Italian court rules MMR vaccine did trigger autism

Posted on May 17, 2012 by andreas m

By: Staff Writer
Source: nyrnaturalnews.com

An Italian court has ruled there is a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

In what may be a ground-breaking decision, the Italian Court of Rimini has ruled that causation between an MMR vaccine and the resulting autism in a young child “has been established.”

The unnamed child received the vaccine in March of 2004 and on returning home immediately developed adverse symptoms. During the next year the child regressed, receiving the autism diagnosis one year later and is now 100% disabled by the disease.

The Italian court ruled that the child “has been damaged by irreversible complications due to vaccination (prophylaxis trivalent MMR)” and ordered the Ministry of Health to compensate the child with a 15 year annuity and to reimburse the parents of their court cost.

The judgement can be found in full here and the original news report in Italian appears here. A rough Google translation appears here.

The case is expected to go to appeal as authorities are concerned it may set a legal precedent.

Not the first judgement against the vaccine

This, however, is the second recent judgement to come to this conclusion. Earlier this year a US court also ruled that the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine can cause autism.

In a ruling that kept very quiet in the press, the US Court of Federal Claims has conceded that the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, which was in vaccines until 2002, caused autism in the case of one child.

The ruling was just one of 4,900 cases currently being considered for compensation payments. Health officials are concerned that it could open the floodgates for even more claims.

The ruling, made by US Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler, was made last November, and was one of three test cases into the MMR-autism link that was being considered by a three-member panel, which Keisler chaired.

The case involved a child who received nine vaccinations in July 2000, when she was 18 months old. Two of these contained thimerosal. Within days, the girl, who had previously been healthy, began to exhibit loss of language skills, no eye contact, loss of response to verbal direction, insomnia, incessant screaming, and arching.

A diagnosis of autism was confirmed seven months later.

In its defence, the US government claimed the girl had a pre-existing mitochondrial disorder that was aggravated by the vaccine. However in his conclusion, Keisler said that “compensation is appropriate”.

Too much heat, not enough light

Both findings would appear to support the controversial findings of Dr Andrew Wakefield who, in 1998 published an article in the Lancet suggesting a link between the vaccine and autism. Official reaction to the paper was of such force and such outrage that the Lancet withdrew the paper on the grounds that it was scientifically unsound.

Wakefield has been in a battle for his professional reputation ever since and the question of the proposed link between the MMR vaccine and autism has been largely sidelined (though not solved) by bitter and very public professional rows that have done little to bring clarity to concerned parents.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Turning plastic into oil would eliminate plastic waste and stick it to greedy oil companies

Posted on May 12, 2012 by andreas m

By: Sarka-Jonae Miller
Source: NaturalNews.com

Only around 7 percent of plastic waste in the United States gets recycled, estimates the Environmental Protection Agency. Several attempts at turning plastic into oil have been made in the past with not much success, but a new start-up company based in New York has a real solution for transforming recyclable plastic into gas. With gas prices at an all-time high, people need to make a bigger push for alternatives to oil. The company, JBI Inc., invented an innovative machine for turning plastic into oil that could make dependency on foreign oil a thing of the past.

JBI is run by a man named John Bordynuik in Niagara Falls. Bordynuik recently found a way for converting plastic into oil that unlike attempts by past companies makes a product with equal quality to standardized fuel. Many people are skeptical of using alternatives to oil because of reduced quality, but Bordynuik’s machine turns plastic waste into oil as good as anything people buy, yet is significantly cheaper.

Bordynuik refers to his creation as the Plastic-Eating Monster. The machine melts all types of recyclable plastic and then rearranges the hydrocarbon chains in the plastic to transform it into No. 6 fuel. Recyclable plastic includes things like empty bottles, plastic shopping bags and plastic containers. JBI can produce a few thousand gallons of oil made from plastic waste every day. Bordynuik’s process for turning plastic into oil makes a barrel of oil for around $10. JBI then sells the oil for about $100.

The dream of turning plastic into oil

Converting plastic into oil has been a dream of many companies for years, but often produced a dirty, low-quality product that was unable to replace the fuel used in cars and major machinery. However, Bordynuik’s Plastic-Eating Monster is not the only such machine designed for turning plastic into oil. Last year, a businessman in Alaska named Bernie Karl made news for using his own plastic waste transforming machine.

Karl owns a company called K&K Recycling and Chena Hot Springs Resort in Fairbanks. The business began stockpiling discarded recyclable plastic, which caught the attention of locals who had no idea what the purpose of keeping plastic was. Karl surprised many when started using a Japanese machine capable of turning plastic into oil. The machine takes anything from styrofoam to plastic bags and melts them down in a vat heated to 800 degrees, turning the plastic into gas. The machine then sends the gas into a water container for cooling, which turns the gas into fuel. The resulting product is not high quality, but it may be good enough for use in machines like space heaters, which is quite useful in places like Alaska.

Environmental impact of converting plastic into oil vs. using alternatives to oil

Supporting alternatives to oil like making electric cars or using solar and wind power are still better for the environment. Even though Bordynuik’s method of converting plastic into oil could put the 93 percent of recyclable plastic sitting in landfills to good use, oil is still a fossil fuel and as such creates pollution. However with major advances in hybrid cars, making a cheaper alternative to expensive fuel out of plastic waste is still a step in the right direction.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

FDA proposes bypassing doctors, selling prescription drugs over the counter

Posted on May 12, 2012 by andreas m

By: Ethan A. Huff,
Source: NaturalNews.com

When it comes to freedom of food choice, the U.S.Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers Americans to be too stupid to make their own dietary choices. But when pharmaceuticals are involved, the FDA apparently thinks individuals should be able to completely self-medicate themselves without a prescription, having recently proposed new guidelines that would make it easier than ever for patients to access high-risk prescription drugs without even having to see a doctor.

The Washington Times reports that a new four-page proposal made by the FDA suggests that cholesterol (statins), diabetes, and asthma drugs, among others, be made available over-the-counter (OTC) to patients without a prescription. And what is the reason for this? According to the agency, too many patients are not getting their prescriptions filled, and many would-be patients are not going in to receive the treatments that their medical overlords feel they should be receiving.

The drug industry, in other words, is losing profits because many patients simply are not participating in the health care system as we know it. So to help boost participation, the drug industry’s gatekeeper, the FDA, is working on behalf of Big Pharma to make prescription drugs as easy to access as a candy bar or a pack of gum, even though prescription drugs are typically extremely high-risk and come with severe side effects.

“The FDA has not offered any evidence establishing that it is safe, or patient outcomes are improved, when patients with hypertension, [high cholesterol], asthma or migraine headaches self-diagnose and manage these (or other) serious chronic medical conditions on their own,” said Dr. Sandra Fryhofer, who testified on behalf of the American Medical Association (AMA) at an FDA-held public hearing recently.

But this has not stopped the FDA, Big Pharma, and various pharmacist groups from arguing that there are somehow too many barriers to patients accessing deadly pharmaceuticals. The FDA’s proposal, in fact, explicitly views having to see a doctor before being allowed access to prescription drugs an “unnecessary hindrance,” according to Sarah Kliff from the Washington Post.

Both sides fighting for the same goal – to maximize prescription drug use

Meanwhile, both sides of the debate appear to be concerned about one thing, and one thing only — getting as many people as possible to take their prescription drugs. Peter Carmel from the AMA, for instance, told the Washington Post that he is concerned patients will not take their prescription drugs unless they first see a doctor, while the other side says having to see a doctor deters too many patients from accessing prescription drugs.

In either case, the medical-industrial complex is primarily concerned with drug company profits rather than patient safety. And the FDA, which is also busy aggressively harassing and tyrannizing family farmers selling raw milk to willing customers, is an active co-conspirator in this drug industry scam to basically deregulate prescription drugs to boost industry profits.

You can view the FDA proposal, entitled Using Innovative Technologies and Other Conditions of Safe Use To Expand Which Drug Products Can Be Considered Nonprescription (Docket No. FDA-2012-N-0171), here:
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FDA-2012-N-0171-000

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Courts Slaps FDA and FTC for Unjustified Attacks

Posted on May 7, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Did you know it’s currently illegal for a food or supplement producer to tell you about their products’ scientifically proven health benefits?

As unbelievable as it sounds, a person can be thrown in jail for telling you the walnuts they grow may slow down the growth of prostate tumors, or cherries ease symptoms of arthritis and gout, even though this is truthful, accurate and helpful information for a consumer to know.

This is why a case that was recently heard before U.S. District Court Judge Vanessa L. Bryant could turn out to be a landmark event, as she ruled that the “FDA went too far” in censoring health claims related to green tea and cancer.

FDA Wording Too Strong, “Effectively Negates” Qualified Health Claims

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows food and supplement manufacturers to use a qualified health claim (QHC) when “there is emerging evidence for a relationship between a food, food component, or dietary supplement and reduced risk of a disease or health-related condition.”

However, because the evidence is still emerging, the FDA requires “qualifying language” to be included with the claim “to indicate that the evidence supporting the claim is limited.” In the case of Fleminger, Inc., which sells green tea and filed a health claim petition in 2004 to highlight green tea’s anti-cancer properties, the FDA suggested that this disclaimer be added to the health claim:

“FDA concludes that it is highly unlikely that green tea reduces the risk” of breast cancer or prostate cancer.

Obviously, this essentially contradicts the health claim.

So, in 2010 (after a petition to review the FDA’s disclaimer was denied), the FDA threatened to seize Fleminger’s products if they did not use the exact disclaimer above.

Eventually the FDA sent a revised claim, which still negated the point of the health claim:

“Green tea may reduce the risk of breast or prostate cancer. FDA does not agree that green tea may reduce the risk because there is very little scientific evidence for the claim.”

This is a major win for natural food and supplement producers alike, as the FDA is being required to revise the disclaimer so as not to negate the health claim being made. At this point, Fleminger took the case to court, where Judge Bryant ruled:

“The FDA’s language “effectively negates the substance–disease relationship claim altogether….There are less burdensome ways in which the FDA could indicate in a short, succinct and accurate disclaimer that it has not approved the claim without nullifying the claim altogether.”

Why Can’t Foods Have Truthful Health Claims on Their Labels?

This is perhaps the underlying question: why must manufacturers petition the FDA to make truthful, science-based health claims in the first place and then have them subjected to disclaimers? This is a serious waste of tax dollars – not to mention an assault on your freedom of access to information (and for the manufacturers, on their freedom of speech).

The fact is, QHCs are currently the only way that companies can make truthful health claims about natural foods or supplements. However, they are not easy to come by (the FDA approved only 12 QHCs from 1999 to 2010). Under current FDA law, if a food or natural supplement makes a medical claim without a QHC, it’s automatically classified as a drug. The Alliance for Natural Health explains:

“Outside of QHCs, food and supplements are not allowed to speak of the specific health benefits of their products because the FDA takes the position that any such statement magically turns them into drugs. And, as drugs, they would have to go through exorbitantly expensive drug trials, a cost which the manufacturer could never recoup, since food and supplements are natural products and cannot be patented. Without a patent, anyone can sell them, so paying as much as a billion dollars for a drug trial is essentially money down the drain.”

Believe it or not, the FDA recently sent a warning letter to Diamond Food for making truthful, science-backed health claims about the omega-3 fats in walnuts. But because the research cited health claims that omega-3 fats in walnuts may prevent or protect against disease, the FDA said walnuts would be considered “new drugs” and as such would require a new drug application to become FDA-approved.

The FDA’s current position is that foods such as walnuts, cherries, broccoli, turmeric, green tea and the like should be subjected to the full FDA approval process. But obtaining a new drug application, as the FDA suggests, can cost billions of dollars. And let’s face it – small food and supplement producers cannot come close to affording that!

In related news, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also suffered a loss in its efforts to hold Garden of Life, the marketer of various dietary supplements, in contempt of a previous consent order. The FTC alleged that Garden of Life violated the order by making false and baseless claims about its vitamin C and omega-3 fat based products, but the court ruled that the FTC had failed to prove that any of the challenged claims violated the consent order. It’s a small win, but it could have major repercussions for other natural supplement makers who are being unjustly attacked by the FTC or another government agency.

Experts Challenge FDA over Approval for New Dose of Alzheimer’s Drug

It’s ironic that the FDA comes down so hard on truthful health claims about green tea or walnuts, but seemingly gives drug companies carte blanche when it comes to bringing new products to market. Case in point, with its patent set to expire in November 2010, Donepezil, a blockbuster Alzheimer’s drug with over $2 billion in annual sales in the United States, submitted a new dosage for FDA approval.

Four months before the patent expired, the FDA approved the new dose, even though 5 mg and 10 mg doses were already on the market (though set to go generic soon).

The approval also went against the advice of the FDA’s own medical and statistical reviewers and was contrary to scientific evidence, which showed the drug offered “no meaningful added benefit, just more harm.” In fact, a 2010 report published in the journal Seizure found that of the 71,471 adverse drug reactions classified as convulsive events reported by the World Health Organization between 1968-2006 donepezil alone accounted for 8.4% of them, indicating that the drug is not only unsafe but that an increased dosage scheme would likely only cause more seizures in exposed populations.

Adding insult to injury, advertisements for the drug made misleading claims that the higher dose led to important clinical benefits on measures of cognition and overall function, a statement professors Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin of the Center for Medicine and the Media at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice called “stunningly erroneous.” In a BMJ commentary titled “How the FDA Forgot the Evidence …,” the professors detail the more likely reason why the 23 mg dose was approved:

“What is the difference between 20 and 23? If you said three, you are off by millions—of dollars in sales, that is—at least from the perspective of Eisai, the manufacturer of donepezil (marketed as Aricept by Pfizer).

A little context helps make the math clearer. Donepezil, the biggest player in the lucrative market for Alzheimer’s disease treatments, was a blockbuster, with over $2B in annual sales in the United States alone. But the drug, first approved in 1996, had reached the end of the road: the patent expired in November 2010.

Investors call this “going over the cliff,” an anxious reference to plummeting sales as market share is lost to generic competitors. Necessity, however, is the mother of invention. Just four months before the expiry of the patent, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new dose for moderate to severe Alzheimer’s disease: donepezil 23 mg. Is 23 an odd number? Not really, when you consider that you cannot get to 23 mg using the 5 mg and 10 mg doses that were going generic. The “new” 23 mg product would be patent protected for three more years.”

Support HR 1364 for Free Speech About Science

As unbelievable as it sounds, current law makes it illegal for natural supplement and food producers to share accurate, science-based health information with you.

Congressmen Jason Chaffetz (R–UT) and Jared Polis (D–CO) have introduced the Free Speech about Science Act (HR 1364), a landmark legislation that would allow the flow of legitimate scientific and educational information. The new bill provides a limited and carefully targeted change to FDA regulations so that manufacturers and producers may reference legitimate, peer-reviewed scientific studies without converting a natural food or dietary supplement into an “unapproved drug.” According to Rep. Chaffetz’s website, the provisions of HR 1364 do the following:

Allow dietary supplements and healthy foods to cite legitimate scientific research
Provide a clear definition of the types of research that may be referenced by growers and manufacturers
Ensure that referencing such research does not convert a food or dietary supplement into an “unapproved (and therefore illegal) new drug”
Retain the authority of FDA and FTC to pursue any fraudulent and misleading statements

According to Rep. Chaffetz:

“It is important for individuals and families to take charge of their personal health by making the right decisions to get and stay healthy. This includes accessing information so that individuals can adjust habits, eat healthfully, and take appropriate dietary supplements to prevent and even treat health conditions.

The Free Speech About Science Act helps insure their access to legitimate scientific research to make the necessary decisions to improve their personal health and the health of their families.”

Rep. Polis adds:

“Today’s science has shown that vitamins and nutritional supplements can offer successful, natural alternatives to drugs. As we begin to reform our nation’s healthcare system, supplements are an innovative way to help reduce costs.

The Free Speech About Science Act is a common sense act that will make it easier for doctors and consumers to learn about the cheaper, healthier alternatives to costly medicines that food and nutritional supplements provide.”

As of April 2012, HR 1364 was assigned to a congressional committee, which will consider it before possibly sending it on to the House or Senate. The majority of bills never make it out of committee, so we need your help.

Please lend HR 1364 your support by signing on as a co-sponsor TODAY.

Use the Alliance for Natural Health’s HR 1364 page to send a letter to your representative in support of this bill. And forward or post this article to all of your friends and loved ones who care about their health and their right to full information so they can make an intelligent choice in their health care decisions. With your combined influence we can be a powerful force for much-needed change.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

No Jab, No Education: New CA Law Requires Middle Schoolers to Provide Proof of Tdap Vaccination in order to Receive Education

Posted on May 3, 2012 by andreas m

By: Ethan A. Huff
Source: NaturalNews.com

A new amendment to California’s Health and Safety Code as it relates to vaccinations will take effect this fall for the 2012-2013 school year, and will require all incoming seventh graders, as well as eighth and twelfth graders for the first year, to get a Tdap booster vaccination for pertussis (whooping cough) before being admitted to school. The website of the Marin County School District, which includes the city of San Francisco, literally states “No shot, No School!” in an apparent attempt to strong-arm parents into complying with the new provision.

Even though students in California can be exempted from any and all vaccinations for medical or personal reasons, most parents are largely unaware of this fact. And because of the 2010 whooping cough outbreak in California, many parents will likely just comply with the new Tdap requirement simply out of fear that their child could be the next victim of the disease, even though the Tdap vaccine itself has been shown to be ineffective at protecting against whooping cough.

Unless parents specifically request a Personal Belief Exemption Form (PBEF) from their local health department’s Immunization Program, their school-age children are required to get whatever vaccinations the State Department of Public Health decides is necessary from year to year. And those wishing to opt out of the new Tdap requirement will need to specifically request a CDPH 8261 form from the school.

The interesting thing about DTaP, Tdap, and other pertussis vaccines is that they have never been tested for long-term safety, and they have never been proven to work. In fact, as we reported previously, the majority of the children who developed whooping cough during the 2010 scare had already been vaccinated against the disease. It was also revealed openly that pertussis vaccinations do not provide “lasting protection” against the disease.

Every California parent has a right to know the truth about Tdap and DTaP, not to mention the many other vaccines they are told their children are required to receive upon entering school for their own safety. They also have a right to know that they can exempt their children from such vaccines for medical or personal reasons. Sadly, most of them know neither, which is why it is crucially important to spread this information far and wide

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Is Your Food Sourced from the Plant Equivalent of AIDS?

Posted on May 2, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Genetic selection to improve crops began when people invented farming, but most of this inheritance cannot be patented, and is therefore useless as a source of profit. Using genetic engineering (GE) to modify crops is radically different than time tested traditional hybridization techniques and offers inviolate proprietary control.

One of the two traits that accounts for practically all of the genetically modified (GM) crops grown in the world today gives plants resistance to glyphosate (a chemical used in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, among others).

Dr. Don Huber, a plant pathologist of 50 years standing has determined that extensive use of these toxic herbicides has caused a novel organism to appear.

Last year he wrote a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, in which he explained that this new infectious agent had been discovered — one that is “widespread, very serious, and in much higher concentrations in Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans and corn.” He made an appeal for funds to continue the research, and asked that the approval of genetically engineered alfalfa be delayed until more research could be completed.

His appeal fell on deaf ears and GE alfalfa was subsequently approved, despite vigorous opposition by the organic community.

After Dr. Huber’s letter was leaked, Acres Magazine interviewed him about the contents of his letter and the dangers of glyphosate. It’s the best interview I have seen on this topic and I strongly recommend reading in its entirety.

It highlights the connection between genetically engineered foods and glyphosate, which blocks nutrient access rather than killing the plant more directly like the pesticides of the past. Genetically engineered crops drive the sale and use of glyphosate, and glyphosate is now wreaking absolute havoc on our environment, and, possibly, on us…

You Can Make a MAJOR Difference In Making Choice Possible and Labeling GMOs.

Before I continue, I want to bring your attention to an issue of great importance, and that is the California ballot initiative to mandate labeling of genetically engineered foods. We only have a few short months left to shift the tide of genetically engineered foods and out-of-control glyphosate use in the US, and we need your help.

This concerns all Americans, not just Californians, because a win for the California Initiative would most likely have the same impact as a national law, due to the size of their market. The initiative has already collected the 800,000 signatures needed to get the Act on this year’s ballot.

Now it’s time to campaign, and the Initiative needs both volunteers and funds to stand a chance against the deep pockets of the biotech industry that does NOT want a labeling requirement for their wares.

I urge you to get involved and help in any way you can:

If you live in California and want to get involved, please contact LabelGMOs.org. Pamm Larry will go through all volunteer requests to put you into a position that is suitable for you, based on your stated interests and location.
No matter where you live, please help spread the word in your personal networks, on Facebook, and Twitter. For help with the messaging, please seeLabelGMOs.org’s “Spread the Word!” page.
Whether you live in California or not, please donate money to this historic effort, either through the LabelGMOs.org, or the Organic Consumers Fund.

How Does Glyphosate Work?

According to Dr. Huber, glyphosate differs from other herbicides in a number of ways. While most herbicides act as mineral chelators, meaning they immobilize certain nutrients, thereby killing the plant, glyphosate differs from other chelators in that it chelates several different mineral nutrients required for proper plant health. This is what is meant by it being “non-specific, broad-based” herbicide. It can limit uptake of a variety of nutrients by as much as 70 percent. As a result, the nutritional content of genetically engineered (GE) plants is also profoundly compromised.

Another difference is that it does not affect the primary mechanism that causes death; rather it just turns off the plant’s self-defense mechanism, allowing soil-borne fungi to kill the weed. While soil-borne fungi are always present, the destruction of the plant’s “immune system” allows the fungi to kill it in mere days.

“When they use the glyphosate-tolerant technology, they insert another gene that keeps that plant’s defense mechanism going somewhat so you can put the glyphosate directly on the crop plant without having it killed.

But the technology doesn’t do anything to the glyphosate, which is still tying up mineral nutrients,” Dr. Huber explains in the featured article.”Anytime you put the gene in, you reduce the nutrient efficiency of the plant, though not to the point that it destroys the ability of the plant to survive. [But] it does leave it physiologically impaired… It’s not quite analogous, but you could say that what you’re doing with glyphosate is you’re giving the plant a bad case of AIDS. You’ve shut down the immune system, or the defense system.”

Glyphosate is Also a Potent Biocide that Alters Soil Conditions

Another factor that sets glyphosate apart is its biocide activity. It stimulates some soil organisms while being quite toxic to others. Overall, its presence disturbs the natural balance of soil microbe and alters the soil biology, creating “super-pathogens” that can be very harmful. This also translates to greater danger for animals and humans who consume affected crops. For example, toxic botulism is now becoming a more common cause of death in dairy cows whereas such deaths used to be extremely rare. The reason it didn’t occur before was because beneficial organisms served as natural controls to keep the Clostridium botulinum in check. Without them, the Clostridium botulinum is allowed to proliferate in the animal’s intestines and produce lethal amounts of toxins.

According to Dr. Huber, there’s currently enough residual glyphosate in animal feed and food to make an otherwise benign organism lethal… and it may already be rearing its ugly head.

The new-to-science organism Dr. Huber warned Secretary Vilsack about is primarily found in genetically engineered corn and soybeans, and it’s been clearly established that it causes not only sudden death in plants, but also infertility and miscarriage in cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, and poultry. Could it be affecting humans as well? After all, we have seen an increase in infertility in the past 10 years, since genetically engineered foods were first introduced.

Dr. Huber believes this harmful organism is the result of a change in plant and soil conditions that has granted a pre-existing pathogen the ability to cause harm in ways it was never before capable of. According to Huber:

“Any time you have a single gene in so many different crops, especially a gene that impacts the normal resistance and defense mechanism in the plant, and you spread that same vulnerability across so many plants, you should anticipate a high level of vulnerability. I think that’s what we’re seeing.”

Statistics Indicate Increased Plant Stress…

While some critics refuse to accept that sudden plant death and animal miscarriages are occurring, Dr. Huber points out that the statistics should speak for themselves. In the featured article he states:

“It isn’t a universal phenomenon, just as most disease outbreaks can be limited. I think the criticism goes against the statistics though. If you look at the USDA’s anticipated yield on corn that they put out in August, and then subtract the actual yields reported in January, you come up with almost a billion bushels less, even though we had near ideal conditions for harvest. Where did those billion bushels go? All you have to do to document that there was a short crop last year is look at the price.

We’re no longer talking about $3 per bushel of corn; we’re talking about $6 per bushel. That’s not from increased ethanol use, that’s from a major shortage in the crop produced. How do you get soybeans from $5 to $12? You have a short crop, because you have an inelastic supply/demand relationship in agriculture.”

Why Genetically Engineering Perennial Alfalfa May Be a Disaster

As mentioned earlier, genetically engineered alfalfa was approved late last year. There’s reason to believe that this decision could be particularly devastating not just for the environment in general, but for organic farming in particular, including organic animal products as dried alfalfa is a common addition to the feed during winter months. In the featured article, Dr. Huber explains why allowing for the genetic alteration of alfalfa might be so devastating:

“A perennial crop like alfalfa can be very susceptible to a closely related common soilborne bacterium to Goss’ wilt. If the technology nullifies resistance to this bacterial disease like it can for corn, and it is compatible with the new organism, then you have a situation where you can compromise the crop totally because you don’t have any way to get it out.

With an annual crop like corn or soybean… it [is] a matter of just going back to our old genetics and eliminating those with the gene from the breeding program. [But] once you have it implanted in the plant though, there’s no way to get it out. With a perennial, insect-pollinated plant, I don’t know of any way to eliminate it once it’s distributed throughout an area…”

Genetic engineering of plants—the act of altering plant traits by inserting foreign genes—makes it very difficult to revert back to the way things were… It’s a lot easier to put DNA in than it is to get it back out once it’s growing in our fields. Furthermore, each genetic alteration stresses the plant. This is referred to as the “yield-drag aspect.” Dr. Huber believes there may be ways to genetically improve crops, but inserting genetic material in multiple species of plants to impart the same resistance (in this case, resistance to glyphosate, or so-called Roundup Ready crops), significantly increases the vulnerability of the plants.

Are Genetically Engineered Foods Safe for Human Consumption?

Independent research has repeatedly found significant problems with both genetically engineered foods. Dr. Huber gives another telling example in the featured interview, in which he states:

“The Indian Supreme Court recently actually insisted on an outside laboratory to do the toxicology analysis for Bt eggplant. The independent laboratory—I believe the one they selected was in New Zealand—stated essentially that the data presented for deregulation of that crop didn’t meet international standards for toxicological studies, and that their independent toxicological research found that it wasn’t safe for human consumption.”

Bt crops are genetically engineered not to withstand glyphosate, like the Roundup Ready crops are, but rather they’re designed to create their own internal pesticide—Bt toxin—which ruptures the bellies of the bugs that eat it… Bt toxin has now been detected in the blood of pregnant women and their unborn babies, indicating that this genetic feature is transferred into the system of those who eat such crops.

As if that’s not enough, research data also shows that even low levels of glyphosate are very toxic to liver, kidney, and testicular cells, and to your endocrine system. Still, despite mounting evidence, agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refuses to act to protect the health of Americans by revealing which foods contain genetically engineered ingredients.

FDA Eliminates 1 Million Signatures for GMO Labeling on ‘Technical’ Reasons

Mandatory labeling may be the only way to stop the proliferation of genetically engineered foods in the U.S., but simple petitions will likely fail. We strongly support state initiatives, such as California’s ballot initiative to get mandatory labeling for genetically engineered foods sold in their state. A recent story highlights why state initiatives in particular are so vitally important.

It’s a brazen example of how the FDA completely ignores the people it’s supposed to listen to and protect… The agency actually decided to eliminate and disregard over a million U.S. citizens’ signatures and comments collected by the Just Label It campaign. Organizers of the campaign said they gathered more than one million signatures of people who want to know what’s in the foods they’re eating. But the whole effort ended up being for naught as the FDA declared that signatures on form letters don’t count.

According to the Chicago Tribune:

“The agency says that if 35,000 people, for instance, sign their name to the same form letter it only counts as one person or “comment.” And if tens of thousands sign a petition, they are only counted as one “comment,” too.”

Therefore, under the FDA counting method, the one million signatures whittled down to a measly 394 people asking for labeling… The FDA says it’s still considering the issue, and that they would let the Just Label It group know if, and when, they make a decision on whether they would mandate labeling of genetically engineered foods.

Proof Positive that GMO Labeling WILL Change the Food Industry

Many don’t fully appreciate the strategy of seeking to have genetically engineered foods labeled in California. The belief is that large companies would refuse to have dual labeling; one for California and another for the rest of the country. It would be very expensive and a logistical nightmare. So rather than have two labels, they would simply not carry the product, especially if the new label would be the equivalent of a skull and crossbones. This is why we are so committed to this initiative as victory here will likely eliminate genetically engineered foods in the US.

Powerful confirmation of this belief occurred in early 2012 when both Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo Inc. chose to alter one of their soda ingredients as a result of California’s labeling requirements for carcinogens^vi:

“Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. are changing the way they make the caramel coloring used in their sodas as a result of a California law that mandates drinks containing a certain level of carcinogens bear a cancer warning label. The companies said the changes will be expanded nationally to streamline their manufacturing processes. They’ve already been made for drinks sold in California.”

This is a PERFECT example of the national impact a California labeling mandate can, and no doubt WILL, have. While California is the only state requiring the label to state that the product contains the offending ingredient, these companies are switching their formula for the entire US market, rather than have two different labels. According to USA Today:

“A representative for Coca-Cola, Diana Garza Ciarlante, said the company directed its caramel suppliers to modify their manufacturing processes to reduce the levels of the chemical 4-methylimidazole, which can be formed during the cooking process and as a result may be found in trace amounts in many foods. “While we believe that there is no public health risk that justifies any such change, we did ask our caramel suppliers to take this step so that our products would not be subject to the requirement of a scientifically unfounded warning,” Garza-Giarlante said in an email.”

Learn More about Genetically Engineered Foods

Due to lack of labeling, many Americans are still unfamiliar with what genetically engineered foods are. We have a plan to change that, and I urge you to participate and to continue learning more about genetically engineered foods and helping your friends and family do the same.

To start, please print out and use the Non-GMO Shopping Guide, created by the Institute for Responsible Technology. Share it with your friends and family, and post it to your social networks. You can also download a free iPhone application, available in the iTunes store. You can find it by searching for ShopNoGMO in the applications.

Your BEST strategy, however, is to simply buy USDA 100% Organic products whenever possible, (as these do not permit genetically engineered ingredients) or buy whole fresh produce and meat from local farmers. The majority of the genetically engineered organisms (GMOs) you’re exposed to are via processed foods, so by cooking from scratch with whole foods, you can be sure you’re not inadvertently consuming something laced with altered ingredients. When you do purchase processed food, avoid products containing anything related to corn or soy that are not 100 percent organic, as any foods containing these two non-organic ingredients are virtually guaranteed to contain genetically engineered ingredients, as well as toxic herbicide residues.

To learn more about genetically engineered foods, I highly recommend the following films and lectures:

Hidden Dangers in Kid’s Meals
Your Milk on Drugs – Just Say No!
Everything You Have to Know About Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Something Historical is About to Happen – But Your Participation is Critical

Posted on May 1, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Mayday! Mayday!

I’m pleased to announce that the Money Bomb Against Monsanto has been officially launched!

Yes, it is official.

Volunteers and staff from the California Right to Know Campaign are submitting nearly 1 million signed petitions from registered voters across the state of California to county officials, to place Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act on the Ballot for November 6.

Starting May 1, and extending through May 26, a broad coalition of farmers, health groups, and organic food manufacturers, will attempt to raise one million dollars (i.e. “The Money Bomb”). Donations can be made online, via regular snail mail, and over the phone. All donations will support state GMO-labeling campaigns and their defense from biotech bully lawsuits.

The Right to Know Gentically Engineered Food Act

This Act will require food manufacturers to identify genetically engineered ingredients on the labels of foods sold in California.

When California voters pass this ballot initiative, the Label Genetically Engineered Food Act will also not allow the common practice of mislabeling genetically engineered foods as “natural” or “all natural.” It’s imperative to understand why this initiative is so important and how it can affect all Americans, regardless of where you live.

California has the eighth largest economy in the world, so passing a labeling law for genetically engineered foods in California can have the same impact as passing a federal law.

Large food companies are unlikely to accept having dual labeling; one for California and another for the rest of the country. It would be an expensive logistical nightmare, not to mention a massive PR problem.

To avoid the dual labeling, many would likely opt to not include using any genetically engineered ingredients in their product, especially if the new label would be the equivalent of a skull and crossbones. Those who opt not to replace GE ingredients from the get-go will likely find themselves unable to sell their products, as a majority of consumers reportedly will not buy foods once they know they’re genetically engineered. Unable to sell their products, such companies will eventually be forced to stop contaminating our food with genetically engineered ingredients, or risk going out of business.

This is what happened in Europe and over 40 countries around the world. It can happen in the U.S. This is why we can’t leave California to battle the biotech giants on their own. They need your help! Donating funds to this campaign may be the best money you’ll spend all year to safeguard your health, and the health of your children.

Do you know which foods are genetically engineered when you go grocery shopping for your family? Wouldn’t you want to know? Genetically engineered foods have been on the market since 1996. It’s time they tell us what’s in the food we’re eating on a daily basis. Making a generous donation to this campaign is the best chance every American has at this point to make that happen!

The Proverbial David versus Goliath

Naturally, the biotech industry is not about to let this pass without a fight. Monsanto, the Farm Bureau, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, along with corporate agribusiness, are all raising millions of dollars to spread their propaganda in an effort to defeat the California Ballot Initiative, just like they did a decade ago in Oregon. At that time, a cabal of corporate giants, including Monsanto and DuPont, calling themselves The Coalition Against the Costly Labeling Law, outspent the pro-labeling group 30-1, and successfully defeated the labeling initiative by scaring voters into believing that labeling genetically engineered foods was unnecessary and would raise food prices.

They did it again in Washington state last month, where campaign contributions to three of the eight politicians on the Senate Agriculture Committee—Democrat Brian Hatfield, and Republicans Jim Honeyford and Mark Schoesler—guaranteed the bill’s demise in committee. Right now, the biotech industry is also working to defeat similar GE labeling bills in Vermont, Hawaii, Connecticut, and other states. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, Monsanto spent $8 million on their lobbying efforts in 2010 alone, and gave more than $400,000 in political contributions. Monsanto also spent $120 million on advertising, to convince consumers that genetically engineered foods are safe – despite the overwhelming scientific evidence showing otherwise.

Let’s send them a message, loud and clear: We have the right to know what they put into our food!

You can do so by making a donation right now. The money will be used to counter the industry propaganda so that we can win this ballot.

We’re Dropping the Money Bomb!

About twenty years ago, the FDA decided to deny consumers the right to know whether their food was genetically altered or not. This shameful regulation was spearheaded by Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto lawyer who transferred into the offices of the FDA. Taylor is not the only ex-Monsanto employee that ended up in a position of power within the US federal government and its regulatory agencies, and this is precisely why previous efforts to get genetically engineered foods labeled have been blocked.

Not so this time!

Ballot Initiatives like the one in California is one way for citizens to take back control from compromised politicians and government officials and bypass them entirely. To sweeten the deal further, a group of “Right to Know” public interest organizations and organic companies have pledged to match the first million dollars raised in this nationwide “Drop the Money Bomb on Monsanto Campaign.”

So click here, and help us raise 1 million dollars to win this historic campaign! These “Right to Know” groups include:

The Organic Consumers Association
Mercola.com
Food Democracy Now
Nature’s Path
Lundberg Family Farms
Eden Foods, and
The Organic Consumers Fund

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

GMO Alert: Top 10 Genetically Modified Foods to Avoid Eating

Posted on May 1, 2012 by andreas m

By: Aurora Geib
Source: NaturalNews.com

There is a conspiracy of selling out happening in America. Politics and personal interest it would seem determine government policies over and above health and safety issues. When President Obama appointed Michael Taylor in 2009 as senior adviser for the FDA, a fierce protest ensued from consumer groups and environmentalists. Why? Taylor used to be vice president for Monsanto, a multinational interested in marketing genetically modified (GM) food. It was during his term that GMO’s were approved in the US without undergoing tests to determine if they were safe for human consumption.

