Weight Loss Without Dieting, Health Without Drugs - Free Health News

This article discusses the potential health risks of genetically engineered foods (GMOs). It draws on some previously used material because its importance bears repeating. It also cites three notable books and highlights one in particular - Jeffrey Smith's "Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods." Detailed information from the book is featured below.

Genetically engineered foods saturate our diet today. In the US alone, over 80% of all processed foods contain them. Others include grains like rice, corn and wheat; legumes like soybeans and soy products; vegetable oils, soft drinks; salad dressings; vegetables and fruits; dairy products including eggs; meat, chicken, pork and other animal products; and even infant formula plus a vast array of hidden additives and ingredients in processed foods (like in tomato sauce, ice cream, margarine and peanut butter). Consumers don't know what they're eating because labeling is prohibited, yet the danger is clear. Independently conducted studies show the more of these foods we eat, the greater the potential harm to our health.

Today, consumers are kept in the dark and are part of an uncontrolled, unregulated mass human experiment the results of which are unknown. Yet, the risks are enormous, it will take years to learn them, and when we finally know it'll be too late to reverse the damage if it's proved conclusively that genetically engineered foods harm human health as growing numbers of independent experts believe. Once GM seeds are introduced to an area, the genie is out of the bottle for keeps. There is nothing known to science today to reverse the contamination already spread over two-thirds of arable US farmland and heading everywhere unless checked.

This is happening in spite of the risk because of what F. William Engdahl revealed in his powerfully important, well documented book titled "Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation." It's the diabolical story of how Washington and four Anglo-American agribusiness giants plan world domination by patenting animal and vegetable life forms to gain worldwide control of our food supply, make it all genetically engineered, and use it as a weapon to reward friends and punish enemies.

Today, consumers eat these foods daily without knowing the potential health risks. In 2003, Jeffrey Smith explained them in his book titled "Seeds of Deception." He revealed that efforts to inform the public have been quashed, reliable science has been buried, and consider what happened to two distinguished scientists - UC Berkeley's Ignacio Chapela and former Scotland Rowett Research Institute researcher and world's leading lectins and plant genetic modification expert, Arpad Pusztai. They were vilified, hounded, and threatened for their research, and in the case of Pusztai, fired from his job for doing it.

He believed in the promise of GM foods, was commissioned to study them, and conducted the first ever independent one on them anywhere. Like other researchers since, he was shocked by his findings. Rats fed GM potatoes had smaller livers, hearts, testicles and brains, damaged immune systems, and showed structural changes in their white blood cells making them more vulnerable to infection and disease compared to other rats fed non-GMO potatoes. It got worse. Thymus and spleen damage showed up; enlarged tissues, including the pancreas and intestines; and there were cases of liver atrophy as well as significant proliferation of stomach and intestines cells that could be a sign of greater future risk of cancer. Equally alarming, results showed up after 10 days of testing, and they persisted after 110 days that's the human equivalent of 10 years.

Later independent studies confirmed what Pusztai learned, and Smith published information on them in his 2007 book called "Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods." The book is encyclopedic in depth, an invaluable comprehensive source, and this article reviews some of the shocking data in it.

Compelling Evidence of Potential GMO Harm

In his introduction, Smith cites the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) policy statement on GM food safety without a shred of evidence to back it. It supported GHW Bush's Executive Order that GMOs are "substantially equivalent" to ordinary seeds and crops and need no government regulation. The agency said it was "not aware of any information showing that foods derived by these new methods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way." That single statement meant no safety studies are needed and "Ultimately, it is the food producer" that bears responsibility "for assuring safety." As a consequence, foxes now guard our henhouse in a brave new dangerous world.

FDA policy opened the floodgates, and Smith put it this way: It "set the stage for the rapid deployment of the new technology," allowed the seed industry to become "consolidated, millions of acres (to be) planted, hundreds of millions to be fed (these foods in spite of nations and consumers objecting, and) laws to be passed (to assure it)." The toll today is contaminated crops, billions of dollars lost, human health harmed, and it turns out the FDA lied.

The agency knew GM crops are "meaningfully different" because their technical experts told them so. As a result, they recommended long-term studies, including on humans, to test for possible allergies, toxins, new diseases and nutritional problems. Instead, politics trumped science, the White House ordered the FDA to promote GM crops, and a former Monsanto vice-president went to FDA to assure it.

Today, the industry is unregulated, and when companies say their foods are safe, their views are unquestioned. Further, Smith noted that policy makers in other countries trust FDA and wrongly assume their assessments are valid. They're disproved when independent studies are matched against industry-run ones. The differences are startling. The former report adverse affects while the latter claim the opposite. It's no secret why. Agribusiness giants allow nothing to interfere with profits, safety is off the table, and all negative information is quashed.

As a result, their studies are substandard, adverse findings are hidden, and they typically "fail to investigate the impacts of GM food on gut function, liver function, kidney function, the immune system, endocrine system, blood composition, allergic response, effects on the unborn, the potential to cause cancer, or impacts on gut bacteria." In addition, industry-funded studies creatively avoid finding problems or conceal any uncovered. They cook the books by using older instead of younger more sensitive animals, keep sample sizes too low for statistical significance, dilute the GM component of feeds used, limit the duration of feeding trials, ignore animal deaths and sickness, and engage in other unscientific practices. It's to assure people never learn of the potential harm from these foods, and Smith says they can do it because "They've got 'bad science' down to a science."

The real kinds show GMOs produce "massive changes in the natural functioning of (a) plant's DNA. Native genes can be mutated, deleted, permanently turned off or on....the inserted gene can become truncated, fragmented, mixed with other genes, inverted or multiplied, and the GM protein it produces may have unintended characteristics" that may be harmful.

GMOs also pose other health risks. When a transgene functions in a new cell, it may produce different proteins than the ones intended. They may be harmful, but there's no way to know without scientific testing. Even if the protein is exactly the same, there are still problems. Consider corn varieties engineered to produce a pesticidal protein called Bt-toxin. Farmers use it in spray form, and companies falsely claim it's harmless to humans. In fact, people exposed to the spray develop allergic-type symptoms, mice ingesting Bt had powerful immune responses and abnormal and excessive cell growth, and a growing number of human and livestock illnesses are linked to Bt crops.

