大卫Kirby

在几年坚持以后没有连接疫苗的证据与起始孤独性光谱混乱(ASD)，美国政府安静地承认了疫苗孤独性盒在联邦要求法院。

史无前例的让步在11月9日被归档了，并且密封保护原告的辨认。 它通过个体获得了无关与案件。

要求，当前4,900个孤独性案件之一等待在联邦“疫苗法院”，由美国副检察长彼得Keisler和其他司法部官员承认，代表保健服务中心， “被告”在所有疫苗法案。

儿童的要求反对政府-水银包含疫苗的那是她的孤独性的起因-由特别大师在联邦索赔法庭应该是之一三“判例案件”为thimerosal孤独性理论当前在研究中，主持的法官一个三成员的盘区。

Keisler写道，医疗人员在疫苗伤害报偿(DVIC) HHS分部回顾了案件和“认为，报偿是适当的”。

医生承认孩子是健康和通常开发直到她18个月的很好婴孩参观，当她同时接受了接种反对九种不同疾病(二包含了thimerosal)。

几天以后，女孩开始成螺旋形上升向下入，在月内，提出作为孤独性症状病症和挫折的小瀑布，包括： 对口头方向的无回应; 语言技能损失; 没有目光接触; “关联性损失; ”失眠; 持续不断尖叫; 成拱形; 并且“一再观看荧光灯在考试期间”。

七个月在接种以后，患者由博士诊断。 安德鲁Zimmerman，一位主导的神经学家在肯尼迪Krieger儿童医院神经学诊所，以“回归脑病(脑子疾病)与特点一致与自我中心光谱混乱，跟随的正常发展”。 女孩也遇见了诊断和统计指南为精神错乱(DSM-IV)正式标准为孤独性。

在它的书面让步，政府认为孩子有“由她的射击加重”，并且最后导致ASD诊断的已存在的线粒体混乱。

“The vaccinations received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder,” the concession says, “which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of ASD.”

This statement is good news for the girl and her family, who will now be compensated for the lifetime of care she will require. But its implications for the larger vaccine-autism debate, and for public health policy in general, are not as certain.

In fact, the government’s concession seems to raise more questions than it answers.

1) Is there a connection between vaccines, mitochondrial disorders and a diagnosis of autism, at least in some cases?

Mitochondria, you may recall from biology class, are the little powerhouses within cells that convert food into electrical energy, partly through a complex process called “oxidative phosphorylation.” If this process is impaired, mitochondrial disorder will ensue.

The child in this case had several markers for Mt disease, which was confirmed by muscle biopsy. Mt disease is often marked by lethargy, poor muscle tone, poor food digestion and bowel problems, something found in many children diagnosed with autism.

But mitochondrial disorders are rare in the general population, affecting some 2-per-10,000 people (or just 0.2%). So with 4,900 cases filed in Vaccine Court, this case should be the one and only, extremely rare instance of Mt disease in all the autism proceedings.

But it is not.

Mitochondrial disorders are now thought to be the most common disease associated with ASD. Some journal articles and other analyses have estimated that 10% to 20% of all autism cases may involve mitochondrial disorders, which would make them one thousand times more common among people with ASD than the general population.

Another article, published in the Journal of Child Neurology and co-authored by Dr. Zimmerman, showed that 38% of Kennedy Krieger Institute autism patients studied had one marker for impaired oxidative phosphorylation, and 47% had a second marker.

The authors — who reported on a case-study of the same autism claim conceded in Vaccine Court — noted that “children who have (mitochondrial-related) dysfunctional cellular energy metabolism might be more prone to undergo autistic regression between 18 and 30 months of age if they also have infections or immunizations at the same time.”

An interesting aspect of Mt disease in autism is that, with ASD, the mitochondrial disease seems to be milder than in “classic” cases of Mt disorder. In fact, classic Mt disease is almost always inherited, either passed down by the mother through mitochondrial DNA, or by both parents through nuclear DNA.

In autism-related Mt disease, however, the disorder is not typically found in other family members, and instead appears to be largely of the sporadic variety, which may now account for 75% of all mitochondrial disorders.

Meanwhile, an informal survey of seven families of children with cases currently pending in Vaccine Court revealed that all seven showed markers for mitochondrial dysfunction, dating back to their earliest medical tests. The facts in all seven claims mirror the case just conceded by the government: Normal development followed by vaccination, immediate illness, and rapid decline culminating in an autism diagnosis.

2) With 4,900 cases pending, and more coming, will the government concede those with underlying Mt disease — and if it not, will the Court award compensation?

The Court will soon begin processing the 4900 cases pending before it. What if 10% to 20% of them can demonstrate the same Mt disease and same set of facts as those in the conceded case? Would the government be obliged to concede 500, or even 1,000 cases? What impact would that have on public opinion? And is there enough money currently in the vaccine injury fund to cover so many settlements?

When asked for a comment last week about the court settlement, a spokesman for HHS furnished the following written statement:

“DVIC has reviewed the scientific information concerning the allegation that vaccines cause autism and has found no credible evidence to support the claim. Accordingly, in every case under the Vaccine Act, DVIC has maintained the position that vaccines do not cause autism, and has never concluded in any case that autism was caused by vaccination.”

3) If the government is claiming that vaccines did not “cause” autism, but instead aggravated a condition to “manifest” as autism, isn’t that a very fine distinction?

For most affected families, such linguistic gymnastics is not so important. And even if a vaccine injury “manifested” as autism in only one case, isn’t that still a significant development worthy of informing the public?

On the other hand, perhaps what the government is claiming is that vaccination resulted in the symptoms of autism, but not in an actual, factually correct diagnosis of autism itself.

4) If the government is claiming that this child does NOT have autism, then how many other children might also have something else that merely “mimics” autism?

Is it possible that 10%-20% of the cases that we now label as “autism,” are not autism at all, but rather some previously undefined “look-alike” syndrome that merely presents as “features” of autism?

This question gets to the heart of what autism actually is. The disorder is defined solely as a collection of features, nothing more. If you have the features (and the diagnosis), you have the disorder. The underlying biology is the great unknown.

But let’s say the government does determine that these kids don’t have actual “autism” (something I speculated on HuffPost a year ago). Then shouldn’t the Feds go back and test all people with ASD for impaired oxidative phosphorylation, perhaps reclassifying many of them?

If so, will we then see “autism” cases drop by tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people? Will there be a corresponding ascension of a newly described disorder, perhaps something like “Vaccine Aggravated Mitochondrial Disease with Features of ASD?”

And if this child was technically “misdiagnosed” with DSM-IV autism by Dr Zimmerman, how does he feel about HHS doctors issuing a second opinion re-diagnosis of his patient, whom they presumably had neither met nor examined? (Zimmerman declined an interview).

And along those lines, aren’t Bush administration officials somewhat wary of making long-distance, retroactive diagnoses from Washington, given that the Terry Schiavo incident has not yet faded from national memory?

5) Was this child’s Mt disease caused by a genetic mutation, as the government implies, and wouldn’t that have manifested as “ASD features” anyway?

In the concession, the government notes that the patient had a “single nucleotide change” in the mitochondrial DNA gene T2387C, implying that this was the underlying cause of her manifested “features” of autism.

While it’s true that some inherited forms of Mt disease can manifest as developmental delays, (and even ASD in the form of Rhett Syndrome) these forms are linked to identified genetic mutations, of which T2387C is not involved. In fact little, if anything, is known about the function of this particular gene.

What’s more, there is no evidence that this girl, prior to vaccination, suffered from any kind of “disorder” at all- genetic, mitochondrial or otherwise. Some forms of Mt disease are so mild that the person is unaware of being affected. This perfectly developing girl may have had Mt disorder at the time of vaccination, but nobody detected, or even suspected it.

And, there is no evidence to suggest that this girl would have regressed into symptoms consistent with a DSM-IV autism diagnosis without her vaccinations. If there was such evidence, then why on earth would these extremely well-funded government attorneys compensate this alleged injury in Vaccine Court? Why wouldn’t they move to dismiss, or at least fight the case at trial?

6) What are the implications for research?

The concession raises at least two critical research questions: What are the causes of Mt dysfunction; and how could vaccines aggravate that dysfunction to the point of “autistic features?”

While some Mt disorders are clearly inherited, the “sporadic” form is thought to account for 75% of all cases, according to the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation. So what causes sporadic Mt disease? “Medicines or other toxins,” says the Cleveland Clinic, a leading authority on the subject.

Use of the AIDS drug AZT, for example, can cause Mt disorders by deleting large segments of mitochondrial DNA. If that is the case, might other exposures to drugs or toxins (i.e., thimerosal, mercury in fish, air pollution, pesticides, live viruses) also cause sporadic Mt disease in certain subsets of children, through similar genotoxic mechanisms?

Among the prime cellular targets of mercury are mitochondria, and thimerosal-induced cell death has been associated with the depolarization of mitochondrial membrane, according to the International Journal of Molecular Medicine among several others. (Coincidently, the first case of Mt disease was diagnosed in 1959, just 15 years after the first autism case was named, and two decades after thimerosal’s introduction as a vaccine preservative.)

Regardless of its cause, shouldn’t HHS sponsor research into Mt disease and the biological mechanisms by which vaccines could aggravate the disorder? We still do not know what it was, exactly, about this girl’s vaccines that aggravated her condition. Was it the thimerosal? The three live viruses? The two attenuated viruses? Other ingredients like aluminum? A combination of the above?

And of course, if vaccine injuries can aggravate Mt disease to the point of manifesting as autism features, then what other underlying disorders or conditions (genetic, autoimmune, allergic, etc.) might also be aggravated to the same extent?

7) What are the implications for medicine and public health?

Should the government develop and approve new treatments for “aggravated mitochondrial disease with ASD features?” Interestingly, many of the treatments currently deployed in Mt disease (i.e., coenzyme Q10, vitamin B-12, lipoic acid, biotin, dietary changes, etc.) are part of the alternative treatment regimen that many parents use on their children with ASD.

And, if a significant minority of autism cases can be linked to Mt disease and vaccines, shouldn’t these products one day carry an FDA Black Box warning label, and shouldn’t children with Mt disorders be exempt from mandatory immunization?

8) What are the implications for the vaccine-autism debate?

It’s too early to tell. But this concession could conceivably make it more difficult for some officials to continue insisting there is “absolutely no link” between vaccines and autism.

It also puts the Federal Government’s Vaccine Court defense strategy somewhat into jeopardy. DOJ lawyers and witnesses have argued that autism is genetic, with no evidence to support an environmental component. And, they insist, it’s simply impossible to construct a chain of events linking immunizations to the disorder.

Government officials may need to rethink their legal strategy, as well as their public relations campaigns, given their own slightly contradictory concession in this case.

9) What is the bottom line here?

The public, (including world leaders) will demand to know what is going on inside the US Federal health establishment. Yes, as of now, n=1, a solitary vaccine-autism concession. But what if n=10% or 20%? Who will pay to clean up that mess?

The significance of this concession will unfortunately be fought over in the usual, vitriolic way — and I fully expect to be slammed for even raising these questions. Despite that, the language of this concession cannot be changed, or swept away.

Its key words are “aggravated” and “manifested.” Without the aggravation of the vaccines, it is uncertain that the manifestation would have occurred at all.

When a kid with peanut allergy eats a peanut and dies, we don’t say “his underlying metabolic condition was significantly aggravated to the extent of manifesting as an anaphylactic shock with features of death.”

No, we say the peanut killed the poor boy. Remove the peanut from the equation, and he would still be with us today.

Many people look forward to hearing more from HHS officials about why they are settling this claim. But whatever their explanation, they cannot change the fundamental facts of this extraordinary case:

The United State government is compensating at least one child for vaccine injuries that resulted in a diagnosis of autism.

And that is big news, no matter how you want to say it.

NOTE: Full text of the government’s statement is posted here.

David Kirby is the author of “Evidence of Harm - Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic, A Medical Controversy” (St. Martins Press 2005.

S.A Ramratan

Why are pharmaceuticals so expensive? This question has been asked for many years. In fact this was the question asked by Senator Estes Kefauver (D) in the late 1950s. Senator Kefauver was the first to put together an indictment against the business practices of the pharmaceutical industry. In fact he lobbed three charges at the pharmaceutical industry at the time.

They were the following:

1) Patents sustained predatory prices and excessive margins

2) Costs and prices were extravagantly increased by large expenditures in marketing

3) Most of the industry’s new products were no more effective than established drugs on the market(1).

If you look at these charges they are much the same accusations that many people blame the pharmaceutical industry of practicing right now, fifty years later. Has anything changed in the past fifty years?