The danger of GMO’s

The question of whether or not genetically modified foods (GMO’s) are safe for human consumption is an ongoing debate that does not seem to see any resolution except in the arena of public opinion. Due to lack of labeling, Americans are still left at a loss as to whether or not what is on the table is genetically modified. This lack of information makes the avoiding and tracking of GM foods an exercise in futility. Below are just some of the food products popularly identified to be genetically modified:

1.Corn - Corn has been modified to create its own insecticide. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has declared that tons of genetically modified corn has been introduced for human consumption. Monsanto has revealed that half of the US’s sweet corn farms are planted with genetically modified seed. Mice fed with GM corn were discovered to have smaller offspring and fertility problems.

2.Soy - Soy has also been genetically modified to resist herbicides. Soy products include soy flour, tofu, soy beverages, soybean oil and other products that may include pastries, baked products and edible oil. Hamsters fed with GM soy were unable to have offspring and suffered a high mortality rate.

3.Cotton - Like corn and soy, cotton has been designed to resist pesticides. It is considered food because its oil can be consumed. Its introduction in Chinese agriculture has produced a chemical that kills cotton bollworm, reducing the incidences of pests not only in cotton crops but also in neighboring fields of soybeans and corn. Incidentally, thousands of Indian farmers suffered severe rashes upon exposure to BT cotton.

4.Papaya - The virus-resistant variety of papaya was commercially introduced in Hawaii in 1999. Transgenic papayas comprised three-fourths of the total Hawaiian papaya crop. Monsanto bestowed upon Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore technology for developing papaya resistant to the ringspot virus in India.

5.Rice - This staple food from South East Asia has now been genetically modified to contain a high amount of vitamin A. Allegedly, there are reports of rice varieties containing human genes to be grown in the US. The rice will create human proteins useful for dealing with infant diarrhea in the 3rd world. China Daily, an online journal, reported potential serious public health and environment problems with genetically modified rice considering its tendency to cause allergic reactions with the concurrent possibility of gene transfers.

6.Tomatoes - Tomatoes have now been genetically engineered for longer shelf life, preventing them from easily rotting and degrading. In a test conducted to determine the safety of GM tomatoes, some animal subjects died within a few weeks after consuming GM tomatoes.

7.Rapeseed - In Canada, this crop was renamed canola to differentiate it from non-edible rapeseed. Food stuff produced from rapeseed includes rapeseed oi (canola oil) l used to process cooking oil and margarine. Honey can also be produced from GM rapeseed. German food surveillance authorities discovered as much as a third of the total pollen present in Canadian honey may be from GM pollen. In fact, some honey products from Canada were also discovered to have pollen from GM rapeseed.

8.Dairy products - It has been discovered that 22 percent of cows in the U.S. were injected with recombinant (genetically modified) bovine growth hormone (rbGH). This Monsanto created hormone artificially forces cows to increase their milk production by 15 percent. Milk from cows treated with this milk inducing hormone contains increased levels of IGF-1 (insulin growth factors-1). Humans also have IGF-1 in their system. Scientists have expressed concerns that increased levels of IGF-1 in humans have been associated with colon and breast cancer.

9.Potatoes - Mice fed with potatoes engineered with Bacillus thuringiensis var. Kurstaki Cry 1 were found to have toxins in their system. Despite claims to the contrary, this shows that Cry1 toxin was stable in the mouse gut. When the health risks were revealed, it sparked a debate.

10.Peas - Peas that have been genetically modified have been found to cause immune responses in mice and possibly even in humans. A gene from kidney beans was inserted into the peas creating a protein that functions as a pesticide.

The GMO link to strange disease

As early as 2008, NaturalNews.com reported about a condition called Morgellon’s disease. The article went on to report the symptoms of the disease as follows: crawling, stinging, biting and crawling sensations; threads or black speck-like materials on or beneath the skin; granules, lesions. Some patients report fatigue, short term memory loss, mental confusion, joint pain and changes in vision. Furthermore, there have been reports of substantial morbidity and social dysfunction leading to a dip in work productivity, job loss, total disability, divorce, loss of child custody and home abandonment.

Prior to its reporting, the condition was dismissed as a hoax, but upon further investigation, the evidence pointed out that the disease was real and may be related to genetically modified food.

Despite this link being established, the CDC declared Morgellon’s disease of unknown origin. Worse, the medical community could not offer any information to the public regarding a cause for the symptoms.

When a research study was conducted on fiber samples taken from Morgellons patients, it was discovered that the fiber samples of all the patients looked remarkable similar. And yet, it did not seem to match any common environmental fiber. When the fiber was broken down, and it’s DNA extracted, it was discovered to belong to a fungus. Even more surprising was the finding that the fibers contained Agrobacterium, a genus gram-negative bacteria with the capacity of transforming plant, animal and even human cells.

Morgellon’s disease is not the only condition associated with genetically modified foods. A growing body of evidence has shown that it may cause allergies, immune reactions, liver problems, sterility and even death. Moreover, based on the only human feeding experiment conducted on genetically modified food, it was established that genetic material in genetically modified food product can transfer into the DNA of intestinal bacteria and still continue to thrive.

Heeding the warning

Time and again, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has warned that GMOs pose a serious threat to health, and it is no accident that there can be a correlation between it and adverse health effects. In fact, the AAEM has advised doctors to tell their patients to avoid GMOs as the introduction of GMOs into the current food supply has correlated with an alarming rise in chronic diseases and food allergies.

This should come as no surprise. More than 30 years ago a food supplement called L-trytophan killed 100 people and affected 5,000 to 10,000 more. The cause was narrowed down to the genetic engineering process used in its production. If the symptoms had not had three simultaneous characteristics – namely, they were unique, acute and fast-acting – the disease could never have been identified.

If science could assure us with certainty that serious consequences do not wait for us at the end of the line, it might be to our best interest to let this opportunity pass. Progressive thinking in terms of profit is certainly not wrong. But to brush off precaution on the convenient argument that there is not enough evidence to prove that GM food is indeed harmful is sheer irresponsibility. It certainly is a lame excuse to offer in the event that GM foods are indeed proven to contain health hazards

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Albuquerque, NM, 32nd Largest US City, Ends Water Fluoridation

Posted on May 1, 2012 by andreas m

By: Ethan A. Huff
Source: NaturalNews.com

A major health victory has been achieved in New Mexico where officials in the state’s largest city, Albuquerque, have made the historic decision to stop artificially fluoridating the municipal water supply. This means that more than half a million local residents will no longer be forcibly medicated with a toxic byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer manufacturing industry, and the city itself will save hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars a year in the process.

KOB News 4 in Albuquerque reports that, after much deliberation, officials from the Albuquerque Water Authority decided that it is no longer necessary to fluoridate the city’s water supply. Since some naturally-occurring fluoride is already present in the Albuquerque water supply, the city will instead “err on the side of caution,” to quote the words of the Water Authority‘s David Morris.

And why, exactly, is the city employing “caution” in the matter? First, the fluoride that continues to be added to many water supplies across America is not actually fluoride at all. It is either sodium fluoride, sodium fluorosilicate, or fluorosilicic acid, all of which are highly-toxic, industrial waste byproducts with no scientifically demonstrable health benefits.

In fact, these poser fluoride compounds have been shown in many recent studies to cause severe health problems, including tooth decay. Synthetic fluorides are also responsible for causing developmental problems in children, brain damage, lowered IQ, thyroid disorders, bone damage, hormone disruption and cancer (http://www.fluoridealert.org/fluoride-dangers/health/index.aspx).

According to Shane Ellison, M. Sc., also known as The People’s Chemist, fluoride directly attacks the structural integrity of the body, including collagen, a vital protein in the body that composes connective tissues like tendons, bones, cartilage, blood vessels, and even gut lining. Fluoride has also been shown to be mutagenic, which means it damages DNA and can lead to the development of cancer.

The foundation of oral health is not found in ingesting fluoride, in other words, but rather in maintaining optimal nutrition and oral health. Avoiding refined carbohydrates like processed sugars and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), for instance, which easily ferment in the mouth and cause tooth decay, is a practical, sensical way to stave off cavities.

Regular consumption of raw, grass-fed butter and dairy products can also help prevent the development of cavities, according to research conducted by the late Weston Price, a dentist whose nutritional protocols have helped many people improve their health and mitigate disease.

You can proactively help to get fluoride removed from your own town or city by learning more about fluoride, and using this information to educate your friends, neighbors, and local officials about its many dangers:
http://www.fluoridealert.org

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Many US Hospitals, including Children’s Hospitals, Continue to serve McDonald’s Fast Food in their Cafeterias

Posted on April 30, 2012 by andreas m

By: Ethan A. Huff
Source: NaturalNews.com

Many people still think of hospitals as places where the sick become healthy, and where disease is nursed into wellness — but these notions could not be further from the truth. Besides being cesspools of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” and filth in many cases, dozens of U.S. hospitals, including children’s hospitals, continue to serve McDonald’s fast food to guests in their cafeterias and lobbies, a telling indictment of Western medicine’s prevailing lack of discernment and knowledge in the area of proper nutrition.

The group Corporate Accountability International (CAI), a consumer advocacy group, recently sent a formal letter to 21 U.S. hospitals that still serve McDonald’s to guests and visitors, urging them to “stop fostering a food environment that promotes harm, not health.” The group cites numerous statistics that point to junk foods, like those served at McDonald’s, contributing to the very diseases now being treated at U.S. hospitals.

“The rates of children suffering from diet-related disease are staggering,” says the letter. “Today, private practices, pediatric clinics, and emergency rooms are increasingly bearing witness to children suffering from preventable chronic conditions related to the food they eat [...] in the decades to come, one in three children will develop type 2 diabetes as a result of diets high in McDonald’s-style junk food.”

You can read the entire petition letter here:
http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/node/1654

Hospitals that still serve McDonald’s include Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago; theRiley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis; Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego; and Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. CAI is urging these hospitals and others to end their contracts with McDonald’s, and begin working towards the implementation of food options that support the role of improving health, rather than counteract it.

“We hear from physicians saying kids come in for their diabetic check-ups and they hear the parents saying, ‘If you are well-behaved, we’ll take you for a treat at the McDonald’s down the hall,” said Sara Deon, director of CAI’s McDonald’s campaign, to USA Today about the hypocrisy of the situation. It is akin to NaturalNews selling pharmaceutical drugs while simultaneously promoting health and wellness through nutrition.

If hospitals were truly about health, they would focus on serving more organic, grass-fed, and ‘superfood’ items

Getting rid of McDonald’s is a start, but most hospital food, including the food served to sick and dying patients, is completely devoid of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, probiotics, and other important nutrients that promote health. In fact, most hospital food is highly processed and loaded with toxic chemicals, which puts patients at risk of developing further illnesses and infections.

Some hospitals are starting to do things right, including over 40 hospitals in the Northeast that have begun purchasing clean, local foods, including grass-fed meats, to serve to patients (http://www.americanfarm.com). But many others are still greatly lacking in the nutritional department, and patients nationwide are suffering as a result

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Over 60 Billion Doses a Year and Not ONE Death, But Still Not Safe?

Posted on April 29, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Vitamins, minerals and herbal supplements have a tremendously safe track record, yet they are often singled out as being potentially dangerous by government agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

This – the notion that dietary supplements are unsafe — is the premise behind the FDA’s Draft Guidance on New Dietary Ingredients, which would require the supplement industry to prove the safety of natural ingredients that, in many cases, have been on the market and used safely for decades.

As new research from the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System reveals, there were zero deaths linked to nutritional supplements in 2010, the most current data available.

Zero Deaths Linked to Vitamin Supplements

However, in the FDA’s new Draft Guidance, the FDA is essentially claiming that dietary supplements are unsafe, and implying that in order to “protect consumers” the agency must place a stranglehold on the dietary supplement industry by requesting exorbitant safety testing.

These ludicrous safety thresholds are in excess of those required by pharmaceutical drugs — despite extensive toxicological data showing supplements are far safer than drugs.

The most recent data comes from the U.S. National Poison Data System’s annual report, which tracked data from 57 U.S. poison centers and showed vitamin and mineral supplements caused zero deaths in 2010.

As noted by Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, Americans easily take more than 60 billion doses of nutritional supplements every year, and with zero related deaths this is an outstanding safety record:

“Well over half of the U.S. population takes daily nutritional supplements. Even if each of those people took only one single tablet daily, that makes 165,000,000 individual doses per day, for a total of over 60 billion doses annually. Since many persons take far more than just one single vitamin or mineral tablet, actual consumption is considerably higher, and the safety of nutritional supplements is all the more remarkable.

Over 60 billion doses of vitamin and mineral supplements per year in the USA, and not a single fatality. Not one. If vitamin and mineral supplements are allegedly so “dangerous,” as the FDA and news media so often claim, then where are the bodies?”

In striking contrast, drugs are known to cause well over 125,000 deaths per year when taken correctly as prescribed – yet the FDA allows “fast-track” approvals and countless new additions to the marketplace. So why are dietary supplements on the chopping block?

Why is the FDA Attacking Dietary Supplements That Have Been Used Safely for Decades?

Back in the early 1990s, the FDA threatened the availability of dietary supplements to the point that consumers staged a massive revolt, which resulted in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA).

The law specifically protects your access to dietary supplements by classifying them as foods, not food additives or drugs, and it grand-fathered in dietary supplements that were already in use as of 1994. Only novel ingredients introduced after October 15, 1994 are required to seek FDA approval.

The FDA’s new proposed mandates directly contradict what DSHEA sought to prevent, and the FDA is using its authority in direct violation of Congressional intent. As explained in an article by Alliance for Natural Health, the proposed regulations turn what was clearly supposed to be a pre-market notification system into a pre-approval system, just like that of drugs.

As a result, dietary supplements that have been freely available for nearly two decades can now be forced off the market until they receive New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) approval. And the NDI approval process is a lengthy affair that may take months or years to complete, and cost a small fortune. Bringing a drug from the pre-clinical (or discovery phase) all the way to market can easily take more than a decade and cost significantly more than $1 billion! This despite the fact that contrary to drugs, fatalities from vitamins and other supplements are minuscule.

According to the 2001 report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC), of the substances implicated in fatal poisonings in 2001, 84.6 percent were pharmaceutical drugs, with analgesics being implicated as the primary cause of death in 32 percent of fatalities or 341 deaths. This compares with 0.8 percent for all dietary supplements combined, even including substances such as dinitrophenol, a dangerous (and illegal) substance banned in 1938, as well as the central nervous system stimulant Ma Huang (Ephedra). Interestingly, the anti-asthma drug theophylline alone was responsible for 15 deaths, 66 percent more than all the available dietary supplements combined.

What might make an “old” ingredient “new,” under the new regulation?

The methods of production and extraction, for example … As bizarre as that sounds, the mere fact that a product is being extracted or produced by improved means compared to methods used in the past, could reclassify any grandfathered nutrient as an NDI that would now have to undergo the same type of safety testing and approval process as a drug.

FDA Seeking Outrageous Safety Studies from Tried and True Supplements

In some cases, the FDA will require manufacturers to conduct outrageously expensive studies using absurdly high doses, in some situations multiplied by a “safety factor” up to 2,000-times the recommended dosage on a per product basis. Further, the FDA proposes that new dietary supplement ingredients should adhere to aggressive safety margins, which are typically reserved for chemical compounds known to be dangerous in all but the most miniscule concentrations.

Since food additives or preservatives such as aspartame, monosodium glutamate, and sodium nitrate are known to cause cancer or other severe health problems, the FDA has implemented safety guidelines that limit allowable concentrations of these food additives to levels that are supposed to be physiologically inert.

The fact that the FDA is trying to impose the same limits upon dietary supplements seems to be arbitrary and completely unfounded. In fact, when someone takes a dietary supplement, their intent is to positively affect the structure or function of their bodies in some way — limiting dosages of dietary supplements to physiologically inert levels defeats the entire purpose of supplementation with health-sustaining nutrients.

And, since supplements are not patented drugs, virtually no supplement manufacturers will be able to afford these “safety” studies, which means that many of the nutrients you now purchase at low prices will convert into high-priced drugs, or simply disappear from the market entirely.

The Drug Industry is the Real Safety Threat

While the U.S. National Poison Data System’s annual report showed zero deaths from nutritional supplements, this was not the case for prescription and over-the-counter drugs. The top categories associated with the largest number of fatalities were ALL medications, including:

Analgesics, sedatives, hypnotics, and antipsychotics
Cardiovascular drugs
Opioids
Acetaminophen combinations
Antidepressants

Slightly lower down on the list were more drugs, including muscle relaxants, anti-inflammatory drugs, hormones, antacids, anticoagulants, antihistamines and more. Out of a total 1,366 reported fatalities, pharmaceuticals were involved in over 1,100 of these deaths (again, compared to zero for supplements). Keep in mind that this is not an estimate of all the deaths attributed to pharmaceuticals in the U.S., only those reported to 57 poison control centers. The total figure is closer to 125,000 deaths from pharmaceuticals per year.

If you extrapolate this number out over 30 years this is well in excess of 3 million people who died from taking appropriately prescribed legal drugs. It is simply incomprehensible that any rational approach would seek to vilify supplements over drugs when the data in no way, shape or form supports it. The most likely motive for this position is financial greed that can put your life in jeopardy.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

The Deadly Poison Lurking in your Car’s Air Bags

Posted on April 29, 2012 by andreas m

By: Tony Isaacs
Source: NaturalNews.com

Automobile airbags, which have been mandatory in the United States and other countries for almost two decades, have long been touted as life savers. What hasn’t been widely told is that every air bag in every vehicle is a potential death trap and a growing danger to the environment due to a chemical compound used to inflate airbags which is every bit as toxic as sodium cyanide. That deadly compound is sodium azide.

Sodium azide (NaN3) is a highly volatile and highly poisonous compound which is used to inflate airbags when a collision causes the sodium azide to violently explode and inflate the airbags. However, even in minute amounts it can kill everything from bacteria and fungi to animals and humans. The presence of the deadly compound represents a serious threat to vehicle occupants, rescuers and others who might come into contact with it as well as an increasing threat to the environment.

Ingesting or absorbing as little as 50 milligrams (less than two-thousandths of an ounce) can cause the average adult to collapse into a coma-like state within five minutes. Blood pressure will drop and the heart will go into tachycardia. Ingestion of only a few grams can result in death in as little as 30 minutes.

Studies dating as far back as 1970 show that sodium azide kills or degrades the seeds of many plants at 10 parts per million in the soil. At 200 ppm, it not only sterilizes the soil – but also changes soil chemistry and kills all soil bacteria and fungi.

The increasing threat to humans and the environment from sodium azide

Little is presently known about the environmental effects of sodium azide. However, what is known is that sodium azide is water-soluble and that spills could possibly migrate into the water table via sewers, streams, lakes, and groundwater systems.

When wet, sodium azide produces hydrazoic acid – a volatile compound which also represents a potential threat to vehicle occupants, rescuers, recovery agents and even sanitation workers and others that may come in contact with the acid or hydrazoic acid gas. Additionally, scrapped airbags sit like environmental time bombs in the myriad of automobile salvage yards that we see in most communities.

On March 26, 2005 at a national meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco, atmospheric scientist Eric A. Betterton of the University of Arizona stated that “scientists really don’t know where or how all this sodium azide will inevitably wreak greatest environmental havoc”.

“Given the huge surge in production, there exists a greatly increased potential for significant accidental spills and subsequent human and environmental exposure to this material.”

Although sodium azide is already used in many industrial products, such as explosives, detonators, anticorrosion solutions, broad-spectrum biocides and airline safety chutes, with the advancement of passive vehicle safety systems a much larger threat to our environment has emerged over the last 15 years. Much of that threat is likely to come from automobile salvage yards where automobiles are crushed and taken apart with little or no regard for the potential dangers lurking in airbags. The vast majority of vehicles with airbags remain on the road today. The more that huge fleet of vehicles ages, the greater the risk becomes of harmful exposures to humans and the environment.

As Betterton stated, the increased demand for airbags and the aging vehicle fleets over the next few decades will result in amounts of sodium azide which “will greatly exceed the approximated 5 million kilograms (11 million pounds) that has already been incorporated into airbag inflators in the United States alone.”

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Culture of Corruption has become common within FDA, Big Pharma

Posted on April 29, 2012 by andreas m

By: Ethan A. Huff
Source: NaturalNews.com

When pharmaceutical drugs and medical devices are approved for use in medicine by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), their safety and efficacy are typically not the primary factors considered during the decision-making process. As pointed out by the Office of Medical and Scientific Justice (OMSJ), the FDA and the drug industry are both now dominated by cultures of corruption that put profits before patient safety in almost every instance, which means that a steady stream of deadly drugs and medical devices continues to flood the market.

Going as far back as the 1950s — and likely even much earlier than that — the FDA has made it routine practice to ignore and even deny the dangers associated with drugs and medical devices when approving them. In the case of the Up john Company, for instance, which unveiled the antibiotic drug Panalba back in 1957, the FDA ignored many years of complaints about the drug’s safety in order to protect the company’s profits.

At the time, data showed that as many as 20 percent of patients taking Panalba had suffered severe allergic reactions to the antibiotic, and yet the FDA did nothing. Even Upjohn’s own research studies on Panalba showed that the drug was less effective and less safe than alternative drugs on the market, and still the FDA did nothing, effectively sheltering Upjohn’s enormous profits from Panalba, which represented 12 percent of its overall profit earnings.

Sadly, the same is true today, as the drug industry and the FDA essentially work in tandem to get dangerous, but highly-profitable, drugs and medical devices to market. It is a win-win situation for both groups as the FDA gets kickbacks in the form of exorbitant new drug and medical device application fees, and the drug industry rakes in billions of dollars for blockbuster drug and device products that would never have been approved had science and facts been legitimately factored into the equation.

FDA’s culture of corruption promotes social irresponsibility in all areas of food and medicine

Because the FDA so easily capitulates to the demands of special interests, the food and drug industries have largely become purveyors of social irresponsibility. Back in 2009, the FDA’s own scientists came forward and admitted that they are routinely threatened by their superiors to cover up unfavorable study data, and basically promote “corrupt and distorted” information to the public — and this same type of trickle-down deception is inherent within food and drug firms as well.

A study conducted back in 1977 by researchers from Penn State University (PSU) revealed that the vast majority of people, when put in such situations by their superiors where they are expected to lie, simply cave to the pressure and comply. Embodying the scenario that has evolved at the FDA and throughout the drug industry, the report explained that:

“[...] ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

And this is the situation many lower-level workers in government and industry find themselves in today. Will they have the courage to resist the pressure to commit acts of immorality that serve the voracious greed and malice of their superiors? Or will they just defy their consciences and obey their overlords, claiming all the while that they are “just doing their jobs?”

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Call to Action – Join the Demand to Investigate Michigan DNR Director Rodney Stokes over Forced Shooting of Baby Piglets in Cold Blood

Posted on April 24, 2012 by andreas m

By: Mike Adams
Source: NaturalNews.com

There is nothing more pathetic, ugly and insidious than a tyrannical government thug who uses his power to destroy the lives of law-abiding citizens. Today, we have witnessed the outrageous acts carried out by jack-booted scumbags in Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) who masterminded armed raids on two ranches in that state, all with the intention of shooting and killing traditional livestock and arresting ranchers as felons. This is part of Michigan’s new “Invasive Species Order” which maliciously and unlawfully targets traditional pig livestock as an invasive species, based entirely on their hair color and other physical traits.

According to our sources, the person behind this effort is DNR director Rodney A. Stokes. Rodney Stokes, we’ve been told, is the decision maker behind these armed raids on Michigan ranchers. He’s the one who demands that traditional heritage pigs be slaughtered at gunpoint and that Michigan ranchers be arrested and charged as felons if they resist.

In investigating this story, I called and left a message for the DNR’s media contact, but he has so far failed to return my call. I am not necessarily expecting a return call, as experience has taught me that these cowards prefer to operate in darkness and quickly flee when someone with any real journalistic integrity begins to ask real questions.

Forced to murder his own livestock

This entire story stems from the DNR’s forcing of Michigan small-scale pig ranchers to slaughter their own livestock or be arrested as felons. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

Just this last week, one Michigan farmer was forced to shoot his own livestock in cold blood — including twenty baby piglets and pregnant sows. As he says in his own words:

“I was served a search warrant yesterday at 7: 45am. I have killed all my hogs. [DNR] gave me papers that say I do not have any hogs on my property. All they saw were dead hogs laying around from my mass slaughtering. It took 12 guys 4 times in there to kill all of them, sows with young, Pregnant sows, dozens of piglets, and old mature boars. It has been a sad few weeks. Does anyone know what it feels like to open fire on 20 baby piglets in one group which weigh between 5 lbs and 15 lbs. They are so adorable and cute. They commented to everyone that they never saw a fence built so tough and no way would a hog get out of this area.”(www.BakersGreenAcres.com)

This is directly a result of the orders of DNR director Rodney Stokes.

NaturalNews has received word that many of the front-line DNR enforcement officers are completely opposed to this agenda put forth by Stokes. I will state here on the record that any DNR officers, employees or whistleblowers who wish to come forward with information about this case can contact NaturalNews with the complete assurance that their identity will be protected. Obviously, do NOT use government computers to reach us or send us email, as that will be tracked. Do this from a public internet cafe using a hosted email address such as Gmail.

We are specifically looking for whistleblowers who wish to step forward and expose the actions of Rodney Stokes or others who are directly responsible for the terrorizing of Michigan farmers. We will expose this information publicly, and we will aggressively defend the anonymity of our sources in order to see justice served.

Michigan’s DNR is out of control

As anyone can see from the facts surrounding this case, the Michigan DNR is, under the “leadership” of Rodney Stokes, acting as a rogue government agency gone completely mad and now running across the countryside with the intent of murdering livestock and terrorizing farmers.

As a freedom-loving American and strong advocate of common law, farm freedom and the rights of citizens to be free from such acts of government aggression against the People, I have called for the immediate arrest of those responsible for these illegitimate and utterly unjustified armed raids. At the very least, a criminal investigation needs to be initiated against the DNR and its director. Someone must resign over this fiasco for there to be even an inkling of justice served in this case.

I, for one, will not stop investigating Michigan’s DNR until I see justice served against those responsible for these actions. And I assure NaturalNews readers that I will immediately go public with every piece of information on the DNR that comes my way. Lawyers are standing by (as usual) to defend my right to exercise my First Amendment, even if Michigan’s DNR thinks it can deny people their entire Bill of Rights.

By the way, I also question just the basic I.Q. of the Michigan DNR about this whole issue of feral pigs. You know, here in Texas, we’re smart enough to shoot the pigs running around OUTSIDE the fences (well not me personally, but others who actually shoot the pigs). But in Lansing, Michigan, where these city bureaucrats have apparently never even seen a farm, they’re so stupid they think feral pigs can be eradicated by shooting pigs INSIDE the ranch fences! That’s about as retarded as thinking you can eliminate a coyote problem by shooting your family dog… (see below).

Michigan DNR can come and shoot your dog next

Just how out of control is the DNR? Imagine this: Using the exact same logic they have now put forth to justify their recent raids of farmers, the Michigan DNR could simply declare domesticated dogs to be an “invasive species” and then unleash swarms of armed DNR agents across the state to enter your house and shoot your dog, then arrest you as a felon for even owning that now-dead dog!

This is exactly — precisely! — what the DNR has done with farmers’ pigs, which they claim are “feral” pigs. But that’s no different than claiming your household dog is a “feral” dog. If it’s domesticated in your house (or on your ranch, within the fences), then it’s not feral, is it? It’s domesticated. It’s fenced in.

Michigan’s DNR argues that “your pigs MIGHT escape” into the wild, and therefore the state of Michigan has the right to come shoot all your pigs on sight, with no judge, no jury, no trial, no law, no due process and no opportunity for appeal! How’s that for total, runaway tyranny in Michigan?

But by the same logic, the DNR could argue that “your DOG might escape” into the wild, and therefore the DNR should just murder all family dogs in Michigan, see? It’s the same (warped) reasoning. These people are insane! I wonder if DNR director Rodney Stokes has a family dog? And I wonder how he would feel if four government vehicles stopped at his house, a dozen armed agents burst into his home, and then they shot his dog right in the head? That’s what he ordered done to Michigan pig ranchers, you see. It’s no different. (For the record, I am not calling for anyone to actually shoot Stokes’ dog, if he even has one. I repeat my call for non-violent resolution of these issues — even though that’s a philosophy the Michigan government has long abandoned in favor of violent escalation.)

If the DNR is not sharply rebuked for its outrageous actions of forcing farmers to shoot their own baby piglets in cold blood, there is no telling where this madness will end. Emboldened by the mass slaughter of pigs, DNR director Rodney Stokes could simply declare (like the Emperor) that cows are now an invasive species. Or goats. Sheep. Cats. Backyard chickens. Without any law being passed whatsoever, the DNR could simply invent its own new “directives” (exactly as happened in this case) and then use those directives as the quasi-legal justification to just run around the state using people’s animals as target practice.

And by God, the DNR front line agents would do what they were told, too! “We’re just following orders!” they would say as they put a bullet in the head of your family dog. Such is the nature of tyranny — there’s always some poor sap willing to carry it out in exchange for a government paycheck and the promise of retirement benefits that they’ll never receive because the state will be bankrupt long before that date ever arrives anyway.

If government will not halt its own abuses of power, such tasks fall upon the People

So the question right now is whether the Michigan government will reign in these outrageous abuses of power by the DNR — a rogue, criminal agency operating right under the nose of Governor Rick Snyder.

I urge you to contact the Governor (and other key state officials) using the contact information I’m publishing below. It’s time to let these people hear what you think about their policy of the mass slaughter of pregnant pigs and baby pigs because of the ego-tripping power desires of its most insane departmental tyrants.

If Michigan will not investigate itself and put an end to this tyranny, I fear the only solution to this will involve deputized citizens rising up against their state government and making these lawful and legal arrests on their own, without the assistance of government, if it comes to that.

After all, when government becomes the criminal, there is no option left but to invoke the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms in a common defense of the People against tyranny. This is precisely what our founding fathers wrote about when they spoke of the “right to keep and bear arms” as well as the Fourth Amendment’s protections against illegal search and seizure. In Michigan, we have now approached a decisive moment where either the government must investigate its own terrorist activites, or the People of that great state will inevitably rise up against their oppressors and assert their protections under law to be free from government tyranny. (And to be free to farm without ill-conceived government interference, above all.)

State-sponsored terrorism

Let’s be honest about what we’re witnessing here. What Michigan has done is an act of state-sponsored terrorism that specifically has targeted innocent farmers who have done nothing wrong.

As the DNR refused to debate their ISO (Invasive Species Order) in the courts and instead resorted to an escalation of violence by bringing guns onto illegal farm raids, their actions are clearly those of government tyrants who resort to tactics of fear, intimidation and violence in order to get their way.

This is simply not acceptable. Such actions must be halted by peacekeeping citizens who lawfully and ethically act to preserve their rights to pursue life, liberty and happiness. Even if it means lawfully and legally arresting government terrorists who have been conspiring against them.

While DNR director Rodney Stokes could have decided to hold off on the armed raids and argue the merits of the ISO in Michigan’s courts, he instead decided to escalate the violence and bring guns to farms where unjustified violence has now been committed against the animals there. This shows a striking disregard for valuing life and liberty. It is a very dangerous sign to see a departmental director openly advocating such acts of terrorism against the People. (Should Rodney Stokes be prosecuted under the Patriot Act? That’s something worth investigating, even if the Patriot Act is a bad law to begin with…)

Regardless of the evidently unstable psychology of the man who masterminded this criminal conspiracy against Michigan farmers, the actions of the DNR are wholly illegitimate, unethical, immoral, illegal, unconstitutional and despicable. This is the kind of government behavior you might expect in North Korea, not Michigan. Yet through its recent actions on threatening home gardeners, SWAT-teaming innocent mothers while stealing their children with CPS workers, and now raiding farms at gunpoint, the state of Michigan has cemented its reputation as the most terror-driven state government in America today.

Where is Michigan Governor Rick Snyder on these issues? Why has he not spoken out for the People of Michigan and sought to defend them against the tyranny of the very rogue government agencies he now commands? Governor Rick Snyder could put a stop to this with a single phone call (or by firing a single person, probably). Encourage Snyder to take action by contacting his office about this issue (see contact information below).

DNR director Stokes could have stopped it, too, but he actually ordered the raids to move forward. At no point have the representatives of government in Michigan actually stood up to protect the fundamental rights and protections of Michigan farmers and ranchers. We aren’t asking the Michigan government for handouts here. This isn’t a request for corporate welfare or even individual welfare. We are only requesting that government get the Hell off our farms and leave us in peace to pursue the difficult work of being a rancher.

In this time of economic desperation, with Detroit gutted by the downfall of the automobile industry in America, and with agriculture suffering under GMO contamination and the onerous regulations of the FDA and USDA, it is beyond belief that the state of Michigan would spend taxpayer dollars to seek out and destroy local farming and ranching operations that are contributing to the economy at many levels.

Take Action Now!

Today, I am urging you to join hundreds of thousands of NaturalNews readers and InfoWars listeners across the country in taking action to loudly and confidently denounce the Michigan state government’s actions in terrorizing farmers, and demand an investigation into the actions and decisions of DNR director Rodney Stokes – decisions that led to the inexplicable terrorizing of Michigan farmers and the forced shooting of one man’s entire herd of livestock.

Here’s how you can help:

#1) CALL the office of Governor Rick Snyder
PHONE: (517) 373-3400
PHONE: (517) 335-7858 (Michigan constituents)
FAX:(517) 335-6863

When you call, DEMAND an investigation into DNR director Rodney Stokes.

#2) CALL the Michigan office of Attorney Generaland demand an investigation into the illegitimate terror-style tactics of the DNR operating in that state.

Main Number (517) 373-1110
Facsimile (517) 373-3042

#3) CALL the Michigan DNR officesand loudly complain about their terrorist tactics used against Michigan farmers and ranchers:

Director, Rodney A. Stokes- this is the top man responsible for the DNR’s actions against farmers.
Phone: 517-373-2329
e-mail: DNR-Director@michigan.gov

Other contacts at the DNR:
Acting Natural Resources Deputy, Kelley Smith
Phone: 517-373-2329

Chief Administrative Officer, Mark Hoffman
Phone: 517-373-2329

Legislative Liaison, Gary Owen
Phone: 517-373-0023

Public Information Officer, Ed Golder
Phone: 517-335-3014

Upper Peninsula regional Coordinator, Stacy Welling
Phone: 906-228-6561

Policy Coordinator, Donna Stine
Phone: 517-241-3774

Senior Executive, Patricia Stewart
Phone: 517-335-1833

#4) CALL the law enforcement division of the Michigan DNRto denounce their use of taxpayer dollars to conduct armed raids on private ranches and farms:

Law Enforcement Division
Gary Hagler, Chief
Phone: 517-373-1230

#5) SHARE this story on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. LINK to this page and spread the word.

Heed my warning or you may be next

This is real, my friends. This is happening. After we published our first article on this topic, I remember reading some of the ignorant comments from the usual trolls who claimed we were “exaggerating” the directive. “There won’t be any raids, that’s ridiculous,” one comment claimed. Another said that we made up the whole thing, that there was no such law on the books (it’s not a law, it’s a “directive”) and that our entire story was pure fiction.

And yet, once again, we were right and the trolls were wrong. Again and again, this is how it works: NaturalNews warns readers about the coming tyranny, and people ignore it and think we’re making it up. Then that tyranny kicks in and people end up in jail (or dead) thanks to government tyrants. Read the story of Andrew Wordes if you don’t believe me.

Or listen to my interview with James Stewart, the senior citizen “milk man” who was tortured by LA County for distributing fresh milk!.