Smith notes still another problem relating to inserted genes. Assuming they're destroyed by our digestive system, as industry claims, is false. In fact, they may move from food into gut bacteria or internal organs, and consider the potential harm. If corn genes with Bt-toxin get into gut bacteria, our intestinal flora may become pesticide factories. There's been no research done to prove if it's true or false. Agribusiness giants aren't looking, neither is FDA, consumers are left to play "Genetic Roulette," and the few animal feeding studies done show the odds are against them.

Arpad Pusztai and other scientists were shocked at their results of animals fed GM foods. His results were cited above. Other independent studies showed stunted growth, impaired immune systems, bleeding stomachs, abnormal and potentially precancerous cell growth in the intestines, impaired blood cell development, misshaped cell structures in the liver, pancreas and testicles, altered gene expression and cell metabolism, liver and kidney lesions, partially atrophied livers, inflamed kidneys, less developed organs, reduced digestive enzymes, higher blood sugar, inflamed lung tissue, increased death rates and higher offspring mortality as well.

There's more. Two dozen farmers reported their pigs and cows fed GM corn became sterile, 71 shepherds said 25% of their sheep fed Bt cotton plants died, and other reports showed the same effects on cows, chickens, water buffaloes and horses. After GM soy was introduced in the UK, allergies from the product skyrocketed by 50%, and in the US in the 1980s, a GM food supplement killed dozens and left five to ten thousand others sick or disabled.

Today, Monsanto is the world's largest seed producer, and Smith notes how the company deals with reports like these. In response to the US Public Health Service concerning adverse reactions from its toxic PCBs, the company claims its experience "has been singularly free of difficulties." That's in spite of lawsuit-obtained records showing "this was part of a cover-up and denial that lasted decades" by a company with a long history of irresponsible behavior that includes "extensive bribery, highjacking of regulatory agencies, suppressing negative information about its products" and threatening journalists and scientists who dare report them. The company long ago proved it can't be trusted with protecting human health.

In his book, "Seeds of Destruction," Engdahl names four dominant agribusiness giants - Monsanto, DuPont, Dow Agrisciences and Syngenta in Switzerland from the merger of the agriculture divisions of Novartis and AstraZeneca. Smith calls these companies Ag biotech and names a fifth - Germany-based Bayer CropScience AG (division of Bayer AG) with its Environmental Science and BioScience headquarters in France.

Their business is to do the impossible and practically overnight - change the laws of nature and do them one better for profit. So far they haven't independent because genetic engineering doesn't work like natural breeding. It may or may not be a lot of things, but it isn't sex, says Smith. Michael Antoniou, a molecular geneticist involved in human gene therapy, explains that genetic modification "technically and conceptually bears no resemblance to natural breeding." The reproduction process works by both parents contributing thousands of genes to the offspring. They, in turn, get sorted naturally, and plant breeders have successfully worked this way for thousands of years.

Genetic manipulation is different and so far fraught with danger. It works by forcibly inserting a single gene from a species' DNA into another unnaturally. Smith puts it this way: "A pig can mate with a pig and a tomato can mate with a tomato. But this is no way that a pig can mate with a tomato and vice versa." The process transfers genes across natural barriers that "separated species over millions of years of evolution" and managed to work. The biotech industry now wants us to believe it can do nature one better, and that genetic engineering is just an extension or superior alternative to natural breeding. It's unproved, indefensible pseudoscience mumbo jumbo, and that's the problem.

Biologist David Schubert explains that industry claims are "not only scientifically incorrect but exceptionally deceptive....to make the GE process sound similar to conventional plant breeding." It a smoke screen to hide the fact that what happens in laboratories can't duplicate nature, at least not up to now. Genetic engineering involves combining genes that never before existed together, the process defies natural breeding proved safe over thousands of years, and there's no way to assure the result won't be a deadly unrecallable Andromeda Strain, no longer the world of science fiction.

The industry pooh-pooh's the suggestion of potential harm, and unscientifically claims millions of people in the US and worldwide have eaten GM food for a decade, and no one got sick. Smith's reply: How can we know as "GM foods might already be contributing to serious health problems, but since no one is monitoring for this, it could take decades" to find out. By then, it will be too late and some industry critics argue it already may be or dangerously close.

Today, most existing diseases have no effective surveillance systems in place. If GM foods create new ones, that potentially compounds the problem manyfold. Consider HIV/AIDS. It went unnoticed for decades and when identified, many thousands worldwide were infected or had died.

Then there's the problem of linkage. In the US and many countries, GM foods are unlabeled so it's impossible tracing illness and diseases to specific substances ingested even if thousands of people are affected. It can plausibly be blamed on anything, especially when governments and regulatory agencies support industry claims of reliability and safety.

It's rare that problems like the L-Tryptophan epidemic of the late 1980s are identified, but when it was thousands were already harmed. L-Tryptophan is a natural amino acid constituent of most proteins and for years was produced by many companies including Showa Denko in Japan. The company then got greedy, saw a way to increase profits from a product designed to induce sleep naturally, and gene-spliced a bacterium into the natural product to do it. The result was many dozens dead, over 1500 crippled, and up to 10,000 afflicted with a blood disorder from a new incurable disease called Eosinophilia Myalgia Syndrome or EMS.

It's a painful, multi-system disease that causes permanent scarring and fibrosis to nerve and muscle tissues, continuing inflammation, and a permanent change in a person's immune system. It cost the company two billion dollars to settle claims. Hundreds have since died, in all likelihood from contracting EMS.

This is the known toll from a single product. Consider the potential harm with Ag biotech wanting all foods to be unlabeled GMOs worldwide and governments unable to balk because WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) and Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) rules deny them. They're also prevented under WTO's Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement (SPS). It states that national laws banning GMO products are "unfair trade practices" even when they endanger human health. Other WTO rules also apply - called "Technical Barriers to Trade." They prohibit GMO labeling so consumers don't know what they're eating and can't avoid these potentially hazardous foods.