The core of this debate, especially in the U.S. where direct-to-consumer marketing is legal, is the amount pharmaceutical companies spend on marketing vs. the amount spent on research and development (R&D). Aren’t we all lead to believe that the high cost of research and development is the reason that pharmaceuticals are so incredibly expensive? The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) uses data from IMS, a firm specializing in pharmaceutical market intelligence, to conclude that pharmaceutical companies spend U.S. $29.6 billion on R&D and U.S. $27.7 billion for all promotional activities (data from 2004). Even if these numbers can be trusted, and the pharmaceutical industry is altruistic, why are these expenses so close? An investigative article in the Public Library of Science (PLoS), who used proprietary databases to construct a new, and quite possibly more accurate estimate, states the money goes to marketing twice as often than R&D.

Show me the money.

It is important to note that the PLoS is an open source publication. In fact the publication states that you may use its articles and “download, copy, distribute, and use (with attribution) any way you wish.” This means that the PLoS is not taking money from anyone and so are free to publish articles that go against the mainstream. Most importantly, they are not taking money from pharmaceutical companies and can publish content like this without fear of reprisal. What was published in “The Cost of Pushing Pills: A New Estimate of Pharmaceutical Promotion Expenditures in the United States” does go against the mainstream – by clearly stating that the pharmaceutical industry is spending more on marketing, much more than most people would expect.

As the U.S. represents 43% of global sales and global promotion expenditures, knowing the amount of money put into marketing is essential. It is also important to note that according to CAM, which is a global company that audits the promotional activities of the pharmaceutical industry, about 30% of promotional spending is not accounted for in their figures. The breakdown is not accurately known of unmonitored promotion, but CAM believes that approximately 10% is due to incomplete disclosure by surveyed physicians and 20% comes from promotion geared towards physicians not surveyed or unmonitored journals. Combining the information gathered from CAM, as well as IMS, the total amount of money spent on marketing by pharmaceuticals was U.S. $57.5 billion for 2004. The total spent on domestic industrial pharmaceutical R&D was U.S. $31.5 billion.

There is quite a bit of difference between the money spent on R&D and marketing. If we exclude direct-to-consumer marketing, of the U.S. $57.5 billion, CAM estimates that 80% of this money is spent on physicians. This means that, with 700,000 practicing physicians in the U.S., the pharmaceutical industry spent nearly U.S. $61,000 in promotion per physician! It is interesting to note that according to the U.S. census the real median household income (2003) was $43,318.

Is Kefauver right?

While knowing that the pharmaceutical industry spends nearly U.S. $57.5 billion on marketing and U.S. $31.5 billion on R&D, those that believe the industry is promotion based, and not entirely altruistic as the industry claims, have some proof to this claim. How can we continue to pump money into, and grant legislation to, an industry that would rather hide the truth than be honest? How far are we from formally proving Kefauver’s other claims to be true? Whether or not we can all agree on the pharmaceutical industry’s place in our society – no industry should go fifty years without ethical restrictions, while claiming they are the champions of society.

References:

1) The Cost of Pushing Pills: A New Estimate of Pharmaceutical Promotion Expenditures in the United States

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/280.html

Now I’ve seen it all

This is how insanely corrupt the United States has become.The pharmaceutical industry that has handicapped countless children with mercury-based vaccines is able to buy a study that says a known neuro-toxin is good for the brains of infants and small children and improves their behavior!

Mark Forbes

THE Indonesian Health Minister has said the United States and the World Health Organisation are part of a global conspiracy to profit from the spread of bird flu and the US may use samples to produce biological weapons.

The views of Dr Siti Fadilah Supari, outlined in her new book, threaten to undermine efforts to control the spread of avian influenza. With 104 deaths, nearly half the world total, Indonesia is the new hotspot for the virus.

Despite claims by the minister that she has agreed to share virus samples and allow all nations access to resulting vaccines, Indonesia is still blocking sharing samples from human victims.

Applications to send more than 200 samples from chickens to an Australian laboratory had also been refused, inquiries by the Herald have revealed.

In the book, Dr Supari writes that WHO laboratories forwarded influenza viruses to Western companies so they could profit by selling vaccines back to developing countries: “The system of world health management has been very exploitative. It has been controlled by inhumanly desires, based on the greediness to raise capital and to control the world.”

Some Indonesian samples had been sent to a US Defence Department laboratory, Dr Supari says, adding that “some of our seed viruses had been in a laboratory known as a facility developing biological weapons in a superpower country”.

Privately, officials said Dr Supari’s belief that she was engaged on a God-driven crusade against an evil and “neo-colonialist” world health system - on the book’s cover she describes herself as the “divine hand behind avian influenza” - had caused her to lose touch with reality.

The President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, appears to have endorsed the book, having written its introduction.

Dr Yudhoyono supports Dr Supari’s claim that the virus is under control in Indonesia, stating the “occurrence rate and the number of affected areas are decreasing”.

The WHO declined to comment and no US officials were available.

They make it hard to get the money you’re entitled to. Here’s how to get them to pay.

by Suz Redfearn

Health insurance companies like to keep secrets. And they like to save money. Example: You have surgery, and weeks later you get a bill for using an out-of-network anesthesiologist. Ridiculous, right? You didn’t choose who put you under, so you shouldn’t have to pay extra. But your insurer sent the bill anyway, hoping you wouldn’t notice.

Fighting back against this kind of trickery—and winning—is a lot easier than you think, says Kevin Flynn, president of Healthcare Advocates, a Philadelphia-based firm that helps patients wrangle with their health plans. We checked with Flynn and other insurance-industry insiders, lawyers, doctors, and regulators to uncover nine little-known ways to get the health coverage you deserve—for less.

Don’t pay if you don’t have a say.
When you purposely see an out-of-network doctor, your plan usually makes it clear that it’ll cost you. But when you have surgery, the hospital chooses the anesthesiologist. If you get that annoying “out-of-network” bill, Flynn says, draft a strongly worded letter stating you had no say about the anesthesiologist—in-network or otherwise—and, therefore, won’t pay any additional fees. “If you don’t have direct control, you are not liable,” Flynn says, adding that this tack is likely to work every time, but few consumers know about it.

You may be eligible for more coverage.
Depending on your state, you could be eligible for more benefits than your plan is telling you about. Take Maryland, for instance. Health plans operating there must pay for expensive infertility coverage. But one state over, in Virginia, they don’t. It’s unlikely that your plan is trumpeting info about state-mandated coverage, though. It’s up to you to get the scoop. One good place to check is Families USA (www.familiesusa.org), a consumer group that keeps tabs on state rules, suggests Kevin Lembo, Connecticut’s official health care advocate for consumers. Another option: Contact your state’s insurance commissioner.

To get tested, talk up your symptoms.
Your insurer doesn’t want to pay for a colonoscopy if it’s not necessary. But if your best friend is diagnosed with colon cancer and you want the $675 test to put your mind at ease, here’s how to get one covered: Mention to your doctor that you’ve had some blood in your stool and a lot of gas lately—or simply that your bowel habits have changed. Your plan has to pay for the test if you have gastro complaints, health experts say. (Only 21 states require insurers to cover colonoscopies for general screening.)

Stall first, answer questions later.
When Wendy Decenzo became pregnant with twins, she wasn’t worried about health insurance. Her husband, Chris, had made sure to get a health plan that covered pregnancy well before they started trying. But when Wendy began going for prenatal visits, coverage was denied. Their plan, Blue Cross of California, wouldn’t say why. Instead, the insurer asked the Decenzos to sign release forms allowing the plan to view their medical histories, which the law says are private.

Chris believes the company was looking for any info that the Decenzos may have accidentally omitted when they applied for coverage. If an omission were found, the couple might have been denied coverage. “It seemed like a fishing expedition in order to deny us,” Chris says. So they refused to sign, and three months later the plan started paying for the prenatal appointments, even going back and paying for earlier visits that hadn’t been covered. Flynn says lots of insurers try this trick, but since their review process usually lasts only 60 to 90 days, they often drop the inquiry after that. Sometimes, procrastination pays.

Letters are your best bet.
It may seem a bit inconvenient, but the old-fashioned letter is by far the best way to communicate with your health plan. “Don’t do anything over the phone. It takes forever and when you’re done there’s no record of it, so it didn’t happen,” says Rhonda Orin, a Washington, D.C.–based attorney and author of Making Them Pay: How to Get the Most From Health Insurance and Managed Care.

Letters almost always get a response, adds Lembo, the Connecticut health care advocate. Some plans will answer e-mail, but many won’t. And to whom, exactly, should you address your mail? Experts recommend following your plan’s appeal process for letters and sending copies to your state insurance commissioner. Also, keep copies of every letter you’ve sent your plan and everything they’ve sent back. That way, when your insurer says, “We never said we’d cover that,” you can say, “I have it right here in writing.”

Doctors can be good weapons.
You just got four massage sessions, under doctor’s orders, for lower-back pain—but your insurer refuses to pay for them? Ask your doctor for help. He can tell the insurer he’s going to complain to the state board that regulates health plans.

“Health plans may not fear you, but they do respect the board,” says James Moss, a retired Kentucky surgeon. He intervened on a patient’s behalf and, by pressuring the board, helped the patient win coverage. Another option: Say you’ll call your congressman and/or state Medicare office to lodge a formal complaint, Moss says.

Caveat: Don’t actually contact your state board yourself if a claim is denied. Janice Weiss, a Jupiter, Florida–based attorney who fights health plans for consumers, says some of her clients who went this route ended up hurting their cases when the state agency ruled their claims invalid; that left them little recourse with their insurance companies. Instead, while working your plan’s appeals process, just suggest you may take the matter to your state.

A little research can go a long way.
If you want a special CT scan or MRI, your doc probably won’t authorize it unless it’s an absolute must. Persuade her with expert info from the American College of Radiology’s Appropriateness Criteria, says Anne Roberts, executive vice chair of the department of radiology at the University of California, San Diego. Used primarily by doctors but open to the public, it’s an up-to-date list of the types of imaging that are right for various conditions (Click here for a link to the radiology site.) Arming yourself with the info doesn’t guarantee coverage, but it’s a proactive step in the right direction.

There are ways to get drugs cheaper.
Doctors are often wowed by the latest and greatest drugs, which tend to be the most expensive. Make sure these newer, high-end meds are what you need before you leave the doctor’s office. Sometimes your insurance plan won’t pay for them at all; other times it’ll charge higher co-pays. In many cases, drugs have generic versions that are just as effective but cheaper than the newer ones. Always ask your doc (or the pharmacist) for generics. And if you really need a medicine that doesn’t have a generic version, order it by mail. Many plans have a less-expensive mail-order pharmacy option. Another prescription trick for people who have chronic conditions like allergies: Ask your doc to write you a prescription for two or three months’ worth of medication instead of one. Goodbye, extra co-pays.

An advocate can help you win.
Imagine being turned down for coverage after running up $125,000 in medical bills. That’s what happened to the parents of a daughter with anorexia just before they sought help from Kevin Flynn, of Healthcare Advocates. For $400, he took over the fight with their insurer and—after a year’s worth of combat—won.

Flynn is a patient advocate, part of a growing industry that makes its money from helping you. Some advo-cates help you interact with your doctor, while others specialize in insurance disputes. Most of all, firms like Flynn’s keep the letters going out on your behalf, saving you time, energy, and headaches. “The insurers know that advocates know the laws, the regulations—things a regular consumer might not know. That makes them nervous,” Flynn says.

Advocates can even get policies changed. One of Flynn’s clients, who had rectal cancer, was having trouble getting his insurance plan to pay for a new radiation therapy. The insurer claimed the treatment wasn’t ready for prime time, but Flynn found six studies showing its usefulness for the disease, got the coverage—and got the insurer to rewrite its policy.

To find an advocate, contact the Patient Advocate Foundation, says Laura Weil, interim director of Sarah Lawrence College’s Health Advocacy Program. Another helpful resource is the Society for Healthcare Consumer Advocacy. Also try checking with the medical association for a particular condition, like the Multiple Myeloma Association or the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders; many of these groups keep lists of advocates. See the links below for help:

Patientadvocate.org

SHCA_AHA.org

National Institutes of Health

Anad.org

FDA Wants Big Pharma to Use Terminally Ill Patients as Guinea Pigs for Unapproved Drugs

David Gutierrez

 The FDA has proposed allowing the testing of experimental drugs on terminally ill patients once the drugs have passed the first safety testing phase, but before they have received final approval. The plan has already sparked controversy, with physicians staking out positions both for and against the proposed rule change.

Cancer doctor Dean Gesme, of the Minnesota Oncology Hematology Professional Association, charged that the rules will engender false hope in patients, when less than 10 percent of drugs beginning phase I safety trials are eventually adopted as viable treatments. Among these, most provide only incremental benefits; few are life-savers.

Testing these drugs on terminally ill patients would be unfair to the patients, and would potentially delay approval by obscuring the drugs’ long-term effects.

“False hopes for unproved drugs can also erode the clinical trials system by substituting clinical enthusiasm and wishful thinking for evidence based medicine,” Gesme said.

