Saturday, October 18, 2014

General Electric Shifts From Causing Disease to "Treating" Diseases Caused





In 2012 GE CEO Jeff Immelt was quoted by the Financial Times as stating nuclear is 'Hard to Justify', GE Says:
Financial Times Monday July 20, 2012, p. A1 by Piita Clark

"Nuclear power is so expensive compared with other forms of energy that it has become 'really hard' to justify, according to the chief executive of General Electric, one of the world's largest suppliers of atomic equipment.

'It's really a gas and wind world today,' said Jeff Immelt....

'When I talk tot he guys who run the oil companies they say look, they're finding more gas all the time. It's just hard to justify nuclear, really hard. Gas is so cheap and at some point, really economics rule,' Mr. Immelt told the Financial Times in an interview in London....

Majia here: Given nuclear reactors are hard to justify, how will GE continue to make money? The Wall Street Journal is reporting GE hopes to profit from the public's increasing lack of health:

Mann, T. (2014, October 18-19 Weekend Edition). GE Highlights Medical Unit as Earnings Rise. The Wall Street Journal, p. 3

Immelt told the WSJ that GE Healthcare Life Sciences is a "key business for us" and Kieran Murphy who heads the division is quoted as stating: "This is a growing and valuable business within GE, and we continue to see a healthy pipeline and have great confidence in the future growth of the business."


Majia here: The WSJ explains GE is under investor pressure to spin off the health care division because margins are thin but GE executives are convinced they will have a "healthy pipeline" of sick patients in need of GE equipment, which mostly (as far as I can tell) consists of medical scanning equipment.

GE's use of the term "healthy" to describe their pipeline is indeed ironic given that said pipeline consists largely, if not primarily, of cancer patients.

Cancer rates are expected to skyrocket:
Nanci Hellmich New cancer cases worldwide expected to skyrocket , USA TODAY http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/04/cancer-cases-worldwide-increase/5200445/

The incidence of cancer worldwide is growing at an alarming pace, and there is an urgent need to implement strategies to prevent and curb the disease, according to a report from the World Health Organization. New cancer cases will skyrocket globally from an estimated 14 million in 2012 to 22 million new cases a year within the next two decades, the report says. During that same period, cancer deaths are predicted to rise from an estimated 8.2 million annually to 13 million a year.
Majia here: With Fukushima's GE reactors in meltdown spewing radiation contamination into the ocean and atmosphere I imagine that cancer rates will soar still higher.

No wonder GE sees a bright future in medical imaging. It is helping to produce the plague of cancer its techologies are designed to diagnose! How profitable!






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