The 1996 Biosafety Protocol was drafted to prevent this problem, and it should be in place to do it. Public safety, however, was ambushed by Washington, the FDA and the agribusiness lobby. It sabotaged talks and insisted biosafety measures be subordinate to WTO trade rules that apply regardless of other considerations, including public health and safety. The path is thus cleared for the unrestricted spread of GMO seeds and foods worldwide unless a way is found to stop it.

Independent Animal Studies Showing GMO Harm

Rats fed genetically engineered Calgene Flavr-Savr tomatoes (developed to look fresh for weeks) for 28 days got bleeding stomachs (stomach lesions) and seven died and were replaced in the study.

Rats fed Monsanto 863 Bt corn for 90 days developed multiple reactions typically found in response to allergies, infections, toxins, diseases like cancer, anemia and blood pressure problems. Their blood cells, livers and kidneys showed significant changes indicative of disease.

Mice fed either GM potatoes engineered to produce Bt- toxin or natural potatoes containing the toxin had intestinal damage. Both varieties created abnormal and excessive cell growth in the lower intestine. The equivalent human damage might cause incontinence or flu-like symptoms and could be pre-cancerous. The study disproved the contention that digestion destroys Bt-toxin and is not biologically active in mammals.

Workers in India handling Bt cotton while picking, loading, weighing and separating the fiber from seeds developed allergies. They began with "mild to severe itching," then redness and swelling, followed by skin eruptions. These symptoms affected their skin, eyes (got red and swollen with excessive tearing) and upper respiratory tract causing nasal discharge and sneezing. In some cases, hospitalization was required. At one cotton gin factory, workers take antihistamines daily.

Sheep grazing on Bt cotton developed "unusual systems" before dying "mysteriously." Reports from four Indian villages revealed 25% of them died within a week. Post mortems indicated a toxic reaction. The study raises questions about cottonseed oil safety and human health for people who eat meat from animals fed GM cotton. It's crucial to understand that what animals eat, so do people.

Nearly all 100 Filipinos living adjacent to a Bt corn field became ill. Their symptoms appeared when the crop was producing airborne pollen and was apparently inhaled. Doing it produced headaches, dizziness, extreme stomach pain, vomiting, chest pains, fever, and allergies plus respiratory, intestinal and skin reactions. Blood tests conducted on 39 victims showed an antibody response to Bt-toxin suggesting it was the cause. Four other villages experienced the same problems that also resulted in several animal deaths.

Iowa farmers reported a conception rate drop of from 80% to 20% among sows (female pigs) fed GM corn. Most animals also had false pregnancies, some delivered bags of water and others stopped menstruating. Male pigs were also affected as well as cows and bulls. They became sterile and all were fed GM corn.

German farmer Gottfried Glockner grew GM corn and fed it to his cows. Twelve subsequently died from the Bt 176 variety, and other cows had to be destroyed due to a "mysterious" illness. The corn plots were field trials for Ag biotech giant Syngenta that later took the product off the market with no admission of fault.

Mice fed Monsanto Roundup Ready soybeans developed significant liver cell changes indicating a dramatic general metabolism increase. Symptoms included irregularly shaped nuclei and nucleoli, and an increased number of nuclear pores and other changes. It's thought this resulted from exposure to a toxin, and most symptoms disappeared when Roundup Ready was removed from the diet.

Mice fed Roundup Ready had pancreas problems, heavier livers and unexplained testicular cell changes. The Monsanto product also produced cell metabolism changes in rabbit organs, and most offspring of rats on this diet died within three weeks.

The death rate for chickens fed GM Liberty Link corn for 42 days doubled. They also experienced less weight gain, and their food intake was erratic.

In the mid-1990s, Australian scientists discovered that GM peas generated an allergic-type inflammatory response in mice in contrast to the natural protein that had no adverse effect. Commercialization of the product was cancelled because of fear humans might have the same reaction.

When given a choice, animals avoid GM foods. This was learned by observing a flock of geese that annually visit an Illinois pond and feed on soybeans from an adjacent farm. After half the acreage had GM crops, the geese ate only from the non-GMO side. Another observation showed 40 deer ate organic soybeans from one field but shunned the GMO kind across the road. The same thing happened with GM corn.

Inserting foreign or transgenes is called insertional mutagenesis or insertion mutation. When done, it usually disrupts DNA at the insertion site and affects gene functioning overall by scrambling, deleting or relocating the genetic code near the insertion site.

The process of creating a GM plant requires scientists first to isolate and grow plant cells in the laboratory using a tissue culture process. The problem is when it's done it can create hundreds or thousands of DNA mutations throughout the genome. Changing a single base pair may be harmful. However, widespread genome changes compound the potential problem manyfold.

Promoters are used in GM crops as switches to turn on the foreign gene. When done, the process may accidently switch on other natural plant genes permanently. The result may be to overproduce an allergen, toxin, carcinogen, antinutrient, enzymes that stimulate or inhibit hormone production, RNA that silences genes, or changes that affect fetal development. They may also produce regulators that block other genes and/or switch on a dormant virus that may cause great harm. In addition, evidence suggests the promoter may create genetic instability and mutations that can result in the breakup and recombination of the gene sequence.

Plants naturally produce thousands of chemicals to enhance health and protect against disease. However, changing plant protein may alter these chemicals, increase plant toxins and/or reduce its phytonutrients. For example, GM soybeans produce less cancer-fighting isoflavones. Overall, studies show genetic modification produces unintended changes in nutrients, toxins, allergens and small molecule metabolism products.

To create a GM soybean with a more complete protein balance, Pioneer Hi-Bred inserted a Brazil nut gene. By doing it, an allergenic protein was introduced affecting people allergic to Brazil nuts. When tests confirmed this, the project was cancelled. GM proteins in other crops like corn and papaya may also be allergenic. The same problem exists for other crops like Bt corn, and evidence shows allergies skyrocketed after GM crops were introduced.