But Emil Freireich, a professor of Special Medical Education Programs at the University of Texas, believes the new rule would actually speed up the process of drug development. Most cancer drugs, he says, are tested only on the healthiest patients, making more critically ill patients ineligible and making it hard to know how well the drugs would work on that demographic.

“It is tragic that regulatory bodies have created a circumstance where people have to live in an aura of hopelessness even though they have the will, the resources and the ability to expose themselves to the risk of participating in investigational studies and to enjoy the potential for benefit,” he said.

Consumer health advocate Mike Adams characterized the plan as, “…yet one more way that Big Pharma and the FDA are conspiring to exploit the terminally ill.” Adams, who is an outspoken opponent of conventional cancer drugs, said, “I find it inexcusable that the FDA would support the use of unproven, potentially deadly cancer drugs while still maintaining staunch opposition to the use of much safer and more affordable natural anti-cancer therapies based on anti-cancer phytonutrients from herbs and foods. This kind of proposal by the FDA clearly demonstrates yet again that the agency acts solely in the interests of Big Pharma while ignoring the true medical needs of cancer patients.”

In the United Kingdom, doctors can make the decision to import or prescribe unlicensed drugs on a case-by-case basis. However, investigators into a drug trial that almost led to the deaths of six young participants have recommended to the British Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency that certain drugs might be better tested on patients who are more, rather than less, ill.

Rich Stacel | Newstarget

Today we know more about vitamins, minerals and nutrition in general then ever before, but at the same time there are various elements of the media and medical community that want to keep everyone in the dark about the true role and power that vitamins play in our health and life.

As many who study natural health, nutrition and those who subscribe to various newsletters such as this, the pharmaceutical companies are a major front in the war against nutrition. That’s because it’s been known since the turn of the last century that the cause of nearly all degenerative diseases as well as the weakening of the immune system that makes one susceptible to communicable diseases are deficiencies of various key nutrients or total lack of them altogether.

Of course this knowledge has been carefully and cleverly hidden from the public for over one hundred years now since they can’t have people learning that they can be healthy merely by taking the right nutrients and the right amounts of each. That’s why as is the case with vitamin C and many other vitamins, the RDA for most nutrients is pathetically low and barely enough to keep you alive, let alone for you to be healthy and strong.

Since the mid 1800’s, the naturopathic doctor has ceaselessly and constantly come under attack by the MD’s and organized medical community. As the mechanized view of the body and the germ theory of disease began to become more accepted along with the belief that chemicals and drugs were the way of the future, the attacks became more frequent, bold and progressed to outright lies at times. That’s because the MD, with his surgical procedures, chemical drugs, fancy concoctions and useless medical terminology had much more potential for financial gain than did the naturopath or “country doctor”. They saw the country doctor as a threat to their growing influence and livelihood as well. In fact the medical terminology that doctors use was created precisely to make the average person feel ignorant and stupid and to keep people from ever trying to diagnose or cure themselves.

The AMA was formed in 1847 specifically to protect the profits and practices of doctors, the MD, not the “country doctor” who they came to view as backwards and outdated. Of course they know that the methods and cures of the country doctor were far better, cheaper and safer than the drugs and surgery approach of the “medical doctor”, also known as the “Slash and Burn” method, but it was all about the profits, so if the AMA was going to represent any group they knew that the MD’s offered them the greatest chance at profits, growth and power. The AMA is a union created specifically for doctors, NOT patients, not to find cures, not to prevent disease, but to protect the profits of doctors. Just like any union, its job is to protect the jobs and income of its members. The AMA is not the wonderful, benign or righteous agency that it tries to convince the world that it is.

The western allopathic medical establishments knows that nutrition prevents disease and cures most non-communicable and even many communicable diseases as well. That’s why they work so hard to suppress this knowledge and why they keep trying to get nutrients like vitamin C labeled as a “drug”. They haven’t yet, but they’re not giving up on this either.

In the book “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration”, Dr. Weston A. Price details his discoveries in the 1920’s of primitive tribes and cultures around the world that were models of health and free of dental caries and degenerative diseases. Since he was a dentist searching for the cause of cavities (caries), that was the main focus of his book. However, he also discovered in his research and travels that a solid and irrefutable link existed between those who had cavities, crowded teeth, and “malformed” faces, and those that lacked nutrition. When the native peoples began to eat the modern processed foods devoid of real nutrients and loaded with chemicals and artificial ingredients, they too suffered the same dental and health problems as those raised on such diets. When the native peoples went back to their traditional whole foods diet, cavities that were progressing ceased and the next generation of children were born with perfect teeth and greatly improved immunity as had the previously untouched generations.

Knowledge such as this is powerful, and it’s this kind of knowledge that the “powers that be” don’t want too many people knowing about. The less real knowledge and truth that you have about how to prevent and eliminate disease and degenerative conditions with the power of nutrition, herbs, exercise, deep breathing, meditation, relaxation and many other natural and alternative methods, the more people will suffer needlessly while the people who control these organizations, including pharmaceutical companies, doctors and hospitals all get richer. The rest of us will continue to get poorer while trying to pay for this system of useless, dangerous and deadly so-called “medicines” and procedures.

The inexpensiveness and effectiveness of natural cures and the cultures that practice them, such as the Chinese, are a direct threat to the stranglehold that the western medical system has on this country and most of the world. That is one of the main reasons why many aspects of Chinese medicine were so strongly suppressed, laughed at, made fun of, ridiculed and ignored in the past thirty or so years.

It was through the actions of the patients themselves, who kept going to Chinese doctors and other natural doctors and spreading the word of how effective these methods were, that finally got the western medical establishment to start taking notice of Chinese medicine and other natural treatments. They realized that since they couldn’t suppress this any longer, they might as well admit how well it works so that they can control it, regulate it, license it and at least make some money off of it. This is especially the case with acupuncture. Even though they reject the Chinese explanations of Chi flow and balance and prefer to believe that it’s just effecting the nerves of the body or it’s an out of control placebo effect, they still allowed it to be practiced and covered by insurance as a valid and effective cure for certain illnesses.

Getting proper nutrition is vitally important, which is why I juice several times a week to make sure that I’m getting plenty of vital nutrients into my body and I can feel this as I drink the life in the juice down. What’s also interesting is that this is also a great way to help one lose weight, since juicing delivers tons of nutrients into the body; hunger often disappears for several hours or more afterward and it seems to also raise metabolism since the body is getting tons of nutrients and enzymes to function with greater efficiency and at a higher level.

I lost over twenty pounds when I started juicing about five times a week. As my appetite decreased and my taste for carrots, celery, broccoli, spinach and such increased, I no longer wanted to put pastries, pizza and doughnuts or other junk food into my body and certainly not fast food. After juicing at lunch time each day at one of my jobs, I often ate my last meal at 3 pm in the afternoon, had no dinner and was not even hungry till about 8 am the next morning. Even then I was not ravenous at all and could have easily gone till lunch without eating anything at all. That’s because when you’re hungry, your body is not so much craving the solid matter. . . it’s craving the nutrients in foods, real nutrients from natural, whole foods. Since juicing delivers large amounts of these nutrients to the body in liquid form, your body has plenty of nutrients in reserve to produce what it needs, so hunger simply goes into a stand-by mode until the cells tell the liver and brain once again that more nutrients are needed, at which point you start to feel hungry again.

You’re also getting these nutrients in a more readily bioavailable form since the nutrients are also being delivered with tons of natural plant enzymes, which again take a great load off the pancreas since the body does not have to produce large quantities of enzymes to digest solid matter. Of course juicing is never a long term substitute for real, solid whole foods, but doing short term juice fasts and juicing daily or at least several times a week is a vital and fantastic way to ensure that you’re getting large amounts of necessary nutrients in an unadulterated form each time you juice.

I mentioned above a little about the liver and brain receiving signals from the cells. The cells communicate with the rest of the body using energies very similar to light. A physicist by the name of Popp has demonstrated this in his many experiments with cellular communication. He started this work because the modern idea that the cells are all communicating via chemical messages simply did not hold up. Cells were receiving various signals far too quickly to be explained by chemical reactions. His research showed that in fact the whole body is communicating via energy in the light spectrum and that this communication goes on at nearly the speed of light. We are indeed all “luminous beings”. This is also why getting out into the sun for 10-15 minutes a day is absolutely vital, not only for the production of vitamin D, but so that your cells can properly communicate with each other and especially the brain. The Chinese and particularly the Taoists practice visual exercises called “Administering Sunbeams” early in the morning and late in the afternoon to ensure that the brain and body get adequate amounts of UV rays from the sun. I’ll talk more about this in a later article. The body does talk and has its own language of communication, it’s absolutely amazing!

In regards to the liver, in Chinese medicine it’s been known for centuries that the liver and spleen are very important for digestion. They are given a special relationship in the five element theory of Chinese medicine which teaches that each organ has solid ties with the others and that there is a definite cause and effect relationship at work. For example, the Chinese have known that the stomach and spleen are linked pairs. This is one of the strongest inter-organ relationships in the body. When the body needs nutrients and even more then just nutrients, but Chi, the liver, which is the vitamin storehouse of the body, sends a signal to the spleen (and stomach by extension) that it requires energy. The spleen, which gives its energy to the mind and is responsible for concentration and faith in Chinese medicine, then signals the stomach and brain that nutrients are needed and the brain interprets this and starts to send out a signal back to the stomach. We feel this as the beginnings of hunger. So naturally, we grab something to eat. When we were all eating real foods from nature, we got lots of nutrients, fiber, bulk matter, sunlight and earth energy in those natural foods and the various physical and energy systems of the human body were satisfied. This kept intense foods craving and bingeing to a minimum because those cravings simply never manifested themselves to the degree that we see today. This is precisely because so many people are consuming nutrient-, energy- and enzyme-dead foods, that the body is in a constant state of nutritional and energy deficiency. Because of this, the liver is not being given the nutrients, enzymes or bio-energy (chi) that it needs, so the feeling of hunger or of never feeling satisfied is nearly always “on” to some degree in most people today.

When you follow a whole foods diet, which includes juicing with lots of fresh vegetables that are nutrient and enzyme dense, you’re giving your body not only the physical nutrients and enzymes that it needs, but because such foods are alive, there is also the vital and indisputable non-physical element of Chi present in the foods that the body also requires to convert all those nutrients into other chemical compounds, hormones and enzymes to carry out all its functions. When we eat processed foods such as sugar, which leeches calcium from the bones and teeth and nutrients from the liver, we’re stripping away the nutrients needed and not giving the body what’s truly needed for us to be healthy, feel great and live long and happy lives.

See, the body is very smart. It knows what is natural and good for it and what is not. It knows that real foods have nutrients, vitamins, minerals and energy present in them. Most other man-made garbage is treated as a toxin by the body. The liver takes care of the nutrient part and the spleen extracts the Chi or energy from foods. But when we consume man-made junk foods and useless stomach fillers such as doughnuts, cakes, candies, cookies, refined white breads, pastries and more, the body senses the various non-organic and foreign chemicals in these foods and the almost total lack of nutrients. The body must have nutrients to digest those foods, so it must somehow “borrow” the nutrients that it needs to digest this “food” from the liver, because the body can’t digest them without these nutrients present.

Chemicals that the body cannot digest are considered foreign and toxic by the body and are moved to the eliminatory organs for excretion and elimination from the body. If it can’t eliminate it, it does the next best thing, which is to “isolate” it away from the vital internal organs. It mostly does this by storing such foreign matter in the fatty tissues, the fascia between the muscles and the joints. In the case of the latter, this becomes one of the main causes of arthritis which is the body’s attempt to store dangerous crystalline structures formed from the consumption of dangerous and unnatural chemical compounds away from the organs. Interesting that your computer anti-virus software also does the same thing when it can’t eliminate a virus from the system, it “quarantines” it away so it does not damage the operating system or other critical files.

Getting proper amounts of vitamins, minerals and nutrients is absolutely vital for health, regeneration, strength, happiness and longevity. Just as a lack of vitamin C causes rickets and scurvy, just as a sufficient lack of the “B” vitamins can cause severe illness and eventually death, so too the lack of nutrients in our bodies causes slow degeneration of the body and eventual premature death. Very famous fitness gurus of the 1950’s once said “If man makes it, don’t eat it” and “It’s not what you do some of the time that counts, it’s what you do all of the time that counts.”

We have to be aware of our nutrient intake every day, not just some days and not others. In this modern, fast-paced world it’s hard to make sure we’re getting all that we need. That’s why taking a good multi-vitamin on a daily basis is very important. A good multi is not your “once a day” vitamins popularly advertised. I recommend the “Alive-Whole Food Energizer” as my number one multivitamin. That’s because this product, made by Nature’s Way is a whole food vitamin, meaning its not synthesized by man, but merely whole natural foods compressed into a tablet form. Some of the ingredients are even organic. It has tons of great stuff such as all the main vitamins and minerals in very good amounts for most, plus the following: “Green food/Spirulina blend, Digestive enzyme blend, Amino Acid complex, Garden Veggie blend, Orchard fruit blend, Myco defense mushroom blend with about a dozen mushrooms known to increase immunity including Reishi and Shiitake, Omega fatty acid blend and a vitamin C complex all from natural sources”. Always remember that it’s never a substitute for consuming real, healthy and preferably organic natural raw foods from nature, untouched by man.