Read the true story of Julie Bass, a resident of Oak Park, Michigan who was threatened with 90 days of jail time for growing a garden in her own front yard!

These reports are all real, folks. You won’t find them in the lamestream media, however, because the mainstream media is a journalistic joke. They don’t report much real news anymore, didn’t you know? They only report sports, entertainment and corporate-packaged propaganda. Mainstream media is to your brain what junk food is to your body.

The real news about what’s really happening in America is now solely reported in the alternative press– sites like NaturalNews.com and InfoWars.com — where real journalism is still kept alive by hard-working writers and researchers who dare to ask the tough questions and pursue the tough stories. Sure, any word-wrangling hack can win a Pulitzer prize at a mainstream newspaper by coughing up a feel-good propaganda piece, but the real news in America today isn’t going to be found at any conventional media outlet (all of which are driven entirely by corporate interests and government boot licking). With rare exceptions, the only place you’ll find real news now is the alternative press and independent sites, from the Drudge Report on down.

That’s why it’s up to YOU to help get this story out there. The mainstream media won’t touch it. It reveals far too much about the corrupt, criminal nature of government. While daily newspapers are more than happy to run stories about school shootings where citizens go crazy and government comes in to rescue everybody, they absolutely will not touch stories where government goes crazy and the citizens are victimized.

See the difference? A school shooting gets front-page press, but a farm shooting waged by government tyrants getszerocoverage.

The real agenda? Total destruction of America’s small farmers

It’s all an agenda, my friends. It is layer upon layer of dark agendas of control, tyranny, economic destruction and public brainwashing. There is an agenda at work today to destroy America’s farms and gut the small-farmer agricultural sector in its entirety. The federal government wants nothing left but a centralized corporate-controlled genetically modified factory food monopoly, where food is stripped of all its nutrient value and contaminated with GMOs, MSG and other toxic chemicals. Michigan’s DNR is playing right into this agenda with its attempt to crush and outlaw local pig ranching (for starters).

The FDA openly says it wants all food to be irradiated, pasteurized or fumigated in order to kill everything living. That’s the agenda, folks: Dead food and centralized corporate control over all food and seeds. Mass chemical contamination. Mass genetic modification. Police state gunpoint enforcement. Criminalization of non-hybrid seeds. Armed teams of state-sponsored “hit squads” running around shooting your animals. Criminalization of farmer’s markets, raw dairy, raw almonds, backyard gardens, live foods and medicinal herbs. It’s already here. More than half of what I just described already exists and has been reported and documented here on NaturalNews.

We are already so deep into this quagmire of food tyranny that I seriously wonder how we’re ever going to restore liberty in this nation. In Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Illinois and California, we are now seeing criminal government gangs running rampant and terrorizing the citizens. In those states (and many others), government has gone from being just plain bad to insidiously evil – to the point where it now threatens the very fabric of our republic.

This is a time when, more than ever, we must heed the warnings of people such as:

• Ron Paul

• Judge Andrew Napolitano, author ofIt Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom.

• Jonathan Emord, author ofRestore the RepublicandThe Rise of Tyranny(Emord actually predicted much of what we see happening today).

• Alex Jones, the InfoWars pioneer who has been proven right over and over, again and again, so many times that he’s actually become one of the most reliable sources in the world for intel on what’s about to go down.

• James Wesley Rawles from SurvivalBlog.com, the former Army intelligence officer who wrote about much of this nearly twenty years ago!

These people all warn about the dangerous rise of tyrannical government; the stripping away of due process and the Bill of Rights; the dangerous centralization of power in Washington, and the terrible price of citizen apathy, where people refuse to take action against the destructive forces of bad government.

Food fascism is upon is NOW

Allow me to add my voice to their urgent warnings: Freedom is rapidly eroding in America at a pace we’ve never before witnessed in human history. We are losing our nation not by the decade, not even the year, butby the month! At this pace, we are less than five years away from a total police state takeover of the economy and a permanent end to nearly all freedoms and liberties among the People.

Runaway tyranny is biting at our heels right now, at this very moment, and tyrants in state capitols are hurriedly plotting their dictatorial takeovers of their own regions, even while bowing down and kissing the boots of the black-garbed federal thugs in Washington. Their agenda is clear: Obliterate freedom at all costs! Enslave the people! Destroy local food and farms! Tax and regulate people into a state of perpetual economic slavery! Invoke fear and intimidation to keep everyone in line! These are the very tactics now openly demonstrated by the Michigan DNR, which can only be honestly called a terrorist organization run amok.

These are the dark signs of the new fascist Amerika that’s now rising from the underworld like some sort of undead demonic force of evil. This evil is what we must meet at the gates, with our courage and our defenses, and we must defeat this infectious tyranny before we lose our nation and our future into its screaming, slithering jaws. Everything is at stake here – our future, our liberties, our dignity, our children, our farms, our land, our very souls. We must not let these tyrants stomp our faces into the dirt. We demand justice; we demand protection under the law; we demand fundamental human rights; and we demand the arrest and prosecution of those agents of government evil who plot in the dark corners of their diseased minds to strip us of those rights.

Live free or die, my fellow Americans. If we do not believe in that, then we are not Americans at all.

JOIN ME in taking action on this day to demand the arrest and investigation of DNR agents working as terrorists for the government of Michigan. And if the Michigan government decides not to take action against its own rogue agents, then that government is, itself, illegitimate.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Roundup Herbicide can alter Morphology of Animals – New Study

Posted on April 24, 2012 by andreas m

By: Jonathan Benson
Source: NaturalNews.com

Exposure among amphibians and other vertebrate animals to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide has been shown, for the very first time, to actually induce physical changes to the shapes of these animals’ bodies. Published in the journal Ecological Applications, the new study reveals once again the incredible hormone-altering power of Roundup, and how even minute exposure to this highly-toxic chemical brew can have disastrous health consequences.

In their natural environment, tadpoles, which are just amphibians in the larval stage of their life cycle, have a natural ability to detect the presence of predators and respond accordingly. In order to avoid insect predators, for instance, tadpoles can actually develop deeper or longer tails in order to swim away from them faster, which helps ensure their survival (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10862727).

But it appears as though Roundup, which has already been shown in other studies to be highly pervasive throughout the environment, induces these very same physical changes. And when exposed to both Roundup and natural predators, tadpoles will develop grossly large tails that are much larger than normal, which is likely the result of both the tadpoles’ detection of Roundup, and Roundup’s ability to chemically-induce hormonal changes.

“What shocked us was that the Roundup induced the same changes,” said Rick Relyea, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Pittsburgh‘s (Pitt) Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and director of Pitt’s Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology, referring to changes in the tadpoles’ tails that caused them to actually become twice as large as normal.

“This discovery highlights the fact that pesticides [...] can have unintended consequences for species that are not the pesticides’ target. [W]e are learning that [pesticides and herbicides] can have a wide range of surprising effects by altering how hormones work in the bodies of animals.”

For his study, Relyea examined how tadpoles living in water tanks respond to varying exposures of Roundup, as well as to predators. And his findings revealed that Roundup visibly alters tadpoles’ stress hormones, which appears to coincide with an earlier study that revealed Roundup-induced hormonal changes in humans.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen Argentinian farmers have filed a lawsuit against Monsanto, creator of Roundup, and several tobacco companies for allegedly knowingly poisoning them with Roundup and other pesticide and herbicide chemicals. According to the filing, Monsanto’s pesticides and herbicides caused the farmers’ children to be born with “devastating birth defects” (http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/04/10/45469.htm)

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Colony Collapse Disorder in Bees Triggered not just by Pesticides, but also by GMO High-Fructose Corn Syrup

Posted on April 23, 2012 by andreas m

By: Jonathan Benson
Source: NaturalNews.com

Studies linking neonicotinoid pesticides to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a condition in which entire bee colonies suddenly disappear or die, have been gaining national attention in recent months as they continue to flood scientific journals. But one area that has been largely overlooked is the role high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) plays in killing off bees, as the vast majority of it comes from genetically-modified (GM), pesticide treated corn crops.

Chensheng Lu, Kenneth M. Warchol, and Richard A. Callahan from the Department of Environmental Healthat theHarvard School of Public Health examined the effects of imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid pesticide, on bee colonies as part of a recent review. Part of this research involved using HFCS that had been derived from corn crops treated with imidacloprid, for which the pesticide ended up getting into the end product.

For their study, the team created four honey bee sites with five honey bee hives each, for a total of 20 hives, with each site containing four imidacloprid hives and a control hive. Among the 16 hives treated with imidacloprid, varying amounts of the pesticide were used in order to gain a proper assessment of how, and at what levels, it affects bees.

In the end, the team discovered that the vast majority — 94 percent — of hives treated with imidacloprid ended up dying off as a result of what appeared to be CCD, even when very minute levels of the pesticide were added. And a key culprit in this die-off was imidacloprid-tainted HFCS, which served as the delivery system for this toxic chemical.

“Data from this in situ study provide convincing evidence that exposure to sub-lethal levels of imidacloprid in HFCS causes honey bees to exhibit symptoms consistent to CCD 23 weeks post imidacloprid dosing,” wrote the authors. “15 or 16 imidacloprid-treated hives (94%) were dead across four apiaries 23 weeks post imidacloprid dosing.”

You can review the study for yourself at:
http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org

Most commercial honey comes from bees fed chemical-laden HFCS

HFCS is commonly fed to many commercial bees today, which is why more than 75 percent of the so-called “honey” sold on store shelves is nothing more than HFCS. And since the GM corn crops from which the vast majority of HFCS is derived have been treated with imidacloprid and other pesticides, it is hardly surprising that these chemicals end up in commercial bee feed.

France actually banned the use of imidacloprid on sunflowers and sweet corn back in 1999 and 2003, respectively, after more than one third of its bees died (http://www.guardian.co.uk). And yet the pesticide continues to be used in the U.S., despite the fact that it was never even lawfully approved for use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Pharmaceutical Company spends Millions Studying How to Steal Black Cohosh Component as Potential Treatment for Alzheimer’s

Posted on April 22, 2012 by andreas m

By: Jonathan Benson
Source: NaturalNews.com

In the push to develop new drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease, drug company Satori Pharmaceuticals has successfully raised $37 million in venture capital to continue studying a key compound that it believes will eventually lead to a major breakthrough in disease treatment. And according to Xconomy.com, this compound comes from natural black cohosh, a perennial plant whose extract is often used to treat menopause symptoms.

Unbeknownst to many people today is the fact that pharmaceutical drugs are largely derived from natural herbs and plants that have been chemically synthesized into patented, isolated drug formulas. And Satori’s approach with black cohosh is no different, as the company hopes to eventually conduct human clinical trials on an isolated, synthesized version of the compound in question to verify that it actually does target amyloid beta 42, the protein that many researchers believe is connected with Alzheimer’s development.

Buildup of beta amyloid proteins in the brain is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease, as this process is believed to degrade nerve cells in the brain and block proper nerve function. And when secretases, which are enzymes that promote the production of beta amyloid proteins, begin to dysfunction, the body is unable to successfully break them apart and prevent them from lodging in the brain.

But the substance identified in black cohosh, which was the result of work being done at the Mayo Clinic, reportedly binds with a specific enzyme known as gamma secretase that promotes the production of beta amyloid proteins, and stops them from forming in the brain. And unlike previous secretase inhibitor drugs that blocked all amyloid-promoting enzymes, including those that performed beneficial functions, natural black cohosh appears to block just those that are harmful while leaving the others alone.

“The molecule found at Mayo is a minor constituent of black cohosh that modulates gamma secretase,” said Jeff Ives, CEO of Satori, concerning the findings. “It’s a unique chemical series.”

As good as this news is, however, it is important to note that Satori does not necessarily plan to utilize black cohosh extract in its natural form for treatment — the company will likely break it apart, patent it, and sell it as an FDA-approved drug in the future. And as we all know, whenever a natural substance is artificially synthesized and separated from its other natural cofactors, negative side effects emerge.

On the other hand, it would appear as though taking black cohosh extract as it is currently available might be an effective way to prevent or even mitigate Alzheimer’s symptoms without the need for an actual drug.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Study: EPA-approved GMO Insecticide Responsible for Killing Off Bees, Contaminating Entire Food Chain

Posted on April 20, 2012 by andreas m

By: Jonathan Benson
Source: NaturalNews.com

Early last year, leaked documents obtained by a Colorado beekeeper exposed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency‘s (EPA) illegitimate approval of clothianidin, a highly-toxic pesticide manufactured by Bayer CropScience that the regulatory agency knew was capable of killing off bees. Now, a new study out of Purdue University in Indiana has not only confirmed, once again, that clothianidin is killing off bees, but also that clothianidin’s toxicity is systemic throughout the entire food chain, which could one day lead to the catastrophic destruction of the food supply.

The study, which was published in the online journal PLoS ONE, investigated the various methods and routes by which a class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids, which includes clothianidin, are harming honey bees. They discovered that both clothianidin and thiamethoxam, another component of neonicotinoid insecticides, persist in “extremely high levels” in planter exhaust material produced during the planting of crops treated with these insecticides, which runs contrary to industry claims that the chemicals biodegrade and are not a threat.

The research team also found neonicotinoid compounds in soil, including in fields where the chemicals were not even sprayed, as well as on various plants and flowers visited by bees. Based on their analysis, the researchers involved with the study determined that bees actively transfer contaminated pollen from primarily neonicotinoid-treated corn crops, and bring it back to their hives. The bees also transfer neonicotinoid compounds to other plants and crops not treated with the chemicals, which shows just how persistent these chemicals truly are in the environment.

You can read the entire report for yourself at the following link:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250423/?tool=pubmed

“This research should nail the coffin lid shut on clothianidin,” said Laurel Hopwood, chairwoman of the Sierra Club‘sGenetic Engineering Action Team, who is petitioning the EPA to finally ban these chemicals after years of needless delay. “Despite numerous attempts by the beekeeping industry and conservation organizations to persuade the EPA to ban clothianidin, the EPA has failed to protect the food supply for the American people.”

Without bees, which are now dying off at an alarming rate due to exposure to clothianidin and various other insecticides and fungicides, one third or more of the food supply will be destroyed, including at least 100 varieties of fruits and vegetables that rely on bees for pollination. This is why Dr. Neil Carman, Ph.D., scientific advisor to Sierra Club, has put out a call for the EPA to immediately ban the use of clothianidin and the other neonicotinoid insecticides for the sake of protecting the food supply from irreversible destruction.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Ron Paul admits in speech to public that the FDA And Big Pharma ‘are in bed together’

Posted on April 20, 2012 by andreas m

By: NaturalNews
Source: NaturalNews.com

Ron Paul makes a groundbreaking admission to the public on tape – that the FDA and Big Pharma are indeed “in bed together,” both building up their monopolies and only interested in making more money. The Republican presidential candidate confirms that the corrupt corporations are running the show, that the FDA is doing more harm than good and many other eye-opening admittances.

Watch the video yourself at:
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=E422FE9A5D1E2C455393C681BB0E1D80

Ron Paul: It never works that way. You know, your safety and your drugs, for instance, it sounds like a reasonable thing. You want safety in your drugs. But the FDA and the drug companies are in bed together and they squeeze out competitions and build up their monopolies and they love government medicine because they make more money. The insurance companies and the drug companies, whether it’s Democrats or Republicans reforming the medical care system, these corporations run the show. You know, they support it, it’s because the government doesn’t take it over. It’s the corporations that end up taking over. So, it’s well intended but I think it always backfires on us and that the people we’re wanting to regulate end up writing their own regulations.

Reporter: So in that particular case would the reasonable alternative being no FDA?

Ron Paul: I think so because, I don’t think, I think they’ve done more harm than good because sometimes it might take them 25 years to allow a good drug to come onto the marketplace and the rules and regulations inhibits the options of the physician to use drugs for anything other than not approved by the FDA, which means it slows up research and the cost goes up and then when it’s approved by the FDA, guess what happens? If you’re on the inside track of that- I’m the FDA- today I approve this drug, tomorrow, their drug company’s value, their stock goes up fifty fold. Just because a bureaucrat made this decision. So, it’s a protection of the corporation is basically what it is. People weren’t dying from bad drugs before we had the FDA. I mean, it just didn’t happen. There’d be other agencies that would do this. There’d be no reason to assume that all of a sudden, the drug companies have it in their interest to give you a bad drug.

Reporter: Well, I’m not sure what fits in there and it’s hard to prove a negative, but are you assuming that there are no bad drugs

Ron Paul: There’s plenty of bad drugs, and the FDA’s permitted a lot of them to get on the market, too. I mean bad drugs on the market now. Did you ever see a PDR? They’re about that big and about half of them are useless. But if it’s FDA approved- and what does the FDA do when it comes to alternative or natural products? The FDA and the drug industry keeps them off the market. A natural drug product, alternative health care, freedom of choice, it is obstructed from those making those free choices. So it’s there to protect the drug industry. They very often do exactly the opposite. I believe in free choice on picking alternative care rather than having it licensed through the FDA and these drug approvals. It delays, it costs so many- this is one reason why drug costs are so high, because it goes through years and years and years of litigation and getting approval, and that’s a source of making drug costs much higher in cost.

Reporter: So how did we get to this mess? Let’s just stick with FDA or go with Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but how is it that this body of burdensome regulations was allowed to develop? Is it parts of the private sector finding ways to protect themselves or what?

Ron Paul: I don’t know, I haven’t done a detailed history of exactly this but my assumption would be that it’d be a lot of well noted people saying, well, we need these regulations to help the people and protect the people. But those individuals and the companies that are involved immediately leap to it and take over and find out how they can keep out their competition. What industry it is, whether it’s the housing industry, housing insurance, it’s always to squeeze the little guy out and protect the big industries. Competition serves the competitor who is trying to compete with big industry, and I don’t like to see government protecting big industries and big corporations.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

The Dramatic New Rule Change for Genetically Engineered Foods

Posted on April 10, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Under new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) rules, Monsanto and other biotech companies that create genetically modified (GM) crops will get speedier regulatory reviews of their genetically engineered food products.

The new rules will cut the time needed to approve biotech crops in half—from an average of three years, to about 13 months for new versions of already existing crop technologies, and about 16 months for brand new technologies.

The U.S. Congress is also helping out by increasing the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service 2012 budget for biotech regulation from $13 million to $18 million.

One way the USDA plans to speed up approvals is by asking for public comments as soon as a petition for the deregulation of a biotech crop is filed, rather than waiting until the end of the review.

However, according to Bloomberg:

“The Center for Food Safety, a Washington-based non-profit group that has successfully challenged approvals of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar-beet and alfalfa crops, said the rule change is aimed at preventing opponents of modified crops from voicing criticism of the agency’s methods.

“They are trying to work the system so they can dismiss public comments more quickly and easily in order to speed things up,” Bill Freese, a policy analyst at the group, said in a telephone interview.

”It’s a rubber-stamp system. A real regulatory system will occasionally reject something.”"

Monsanto Will Also Conduct Its Own Environmental Impact Studies…

As if that’s not enough, let’s not forget that the USDA also created a two-year long pilot program last year, which allows biotech companies like Monsanto to conduct their own environmental assessments.

This decision opens the door for massive conflicts of interest, because if history has shown us anything, it’s that industries CANNOT police themselves. The end result is always the same—corporate vested interests win every time. This is exactly why we need independent agencies to do safety reviews.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government and our regulatory agencies are FILLED with former Monsanto employees, which is likely why all federal actions relating to genetically engineered foods are so illogical and downright foolhardy.

Take Michael Taylor for example. He was the vice president of public policy and a chief lobbyist at Monsanto, and he’s now the deputy commissioner for foods at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)! According to Jeffrey Smith, founder of the Institute for Responsible Technology, Taylor oversaw the creation of GMO policy, which may help explain why genetically engineered foods do not have to be labeled in the U.S.

According to Jeffrey Smith:

“If GMOs are indeed responsible for massive sickness and death, then the individual who oversaw the FDA policy that facilitated their introduction holds a uniquely infamous role in human history. That person is Michael Taylor. He had been Monsanto’s attorney before becoming policy chief at the FDA. Soon after, he became Monsanto’s vice president and chief lobbyist.”

Once you realize just how many of Monsanto’s employees have shifted into positions of power within the federal government, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to understand why they appear to so callously ignore public safety and turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to any and all evidence of harm linked to Monsanto’s products.

Monsanto Accused in Suit Tied to Agent Orange

Granting speedier approvals and allowing biotech companies to do their own safety reviews becomes even more ludicrous when you consider the poor safety record of companies such as Monsanto. Most recently, in the town of Nitro, West Virginia, tens of thousands of people filed a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto, accusing the company of spreading toxic substances, primarily carcinogenic dioxins, all over the city for two decades. The Monsanto chemical plant in Nitro produced the herbicide 2,4,5-T; a component of Agent Orange, the extremely toxic herbicide used to defoliate jungles during the Vietnam War. Agent Orange is known to cause cancer, birth defects in children of exposed victims, leukemia, liver disease, heart disease, Parkinson’s Disease, diabetes and chloracne.

The suit claims poisonous residues from the chemical have polluted the area, putting residents’ health and the environment at serious risk. According to the Republic Broadcasting Network:

“Monsanto is alleged to have burned dioxin waste in open pits, spewing dioxin and its ash into the air and polluting land … The EPA recommended that Monsanto be criminally investigated for fraud in covering-up dioxin contamination in its products, including 2,4,5-T herbicide. Monsanto failed to report contamination, substituted false information to show no contamination or sent in ‘doctored’ samples of their products devoid of dioxin to government regulators.”

Monsanto has tentatively agreed to a $93 million settlement with some of the residents. The settlement would include $21 million for medical testing, $63 million for additional screening, and $9 million for the cleanup of 4,500 homes.

Why We MUST Insist on Mandatory Labeling of GM Foods

Mandatory labeling may be the only way to stop the proliferation of GM foods in the U.S. It is primarily due to lack of labeling that many Americans are still unfamiliar with what GM foods are, and that they’re eating them on a daily basis. We have a plan to change that, and I urge you to participate and to continue learning more about GM foods and helping your friends and family do the same. To start, please print out and use the Non-GMO Shopping Guide, created by the Institute for Responsible Technology. Share it with your friends and family, and post it to your social networks. You can also download a free iPhone application, available in the iTunes store.

You can find it by searching for ShopNoGMO in the applications.

Your BEST strategy, however, is to simply buy USDA 100% Organic products whenever possible, (as these do not permit GM ingredients) or buy whole fresh produce and meat from local farmers.

The majority of the GMO’s you’re exposed to are via processed foods, so by cooking from scratch with whole foods, you can be sure you’re not inadvertently consuming something laced with GM ingredients. When you do purchase processed food, avoid products containing anything related to corn or soy that are not 100 percent organic, as any foods containing these two non-organic ingredients are virtually guaranteed to contain genetically engineered ingredients, as well as toxic herbicide residues. To learn more about GM foods, I highly recommend the following films and lectures:

Hidden Dangers in Kid’s Meals
Your Milk on Drugs – Just Say No!
Everything You Have to Know About Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

FDA Admits in Court Case that Vaccines still Contain Mercury

Posted on April 10, 2012 by andreas m

By: Ethan A. Huff
Source: NaturalNews.com

It is a common myth today that the vaccines administered to children no longer contain the toxic additive thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative linked to causing permanent neurological damage. But a recent federal case involving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has revealed that, contrary to this widely-held belief, thimerosal is actually still present in many batch vaccines, including in the annual influenza vaccine that is now administered to children as young as six months old.

Filed by a citizen-backed coalition advocating vaccine safety, the lawsuit against the FDA alleged that the agency’s continued endorsement and approval of thimerosal as a vaccine additive is a serious public health threat, especially since safer alternatives already exist and are widely used voluntarily by many vaccine manufacturers. But Judge Brett Kavanaugh, siding with antiquated pseudoscience, decided that thimerosal is not a health threat, and that those who wish to avoid it can simply choose thimerosal-free alternatives.

Ignoring the evidence of thimerosal’s dangers brought before him on behalf of the millions of children across the country who continue to be injected with this mercury-based additive, Judge Kavanaugh declared that the plaintiffs, which include groups like the Coalition for Mercury-Free Drugs(CMFD), did not have proper standing to file the lawsuit. And in the process, both he and the FDA inadvertently admitted that thimerosal is still present in many childhood vaccines, which counters popular claims to the contrary.

FDA admits on its website that thimerosal is still in vaccines

The fact that Judge Kavanaugh refused to hear the case is tragic in and of itself, as thimerosal, which is composed of 50 percent mercury, has been proven to cause serious health damage. But what may be even worse is the fact that many people falsely believe that thimerosal is not even included in vaccines anymore, which is leading them to blindly allow them to be administered to their children. And the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the FDA have continued to provide dubious and misleading information on the subject, which the mainstream media has been complicit in spreading over the years.

But the FDA explains, in no uncertain terms, directly on its website that thimerosal is still added to certain vaccines. For this reason alone, it is crucial that parents who choose to vaccinate their children ask for an ingredients list for each and every vaccine before allowing them to be administered to their children.

“While the use of mercury-containing preservatives has declined in recent years with the development of new products formulated with alternative or no preservatives, thimerosal has been used in some immune globulin preparations, anti-venins, skin test antigens, and ophthalmic and nasal products, in addition to certain vaccines,” writes the FDA on its Thimerosal in Vaccines page (http://www.fda.gov).

Don’t believe the lie: Thimerosal is eventually converted by the body into highly-toxic inorganic mercury

Another myth often spread by thimerosal advocates claims that the ethylmercury compounds that compose roughly 50 percent of the preservative are not actually harmful because they are different from the type found in a can of tuna. But a comprehensive review conducted by Dr. Paul G. King has proven otherwise, showing that ethylmercury is first metabolized by the body into toxic methylmercury, which is then metabolized into inorganic mercury (http://www.infowars.com).

Both methylmercury and inorganic mercury are listed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as toxic substances responsible for causing neurological problems, brain disorders, nervous system illnesses, gastrointestinal problems, kidney failure, respiratory illness, and death (http://www.epa.gov/hg/effects.htm).

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Health Basics: The 11 most Toxic Vaccine Ingredients and Their Side Effects

Posted on April 10, 2012 by andreas m

By: S. D. Wells
Source: NaturalNews.com

It’s been only 70 years since World War II, and the mad scientists from companies like I.G. Farben, BASF, Hoechst, Dow and Bayer, who created the gas chambers and tested dangerous vaccines on innocent Jews, didn’t just go away. In fact, they went to work for U.S. corporations and pharmaceutical companies that run the vaccine industry today. At least a dozen of these cold blooded killers were hired fresh out of prison, just 4 to 7 years after the Nuremberg trials found them guilty of mass murder and enslavement. (http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/trials3.html)

In fact, at the close of WWII, the IG Farben building in Frankfort was protected from allied bombings by the highest levels of military command. Why? IG Farben was the FDA/CDC type of “pharmaceutical arm” of Hitler’s 4th Reich, and the Rockefellers had a financial interest in maintaining and controlling this pharmaceutical empire, which would soon be catapulted on U.S. soil. Research reveals that Hitler also invested heavily in Merck and other pharmaceutical companies.

Nazi convicted mass murderers became executives for major U.S. chemical and pharmaceutical companies

Fritz ter Meer, found guilty of slavery and mass murder at Auschwitz, served only seven years in prison and became Chairman of the Board at Bayer in 1956. Still trust U.S. vaccines?

Carl Krauch, Executive Member of IG Farben and Head of Military Economics for Hitler, found guilty of slavery and mass murder, served just 6 years in prison, then became Chairman of the Board for BASF in 1952. Still want to get those flu shots? How about that HPV shot for your daughter or son?

This is the same vaccine industry today which protected and employed Nazi war criminals. The very industry that produced the Nazi gas chambers was purchased by Bayer. So, exactly whom are you trusting with your children’s health and welfare?

Currently, the U.S. Government and the CDC rely solely on the manufacturers of vaccines to report problems, injuries and deaths. This atrocity is like letting murderers be their own judges in court! Where are the checks and balances this country was founded upon? Vaccines have economic and political agendas now, and the FDA does absolutely no testing of their own before making decisions to release vaccines to the masses.

Want more research before you or your child get injected with a new concocted disease for which there is no cure? Listen to stunning admissions by vaccine industry experts, including Dr. Maurice Hilleman (formerly w/Merck), who admitted to the deadly nature of the most trusted vaccines.

Today’s vaccines not only contain live versions of the diseases you DO NOT WANT, but also contain GMOs, hormones from infected cows, pigs, chickens and monkeys, untested virus combinations (like H1N1), aluminum, mercury, emulsifiers, and crossbred bacteria from animals, mosquitoes, and diseased humans:

Measles Live Virus Vaccine: (Attenuvax) Made by Merck. Two injections are given; one at 1 year and another at 4 years old. Contains gelatin, sorbitol, sodium chloride, bovine cow serum, egg protein and human albumin.

Measles and Mumps Live Virus Vaccine: (M-M-Rvax) Made by Merck. Injected into one year old babies. Contains gelatin, sorbitol, sodium chloride, bovine cow serum, and human albumin.

Diptheria, Tetanus and Polio Vaccine: Five injections given between 2 and 6 years of age, plus boosters “recommended” every 10 years. Contains formaldehyde, phenoxyethanol and aluminum phosphate.

DTaP, IPV, HBV and Hib*: (Diphtheria, tetanus, polio, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenza type B) Given to infants 2 to 12 months with boosters less than a year later. Contains aluminum hydroxide, formaldehyde, and bovine cow serum.

Gardasil HPV: Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Made by Merck. “Recommended” 3 intramuscular injections; given at birth, 2 and 6 months of age. Re-administered to children as young as 9 years of age for a rare sexually transmitted disease. Contains polysorbate 80, sodium chloride, aluminum, and a “denatured” (fragmented and weakened) form of the virus.

Toxic vaccine ingredients and their adverse effects:

•Bovine cow serum: Extracted from cow skin. When injected causes connective tissue disorders, arthritis and lupus; also shortness of breath, low blood pressure, chest pain and skin reactions.

•Sorbitol: Synthetic sweetener which metabolizes very slowly and aggravates IBS and gastrointestinal issues.

•Gelatin: Derived from the collagen inside animals’ skin and bones. Injecting gelatin poses the risk of infection from synthetic growth hormones and BSE infectivity (mad cow disease).

•Sodium chloride: Raises blood pressure and inhibits muscle contraction and growth.

•Egg protein: Vaccines are prepared in eggs (certainly not organic). May contain growth hormones, antibiotics, and salmonella bacteria.

•Thimerosal: A neurotoxic mercury which causes autism: There are 25 mcg in one average flu vaccine, and the EPA safety limit is 5 micrograms, so children who are vaccinated simultaneously with multiple vaccines receive over 10 times the safety limit of mercury in one day.

•Human albumin: The protein portion of blood from pooled human venous plasma; when injected causes fever, chills, hives, rash, headache, nausea, breathing difficulty, and rapid heart rate. Injecting “pooled blood” can result in a loss of body cell mass and cause immunodeficiency virus infection, or contain SV40, AIDS, cancer or Hepatitis B from drug addicts.

•Formaldehyde: Highly carcinogenic fluid used to embalm corpses. Ranked one of the most hazardous compounds to human health; can cause liver damage, gastrointestinal issues, reproductive deformation, respiratory distress and cancer. Plus, formaldehyde has been known to fail to deactivate the virus the vaccine is intended to cure, thus enabling a live virus to enter your blood and infect your system.

•Phenoxyethanol: A glycol ether/chemical; highly toxic to the nervous system, kidneys, and liver. The FDA warns “can cause shut down of the central nervous system (CNS), vomiting and contact dermatitis” in cosmetics; imagine when injected into your blood.

•Aluminum phosphate: Greatly increases toxicity of mercury, so caution about minimum mercury tolerance is therefore severely underestimated. CDC scientists and all doctors are well aware of this.

•MSG (monosodium glutamate): When injected becomes a neurotoxin, causing CNS disorders and brain damage in children.

If you especially enjoy being lied to, visit vaccinateyourbaby.org, where they tell you formaldehyde is safe because it is “present in the environment and is a byproduct of metabolism, so it is already present in the human body.” They also inform you that aluminum is good for you, because “[a]luminum is also commonly found in food, water, infant formula and even breast milk.” Hey, if it’s in the environment, it must be safe to inject into your veins (so why not use snake venom, bleach, and plutonium?).

Want the ultimate alternative to vaccines that prevents disease? Buy organic vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, amino acids, and enzymes! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH6N7tHGsi8)

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Investigation of Dangerous Medical Device Implants Reveals most have Never Been Tested for Safety

Posted on April 9, 2012 by andreas m

By: Jonathan Benson
Source: NaturalNews.com

Did you know that the vast majority of medical devices on the market today have received approval from the U.S.Food and Drug Administration (FDA) without ever having been properly safety tested? A thorough investigation by Consumer Reports has revealed that the medical device approval process is a pay-for-play sham that is putting millions of people at risk of serious injury or death.

Confirming two earlier studies that were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the American Journal of Therapeutics (AJT) back in 2010, the Consumer Reports findings expose the FDA’s complete lack of oversight of the medical device industry. Rather than require that medical device manufacturers prove the safety of medical devices prior to their approval, the FDA instead extorts user fees in exchange for the agency’s seal of approval.

“For most implants and other high-risk devices brought to market, manufacturers do nothing more than file some paperwork and pay the Food and Drug Administration a user fee of roughly $4,000 to start selling a product that can rack up many millions of dollars in revenue,” says Consumer Reports. “Often, the only safety ‘testing’ that occurs is in the bodies of unsuspecting patients.”

In 1998, the FDA ruled that medical device distributors were no longer required to report adverse events, including death, to the agency, which means there is no way to know just how many people are being injured or killed by medical devices (http://www.fda.gov). And if that is not bad enough, the FDA is now trying to work with Congress to enact new laws that would make it even easier for medical device manufacturers to get their products to market without having to first prove their safety.

“Because so many medical devices are not being held to a higher safety standard, people are dying who wouldn’t otherwise die and who don’t have to die,” Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women & Families, is quoted as saying by USA Today. “People are being harmed who don’t have to be harmed” (http://yourlife.usatoday.com).

When also considering the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled back in 2008 that medical device manufacturers could not be sued for injury or death caused by their FDA-approved products, it becomes disturbingly obvious that using medical devices or getting them implanted into your body is like playing Russian Roulette with your health.

Be sure to read the entire Consumer Reports piece on medical devices here:
http://www.consumerreports.org

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Vaccine Failure Admitted: Whooping Cough Outbreaks Higher among Children already Vaccinated

Posted on April 9, 2012 by andreas m

By: Mike Adams
Source: NaturalNews.com

For several years, NaturalNews has maintained that many vaccines actually cause the very infectious diseases they claim to prevent. Measles vaccines, for example, actually cause measles. And flu shot vaccines actually increase susceptibility to the flu.

Now we have an open admission of precisely this point.

New research reported by Reuters reveals that whooping cough outbreaks are HIGHER among vaccinated children compared with unvaccinated children. This is based on a study led by Dr. David Witt, an infectious disease specialist at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael, California.

As Reuters reports:
(http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/03/us-whoopingcough-idUSBRE832…)

In early 2010, a spike in cases appeared at Kaiser Permanente in San Rafael, and it was soon determined to be an outbreak of whooping cough — the largest seen in California in more than 50 years. Witt had expected to see the illnesses center around unvaccinated kids, knowing they are more vulnerable to the disease. “We started dissecting the data. What was very surprising was the majority of cases were in fully vaccinated children. That’s what started catching our attention.”

This same article also admits that these vaccines have never been tested for long-term effectiveness:

“GSK has never studied the duration of the vaccine’s protection after the shot given to four- to six-year-olds, the spokesperson said. Dr. Joel Ward at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute said it’s still important for parents to get their kids immunized, even though it doesn’t provide lasting protection from whooping cough.”

Huh? So let me get this straight:

• Whooping cough infections are MORE common among children already vaccinated against whooping cough than unvaccinated children.

• The whooping cough vaccines have NEVER been tested for long-term efficacy.