Another study of Monsanto's high-lysine corn showed it contained toxins and other potentially harmful substances that may retard growth. If consumed in large amounts, it may also adversely affect human health. In addition, when this product is cooked, it may produce toxins associated with Alzheimer's, diabetes, allergies, kidney disease, cancer and aging symptoms.

Disease-resistant crops like zucchini, squash and Hawaiian papaya may promote human viruses and other diseases, and eating these products may suppress the body's natural defense against viral infections.

Protein structural aspects in GM crops may be altered in unforeseen ways. They may be misfolded or have added molecules. During insertion, transgenes may become truncated, rearranged or interspersed with other DNA pieces with unknown harmful effects. Transgenes may also be unstable and spontaneously rearrange over time, again with unpredictable consequences. In addition, they may create more than one protein from a process called alternative splicing. Environmental factors, weather, natural and man-made substances and genetic disposition of a plant further complicate things and pose risks. They're introduced as well because genetic engineering disrupts complex DNA relationships.

Contrary to industry claims, studies show transgenes aren't destroyed digestively in humans or animals. Foreign DNA can wander, survive in the gastro-intestinal tract, and be transported by blood to internal organs. This raises the risk that transgenes may transfer to gut bacteria, proliferate over time, and get into cells DNA, possibly causing chronic diseases. A single human feeding study confirmed that genes, in fact, transferred from GM soy into the DNA gut bacteria of three of seven test subjects.

Antibiotic Resister Marker (ARM) genes are attached to transgenes prior to insertion and allow cells to survive antibiotic applications. If ARM genes transfer to pathogenic gut or mouth bacteria, they potentially can cause antibiotic-resistant super-diseases. The proliferation of GM crops increases the possibility. The CaMV promoter in nearly all GMOs can also transfer and may switch on random genes or viruses that produce toxins, allergens or carcinogens as well as create genetic instability.

GM crops interact with their environment and are part of a complex ecosystem that includes our food. These crops may increase environmental and other toxins that may accumulate throughout the food chain. Crops genetically engineered to be glufosinate (herbicide)resistant may produce intestinal herbicide with known toxic effects. If transference to gut bacteria occurs, greater problems may result.

Repeated use of seeds like Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybeans results in vicious new super-weeds that need far greater amounts of stronger herbicides to combat. Their toxic residues remain in crops that humans and animals then eat. Even small amounts of these toxins may be endocrine disruptors that can affect human reproduction adversely. Evidence exists that GM crops accumulate toxins or concentrate them in milk or animals fed GM feed. Disease-resistant crops may also produce new plant viruses that affect humans.

All type GM foods, not just crops, carry these risks. Milk, for example, from cows injected with Monsanto's bovine growth hormone (rbGH), has much higher levels of the hormone IGF-1 that risks breast, prostate, colon, lung and other cancers. The milk also has lower nutritional value. GM food additives also pose health risks, and their use has proliferated in processed foods.

Potential harm to adults is magnified for children. Another concern is that pregnant mothers eating GM foods may endanger their offspring by harming normal fetal development and altering gene expression that's then passed to future generations. Children are also more endangered than adults, especially those drinking substantial amounts of rbGH-treated milk.

Conclusion

The above information is largely drawn from Smith's "Genetic Roulette." The data is startling and confirms a clear conclusion. The proliferation of untested, unregulated GM foods in the span of a decade is more a leap of faith than reliable science. Microbiologist Richard Lacey captures the risk stating: "it is virtually impossible to even conceive of a testing procedure to assess the health effects of (GM) foods when introduced into the food chain, nor is there any valid nutritional or public interest reason for their introduction." Other scientists worldwide agree that GM foods entered the market long before science could evaluate their safety and benefits. They want a halt to this dangerous experiment that needs decades of rigorous research and testing before we can know.

Unchecked and unregulated, human health and safety are at risk because once GMOs enter the food chain, the genie is out of the bottle for keeps. Thankfully, resistance is growing worldwide, many millions are opposed, but reversing the tide won't be easy. Washington and Ag biotech are on a roll with big unstated aims - total control of our food, making it all genetically engineered, and scheming to use it as a weapon to reward friends and punish enemies.

Smith is hopeful that people will prevail over profits. Hopefully he's right because human health and safety must never be compromised. Resistance already halted the introduction of new crop varieties, and Smith believes that with enough momentum existing ones may end up withdrawn. He cites an example he calls a "Shift away from GM foods in the United States" in 2007. Leading it is an initiative launched last spring to remove GM ingredients from the entire natural food sector. It's led by a coalition of natural food products producers, distributors and retailers along with the Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT). It's called the Campaign for Healthier Eating in America, and its aims are big - to educate consumers about GM food risks and promote healthy alternatives through shopping guides.

A Pew survey reported that 29% of Americans, representing 87 million people, strongly oppose these foods and believe they're unsafe. That's a respectable start if backed up with efforts to avoid them, and more information how is at ResponsibleTechnology.org. Jeffrey Smith founded IRT in 2003 "to promote the responsible use of technology and stop GM foods and crops through both grassroots and national strategies." It seeks safe alternatives and aims to "ban the genetic engineering of our food supply and all outdoor releases of (GM) organisms, at least until (or unless scientific opinion) believes such products are safe and appropriate based on independent and reliable data."

IRT urges consumers to become educated about the risks, mobilize to combat them and act in our mutual self-interest. It's beginning to happen, and Smith believes "there is an excellent chance that food manufacturers will abandon GM foods in the near future" if a public groundswell demands it. He ends his book saying: "Although GMOs present one of the greatest dangers, with informed, motivated people, it is one of the easiest global issues to solve." Hopefully he's right.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions of world and national topics with distinguished guests.



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Labels: frankenfood, genetically modified, GM food

We barely know about the effects of chemical food additives, and our governments don't care

Eric Schlosser
Thursday September 6, 2007
The Guardian

The overwhelming majority of our additive intake today has been part of the diet of humans for generations: yeast, salt, sugar, baking powder. But thousands of other additives, derived from both natural and synthetic sources, have recently become commonplace in western eating. What are these substances doing to our bodies and our minds? We are just beginning to find out.