For some further reading on the topic of nutrition and its relationship to health and degeneration, read “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” by Weston A. Price and “Pottenger’s Cats: A study in nutrition” by Francis Marion Pottenger.

Once it was cocaine, speed or heroin, but now the fashion is for legal pills, washed down by spirits. Last week’s news that actor Heath Ledger, right, died from an overdose of prescription tablets shed light on a startling new trend - misuse of over-the-counter pills now kills more Americans than illegal drugs.

Elizabeth Day in New York

Alex is a man who prides himself on sticking to routine. He likes to start the day with a large cappuccino from Starbucks and to end it with a handful of anti-depressants washed down with vodka. ‘It’s my treat after coming home from work,’ he says. ‘I guess it just chills me out a little.’

In many ways Alex, 31, is a typical well-heeled young New Yorker. He works in finance, holidays in the Hamptons and enjoys partying at the sort of exclusive nightclubs where having your name on the guest list is a prerequisite to entry. He also likes to get high on prescription drugs.

Tonight he is celebrating a friend’s birthday at Marquee, one of the city’s hippest nightspots. The main bar, lined with leather banquettes, is cast in a shadowy half-light. In the upstairs lavatory there is a small framed sign on the back of the door reminding guests the use of illegal drugs will not be permitted.

But Alex would not consider himself a drug abuser. For him, those small white Xanax tablets on his bathroom shelves are simply a recreational accompaniment to the $15 Grey Goose vodka martini he has just been served. And, what’s more, they’re entirely legal.

Over the past five years the United States has seen a ferocious increase in prescription drug abuse. According to the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 49.8 million Americans over the age of 12 have reported non-medical use of illicit drugs in their lifetime, 20.3 per cent of the population. Among teenagers aged 12-17, prescription drugs are second only to marijuana in popularity, and in the past 15 years there has been a 140 per cent increase in painkiller abuse. It is the fastest-growing type of drug abuse in the US. Even more worryingly, prescription drugs have made it on to the party scene as a legal, seemingly safe, way to recreate an illicit high.

Until last month this was a largely silent epidemic. But the death of Heath Ledger, a regular at Marquee and other nightclubs, thrust it into the spotlight. The 28-year-old actor died from ‘acute intoxication’ caused by an accidental overdose of anti-anxiety medication and prescription painkillers.

‘Americans love to get pills for everything that ails them,’ says Dr Howard Markel, a professor of paediatrics and psychiatry at the University of Michigan. ‘The misuse of those drugs has become one of the major health problems of our time.’ The UK has less of a prescription culture than the US, although many experts believe the advent of internet pharmacies means it is only a matter of time. In the US, where pharmaceuticals are advertised on prime-time television, pill-popping has become normalised, a socially acceptable means of alleviating stress, sleeplessness or anxiety.

The most commonly abused prescription medications fall into three categories: opiate-based painkillers (OxyContin and Percocet); central nervous system depressants prescribed for anxiety and sleep disorders (Valium and Xanax); and stimulants, used to treat attention deficit disorders (Ritalin and Adderall).

Within these categories, the pharmaceutical industry has provided a full set of substitutes for just about every illegal narcotic available. Methylphenidate, the active chemical in Ritalin, targets the brain’s pleasure-producing centres in the same way as cocaine. Antidepressants can act as serotonin-boosting ‘uppers’. A few years ago OxyContin, an extremely powerful painkiller developed for cancer patients, became known as ‘hillbilly heroin’ after an epidemic of abuse took root in poor rural communities.

Such mishandled drugs now kill 20,000 a year, nearly twice as many as 10 years ago.

Dependence on legal drugs is not a new problem - during the American Civil War morphine abuse was labelled ‘the soldiers’ disease’ - but the practice of prescribing drugs has metamorphosed from a medical treatment of last resort to a way of life. ‘The problem has been greatly worsened by the internet, and that affects all countries - including Britain,’ says Susan Foster, of the National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, New York. ‘As long as you have a credit card, anyone can log on and have potentially lethal drugs delivered to their door. You don’t even need a prescription. You have what’s called an “online consultation” where you are asked how old you are, how bad your pain is.’

The substances most commonly traded over the internet are tranquilisers such as diazepam and stimulants like Ritalin. However, the most dangerous are the opiates, which include codeine and morphine.

The painkiller fentanyl can act like heroin and traffickers get hold of supplies by forging stolen prescriptions, breaking into pharmacies and stealing stocks or buying the drugs from patients who have been prescribed it. Another opiate painkiller, buprenorphine - prescribed for heroin addicts trying to kick their habit - is peddled in countries as diverse as India, Iran, Finland and France. From 2001-05, the global consumption of buprenorphine more than tripled to 1.5 billion daily doses.

Doctors are woefully ignorant of the dangers; a 2005 study by Casa found that 43.3 per cent of them did not ask about drug abuse when taking histories. Even if they do, the seasoned drug abuser will go from one doctor to the next until they get the quantities they want - a practice known as ‘doctor-shopping’.

This was Jeana Hutsell’s experience. A petite 35-year-old from Canton, Ohio, with cropped peroxide blonde hair and square-framed glasses, Hutsell became hooked on Percocet, an opiate-based painkiller, when she was prescribed it 12 years ago after an operation for Crohn’s disease. ‘I went to the doctor with abdominal cramps and he began writing me copious prescriptions,’ she says. Within a year, her habit had escalated to 60 pills a day and she was sewing emergency stashes into the lining of her handbag. ‘I felt they gave me personality. They made me chattier, friendlier.’

Hutsell began forging prescriptions, sometimes walking into hospital casualty departments over the weekend and saying she had run out. ‘I felt justified and safe because my doctor was giving them to me. I wasn’t getting them on the streets - I was going to a pharmacy.’

Whereas illegal street narcotics - heroin or crack cocaine - are more likely to be used by the poorer socio-economic classes, prescription drugs have become the preserve of the rich. In the privatised American healthcare industry, these pills do not come cheaply: an antidepressant like Wellbutrin can cost from $1,000 to $2,400 a year.

Wealthy individuals also enjoy the luxury of paying private physicians - known as ’script doctors’ - to provide them with prescriptions. And often, because the drugs are viewed as performance-enhancers, they will be taken by those at the higher end of the social strata: by the college students and Wall Street traders. In the 1980s cocaine was the glamour yuppie drug. Now, the line of white powder is being overtaken by the little white capsule.

Phoenix House is a tall, grey stone building on the Upper West Side, a former 19th-century hotel with mosaic-tiled floors in the hall. The genteel appearance belies its gritty purpose: Phoenix House is a rehabilitation centre for drug and alcohol abusers, treating 6,000 people a day. In recent years, such centres have seen a substantial increase in prescription drug admissions - some counsellors say that they account for 90 per cent of new patients.

Professor David Deitch, the chief clinical officer, does not want to use the word ‘epidemic’, but he concedes that ‘the genie is out of the bottle’. ‘You see prescription drug abuse in the same circles that you saw cocaine abuse - the high-performing executive class. They might have a big day, so they take some something to get to sleep. Then they’ll take another pill the next morning to enhance their performance. Then they’ll go out and use all kinds of drugs at a party, and then to recover from the party the next morning they’ll take a different pill. It’s pervasive.’

Celebrities who have admitted their own struggles with prescription medication include Elizabeth Taylor, the talkshow host Rush Limbaugh, and Cindy McCain, the wife of the Republican presidential candidate John McCain. More recently, there have been rumours that Britney Spears has been self-medicating. The impact has percolated down to impressionable adolescents. One of the most popular forms of recreation among high-school students is the ‘pharm party’. Teenagers raid their parents’ medicine cabinets, then pool their resources. ‘You throw your drugs into a bowl in the middle of the room, then people pick pills out and chase them with alcohol,’ says Susan Foster. ‘We’ve seen these internet recipe sites where you go online to find out how to mix drugs for a certain effect. You can trade drugs online - in fact, at one college the students reported that they had a prescription drug trade forum on the university website.’

Markel tells the story of one of his patients, a 16-year-old student called Mary, who liked to down a few tablets of OxyContin with a single shot of vodka. She called the combination ‘the sorority girl’s diet cocktail’ because it gave a stronger kick of inebriation with fewer calories than alcohol alone.

‘There’s a cachet to this sort of drug abuse, encouraged by the Paris Hiltons and the Lindsay Lohans going into rehab, so it becomes a really cool druggy, party culture,’ Markel says. ‘Now teenagers don’t want to smoke and drink, they want to take a pill because it’s so easy to get and some of them can really make you feel good.’

But it is easy to overdose on prescription drugs, partly because your consciousness is impaired and it can be difficult to remember how many you’ve taken, and partly because mixing medication without specialised knowledge can produce fatally toxic results. And however legal these drugs might be, their misuse carries the same consequences as illegal narcotics: the familiar, dispiriting tale of the addict losing their family, friends, job, home and, sometimes, their life. After two years of Percocet addiction, Jeana Hutsell took stock of the wreckage her life had become: ‘I was homeless, I didn’t have a car, my family didn’t like me. I realised that I was the cause of all my problems. That was the turning point.’

Others are not so lucky. Randy Colvin, an abuser of Valium, Xanax and Percocet, died of a drug overdose on his 35th birthday. ‘We tried to save him and we lost,’ says his older brother Rod. ‘For 15 years we tried to get him into treatment and each time he would be in denial, he would be furious with us. My mother and I even tried to get a court order so that he could be sectioned. We did everything we possibly could. Addiction is a family disease. His death was very painful. ‘

For Heath Ledger’s parents, the grieving process is still in the rawest stages. Their son cemented his fame for reasons that were nothing to do with his talent. Instead he is for ever associated with a seedy death on the floor of a Manhattan apartment, just one more victim of the pill-popping epidemic that has become America’s secret illness.

Alzheimer Tagging Labelled an ‘Excuse’ for Shocking Care-Home Standards

Michael Jolliffe | Newstarget

A controversial new scheme to electronically tag the elderly has been blasted by critics as a ‘gimmick’ and as an excuse for negligence, by civil liberties campaigners. The plan, which would involve tracking dementia patients by utilising the same high-powered satellite technology used to control criminal offenders, has received widespread criticism, despite the backing of a dementia care charity, Alzheimer’s Society.

The idea was first introduced by British science minister Malcolm Wickes who argued that the use of tags, both at home and in residential care, would prevent the worry caused to loved ones of elderly family members prone to wandering. The National Pensioners Convention described the proposal as ’shocking’ and ‘inhumane’.

This most recent debate follows a string of high profile care home abuse reports, both in Britain and the US. In early December 2007, the Wall Street Journal dedicated a front page to a story on the overmedication of nursing home residents in which it exposed the use of antipsychotic medication to control distressed residents.

Reports included an 84-year-old Alzheimer’s disease patient at the Orchard Manor nursing home in Medina, New York who, after repeatedly tapping her foot nervously, was given the powerful anti-schizophrenia drugs Haldol and Seroquel. Another agitated resident at a nursing home in Massapequa was given 90 doses of injectable Haldol, despite staff being able to calm her with ice cream and soft toys. Dr. Jeffrey Nichols, vice president for medical services at the Cabrini Eldercare Consortium in New York, described the use of such drugs as being “like hitting a TV on the side”.

Similarly, early in 2007 British liberal Member of Parliament Paul Burstow attempted to introduce a Human Rights bill into the House which, he hoped, would protect the elderly from negligent care. The move came in response to an inquiry that had found residents forced to live on a diet of Angel Delight and beans on toast.

“One in 10 care home residents lose up to 5% of their body weight within a month of being admitted to the home and 10% of their body weight within six months”, Mr. Burstow told a Commons Select Committee, before expressing his horror at the “culture of convenience… maltreatment and neglect” that included the misuse of drugs to make managing the elderly easier.

Most recently and most damningly, a report by the British Commission for Social Care Inspection discovered a number of horrifying examples of abuse, including the use of ‘cocoon’ sheets to tie elderly residents into beds, dementia sufferers being dragged around by the hair and incontinent patients being kept from using a lavatory despite being wet and soiled.

In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live, Dr. Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics expressed concern that the new tagging scheme would be used as a way of “making life easier for carers” rather than as a way of making life safer or more pleasant for those in need of care. With the nursing home industry under pressure from an exponentially increasing elderly population, campaigners have called for the government to stop investigating such methods, described as “substitutes for proper resources”. Instead, they argue, it must look to overturn the culture of neglect, and protect the rights and dignity of its citizens.

