Author: Richard Eskow

By Cameron Stephenson October 16th 2012  1:30pm The New England Compounding Center (NECC), located in Framingham, Massachusetts, has now killed 15 people and left over 200 sick.  These numbers, growing literally by the hour, leave no question that this company directly caused one of the deadliest outbreaks of fungal meningitis to date.  But, how deep does the story go?  We all know this company is responsible, but where was the regulatory oversight and why was it not enforced? NECC is a specialized compounding pharmacy that, unlike Big Pharma giants Pfizer and Merck, is not regulated at the federal level by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  Rather, due to its compounding nature, NECC operates under questionable loophole status, thus subjecting itself to regulation at the state level only.  Pursuant to its licensing through the Massachusetts’ Board of Pharmacy, NECC is only permitted to manufacture and deliver compounded products in response to “individual patient specific prescriptions.”  However, according to the Massachusetts’ Department of Health, NECC was acting well beyond its state license by mass producing and distributing compounded medications in bulk, not in response to individual patient prescription orders. “The New England Compounding Center was masquerading as a compounding pharmacy so it could escape federal regulation when it was actually operating as a drug manufacturer,” said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has...

For the last two weeks, Republicans have been telling us that all of the national polls showing Obama destroying Mitt Romney in this year’s election are untrustworthy and are all biased towards Obama.  But that talking point is just a distraction, and the GOP knows that they are facing an enormous uphill battle with candidate Romney.  And that’s why they’ve been working so hard to keep Democrats away from the voting booth this year, and in their desperation, they’ve now turned to one of the dirtiest, dishonest men imaginable – a man named Nathan Sproul. Below is a transcript of Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio interview this week with investigative journalist Brad Friedman, where the two discuss the GOP’s voter suppression schemes that are taking place in states across the country. Mike:              So Brad, Nathan Sproul.  He’s somebody you’ve followed over the years.  What a creepy little character.  Tell me the Nathan Sproul story. Brad:               Yeah, Nathan Sproul he shows up in election after election year after year.  He’s hired by the top Republican Party, the presidential candidates.  He worked for Bush-Chaney in ’04, for McCain-Palin in ’08.  Once again he was hired as a paid political consultant by Mitt Romney this year and he is the owner of a company by the name of Strategic Allied Consulting that is at the center of a GOP voter registration fraud...