A study published today by Southampton University, into the impact of additives on groups of three-year-olds and eight-year-olds, produced some alarming results. The Food Standards Agency-commissioned report found a link between hyperactivity among children and certain food colourings, as well as a preservative used in sweets, drinks and processed foods in the UK.

We are only just beginning to learn the impact of synthetic additions to what we eat. The industrialisation of the food supply has turned consumers into the unwitting subjects of a vast, ongoing scientific experiment.

Spices and preservatives have been added to foods for millennia in order to make them last longer and taste better. And there is a long history of using additives to mislead consumers, with various chemicals employed to supply taste, enhance colour and disguise the aroma of spoiled meats. Before the advent of federal food safety laws in the United States, dangerous heavy metals were routinely used as colouring agents in children's sweets.

It would be hard to find a processed food on a supermarket shelf (or on a fast food menu) that does not contain a vast array of chemical additives. Indeed, the packaged food industry and the fast food industry are dependent on the use of such additives to prevent spoilage, to allow the transport of products long distances, and to maintain uniformity. Any finding that such additives pose a threat to human health will threaten the financial health of these industries. And that is why so few large-scale studies have been conducted. The absence of adequate information greatly benefits the producers of industrial food.

In the United States there is an extremely cosy relationship between the food industry and the government agencies that are ostensibly regulating it. Until a few years ago, the head of the food and drug administration - our version of the Food Standards Agency, responsible for the safety of most of the food that Americans eat - was a former executive vice president of the national food processors association. Similarly close ties between industry and government can be found in the European Union. As a result, hundreds of food additives are never tested for harmful effects. And the risks posed by consuming a variety of additives in combination are rarely explored.

I don't think that people should feel panicky about food additives or succumb to the latest food scare. The best advice is probably caveat emptor. We simply don't know what effect these things are having on us. And government food safety agencies don't seem eager to find out. "Food additives play a vital role in today's bountiful and nutritious food supply," the US food and drug administration claimed in a brochure some years ago. "They make possible an array of convenience foods without the inconvenience of daily shopping."

Perhaps a little less convenience, and a lot more unprocessed food, would be the wise course.

· Eric Schlosser is the author of Fast Food Nation: What the All-American Meal Is Doing to the World, and Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food
comment@guardian.co.uk


Weight loss without dieting

Labels: food additives

SHERYL UBELACKER

Canadian Press

September 10, 2007 at 10:20 PM EDT

TORONTO — People who take vitamin D supplements appear to have a lower risk of death from any cause, an analysis of numerous studies has found, adding to the weight of evidence suggesting that the “sunshine nutrient” confers widespread health benefits.

In an analysis of data pooled from 18 randomized controlled trials, researchers at the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the European Institute of Oncology found that subjects who took at least 500 international units of vitamin D daily had a 7 per cent lower risk of death, on average, compared with control groups given a dummy pill.

The 18 clinical trials involved a total of more than 57,000 subjects, who were followed for almost six years. Most of the studies, with participants mainly over age 65, were investigating the role of vitamin D in keeping bones strong and preventing fractures.

In the nine trials that collected blood samples, participants who took supplements had an average 1.4- to 5.2-fold higher blood level of vitamin D than those who did not, the analysis shows.

Previous studies have suggested that vitamin D deficiency may be linked to a higher risk of dying from cancer, heart disease and diabetes — illnesses that account for 60 per cent to 70 per cent of deaths in high-income countries, the authors say.

“If the associations made between vitamin D and these conditions were consistent, then interventions effectively strengthening vitamin D status should result in reduced total mortality,” the authors write.

Researchers can't say for sure what it is about vitamin D that seems to improve health and apparently prolong life.

“It's still a little bit obscure,” co-author Dr. Philippe Autier, chief of epidemiology and biostatistics at the Agency for Research on Cancer, said Monday from Lyon, France. “There's one area of research quite recently that showed that vitamin D had the possibility to delay, to retard, the progression of certain diseases, essentially cancer and some cardiovascular diseases.”

Numerous laboratory studies have shown that vitamin D can halt the growth of cells, Dr. Autier said. “Cancer is characterized by the proliferation of cells. It looks like the vitamin D was able to . . . put a control on this, put the brake on this proliferation.”

“So that's why probably vitamin D could be able to decrease the progression of the disease and explain better survival and greater life expectancy.”

In June, the Canadian Cancer Society recommended that adults consider taking a vitamin D supplement of 1,000 IUs daily during fall and winter, while darker-skinned and older people should think about maintaining that daily intake year-round.

Dr. Reinhold Vieth, an expert in vitamin D and osteoporosis at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, called the analysis “really interesting.” By pooling results from many studies, the European researchers were able to tease out vitamin D's effect on longevity that wouldn't have been statistically relevant in a single study.

“So what it's coming along at is more and more little pieces of evidence that say it's very interesting to look at vitamin D a little bit more,” said Dr. Vieth, who was not involved in the research published Tuesday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Two other recently published papers have shown vitamin D's apparent benefits: In one, young Finnish men who took the nutrient had half the number of respiratory infections compared with those not taking a supplement.

And in a study of older people in the Netherlands, who were followed for eight years, researchers found that those with high vitamin D levels in their blood were less likely to end up in a nursing home and less likely to die early compared to those with low blood levels of vitamin D.

“What we've been finding out over the last 10 years is that vitamin D is not a one-trick pony that just relates to bone (health), but to many biological functions that go on throughout the body and make use of vitamin D to regulate the way they work,” dr. Vieth said.

“So it covers a lot of territory.”

In an editorial accompanying the study, Dr. Edward Giovannucci of the Harvard School of Public Health says the meta-analysis “adds a new chapter in the accumulating evidence for a beneficial role of vitamin D on health.”

“Research on vitamin D should be continued to clearly elucidate the specific benefits and optimal intakes and levels of vitamin D,” Dr. Giovannucci writes. “Nonetheless, based on the total body of evidence of health conditions associated with vitamin D deficiency, abetted with the results from this meta-analysis, a more proactive attitude to identify, prevent and treat vitamin D deficiency should be part of standard medical care.”