About the author

Michael Jolliffe is a health writer, and an expert on nutritional and environmental influences on health and disease.
He is a member of the British Association for Nutritional Therapy, International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine and the Life Extension Foundation.
To make contact, email michael@healthrevolutions.com or visit www.healthrevolutions.com.

Governor Schwarzenegger Backed Immoral Sex Pheromone Spraying Continues

Rami Nagel | Newstarget

Sometimes bad dreams do come true. My bad dream was that the government issued quarantine, and forced everybody to be vaccinated for some fake disease. In my dream, I took my family, and fled to the hills to avoid being vaccinated.

Now, nine months later, this dream has come true. In an emergency, I relinquished my rental contract and moved my pregnant partner and three and a half year old daughter out of Santa Cruz, CA, to avoid being exposed to potentially deadly chemicals.

The chemicals, known by their trade names as Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F, have been sprayed via state owned airplanes in September and October in Monterey County California. These same aerial chemicals, despite their known health risks, were sprayed on two nights (11-8, 11-9) over the people of Santa Cruz County. The purpose of this spray is to control the mating/reproductive habits of the light brown apple moth (LBAM). The prevailing belief is that the mating habits of this moth needs to be controlled because the USDA believes that the moth might cause 100 million dollars of damage (Realize that this figure is not a fact, but based on a government guess).

The way Checkmate works is by attempting to disrupt the mating habits of the LBAM, by cluster bombing infested cities with billions of miniature time-release plastic microcapsules filled with synthetic moth sex pheromone. The pheromone gives of a scent, which supposedly confuses the male moths who then cannot find the female moths and instead will attempt to mate with other moth’s or anything that gives off that pheromone smell.

Government’s Pesticide Experiment Program

The California Department of Food and Agriculture’s own doctor acknowledges, in court documents, that the aerial application of this chemical has not been tested. Let me repeat this so you understand, chemicals are being sprayed on young children, nursing mother’s, people with asthma, lung problems, heart problems, the elderly, the disabled, the homeless and the chemically sensitive - and this chemical formulation has NEVER been tested on even a piece of dirt, let alone, humans. The newly designed Faroes Statement, the consensus of over 200 scientists, calls for a precautionary approach with respect to exposure of fetuses and children to environmental toxins. The consensus is that exposure of fetuses or children to chemicals can cause increased susceptibility to disease and disability later in life. In addition, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has specific directives and codes that state that they should not experiment with pesticides on pregnant women, or infants. It is a fact, since this aerial pesticide has not been proven to control the moth’s mating habits and has not been proven safe to animals or humans, that this is an experiment.

In Monterey, approximately 100,000 residents were exposed to untested chemicals to control the mating habits of less than 750 moths. In Santa Cruz County, over 100,000 residents will be exposed between 11/06/07 – 11/09/07 to untested chemicals to control the mating habits of less than 9,000 moths. This is not a one time application, but will continue monthly beginning again in February, for nine months, and then repeated for up to a total of three years. Again, this program designed to eradicate the moth at best will only control the moth’s mating habits; it will not eliminate the moth. At worst, the program will be ineffective, cost tax payers millions of dollars, and cause permanent disability to residents and their pets. All this harm is over a little moth that has yet to cause even $1.00 of damage in California.

Did you know that each aerial application of Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F costs approximately $3.5 million and that $3 million is paid directly to the manufacturer Suterra, LLC of Bend, Oregon?

The projected expense of this eradication “attempt” will cost tax payers over $70 million dollars just to spray Monterey and Santa Cruz counties the proposed 9 times. These monthly sprays are already scheduled for next year to begin in March. The California Department of Food and Agriculture has created a map which shows the spray area to grow and encompass various portions of the entire San Francisco Bay Area, click on the Central Coast (www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/PDEP/lbam/maps.html) . The United States EPA has authorized an emergency permit which could allow the CDFA to aerially spray the state of California until the year 2010. This Light Brown Apple Moth Eradication could cost California tax payers more than $500 million dollars when all is said and done, which is five times the projected amount of losses to the agricultural industry if the moth were to infest the state. Ridiculous and frivolous spending on untested, unproven and toxic methods of “attempted” pest eradication are unacceptable actions taken by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California Department of Food and Agriculture. This is not a state plan, but is a plan that is sponsored, endorsed, and largely funded by the EPA and the USDA.

Documented and Undocumented Pesticide Damage to Humans

While the moth may cause an estimated $100 million of crop damage, one cannot put a price tag on the damage that Checkmate’s chemicals cause to humans. In Monterey County, the first county in California to be sprayed with Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F, documented affidavits show that citizens got sick, ill or suffered life threatening reactions to the toxic spray. One infant in the City of Monterey nearly died from inhalation of the experimental biochemical, and now has permanent lung damage. Dozens of women in cities throughout the Monterey Peninsula are reporting problems with their reproductive systems after exposure to the pesticide, including: sudden, severe and irregular menstrual cycles, extreme cases of tender and swollen breasts, and the recurrence of menopause symptoms in older women. Other side effects of both Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F include: asthma and sudden breathing difficulties, chest pain, vomiting, lethargy, fatigue, and extreme mood swings. Some people have coughed up blood and have gotten bloody noses from Checkmate exposure.

If you are familiar with chemical exposure, then there is something to note which is of great alarm. If you have ever smelled paint, bleach, or something toxic like that, it takes a significant and potent amount of the chemical to make one sick. It is not typical that such small and minute amounts of chemicals can cause such severe damage as described above. The explanation for the severe side effects, is that the chemicals are in miniature balls of volatile plastic called microcapsules; thus chemicals can be introduced deeply into the body through swallowing or inhalation of the micro-sized particles. It is as if this “agricultural” product acted more like a drug on humans, than as a pesticide on moths.

Thousands of residents, including myself, have undocumented pesticide damage. I lived forty miles from the October-Monterey spray zone, and on the last day of aerial spraying, my entire family became ill. My three and a half year old daughter vomited. I had severe intestinal distress and could not eat for several days. I felt nervous and anxious, as if I had the caffeine equivalent of 10 cups of coffee. And for the first time in my life, I had for two days orange/red colored urine (I am now recovered). I did not link these symptoms to pesticide exposure until days later upon talking and hearing about dozens of other Santa Cruz residents who were experiencing the same or similar symptoms, on or near the same day. Their symptoms included severe vomiting and dark yellow/red colored urine. Recently I learned that this exposure may not have been from pesticide drift, but from a rogue plane releasing chemicals where it was not supposed to. Witnesses have recently linked the red color to the Checkmate formulations, seeing small red droplets where the Checkmate has contacted metallic objects.

The questions I ask myself are: What type of chemical, in such small doses, causes such profound harm? Why does a chemical claimed to be harmless to humans by the EPA, the CDFA and Governor Schwarzenegger have a significant and severe effect on the female reproductive system?

Microcapsules = Microwarfare

The aerial application of Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F are pheremone filled miniature plastic sphere-like particles (microcapsules), generally the same size as the width of a human hair. Each capsule is a biologically “loaded gun” due to its own chemical make-up and that of the pheromones held inside. Research indicates that the capsules are likely made out of a urea-formaldehyde polymer, the industry standard. This is an extremely volatile plastic which, under UV rays, degrades over a time period estimated to be anywhere from 30-90 days. These “agricultural” microcapsules have never been tested safe for humans. Thus, the life of these microcapsules inside our bodies is truly unknown as are the health risks of inhaling or swallowing them. Preliminary research on the microcapsules has revealed that some of them are as small as 10 microns, a size known to be dangerous to humans, with an average capsule size of 25-30 microns. Another investigation suggested that the large capsules may be made up of a cluster of smaller 3-4 micron size capsules.

Many of the chemicals used to make the Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F products have been deemed harmful for human consumption, like butelated hydroxyl tolune (BHT). For example: on the label for BHT it says (in big letters) “Do not inhale this product. Dangerous to respiratory health.” Yet people in the spray zones in California to this day are still being exposed to BHT via the microcapsules. The symptoms documented by Monterey County residents can be directly correlated to the warning labels of BHT, and several other chemicals. BHT, is also known as DBCP, a dangerous pesticide known to cause sterility in men. Recently, Dole Food Company lost a lawsuit in which Nicaraguan Banana farmers were exposed to DBCP. In pending lawsuits, thousands of South American Farmers are claiming that they were harmed by exposure to DBCP.

Within these microcapsules is an endocrine disrupter which attaches itself to estrogen receptors and forces the activation and constant production of estrogen to occur in the human body. This happens for men, women and children. This chemical is called 2 hydroxy 4n octyloxybenzophenone. The warnings surrounding the exposure to this toxic chemical can be directly correlated to the documented symptoms of women living within the spray zone in Monterey County. These are health concerns which CANNOT be overlooked or swept under the carpet. The projected long term effects of exposure to Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F are unknown, undocumented and until now - not even a thought in the minds of those who are authorizing the spraying, and manufacturing the chemical.

In addition to the horrible documented health effects of coming into contact with Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F, there is a great chance that it will not even prove to be an effective investment. The EPA’s own documents state that such a microcapsule cannot successfully release pheromone, and that “The studies show that only a small proportion of the microcapsules actually release any pheromone or only a portion of the total pheromone loaded into the capsule is capable of ever being released.” Science and competent intelligence does not seem to be the methodology of this spray program; in light of such statements made, the technology cannot work.

The EPA masks their “emergency approval” of Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F behind the assertion that the pheromones in the products are safe. They then make the scientific leap and pronounce the entire pesticide is safe to be sprayed on residential neighborhoods, schools and water ways. This arrogant assertion by the CDFA and the EPA comes, again, without ANY LEGITIMATE TESTING. Under the “emergency exemption” (also known as Section 18), regulations allow the EPA to disregard the important 3% of “inert” ingredients. The “emergency exemption” allows this disregard even though many of those ingredients are not even inert, and are actually part of the “active” ingredients. The EPA then reaches the conclusion, “EPA believes use of these pheromone products, including aerial application over residential areas, presents negligible risks to human health and the environment.” Again, these exemption laws are designed for agricultural fields like a field of apple orchards, or grapes, not for cities. This is another case of ridiculous, frivolous and blatant disregard for human health by Governor Schwarzenegger, the CDFA and the EPA.

In addition to the aerial application which focuses on the agriculture industry, microcapsules are used in medical and military technology. In medical technology, microcapsules are used to time-release drugs into the body. The medical capsules are made out of a bio-compatible material that the body can easily absorb. Director of Public Affairs at the CDFA Steve Lyle claims that their capsules are bio-compatible too because they are made largerly from urea. Mr. Lyle contents that this urea is equivelent to the urea our body produces and is thus a “basic biodegradable building block..” The material saftey data sheet for urea (www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/u4725.htm) clearly shows that “Supersensitive individuals with skin or eye problems, kidney impairment or asthmatic condition should have physician’s approval before exposure to urea dust.” It further explains how urea is a noxious chemical to humans. In military technology, microcapsules they can be used for chemical shields, or for experimental “non-lethal” weapons (That means the weapon does not cause immediate death). These thoughts do not leave one with a pleasant taste about how these microcapsules are being used in our neighborhoods and communities, especially for just a moth.

The over 30 billion microcapsules sprayed over Monterey County last month are not bio-compatible; and yet children are playing in them, dogs are rolling around in them, and people are inhaling them. And the state plans to continue to spray more communities over and over again begining early in 2008.

Like pollen, the miniature capsules can float in the air and they can stick to surfaces people touch. Imagine hundreds of synthetic microscopic plastic balls floating in the environment and then entering your nose, mouth, eyes and ears. Is this safe? What happens when those minuscule plastic balls are inhaled? We know what happens. They get lodged in your lungs, you cough profusely to expel them, and you go into respiratory distress. Some Monterey County residents report asthma attacks increasing, others report coughing so hard and for such long durations that they cough up blood. One healthy adult male in the sprayed Salinas area, who jogs five miles daily, now has developed asthma since the last two aerial sprays. For the first time in his life, he must use an inhaler to help him breathe. The local doctor he sees is out of inhaler samples because he has given them all away.

These and other serious side effects associated with the aerial application of Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F are being captured by citizen groups daily. Local doctors are refusing to document that their patients’ symptoms have any relation to the aerial spraying. One doctor even told his patient (who was very ill from the spraying) that he would have to consult with this lawyer before discussing the matter further. An attorney representing the CDFA declared to a judge in Monterey County superior court during a hearing where a local environmental organization was suing the CDFA to stop the aerial spraying, that the CDFA has no intention on monitoring or following up on any of the health concerns or complaints that have been or will be filed in association with this aerial application. This is another blatant disregard for the health and well being of citizens. The CDFA can pay $3.5 million dollars to spray the residents of Monterey County, but cannot and will not spend a penny to assure citizens and residents that their health is of consequence to this program. This is repulsive! This is a crime!

Cities Are the Targets!

If you examine the CDFA reports (www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/PDEP/lbam/maps.html) you will see the cause for grave alarm. The LBAM aerial spraying program does not target agricultural fields with this agricultural technology, but rather targets mostly residential and urban areas that are great distances from crops and fields.