• Doctors openly admit the vaccine “doesn’t provide lasting protection” against the disease.

• But doctors and government authorities mindlessly push the vaccine anyway?!

That’s essentially like saying, “We know these vaccines don’t really work, but everybody should get vaccinated anyway.”

Whooping cough outbreak? Demand everybody be vaccinated!

Despite the fact that the whooping cough vaccines actually cause anincreasein the risk of being infected with whooping cough, every time a whooping cough outbreak occurs, there’s a mad rush of everybody screaming, “Vaccinate! Vaccinate! Vaccinate!”

For example, this mindless article in The Seattle Times typifies the kind of brain-dead journalism observed across the mainstream media: “Whooping cough spreading fast in state; vaccinations urged.”
(http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017902210_whoopingco…)

This mindless, irrational cry for vaccinations utterly contradicts scientific truth, but it get published over and over again with zero skepticism and no intelligent questioning by anyone in the (whored-out) mainstream media.

Whooping cough vaccines, it turns out, do nothing to reduce the rate of whooping cough infections. But they do accomplish something else that’s even more important for Big Pharma. Care to guess what that is?

You guessed it: Whooping cough vaccines keep whooping cough in circulation! The vaccines cause the very disease they claim to treat, so the more kids get vaccinated, the more outbreaks occur! This then results in more people calling for more vaccines, which causes even more whooping cough outbreaks to occur, and this sick profiteering cycle of vaccine quackery repeats itself over and over until children are pumped full of useless vaccines while the drug companies bank on record profits and all the parents are living in fear.

The drug companies figured it out a long time ago, see? The best way to SELL a vaccine that claims to treat a disease is to make sure the vaccine contains the disease! Thus, the vaccination itself becomes the pathway to re-infection and repeat business!

Want to make money in the cancer industry? Put cancer viruses into the vaccines! Oops, Merck already did that, didn’t they? Here’s an admission by a Merck scientist of exactly this point:

How the media is trying to spin these shocking revelations about the failure of vaccines

The media is trying to spin this revelation, of course, claiming that the whooping cough vaccine merely “wears out” or “fades over time.” While that alone is an admission of total vaccine failure, it’s actually much worse: The findings show that vaccines make children MORE vulnerable to infection than the unvaccinated children.

Virtually nowhere in the lamestream media will you see any real admission that whooping cough vaccines are based entirely on scientific fraud because they simply don’t work. That simple truth is just not allowed to be printed anywhere except places like NaturalNews, where we haven’t sold out to Big Pharma’s corporate interests. The fact that even a hint of this has appeared in Reuters is astonishing, and I suspect they will pull their story as quickly as possible before it starts getting too much attention.

If vaccines “fade out” then they don’t work!

The bedrock of vaccination theory is that when your body is exposed to a weakened virus, it will build up its supply of antibodies that will forever recognize that virus and defend your body against it. Sound familiar? That’s the fairy tale told to every parent and child by a vaccine-wielding brainwashed doctor.

The key element of the story is that your body is supposed to keep those antibodies forever, right? Just like if you get the chicken pox one time, you won’t ever get it again because your body is immune to the chicken pox, right?

But wait: Now they’re saying vaccines fade out over time. Somehow your body “forgets” the antibodies, they now admit, so you need a booster shot, what else? (Repeat sales, anyone?)

So then, vaccines don’t really invoke lifetime antibodies at all, do they? And if that’s the case, then the entire vaccine mythology crumbles. No lifetime antibodies means the vaccines aren’t really working like real infections (such as the chicken pox). Something doesn’t add up here, especially when you figure that vaccines make children MORE susceptible to future infections.

Healthy kids are not vaccinated kids

Want to find the healthiest children in America? Find families who follow these rules:
#1) They live on small farms and their children play in the dirt (they have contact with nature).
#2) Their children are all home schooled.
#3) None of their children are vaccinated.
#4) They drink raw milk and eat farm fresh foods.

As you will readily find, these are the healthiest, smartest kids in America! They don’t have problems with autism, allergies, cancer or ADHD. They are bright, healthy, and easily capable of surviving an infection of chicken pox.

The least healthy children in America are vaccinated children who eat public school food (GMOs) and never spend time in nature. These are the asthmatics, the diabetics, the ADHD cases, the suicidal psych drug takers. They’re vaccine damaged and nutritionally depleted, and they catch every cold every winter, it seems, you know what I mean?

Media lies about vaccine effectiveness (written by brain-dead journalists)

The media, you see, is so steeped in lies about vaccines that they are now utterly unable to recognize the truth. In the Seattle Times article mentioned above, for example, you’ll find this mysterious sentence in the story: “Pertussis vaccines are about 85 percent effective overall…”

And yet I’ll bet you twenty bucks there’s not a single journalist on the entire Seattle Times staff who even understands what that number means and where it came from. They probably think it means that for every 100 people vaccinated with the whooping cough vaccine, 85 percent of them will be completely protected against the disease even if they are exposed to it. (Insert laughter here…)

But it’s nothing like that at all. This number is simply made up. It is invented from fabricated relative statistics cherry-picked out of distorted clinical trials funded by drug companies. It’s sort of like the CDC’s completely fabricated number of “35,000 people die each year from the flu” — a bald-faced conjuration of pure fiction that’s repeated as if it were fact across every paper in the country. And even if you believe the 85 percent number, it was probably derived from something more like this: For every 1,000 children in America, only 1 catches the whooping cough, but if those 1,000 children are vaccinated (says the corporate-funded study), then only 0.15 children out of 1,000 will catch the whooping cough.

Thus, in other words, using these numbers you’d have to vaccinate 1,000 children in order to prevent less than one child from getting the whooping cough — and meanwhile, out of those 1,000 children perhaps 10 – 20 of them suffer vaccine damage in other ways that are far serious, including autism.

Lamestream media journalists who work for these rag papers just don’t have any real ability to exercise critical thinking anymore. They don’t know how to read scientific studies. They don’t understand numbers. And you know why? Because they’ve been over-vaccinated! And vaccines cause neurological damage, which is why the most brain-dead people you’ll find in the country are the ones who line up every year to receive annual flu shots.

When it comes to vaccines, the only thing mainstream newspapers know how to do is rephrase corporate press releases and spout vaccine propaganda that ends up harming, maiming and often killing more innocent children.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Pink Slime Factories Shuttered after Massive Public Backlash

Posted on April 5, 2012 by andreas m

By: Jonathan Benson
Source: NaturalNews.com

For several decades now, the conventional beef industry has secretly been lacing ground beef products with an industrial, ammonia-laced byproduct known as “pink slime,” a disturbing fact that recently came to the forefront of national attention after Food Network chef Jamie Oliver first drew attention to its existence. And consumer backlash has been so strong ever since that a number of supermarket chains, restaurants, and even schools have decided to stop supplying it, which has caused its primary producer, Beef Products Inc. (BPI), to close three of its four manufacturing plants.

USA Today and others are reporting that Dakota Dunes, South Dakota-based BPI is temporarily closing its Waterloo, Iowa; Garden City, Kansas; and Amarillo, Texas plants for an indefinite period of time as a result of widespread consumer rejection of pink slime products. Workers at these plants will continue to receive pay and benefits for the next 60 days, but it is unclear what will happen after these next two months expire, should the plants continue to remain closed.

Meanwhile, BPI is launching an aggressive public relations campaign to fight back against its critics, which includes claiming that pink slime is “100 percent beef,” and that it is a highly-nutritious and safe product. And many in the media are jumping onboard this propaganda bandwagon by spinning the situation back against consumers, who are technically victims that have been been duped all these years into buying ground beef products that were secretly adulterated with pink slime.

In case you missed the original story, pink slime, which is officially known as “lean finely textured beef,” is basically a low-cost ground beef filler composed of beef scraps that are mashed, processed with a chemical ammonia solution, and turned into an unappetizing pink paste, the pictures of which have circulated the internet in recent months.

This pink slime has been added to roughly 70 percent of all ground beef products since the 1990s, but few were aware of it. Pink slime is obviously not labeled on ground beef packages, and the only way consumers can know for sure that they are not consuming it is to buy local or organic ground beef, or to watch the beef being ground fresh before buying it.

BPI, mainstream media launch attack on consumers for rejecting pink slime

It is abundantly clear that the vast majority of American consumers are not interested in feeding their children a highly-processed additive that has been treated with toxic ammonia, which is why the product is being pulled from grocery store shelves, restaurant menus, and schools all across the country. But BPI is not going down without a fight, as it is launching a campaign that basically insults the intelligence of Americans by claiming that pink slime is no different from real beef.

But according to former U.S.Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist Gerald Zirnstein, pink slime is not actually meat, nor is it as nutritious as meat, a sentiment to which his former colleague Carl Custer also agrees. And Kit Foshee, a former executive at BPI, appears to hold the same view, having told ABC News that pink slime is processed from fat and cuts that would otherwise not ever be used as food.

“Microbiologically safe and nutritionally complete are two different issues,” said Custer to ABC News, referring to BPI’s claim that pink slime contains little fat and is pathogen-free. “It may be pink [but], nutritionally, it is not equivalent to whole-muscle tissue” (http://abcnews.go.com).

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Take Action to Support ‘Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act’

Posted on April 5, 2012 by andreas m

By: Jonathan Benson
Source: NaturalNews.com

Every year for at least the last decade, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh.) has stood up for health freedom by introducing the Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act before the U.S. Congress, only to witness it later die in committee. And once again, Rep. Kucinich has introduced the bill in the current congressional session, this time as H.R. 3553, with 21 co-sponsors thus far — and your help is needed to finally get this legislation acknowledged and passed into law.

More Americans than ever are waking up to the presence of genetically-modified organisms (GMO) in the foods they eat, which means momentum is strong to pass legislation at the national level requiring their proper labeling. After all, more than 90 percent of individuals polled in numerous surveys have indicated that labeling GMOs is essential in a free society.

But as it stands, the federal government is stonewalling all efforts, both public and private, to implement food transparency. It also continues to ignore all independent science on the matter, which shows conclusively that GMOs are not the same as natural foods, and that they are responsible for causing a host of illnesses in humans, and colossal environmental damage.

“Gen-M, ‘Generation Monsanto,’ the first generation of humans force-fed genetically modified foods, hasn’t reached reproductive age yet (they were born in the late 1990s),” says a new Organic Consumers Association (OCA) Action Alert. “But, if a critical mass of animal feeding studies are any indication, the millennial generation, reared on Food Inc.’s unlabeled ‘Frankenfoods’ can look forward to a long-term epidemic of cancer, food allergies, sterility, learning disabilities, and birth defects.”

In California, Washington, and about a dozen other states there are currently efforts underway to pass GMO labeling laws statewide, which is a great start. But the federal government, controlled largely by pharmaceutical and biotechnology interests, refuses to require mandatory labeling, let alone require proper safety testing for GMOs before approving them.

But the issue is not going away anytime soon, and eventually a critical mass of awareness about GMOs and the immense damage they are causing to humans and the environment will spur a political and agricultural revolution. So our elected officials had better listen up now and take action before the people decide to take action for them.

Be sure to ask your representatives to cosponsor H.R. 3553:
http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/alert/?alertid=58123521

You can view H.R. 3553 at:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3553/show

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Hospital Workers call Police to Seize Newborn Baby, Throw Momma Out of the Building, Assault Child with Dangerous Vaccines

Posted on April 5, 2012 by andreas m

By: Mike Adams
Source: NaturalNews.com

Another shocking case of tyrannical, overzealous social workers and hospital staff has unfolded in Pennsylvania, where a mom who just gave birth in an ambulance to a healthy baby girl was threatened by a government social worker and accused of not allowing her child to receive “medical treatment.” (A claim which is factually false.) In reality, the new mom, exhausting from giving birth in an ambulance, was merely asking questions and trying to determine how her newborn daughter was being treated by hospital staff.

A social worker named Angelica Lopez-Heagy continued to threaten the mom, who persisted in asking polite questions to try to determine what she was being accused of. In response, the social worker demanded, “Since you’re not going to cooperate, I’ll just go and call the police and we can take custody of the baby.”

The social worker then demanded that the mom and dad sign a “safety plan” that would contractually bind them to whatever medical procedures the hospital tries to push on all newborns, including multiple vaccines. The term “safety plan” is really just a linguistic mind trick for the agenda of damaging newborns with vaccines so that they become repeat customers of the medical industry. Vaccines routinely cause kidney damage, neurological damage and gastrointestinal damage, all of which produce huge long-term profits for hospitals, doctors and drug companies.

When the mom said she wanted her attorney to look over the document before she signed it, the nanny state social worker invoked her previous threat and called the police. The police then took custody (kidnapped) the daughter while hospital workers claimed the newborn was suffering from “illness or injury.” (Completely fabricated to justify their kidnapping.) Then they forcibly vaccinated the baby without her mother’s consent! This was all “approved” by the social worker, Lopez-Heagy.

Note that even though the hospital stole her baby away, if the baby ends up being vaccine damaged, the entire burden of long-term health care costs for that damage will fall squarely on the mother! In fact, the mom might even be accused of “child abuse” if the vaccine damage side effects in any way resemble physical abuse (which often happens, as vaccines can cause bruising, swelling and brain damage).

Hospital workers then proceeded to kidnap her daughter and kick the mom out of the hospital, taking “possession” of the newborn child and forcing the mom and husband to sleep in the Wal-Mart parking lot, only allowing her to re-enter the hospital every three hours to breastfeed (and I’m shocked they even allow breastfeeding. Isn’t that illegal RAW milk?).

This is how parents are treated in America today: Like criminal dogs whose only function is to give birth to a new “litter” of victims for the state.

Read the full account of all the details of this incident at:
http://hslda.org/hs/state/pa/201203270.asp

Defended by the Home School Legal Defense Fund

The rights of parents are under constant assault across America these days, where insanity has now overruled rationality and government tyrants are running rampant over common sense.

The Home School Legal Defense Fund is defending this case. This organization is donation-supported, so please consider donating at:
http://hslda.org/hs/state/pa/201203270.asp

Most reasonable people would agree that parents have the right to ask basic questions about the medical care their children are receiving, but increasingly across U.S. hospitals, asking questions is perceived as a challenge to medical authority, and these power-hungry, ego-tripping social workers — who would feel right at home working for the TSA and reaching down your pants to intimidate you — then feel the need to make others suffer as an expression of their own power.

Increasingly, they call C.P.S. or the local police. They have children kidnapped and taken away. They force potentially deadly vaccines on children. And they even have police bring guns to hospitals to force children and teens to be injected with deadly chemotherapy agents against the wishes of their parents!

This is the new medical police state in America. Parents are routinely criminalized for simply acting like responsible parents, even while the state now routinely kidnaps infants and children and then subjects them to dangerous, even deadly medical procedures.

We’ve seen it time and time again. Here are just a few of the cases NaturalNews has reported on over the last few years:

Other cases of outrageous government abuse of parental rights

• Ken & Erin Stieler
http://www.naturalnews.com/035290_pediatricians_chemotherapy_medical_…

• Tina Marie Carlsen
http://www.naturalnews.com/019512.html

• Katie Wernecke
http://www.naturalnews.com/016387.html

• Maryanne Godboldo
http://www.naturalnews.com/032090_Maryanne_Godboldo_health_freedom.ht…

• Abraham Cherrix
http://www.naturalnews.com/019617.html

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Tell Your Doctor: If You Don’t Show Me This, You’re Breaking the Law

Posted on March 27, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

All across the United States, people are fighting for their right not to be injected with vaccines against their will.

Currently, the Colorado Board of Health has been holding hearings on whether or not to adopt a new rule that would mandate healthcare workers get an annual flu vaccine — with NO religious or personal exemption, while a federal vaccine advisory committee has recently voted to encourage hospitals and medical facilities to require health care workers get an annual flu shot as a condition of employment.

Other states are faring a bit better.

In New Jersey, Governor Christie recently pocket vetoed a bill that would mandate flu vaccines for the state’s health care workers.

(When a bill is “pocket vetoed” it is not returned to the legislature for a possible vote to override the veto.)

And in West Virginia, where residents can currently only obtain a medical exemption for vaccination, a new bill has been introduced that could expand exemptions to religious and conscientious reasons.

Parents in Kansas are also fighting for more vaccine exemption rights, along with those in Florida and Mississippi.

This is good news.

But in the state of Vermont, there are bills in the House and Senate to strip the right to exercise a philosophical exemption to vaccination from state public health laws.

Parents are opposing the legislation that is being supported by state public health officials and medical trade associations.

In this video commentary, Barbara Loe Fisher examines the threat to philosophical exemptions to vaccination by interviewing the parents of seven-year old Kaylynne. Kaylynne was a healthy seven year old living in Vermont who died within 92 hours of a routine flu shot in December 2011.

Kaylynne’s parents are pleading with the Vermont legislature to oppose proposed bills that would strip philosophical exemptions from state vaccine laws. But the Vermont Health Commissioner and the drug industry-backed American Association of Pediatrics are pressuring legislators to take away parental informed consent rights.

It is extremely important that Vermont residents who want to protect their right to obtain a philosophical exemption to vaccination for their children IMMEDIATELY contact their state representative and senator and ask them to vote “NO” to S. 199 and H. 527.

Legislators in other states may soon follow Vermont’s lead and try to restrict your right to make voluntary vaccine choices.

In Arizona, public health officials and medical trade groups are pushing bills to require doctors to sign off on religious and philosophical exemptions to vaccination, which is similar to a law that passed in Washington state last year..

At present, all but two states (West Virginia and Mississippi) allow religious exemption to vaccination.

In the video above, Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), discusses this important exemption, and why it’s so vital we defend our right to opt out of vaccinations for medical, religious, or conscientious belief reasons.

All Americans need to know their options for legally opting-out of vaccinations, and you also need to know why it’s so important to protect this legal option, whether you choose to use every federally recommended vaccine for yourself and your children or not.

Forced Vaccinations for Health Care Workers—A Real Threat to Health and Liberty

The right to make an informed, voluntary vaccination choice for yourself (or your child) should be an inalienable human right because it involves taking a risk with a pharmaceutical product that could cause harm or even death. There is no guarantee that taking a vaccine (or any other drug) will not cause a complication and lead to serious injury. Yet we’ve seen time and again how government tries to take away our human right to say ‘aye’ or ‘nay’ to potentially hazardous medical interventions like vaccination.

In response to the proposed federal recommendations for flu shot mandates for health care workers, the NVIC sent a public comment to the National Vaccine Program Office, US Dept. of Health and Human Services stating in part:

“The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) has historic standing in representing the vaccine injured and vaccine consumers concerned about vaccine safety and the critical need to protect the legal right to informed consent to vaccination in America. NVIC co-founders worked with Congress to insert vaccine safety and informed consent provisions in the historic National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.

… NVIC does not advocate for or against the use of vaccines but defends the human right to exercise informed consent to medical risk-taking, including the right for everyone to have access to full information about infectious diseases and vaccines and the freedom to make voluntary decisions about vaccination.

Vaccines are pharmaceutical products that carry a risk of injury or death, which can be greater for some than others.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a landmark report in 2011, Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality, and acknowledged increased susceptibility for individuals, who have unidentified genetic or other biological high risk factors for adverse responses to vaccination that can lead to permanent injury or death. In addition, out of the 27 adverse events reported to be associated with influenza vaccination, for which the IOM committee reviewed evidence in the medical literature to try to determine causation, the committee was unable to make a determination for 23 of the 27 adverse events because there was either an absence of studies or the studies were not methodologically sound enough to prove or disprove causation.

Therefore, a mandatory, one-size-fits all approach to vaccination punishes those at greater genetic and biological risk for suffering harm from vaccines.

Mandatory vaccination policies without exemptions also penalize those holding religious or conscientious belief objections to vaccination. It is unfair, irresponsible and unethical for employers to force health care workers to choose between their health, their deeply held spiritual or conscientious beliefs or their job. In the past two years, we have seen an increase in the number of harassment reports made by health professionals to NVIC. They are reporting they are being threatened and fired from their jobs for declining influenza vaccination even though:

(1) they have already suffered previous vaccine reactions that their employers refuse to recognize as serious enough to qualify for a medical exemption because those reactions to not adhere to strict CDC contraindication guidelines; or

(2) they have a personal or family history of severe allergies, vaccine reactions, autoimmune or neurological disorders that employers reject as qualifiers for a medical exemption because the CDC does not list those medical conditions as a reason to defer vaccination; or

(3) they have deeply held spiritual or conscientious beliefs that oppose vaccination but the employer refuses to grant an exemption because the health care worker does not belong to an organized religion or church with a tenet opposing vaccination, which is a violation of constitutional rights.

As a result, these health care professionals – some of them with decades of experience on the front lines caring for patients – find themselves on the street with no job or income during these hard economic times. This should not be allowed to happen in America.”

OSHA Opposes Mandatory Flu Shots

The largest national nurses union opposes mandatory flu vaccination as a condition for employment, eNews Park Forest recently reported. The National Nurses Union (NNU) is also calling for members of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee who are also pharmaceutical representatives from Pfizer and Novartis to recuse themselves from voting on this issue. These companies will make millions of dollars from the flu vaccine sales that a mandate would create. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has also issued a statement opposing mandatory flu shots for health care workers without exemptions, stating:

“While we are supportive of the Healthy People 2020 goal of a 90 percent vaccination rate, we have seen no evidence that demonstrates that such a high rate is in fact necessary. Furthermore, the current influenza vaccine is no magic bullet.

The current state of influenza vaccine technology requires annual reformulation and revaccination and the efficacy is quite variable. Every year there are numerous circulating strains of influenza that are not included in the vaccine. In years where the antigenic match is good, the vaccine only provides protection against the 3 strains in the formulation. In years when the antigenic match is poor, the vaccine may provide no protection at all.

The limits of current influenza vaccine technology are especially problematic in the context of a mandatory influenza vaccination program that results in job loss. Lastly, reliance on a mandatory influenza vaccination policy may provide healthcare workers, health care facility management and patients with an unwarranted sense of security and result in poor adherence to other infection control practices that prevent all types of infections, not just influenza. Influenza vaccination has always been just one part of a comprehensive multi-layered infection control program.”

Understand the Risks You Take Before You Take Them…

If you want a clear illustration of what could happen to you or someone you love, should the seasonal flu vaccine become mandated for all health care workers without exemptions, take a look at this video profile of a former professor of nursing, who was left completely disabled after a seasonal flu shot. This is a risk every single health care worker would have to take in order to keep their job, should this federal recommendation go through…

Is that really reasonable?

Is Your Doctor Breaking the Law?

The seasonal flu vaccine is not the only vaccine the U.S. government is trying to mandate. The HPV vaccine is another, and it has been associated with many reports of serious injuries and deaths, just like the flu vaccine. In September of last year, California passed bill AB499, permitting minor children as young as 12 years old to be vaccinated with sexually transmitted disease vaccines like Gardasil without parental knowledge or parental consent.

This could be a disaster in the making… Informed consent is especially important when it comes to vaccination because no one can predict whether your child will be one of the children who has a devastating vaccine reaction, such as brain inflammation, paralysis, immune dysregulation, permanent brain damage, or even death. Furthermore, doctors have been notoriously lax when it comes to providing patients with full disclosure of potential side effects. And even if they did inform minor children of vaccine risks, are pre-adolescent children really cognitively and emotionally mature enough to understand them and fully weigh the risks and benefits appropriately? And what about the minor child, who is given one or more vaccines without the knowledge of a parent, and suffers a serious vaccine reaction but the parent, who has been kept in the dark, doesn’t even know what is happening?

Lack of disclosure is now coming back to bite at least three Canadian doctors, who are being sued by the parents of a 14-year old girl, Annabelle, who died following her second Gardasil shot.

Linda Morin, Annabelle’s mother, claims she was not informed by anyone of the side-effects linked to Gardasil, and that the doctors were negligent in their treatment of her daughter, as she suffered apparent side effects of the vaccine right after her initial dose. The symptoms: vomiting, confusion, incoherence and inability to speak or walk, was simply dismissed as a migraine attack. Two weeks after her second inoculation, Annabelle was found dead in the bathtub…

All Americans should know that if your doctor does not provide the CDC Vaccine Information Statement (VIS) sheet, or directly discuss the potential symptoms of side effects of the vaccination you or your child is about to receive BEFORE vaccination takes place, it is a violation of federal law.

You have a right to know!

In addition, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 requires doctors and other vaccine providers to:

Keep a permanent record of all vaccines given and the manufacturer’s name and lot number
Write down serious health problems, hospitalizations, injuries and deaths that occur after vaccination in the patient’s permanent medical record
File an official report of all serious health problems, hospitalizations, injuries and deaths following vaccination to the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS)

If a vaccine provider fails to inform, record or report, it is a violation of federal law.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

USDA Green-Lights field trials of Monsanto Drought-Resistant Corn after Admitting it Performs No Better than Natural Corn

Posted on March 27, 2012 by andreas m

By: Ethan A. Huff
Source: NaturalNews.com

The U.S. Department of Agriculture‘s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) does not even pretend to legitimately evaluate genetically-modified organisms (GMO) before approving them anymore, having recently green-lighted approval for a new variety of “drought-resistant” GM corn produced by Monsanto that admittedly grows no better under drought conditions than natural varieties do.

According to the Washington Post, APHIS fast-tracked the corn, known as MON87460, without ever conducting an appropriate environmental risk analysis on the crop’s efficacy, which includes determining whether or not the crop is even safe for humans or the environment. In fact, in accordance with the Obama Administration’s new hands-off approach to regulating GMOs, APHIS decided to actually approve MON87460 even after a cursory evaluation of the data exposed it as a complete failure.

“The reduced yield [trait] does not exceed the natural variation observed in regionally-adapted varieties of conventional corn,” wrote the USDA in an earlier report on the crop published last fall. “Equally comparable varieties produced through conventional breeding techniques are readily available in irrigated corn production regions”.

MON87460 is the first GMO to be approved with resistance to drought, as opposed to a pesticide or herbicide. And even though many drought-adaptive varieties of natural or hybrid corn already exist, Monsanto is pushing MON87460 on farmers all across the Midwest, and primarily in the Western plains where drought conditions are still severe, with promises that it will translate into increased yields.

Based on its initial findings, however, as well as the fact that GM crops are known to contaminate nearby conventional and organic crops, APHIS should have wholly rejected MON87460 and told Monsanto to hit the road. Instead, thanks to embedded special interests throughout the USDA and the highest levels of the federal government, this former regulatory body has become nothing more than a bureaucratic rubber stamp for the biotechnology industry.

“[Bio]technology has been spectacularly unsuccessful at delivering complex traits such as drought tolerance, which involve multiple genes and complex interaction with the plant’s environment,” wrote Dr. Helen Wallace, director of GeneWatch U.K., in a piece last year on so-called drought-tolerant GM crops. “Meanwhile, conventional breeding and new techniques such as marker-assisted selection — which uses knowledge of the plant’s genome to inform breeding, without engineering the plant, have produced a long string of successes.”

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

The Worst of Both Worlds — Genetically Engineered Goats to Produce New Vaccine

Posted on March 26, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Goats are being genetically engineered to become “pharm animals” that carry vaccines in their milk.

Current experiments being conducted by researchers from Texas A&M are geared toward producing an “edible” malaria vaccine, with the ultimate goal being that children drinking the milk will become vaccinated in the process.

While claiming that bioengineered animals could be “life-savers” for people in third-world countries, the researchers ignore the glaring issue that such biotechnology often produces unknown, and unintended, health consequences that prove tragic for individuals and the environment.

Vaccines in Your Milk?

Transmogrifying farm animals into “pharm” animals to act as living and breathing pharmaceutical factories is not new.

In 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first drug produced by livestock that had been bioengineered to express a human gene.

In that case, the protein was extracted from the milk of genetically engineered (GE) goats.

In the latest instance, researchers introduced DNA coding for the malaria parasite into the goat genome linked to milk production.

The DNA is supposed to “switch on” only in the mammary gland when the goat produces milk.

As we’ve seen in the past with genetically modified plants, genetically engineered vaccine-producing animals might enter the food supply unexpectedly — exposing unintended recipients to the vaccine. Or the animals might escape and breed with others, passing these bioengineered genes on with unpredictable consequences. Even the technology itself is risky at best, because when animals are exposed to foreign DNA, literally anything can happen.

Take, for instance, milk from cows treated with a synthetic, genetically engineered growth hormone called rBGH. rBGH milk differs from natural milk nutritionally, pharmacologically, immunologically, and hormonally, and along with causing health problems in the cows, it is linked to cancer in humans. What does ingesting the DNA from the malaria parasite in your milk cause? No one knows.

Vaccine Makers See Dollar Signs When They See Third-World Countries

Malaria is caused by a parasite of the species Plasmodium, which is spread from person to person by infected mosquitoes. Every year, it results in about 1 million deaths, the majority of which are in third-world countries. We are certainly in need of a solution, and while it sounds good in theory that a child could be protected from malaria just by drinking a glass of milk, remember that vaccines often weaken and confuse children’s immune systems, which ultimately increases their susceptibility to the very infectious diseases vaccines are designed to prevent.

The most vulnerable of the world’s children are those in the poorest countries where death and disease is often a result of malnutrition, and where children are often battling some sort of infection 200 days out of the year. Vaccines can be devastating to these already immunosuppressed children, as well as to adults.

However, emerging vaccine markets like third-world countries will soon outgrow developed markets by hundreds of billions of dollars. Emerging markets are areas of the world that are beginning to show promise as a profitable venture for many products, including vaccines. And emerging markets – primarily in developing countries in Southeast and Central Asia, and Africa – have been on vaccine makers’ radar for quite some time.

Giving Immune-Compromised Children Vaccines May Create Illness, Not Cure It

One reason that vaccine makers are interested in these parts of the world is that that’s where most of the world’s deaths from major infectious diseases occur. The only problem has been that, until recently, making vaccines for undeveloped countries with no money to pay for them, was not exactly a profitable goal for vaccine makers.

Concerned that developed countries would have little or no resources for addressing serious infectious diseases if vaccine makers continued their pull-out, the World Health Organization and the G8 – the top developed countries in the world – responded with a plan for inducing vaccine companies to stay in the business.

That plan was called Advance Market Commitments (AMCs). Under AMCs, developed countries make legal, binding agreements to purchase vaccines that are needed in low-income countries. The purchase guarantees a bottom line for the manufacturers. In return, the manufacturers promise to sell those vaccines at reduced prices in the countries where they are most needed.

Unfortunately, legally binding, advance market commitments to purchase vaccines that are mostly needed in third world countries could backfire on developed countries that don’t need – or want – certain vaccines. Malaria is one of the top neglected diseases that world health leaders want to address with AMCs, so the GM vaccine-producing goat milk might already be on their radar.

The ability to resist diseases like malaria requires a strong immune system, and for that, you require good nutrition, clean drinking water, and sanitation. If we want to help people in other countries to lower their malaria rates, it would be wise to focus on these basics first. In order to eradicate infectious disease from a nation, you have to first address compromised immune systems. If you hit immune suppressed children with a potent, adjuvant-loaded vaccine, you’re far more likely to create new disease, not eradicate it.

It’s similar to the corporations seeking to plant genetically modified golden rice in the developing world to purportedly alleviate vitamin A deficiency. What people in the developing world need to receive ample dietary vitamin A are the basics like access to a diverse range of nutritious foods — including animal products like eggs, cheese and meat and vegetables such as dark leafy greens and sweet potatoes. This is the type of diet that is attained from biodiverse farming — the opposite of what will occur if golden rice is planted on a large scale. So in the end it appears the golden rice will do little to improve vitamin A levels in the poor — and may actually make vitamin A deficiency worse.

Fertility Problems, DNA Damage Among the Serious Health Problems Linked to GM Foods

The vaccine-producing GM goats are a double-edged sword because while no one knows for sure what consuming GM vaccine-containing milk will do to humans, there’s very convincing evidence that genetically modified foods spell nothing but trouble for your health.

In one review of genetically modified organisms (GMO) — an analysis of 19 animal studies – it was revealed that nearly 10 percent of blood, urine, organ and other parameters tested were significantly influenced by GMOs, with the liver and kidneys faring the worst.

In the only human feeding study ever published on genetically modified foods, seven volunteers ate Roundup-ready soybeans. These are soybeans that have herbicide-resistant genes inserted into them in order to survive being sprayed with otherwise deadly doses of Roundup herbicide. In three of the seven volunteers, the gene inserted into the soy transferred into the DNA of their intestinal bacteria, and continued to function long after they stopped eating the GM soy!

So, exposing children in third world countries to these potential risks needs to be carefully considered before a malaria vaccine is distributed in GM milk especially when there are other innovative ways of fighting malaria available. In addition, Jeffrey Smith, founder of the Institute for Responsible Technology, has documented at least 65 serious health risks from GM products of all kinds. Among them:

Offspring of rats fed GM soy showed a five-fold increase in mortality, lower birth weights, and the inability to reproduce
Male mice fed GM soy had damaged young sperm cells
The embryo offspring of GM soy-fed mice had altered DNA functioning
Several US farmers reported sterility or fertility problems among pigs and cows fed on GM corn varieties
Investigators in India have documented fertility problems, abortions, premature births, and other serious health issues, including deaths, among buffaloes fed GM cottonseed products

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Is This Fraud Too Big Even For 60 Minutes?

Posted on March 22, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Exposure and subsequent concern over medical research fraud is on the rise, and for good reason.

It’s now reached the point where blogs exist solely to cover retractions of published research.

An episode of 60 Minutes, featured above, also highlights the problem.

In this episode, they reveal the dramatic rise and fall of Dr. Anil Potti, whose cancer research at Duke University was heralded as a groundbreaking game changer.

It’s a perfect example of how fraud can occur anywhere. Even at the best institutions.

Dr. Potti’s work, which entailed matching a patient’s tumor to the best chemotherapy drug based on its DNA makeup, was the most exciting cancer breakthrough in recent history, according to many involved.

More than 100 cancer-stricken and desperate patients signed up for Dr. Potti’s trial. Unfortunately, two years ago, it became apparent that the method was a failure. Not only that, but as stated in the 60 Minutes segment, Dr. Potti’s discovery “may end up being one of the biggest medical research frauds ever; one that deceived dying patients, the best medical journals, and a great University.”

Dr. Potti May have Faked Both Credentials and Research Data

Questions about Dr. Potti’s research had been raised, but were cleared by a committee at Duke University. It wasn’t until a confidential source tipped off the editor of The Cancer Letter to take another look at Dr. Potti’s claim of being a Rhodes Scholar that the lies began unraveling.

Joseph Nevins, Dr. Potti’s mentor and coworker at Duke University for over four years confronted him about the accusation he may have lied on his resume. Potti admitted that he wasn’t really a Rhodes Scholar, rather it was a fellowship from Rhodes Scholars in Australia… Nevins decided to take another look at Dr. Potti’s original data, eventually concluding that it was “abundantly clear” Potti had purposefully manipulated the data.

Whenever the data disproved Potti’s theory, the data had simply been altered.

The claim that the novel procedure had an 80 percent chance of success was a complete lie, and patients in Potti’s trial died. Some of the surviving family members are now suing. Dr. Potti has stated that he “… was not aware that false or ‘improper’ information had been included in the research.” Duke University has also apologized for the trials, and has opened up about the case to serve as a warning example to other institutions.

But the greatest irony of all is brought up at the very end of the 60 Minutes’ segment. While patients did not receive any groundbreaking treatment, Duke University has stated that none of the patients in Dr. Potti’s failed trial were really harmed “because all of them received the standard of care in chemotherapy.”

And THAT, my friends, is the real “Biggest Medical Fraud” of all time.

It’s so big, 60 Minutes will not likely discuss that truth any time soon. In reality, virtually the entire cancer industry is one massive fraud, in the sense that it’s not really allowing authentic and inexpensive cancer cures that address the cause of the problem to come to market. They are virtually all violently opposed and condemned. It’s a massive for-profit industry, and unless a treatment revolves around a costly drug that can be patented, it will never see the light of day. The whole idea that the cancer industry is “searching for a cure” is a sham… because cures already exist. But they’re being massively suppressed.