“From a broader public health perspective, the roles of moderate sun exposure, food fortification with vitamin D and higher-dose vitamin D supplements for adults need to be debated.”



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By Will Dunham
9-11-7

(Reuters) -- Vitamin C can impede the growth of some types of tumors although not in the way some scientists had suspected, researchers reported on Monday.

The new research, published in the journal Cancer Cell, supported the general notion that vitamin C and other so-called antioxidants can slow tumor growth, but pointed to a mechanism different from the one many experts had suspected.

The researchers generated encouraging results when giving vitamin C to mice that had been implanted with human cancer cells -- either the blood cancer lymphoma or prostate cancer. Another antioxidant, N-acetylcysteine, also limited tumor growth in the mice, the researchers said.

Antioxidants are nutrients that prevent some of the damage from unstable molecules known as free radicals, created when the body turns food into energy. Vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene are among well-known antioxidants.

Previous research had suggested that vitamin C may stifle tumor growth by preventing DNA damage from free radicals.

But researchers led by Dr. Chi Dang, a professor of medicine and oncology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, found that antioxidants appear to be working in a different way -- undermining a tumor's ability to grow under certain conditions.

Figuring out how antioxidants impede tumors should help scientists figure out how they might be harnessed to fight cancer, Dang said. In addition to the cancer types involved in this study, others that might be vulnerable to vitamin C include colon cancer and cervical cancer, he said.

Dang said more research is needed and cautioned against taking high doses of vitamin C based on these findings.

"Certainly we would very much discourage people with untreated cancer to go out and take buckets full of vitamin C," Dang said in a telephone interview.

Linus Pauling argued in the 1970s that vitamin C, also called ascorbic acid, could ward off cancer, but the notion has proved contentious.

Pauling, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry as well as the Nobel Peace Prize, died in 1994.

"Pauling actually had some good evidence that under certain situations vitamin C can prevent tumor formation. It's just the mechanism was really not that clear then," Dang said.

"Now that, I think, we provide relatively compelling evidence of how this works, maybe Pauling is partly right. We shouldn't dismiss him so quickly." Dang added.

Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Critical Response To Vitamin C's Cancer-Fighting Properties
By Ken Adachi
9-15-7


Dear Jeff,
Re: http://www.rense.com/general78/csprop.htm
How utterly vexing and annoying it was to read the salubrious, yet untrue assertions made by oncologist and John Hopkins professor Dr. Chi Dang concerning the role that Dr Linus Pauling played in the 1970s in regard to heralding the importance of Vitamin C as a CRITICAL ingredient in immune system modulation (enhancement) to not only PREVENT the formation of cancerous tumors, but to ALSO mitigate and reduce the advancement of cancer growth, once it had reached the full blown metastasis stage.
Dr Dang, an obvious servant of the chemical cancer industry, reduces the Herculean contributions in vitamin C knowledge provided by Nobel laureate Dr. Linus Pauling down to that of a minor, peon researcher whose discoveries merit no more mention than that of a footnote.
I'd like to punch that guy square in the nose for uttering such vapid stupidities!
Long before this man showed up in a national press release, Linus Pauling had ALREADY PROVEN and DEMONSTRATED THE many pathways by which Vitamin C enhances immunity, and not only for cancer, but for ANY disease condition.
Pauling went FAR BEYOND tests with mice. He had already graduated though ALL the ranks of animal research and was long ago engaged in LONG TERM human studies (with Dr Cameron of Canada) in the EARLY 1970S! He had published all of his research findings in numerous peer reviewed journals and published no less than SEVEN Books documenting his findings!
This is NOT the first time that I have encountered institutional hacks from big name "medical research" universities or institutions that have attempted to lay claim to discoveries that had ALREADY been documented and published by earlier pioneers. About 6 years ago, I caught a brief news item under new science discoveries in which a claim was made by a female university "team leader" from a Big Deal university in San Diego where she said that SHE had discovered some NEW and remarkable attributes of Flax seed oil to stem cancer proliferation. I wrote her and her adoring university promoters, that she hadn't discovered ANYTHING; that her "work" was a virtual carbon copy of Dr Johanna Budwig's research about flax seed oil made in the 1950s in Germany for which she had to endure endless assaults and debunking travails from the entrenched food oil industry in Germany.
If you want to find out what Vitamin C can do to improve health and immunity, then obtain the books of Dr Linus Pauling, published in the 1970's and 1980s, and you will find out what this man will undoubtedly lay claim to as "discovering" in the coming months and years.
Long live the Corporate Foundation Research Grant and the hacks who covet them, for they make life worth living for no other reason than to rebuke their calumny and pretense to fame!
Sincerely,

Ken Adachi



Weight loss without dieting

Labels: cancer, vitamin c

Ted Twietmeyer
6-20-7


This is dedicated to readers who are NOT yet seriously ill or who do NOT serve as caregivers for the chronically ill. Hopefully it will instill some very sobering thoughts. If you are one of these fortunate people - live every day like it's your last. Not one of us will ever know when some nasty disease will strike us and wreak havoc on our lives, or the life of someone we love or care about. There are actually only a handful of different ways we can get our exit ticket punched on this Earth. We may never know when we'll meet the train conductor face to face.

As a caregiver, I can testify that serious illness around you (or in you) will drain you even while you're still relatively healthy, in countless ways which will test your patience with the medical and drug professions. Expenses will bombard you from all directions that will drain your wallet with insane, countless costs you never thought possible. On top of all this, every year these costs increase. There is a frustration doctors can create in your mind with their often frustrating behavior and "standard of care" which all doctors must follow.

We see more and more power being consolidated into fewer and fewer and drug companies and government organizations. Now the FDA wants to suckle at big pharma nipples under the guise of "fees." I'll not delve into that black hole in depth here as others already have done so far more eloquently than I. But we will explore the medical and drug profession which is connected at the waist like Siamese twins. The core of this matter is the public's ignorant, blind trust in the FDA as their watchdog. People seldom can help themselves to believe otherwise, as they are unknowingly brainwashed to think that way by media. Is this a cultural thing perhaps?