It does not take a rocket scientist to connect the dots:

1) A biochemical never tested before is being sprayed on cities and not agriculture.

2) The chemical has never been tested on moths, animals, or humans for safety or efficacy.

3) An emergency exemption is used for a moth which is not dangerous to humans; nor does it cause significant crop damage, especially in California’s warm climate regions.

4) Minute doses of the chemical causes reproductive effects on women, and likely men.

5) Some of the chemical ingredients have no material safety data sheets regarding human exposure, and samples of the pesticide have never been independently scrutinized except by the EPA.

6) The majority of the funding of this project comes from the USDA and Commodity Credit Corporation funds, these funds are managed by George W. Bush appointees.

7) Plans are being put in place to continue aerial spraying over other populated portions of California, including San Mateo, San Francisco, Oakland, and many regions in Southern California. The moth has a peculiar habit of living in cities.

8) The spray plan does not include all the moth finds, but rather mostly moth finds in cities. For a spray plan to work to control these insects, a buffer zone should be created around all the moths; such that none escape the spray, but this is not what is being done.

9) People who have been sprayed feel significantly impacted, physically and emotionally.

10) People who understand the situation respond to it, as if they are being attacked.

11) Preliminary research shows the microcapsule particles to be of a dangerous size.

12) Microcapsules are used to deliver drugs deep into the human body.

For me, I felt like the airplanes spraying chemicals were attacking my very right to exist and be here. What do you conclude?

Is the Government Negligent, Or Sinister?

The urgent question that I must bring your attention to, is this: Is the government just the biggest, dumbest entity on the planet; where they haphazardly declare an emergency, which this is not one, and then over eagerly dose whole cities with untested chemicals?

Or,

Is what we are experiencing part of a sinister plan to poison (or worse) a large populace, who more and more, is choosing an alternative and chemical free lifestyle? It is unclear how much the government is aware of this plan, but it is clear that the government goes out of their way to deny and hide all serious reported health claims.

These may be scary questions to consider or you may find them amusing and absurd. But if you lived in the spray zone and experienced what we have, you might be asking yourself the same questions too.

It is likely that both of these statements are true, that the government is acting in a negligent, and sinister way.

A Time for Mourning

Even if we do not know for sure the intention of the aerial spray, we must begin to acknowledge the great human tragedy that is now playing out before us.

Over 200,000 fellow residents of California, USA, are being exposed, needlessly, to biologically active time-release chemicals. Pregnant women, infants, and the sick will be the most effected, because we know that even the most minute dose of the chemical can find its way into fetuses and affect them, and can find its way into human breast milk. These residents are being exposed to chemicals against their will. Some of them have had to rush to the emergency room for treatment. Others, like myself, have literally fled to protect their lives. Many businesses are and will be devastated as owners decide to move out if their business is affected. Many children’s hopes will be dashed when their parents decide to leave the area and the only homes they’ve ever known, and many sick and elderly people will be torn from their own homes to avoid becoming gravely ill.

There is a war happening right here, on our own soil; as citizens try desperately to assert their right to survive, to exist, and to do so without this obscene government intrusion.

Today is a day to mourn. A day to mourn the ignorance and the violence perpetuated on our own soil. Today is a day to acknowledge the profound and sad fact that our government seems hell bent on turning this world into a war zone. Today is a day to mourn for the children whose growing bodies are being affected by this spray and for the countless people who were not even informed about what the spray means or when it will take place. Today is a day to mourn the liars in the government, who use our tax money to test chemicals on the public and then use our money, again, to pay lawyers to defend their negligent actions in court case after court case.

Today is not a good day, but a day when we are being called upon to surrender our greater reality that includes all of our feelings and experiences, good ones and bad ones. We must look now on what we have become as a nation, and what we have allowed to happen.

I sincerely believe that only through looking at the outer and inner experience and through accepting our own feelings, can we find a way to both make peace within and to take effectual action in the world to stop this violence once and for all.

The Earth is in mourning. She wants to protect her children from harm so badly.

Recent Checkmate Aerial Spray Research Confirms Its Harm

A recently released study about Checkmate LBAM-F by the Aquatic Toxicology Laboratory at
The University of California, Davis confirms the danger of this aerial application. The authors state on page three that, “the microcapsules ranged in size from approximately 10 microns to 190 microns..”

Microcapsules circa the 10 micron size range fall under the category of “particle pollution” according to the American Lung Association (ALA). On the ALA’s website they state, “”Particle pollution, called particulate matter or PM, is a combination of fine solids and aerosols that are suspended in the air we breathe… The ones of most concern are small enough to lodge deep in the lungs where they can do serious damage. They are measured in microns. The largest of concern are 10 microns in diameter.”

Particle pollution has well documented short and long term health effects, including: death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes, including strokes; inflammation of lung tissue in young, healthy adults; increased severity of asthma attacks in children; slowed lung function growth in children and teenagers; significant damage to the small airways of the lungs; and increased risk of dying from lung cancer. Children under 18 and adults over the age of 65 will be the ones most harmed by this chemical assault.

A Call to Action

Aerial application of chemicals, whether supposed safe or not, violates the very roots of our democracy and the free will of the people of the United States of America. What choices will residents of this democracy have left if they choose to not be sprayed with potentially deadly chemicals and are then denied that right? If you continue to stand by and let this happen, do you think your city and your county will be immune from the next senseless government incursion? Now there are court cases and legal presidents being set, which our government can use, to justify further hostile actions against its own people.

You cannot continue to sit around and think that you will not be affected by the actions that our government is taking today. You must act because the people here need your help. Every action you take has the potential to help. Your friends and family need you. Your country needs you. This world needs everyone of you to stand up and say loudly and clearly that you have had enough and you will not take this governmental bullying anymore!

Here are suggestions for action:

Call Governor Schwarzenegger who supports the biochemical aerial spraying that harms children and tell his staffers that you order the Governor to immediately halt the spraying.
(916) 445-2841 2841 (press #1, #5, #0)
Fax: (916) 445-4633

See my related story: (www.NaturalNews.com/022158.html)

Call your local senator and congressional representative. And I encourage you to call these California Senators. Federal offices will say that this is a state matter. You tell them that this LBAM eradication plan is funded by the USDA and that this is certainly a federal problem.

(Both California US Government Senators have been sitting on the fence, even though a congressional investigation as to why the USDA and EPA are so eager to spray chemicals on people, in plain violation of their own laws, is called for.)

Senator Diane Feinstein
San Fransisco Office - (415) 393-0707

Senator Barbara Boxer
San Fransisco Office - (415) 403-0100

Democracy Now!
They want to here our stories,
(www.democracynow.org/storyidea.pl)

Send them this link with this article, or post a summary of this article to their e-mail.

The American Civil Liberties Union
The ACLU is a pioneer in human and civil rights, yet they claim that this is an environmental issue. Think again, this is a human rights issue, let them know (www.aclu.org/contact/general/index.html)

The Sierra Club
They should be suing to stop this but rather have laid back in their support, claiming that pheromones are a safer alternatives than insecticides according to the information they are receiving from the EPA. Think Again, pheromones in microcapsules, never tested before on animals or people, could be deadly. The Sierra Club is being intentionally misled into supporting a substance that they know very little about.
Let them know your opinion. National Headquarters 415-977-5500

The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
They are a lead environmental organization who usually has a fabulous track record in fighting against such atrocities as spraying chemicals. However, they have been ardent supporters of pheromone use, stating that the pheromone is safe because the EPA says it is better than traditional pesticides. Note that we were also told that they have not done ANY independent research into the toxic side effects of pheromones and do not have the resources to have their own scientists do any testing. Basically they are taking the EPA and USDA’s word that it is safe, even though there are no tests available to show that it is safe or effective.

Call them and let them know how you feel. And ask them why they aren’t doing their own tests.
National Headquarters Telephone: (212) 727-2700
Or the San Francisco, CA Office: (415) 875-6100

Personal Action
Talk to your friends about this and other government abuses.

If you can provide us legal, scientific, medical or other expert support contact the author of this article immediately.

Write Articles relating to this topic or to human rights in the United States.

Alert national and international media organizations, use your personal contacts to help the cause; spread this article.

Feel your feelings, let your feelings be present.

Pray, Meditate, Dance, Dream, Act for peace.

Boycott Roll International, owner of Suterra the maker’s of Checkmate
Companies include: Fiji Water, Paramount Farms, Paramount Citrus, POM Wonderful, The Franklin Mint, and Teleflora

Some of Checkmate’s Published Ingredients:

Here are three published Checkmate ingredients, of particular concern, which have been and will continue to be sprayed upon humans and their environment.

Butylated hydroxytoluene

The Material Saftey Data Sheet States:
“Mutagenic for mammalian somatic cells. Mutagenic for bacteria and/or yeast” “The substance may be toxic to blood, liver, central nervous system(CNS). Repeated or prolonged exposure to the substances can produce target organs damage.”

Tricaprylmethyammonimum chloride

There is no information or documentation about this substance or how chronic exposure to it can effect human health. That means we cannot be certain that even small doses are safe.

2-hydroxy-4-n-octyloxybenzophenone

This is a Xenochemical that binds to estrogen receptors not just in animals, but in humans. In other words, even in small doses, it signals people’s bodies to take a specific biological action. Even small doses could affect hormonal functions by causing the constant production of estrogen. Prolonged exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals is the cause of breast cancer.

Legal Cases

Helping Our Peninsula’s Environment sued for a restraining order to stop aerial spraying in Monterey and lost because the disputed Checkmate ingredient was not in the EPA’s documents; even though the pesticide manufacturer, Suterra, reported that they did use the disputed ingredient in the manufacture of Checkmate. The lawsuit included a document by a former EPA chemist showing how such an aerial spray program is dangerous to both humans and the environment. The lawsuit continues. Text of HOPE’s lawsuit is at (www.1hope.org/SPRAYTRO.PDF)

The City and County of Santa Cruz voted to sue the California Department of Food and Agriculture, they too lost their request for a restraining order of the spray, even with a rock-solid case which stated that the county could not perform its functions; such as school, police, protect, and administer the city while aerial spraying continued. They too did not get a restraining order, as their case continues. You can read the court case here
(www.santacruzcourt.org/News/lbam.htm)

A group of local residents filed suit in Federal Court and also did not get a restraining order, but did get a November 21st, 2007 Federal Court date to have their case more fully considered. Please consider attending this monumental hearing as citizens will stand and defend their civil liberties and right to a healthy life. Docket #0705587

Conclusion

Telling you this truth, about this atrocity, is my prayer and hope for peace.

I leave you with part of this press release by a strong opponent to the aerial spraying, California State Senator John Laird.

“Of greatest concern to me is the notion that speculative economic impacts may be outweighing the need to protect human health. In Monterey County there are reports of more than 200 health complaints associated with aerial spraying. Yet, to date there is no evidence that reports have been analyzed, and a promised ‘white paper’ on the toxicological data on the pheromone product and the health complaints taken as a whole has not been released. In fact, in his October 26th letter to me, CDFA Secretary Kawamura indicated there are no plans to either study long term effects of the spraying or conduct an epidemiological analysis of the complaints CDFA has received.

In light of the unresolved health complaints and unanswered scientific questions, the “precautionary principle” should serve as a guide. It has been described as a political and moral principle that says if an action or policy could harm the public or the environment, the burden of proof falls on the proponent of the action — rather than on the public.

It was determined in Superior Court that the County of Santa Cruz failed to meet the burden of proof required to obtain a temporary restraining order against the state. However, in the court of public opinion, the burden of proof ought to be on CDFA to prove LBAM-F and OLR-F are safe prior to spraying it on residential populations monthly for an open-ended period of time.”

(http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/MEMBERS/A27/press/20071103AD27PR01.htm)

Further information and research about the Light Brown Apple Moth Aerial Spray program is available at: Hope For Truth

About the author

Rami Nagel is a father who cares about the way we affect each other, our children, and our planet through our lifestyle choices. His health background is in hands-on energy healing, Hatha & Bhakti yoga and the Pathwork.
Rami is author of several health resources:
www.curetoothdecay.com - Heal and Prevent Cavities with Nutrition!
www.healingourchildren.net - Learn the Cause and Prevention of the Diseases of Pregnancy and Childhood
www.preconceptionhealth.org - A Program for Preconception Health based on Indigenous Wisdom
www.yourreturn.org - The cause of disease and the end of suffering of humanity.

No Such Thing as Bad Cholesterol: Dispelling the Marketing Myth

Cholesterol seems to be one of those things that strikes fear into the hearts of many, so to speak. But is the reputation that this oily substance has acquired truly deserved? What is certain is that the ‘little knowledge’ that the media often imparts means many folks assume cholesterol is simply a ‘bad’ thing. Alternately, a good number of us may have heard the terms ‘good’ cholesterol and ‘bad’ cholesterol bandied about without knowing much about what this really means. In fact it is a fairly safe bet that if you asked anyone on the street for his or her instinctive response, if asked about cholesterol, they would probably say that we simply need to ‘reduce it’.