Why Many Groundbreaking Cancer Therapies are Suppressed

It’s kind of sad to hear how Dr. Potti’s idea of using DNA-matching to customize treatments created such waves of excitement, knowing that similar gene-target therapies have been vehemently suppressed, simply because they did not involve expensive pharmaceuticals patented by Big Pharma.

Burzynski: The Movie tells the story of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, who developed a non-toxic gene-target cancer therapy called antineoplastons, and has been harassed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for over 14 years in an effort to shut him down. His treatment could have helped save millions of lives over the last two decades had his discovery not been criminally suppressed by the U.S. government, as it has been shown to effectively help cure some of the most “incurable” forms of terminal cancer. The film is a powerful expose of the unscrupulous forces that work to maintain the status quo of the medical and pharmaceutical industry at any cost.

Why was Dr. Burzynski attacked while Dr. Potti was worshipped as a wunderkind?

Potti was working within “the standard of care,” matching chemotherapy drugs to the DNA of patient’s tumors, while Burzynski’s antineoplastons are non-toxic peptides and derivatives of amino acids that work as genetic switches. In short, Dr. Burzynski developed a cancer treatment that surpassed all other treatments on the market, and the FDA, the pharmaceutical industry, and the National Cancer Institute all knew it. But he was also the sole owner of the patents for this therapy, and these two facts combined threatened the entire paradigm of the cancer industry.

The cancer paradigm is based on very expensive machines and toxic drugs. There’s an enormous amount of money to be made in this paradigm, no one in the cancer industry, aside from Burzynski himself, stand to make a dime if his treatment is granted approval and goes mainstream. That’s why it has been suppressed, despite the fact that antineoplastons have been shown to be far more effective than the current standard of care. The film features several remarkable case stories of people who were successfully cured of cancer, but it’s when the clinical trial data of conventional therapies versus antineoplastons are stacked against each other that the benefits of antineoplastons become really obvious:

Systemic Corruption within the FDA Threatens Your Health

Unfortunately, our government plays a significant and ongoing role in the committing of this kind of scientific fraud. I recently commented on the fact that the FDA secretly monitored the personal e-mail of nine whistleblowers—its own scientists and doctors—over the course of two years. The whistleblowers, who worked in the office responsible for reviewing medical devices, including those for cancer screening, had warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that posed unacceptable risks to patients.

Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health kept pushing for the Department of Health and Human Services’ (DHHS) inspector general to investigate the employees, accusing them of improperly disclosing confidential business information about the devices.

Shuren is also the official who oversees mercury dental fillings, which they have been fraudulently referring to as ‘silver fillings’. He had promised to make an announcement about dental amalgam by the end of 2011. But with just six minutes left in the work year, at 4:54 pm on Friday, December 30, the FDA conceded that no announcement was forthcoming – not in 2011, and maybe not at all.

I’ve long questioned the safety of mammography, based on compelling information from scientists and experts in the field. Here, we have a number of FDA employees warning Congress that the agency is placing patient’s lives at risk, due to internal corruption… and still nothing is done.

The fact is, a lot of what the general public assumes is “science-based medicine” is anything but. According to one recent poll for the British Medical Journal, one in 10 scientists and doctors claim to have witnessed colleague’s deliberately fabricating data in order to get their research published. Back in 2005, Dr. John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Ioannina School of Medicine, Greece, showed that there is less than a 50 percent chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper will be true! He repeated his investigation in 2008 and found that much of scientific research being published is highly questionable. According to his study:

“Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true.”

Add to that the fact that the FDA is not doing its stated job either, and it should be quite clear that there’s really no one out there protecting your health from dangerous pharmaceuticals and medical treatments…

Notable Cases of Medical Fraud

While many believe Dr. Potti may go down as the largest medical science fraud case in modern history, we’ve seen several stunning cases in the last few years. Tragically, some if not all of them may have contributed to significant health ramifications and loss of life of many thousands of people:

Scott S. Reuben, a prominent Massachusetts anesthesiologist, allegedly fabricated 21 medical studies published between 1996 and 2008 that claimed to show benefits from painkillers like Vioxx, Celebrex, Bextra and Lyrica. His work was considered important in encouraging doctors to combine the use of painkillers like Celebrex and Lyrica for patients undergoing common procedures such as knee and hip replacements
Last year, autism researcher Poul Thorsen was charged with 13 counts of wire fraud and nine counts of money laundering. He also allegedly stole over $1 million from autism research funding between February 2004 and June 2008. He is said to have stolen the money while serving as the ‘principal investigator’ for a program that studied the relationship between autism and exposure to vaccines. He was involved in several key studies the CDC uses to support their claims that MMR and mercury-containing vaccines, among others, are safe. One of his papers on the subject, known as ‘The Danish Study’, is extensively quoted to refute the autism-vaccine connection
In October, 2011, the Office of Research Integrity at the U.S. Department of Health discovered that a Boston University cancer scientist, Sheng Wang, had fabricated his research findings. His work was published in two journals in 2009, and he’s been ordered to retract them. But important studies by other scientists like those at the Mayo Clinic, who based their work on his findings, could now see 10 years of their studies going down the drain as worthless…
In November of last year, a noted Dutch psychologist confessed to fabricating research data for years. According to an investigating committee, Dr. Diederik Stapel falsified entire experiments, and several dozen of his fabricated papers were published in respected psychology journals and promoted in the media.
In January, resveratrol researcher with the University of Connecticut, Dipak Das, was found guilty of 145 counts of fabrication and falsification of data published in 11 different journals.

How to Get Solid Information in an Era of Confusion

Ultimately, my take-home message here is that even if a drug or treatment is scientifically proven, all these examples make it crystal clear that this simply is not a guarantee of safety or effectiveness. Likewise, if an alternative treatment has not been published in a medical journal, it does not mean it is unsafe or ineffective. There’s a lot to be said for the tried-and-true remedies of old, even if they’ve not been rigorously studied by modern researcher.

I recommend using all the resources available to you, including your own sense of common sense and reason, true experts’ advice and other’s experiences, to determine what medical treatment or advice will be best for you in any given situation. Remain skeptical but open — even if it is something I am saying, you simply need to realize YOU are responsible for your health, not me and certainly not drug companies trying to sell their wares.

Seeing how it’s been well established that most drugs do absolutely nothing to treat the cause of disease, it would be prudent to exercise the precautionary principle when evaluating ANY new drug claim, as it will more than likely be seriously flawed or biased — and is most likely not in your long-term best interest.

If you’re facing a health challenge, I recommend seeking out a qualified natural health consultant. A good place to look for recommendations is at your local health food store. Get to know the people who work there, the owners, and those who frequent the store, and obtain a consensus as to who the best clinician for you is in your area. Word travels fast in the natural medical community, so if there’s a knowledgeable practitioner in your area that’s getting awesome results, his or her reputation will be known. Of course, when it comes to cancer, you’ll want to identify someone that is well known and respected for their work in treating cancer patients. If you don’t find one locally then scour the Internet and make calls to plenty of patients that the practitioner has seen.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

65-year-old California ‘Milk Man’ Subjected to Extreme Torture, Hypothermia, Raw Sewage in LA County Jail

Posted on March 21, 2012 by andreas m

By: Mike Adams
Source: NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews exclusive report, please credit with link. NaturalNews can now report that 65-year-old senior citizen James Stewart, a raw milk farmer with no criminal history, was nearly tortured to death in the LA County jail this past week. He survived a “week of torturous Hell” at the hands of LA County jail keepers who subjected him to starvation, sleep deprivation, hypothermia, loss of blood circulation to extremities, verbal intimidation, involuntary medical testing and even subjected him to over 30 hours of raw biological sewage filth containing dangerous pathogens.

This is from a county that has targeted and terrorized James Stewart for the supposed crime of selling fresh milk containing “dangerous pathogens.” That’s right – the only “crime” James has ever committed is being the milk man and distributing milk that is openly and honestly kept fresh and raw instead of pasteurized. So as part of his punishment of advocating raw cow’s milk, he was tortured with raw human sewage at the LA County jail.

This true story of jaw-dropping dehumanization and torture — conducted in total violation of state law as well as the Geneva Convention for prisoners of war — is told in an exclusive audio interview recorded today between Mike Adams and James Stewart.

That audio recording, which has been released by Adams into the public domain for the purpose of widespread copying and sharing, is available for download at the following links:

128kbps MP3 file (47MB, Hi-Fi, suitable for posting online):
MP3 only: www.naturalnews.com/files/Torture_128.mp3
ZIP file container: www.naturalnews.com/files/Torture_128.zip

32kbps MP3 file (12MB, Lo-Fi, suitable for emailing or sharing on mobile devices):
MP3 only: www.naturalnews.com/files/Torture_32.mp3
ZIP file container: www.naturalnews.com/files/Torture_32.zip

Video files:

Watch the full interview on YouTube at:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkDrrKhPB7M

or if YouTube censors it (as they now do almost any video critical of government), see it on the uncensored video site TV.NaturalNews.com at:
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=B0E3220D2A290E5966F3683E6377778B

Adams openly encourages members of the public to post these files on YouTube, Vimeo, bittorrent sites and anywhere else where they may reach the public.

“I thought I was gonna die in there…”

In this exclusive interview, you can hear James Stewart describe, in his own words, the shocking details of prisoner abuse right here in America. Among the highlights from his interview with Mike Adams:

• How James was subjected to severe food deprivation.

• How he was interrogated by deputies and accused of being a “sovereign,” then branded with a red arm band (Nazi-style) to falsely indicate that he was a danger to the general population.

• How James was shackled in long chains wrapped around his waist multiple times, then had his hands cuffed behind his back which was bound to the heavy waist chain to restrict his movement. His handcuffs were so tight he thought his wrists would break.

• James was then handcuffed to a cold bench, restricting his movement to just six inches, then left on the bench for 4-5 hours.

• James was then forcibly subjected to various medical tests, including forced chest X-rays even while he was handcuffed.

• He was placed in a cold cell wearing only a T-shirt and pants, where he soon began to suffer from hypothermia and found himself violently shivering just to stay alive.

• How he was made to suffer through total sleep deprivation all night long as other prisoners were screaming and banging on the walls.

• His cell was then flooded with raw human sewage, which flowed into his jail cell 2-3 inches deep, covering his shoes and shirt. LA County jail guards then ordered James to clean up all the raw sewage in his cell by handing him a small hand-held squeegee and demanding that he squeegee out all the raw sewage himself (which he reluctantly did).

• He was then forced to stay in the putrid raw sewage cell for over 30 hours, fighting off nausea and living in bacteriological filth that threatened his health.

• All along, the LA County prison guards gloated over their treatment of prisoners while laughing and joking about their power to subject prisoners to such abuse. This behavior openly mimics that of Gitmo guards who took pictures gloating over their torture and murder of prisoners of war.

• During this entire process, James was not allowed a single phone call nor any visit from an attorney. His right to speak to an attorney was repeatedly denied.

• At no point was James notified of what he was being charged with. He was never presented with an arrest warrant nor were any charges explained to him.

• James was mysteriously “lost” in the system and LA County officials claimed they did not know where he was. This was apparently a deliberate attempt to subject an individual to drawn-out torture without legal representation and make sure no one could locate them to check on their health or arrest status.

“Worse than torture… They’re actually torturing you mentally and physically to break you down…”

These are the actual words of James Stewart that you will hear in this interview:

• “I thought I was gonna die in there.”

• “It was worse than torture. They’re actually torturing you mentally and physically to break you down.”

• “I wrote the ‘torture’ on a piece of toilet paper to try to tell everybody what I had gone through, because I was worried they were going to mentally break me and put me in a psych ward.”

• “What I experienced in downtown LA was brutality.”

• “It’s trauma. And they create this thing where you’re not even sure what’s coming next. What has this country come to? I don’t sleep well at night right now, and I don’t think anyone would if they had been what I’ve been through.”

• “I’m shocked that this is America. Because it seems like you’re in some third world country, in a gulag, like in the movie Midnight Express, where you’re absolutely just tortured. That was the experience I had. Your mind goes, how can this be? This is America?”

NaturalNews calls on Amnesty International, ACLU to intervene

What we are witnessing here is a gross violation of civil rights and human rights, not to mention fundamental due process. The treatment unleashed upon James was not merely against the law in California, it was also a violation of federal law and a violation of the Geneva Convention and its ban on torturing prisoners of war.

“What happened to Stewart is horrendous,” health freedom attorney Jonathan Emord told NaturalNews. He’s the author of the new book “Restore the Republic” which lays out a plan to overthrow tyranny and restore a government that works on behalf of the people instead of declaring the People to be the enemy.

The bail amount set for James ($1 million) and the torture to which he was subjected clearly indicate that James Stewart is a political prisoner of the State of California, which has decided to spend millions of dollars in taxpayer money to target and incarcerate a senior citizen farmer. (By comparison, bail for alleged child rapist and sex pimp Jerry Sandusky, former Penn State sports coach, was only set at $100,000 and wasunsecured!)

NaturalNews calls upon Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union to intervene in this extraordinary violation of basic human rights. For the record, James Stewart has no criminal record and is a permaculture farmer and fresh food advocate. His “crime” consists entirely of arranging for the distribution of raw milk to customers who actually line up to access this nourishing food (people love it!).

NaturalNews has no financial ties to James Stewart nor Rawesome Foods and has been the leading source of free press information covering this story. The mainstream media so far refuses to cover this story, most likely out of financial loyalty to the conventional (processed) dairy industry which stands to lose tens of millions of dollars if raw milk is allowed to be openly and legally sold.

Assistance efforts for James Stewart and Sharon Palmer, the other person arrested in this case, can be emailed to:
friendsofhealthyfamilyfarms@gmail.com

Information is also being forwarded to the Ron Paul campaign, as Ron Paul has openly spoken out against the absurdity of laws targeting raw milk producers. As Paul is extremely busy running for President, however, he is unlikely to be able to comment on this particular issue.

Tips have been forwarded to Matt Drudge for his consideration of the issue.

NaturalNews.com continues to be the breaking news source on this story with a voice of liberty and food freedom. Check NaturalNews.com for more details this weekend and all next week.

Action items:

• SHARE this story on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks. You also have permission to download and share the audio files and video files of the interview. Post it on every bittorrent in the known universe…

• Contact your local newspaper editors with letters and opinion pieces to express your outrage at this vindictive arrest and torture of a California farmer.

• Write the officer of Governor Jerry Brown, who has done absolutely nothing to stop this outrageous abuse of California’s by rogue DA operatives in both LA and Ventura counties:
http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php

• Contact the Los Angeles County DA’s office at:
http://da.co.la.ca.us/feedback.htm

• Contact the Ventura County DA’s office (which arrested James at his court hearing) at:
http://da.countyofventura.org/contact_information.htm

• Stay up to date on our Facebook page where we post breaking news:
www.Facebook.com/HealthRanger

• Follow our Twitter feed at:
http://twitter.com/#!/healthranger

• Subscribe to our email newsletter to receive breaking news email alerts:
http://www.naturalnews.com/readerregistration.html

• Share our infographic about raw milk:
www.naturalnews.com/Infographic-Raw-Milk.html

• Learn more about raw milk at:
www.RealMilk.com

•www.WestonAPrice.org

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

While California Persecutes Raw Milk Farmers, France unveils Raw Milk Vending Machines for Happy, Healthy Consumers

Posted on March 20, 2012 by andreas m

By: Mike Adams
Source: NaturalNews.com

Thanks to the extraordinarily cruel and vindictive actions of the LA County and Ventura County District Attorneys’ offices, California is rapidly losing its reputation as a state that promotes a healthy lifestyle. Instead, the state is becoming increasingly known as “the torture state” where senior citizen farmers and fresh food advocates are imprisoned, tortured, and charged with felony crimes for making fresh milk available to customers.

France, on the other hand, has embraced the health benefits of raw milk. There, innovative dairy farmer Michel Cantaloube has created a raw milk vending machine (see photo below). The vending machine is a tastefully-designed kiosk that blends right into the urban setting, allowing it to be set up on a street corner on a French town or even a major metropolitan area.

Customers can purchase whatever quantity of raw milk they wish, and unlike in the United States, they don’t even have to go through the bizarre paperwork of owning a “cow share.”

California declares war on raw dairy farmers

Back in Los Angeles, raw dairy farmer Sharon Palmer has been slapped with 38 felony counts drummed up by the county, which has a rogue DA office running a campaign of personal revenge against dairy farmers. Driven into near-bankruptcy by the fines and legal fees, Palmer has been unable to repay farm investors as planned, so when her repayments fell behind, the county charged her with financial fraud.

Keep in mind that when MF Global’s Jon Corzine stole billions of dollars from investors, he was never even charged with a crime. When Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs went broke making bad beds with other people’s money, the United States government gave them a trillion-dollar bailout! But when a small, organic raw milk farmer in California runs into financial trouble caused by the state itself, they get charged with 38 felony counts of fraud.

James Stewart, the 65-year-old “milk man” from California, was arrested nine days ago for the crime of merely “knowing” Sharon Palmer. His bail was set at the astonishing level of $1 million– an amount rarely used even for rapists and murderers. (Sharon’s bail was set at $2 million!) He was then subjected to extreme torture that nearly killed him in an LA County jail. This included food deprivation, sleep deprivation, hypothermia, interrogation, verbal intimidation and even flooding his jail cell with raw human sewage and forcing him to clean out the raw sewage himself.

So in France, raw milk is happily sold in vending machines on street corners, but in California — a state which used to represent a healthy, happy lifestyle — raw milk advocates are targeted by the state as criminals, then subjected to personal vengeance campaigns run by the DA’s office.

France = the “healthy food nation” of raw milk and red wine.

California = the “torture state” of total government brutality and oppression of farmers, along with the torture of raw dairy advocates.

Here’s the picture of the raw milk vending machine in France:

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Doctor from MMR Controversy wins High Court appeal – next up, Dr. Andrew Wakefield himself

Posted on March 20, 2012 by andreas m

By: Ethan A. Huff
Source: NaturalNews.com

The U.K.General Medical Council‘s (GMC) rash and unfounded decision to strike Professor John Walker-Smith, who had helped Dr. Andrew Wakefield in treating desperately-ill children with regressive autism symptoms and severe gastrointestinal problems, off the medical register for alleged “professional misconduct” has been exposed as a fraud. During a recent High Court appeal, Mr. Justice Mitting ruled that Prof. Walker-Smith’s striking “cannot stand” because of serious misconduct in the way GMC handled the case against him, and that the entire council needs to be reformed.

For many years now, Prof. Walker-Smith has had to endure having his reputation tarnished by the likes of freelance journalist Brian Deer, GMC, the British Medical Journal, and the lapdog American media who have together conspired to destroy the legitimate work of Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues on the gastrointestinal problems they observed in young children, many of whom had received the combination measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. And caught in the fray of this malicious crusade against independent thought and honest medical inquiry was the life and career of Prof. Walker-Smith, who had already retired from his medical practice when the controversy began.

Prof. Walker-Smith had been head of the department of pediatric gastroenterology at the Royal Free Hospital (RFH) in London where Dr. Wakefield was making observations about children’s health that would later be published, and retracted, by The Lancet. During this time, Prof. Walker-Smith was helping to treat these suffering children, the parents of whom had directly approached both him and Dr. Wakefield for help after being ignored by their own general practitioners.

“There has been a great burden on me and my family since the allegations were first made in 2004 and throughout the hearing that ran from 2007 to 2010,” said Prof. Walker-Smith in a recent statement about the case. “I am relieved that this matter is now over.”

Since GMC’s handling of the entire case has been proven fraudulent, it is now Dr. Wakefield’s turn to be exonerated

Mr. Justice Mitting’s scathing indictment of GMC’s unprofessional and dishonest handling of the Dr. Wakefield case is telling, as it once again calls into question the legitimacy of any of the claims made against Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues concerning their observational, peer-reviewed study. It only further reinforces what has already come to light about the blatant fraud that is the continued witch hunt against Dr. Wakefield for his independent work.

“The welcome decision to exonerate Prof. Walker-Smith is a clear indication that the GMC’s case against the Royal Free doctors was manufactured to discredit any association between bowel disease, autism conditions and some of the parents’ reported link to the MMR vaccine,” writes Age of Autism. “The allegations leveled at Prof. Walker-Smith and the Royal Free team now have to be viewed with total skepticism as nothing more than a witch hunt by vested interests at the highest levels in government, media and the pharmaceutical industry.”

This ruling will clearly bolster the efforts of Dr. Wakefield to vindicate his own reputation and career, including his recent lawsuit against Brian Deer, BMJ, and BMJ editor Fiona Godlee, all of which have repeatedly spread lies and slander about Dr. Wakefield and his paper

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Shocking Photos show result of Raw Milk Man’s 10 days of Torture and Abuse, Effects of Government-Approved Food in LA County Jail

Posted on March 20, 2012 by andreas m

By: Mike Adams
Source: NaturalNews.com

California is now in the business of torturing senior citizens who advocate real food. 65-year-old James Stewart, the California “milk man,” was recently arrested under trumped-up charges, then “lost” in the LA County jail for over a week, during which he was subjected to hypothermia, torture, interrogations, involuntary medical procedures, verbal intimidation, food deprivation and even had his jail cell flooded with saw sewage which he was forced to clean up by hand.

Now photos have emerged that show the before and after of James Stewart. This photo, shown below, shows his level of health and vitality on a raw food diet at age 65, followed by his loss of health and vitality after just 10 days on a California government-approved diet of dead processed foods which were occassionally thrown at him in jail (when he was not being starved of food, anyway).

As the photo clearly reveals (see photo at the bottom of this article):

• James looks almost 20 years older after surviving 10 days in the California jail system.

• His energy and vitality are drastically reduced.

• His skin tone is more mottled and clearly shows signs of digestive distress.

• His eyes reflect a kind of emptiness, as if his very soul has been assaulted.

• His posture reflects a systemic loss of energy and strength.

• There is a clear loss of subcutaneous body fat and a “hollow-ness” to his face shape.

• His emotional state is clearly devastated. He has the look of someone who has been tortured and brutalized. (Oh, but America doesn’t torture its citizens, does it? Grow up, people. WAKE UP. This is happening right in Los Angeles.)

Remember: California says only dead, pasteurized milk is “safe” for you to drink

As you look at these photos, remember that the California government says raw milk is a dangerous, criminal substance advocated by dangerous “sovereign” people who might as well be labeled terrorists. But dead, pasteurized milk and other dead foods are “government approved” for feeding to both schoolchildren and prisoners. (Along with “pink slime” processed meat and other grotesque “food” substances.)

When you look at the skyrocketing rates of disease across California today — cancer, diabetes, heart disease, mental disorders and more — ask yourself why the California government is criminalizing fresh, living food while forcing people to eat dead, processed foods.

California, which was once a state recognized for its promotion of a healthy lifestyle and freedom of choice is now known as “the torture state” that targets senior citizens for torture and abuse. It is the state where the governor signed a bill into law allowing children as young as 12 years old to “consent” to being vaccinated without parental permission. It is a state that has spent millions of dollars in taxpayer money to target and attack senior citizen farmers whose only wish is to create and share fresh, wholesome food with other Californians.

The California press refuses to cover this true story of the torture of a senior citizen milk man

The Los Angeles Times is so corrupt and whored out to its corporate interests that it won’t even cover this story! There is torture and abuse of farmers happening right in Los Angeles, and the LA Times absolutely refuses to cover the story! How’s that for pathetic journalism? (If the LA Times actually starts to cover this story, I will retract this paragraph. But as of this writing, the LA Times has done nothing to cover this huge story of government abuse of innocent citizens.)

In fact, to date no newspaper in California has covered this story of torture and abuse of the California milk man. There is complete silence on it. A total cover-up. The lamestream media wants you to believe this never happens in California.

But these pictures don’t lie. The recorded testimony of James Stewart is factual and truthful. Watch the video and hear it yourself at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkDrrKhPB7M

James passes all the tests for credibility — no criminal record, his testimony cites accurate details of his experience in jail (such as being held in cell number ‘Denver 22′), and he has no agenda other than to assert his freedom to pursue life, liberty and the American dream.

For that, he is targeted, surveilled, arrested, tortured, malnourished, brutalized and then his story is utterly ignored by the California press.

Shame on you, California bureaucrats and presstitutes. Shame on you for ignoring the plight of this innocent man while you promote the corporate agenda of feeding more dead, processed foods to a diseased population that’s desperate for solutions. YOU people are worse than terrorists because you claim to cover the news, you claim to represent justice, and you claim to stand for the People of California. But behind the scenes, in truth, you are nothing but wicked betrayers of Californians. You would rather see people die of disease than offend your milk industry sponsors, wouldn’t you?

No wonder newspapers all across California are losing readers in droves. People are coming to the internet — places like NaturalNews.com — to read the news that “lamestream media” newspapers outright refuse to cover. The public increasingly realizes that big-city newspapers are a complete joke — a meda hoax of fake news that intentionally ignores the real stories that matter to real people.

If an American farmer being tortured nearly to death in an LA County jail isn’t news, I wonder what is?

Oh, wait: The LA Times is happy to report on Libya’s abuse of “detainees.” See, they cover it gleefully:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/10/libya-amnesty-inter…

But when a California man is tortured and brutalized in an LA County jail, the LA Times won’t cover it. Pathetic.

Here’s the photo

Credit for this photo goes to www.TheGirlsGoneRaw.com where you can find additional updates on this story.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Monsanto’s Roundup threatens stability of global food supply

Posted on March 20, 2012 by andreas m

By: Anthony Gucciardi
Source: NaturalNews.com

Monsanto’s reckless disregard for public health and the agricultural stability of the planet may be even more significant than previously thought. A shocking new report reveals how Monsanto’s Roundup is actually threatening the crop-yielding potential of the entire biosphere. The report reveals that glyphosate, which was developed by Monsanto in the early 1970s and is the active ingredient in its patented herbicide Roundup, may be irreversibly devastating the microbiodiversity of the soil – compromising the health of the entire planet, as a result.

New research published in the journal Current Microbiology highlights the extent to which glyphosate is altering, and in some cases destroying, the very microorganisms upon which the health of the soil, and – amazingly – the benefits of raw and fermented foods as a whole, depend. Concerningly, certain beneficial strains of bacteria used as food-starters in cultures for raw yogurt, such as Lactobacillus cremoris, have entirely disappeared from certain geographic regions where traditionally they were found in plenty. The study reports that the death and growth inhibition of selected food microorganisms was observed in concentrations of Roundup that are lower than are recommended in agricultural practice.

This means that farmers who are increasingly using larger and larger concentrations of Roundup and similar glyphosate-based herbicide formulations to countermand the increasingly resistant super weeds GM agriculture has spawned, are not only damaging the immediate health of the soil, but subsequent yields of indispensable food-starter microorganisms, as well as the microbes that ensure the overall fertility of the soil for producing crops well into the future.

Monsanto’s Roundup assaults the planetary biosphere

Microorganisms are responsible for much more than just the health content of raw and fermented foods. The most numerous inhabitants in the web of life, microorganisms participate quite literally “at the root” of the nitrogen, phosphate, oxygen and carbon cycles, and are therefore indispensable for the health of the entire biosphere. Astoundingly, there are an estimated 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (6 x 10 to the 30th power) bacterial cells on the planet, and these soil microrganisms represent about 50 percent of the the total biodiversity in terms of numbers of species.

As Roundup usage threatens these soil microrganisms, including fungi and the mycellium (technically the largest organism in the world), it could lead to devastating implications. Compromising the health of the mycellium, in particular, may cause serious harm to the planet. According to prominent mycologist Paul Stamets, mycellium may actually act as a ‘network’ within the biosphere, acting as the Earth’s ‘natural internet’ in which virtually all organisms may rely upon. It has been recognized throughout the ages that all life depends on the soil. Without healthy soil, the health of the entire planet is at risk.

Charles E. Kelogg was one individual who stated such in the USDA yearbook back in 1939. Kelogg said:

“Essentially, all life depends upon the soil … There can be no life without soil and no soil without life; they have evolved together.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt also voiced similar concerns, warning:

“The nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself.”

Based on an ever-increasing body of scientific evidence showing glyphosate biodegrades slowly, sinks down through the topsoil where it accumulates in the groundwater (source for natural drinking water, e.g. aquifers, springs), and is found in nearly all air and rain samples tested in the US, it is safe to say that Monsanto’s best-selling Roundup is one of the greatest threats to human and environmental health ever created.

As the USDA continues to sit back and allow Monsanto to threaten the environmental stability of the planet, it becomes more apparent that the USDA and Monsanto are gladly willing to exchange the future of the planet and its inhabitants for short term gain. In fact, the USDA has even given Monsanto’s latest GMO crops speedier approval in order to secure the company’s profits, ignoring the numerous known harmful effects of Monsanto’s past creations, e.g. Agent Orange, Aspartame, DDT.

The known effects of Roundup

The negative effects of Monsanto’s Roundup on human health and the environment have been firmly established by numerous scientific studies and large-scale investigations, with scientists even linking the best-selling herbicide to conditions like infertility and cancer due to its genotoxic (DNA damaging) nature. Amazingly, even when diluted by 99.8 percent (450-fold lower dilutions than used in agricultural applications), Roundup still exhibits serious genotoxic characteristics and is harmful to the integrity of human DNA. Meanwhile, this carcinogenic herbicide product is used nationwide by unsuspecting homeowners and agricultural workers. According to the United States Geological Survey, 176 million lbs of glyphosate were used in the U.S. in 2007.

Outside of the public health realm, Roundup’s startling environmental havoc is perhaps an even greater cause for concern. Despite being created to fend off weeds, Roundup is actually spawning resistant superweeds across millions of hectares (one hectare is 10,000 square metres), bankrupting farmers and destroying crop land. These resistant weeds currently cover over 4.5 million hectares in the United States alone, though experts estimate the world-wide land coverage to have reached at least 120 million hectares by 2010. The onset of superweeds is being increasingly documented in Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Europe and South Africa.

The research is clear: Roundup is not only harming human health and damaging farmland, it is threatening the very biosphere itself by destroying microbial biodiversity, with the future agricultural stability of the planet, i.e. the ability to produce food through monoculturing, at serious risk of collapsing.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Bill Gates: One of the World’s Most Destructive Do-Gooders?

Posted on March 19, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Above, ABC’s “Nightline,” Bill Weir talks with Microsoft founder Bill Gates about his charitable endeavors.

Gates’ latest plan is to try to end world hunger by growing more genetically modified (GM) crops.

He’s already invested $27 million into Monsanto Company—leading some countries to reject his charity due to the high risks, such as:

New disease vectors
Mutated pesticide-resistant insects
Resistant “superweeds”
Contamination of surrounding non-GM crops

We already know how deeply entrenched the U.S. government has become with Monsanto.

For a visual illustration of their ‘revolving-door-relationship’ with the governmental regulatory agencies, see the graph toward the bottom of this article.

It is this type of government infiltration that allowed genetically engineered alfalfa to be approved without any restrictions at all, despite the protests of the organic community and public comments from a quarter of a million concerned citizens.

In Bill Gates, Monsanto also has one of the wealthiest and most influential “philanthropists” supporting their agenda and spreading misleading propaganda about their products.

In recent years, it has become disappointingly clear that Gates may be leading the pack as one of the most destructive “do-gooders” on the planet… His views on what is required to make a difference in poverty- and disease-stricken third world nations are short-sighted and misinformed at best. A recent article in the Seattle Times joins me in arguing that Bill Gates’ support of genetically modified (GM) crops as a solution for world hunger is based on unsound science. A team of 900 scientists funded by the World Bank and United Nations, investigated the matter over the course of three years, and determined that the use of GM crops is simply NOT a meaningful solution to the complex situation of world hunger.

Instead, the scientists suggested that “agro-ecological” methods would provide the most viable means to ensure global food security, including the use of traditional seed varieties and local farming practices already adapted to the local ecology.

“Philanthropy is the Enemy of Justice”

In a recent article with the same headline, “Philanthropy is the Enemy of Justice”, Robert Newman criticizes the choice of Bill Gates as the designated “voice” of the world’s poor at the World Economic Forum, held in January.

“Am I saying that philanthropy has never done good? No, it has achieved many wonderful things… But beware the havoc that power without oversight and democratic control can wreak,” Newman writes.

“The biotech agriculture that Lord Sainsbury was unable to push through democratically he can now implement unilaterally, through his Gatsby Foundation. We are told that Gatsby’s biotech project aims to provide food security for the global south. But if you listen to southern groups such as the Karnataka State Farmers of India, food security is precisely the reason they campaign against GM, because biotech crops are monocrops which are more vulnerable to disease and so need lashings of petrochemical pesticides, insecticides and fungicides – none of them cheap – and whose ruinous costs will rise with the price of oil, bankrupting small family farms first. Crop diseases mutate, meanwhile, and all the chemical inputs in the world can’t stop disease wiping out whole harvests of genetically engineered single strands.

Both the Gatsby and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundations are keen to get deeper into agriculture, especially in Africa. But top-down nostrums for the rural poor don’t end well.”

I agree. Donating patented seeds, which takes away the farmers’ sovereignty, is not the way to save the third-world poor. As reported by Netline last year, Monsanto and other biotech companies have collaborated with the Gates Foundation via the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to promote the use of genetically modified (GM) crops in Africa. The Gates Foundation has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to AGRA, and in 2006 Robert Horsch was hired for the AGRA project. Horsch was a Monsanto executive for 25 years. In a nutshell, the project may be sold under the banner of altruism and ‘sustainability’, but in reality it’s anything but. It’s just a multi-billion dollar enterprise to transform Africa into a GM-crop-friendly continent.

Conflicts of Interest Abound

Gates’ philanthropic methods came under scrutiny back in August 2010, when it was discovered that The Gates Foundation had purchased 500,000 shares of Monsanto stock; dramatically increasing its previous holdings—and hence its financial conflicts of interest—in the biotech firm. AGRA-Watch commented on the ties stating:

“The Foundation’s direct investment in Monsanto is problematic on two primary levels,” said Dr. Phil Bereano, University of Washington Professor Emeritus and recognized expert on genetic engineering.

“First, Monsanto has a history of blatant disregard for the interests and well-being of small farmers around the world, as well as an appalling environmental track record. The strong connections to Monsanto cast serious doubt on the Foundation’s heavy funding of agricultural development in Africa and purported goal of alleviating poverty and hunger among small-scale farmers. Second, this investment represents an enormous conflict of interests.”

It would be naive to think that all these philanthropic collaborations are designed to solve any problem besides how to help Monsanto monopolize the world’s food supply with expensive patented GM seeds, and the herbicides to go with them.

In the interview above, Gates claims the seeds would be donated to the impoverished areas in question. But seriously, how long would the seeds remain free? There’s rarely such a thing as a free lunch anymore, and it appears highly unlikely that Monsanto is poised to “feed Africa” indefinitely… And since you cannot save Monsanto’s seeds from year to year, they will literally own the areas and the people they temporarily donate their seeds to. And once you own the rights to all the food grown around the globe, you literally rule the world.

That appears to be the goal. And only sane, rational, thinking people can stop them. It’s really too bad that Gates has signed up as a lackey for “the Dark Side,” as it were, instead of using his unfathomable wealth to really create positive, sustainable change.

It’s an undisputed fact at this point that the introduction of genetically engineered crops lead to diminished biodiversity, which is the direct opposite of what the world needs. Truly, in order to save the planet and ourselves, small-scale organic and sustainable farming must not only prevail but flourish, and GM crops do not help, but rather threaten their existence. Seeds have always been sold and swapped freely between farmers, preserving biodiversity, and without that basis, you cannot have food sovereignty. And with fewer farmers, “feeding the hungry with GM crops” is nothing but a pipe dream.

Both Genetically Engineered Seeds and Herbicides Pose Risks to Environment and Human Health

Besides the threat to the environment and to agricultural practices, GM crops also bring a whole host of health concerns; not just from the GM seeds, but also from the herbicide used: Monsanto’s Roundup. It’s the world’s best-selling herbicide, which is designed to be partnered with genetically engineered “Roundup Ready” crops.