There is also a well-known phenomenon that everyone in the medical profession knows about - the "white lab coat effect." This one is strange but true. Generic white lab coats were originally designed to protect street clothes from chemicals and spills in a laboratory. But it was discovered a long time ago that people blindly trust almost anyone wearing a white lab coat! This is why many doctors wear them, even though most doctors never step foot in a laboratory.

What a mistake it is to blindly trust the FDA - this is akin to trusting Jack the Ripper with a sharpened knife alone in a dark alley with a woman. But instead of a knife, today there are countless pills which are equally dangerous. At least you KNOW that the knife is a dangerous weapon. A pill is an innocent looking object, and stays that way - until you take it. It hides very complex chemistry. When you take any pill you roll the dice - will you get better or feel far worse? And what was in that pill you took? Too late now

It's almost totally impossible to know which prescription meds will work right and which ones will not. Those reassuring voices speaking daily on the squawk box in your living room constantly tell you how wonderful these designer chemicals are, in spite of an actor casually downplaying dangerous side effects. Web research can be highly informative..

CORPORATE - FDA CONNECTION TO DOCTORS

This corporate-FDA connection most certainly fits under the cliché "The tie that binds." Western medical profession is centered on treating A disease. (Emphasis placed on the letter "A" here.) We give a dog a treat for behaving as trained. Or a child is bribed with a treat for behaving themselves. Medical students trained to become doctors learn to ever avoid uttering the word "cure." They use "treatment" instead. To use the "cure" word is almost the career equivalent to a disk jockey using the "F" or "N" word on the air.

When you enter their office, many receptionists demand your co-pay up front or they may refuse to see you. They "treat" you to a whopping bill for just thirty seconds of a doctor's time. So much for the Hippocratic Oath.

When you are sick, there are basically only five things that will happen to you upon seeing your doctor:

1. NOTHING HAPPENS - You are sent home because it's actually a cold or flu. Translation: It's all in your head. This might result in a referral to a head doctor as it did for many thousands of Gulf War 1 vets suffering from Gulf War Disease.

2. YOU ARE MIS-DIAGNOSED - Not detecting a serious life-threatening illness is the worst. Nothing usually happens to the doctor because of his/her incompetence, because often the patient DIES before it ever goes to court. Few people think about the hazard of mis-diagnosis. DON,T schedule your appointment (if you think you are seriously ill) on the day your doctor plays golf!

3. OFF TO SURGERY - Into the hospital you,ll go as an inpatient or outpatient, hopefully for a positive outcome. God willing you won't contract a drug-resistant bug or two during your stay there. (Hospitals are good at hiding infection statistics.) Hopefully, while you're there the surgeon will do the RIGHT surgery on you. Diligent surgeons will ask YOU who you are and what procedure you are there to have, BEFORE putting you under anesthetic. Be sure to tell them a ghost surgeon OR A STUDENT will not be allowed to work on you. Don't put it as a request - make it a demand. It's your life and in reality it's up to YOU to defend it, not them.

The cold truth is you are just raw material for doctors, not unlike a butcher working on a side of beef. Without the beef, the butcher would not have a job to do. No real difference, except that the beef can't sue the butcher. Never, ever lose track that being on the table is only a business arrangement and nothing more. There is no real charity in a commercial hospital. Don't think so? Try owing one of them any money and see what happens to your bank account and property.

4. TESTS REQUIRED - Lots of these are often required to confirm a diagnosis. That's part of the "standard of care" all physicians must follow. A doctor's malpractice insurance requires them to follow the standard of care or risk being cancelled. Again, lawyers really determine what a doctor's limits are. And you,ll most likely be going back to the doctor (paying again) for a review of the results. If something is found in a test, count on MORE TESTS being prescribed. Too many prescribed tests can be a sign of incompetence. If the doctor finally says that he/she doesn't know what's wrong, ask a friend of relative for the name of a good proven doctor who is known to hopefully be more competent than your previous one.

5. PRESCRIPTIONS - You will most likely travel straight from the doctor's office to the pharmacy to get the latest drug pushed by big pharma reps. who visit your doctor regularly. This may happen even if tests are scheduled as a precaution, such as when you are in pain or have an infection. If you are lucky, you might even get free samples of big pharma's latest "designer drug" to make you better. Note the key word here is to get "better," not be cured.

Most doctors tend to focus on using number 1 or 5 above. Someone said it all perfectly many years ago: "A patient cured is a customer lost."

If they follow the standard and something goes wrong that isn't their fault and you are hurt or even die, the doctor probably cannot be successfully sued. I lost a relative 5 years ago to MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, commonly known as a drug resistant Staph infection) that entered his body from an IV while still IN the operating room.

Methicillin is such a strong drug that it's one of the few intravenous drugs still stored and delivered to patients in a glass bottle. Yet even this drug couldn't stop the infection.

The hospital lied and said that this Staph germ is everywhere. In reality, tests established several years earlier that the MRSA version of Staph evolved in operating rooms. It is actually resistant to antiseptics used to sterilize operating rooms. In some cities, operating rooms were closed off and gassed to kill everything off. Yet no lawyer would touch the MRSA case, even though it was a clear case of incompetence. A simple alcohol swab would have easily sterilized the IV entry site on his neck.

There is a only a small distinction between illegal drug dealers in hidden locations cooking up powerful "designer drugs" to strongly addict people, and the latest "Designer drugs" from major pharmaceutical manufacturers. Did you see the difference? One is spelled with a "D" instead of a "d." Otherwise they are the same. Will future street drug pushers go the legal route, and just start their own big pharma companies? Who knows - one day even illegal Crack might become a prescription. Let's hope not, but only time will tell. Drugs being pushed on television today have so many side effects, that just 20 years ago they would never be allowed on the market.

DRUG PUSHING MACHINERY

But is there a machine behind all this to legally keep pushing these chemical cocktails into mainstream America? Could this be the barrage of drug commercials on radio, TV, newspapers and magazines?