The ‘noddy-science’ offered by marketing men to a generally scientifically-naive public has led many people to believe that we should replace certain food choices with specially developed products that can help ‘reduce cholesterol’. Naturally this comes at a price and requires those who can afford it to pay maybe four or five times what a ‘typical ordinary’ product might cost. But is this apparent ‘blanket need’ to strive towards lowering our cholesterol justified? And, indeed, is it healthy?

For anyone who has had the official diagnosis of ‘high cholesterol’ in their bloodstream, they may even have embarked upon a program of medicinal intervention. In fact it is quite likely that they may have joined the legions of long-term pill-poppers who are already lining the pockets of the profit-oriented pharmaceutical giants.

But let’s take a moment, now, to review some of the facts and fallacies about the much-maligned substance: cholesterol.

First of all, cholesterol is a naturally occurring lipid. This means it is a type of fat or oil and it is in fact an essential component in creating and sustaining the membranes of the cells of all bodily tissues. So this alone means we need cholesterol to survive! Most of the cholesterol that is found in our bodies is actually naturally manufactured within our own cells. However there is also an additional contribution that we get from external ‘nutritional’ sources - the foods we consume. In a typical diet providing around 400mg of cholesterol per day from food sources, about half to two-thirds of this amount is actually absorbed through the process of digestion. The body will normally secrete about a gram (1000mg) of cholesterol per day into the bile via the ducts, and approximately three-fifths of this is then re-absorbed.

Where our tissues or organs are a particularly dense complex of cells, which have closely packed cell membranes, there will naturally be higher levels of cholesterol. The key organs that need, and contain, these higher amounts of cholesterol include the liver, the brain and the spinal cord - none of which would work well if we reduced cholesterol too much!

In effect cholesterol plays an essential role in the development and maintenance of healthy cell walls. It is also a critical factor in the synthesizing of steroid hormones, which are a key factor in our natural physical development. Cholesterol is used by the adrenal gland and the sex glands to create these necessary hormones. As you may know, hormones are important regulators of many control mechanisms that occur throughout our bodies as we grow, develop and simply function every day.

Being a lipid, cholesterol is fat-soluble, but it is not soluble in blood. However it needs to be transported around the body to the places where it can be utilized. This is why, in order to be moved around, it must become ‘associated’ with certain lipoproteins which feature a water-soluble (therefore ‘blood transportable’) coat of proteins. There are two key types of lipoproteins that transport cholesterol around the body: low-density and high-density variants. The essential cellular function of cholesterol requires that sufficient amounts are manufactured by specialized sub-systems (or organelles) within the body’s cells called the endoplasmic reticulum. Alternatively, the cholesterol we need must be derived from our diet. During the process of ‘digestion and assimilation’ of foods, it is the low-density lipoprotein (LDL) that carries dietary cholesterol from the liver to various parts of the body.

When there is sufficient cholesterol for cellular needs, the other key transport mechanism in this amazing ‘logistics system’ - high-density lipoprotein (HDL) - can take cholesterol back to the liver from where any unnecessary excess can be processed for excretion.

The ‘noddy-science’ of the so-called ‘functional food’ manufacturers would have us believe that there is such a thing as ‘bad’ cholesterol and ‘good’ cholesterol. This is, in fact, totally untrue. The cholesterol itself, whether being transported by LDL or HDL, is exactly the same. Cholesterol is simply a necessary ingredient that is required to be regularly delivered around the body for the efficient healthy development, maintenance and functioning of our cells. The difference is in the ‘transporters’ (the lipoproteins HDL and LDL) and both types are essential for the human body’s delivery logistics to work effectively.

Problems can occur, however, when the LDL particles are both small and their carrying capacity outweighs the transportation potential of available HDL. This can lead to more cholesterol being ‘delivered’ around the body with lower resources for returning excess capacity to the liver.

LDL can vary in its structure and occur in particles of varying size. It is the smaller LDL particle sizes that can easily become ‘trapped’ in the arteries by proteoglycans, which is, itself, a kind of ‘filler’ found between the cells in all animal and human bodies. This can then cause the cholesterol the LDL carries to contribute to the formation of fatty deposits called ‘plaques’ (a process known as atherogenesis). As these deposits build up, they restrict the arteries’ width and flexibility. This causes an increase in blood pressure and can also lead to other cardiovascular problems such as heart attacks or strokes.

The LDL itself is consequently sometimes referred to as ‘bad cholesterol’, but you can now appreciate the fact that this is simply incorrect. In fact LDL, HDL and cholesterol are all essential to our health. However, it seems that it has become common for humans to have a preponderance of ‘unhealthily’ small LDL particles, which can become a precursor to heart and arterial disease due to the mechanisms described. It is apparently healthier to have a smaller number of larger LDL particles carrying the same quantity of cholesterol than a large number of small LDL particles might transport, but for some reason this is less common. This is an interesting area that demands more research.

When LDL becomes retained by the glycol-proteins in the arteries it is subject to being oxidized by ‘free radicals’. This is when the process can become health threatening. It has therefore been suggested that increasing the amount of antioxidants in our diet might effectively ‘mop up’ free radicals, and consequently reduce this harmful oxidation. Although the idea of consuming foods rich in antioxidants, or even using supplements, is now widely promoted, the scientific evidence for their efficacy still remains to be fully established.

Another point to consider is the occurrence of substances called ‘very-low-density-lipids’ or VLDL, also known as triglycerides. VLDL is converted to LDL in the bloodstream and therefore contributes towards increased levels of LDL and to subsequent potential cholesterol-related health problems. This is why triglycerides are usually measured when a cholesterol test of your blood is undertaken.

The production of VLDL in the liver - which amounts to a combination of cholesterol and low-density apolipoprotein - is exacerbated by the intake of fructose. Fructose is the type of sugar found in many fruits, it is also a component of sucrose and of the widely used food ingredient high-fructose corn syrup. This implies that anyone whose LDL or triglyceride levels are unduly high should cut back on those sweet sugary snacks, and even on the sweeter, fructose laden fruits; not simply reduce their intake of fatty foods!

Vitamin B3, otherwise known as niacin, on the other hand, actually lowers the amount of VLDL, and therefore also LDL. In addition, niacin helps to stimulate the production of helpful HDL, the lipoprotein that carries excess cholesterol back to the liver for excretion. However, in keeping with the best traditions of consuming ‘all things in moderation’, currently recommended upper limits for daily intake of niacin is 35mg, given that it can have toxic effects in larger amounts. Even so, medical professionals have been known to prescribe niacin in doses as high as 2g, up to three times a day, for treatment of those with dangerously high blood cholesterol levels. Naturally you should never self-medicate with high doses of niacin without taking appropriate medical advice.

Niacin in the diet is typically derived from high protein foods including liver and other meats, as well as significant amounts being found in certain nuts and whole grains.

However one of the fashionable types of pharmaceutical drugs of recent times, introduced to treat the apparently increasing incidence of high cholesterol levels particularly in the West, are Statins. These drugs work by interfering with the liver function and reducing the production of LDL. But Statins are a questionable innovation on at least a couple of accounts. Firstly they are not without side-effects: they can, for example, lead to the breakdown of major muscular material, which can ultimately overwhelm the kidneys and even cause acute renal failure.

Statins also appear to reduce the body’s natural levels of the vitamin-like, cellular protection agent known as Co-enzyme Q10. This benzoquinone plays an important role in cellular energy release, particularly in hard worked areas like the lungs, liver and heart. CoQ10 (as it is sometimes called) has also been shown to protect the brain against neurological degeneration. But perhaps most interestingly, with respect to cholesterol, CoQ10 also acts as an antioxidant, particularly active in protecting the system against LDL oxidation and the potential problems associated with this as described above. So whilst Statins might provide a reduction in LDL per se, they might also be causing more problems in the long-term. Naturally, as with many modern drugs, they generally have to be taken for the long-term by anyone who has been prescribed them.

What is particularly disturbing about Statins is, perhaps, the fact that they may be seen as a ‘quick fix’ for unhealthily high LDL, and consequently cholesterol levels throughout the body. They need to be taken over a long period - which makes them very profitable for drugs manufacturers. But they may also be prescribed without the over-arching message that in order to address any cholesterol problem ‘naturally’, the sufferer must change their lifestyle and diet. Statins can seem an easy option but may indeed merely be the beginning of a process where the ‘negative health pay-off’ is simply delayed rather than actively defused! That is not to say that in extreme cases of high blood cholesterol, or hypercholesterolemia, there may not be a useful role for Statin therapy when natural strategies fail or do not prove effective, or feasible.

In truth, and in summary, cholesterol is an important and essential substance that we need for health at a cellular level. It is most likely that any imbalance in our cholesterol transport system comes down to long-term poor dietary and exercise habits. Ensuring that we consume some extra anti-oxidant foods, along with including niacin rich foods, might well be of benefit. But it is perhaps most important to recognize that deliberate and continued levels of activity and the consumption of a healthful diet is a better solution than questionable quick-fix drugs, if we ever are diagnosed with levels of cholesterol and triglycerides that might give cause for concern.

About the author

Al G Smith MSc BSc - Has been working and teaching in the food related sector for over 30 years and is currently a website publisher (http://www.gonaturalandorganic.com) and Independent Representative for the World’s first extensive range of Certified Organic skin care and cosmetics (http://www.saferalternative.com).

In Los Angeles, medical marijuana patients can now get their drug with a dose of convenience. The Los Angeles Herbal Nutrition Center installed medical marijuana vending machines to give patients a dose of convenience with their grass. The nutrition center’s owner said they also offer low prices, safety and privacy.California allows marijuana use for medical purposes but it’s still against federal law.

“Convenient access, lower prices, safety, anonymity,” inventor and owner Vincent Mehdizadeh said, extolling the benefits of the machine

Federal drug agents said the invention might need unplugging.

“Somebody owns (it), it’s on a property and somebody fills it,” said DEA Special Agent Jose Martinez. “Once we find out where it’s at, we’ll look into it and see if they’re violating laws.”

At least three dispensaries in the city, including two belonging to Mehdizadeh, have installed vending machines to distribute the drug to people who carry cards authorizing marijuana use.

Mehdizadeh said he spent seven months to develop and patent the black, armored box, which he calls the “PVM,” or prescription vending machine.

A sliding fence protects the tinted windows of his dispensary, barely distinguishing it from a busy thoroughfare of strip malls, automobile dealers and furniture shops. A box resembling a large refrigerator stands inside the nearly empty shop, near a few shelves stocked with vitamins and herbs.

A guard in a black T-shirt emblazoned with the word “Security” on the front stands at the door. A poster of Bob Marley decorates a back room.

The computerized machine requires fingerprint identification and a prepaid card with a magnetic stripe. Once the card and fingerprint are verified, a bright green envelope with the pot drops down a slot.

Mehdizadeh says any user approved for medical marijuana and registered in a computer database at his dispensaries can pre-purchase the drug and then use the machine to pick up.

The process provides convenience and privacy for users who may otherwise feel uncomfortable about buying marijuana, Mehdizadeh said.

At the Timothy Leary Medical Dispensary in the San Fernando Valley, the vending machine is accessible only during business hours. An employee there said the machine was introduced about five months ago, and provides speedy service.

“It helps a lot of patients who are in a lot of pain and don’t want to wait around to get help,” Robert Schwartz said. “It’s been working out great.”

Mehdizadeh said he sought the advice of doctors, and decided to limit the amount of marijuana per user to an ounce per week. Each purchase from the machine yields 1/8th or 2/8th of an ounce. By eliminating a vendor behind the counter, he said, the machine offers users lower drug prices. The 1/8th ounce packet would cost about $40 — $20 lower than the average price at other dispensaries.

A spokesman for a marijuana advocacy group said the machine also benefits dispensary owners.

“It limits the number of workers in the store in the event of a raid, and it’ll make it harder for theft,” said Nathan Sands, of The Compassionate Coalition.

Marijuana use is illegal under federal law, which does not recognize the medical marijuana laws in California and 11 other states.

The Drug Enforcement Agency and other federal agencies have been actively shutting down major medical marijuana dispensaries throughout the state over the last two years and charging their operators with felony distribution charges.

Mehdizadeh said the Herbal Nutrition Center was the target of a federal raid in December. He said no arrests were made and no charges have been filed against him.

Kris Hermes, a spokesman for advocacy group Americans for Safe Access, said the machine might benefit those who already know how much and what strain of marijuana they’re looking for. But he said others will want to see and smell the drug before they buy it.

A man who said he has been authorized to use medical marijuana as part of his anger management therapy said the vending machine’s security measures would at least protect against illicit use of the drug.

“You have kids that want to get high and that’s not what marijuana is for,” Robert Miko said. “It’s to medicate.”

