drug turn it technically into a new medicine which is no longer under a 20-year patent to a multinational drug company and can be made and sold cheaply. The process has the potential to undermine the monopoly of the big drug companies and bring cheaper drugs not only to poor countries but back to the UK. Professor Shaunak and his colleague from the London School of Pharmacy, Steve Brocchini, have linked up with an Indian biotech company which will manufacture the first drug - for hepatitis C. Hepatitis C affects 170 million people worldwide and at least 200,000 in the UK. Multinational drug companies put the cost of the research and development of a new drug at $800m (Ł408m). Professors Shaunak and Brocchini say the cost of theirs will be only a few million pounds. Professor Shaunak says it is time that the monopoly on drug invention and production by multinational corporations - which charge high prices because they need to make big profits for their shareholders - was broken. The team's work on the hepatitis C drug has impeccable establishment credentials. But the professors' ethical pharmaceutical model is unlikely to find much favour with the multinational pharmaceutical companies, which already employ large teams of lawyers to defend the patents which they describe as the lifeblood of the industry.

Note: This is very exciting news, but we'll see what happens when the hugely profitable pharmaceutical industry presses its might against this effort. For more, click here.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.