According to a shocking report, regulators were aware as early as 1980 that glyphosate, the active chemical ingredient of Roundup, caused birth defects in lab animals. However, the information was not made public. Instead, regulators misled the public about glyphosate’s safety, and with the introduction of Roundup Ready crops, the use of Roundup has skyrocketed.

According to Monsanto. NO:

“Dr. Andres Carrasco, a lead embryologist at the University of Bueno Aires Medical School and the Argentinean national research council, discovered that glyphosate-based herbicides like Monsanto’s Roundup formula caused deformations in chicken embryos that resembled the kind of birth defects which where reported in areas like La Leonesa, where big agribusinesses depend on glyphosate to treat genetically engineered crops.”

Golden Rice: a “Trojan Horse”

The idea that you can end world hunger with genetically engineered crops is simply not very well thought through. Last summer, I reported on The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s donation of $20 million toward the development of so-called “golden rice”—yet another untested GM crop that risks bringing economic and ecological disaster. Golden rice has been genetically engineered to produce beta-carotene, which your body can convert to vitamin A. It’s been promoted as a way to alleviate vitamin A deficiency, which is common in developing countries where people don’t have regular access to beta-carotene-rich foods, like vegetables and fruits.

However, while this sounds all well and good in theory, the reality of a beta-carotene producing rice may not be all it’s cracked up to be. According to Food Freedom:

“Golden rice is a Trojan horse for pushing through GE-friendly biosafety regulations under the guise of humanitarian aid. Once in place, these regulations open the door for the biotech industry to bring in commercial, patented GE crops; USAID and Monsanto accomplished exactly this in Kenya with their sweet potato project.”

It may be easier to see why so many people question this kind of philanthropy once you understand a bit more about the product itself, and why it likely cannot ever live up to its own hype. In this case, your body can only convert beta-carotene to vitamin A under certain conditions. Specifically, beta-carotene is fat-soluble, which means dietary fat is required for your body to convert it into vitamin A. But many people in developing countries eat very low-fat diets, as they simply do not have access to animal foods or other fat on a regular basis. Furthermore, malnourished people might not be able to convert beta carotene to vitamin A efficiently, so taken as a whole, the actual usefulness of golden rice is debatable.

The soundness of the idea becomes even more questionable when you consider the unrealistic amounts of rice you’d have to consume each day to obtain the recommended amount of vitamin A. As stated in a golden rice case study from Iowa State University:

“Even if golden rice is successfully introduced … a woman would need to eat 16 lbs. of cooked rice every day in order to get sufficient Vitamin A, if golden rice were her only source of the nutrient. A child would need 12 lbs.” [Emphasis mine]

What people in the developing world need in order to receive ample dietary vitamin A is access to a diverse range of nutritious foods — including animal products like eggs, cheese and meat and vegetables such as dark leafy greens and sweet potatoes. This is the type of diet that is attained from biodiverse farming — the opposite of what will occur if GM crops like golden rice get planted on a large scale.

Learn More about Genetically Engineered Foods

Many Americans are still unfamiliar with what GE foods are, which is understandable when you consider that these foods do not need to be labeled in the U.S. We have a plan to change that, and I urge you to participate, and to continue learning more about genetically engineered foods and associated risks, and help your friends and family do the same.

An even better strategy is to simply buy USDA 100% Organic products whenever possible, (as these do not permit GM ingredients) or buy whole fresh produce and meat from local farmers. The majority of the GMO’s (genetically modified organism) you’re exposed to are via processed foods, so by cooking from scratch with whole foods, you can be sure you’re not inadvertently consuming something laced with GM ingredients. When you do purchase processed food, avoid products containing anything related to corn or soy that are not 100 percent organic, as any foods containing these two non-organic ingredients are virtually guaranteed to contain genetically engineered ingredients, as well as toxic herbicide residues.

To learn more about GM foods, I highly recommend number of great films and lectures available, including:

Hidden Dangers in Kid’s Meals
Your Milk on Drugs – Just Say No!
Everything You Have to Know About Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods

Does Monsanto “Own” the U.S. Government?

Is sure seems like it at times. Genetically engineered seeds are now banned in Hungary, as they are in several other European countries, such as Germany and Ireland. Peru is also following the precautionary principle, and has even passed a law that bans genetically modified ingredients within the nation for 10 years.

In the U.S., however, the opposite to consumer protection is taking place, with certain states actually passing legislation that protects the use of GM seeds and allows for unabated expansion! To date, 14 states have passed such legislation and Michigan’s Sen. Bill 777, if passed, would make that 15.

The Michigan bill would prevent anti-GMO laws and would remove “any authority local governments may have to adopt and enforce ordinances that prohibit or regulate the labeling, sale, storage, transportation, distribution, use, or planting of agricultural, vegetable, flower or forest tree seeds.” Bills like these are obviously music to Monsanto’s ears, which spends millions of dollars lobbying the U.S. government at the federal level for favorable legislation that supports the spread of their toxic products. In the first quarter of 2011 alone, Monsanto spent $1.4 million on lobbying the federal government — a drop from the year before, when they spent $2.5 million during the same quarter.

If we all had several million to spend on lobbying efforts, the world would undoubtedly be a very different place… If you aren’t familiar with the power of lobbying please view the recent 60 minutes expansion on it, which is one of the best 60 Minute episodes I have seen in 40 years.

Not only that, but once you realize just how many of Monsanto’s employees have simply shifted into positions of power within the federal government, it suddenly becomes easy to understand how this biotech giant has managed to so successfully undermine common sense within the U.S. government.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Afghanistan Massacre by U.S. Sergeant reveals Epidemic of Psychiatric Drugging of Soldiers

Posted on March 19, 2012 by andreas m

By: Mike Adams
Source: NaturalNews.com

The recent massacre of 16 civilians in Afghanistan by a rampaging U.S. military sergeant has something in common with nearly every school shooting in the USA — something the mainstream media typically refuses to report: These shooters frequently have a history of psychiatric drug “treatment” by psychiatrists.

Psychiatric drugs are now being routinely used across the U.S. military, where violent suicides have skyrocketed to levels never before seen in human history. 18 veterans commit suicide every day, says this NaturalNews article reprinted on CCHR: http://www.cchrint.org/2011/06/04/18-u-s-veterans-commit-suicide-dail…

The story reports:

Prior to the Iraq war, American soldiers in combat zones did not take psychiatric medications, according to PBS Frontline documentary The Wounded Platoon, which aired in May 2010. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/woundedplatoon/etc/synopsis.h…) But by the time of the 2007 surge more than 20,000 of our deployed troops were taking antidepressants and sleeping pills. These drugs allowed soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder to remain in combat when they otherwise could not. “What I use medications for is to treat very specific side effects,” said Army psychiatrist Col. George Brandt. “I don’t want somebody in a helpless mode in a combat environment. I want to make sure I don’t have someone with suicidal thoughts where everyone is armed.”

PTSD, TBI routinely treated with a cocktail of mind-altering drugs

In the military today, soldiers who suffer TBIs — Traumatic Brain Injuries — routinely receive treatment with mind-altering psychiatric drugs. As reported in WIRED:

In an interview with ABC News on Monday, an unnamed source claimed that the sergeant suffered a TBI sometime in a past deployment, either by “hitting his head on the hatch of a vehicle or in a car accident.” A subsequent story from Reuters reported that the TBI occurred as recently as 2010. The alleged shooter is said to have later undergone TBI-specific treatment at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, before being cleared for duty and then redeployed. He also reportedly passed typical behavioral health assessments during his enlistment.

TBI’s are known as the “signature wounds” of soldiers in the Middle East, reports WIRED, where an astonishing 200,000 soldiers have already been diagnosed with the condition. They are routinely treated with psychiatric drugs that have known side effects of promoting violence.

In 2010, WIRED reported
(http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/09/troops-popping-anxiety-depres…):

An untold number of active-duty troops and recent veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming home with mental health conditions inflicted during service — and their spouses and children are suffering too. Now, with solid data slowly emerging from the nearly decade-long wars, the severity of the crisis is starting to show.

The use of psychiatric medications among 18 to 34-year-olds (both troops and their spouses) soared by 42 percent between 2005 and 2009, Army Times is reporting.

Many of the drugs prescribed by military doctors, like Paxil and Zoloft, are also accompanied by warnings about an increased risk of suicide. The danger has already caught the military’s eye, with Army Gen. Peter Ciarelli noting in a recent report that the Army ought to “conduct research to identify appropriate antidepressant medications that are beneficial to the treatment of depression and anxiety, but that will not increase risk for suicidal behavior.”

Psychiatric drug use explodes across the military

NavyTimes reports that psychiatric drug use is skyrocketing among military personnel, and that violent behavior (suicides) is a well-known side effect
(http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/09/military-psych-meds-080910/):

Prescriptions for stimulants, including amphetamines and drugs to treat attention-deficit disorders, more than doubled. And claims for anti-psychotics like Seroquel and Abilify nearly doubled from 2005 to 2009 among beneficiaries ages 18 to 34, the Tricare data show. Seroquel is often used to treat nightmares and sleeping problems related to post-traumatic stress disorder.

The rise — and potential dangers — of psychiatric drug use is a growing concern for many military officials and doctors.

“A lot of neurotransmitters” are involved when troops suffer from complex combinations of mild traumatic brain injury, PTSD, depression, anxiety and substance abuse issues, he said. Cocktails of psychiatric drugs can, in some cases, cause patients to get worse, doctors say.

Army Gen. Peter Chiarelli on July 29 issued a report about the Army’s spike in suicides, noting that some psychiatric drugs — including Paxil and Zoloft, the only two approved for PTSD — come with warnings about the potential for increased risk for suicide.

A shockingly large portion of U.S. military personnel are on multiple mind-altering prescriptions: Narcotics, antidepressants, antipsychotics and more

One Defense Department report reveals that an astonishing 20 percent of U.S. troops are on psychiatric drugs, and that they are often handed as much as a 180-day supply of those pills before being deployed. From:
http://psychiatricnews.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/us-troops-on-psychiat…

A June 2010 internal report from the Defense Department’s Pharmacoeconomic Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio showed that 213,972, or 20 percent of the 1.1 million active-duty troops surveyed, were taking some form of psychotropic drug: antidepressants, antipsychotics, sedative hypnotics, or other controlled substances. Dr. Greg Smith, who runs the Los Angeles-based Comprehensive Pain Relief Group, said he was shocked by CENTCOM’s drug policy for deployed troops. “If I was a commander I’d worry about what these troops would do,” as a result of their medications, Smith said.

Even the New York Times has covered the epidemic of psychiatric drugs on U.S. troops. In an article entitled, “For Some Troops, Powerful Drug Cocktails Have Deadly Results” (February 12, 2011), the paper reports:

Airman Mena died instead in his Albuquerque apartment, on July 21, 2009, five months after leaving the Air Force on a medical discharge. A toxicologist found eight prescription medications in his blood, including three antidepressants, a sedative, a sleeping pill and two potent painkillers.

Yet his death was no suicide, the medical examiner concluded. What killed Airman Mena was not an overdose of any one drug, but the interaction of many. He was 23.

After a decade of treating thousands of wounded troops, the military’s medical system is awash in prescription drugs — and the results have sometimes been deadly.

The story goes on to warn about the risk of suicides (a violent act, obviously) caused by the interaction of multiple psychiatric drugs:

By some estimates, well over 300,000 troops have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan with P.T.S.D., depression, traumatic brain injury or some combination of those. The Pentagon has looked to pharmacology to treat those complex problems, following the lead of civilian medicine. As a result, psychiatric drugs have been used more widely across the military than in any previous war.

But those medications, along with narcotic painkillers, are being increasingly linked to a rising tide of other problems, among them drug dependency, suicide and fatal accidents — sometimes from the interaction of the drugs themselves. An Army report on suicide released last year documented the problem, saying one-third of the force was on at least one prescription medication.

U.S. soldiers are prescribed a cocktail of mind-altering drugs

• Antidepressants
• Sedatives
• Narcotic painkillers
• Sleeping pills
• Anti-psychotics

One-third of the U.S. Army is now taking at least one medication, reports the New York Times, and many are on a toxic combination of pharmaceutical cocktails. This is especially true among those diagnosed and treated for PTSD, TBI or other forms of “mental illness.”

But rather than offering them real treatment, the recipe for the U.S. military today is to “drug ‘em and send ‘em back to battle.” So now we have active-duty troops operating in Afghanistan who are ticking time bombs of psychiatric medications.

When those time bombs go off, we get suicides, accidents and even the occasional massacre of innocent civilians.

Safer alternatives are available

The U.S. military has begun to investigate battlefield acupuncture and is seeing outstanding results. Watch this extraordinary video showing battlefield acupuncture working for active duty military personnel in Afghanistan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmPJKO2Gxsg&noredirect=1

Even MSNBC has covered the story, reporting:

Now the Air Force, which runs the military’s only acupuncture clinic, is training doctors to take acupuncture to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. A pilot program starting in March will prepare 44 Air Force, Navy and Army doctors to use acupuncture as part of emergency care in combat and in frontline hospitals, not just on bases back home.

They will learn “battlefield acupuncture,” a method Niemtzow developed in 2001 that’s derived from traditional ear acupuncture but uses the short needles to better fit under combat helmets so soldiers can continue their missions with the needles inserted to relieve pain. The needles are applied to five points on the outer ear. Niemtzow says most of his patients say their pain decreases within minutes.

Col. Arnyce Pock, medical director for the Air Force Medical Corps, said acupuncture comes without the side effects that are common after taking traditional painkillers. Acupuncture also quickly treats pain.

“It allows troops to reduce the number of narcotics they take for pain, and have a better assessment of any underlying brain injury they may have,” Pock said. “When they’re on narcotics, you can’t do that because they’re feeling the effects of the drugs.”

Source:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28930238/ns/us_news-military/t/air-force-…

The U.S. Department of Defense has even promoted the use of acupuncture as a safe, natural alternative to dangerous (deadly) narcotics and other drugs. As reported at Defense.gov:

“The Air Force Acupuncture Center is the first facility of its kind in DOD ever,” Air Force Col. (Dr.) John Baxter said. “It is a full-time acupuncture facility, and not only is it here to treat patients, it’s here to teach other providers and to do research.” Baxter is director of the Pentagon Flight Medicine Clinic and a credentialed acupuncturist. Acupuncture is being used as a treatment everywhere in the Defense Department, “but the Air Force led the way with two formal training programs of 20 physicians each,” Baxter said. “The Navy has one training program with 20 physicians and efforts are underway to have another tri-service training program.”

Source: http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=62053

What will happen if we keep drugging our soldiers? More violence, suicides and massacres

Alternatives are available for many mental health problems experienced by U.S. troops, but mark my words: If the U.S. government continues to subject its troops to the deadly, dangerous medications pumped out by Big Pharma, we will see more violent massacres, more suicides, more deaths, and a wave of liver failure and kidney failure in veterans. The drugging of troops today creates a windfall of future profits for Big Pharma as the side effects of all these drugs fully kick in.

What these troops don’t realize is while they think they’re “serving their country” for a noble cause, in truth they are often inadvertently serving as Big Pharma’s guinea pig profit centers, where every human body is yet another opportunity for profit as long as a lifetime of disease and drug dependence can be forced upon innocents. And in the wake of all those profits will only be found a long line of violence, murder and body bags.

Such is the scourge of psychiatric medications on the battlefield.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

The “Safe” Garden Product that Can Destroy Your DNA

Posted on March 18, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Have you ever used Roundup to kill weeds in your lawn or garden?

As the most widely used herbicide in the United States, there’s a good chance you have.

In fact, millions of pounds are used every year on U.S. gardens, lawns and, extensively on farms growing genetically modified (GM) “Roundup Ready” crops.

You may forget about the herbicide soon after you spray it — and may never give it a second thought when consuming corn chips or countless processed foods that contain GM Roundup Ready corn and soy — but it doesn’t just magically disappear.

Instead, new research is showing that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, is contaminating everything from food and air to groundwater and even human beings.

Glyphosate Now Detected in Human Urine

Research in the German journal Ithaca revealed significant concentrations of glyphosate in the urine samples of city dwellers.

The chemical is used not only for food production, but also is often sprayed onto railway lines, urban pavements and roadsides.

The article revealed that study participants had concentrations of glyphosate that were 5 to 20 times the limit for drinking water!

This is an alarming finding because glyphosate is easily one of the world’s most overlooked poisons. Research published in 2010 showed that the chemical, which works by inhibiting an enzyme called EPSP synthase that is necessary for plants to grow, causes birth defects in frogs and chicken embryos at far lower levels than used in agricultural and garden applications.

The malformations primarily affected the:

Skull
Face
Midline and developing brain
Spinal cord

Quite shockingly, the amount of glyphosate residue you can be exposed to through food is remarkably high, in terms of being close to the maximum residue limit (MRL) allowed. According to a report in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology, the highest MRL for glyphosate in food and feed products in the EU is 20 mg/kg. GM soybeans have been found to contain residue levels as high as 17 mg/kg, and malformations in frog and chicken embryos occurred at 2.03 mg/kg!

That’s 10 times lower than the MRL.

Other independent scientific research has also found that glyphosate has the potential to cause grave health damage, including a 2009 study that tested formulations of Roundup that were highly diluted (up to 100,000 times or more) on human cells, and even then the cells died within 24 hours!

The researchers hailed a warning cry that still has not been heard by regulators around the world, who continue to allow massive amounts of Roundup to be sprayed into the environment:

” … the proprietary mixtures available on the market could cause cell damage and even death around residual levels to be expected, especially in food and feed derived from [Roundup] formulation-treated crops.”

Not to mention, when applied to crops glyphosate becomes systemic throughout the plant, so it cannot be washed off. And once you eat this crop, the glyphosate ends up in your gut where it can decimate your beneficial bacteria. This can wreak havoc with your health as 80 percent of your immune system resides in your gut (GALT – Gut Associated Lymph Tissue) and is dependent on a healthy ratio of good and bad bacteria! Separate research has also uncovered the following effects from glyphosate:

What Happened to Monsanto’s Claims That Roundup is “Biodegradable” and “Environmentally Friendly”?

It is apparent the chemical is not only persisting in the environment, it’s persisting at alarmingly high levels, despite Monsanto’s claims to the contrary. (In 2009, a French court upheld two earlier convictions against Monsanto for false advertising.)

The overall quantity of glyphosate in the environment has been difficult to analyze due to its physicochemical properties, such as its relatively low molecular weight and low organic solvent solubility. Furthermore, since the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) stopped updating its pesticide use database in 2008, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to estimate how much glyphosate is actually used in the US, but the following 2006-2007 market usage estimates were reported by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2011:

Agricultural market used 180 to 185 million pounds of glyphosate
Home and garden market: 5 to 8 million pounds
Industry, commerce and government: 13 to 15 million pounds

It’s safe to say that usage has increased steadily since these estimates were made, rising right along with the acreage of GM crops. And now the environment and our bodies are paying the price.

One recent study used a magnetic particle immunoassay to test for the presence of glyphosate in roughly 140 samples of groundwater from Catalonia, Spain. The analysis found that glyphosate was present above the limit of quantification in 41 percent of the samples. Of course, because groundwater is used as a drinking water source, this contamination poses a risk to animals, plants and humans alike.

The chemical was also detected in 60 to 100 percent of all air and rain samples tested during two growing seasons in Mississippi and Iowa, which lends further credence to the fact that Roundup does not readily break down in the environment, but rather is lingering all around us. Along with the potential implications for human and animal health, the chemical is also linked to a number of devastating environmental consequences, including Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS), a serious plant disease, and the creation of superweeds.

Today there are more than 750 products in the United States that contain glyphosate, and the problems to human health and the environment are only slated to get worse if drastic changes are not made in the massive use of Roundup herbicide across the United States.

You Can Help Curb the Use of Glyphosate by Avoiding GMOs

It’s important to avoid the use of Roundup on your lawn and garden, but on a larger scale the best way to fight back against this chemical is by boycotting the GM crops that were developed for its use. Several organizations, including Mercola.com, the Organic Consumers Association, the Institute for Responsible Technology, and the Environmental Working Group, are working to generate a tipping point of consumer rejection to make GMOs a thing of the past.

Here’s how you can get involved:

If you live in California and are willing to attend a short training session and then start collecting petition signatures (you will be part of a team of 2-4 people) for the California Ballot Initiative, sign up here. (For more information see: The California Ballot Initiative: Taking Down Monsanto.) Also remember to share this information with family and friends in California!
Whether you live in California or not, please donate money to this historic effort
Distribute WIDELY the Non-GMO Shopping Guide to help you identify and avoid foods with GMOs. Look for products (including organic products) that feature the Non-GMO Project Verified Seal to be sure that at-risk ingredients have been tested for GMO content. You can also download the free iPhone application that is available in the iTunes store. You can find it by searching for ShopNoGMO in the applications.

In the meantime, the simplest way to avoid GM foods is to buy whole, certified organic foods. By definition, foods that are certified organic must never intentionally use GM organisms, must be produced without artificial pesticides and fertilizers and come from an animal reared without the routine use of antibiotics, growth promoters or other drugs. Additionally, grass-fed beef will not have been fed GM corn feed, although now that GM alfalfa is approved, grass-fed will not always mean GMO free.

You can also look for foods that are ”non-GMO verified” by the Non-GMO Project.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Do This – or You Could Soon be Eating an “Agent Orange” for Dinner

Posted on March 18, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Mark Kastel, founder of the farm policy research group Cornucopia, is deeply dedicated to making sure we have high-quality food and that we’re not being deceived about what we’re eating.

Here, we discuss Agent Orange, and one of its active ingredients, which is now creeping into our food supply.

As described by Kastel, Cornucopia’s mission is:

“To empower farmers, consumers, and wholesale buyers with information, so that they can make good, discerning purchasing decisions in the marketplace.

Among other things, we act as an organic industry watchdog to preserve the integrity and authenticity of the organic label and products to make sure that it remains to be a true marketplace alternative for people who want safer and more nutritious food.”

Agent Orange Ingredient Headed Toward Your Plate?

To most people, “Agent Orange” is synonymous with the Vietnam war.

Many veterans suffered permanent side effects from their exposure to this potent defoliant, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese children have been born with serious birth defects as a result of its use during the war.

Now, one of the active ingredients in Agent Orange, 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), a broadleaf herbicide, may be introduced directly into our food supply, because weeds are becoming increasingly resistant to Monsanto’s broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup, which is used in massive quantities on all genetically engineered Roundup Ready crops. It’s estimated that more than 130 types of weeds spanning 40 U.S. states are now herbicide-resistant, and they’re showing no signs of stopping. In fact, the situation is getting progressively worse.

“Agent Orange was an herbicide used to defoliate the jungles in Vietnam and South East Asia, which also include a myriad of other incredibly toxic chemicals that we know had profound deleterious effect on the health of the indigenous people who lived in South East Asia and to our veterans who served there,” Kastel says. Now we see one of these ingredients, 2,4-D, introduced [into our food supply] because the Dow Company… is introducing a new genetically engineered corn plant that “will be resistant to 2,4-D.”

Yes, Dow AgroSciences (a subsidiary of Dow Chemicals), which was one of the original manufacturers of Agent Orange, has developed a new generation of genetically modified (GM) crops called “Enlist”, designed to resist not just one, but THREE different herbicides: glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup), glufosinate, and 2,4-D, in the same way that Monsanto’s Roundup-Ready crops are resistant to glyphosate.

After a mere 15 years’ worth of consistent use on Roundup Ready crops, vast areas are now overrun with glyphosate-resistant superweeds that can’t be destroyed. What makes them think triple-resistant crops are going to be any better, or produce different end results?

Why “Agent Orange”-Resistant Crops are a BAD Idea

Interestingly enough, the use of 2,4-D is not new, as it is actually one of the most widely used herbicides in the world. What is new is that once staple crops like soy and corn that are engineered to be resistant to 2,4-D begin to flourish, the herbicide will be applied to U.S. farm land on an unprecedented scale — not unlike its indiscriminate application during Vietnam.

There are also some other unanswered questions relating to this new breed of 2,4-D-resistant crops.

“The curious part about this – we had to do some research to understand, and I don’t know if we fully understand it yet – is that corn is naturally resistant to 2,4-D, and that 2,4-D has been used as a corn herbicide, a post-emergent herbicide for decades,” Kastel says.

“This is legal, perfectly legal; even though we know that there are profound negative impacts to human health, and that this chemical residue ends up in our food system, in our soil and water, and ends up creating serious occupational exposures and risks for the people who produce our food; it’s still licensed by the EPA and approved for use by the USDA on our food crops.

The curious part is, if corn is already resistant to 2,4-D, why are they injecting that genetically engineered cultivar?

The answer seems to be that there might be some incremental level of benefit in that. Right now there are application windows, certain times during crop growth, that it would probably not kill the plant but stunt its growth. [With approval] the restrictions on the spraying will be relieved.

If this takes off—if Dow can convince agronomists, extension services, extension agents, universities (where they spend a lot of money), and farmers that this is a better seed with a potential for higher yields, we’re going to see really large increases in the application of 2,4-D in our countryside.”

Of course, the whole point of engineering resistance to an herbicide within a plant is so that you can “carpet bomb” an entire field, leaving only your GM crop standing. If 2,4-D resistant crops receive approval and eventually replace Monsanto’s failing Roundup-resistant crops as Dow intends, it is likely that billions of pounds of 2,4-D will be needed, on top of the already insane levels of Roundup being used (1.6 billion lbs were used in 2007 in the US alone!).

2,4-D—Do You Really Want to Feed this to Your Kids?

Ironically, while Dow’s new crops would seriously escalate the use of 2,4-D, Monsanto is currently facing a class-action lawsuit involving another Agent Orange ingredient: 2,4,5-T. The suit alleges that homes and schools near one of its 2,4,5-T chemical plants are now contaminated with cancer-causing dioxin, a byproduct of the manufacturing process.

This should be a wake-up call to those considering widespread application of any toxic Agent Orange ingredient.

And let’s be clear. The EPA acknowledges that 2,4-D is far from a benign chemical.

Researchers have linked it to increased cancer risks, especially soft tissue sarcoma and malignant lymphoma. No less than four American studies have found an association between chlorophenoxy herbicide use (such as 2,4-D) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. EPA researchers have also discovered higher rates of birth defects in countries with high rates of 2,4-D application to farm fields. In fact, birth defects were 60 to 90 percent more likely in such countries, and birth defects were also found to peak in babies conceived in the spring, when fields were being sprayed the most. The most common birth defects included defects of the respiratory and circulatory systems, and musculoskeletal defects such as clubfoot, fused digits and extra digits.

If that’s not bad enough, consider this EPA summary of 2,4-D:

“Health effects of chronic or acute 2,4-D exposure reported for adults included blood, liver, and kidney toxicity. Specific effects included a reduction in hemoglobin and red blood cell numbers, decreased liver enzyme activity, and increased kidney weight. Acute exposure can result in skin and eye irritation. Acute exposure to very high concentrations of 2,4-D can cause the following clinical symptoms: stupor; coma; coughing; burning sensations in lungs; loss of muscular coordination; nausea; vomiting; or dizziness.

Experimental animal studies of chronic oral exposure have reported adverse effects on the eye, thyroid, kidney, adrenals, adrenals, and ovaries/testes. In addition, some experimental animal studies have reported teratogenic effects (birth defects) at high doses, including increased fetal death, urinary tract malformation, and extra ribs.

When adult female experimental animals were exposed to 2,4-D during their pregnancy and lactation periods, their exposed offspring exhibited neurological effects, including delayed neurobehavioral development and changes in several neurotransmitter levels or binding activities and ganglioside levels in the brain. Delayed neurobehavioral development was manifested as delays in acquisition of certain motor skills such as the righting reflex.”

The EASIEST Way to Protect the Health of Your Family…

So, what can you do to protect your health and the health of your family from the ever growing threats posed by genetically engineered foods and mounting herbicide use? Kastel says it well:

“Don’t panic. Go organic.”

Yes, it’s getting increasingly difficult to keep tabs of what’s being added to the food supply, and trying to keep track of everything to avoid can be a daunting task. It’s much easier to simply switch to organic foods; bypassing all the concerns about processed food ingredients, chemical residues on conventionally-grown fresh produce, and the multi-layered hazards related to genetically engineered foods, whether fresh or processed.

By definition, foods that are certified organic must never intentionally use GM organisms, must be produced without artificial pesticides and fertilizers and come from an animal reared without the routine use of antibiotics, growth promoters or other drugs. Additionally, grass-fed beef will not have been fed GM corn feed, although now that GM alfalfa is approved, grass-fed will not always mean GMO free.

“There aren’t that many things that we can totally take control over in terms of our health and our future health and the health of our offspring, but pure food and pure water is one of those,” Kastel says.

“We know that there has been peer-reviewed research that indicates a demonstratively lower level of any kind of contamination in organic food… Peer-reviewed literature clearly illustrates its nutritional superiority. On a micro basis, we need to protect ourselves and our families. It really contributes to the richness and quality of life, because organic food tastes better. And in terms of an investment, what could be a better investment than the health and well-being of your family?

We should also become politically involved, because what’s so insidious is that these novel genes permeate our environment. They can even contaminate organic food. We need to be activists.”

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Do You Have ANY Idea How Absurd U.S. Farm Subsidies Are?

Posted on March 16, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

If you’re like many Americans, when you think of farm subsidies you think of rolling green pastures, fields of golden wheat and corn, and a hillside full of cattle peacefully meandering through the grass.

The farmer, a “salt of the earth” type with weathered skin, depends on his farm subsidy to keep food on his table and, more importantly, to keep his farm afloat, allowing for the rest of the population to put food on their tables too.

This is how it should be — but this is not reality.

Millionaires Receive the Majority of Farm Subsidies

A more accurate picture, as summarized concisely in the Organic Consumers Association video above, is this: those “real” farmers, the ones who truly need it, receive only a few thousand dollars a year, maybe less, while the rest serves to line the pockets of the millionaire “farmers” who own massive factory farms and who have probably rarely spent a day with their hands in the dirt.

According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), between 1995 and 2010:

10 percent of farmers collected 74 percent of all subsidies, amounting to nearly $166 billion over 16 years
62 percent of U.S. farmers did not collect subsidy payments
The bottom 80 percent of recipients averaged just $587 a year

Now, if you look at the leading recipients of commodity subsidies, you’ll see the highest earners received payments numbering in the hundreds of millions from 1995-2010 for the top three! Unfortunately, the USDA is far from transparent with their subsidy data, and EWG was not able to track down who is actually receiving this money, as recipients of payments made through most cooperatives, and the amounts, have not been made public.

However, as EWG explained, it is clear that many of the recipients are not exactly losing their shirts over a dip in market prices for grain: As critics have put it, this is essentially giving “welfare to millionaires.”

” … despite lawmakers’ boasts of enacting major reforms in the 2008 farm bill, the new data clearly show that wealthy absentee land owners and mega farms awash in record income are once again the main beneficiaries of federal farm programs – while struggling family farmers go begging.

And once again, the database shows that many farm subsidy recipients get those fat government checks at addresses in New York City, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles – not exactly farm country, and a far cry from the programs’ original intent. … The database revealed, for example, that Florida real estate developer Maurice Wilder, reportedly worth $500 million, was pulling in almost $1 million a year in farm subsidies for corn farms he owns in several states.”

And Then There are the Recipients Who are Not Even Farmers at All …

The absurdity of federal farm subsidies gets worse still, as even non-farmers who moved into residential areas that once were farmland have received farm subsidy payments from the government, as have wealthy farmers who have received annual payments even when they are no longer growing the subsidized crop.

In 2008, the “actively engaged” rule was put forth specifically to nip this type of fraud in the bud. As its name implies, only those who are “actively engaged” in farming are supposed to be receiving the subsidies. But, alas, when EWG released its updated database in 2011, they found no changes to the status quo:

“Despite this rule, subsidies still line the pockets of absentee land owners and investors living in every major American city. In 2010, 7,767 residents of just five Texas cities – Lubbock, Amarillo, Austin, San Angelo and Corpus Christi – collected $61,748,945 in taxpayer-funded subsidies. Residents of Lubbock booked $24,839,154 in payments, putting it at the top of cities with 100,000+ populations that are home to farm subsidy recipients. The phenomenon of urban residents receiving federal farm payments remains widespread and coast-to-coast.”

Mega-Farms Receive Fixed Annual Cash Payments, Whether They Need Them or Not

You may also be surprised to learn that while farm subsidies initially were created to protect staple crops during times of war, reduce crop surpluses and provide monetary support to farmers when crop prices fell, today mega-farms receive subsidies whether they need them or not.

The transition away from a needs-based system came in 1996, when lawmakers developed a “market transition” payment system for farmers. The idea was to phase out the subsidies over a seven-year transition period, during which farmers would receive an annual fixed cash payment based upon the number of acres on the farm (these direct payments were given as long as the land was not developed — even if nothing was planted).

Of course, this ensures that the largest farms also receive the largest payments, and contrary to its original intent, the payments have not declined annually nor has the program gone away. It still exists today. EWG reported:

“Farm programs turned into a cash crop for big agribusinesses, which co-opted federal policy and turned it into a perennial giveaway that disproportionately benefits large landowners and wealthy farm operations. And that remains the reality today.

The industrial agriculture lobby has been defending the controversial “direct payment” form of taxpayer-funded subsidies ever since they were first authorized. These fixed, automatic checks go out every year to the largest growers of commodity crops, such as corn and cotton, whether farmers need them or not and despite the fact that farm household income has eclipsed average U.S. household income. Farm income for the largest operations, in particular, has soared sky high.”

Subsidies Support Junk Food Diets, Chronic Disease and Environmentally Devastating CAFOs

The farm subsidy program is upside down not only in which farmers it chooses to support, but also in which foods it funds. Have you ever noticed that it’s often cheaper to buy a loaf of bread than a pound of broccoli or even a pound of ground beef than a similar amount of green peppers? Or have you wondered how you can get a value meal at numerous fast-food restaurants for far less money than it takes to purchase foods to make a healthy meal, such as organic chicken and fresh veggies, for your family at home?

Perhaps this disparity has struck you as odd. After all, what makes vegetables more expensive than bread or meat? It’s clearly nothing inherent to their growing requirements. Instead, it’s the direct result of government farm subsidies, which favor the very foods you should eat less of if you want to stay healthy.

The top four most heavily subsidized foods? Corn, wheat, soybeans and rice.

By subsidizing these, particularly corn and soy, the U.S. government is actively supporting a diet that consists of these grains in their processed form, namely high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), soybean oil, and grain-fed cattle – all of which are now well-known contributors to obesity and chronic diseases.

Many of these subsidized grain crops are also used for animal feed, animals raised on confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). As it stands, 2 percent of U.S. livestock facilities produce 40 percent of farm animals, and these large, corporate-owned CAFOs have been highly promoted as the best way to produce food for the masses (beef is also the seventh most heavily subsidized food). In reality, it has lead to an abundance of cheap food, but not without serious consequences:

Loss of water quality through nitrogen and phosphorus contamination in rivers, streams and ground water (which contributes to “dramatic shifts in aquatic ecosystems and hypoxic zones”)
Agricultural pesticide contamination to streams, ground water and wells, and safety concerns to agricultural workers who use them
A decline in nutrient density of 43 garden crops (primarily vegetables, which suggests “possible tradeoffs between yield and nutrient content)
Large emission of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide
Negative impact on soil quality through such factors as erosion, compaction, pesticide application and excessive fertilization

A classic video on the U.S. government’s fatally flawed agricultural subsidy programs, and how they affect your nutritional choices and health, is “How to Get Fat Without Really Trying” with Peter Jennings. Although it’s several years old and Peter has passed away, the video still speaks the truth because virtually nothing has changed. If anything, the situation has actually worsened.

Help Prompt Change by Supporting Small Organic Farmers

It may be tempting to buy the cheap foods that the government is “paying you” to eat … but this choice will come back to haunt you in the form of health problems and increased medical bills later on. Try as they may, industry lobbyists still cannot force you to buy subsidized junk foods and foods raised in unhealthy “agribusiness” conditions. The choice is entirely yours, and consumer demand will always win eventually, so the more you demand healthy, unadulterated foods, the more they must produce, one way or another.