Copyright 2008 by KNBC.com and KNBC (NBC4 Los Angeles.

Plan for Processing Center On Hold, Funding Uncertain

By Robin Shulman

As President Bush gives his State of the Union speech Monday, there will be one man in the audience who plans to sit quietly and watch, his very presence a form of protest.

Joseph Libretti, 51, is sick. He has been diagnosed with chronic lung disease since volunteering after Sept. 11, 2001, to cut through steel to remove bodies from the gritty, smoking pile of detritus of the World Trade Center. Now, too weak to return to his job as an ironworker, he mostly keeps close to his Pennsylvania home.

He is among a group of responders demanding a coherent national program to provide local medical treatment for Ground Zero workers from outside New York City who answered the call to help after the terrorist attacks. An existing program was effectively halted in December, when the federal government canceled its search for a contractor to process medical reimbursements.

“The president should take care of the workers,” Libretti said during a telephone interview in which he frequently coughed and lost his breath. “If he sees me and other first responders, he’ll know we’re there.”

His protest was helped by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), who has made medical care for Ground Zero workers her cause.

“What kind of a nation are we?” Maloney said. “What kind of a message are we sending to future responders? ‘You are rushing into tragedy, and we are not going to be there.’ ”

Right now, Libretti’s son regularly drives him two hours to Manhattan to consult with a pulmonologist and a psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Medical Center, which runs a program providing comprehensive treatment to first responders who suffer from some common ailments: cough, asthma, headaches, nosebleeds, other respiratory ailments and post-traumatic stress disorder.

People came from all 50 states to help in rescue, recovery and cleanup at Ground Zero, and the federal government had been searching for a contractor to run a business center to manage their health care since then. The center would help clinics across the country treat and monitor first responders, streamline existing payment and pharmaceutical plans, and pay medical bills.

On Dec. 13, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention canceled a request for proposals to establish the business center. Without the center, there would be no entity to offer medical referrals to responders far from New York City, or any single scheme for the government to reimburse their doctors or to streamline pharmaceutical reimbursements.

James Melius, an occupational health specialist who is the chairman of the steering committee of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program, said the center is critical because funding to treat and monitor the health of first responders across the country is about to expire.

The Red Cross is providing limited funding to treat about 500 first responders outside the New York City area, but that will end in coming months, while another contract for monitoring about 2,000 people will run out in June, Melius said.

“These people will basically be on their own,” he said.

Bernadette Burden, a spokeswoman for the CDC, said the contractor request was canceled because its language was unclear and confusing.

“We wanted to review the requirements,” she said, “to make certain this solicitation was accurate and fair and to make a determination as to whether a new solicitation should be issued in the future.”

Funding was uncertain, and there was little interest in filling the contract, added Holly Babin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services.

But Congress had already appropriated $50 million for treating and monitoring first responders, and it approved another $108 million shortly after the contract was called off, Rep. Maloney said.

Andreas Moritz

For many decades, leading scientists and doctors have vehemently promoted the idea that immunization of children is necessary to protect them from contracting such diseases as diphtheria, polio, cholera, typhoid, or malaria. Yet evidence is mounting that immunization may not only be unnecessary but even harmful. Pouring deadly chemicals into a lake doesn’t make it immune to pollutants. Likewise, injecting the live poisons contained in vaccines into the bloodstream of children hardly gives future generations a chance to lead truly healthy lives. American children often receive some 30 vaccinations within the first 6 years of their lives and children in the U.K. can expect to be vaccinated about 25 times.

Within the first 15 months of life, vaccinations including nine or more different antigens are pumped into the immature immune systems of babies. Despite the colossal efforts and large sums of money spent on vaccine research, medicine has never been able to devise a cholera vaccine that works and the drugs for malaria aren’t as effective as a single herb.

Diphtheria is still combated with toxic immunization programs even though it has almost completely disappeared from the earth. When diphtheria broke out in Chicago in 1969, 11 of the 16 victims were either already immune or had been immunized against diphtheria. In another report, 14 out of 23 victims were completely immune. This shows that vaccination makes no difference when it comes to protection against diphtheria; on the contrary, it can even increase the chances of being infected.

Immunization against mumps is also highly dubious. Even though it initially reduces the likelihood of becoming infected, the risk for mumps infection increases after immunity subsides. In 1995, a study conducted by the U.K.’s Public Health Laboratory Service and published in the Lancet showed that children given the measles/mumps/rubella shot were three times more likely to suffer from convulsions than those children who didn’t receive it. The study also found that the MMR vaccine increased by five times the number of children suffering a rare blood disorder.

It is interesting to note that the mortality rate from measles declined by 95 percent before the measles vaccine was introduced. In the United Kingdom, despite widespread vaccination among toddlers, cases of measles recently increased by nearly 25 percent. The United States has been suffering from a steadily increasing epidemic of measles, although (or because) the measles vaccine has been in effect since 1957. After a few sudden drops and rises, the cases of measles are now suddenly dropping again. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) acknowledged that this could be related to an overall decrease in the occurrence of measles in the Western Hemisphere.

In addition to this evidence, many studies show that the measles vaccine isn’t effective. For example, as reported in a 1987 New England Journal of Medicine article, a 1986 outbreak of measles in Corpus Christi, Texas found 99 percent of the victims had been vaccinated. In 1987, 60 percent of the cases of measles occurred in children who had been properly vaccinated at the appropriate age. One year later, this figure rose to 80 percent.

Apart from not protecting against measles and possibly even increasing the risk of contracting the disease, the MMR vaccine has been proven to produce numerous adverse effects. Among them are encephalitis, brain complications, convulsions, retardation of mental and physical growth, high fever, pneumonia, meningitis, aseptic meningitis, mumps, atypical measles, blood disorders such as thrombocytopenia, fatal shock, arthritis, SSPE, one-sided paralysis, and death. According to a study published in the Lancet in 1985, if children develop “mild measles” as a result of receiving the vaccine, the accompanying underdeveloped rash may be responsible for causing degenerative diseases such as cancer later in life.

In reality, measles is not a dangerous childhood illness at all. The belief that measles can lead to blindness is a myth that finds its roots in an increased sensitivity to light during illness. This problem subsides when the room is dimmed and vanishes completely with recovery. For a long time, measles was believed to increase the risk of a brain infection (encephalitis) which is known to occur only among children who live in poverty and suffer from malnutrition. Among upper class children, only 1 out of 100,000 will become infected. Besides, less than half of children given a measles booster are protected against the disease.

In a report issued by German health authorities and published in a 1989 issue of the Lancet, the mumps vaccine was revealed to have caused 27 specific neurological reactions, including meningitis, febrile convulsions, encephalitis, and epilepsy. A Yugoslavian study linked 1 per 1,000 cases of mumps encephalitis directly to the vaccine. The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal in the U.S. reported in 1989 that the rate varies from 1 in 405 to 1 in 7,000 shots for mumps.

Although mumps is generally a mild illness and the vaccine’s side effects are severe, it is still included in the MMR vaccine. And so is the vaccine for rubella, although it is known to cause arthritis in up to 3 percent of children and in up to 20 percent of the adult women who have received it. In 1994 the Department of Health admitted to doctors that 11 percent of first-time recipients of the rubella vaccine will get arthritis. Symptoms range from mild aches to severe crippling. Other studies show a 30 percent chance of developing arthritis in direct response to the rubella vaccine.

Research confirms that the whooping cough vaccine is only effective in 36 percent of children. A report by Professor Gordon Stewart, which was published in 1994 in World Medicine, demonstrated that the risks of the whooping cough vaccine outweighed the benefits. The whooping cough or pertussis vaccine is by far the most dangerous of all the vaccines. DTP, the whooping cough vaccine that was used in the U.S. until 1992, contained the carcinogen formaldehyde, and the highly toxic metals aluminum and mercury. Both this vaccine and its “improved” version DTaP have never been tested for safety, only for efficacy.

The new vaccine has proved to be no better than the old one. Both versions cause death, near-death, seizures, developmental delay, and hospitalization. DTaP (formerly DTP) is given to babies as young as six weeks old, although the vaccine has never been tested on this age group. Among the 17 potential health problems caused by the whooping cough vaccine is sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). According to an estimate from the University of California at Los Angeles, 1,000 U.S. infants a year die as a direct result of receiving the vaccine.

Immunization programs against polio have no benefits other than economic ones for vaccine producers. The scientist who eliminated polio now suspects that the handful of polio cases which have occurred in the U.S. since the seventies are caused by the live viruses that were used as vaccines. In Finland and Sweden, where the use of live vaccines for polio is prohibited, there has not been a single case of polio in ten years. If live viruses used as a vaccine can cause polio today when hygiene is generally high, it may well be that the polio epidemics 40 to 50 years ago were also caused by immunization against polio while hygiene, sanitation, housing, and nutritional standards were still very low.

In the United States, cases of polio increased by 50 percent between 1957 and 1958, and by 80 percent from 1958 to 1959 after the introduction of mass immunization. In five states, cases of polio doubled after the polio vaccine was given to large numbers of the population. As soon as hygiene and sanitation improved, despite the immunization programs, the viral disease quickly disappeared. Whatever may have been the reason for polio outbreaks in the past, it is highly questionable today to immunize an entire population against a disease that does not even exist any more. It raises major questions about the motives behind polio vaccination.

Further, the history of some simian virus 40 (SV40) infections in humans is linked to the use of polio vaccines. According to the American Journal of Medicine, many studies have reported the presence of SV40 from the polio vaccine in human brain tumors and bone cancers, malignant mesothelioma, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The polio vaccine seems ever more linked to cancers, especially in children. The cancers caused by the use of the polio vaccine in the past still kills 20,000 people a year in the United States. This is quite outrageous given the fact that polio itself hasn’t killed anyone for a long time.

- Excerpt from Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation by Andreas Moritz (www.amazon.com) or (www.ener-chi.com)

About the author

Andreas Moritz is a medical intuitive; a practitioner of Ayurveda, iridology, shiatsu, and vibrational medicine; a writer; and an artist. He is the author of The Amazing Liver and Gallbladder Flush, Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation, Lifting the Veil of Duality, Cancer Is Not a Disease, It’s Time to Come Alive, Heart Disease No More, Diabetes No More, Simple Steps to Total Health, Diabetes — No More, Ending the AIDS Myth and Heal Yourself with Sunlight. For more information, visit the author’s website (www.ener-chi.com).

One of the fastest ways to absorb anything into the body is through the mouth. Drugs such as nitroglycerine for heart conditions and natural homeopathic remedies are given under the tongue for fast absorption. Your daily routine of brushing your teeth with your favorite toothpaste may also be delivering a daily dose of antibiotics or other potentially toxic ingredients, without you realizing it.

Most people, even dentists and dental hygienists, don’t realize there is a warning on the back of most toothpastes (including many from health food stores). The warning is mandated by the FDA for active ingredients that are drug based. The most common ones are fluoride, antibiotics and other drugs used to prevent cavities, tartar or teeth sensitivity.

Even children’s toothpaste has a warning to “keep out of reach of children under the age of six. If more than used for brushing is swallowed, contact the poison control center or your physician”. If a child under the age of six swallows half a tube of the sparkly, bright colored toothpaste that tastes like bubble gum and contains fluoride, the result could virtually be deadly.

Besides fluoride and the potential for poisoning your child if large amounts are swallowed, most toothpaste contain saccharin and many other artificial additives. Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) is another ingredient to stay away from. Studies have reported there’s a potential for flare-ups of canker sores with SLS. Instead of choosing one of these types of commercial toothpastes for your child or you, providing your family with nutritious meals and brushing with “common sense” toothpaste, without potentially toxic ingredients, is much safer.

In recent years we’ve been hearing about the alarming increase of superbugs such as methicillin-resistant Staphlycoccus aureas (MRSA). The CDC and other studies list one cause for the rise of these antibiotic resistant bacteria to the general overuse of antibiotics. This overuse is not always in the form of a pill. You may be absorbing a small amount of an antimicrobial drug through your personal products as well.

Many brands of toothpastes, deodorants, shampoos, and soaps contain antibiotics, antimicrobials and strong disinfecting detergents. Triclosan, acetylpyridium chloride and tea tree oil are commonly used ones. Although natural, tea tree oil is a strong anti-fungal and antibiotic better suited for conditions such as athlete’s foot than in your moisturizer.

Antibiotics should only be prescribed if you have a serious infection. Informed consumers make wise buying decisions that aren’t based on pretty packages. Read, research and choose wisely for you and
your family.

For more information, visit (www.drstay.com) .

About the author

Flora Stay, D.D.S. has been a practicing dentist for over 30 years. She is the author and contributing author to books as well as magazines such as Total Health, Prevention, Men’s Health and others. She is currently an Associate Professor at U.S.C. School of Dentistry Dept. of Diagnostic Sciences. Visit her website for a free e-book “Product Labels: a cautionary tale” at www.cleure.com