I strongly encourage you to support small family farms in your area, especially those that are embracing organic and traditional farming practices. These are the real farmers who need your support, and who are growing food that will nurture your health instead of harm it.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

The One and Only Way You Can Tell if a Food is GMO-Free

Posted on March 14, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

A bill has recently been introduced in the Vermont state legislature that would require food to be labeled as genetically engineered if it is entirely or partially produced with genetically engineered ingredients.

If passed, the bill, H.722, also known as the ‘VT Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act’, will take effect in 2014.

The bill also forbids any such food from using advertising or promotional material that states or implies that the food is:

“natural”
“naturally made”
“naturally grown”
“all natural,” or
Any words of similar meaning

According to the language of the bill, it would require:

“… in the case of a raw agricultural commodity, on the package offered for retail sale … the clear and conspicuous words, ‘genetically engineered’ on the front of the package … [or] on a label appearing on the retail store shelf or bin in which such commodity is displayed for sale.

… in the case of any processed food, in clear and conspicuous language on the front or back of the package … the words, ‘partially produced with genetic engineering’ or ‘may be partially produced with genetic engineering’”.

More U.S. States Starting to Demand Labeling of GM Foods

Finally we’re starting to see some real opposition against genetically engineered foods in general, and unlabeled GMO’s (genetically modified organisms) in particular, in the U.S.! Aside from this Vermont bill, California, Michigan and Washington are also working on ballot initiatives to get mandatory labeling of genetically modified (GM) foods in their states. Vermont takes it a step further though, as the legislation would effectively also end phony “all natural” claims for products that in actuality contain wholly unnatural, GMOs.

Personally, I believe GM foods must be banned entirely, but labeling is the most efficient way to achieve this. Since 85 percent of the public will refuse to buy foods they know to be genetically modified, this will effectively eliminate them from the market just the way it was done in Europe.

Sheer ignorance on the part of American consumers has allowed Monsanto and other biotech companies to saturate the market with their genetically altered wares. And misuse of the “all natural” label has only made matters worse. According to a 2010 Hartman Group poll, more than 60 percent of consumers erroneously believe that the “natural” label implies or suggests the absence of GM ingredients, but that is sadly NOT the case… In fact, at the current time, the ONLY label that can protect you against GM ingredients is the USDA 100% Organic label.

After reading the Cornucopia Institutes’ 2011 report Cereal Crimes, many, including myself, were shocked to discover some of their favorite natural and even some organic brands were using GM ingredients! For example, natural products that contained 100 percent genetically modified grains included:

Two breakfast cereal products that are currently enrolled in the Non-GMO Project, Barbara’s Bakery’s Puffins and Whole Foods’ 365® Corn Flakes, contained more than 50 percent GM corn. Meanwhile, the control, Nature’s Path® USDA certified organic corn flakes, contained only trace amounts of GM contamination (less than 0.5 percent). Another sign that American consumers are getting fed up with being stonewalled on the GMO labeling issue is the fact that lawsuits are starting to crop up, accusing food manufacturers of deceptive and misleading practices over their “all natural” claims. Here are just a couple of recent examples:

Frito-Lay is being sued by a New York consumer over their ‘all natural’ snacks that are actually made using GM ingredients, such as Tostitos and SunChips
On August 31, 2011, a class action lawsuit was filed against Kellogg/Kashi® for allegedly misleading consumers with its “natural” claims. One Kashi® product in particular, GoLean® Shakes, is composed almost entirely of synthetic and unnaturally processed ingredients, according to the plaintiff

Why We MUST Insist on Mandatory Labeling of GM Foods

As I said earlier, mandatory labeling may be the only way to stop the proliferation of GM foods in the U.S. because while GM seeds are banned in several European countries such as Hungary, Germany and Ireland, in the United States, certain states are passing legislation that protects the use of GM seeds and allows for unabated expansion! At present, no less than 14 states have passed such legislation. Michigan’s Senate Bill 777, if passed, would make that 15. The Michigan bill would prevent anti-GMO laws, and would remove “any authority local governments may have to adopt and enforce ordinances that prohibit or regulate the labeling, sale, storage, transportation, distribution, use, or planting of agricultural, vegetable, flower or forest tree seeds.”

While this type of legislation sounds like crazy nonsense to normal people, such bills are essentially bought and paid for through the millions of dollars Monsanto and other biotech companies spend lobbying the U.S. government each year. In the first quarter of 2011 alone, Monsanto spent $1.4 million on lobbying the federal government — a drop from a year earlier, when they spent $2.5 million during the same quarter.

Their efforts of persuasion are also made infinitely easier by the fact that an ever growing list of former Monsanto employees are now in positions of power within the federal government.

Learn More about Genetically Modified (GM) Foods

Due to lack of labeling, many Americans are still unfamiliar with what GM foods are. We have a plan to change that, and I urge you to participate and to continue learning more about GM foods and helping your friends and family do the same.

Your BEST strategy, however, is to simply buy USDA 100% Organic products whenever possible, (as these do not permit GM ingredients) or buy whole fresh produce and meat from local farmers. The majority of the GMO’s you’re exposed to are via processed foods, so by cooking from scratch with whole foods, you can be sure you’re not inadvertently consuming something laced with GM ingredients. When you do purchase processed food, avoid products containing anything related to corn or soy that are not 100 percent organic, as any foods containing these two non-organic ingredients are virtually guaranteed to contain genetically engineered ingredients, as well as toxic herbicide residues.

To learn more about GM foods, I highly recommend the following films and lectures:

Hidden Dangers in Kid’s Meals
Your Milk on Drugs – Just Say No!
Everything You Have to Know About Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods

Your Opportunity to Eliminate Genetically Engineered Foods from the U.S.

In 2007, then-Presidential candidate Obama promised to “immediately” require GM labeling if elected. So far, nothing of the sort has transpired.

Labeling of genetically engineered food is way overdue… Here’s how you can get involved to rectify the situation:

Whether you live in California or not, please donate money to this historic effort
Talk to organic producers and stores and ask them to actively support the California Ballot. It may be the only chance we have to label genetically engineered foods.
Distribute WIDELY the Non-GMO Shopping Guide to help you identify and avoid foods with GMOs. Look for products (including organic products) that feature the Non-GMO Project Verified Seal to be sure that at-risk ingredients have been tested for GMO content. You can also download the free iPhone application that is available in the iTunes store. You can find it by searching for ShopNoGMO in the applications.
For timely updates, please join the Organic Consumers Association on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter.
Look for in-depth coverage of the issue at the Institute for Responsible Technology, subscribe to Spilling the Beans, and check out their Facebook or Twitter.

In the meantime, the simplest way to avoid genetically engineered foods is to buy whole, certified organic foods. By definition, foods that are certified organic must never intentionally use genetically engineered organisms, must be produced without artificial pesticides and fertilizers and come from an animal reared without the routine use of antibiotics, growth promoters or other drugs. Additionally, grass-fed beef will not have been fed genetically engineered corn feed, although now that genetically engineered alfalfa is approved, grass-fed will not always mean they animals have not consumed genetically engineered feeds.^vi

Be assured that what happens in California will affect the remainder of the U.S., so please support this important state initiative, even if you do not live there!

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Vermont Parents Fight to Save Philosophical Exemption

Posted on March 11, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Non-medical vaccine exemptions are under serious attack across the United States, with the latest assault happening in Vermont.

It is extremely important that Vermont residents, who want to protect their right to obtain a philosophical exemption to vaccination for their children, IMMEDIATELY contact their state representative and senator and ask them to vote “NO” to S. 199 and H. 527.

Legislators in other states may soon follow Vermont’s lead and try to restrict your right to make voluntary vaccine choices.

You can help fight for the right to make voluntary decisions about vaccination in Vermont and every state by becoming a user of the National Vaccine Information Center’s (NVIC) Advocacy Portal and taking action today.

Using the online NVIC Advocacy Portal is free and you are quickly put in touch with your elected state representatives and senators with the click of a mouse or a touch of your Smartphone screen so you can make your voice heard.

Why is Protecting Your Right to Vaccine Exemptions so Important?

As of 2011, all 50 states have enacted vaccine laws that require proof children have received certain vaccines in order to attend daycare, middle school, high school and college.

However, in most states citizens currently have the legal right to opt out of using vaccines. The issue of protecting your right to make an informed, voluntary vaccination choice for yourself or your child in the United States is about defending human rights. As Barbara Loe Fisher, president of NVIC, states:

“While the State may have the legal authority to mandate use of vaccines, nobody has the moral authority to FORCE you to get vaccinated or vaccinate your child without your voluntary, informed consent.”

This — the right to choose what is injected into your body or your child’s — is a decision that is a matter of life and death for some individuals, as the current one-size-fits-all approach to vaccination does not take into account differences among children’s genetic profiles or immune responses based on factors such as age, weight, personal and family medical history and overall health status.

Each and every vaccine carries an inherent risk of causing a reaction, injury or death that can be greater for some individuals than others — and many do not know they are at increased biological risk until it is too late. This is why I often remind readers that, ultimately, it is your responsibility to exercise due diligence and do your own research to decide for yourself which vaccines you do or do not want your child to receive, if any at all. As Fisher continues:

“More than $2 billion dollars has been awarded to children and adults in America, who have been seriously injured by vaccines … We are not all the same. People are injured or die from vaccination because vaccine risks are greater for some than others and sometimes vaccines fail to work at all. That is a big reason why there are vaccine exemptions in state public health laws for medical, religious and conscientious or philosophical beliefs.”

What is a Philosophical Vaccine Exemption?

In Vermont, State Senator Kevin Mullin and State Representative George Till are working with the Vermont Health Commissioner, Dr. Harry Chen and medical trade organizations funded by pharmaceutical companies, to take away philosophical exemption to vaccination with two bills before the state House and Senate — S. 199 and H. 527.

Vermont parents, including a mother and father whose seven year old daughter died within 92 hours of a routine flu shot, are urging Vermont legislators to oppose the bills that would strip Vermonters of their right to exercise philosophical belief exemption to vaccination.

As it stands, Vermont is one of 18 states that allows conscientious, personal or philosophical exemptions to vaccination. These include:

These states come the closest to protecting a citizen’s right to exercise voluntary, informed consent to vaccination in America. However, this exemption, like the religious exemption, is under attack by proponents of inflexible one-size-fits all mandatory vaccination laws, who want to eliminate all non-medical exemptions to vaccination in America.

As you are probably well aware, the vaccine industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it does NOT want you to have the choice to refuse the use of their products! So you can expect that the philosophical and religious vaccine exemptions will remain under attack.

It is shocking, but a fact that, since 1986, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) (which, by the way, receives millions of dollars from vaccine manufacturers) have eliminated almost every medical condition that qualifies as an officially recognized medical reason for withholding vaccination (contraindications). Today, almost no medical condition qualifies for a medical exemption to vaccination. In most states, a medical exemption to vaccination written by a medical doctor can be denied by schools and public health officials if the medical reason given does not strictly conform to CDC and AAP contraindication guidelines. Even children, who have suffered previous vaccine reaction symptoms or are vaccine injured can be forced to be re-vaccinated!

So, this is not simply an issue of being for or against vaccination; it’s a matter of protecting your legal and human right to abstain from risky medical interventions for yourself and your children. Vaccination is a medical procedure, and virtually every medical procedure comes with risks attached, risks that can be greater for some than others. As a parent, do you really want this decision to be taken out of your hands completely, and forced upon you and your child even if use of one or more vaccines conflicts with your reasonable, sound judgment, your conscience or your spiritual beliefs?

How Many More Vaccines Will Soon be Forced Upon Your Child?

The U.S. government recommends children get 69 doses of 16 vaccines from the day of birth to age 18, most of which are required in order for children to attend public school or daycare. This may sound like a lot, and it is, but it has certainly not reached its upper limit as far as the vaccine industry is concerned. Not even close.

Each new vaccine public health officials add to the government recommended vaccine schedule is a guaranteed cash cow, as it means nearly every child in the United States will be legally forced to use multiple doses of each vaccine. And if all vaccine exemptions are stripped from public health laws, they can push those numbers to nearly 100% of U.S. children. At that point, there will be no unvaccinated populations and it will be impossible to compare the long term health outcomes of children, who remain unvaccinated or use fewer vaccines, with the health of highly vaccinated children. This will eliminate the opportunity to document which populations are healthier – the highly vaccinated or the unvaccinated.

Just imagine the money at stake … the base cost for a child to get every government-recommended vaccine in a private pediatrician’s office has increased from $80 per child in 1986 to a whopping $2,200 per child in 2011! And it’s estimated that by 2013, the global market for vaccines will be worth more than $36 billion. As it stands, there are hundreds of new vaccines in the pipeline, many of which will be federally recommended to children. As Fisher states:

“In the future, the state of Vermont could add 10, 20, 30 or more vaccinations to state public health laws. Should every vaccine that Big Pharma creates and doctors want legislators to mandate be legally required for all children without parents being informed and allowed to make a voluntary choice?”

Here’s an example of just 16 new vaccines being developed. Would you want your child to be forced to receive these, with no say in the matter whatsoever?

Fisher explains:

“The only barrier left to unlimited vaccine profit-making is the freedom for Americans to choose whether or not to use every new vaccine Pharma creates and wants mandated. Freedom of choice is something Big Pharma and the medical lobby does not want you to have.

They know that many educated consumers in America and around the world are dissatisfied with the old pharmaceutical-based health care paradigm … And we are questioning why we and our children should be required to get a long list of expensive vaccines that carry serious risks and sometimes don’t work at all.

… So Pharma is funding medical organizations profiting from mass vaccination policies to press politicians into quickly passing laws that force Americans to buy and use dozens of doses of vaccines. The goal is to demand that everyone salute smartly and obey doctors’ orders to get vaccinated or be barred from getting an education, health insurance, medical care or a job. The goal is to, in effect, brand unvaccinated citizens as enemies of the state, so they can be fined or imprisoned. Can this really be happening in America? Yes, it can.”

Do You Think the U.S. Vaccine Schedule Has Been Safety Tested?

It would seem like a no-brainer that the federally recommended vaccine schedule would be rigorously safety tested to protect our most vulnerable citizens, our children — but sadly, it is not.

There is no system of “checks and balances” when it comes to vaccine safety. Vaccines come no where near being adequately tested for safety before they are licensed using methodologically sound scientific studies. The long-term side effects and potential negative impact on individual and community health of using multiple vaccines in childhood remains largely unknown because it has not been fully scientifically investigated. Moreover, the effects of multiple vaccines given simultaneously on the same day have not been adequately tested. And pharmaceutical companies have financed nearly all vaccine research to date, which introduces enormous bias.

Large studies comparing the health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children have not been a priority for vaccine researchers. Most vaccine studies are about developing more vaccines for children and adults to use. And many health officials, reluctant to compare the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated children, claim that studies cannot be done because it would be “unethical” to leave children participating in the study unvaccinated or partially vaccinated in order to do the comparison.

Adding insult to injury, quite literally in this case, vaccine manufacturers are totally shielded from liability and accountability in civil court for vaccine injuries and deaths. In February 2011 – unbelievably – the U.S. Supreme Court gave drug companies making and selling vaccines TOTAL immunity from civil lawsuits- even if it could be shown they could have made a vaccine less toxic – because the Court said “vaccines are unavoidably unsafe.” .

Well, if vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe” – how many people are being hurt by those “unavoidably unsafe” vaccines? Where are the methodologically sound studies to demonstrate that the long term health of highly vaccinated children is superior to the long term health of unvaccinated children? How do we know that the use of many more vaccines in this century than were given to children in the last century is not causing more and more children to become chronically ill and disabled?

In August 2011, an important vaccine safety review was issued by an Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee. According to their review of over 1,000 vaccine studies published in the medical literature, the IOM Committee was unable to determine whether or not vaccines are a causative factor in over 100 serious adverse health outcomes reportedly associated with eight routinely used childhood vaccines. In short: the published research presently available is insufficient and cannot be used to confirm or reject causation for many poor health outcomes associated with many vaccines routinely given to children.

Grassroots Efforts, Lawsuits to Protect Vaccine Exemptions on the Rise

About 13 percent of parents are now using an ”alternative” vaccination schedule for their young children, and 2 percent of parents are refusing vaccines altogether for their children. Parents are losing faith in one-size-fits-all vaccine policies and doctors, who push them. A growing number of vaccine educated parents, both those with vaccine-injured children and those with healthy children, are fed up with the attack on their right to voluntary, informed consent to vaccination — and now they’re fighting back.

It is happening in West Virginia, one of only two states that allows only medical exemption to vaccination (and where regulators are increasingly denying even that). Along with residents spear-heading efforts to pass Senate Bill 50, which would allow philosophical and religious exemptions to vaccinations, a lawsuit has been filed against the state Health Department, alleging the agency’s mandating of vaccinations is in violation of constitutional rights.

WTRF 7 News reported:

“Some believe the way the Health Department is mandating vaccinations is violating our constitutional rights. On February 6th, local attorney’s from Harris Law Offices filed suit in front of Judge Irene Keeley in Clarksburg, asking for this to be ruled unconstitutional. In 2004 and 2005, the Health Department went to the state representatives and asked to have more immunizations required under statutory code. They were denied both times

“West Virginia code requires six immunizations for children, mandatory to attend school,” says Shawn Fluharty, of Harris Law Offices. “The Health Department has bypassed the State Legislature and said ‘we need you to have upwards to nine’.” Which leaves many asking, how did they do that? “They have been using a thing called interpretive rule,” says Grindley. By bypassing that process, Fluharty says “they’re really going at the heart of democracy.”"

Act Now to Protect Vaccine Exemption in Vermont and Elsewhere

You can help fight for the right to make voluntary decisions about vaccination in Vermont, West Virginia and every state by visiting theNVIC’s Advocacy Portal and taking action today. There you will find urgent action items needing to be taken to protect vaccine choices in states across the U.S., from California to New York.

While it may seem “old-fashioned,” the only truly effective actions you can take to protect the right to informed consent to vaccination and legal vaccine exemptions is to get personally involved with your state legislators and the leaders in your community.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Whitney Houston Yet Another Victim of Pharmaceutical Drug Industry

Posted on February 14, 2012 by andreas m

By: Mike Adams
Source: NaturalNews.com

The regretful passing of an American entertainment icon — Whitney Houston — marks yet another sad milestone in the devastating body count of the prescription drug industry. TMZ is now reporting that Whitney Houston was found not with illegal drugs, but prescription drugs that may have killed her or caused her to drown in the bathtub.

Houston had “a plethora of sedatives including Lorazepam, Valium, Xanax, and a sleeping medication that was found in her hotel room,” reports Radar Online.

“The prescription drugs were officially taken into custody by the Beverly Hills Police Department,” the website reported. An autopsy has yet to be performed, and it will reportedly provide more conclusive information about the actual cause of death.

Whitney Houston was also taking Xanax, a psychiatric anti-anxiety drug

According to Fox News, Houston’s family members said she was taking Xanax, a powerful psychtropic drug. As NaturalNews has reported many times, mind-altering drugs are known to cause erratic behavior and suicidal thoughts.

Although Xanax is not an SSRI drug, its side effects include:

• Aggression
• Rage and hostility
• Twitches and tremors
• Mania, agitation

An overdose of Xanax may cause:

• Dizziness
• Fainting
• Coma
• Death

Xanax is widely promoted throughout that DSM-IV, the “bible” of modern psychiatry which promotes the use of prescription amphetamines to children (among other bizarre chemical recommendations).

Whitney Houston showed clear signs of pharmaceutical adverse effects

“[Houston,] who struggled with drug and alcohol abuse in her later life, made a bizarre appearance just two evenings before,” reports US Magazine.

At a pre-Grammys party at Tru Hollywood Thursday evening, the beloved Grammy-winning singer seemed “wasted” and “moody” as she exited the club past midnight, according to a witness. “She reacted angrily to the security guards trying to get her into her car…and started cussing them out.”

Although the superstar smiled when fans approached her for autographs, “she would get moody again in a split second,” the observer says. “It was sad because her fans noticed that she was really shaky as she left the venue. She definitely was not in control of herself.”

This is the behavior of a person who is using either prescription psychiatric drugs or recreational drugs (or perhaps both in combination). That this was observed with Houston on multiple occasions is very strong evidence that these drugs were altering her brain function and thereby radically altering her personality and behavior.

Heath Ledger was also killed by pharmaceuticals

You may recall the death of beloved actor Heath Ledger, who was killed by prescription medications in 2008.

Remember: for every celebrity death caused by prescription drugs, there are hundreds of thousands of deaths of everyday people from prescription drugs, too. In fact, according to published scientific statistics:

Prescription drugs kill over 200,000 Americans every year – even when taken as directed and not abused!

The number of people killed by prescription drugs absolutely dwarfs the number killed by alleged acts of terrorism (9/11 in particular). And while America has gone crazy with “security checkpoints,” TSA agents reaching down your pants, nullification of the Bill of Rights and other outrageous government encroachments on your freedom to fight the so-called “war on terror,” the government does absolutely nothing to address the holocaust of prescription drug deaths happening every single day.

Whitney Houston is just one of countless Americans who are victims of Big Pharma, an industry that cares far more about corporate profits than it does about the lives of real people. And today, we have lost yet another iconic American artist whose life was cut short by addiction, prescription drugs and the entire “medication culture” that exists in America today.

Whitney Houston will be missed. May her death serve as an urgent call for ending the scourge of mind-altering psychotropic drugs and ending the failed “War on Drugs” that tries to criminalize drug addicts rather than helping them heal.

Learn more about the dangers of psychiatric drugs at:
www.CCHRint.org

Read more about the failed War on Drugs at:
www.NORML.org

See Alex Jones’ comments on Whitney Houston’s death via prescription drugs (he’s right on target, covering the same angles as NaturalNews, on the same day!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqeGDDAu3yw

It’s time to start helping drug addicts rather than throwing them behind bars

NaturalNews calls for the decriminalization of recreational drugs followed by the treatment of drug addicts and abusers through health-oriented support services (including nutrition) rather than the criminal justice system.

It is time to empty the prisons of non-violent drug offenders and compassionately offer them addiction treatment programs. As written today, our laws would condemn Whitney Houston as a felony criminal rather than someone who was only guilty of being caught up in a cycle of substance abuse and prescription drug dependence.

It is time to stop treating addiction as a criminal offense and start helping people rather than throwing them behind bars. If society’s response to drug addiction and abuse were based more in health and compassion rather than revenge and punishment, Whitney Houston might very well still be alive today, along with countless other victims of the pharmaceutical and recreational drugs industries.

Even famous singer Tony Bennett echoes this call. In an urgent and outspoken plea made last night, Tony Bennett called for the decriminalization of drugs so that drug addicts can seek help legally and compassionately, without being thrown behind bars and marginalized by society. “First it was Michael Jackson, then Amy Winehouse, now, the magnificent Whitney Houston,” said Bannett (Hollywood Reporter). “I’d like every person in this room to campaign to legalize drugs.”

This doesn’t mean that NaturalNews or Tony Bennett supports the recreational use of such drugs. I am 100% against recreational drug use, and I don’t use such drugs myself. But I also understand that drug use is a behavioral and chemical addiction, not a criminal act. The solution is found in decriminalizing drugs, regulating their distribution like alcohol, and offering treatment, addiction recovery and nutritional consultation programs for those suffering from drug addiction.

Drug users are not criminals! They are people who need medical help, counseling, nutrition and compassion. Calling them “criminals” only becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that keeps the police state in power while doing nothing to end drug addiction.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Kills More People Than Heart Disease or Cancer (But Hardly Anyone Knows)

Posted on February 14, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

The latest data on the leading causes of death in the United States has been released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The report, which is based on 2010 data, lists the 10 leading causes of death as follows:

Diseases of the heart
Cancer
Chronic lower respiratory diseases
Cerebrovascular diseases (stroke)
Accidents (unintentional injuries)
Alzheimer’s disease
Diabetes mellitus
Nephritis, nephritic syndrome and nephrosis (kidney disease)
Influenza and pneumonia
Intentional self-harm (suicide)

In an analysis, 24/7 Wall St. determined that the costs to the economy for these top 10 causes, including not only direct medical care but also the indirect loss of productivity, amounts to a whopping $1.1 trillion!

However, there is one leading cause of death that was left off of this list, and when that is factored in the costs to the economy, and the death toll itself, is actually even higher.

The CDC Left Conventional Medical Care Off of Their Death List — It Should be #1

Over a decade ago, Professor Bruce Pomerance of the University of Toronto concluded that properly prescribed and correctly taken pharmaceutical drugs were the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. More recently, an article authored in two parts by Gary Null, PhD, Carolyn Dean, MD, ND, Martin Feldman, MD, Debora Rasio, MD, and Dorothy Smith, PhD, describes in excruciating detail how the modern conventional American medical system has bumbled its way into becoming the leading cause of death and injury in the United States.

From medical errors to adverse drug reactions to unnecessary procedures, heart disease, cancer deaths and infant mortality, the authors took statistics straight from the most respected medical and scientific journals and investigative reports by the Institutes of Medicine (IOM), and showed that on the whole, American medicine caused more harm than good.

In 2010 (the same year from which the CDC data came), years after the original article was written, an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine piqued my interest – as the researchers found that, despite efforts to improve patient safety in the past few years, the health care system hasn’t changed much at all.

Instead, 18 percent of patients were harmed by medical care (some repeatedly) and over 63 percent of the injuries could have been prevented. In nearly 2.5 percent of these cases, the problems caused or contributed to a person’s death. In another 3 percent, patients suffered from permanent injury, while over 8 percent experienced life-threatening issues, such as severe bleeding during surgery.

In all there were over 25 injuries per 100 admissions! In my update to the original Death by Medicine article, you can get an idea of just how deadly the conventional medical care system actually is:

In a June 2010 report in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, study authors said that in looking over records that spanned from 1976 to 2006 (the most recent year available) they found that, of 62 million death certificates, almost a quarter-million deaths were coded as having occurred in a hospital setting due to medication errors.
An estimated 450,000 preventable medication-related adverse events occur in the U.S. every year.
The costs of adverse drug reactions to society are more than $136 billion annually — greater than the total cost of cardiovascular or diabetic care.
Adverse drug reactions cause injuries or death in 1 of 5 hospital patients.
The reason there are so many adverse drug events^v in the U.S. is because so many drugs are used and prescribed – and many patients receive multiple prescriptions at varying strengths, some of which may counteract each other or cause more severe reactions when combined.

How Many Deaths by Medicine are Disguised as Other Causes?

Another issue is just how many “accidents” or “suicides” are actually the result of accidental drug overdoses. Prescription drugs are now killing far more people than illegal drugs, and while most major causes of preventable deaths are declining, those from prescription drug use are increasing — and this is according to the CDC’s own data.

In 2009, there were nearly 4.6 million drug-related visits to U.S. emergency rooms nationwide, with more than half due to adverse reactions to prescription medications – most of which were being taken exactly as prescribed.

Further, between 2001 and 2008, there was a 36 percent increase in hospital admissions, and a 28 percent increase in emergency room visits, among children 5 and younger who had accidentally ingested medication. ER visits for ingestion of prescription opioid painkillers, such as Oxycodone, increased 101 percent! So it is unclear how many deaths from accidental drug overdose are classified as accidents or suicides.

The 9th and 11th Top Killers Might Also be Linked to Medical Care

The 11th leading cause of death according to the CDC is septicemia (sometimes called blood poisoning), which is bacteria in your bloodstream that is often caused by an infection in your body — an infection that is often acquired in the hospital! A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that sepsis and pneumonia caused by hospital-acquired infections killed 48,000 patients and ramped up health care costs by over $8 billion in 2006. The study also found that 20 percent of people who developed sepsis died; 11 percent of those who developed pneumonia died.

Pneumonia is the 9th leading cause of death, and in some cases may again be related to the high risk of acquiring an infection should you enter the hospital.

A different study in 2006 showed that “central-line-associated” bloodstream infections^xi caused by catheters placed directly into veins resulted in a $26,839 loss for each patient that came down with this type of hospital-acquired infection. This same study estimated that 2 million people come down with hospital-acquired infections of any type in every year, and that approximately 100,000 die from those infections. Despite their high death toll, hospital-acquired infections make no appearance in the CDC’s report.

Most of the Leading Causes of Death are Preventable

Most chronic diseases, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity, are largely preventable with simple lifestyle changes. Even infectious diseases like the flu can often be warded off by a healthy way of life.

Imagine the lowered death toll, not to mention costs to the economy, if more people decided to take control of their health … heart disease and cancer alone accounted for 47 percent of deaths in the United States in 2010, and there are many strategies you can implement to lower your risk of these diseases … and most of the leading causes of death in the United States.

The added bonus to this is that the healthier you are, the less you will need to rely on conventional medical care, which is a leading cause of death. So what does a “healthy lifestyle” entail?

Proper Food Choices

For a comprehensive guide on which foods to eat and which to avoid, see my nutrition plan. Generally speaking, you should be looking to focus your diet on whole, unprocessed foods (vegetables, meats, raw dairy, nuts, and so forth) that come from healthy, sustainable, local sources, such as a small organic farm not far from your home.

For the best nutrition and health benefits, you will want to eat a good portion of your food raw. Personally, I aim to eat about 80-85 percent of my food raw, including raw eggs and humanely raised organic animal products that have not been raised on a CAFO (confined animal feeding operation).

Nearly as important as knowing which foods to eat more of is knowing which foods to avoid, and topping the list is fructose. Sugar, and fructose in particular, acts as a toxin in and of itself, and as such drive multiple disease processes in your body, not the least of which is insulin resistance, a major cause of accelerated aging.

Comprehensive Exercise Program, including High-Intensity Exercise like Peak Fitness

Even if you’re eating the healthiest diet in the world, you still need to exercise to reach the highest levels of health, and you need to be exercising effectively, which means including not only core-strengthening exercises, strength training, and stretching but also high-intensity activities into your rotation. High-intensity interval-type training boosts human growth hormone (HGH) production, which is essential for optimal health, strength and vigor. I’ve discussed the importance of Peak Fitness for your health on numerous occasions, so for more information, please review this previous article.

Stress Reduction and Positive Thinking

You cannot be optimally healthy if you avoid addressing the emotional component of your health and longevity, as your emotional state plays a role in nearly every physical disease — from heart disease and depression, to arthritis and cancer. Effective coping mechanisms are a major longevity-promoting factor in part because stress has a direct impact on inflammation, which in turn underlies many of the chronic diseases that kill people prematurely every day. Meditation, prayer, social support and exercise are all viable options that can help you maintain emotional and mental equilibrium.

Proper Sun Exposure to Optimize Vitamin D

We have long known that it is best to get your vitamin D from sun exposure, and if at all possible, I strongly urge you to make sure you’re getting out in the sun on a daily basis. Vitamin D plays an important role in preventing numerous illnesses ranging fromcancer to the flu.

The important factor when it comes to vitamin D is your serum level, which should ideally be between 50-70 ng/ml year-round. Sun exposure or a safe tanning bed is the preferred method for optimizing vitamin D levels, but a vitamin D3 supplement can be used as a last resort. Most adults need about 8,000 IU’s of vitamin D a day to achieve serum levels above 40 ng/ml, which is still just below the minimum recommended serum level of 50 ng/ml.

High Quality Animal-Based Omega-3 Fats

Animal-based omega-3 fat like krill oil is a strong factor in helping people live longer, and many experts believe that it is likely the predominant reason why the Japanese are the longest lived race on the planet.

Avoid as Many Chemicals, Toxins, and Pollutants as Possible

This includes tossing out your toxic household cleaners, soaps, personal hygiene products, air fresheners, bug sprays, lawn pesticides, and insecticides, just to name a few, and replacing them with non-toxic alternatives.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Drug Firm Agrees to Pay One Billion Dollars in Major Scandal

Posted on February 12, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

A nearly decade-long civil investigation into the fraudulent marketing of Johnson & Johnson’s antipsychotic drug Risperdal may soon be coming to a close, with the drug giant agreeing to pay more than $1 billion to the United States and individual states to resolve the matter.

Negotiations over a criminal plea are still ongoing, and individual states may choose to pursue their own cases rather than join in to the federal government’s settlement.

This means J&J may be liable for far more money… considering the state of Texas alone is asking for more than $1 billion over Risperdal marketing.

In most cases, a billion-dollar (or more) fraud settlement would be a death-sentence for a business, but for the drug industry, it’s just another cost of doing business.

J&J Markets Drug for Unapproved Uses to Boost Profits at the Expense of Patients’ Health

At the heart of the latest settlement is J&J’s, and particularly their Janssen unit’s, attempt to market Risperdal for bipolar disorder, dementia, mood and anxiety disorders, when it had only been approved, initially, for psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.

Of course, only so many people have schizophrenia, so marketing the drug for the slew of conditions noted above boosted their customer base tremendously. Never mind that it wasn’t approved for those conditions …

J&J’s Janssen sent out an army of salespeople to doctor’s offices, nursing homes, Veteran’s Administration facilities, and jails to tout Risperdal as a proverbial miracle drug for mental illness and dementia. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told the company to stop the false and misleading marketing claims not once, not twice, but three times from 1994-2004, but the company reportedly continued to include marketing the drug for unapproved uses right in their business plan. In the years to follow, the FDA did eventually approve Risperdal for bipolar disorder and autism symptoms, but it was never approved for dementia (even though it was heavily marketed as a dementia drug).

In 2006, research showed that up to two-thirds of prescriptions for Risperdal were for unapproved uses that had little or no scientific support. Worse yet, elderly dementia patients who were prescribed Risperdal for off-label uses were found to increase their chances of death by 54 percent within the first 12 weeks of taking it!

Other research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found Risperdal is no more effective than a placebo, and is associated with a long list of potentially devastating side effects.

The study included 123 veterans with PTSD who received Risperdal, and another 124 who received a placebo. After six months of treatment, about 5 percent of the participants in both groups recovered, and between 10-20 percent in each group reported minor improvement. According to the lead author, Dr. John H. Krystal, who is also the director of the clinical neurosciences division of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Center for PTSD:

“We didn’t find any suggestion that the drug treatment was having an overall benefit on their lives.”

So it appears in many cases the joke is on the patient — who takes a drug for no benefit, and is exposed to serious risks of side effects, some of which may be permanent, including:

And all the while, Johnson & Johnson is laughing all the way to the bank. More serious side effects include:

Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome, which can be fatal
Hormone disruption (including breasts producing milk and breast development in males)
High blood sugar and diabetes

Drug Companies are the Top Thugs of the Medical World

Johnson & Johnson is no stranger to being slapped with billion-dollar lawsuits. You probably don’t need to be reminded of all the recalls this company has had over the years with its pain products, specifically Motrin, Tylenol and Fentanyl (pain killer patches). The fact that Johnson & Johnson has paid out over $1 billion in the last few years in fines and judgments alone probably comes as no surprise either.

But did you know that in May 2011 the company pleaded guilty to illegally promoting its epilepsy drug Topamax for psychiatric purposes, and in so doing, settled a civil lawsuit in the case for $75 million? You probably didn’t realize, either, that last January the U.S. Department of Justice accused Johnson & Johnson of paying tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks to Omnicare Inc to buy and recommend Johnson & Johnson drugs.

This latest scheme is the subject of a federal lawsuit that has 18 states suing not just Omnicare, but 14 other major drug companies, alleging that they ran this scheme together.

The bottom line is this: pharmaceutical companies – the same ones you trust to safely manufacture medications that could alter your very life – are the top corporate criminals on the planet, and this is not unique to only Johnson & Johnson. A large number of pharmaceutical companies are guilty of fraud, cover-ups of fatal side effects, and huge kickbacks paid to doctors.

Charges run the gamut from international price-setting, illegal marketing, false claims, hiding serious problems with their drugs and, in one case (Ortho, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson), obstruction of justice and eight counts of persuading employees to destroy documents in a federal investigation.

Yet toxic drugs designed, manufactured, and peddled by these top criminals are what the medical industry and government health agencies try to pass off as the “best” route to good health … despite the fact that pharmaceutical drugs, taken as prescribed, are also directly responsible for the death of at least 125,000 people annually, on top of everything else.

What Common, Illegal Drug Company Practice Earned the Most Penalties from the U.S. Government in the Last 20 Years?

Off-label drug promotion! By scouring through comprehensive databases of all major criminal and civil settlements between federal and state governments and pharmaceutical companies occurring between 1990 and 2010, the Public Citizen’s Health Research Group made some sobering discoveries.

For example, they revealed the illegal practice that has earned the largest amount of financial penalties levied by the U.S. government:

“Of the 165 settlements comprising $19.8 billion in penalties during this 20-year interval, 73 percent of the settlements (121) and 75 percent of the penalties ($14.8 billion) have occurred in just the past five years (2006-2010).

… The practice of illegal off-label promotion of pharmaceuticals has been responsible for the largest amount of financial penalties levied by the federal government over the past 20 years. This practice can be prosecuted as a criminal offense because of the potential for serious adverse health effects in patients from such activities.

Deliberately overcharging state health programs, mainly Medicaid fraud, has been the most common violation against state governments and is responsible for the largest amount of financial penalties levied by these governments. This type of violation is also the main factor in the considerable increase in state settlements with pharmaceutical companies over time.”

I have also done some of my own research into the biggest wrong-doers. The chart below shows the type of criminal activity, lawsuits and fines or judgments I was able to find for six drug companies. Keep in mind that these are conservative numbers as many records are not available without a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Also, many are not readily available online unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, and what year.

What We Can Learn From How Doctors Choose to Die

What is perhaps most poignant of all of this is not the fact that corporations could be engaged in so much fraud and deception – it is the fact that so many have embraced the products of these deceptions as veritable life lines.

In the face of illness, we are taught, often from a young age, that pharmaceuticals are the answer. In reality, your own body has healing potential that is, in many cases, far superior to that offered by synthetic drugs, provided it is given the proper tools to harness its healing potential. Yet, those who are at the front lines – the doctors themselves – will often choose to forgo these “solutions” because, quite simply, they’ve seen the cycle before. Oftentimes, drugs only serve to create more problems – new symptoms and serious, sometimes deadly, side effects with little or no measurable benefit.

In fact, in the face of death, many doctors will choose to skip drugs and medical interventions entirely, choosing, instead, to die naturally. Ken Murray, MD, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at USC, said it well in a recent essay:

“It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.

… To administer medical care that makes people suffer is anguishing. Physicians are trained to gather information without revealing any of their own feelings, but in private, among fellow doctors, they’ll vent. “How can anyone do that to their family members?” they’ll ask. I suspect it’s one reason physicians have higher rates of alcohol abuse and depression than professionals in most other fields. I know it’s one reason I stopped participating in hospital care for the last 10 years of my practice.

How has it come to this—that doctors administer so much care that they wouldn’t want for themselves? The simple, or not-so-simple, answer is this: patients, doctors, and the system.”

The truth is, you cannot trust that the companies making your medications have your best interest at heart. Their behavior is among the most criminal on the planet! The only way to avoid all risk, including death, from prescription drugs is to not take them at all. It is your body, not your doctor’s and not your pharmacist’s, so it is up to you to make the decision of what drugs to take, if any. Be SURE you are aware of the risks of any medication prescribed to you, and weigh them against any possible benefit. Then you can make a well-informed decision of whether it’s a risk you’re willing to take.

Of course, of paramount importance is also taking control of your health so you can stay well naturally, without the use of drugs or even frequent conventional medical care. If you adhere to a healthy lifestyle, you most likely will significantly reduce your need for medications in the first place.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Don’t Eat it: Linked to Cancer and Gets into Your Blood

Posted on February 8, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

In November 2011, about 250 Boulder County residents attended a public meeting to discuss the planting of GM (genetically modified) crops on county-owned land.

Their turnout, together with an anti-GMO (genetically modified organism) recommendation from the county’s Food and Agriculture Policy Council, led county officials to vote for a phase out of genetically engineered crops on open space.

This is a powerful testimony to the influence residents can have on their local regulations when they stand together for a cause; you, too, can work toward enacting such a phase out in your area as well.

Boulder Residents, County Officials Say “No” to GMOs

Boulder’s Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee voted 5-4 in support of the Food and Agriculture Policy Council’s recommendation to phase out the planting of GM crops on the county’s open space.

Currently, about 16,000 acres of county-owned land are planted with genetically engineered corn; the new rule will mean these crops will be transitioned out in favor of traditional GMO-free farming practices.

The area has been a hot-spot for GMO debate since 2009, when local farmers wanted to plant genetically engineered sugar beets in the county.

Following public outcry, County commissioners delayed the farmers’ request. Since then, a local survey showed that 56 percent of Boulder County residents supported a ban on GM crops, and now their voices have been heard. As reported by the Boulder Daily Camera, Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee member John Nibarger said:

“There’s the voters’ side of this, and there’s the farmers’ side of this … I think we heard rather strongly … (that a lot of voters) don’t want to see GM crops.”

Americans Already Eating GM Foods, While Other Countries Have Banned Them

GM corn, soybeans, canola, and sugar beets have made their way into approximately 80 percent of current U.S. processed grocery store items, now that up to 90 percent of several U.S. grown crops are grown with genetically engineered seed. So if you live in the United States, you have most certainly already been exposed to GM foods — most likely a lot of them.

This is why Boulder’s move to phase out GM crops is such a breath of fresh air, as finally a governing body in the United States is stepping up to protect its residents from this massive, uncontrolled experiment — a move that has already taken place in other parts of the world, and in four counties in California and a city in Maine.

Genetically engineered seeds are banned in Hungary, as they are in several other European countries, such as Germany and Ireland. Peru is also following the precautionary principle, and has even passed a law that bans genetically modified ingredients within the nation for 10 years.

The issue of protecting farmland from invading GMOs is a serious one, so much so that Hungary recently destroyed nearly 1,000 acres of corn crops because they were found to be mistakenly grown with GM seeds. The discovery that the farmland was planted with GM seeds came when the season was already underway, so the harvest was completely lost.

What would prompt the Hungarian government to take such a drastic step?

Perhaps it is the fact that GM crops simply cannot be contained, and inevitably will contaminate the environment with GM DNA. Or it could be that they do not want superweeds, triggered by the overuse of Roundup herbicide on GM Roundup Ready crops, overtaking their farmland the way they are now doing in the United States. Then again, it could be the unknown threats to human health — and the fact that new research shows toxins from GM crops are now appearing in human blood – that made them think twice.

The other, and more serious issue, is the hidden one. Nearly all GM crops are designed with genes to resist a potent herbicide called Round Up or glyphosate. The newest science is showing that glyphosate is actually FAR more dangerous than people realize. It just is not widely appreciated yet, and the U.S. is spreading massive amounts of it every year. The consequences of this chemical abuse will have profoundly devastating consequences and the longer we wait to remove this toxin the worse it will be.

Either way, they, and a growing number of people around the world, are clearly well educated about the dangers of GM foods … which is a lesson the U.S. government still needs to learn.

Genetically Engineered “Pesticide” Toxin Now Found in Human Blood

Upwards of 65 percent of U.S. corn crops contain a special gene added that allows them to produce an insecticide. This way, when bugs attempt to eat the corn they’re killed right away (specifically their stomach is split open) because the plant contains an invisible, built-in pesticide shield.

The particular gene added to most corn crops is a type of Bt-toxin — produced from Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria. Genetic engineers remove the gene that produces the Bt in bacteria and insert it into the DNA of corn (and cotton) plants. They claim that Bt-toxin is quickly destroyed in human stomachs — and even if it survived, it won’t cause reactions in humans or mammals …

But studies are now showing that this is not the case, as Bt toxin is readily passing into the human bloodstream and animal studies have already shown that Bt-toxin does cause health effects in animals, including potentially humans. As Jeffrey Smith, executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, wrote:

“Mice fed natural Bt-toxin showed significant immune responses and caused them to become sensitive to other formerly harmless compounds. This suggests that Bt-toxin might make a person allergic to a wide range of substances. Farm workers and others have also had reactions to natural Bt-toxin, and authorities acknowledge that “People with compromised immune systems or preexisting allergies may be particularly susceptible to the effects of Bt.”

In fact, when natural Bt was sprayed over areas around Vancouver and Washington State to fight gypsy moths, about 500 people reported reactions—mostly allergy or flu-like symptoms. Six people had to go to the emergency room.

… The Bt-toxin produced in the GM plants is probably more dangerous than in its natural spray form. In the plants, the toxin is about 3,000-5,000 times more concentrated than the spray, it doesn’t wash off the plants like the spray does, and it is designed to be more toxic than the natural version. In fact, the GM toxin has properties of known allergens and fails all three GM allergy tests recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and others.”

It’s reasons such as this why the precautionary principle should absolutely be used in regard to exposing humans and the environment to GM crops. Unfortunately, it appears Cry1Ab, a specific type of Bt toxin from GM corn, is already quite prevalent in humans; upon testing 69 pregnant and non-pregnant women who were eating a typical Canadian diet (which included foods such as GM soy, corn and potatoes), researchers found Bt toxin in:

93 percent of maternal blood samples
80 percent of fetal blood samples
67 percent of non-pregnant women blood samples

Other potential dangers have also been uncovered, including:

Intense Lobbying Efforts Aim to Keep Americans in the Dark about GM Foods

The food and agriculture biotechnology industry has spent more than $572 million in campaign contributions and lobbying expendituresin just over a decade, according to an analysis by Food & Water Watch. Key among the goals of this intense lobbying effort is to prevent GM food labeling and keep Americans in the dark about the contents of their food. The analysis states:

“The food and agriculture biotechnology industry has been flexing its financial political muscle to ease the regulatory oversight of genetically modified foods. Lobbying efforts for some of these firms and groups have included approval of cloned food and genetically engineered food, animals and livestock.

Companies are also fighting to eliminate or prevent labeling on genetically modified foods in the United States and preventing other countries from regulating genetically modified foods. These efforts have dovetailed with lobbying to tighten intellectual property law protections over patented seeds and animals in attempts to further benefit the biotech industry.”

Over 95 percent of Americans polled said they think GM foods should require a label, stating it’s an ethical issue and consumers should be able to make an informed choice.

Like Europeans, Americans are suspicious of GM foods, and a large part of why many continue to buy them is because they are unaware that they’re already in the food. A prominent GM food label would be a death sentence to U.S. GM crops, which are right now enjoying a free for all when it comes to entering the food market.

Industry lobbying is clearly working, as to date biotech companies have evaded mandatory labeling laws (although a new California initiative may change all of that). They also succeeded in getting GM alfalfa approved, which quite literally threatens the entire organic industry.

A large part of the problem, and one of the reasons why the United States has not taken a precautionary stance the way other countries have, is that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are heavily influenced by biotech giant Monsanto. In the first quarter of 2011 alone, Monsanto spent $1.4 million on lobbying the federal government– and this was a drop from a year earlier, when they spent $2.5 million during the same quarter.

The FDA, the USDA, and the U.S. Trade Representative all have a special set of revolving doors leading straight to Monsanto, which has allowed this transnational giant to gain phenomenal authority and influence, as well as get their genetically engineered crops planted on the lion’s share of U.S. farmland.

However, just as changes in Boulder could prove to be a tipping point that begins a trend toward eliminating GM crops from American soil, a 2012 ballot initiative has been launched in California, which will require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods and food ingredients — also an important step toward ultimately eliminating these toxic foods from the market.

You Can Join the Fight Against GMOs

The people of Boulder County have made it clear that they will not tolerate GM crops on their local land; now you, too, can let your opinion be heard. Several organizations, including Mercola.com, the Organic Consumers Association, the Institute for Responsible Technology, and the Environmental Working Group, are working to generate a tipping point of consumer rejection to make GMOs a thing of the past.

Here’s how you can get involved:

If you live in California and are willing to attend a short training session and then start collecting petition signatures (you will be part of a team of 2-4 people) for the California Ballot Initiative, sign up here. (For more information see: The California Ballot Initiative: Taking Down Monsanto.) Also remember to share this information with family and friends in California!
Whether you live in California or not, please donate money to this historic effort
Talk to organic producers and stores and ask them to actively support the California Ballot. It may be the only chance we have to label genetically engineered foods.
Distribute WIDELY the Non-GMO Shopping Guide to help you identify and avoid foods with GMOs. Look for products (including organic products) that feature the Non-GMO Project Verified Seal to be sure that at-risk ingredients have been tested for GMO content. You can also download the free iPhone application that is available in the iTunes store. You can find it by searching for ShopNoGMO in the applications.
For timely updates, please join the Organic Consumers Association on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter
Look for in-depth coverage of the issue at the Institute for Responsible Technology, subscribe to Spilling the Beans, and check out their Facebook or Twitter.
You can also join the Non-GMO Project on Facebook, or Twitter

You can also look for foods that are ”non-GMO verified” by the Non-GMO Project.

Important Action Item: Support California’s Ballot Initiative to Label GMO’s!

In 2007, then-Presidential candidate Obama promised to “immediately” require GM labeling if elected. So far, nothing of the sort has transpired.

Fortunately, 24 US states have (as part of their state governance) something called the Initiative Process, where residents can bring to ballot any law they want enacted, as long as it has sufficient support. California has been busy organizing just such a ballot initiative to get mandatory labeling for genetically engineered foods sold in their state. The proposed law will be on the ballot for 2012.

Michigan and Washington are also starting similar campaigns.

Since California is the 8th largest economy in the world, a win for the California Initiative would be a huge step forward, and would affect ingredients and labeling nation-wide. Last month, a coalition of consumer, public health and environmental organizations, food companies, and individuals submitted the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act to the State Attorney General. Now, they need 800,000 signatures to get the Act on next year’s ballot.

I urge you to get involved and help in any way you can.

If you live in California, volunteer to gather petition signatures. If you live outside of California, please donate to help support this Initiative and spread the word to everyone you know in California. Be assured that what happens in California will affect the remainder of the U.S., so please support this important state initiative, even if you do not live there!

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Doctor Outraged After Recommending a Drug (That You May Be Taking)

Posted on February 8, 2012 by andreas m

By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

In 2006 health agencies such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva began warning of the imminent onset of an avian flu pandemic of lethal proportions.

The pandemic never materialized, but sales of Tamiflu, touted as effective in reducing complications of flu such as bronchitis and pneumonia, skyrocketed.

In 2009 it was again presented as the drug of choice to stave off swine flu.

Back in 2006, Dr. Tom Jefferson had issued an analysis concluding that the drug was effective.

But when another physician later pointed out that 8 of the 10 studies he had relied on were still unpublished, Jefferson decided to seek out the raw data — only to find he was unable to do so.

His concern turned to outrage when two employees of a communications company admitted that they had been paid to ghostwrite some of the studies, with explicit instructions to come to the “correct” conclusion regarding Tamiflu’s effectiveness.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

“After reanalyzing the raw data finally made available (they still don’t have it all) … there was no proof that Tamiflu reduced serious flu complications like pneumonia or death.

In short, it appears the pharmaceutical companies had been … conning the public on matters of health…”

Interestingly, the author of this LA Times piece, David Finkelstein, actually sued Genentech Corp. (a U.S. affiliate of Hoffmann-La Roche that holds the marketing rights to Tamiflu) in small claims court for “alleged breach of contract by way of fraud” after he discovered these facts.

And guess what? Genentech settled the case for $200—the price of the drug Finkelstein had purchased but not yet used, plus court costs. If only the remedy was that easy for everyone that has been scammed, not to mention severely harmed, by this modern-day snake oil…

Conning the Public on Matters of Public Health

The source of the information that prompted Finkelstein to sue to get his money back for this fraudulently hawked drug was a story originally published in Discover Magazine in November 2010. The article, titled, “The Problem With Medicine: We Don’t Know If Most of It Works,” became available online in February last year, and I highly recommend reading through it. It’s a very revealing piece…

In it, authors Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee write:

“In a recent poll conducted by the Campaign for Effective Patient Care, a nonprofit advocacy group based in California, 65 percent of the 800 California voters surveyed said they thought that most or nearly all of the health care they receive is based on scientific evidence. The reality would probably shock them.

A panel of experts convened in 2007 by the prestigious Institute of Medicine estimated that “well below half” of the procedures doctors perform and the decisions they make about surgeries, drugs, and tests have been adequately investigated and shown to be effective. The rest are based on a combination of guesswork, theory, and tradition, with a strong dose of marketing by drug and device companies. Doctors are often as much in the dark as their patients when they implant new devices… perform surgery, or write prescriptions.”

… Many widely adopted surgeries, devices, tests, and drugs also rest on surprisingly thin data… [A]ccording to an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality report published in 2001: More than 770,000 Americans are injured or die each year from drug complications, including unexpected side effects, some of which might have been avoided if somebody had conducted the proper research.”

The same goes for Tamiflu. Had proper research been conducted rather than concocted, staggering amounts of money could have been saved or allocated for something more useful, and lives could have been spared…

According to Lenzer and Brownlee:

“Although Jefferson had trusted the unpublished study conclusions at the time, the challenge sent him on a hunt for the raw data in 2009. He was stymied when several study authors and the manufacturer gave one excuse after another for why they couldn’t supply the actual data. Jefferson’s concern turned to outrage when two employees of a communications company came forward with documents showing that they had been paid to ghostwrite some of the Tamiflu studies.

They had been given explicit instructions to ensure that a key message was embedded in the articles: Flu is a threat, and Tamiflu is the answer.

… Health officials around the world had assumed the drug was as effective as claimed and recommended Tamiflu for patients during the recent h1n1, or swine flu, pandemic. That pandemic turned out to be far milder than expected, and it is anybody’s guess whether better information about Tamiflu—or better drugs—will appear before a more serious flu outbreak hits. “We shouldn’t have taken anybody’s word for it. We took it on good faith. Never again,” Jefferson says today.”

Jefferson’s update was published in December 2009, in which he concluded that:

“Neuraminidase inhibitors have modest effectiveness against the symptoms of influenza in otherwise healthy adults. The drugs are effective postexposure against laboratory confirmed influenza, but this is a small component of influenza-like illness, so for this outcome neuraminidase inhibitors are not effective. Neuraminidase inhibitors might be regarded as optional for reducing the symptoms of seasonal influenza. Paucity of good data has undermined previous findings for oseltamivir’s prevention of complications from influenza. Independent randomised trials to resolve these uncertainties are needed.”

The Dangers of Tamiflu

Back in 2008, the FDA started reviewing reports of abnormal behavior and disturbing brain effects in more than 1,800 children who had taken Tamiflu. The symptoms included convulsions, delirium and delusions. In Japan, five deaths were reported in children under 16 as a result of such neurological or psychiatric problems. Seven adult deaths have also been attributed to Tamiflu, due to its neuropsychiatric effect.

According to a 2009 study, more than half of children taking Tamiflu experience side effects such as nausea and nightmares. Other more rare and bizarre side effects have also been reported, such as the case of a 19-year old British girl who developed toxic epidermal necrolysis and blindness after taking Tamiflu last year.

A few years ago, Dr. Lawrence G. Roberts, the authentic “father of the internet” also shared his first-hand experience with Tamiflu with me:

“A few years ago, as I returned from Japan, I took Tamiflu on the plane as I arrived into SFO. I thought my symptoms felt like the flu and I (at that time) carried it. As I drove home, I was observed drifting off the road from time to time, but all I noticed was I suddenly was over too far and I corrected. Then at the exit, which was a slow right turn, I blanked out just into the turn and went straight into a tree.

I totaled my BMW and caused some knee damage … I realized somewhat later that the blank out was due to the Tamiflu, but not until other reports came out. Too late to argue the point. Anyway, this was a $100 K side effect caused by the drug, and there most likely have been many more that were never connected to Tamiflu.”

Studies Show Flu Vaccines are Also Ineffective and NOT an Ideal Form of Prevention

While antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu have been used with greater frequency, the traditional first line of defense against the flu has been vaccines. Alas, when you start looking around, you’ll realize that the evidence against flu vaccines is rapidly mounting as well. In recent years, we’ve seen a number of truly damaging studies published in the medical literature—although you’ve not seen them publicized in the media!

Here’s a sampling of studies demonstrating the ineffectiveness of flu vaccines. Many of these studies also explain that earlier positive results appear to have been due to various types of bias, and when the bias is removed, the alleged benefits of vaccinating against the flu disappear. There are many more… For another list of additional studies demolishing the claim that the flu vaccine is an effective prevention strategy, see this previous article:

How to Effectively Prevent Influenza

Avoiding influenza and flu-like illness during the flu season or any season doesn’t require a flu vaccine. By following the simple guidelines below, you can help keep your immune system in optimal working order so that you’re far less likely to get sick or, if you do get sick, you are better prepared to move through it without complications. For more details, follow the hyperlinks provided.

Optimize your vitamin D levels. As I’ve previously reported, optimizing your vitamin D levels is one of the absolute best strategies for avoiding infections of ALL kinds, and vitamin D deficiency is likely the TRUE culprit behind the seasonality of the flu– not the flu virus itself. This is probably the single most important and least expensive action you can take. Regularly monitor your vitamin D levels to confirm your levels are within the therapeutic range of 50-70 ng/ml.Ideally, you’ll want to get all your vitamin D from sun exposure or a safe tanning bed, but as a last resort you can take an oral vitamin D3 supplement. According to the latest review by Carole Baggerly (Grassrootshealth.org), adults need about 8,000 IU’s a day.
Avoid Sugar, Fructose and Processed Foods. Sugar impairs the function of your immune system almost immediately, and as you likely know, a healthy immune system is one of the most important keys to fighting off viruses and other illness. Be aware that sugar is present in foods you may not suspect, like ketchup and fruit juice.
Get Enough Rest. Just like it becomes harder for you to get your daily tasks done if you’re tired, if your body is overly fatigued it will be harder for it to fight the flu. Be sure to check out my article Guide to a Good Night’s Sleep for some great tips to help you get quality rest.
Have Effective Tools to Address Stress . We all face some stress every day, but if stress becomes overwhelming then your body will be less able to fight off the flu and other illness. If you feel that stress is taking a toll on your health, consider using an energy psychology tool such as the Emotional Freedom Technique, which is remarkably effective in relieving stress associated with all kinds of events, from work to family to trauma.
Exercise. When you exercise, you increase your circulation and your blood flow throughout your body. The components of your immune system are also better circulated, which means your immune system has a better chance of finding an illness before it spreads.
Take a Good Source of Animal-Based Omega-3 Fats. Increase your intake of healthy and essential fats like the omega-3 found in krill oil, which is crucial for maintaining health. It is also crucial to avoid excessive and/or oxidized omega-6 fatty acids, as well as trans fatty acids commonly found in processed foods, as they will seriously damage your immune response.
Wash Your Hands. Washing your hands will decrease your likelihood of spreading a virus to your nose, mouth or other people. Be sure you don’t use antibacterial soap for this — antibacterial soaps are completely unnecessary, and they cause far more harm than good. Instead, identify a simple chemical-free soap that you can switch your family to.
Use Natural Antibiotics. Examples include colloidal silver, oil of oregano, and garlic. These work like broad-spectrum antibiotics against bacteria, viruses, and protozoa in your body. And unlike pharmaceutical antibiotics, they do not appear to lead to resistance.
Avoid Hospitals. I’d recommend you stay away from hospitals unless you’re having an emergency and need expert medical care, as hospitals are prime breeding grounds for infectious microorganisms of all kinds. The best place to get plenty of rest and recover from illness that is not life-threatening is usually in the comfort of your own home.

Taken together, these strategies lay the groundwork for a robust immune system that can stand up to all kinds of viral and bacterial assaults. However, there are also a number of all-natural therapies that can help you combat colds and flu’s on a more short-term basis. Here’s a listing of some of the most effective ones:

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

FDA Hacked into Private Gmail Accounts of its Own Whistleblower Scientist using Covert Spy Technology

Posted on February 2, 2012 by andreas m

By: Mike Adams
Source: NaturalNews.com

The criminal tendencies of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration were on full display today when it was revealed the agency installed spy software and illegally hacked into the private Gmail accounts of at least half a dozen of its own top scientists. Those scientists, it turns out, were the very same whistleblowers who warned Congress about the FDA’s approval of dangerous medical devices that threatened the lives of patients. In response to them taking action to protect the lives of the innocent — something the FDA is supposed to do but has long since abandoned — they were instead subjected to illegal hacking and having their employment contracts with the FDA terminated.

Those six scientists and doctors have now filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court which claims that they were subjected to FDA internal harassment and unjustified job termination. The lawsuit also describes how the FDA hacked into the private email accounts of these scientists, then intercepted their “whistleblower complaints” intended to be seen only by members of Congress.

“The complaint details how the FDA targeted its employees with a covert spying campaign that lasted for two years,” reports Whistleblowers.org. “The [FDA] installed (or activated) spyware on their workplace computers and used other technology that to monitor their password-protected Gmail-to-Gmail communications. Managers used the collected information to learn the identities of confidential whistleblowers and to obtain the details of the public health and safety concerns the whistleblowers intended to disclose to the Office of Special Counsel, Congress and the Agency’s own Inspector General.”

More importantly, documents reveal that the FDA’s own lawyers engaged in a criminal cover-up of evidence in order to obstruct justice and retaliate against the FDA scientists:

“The managers who spearheaded the surveillance efforts were the same managers involved with the wrongdoing and corruption that the whistleblowers were seeking to report. Lawyers at the FDA and HHS Offices of General Counsel, who should have understood that the program breached the employees’ confidentiality, helped FDA managers with their obstruction and retaliation.”

Take action to support the whistleblowers

The National Whistleblowers Center has issued an action alert seeking public support for the FDA whistleblowers. You can use the tools on the page linked below to contact your members of Congress and other recipients in Washington:
http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&…

View the FDA spy program documents

Some of the documents in question have been published by the Washington Post, which you can view by clicking here.

WhistleBlowers.org has also published many of the documents intercepted by the FDA as it hacked into the private email accounts of its own scientists. These include:

• Communications to Congress
• Gmail-to-Gmail Communications
• Screen Shots

View all these documents at:
www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1332

Whistleblowers.org also released a special news bulletin about the entire story, viewable at: http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&…

How is FDA hacking legal, but hacking Sarah Palin’s email account gets you a felony conviction?

What’s especially interesting about all this is the contrast to the 2008 hacking of Sarah Palin’s private email account. Then, a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell hacked into Palin’s email account and uncovered some embarrassing emails.

He was convicted of a felony crime called “obstruction of justice” for merely deleting emails on his computer, even when he didn’t know an investigation was under way.

As Reuters recently reported, “While the 6th Circuit on Monday recognized the law was both vague and broad, it concluded the law applied directly to Kernell’s conduct.”

Ah, but guess what? That same law will never be applied to the FDA’s conduct. And why? Because the federal government operates outside the law, with no respect for it. Laws only apply to the “little people,” not the criminal thugs who operate the FDA, TSA, DHS, DEA and other corrupt, criminal agencies that incessantly seek more power while abandoning anything resembling lawful conduct.

See, hacking into emails is only illegal of YOU do it, not if the federal government does it. The feds are increasingly demonstrating themselves to be a gang of criminal thugs who abide by no law and run roughshod over the rights of the American people.

FDA is a criminal agency run amok

I’ve said it countless times here on NaturalNews: The FDA is a criminal rogue agency that is operated by criminal-minded government thugs who routinely break laws and violate human rights in order to pursue their agenda of protecting Big Pharma profits.

Their hacking into the private email accounts of employees is a federal crime– a felony, in fact. That it was done by multiple people who plotted such actions makes it a conspiracy to commit a felony which is itself another crime. In fact, if the Justice Department actually conducted an honest investigation into the FDA’s actions in this case, there is no doubt they would uncover multiple felony crimes.

And yet, just watch… there will be no real investigation, no indictments and no prosecution of FDA managers, even as they now routinely commit felony crimes and operate with complete disregard for the law. The FDA is a lawless agency with zero accountability. In fact, the agency writes its own laws by simply inventing whatever new regulations it wants to enforce, then sending out men with guns to enforce those regulations (just like what happened with the Rawesome Foods raids).

As attorney Jonathan Emord warned in his book The Rise of Tyranny, the FDA is much like the TSA in that it is a bureaucratic agency out of control. Its directors are appointed, not elected, so there is zero public accountability and no recourse for directors who have gone bad. New regulations put in place by the FDA, DEA, TSA, DHS, ATF or USDA need no Congressional approval and are not subject to any review by anyone. They simply write their own “laws” and shove them down your throat, often at gunpoint.

This is how agencies like the FDA and TSA are forming their own fiefdoms of dark power, subject to no law and no public scrutiny. And this is what allows federal agencies to routinely engage in criminal conspiracies with total immunity from prosecution.

Consider, if you will, just some of the more recent criminal acts of federal agencies like the FDA:

Federal agencies operate as total criminal gangs

• The ATF recently got caught running guns into Mexico, then laundering billions of dollars in drug money. When it got caught, there were zero prosecutions.

• The FDA has been caught numerous times lying about the known dangers of deadly prescription drugs, covering for the pharmaceutical industry, intimidating scientists and now engaging in criminal hacking crimes that actually qualifies for “acts of terrorism” under the U.S. Patriot Act. (Yes, the government IS the terrorist group!)

• The TSA routinely engages if felony sex crimes against innocent travelers by reaching down their pants and touching their genitals. This is a crime against your person and a total violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights, yet the TSA does it every single day, claiming total immunity from any and all laws. And amazingly, local Sheriffs sit back and allow these felony crimes to take place in their counties every single day while doing absolutely nothing to stop them!

• The USDA openly conspires with Monsanto and other GMO seed companies to destroy American agriculture by contaminating the genetic heritage of food-producing crops and aiding GMO seed companies in acquiring patent protection for their insidious “seed technology.” This goes on even as those very same seeds produce crop failures that actually reduce food production and inevitably result in farmer bankruptcies and suicides.

• The FBI openly admits to not just aiding terrorists in carrying out “mastermind” terror plots in the USA, but actually providing the weapons, plans, guns, ammo, gear and explosives to help the would-be “patsy” terrorists carry out their fabricated plots! See:
http://www.naturalnews.com/034325_FBI_entrapment_terror_plots.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/033751_FBI_terrorism.html

• The DEA conspires with the Coca-Cola company to allow the importation of hundreds of thousands of tons of coca leaves which are processed into Coca-Cola flavoring, producing a byproduct of purified cocaine. This is all done with the full permission of the DEA — the very same agency that would throw you or I in prison if we were caught with just a single gram of cocaine.

Are we a nation of law, or not?

The point is that today’s federal government is run by such outrageous criminals that they routinely commit felony crimes and yet seem to operate with total immunity from prosecution. This obviously brings up a critical question: Is not the United States of America a nation of law?

Do the laws not apply equally to those in government as well as the People? Why is the federal government insisting it is immune from all prosecution for crimes? And more importantly, why should any of us ever trust the federal government when it routinely lies and commits felony crimes?

If the federal government were a private person, it would have been locked up in prison long ago, convicted of a long string of serious felony crimes. To trust this government when it saysanythingis foolish at best, and suicidal at worst. This is a government that actively and on the record engages in masterminding false flag terror attacks, plotting against the safety of its own people, stealing from the pension funds of federal employees, conducting criminal medical experiments using humans as guinea pigs and destroying the Bill of Rights with new laws like the NDAA and SOPA.

To trust this government to protect our interests and our rights is the height of foolishness. No, this government has onlyits own interestsat heart, and those interests are fully focused on expanding its power at the expensive of liberty. The People be damned…

A warning to those who think they are part of the system

I can only wonder what these six scientists who worked for the FDA have now come to realize. Before all this, they probably grinned and laughed at the world, knowing they were “part of the system” of power that dominated the U.S. economy. They were agents of the FDA, after all, and therefore practically untouchable!

But this is the great deception of the police state: All that runaway power and control that you helped put into place will eventually be used against YOU! When you join the criminal gangs in Washington and become part of the system that strips away the rights of others, you will eventually face a day of reckoning yourself. Payback is a bitch, they say, and those who lead criminal lives as part of the out-of-control federal government sooner or later find their own legs trapped in the very same freedom-crushing machine they once helped operate.

Such is the nature of tyranny: Even those who enforce it eventually become victims of it. No one is immune from the clutches of Big Brother, not even the FDA’s own top scientists as we have now discovered.

At every level in the federal government, those who speak out are threatened, surveilled, terminated or sometimes just flat-out assassinated. What do you really think happened to Vince Foster, anyway? Or JFK, for that matter? The closer you get to the hub of corrupt power, the more you’re worth dead versus alive, because you know too much.

All of you who work for the system will be destroyed by it

So watch out, all of you who currently lick the boots of the corrupt criminal elite — you too shall be destroyed by the very same system you now serve. Because tyranny knows no mercy. There is no quarter granted by the Dark Lord Sauron, nor the Sith, nor the very real element of spiritual evil that lurks in the dark halls of the Pentagon, the FDA headquarters, and every other power-grabbing criminal federal agency.

They are the criminal betrayers of the American people. They betray their countrymen, their oaths of office and their own souls. And they do it out of an almost vampiric blood thirst for more power over their dominions. They are parasites of infinite evil who prey upon the hard-working men and women whose taxes pay their salaries, and if we are to save America’s future, we must cut off the funding to all these agencies in the same way one cuts off the blood supply to a cancerous tumor.

Do as Ron Paul says: Eliminate the TSA. Eliminate the DEA. Eliminate DHS, the FDA and yes, even the extremely corrupt Department of Education. Send the evil creatures in Washington back home to the real world where they must learn to cooperate with people rather than ruling over them as bureaucratic tyrants. Slash the federal budget by a trillion dollars or more and you cut off the multiple heads of the hydra growing completely out of control. If more heads grow back, just show the creature a picture of Janet Napolitano, instantly turning it to stone. Aaaargh!

What we are witnessing today, my friends, is a completely out-of-control federal bureaucracy that respects no law and knows no bounds. The TSA seeks to become the Nazi SS of America, running checkpoints on every highway, sporting event and street corner. We are watching total corporate-run fascism unfold right before our very eyes, and if we do not take serious steps to reform bad government and restore our liberties right now, we will ride this monster into the depths of hellish corruption from which the USA as we now know it will never emerge.

The path we are on today can only lead to another holocaust. Mass death. Total police state powers. Countless innocent victims. We are becoming the next great holocaust in the making, and the FDA is playing a key role in furthering that dark agenda.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines

Did You Know? Nearly All Corn and Soy Products Purchased at Grocery Stores are Genetically Modified and May Place Your Health at Risk

Posted on February 2, 2012 by andreas m

By: David Gutierrez
Source: NaturalNews.com

More than 90 percent of all soybeans grown in the United States are genetically modified (GM) for herbicide resistance and are consequently sprayed with massive quantities of those toxic chemicals. Fully 85 percent of all corn grown in the country is also genetically engineered, either for herbicide resistance or to produce pesticides within its tissues. Since farmers sell their corn and soy to large distributors who mix the product together for processing, this essentially means that 100 percent of non-organic corn and soy products on the US market are GM.

And since soy and corn derivatives are so ubiquitous in packaged food, the Grocery Manufacturers of America has estimated that as much as 80 percent of processed food on US shelves contains GM ingredients. This includes breakfast cereals and other products labeled “natural” or “all natural.”

GM crops are simply unsafe. They expose people to novel and potentially dangerous allergens and to higher levels of pesticides. Animals grazing on GM crops have died from ruptured internal organs. Yet this is the type of food making up 80 percent of packaged food today, and the only way to avoid it is to buy organic food or grow your own.

Tip: Foods labeled USDA Organic do not contain any substantial level of genetically engineered ingredients, but due to cross-contamination of crops, even organic products almost always contain trace levels of GMOs.

To view the original article click here.
To reprint this article, visit the source website for reprinting guidelines