There exists a well known, established method to control the human mind. It doesn't involve the MK-Ultra program. It doesn't requite electrodes, RF mind control, water boarding or hypnosis. It doesn't even employ forced drugging. What is it? Simple repetition. Television shows are carefully designed to have a cliff-hanger hit the viewer, and then WHAMMO on comes a drug commercial repeat, such as the smiling idiot holding a limp garden hose.

One thirty second non-prime time television ad costs several hundred thousand dollars, to over a million dollars during sporting events and prime time.

But drug companies don't mind paying high TV advertising prices for a reason.

Do these expensive TV drug ads pay for themselves? Drug companies see it purely as an investment and part of the cost of doing business. These companies know that they can brainwash a certain percentage of the people a given drug is targeted for. These people in turn go beg their physicians for these drugs, staying on them from several years to perhaps a lifetime. Or at least until the drug is taken off the market after enough patients die.

Even if a small number of patients are brainwashed, the commercial has just paid for itself many times over as we shall see. We can crunch some simple numbers to conservatively look at the payoff. Keep in mind that the raw materials to make almost ANY drug are a few pennies. Profit margins are measured in thousands of percent. It costs mere pennies to manufacture any given drug on today's high speed machinery.

Let's look at a typical health maintenance prescription drug we'll call drug "X." For simplicity we'll leave out the ever increasing cost of drug X each year and just use a flat price. Of course local and on-line pharmacies will some make money off re-selling drug X - but their profits is quite small compared with drug company profits as we shall see.

1. Drug X - Patient cost is typically $100.00 per month, which equates to $1200.00 per year.

2. If a patient is on drug X for 5 years before it's taken off the market because patients DIE from it, the total expenditure by a patient for those five years is a whopping $6,000.00. Of course, this total doesn't include numerous follow-up doctor visit costs and additional prescription drugs that might be needed to counter side effects of drug X.

3. If across the United States 200,000 patients take drug X (a conservative number to be sure,) the drug X manufacturer will have 240 MILLION DOLLARS in sales EACH YEAR. This results in conservative total drug sales over 5 years of 1.2 BILLION dollars. The TV ad has paid for itself in just one year more than 200 times over. But it won't be a mere 200,000 patients that take drug X for some common malady. If there won't be an estimated market measured in millions of patients, no drug company will be interested. Sadly, this is why numerous rare afflictions will probably never have a drug to cure or slow disease progress. It's all about profit, shareholders and greed and not medicine in the final analysis for every drug companies. Curing patients is an unwanted side effect drug companies don't want.

Many wiser patients become well again without taking any prescriptions at all.

MS - ONE OF THE MOST EXPENSIVE DISEASES

Think that drug X is expensive? Not compared to some other "designer" drugs for health maintenance which never cure any diseases. With cancer, you either get better or die. With MS, disease treatment can last the length of a normal lifetime and cost a staggering sum of money, just to try to live a somewhat normal life. Even then, a patient is never cured of it. No need to carry a wallet either.

Some drugs which are incredibly expensive are also highly successful. Since these drugs are pushed by doctors, many never need to advertise on television at all. They don't need to because of the staggering profits these drugs earn all year round.

Let's look at the details for just one of these phenomenally successful drugs - Copaxone.


Copaxone Pre-loaded syringe - one of the most popular drugs used to treat MS
Felt-tip marker shown for size comparison. (Photo - author)

Copaxone comes as 30 pre-loaded syringes in a box, one injection for each day of the month. They are shipped monthly via overnight courier and are packed in a Styrofoam box with icepacks for temperature stabilization.

Cost for above syringe used for daily injection: $63.00

Minimum prescription order shipped: 30 syringes

Injections required per year: 365

Length of time patient takes this drug: Remainder of their life

Storage: Refrigeration

Country of origin: Israel

Number of patients cured: 0.

Effectiveness to slow MS progression according to data sheet: 7% average

Chemistry by which Copaxone works: Unknown according to manufacturer's data sheet.

Sales in 2003: $720,000,000.00

This drug approved only treatment of relapsing/remitting MS. It cures NOTHING and officially has an unknown mechanism according to the drug's data sheet, but was still FDA approved! How can this be possible? FDA Connections? Something to do with the Star of David?

I know from numerous experiences as a caregiver that many emergency room doctors don't have a clue what Copaxone is - although most MS patients know about it even if they aren't on it. Apparently homework for many doctors ends once they earn their MD degree.

Some foolishly think that a socialized public healthcare system will pay for Copaxone. Not so. The UK health system refuses to provide it to patients according to numerous on-line personal health histories posted on various MS websites. What do socialized medicine doctors in the UK give as a reason for this? "Too expensive" is what they are often told. Any patient that wants to obtain the drug must be able to pay for it themselves. This is equivalent to paying every month for a mortgage on a large home - a home they will never see or own.

In the UK, a local pharmacy is more commonly known as a Chemist. In the early days before formal drug treatments from big pharma companies, doctors prescribed drugs. These local pharmacists mixed up chemicals according to prescribed methods to cure various illnesses.

There is a cold truth about socialized medicine today. If you have a serious disease like MS, it's in the government's best interest if you just die. Many patients eventually become so disabled with MS that they can no longer work. Hence, they cannot pay taxes which go into the health system. Therefore, these patients become a negative cash flow drain to the government's health care system. With the scandal of vaccines in the UK now connected to Autism in school children, it's clear the government there has little regard for their people's future. What does any business (which government really is) do with a bad liability? Abolish it.

Logically, it's only a matter of time before government-assisted suicide becomes part of life, but probably not before more engineered diseases like MS are unleashed upon the unsuspecting public. There is already strong evidence the later is happening with West Nile, CJD, Anthrax and new bird flu strains to name a few.

Let's return to Copaxone, and check out the profit numbers for the Copaxone drug racket:

It might cost Teva Pharmaceuticals which manufactures Copaxone perhaps 50 cents for each filled syringe (if it costs that much.)

Typical monthly discount cost of Copaxone to a patient: $1,900.00.

Yearly cost: $22,800.00

Cost for a patient over 5 years: $114,000.00

Purpose: To slow disease progression by an average of just 7%.

Length of time patient takes this drug: Until they die or switch to another drug.

Let's assume for conservative comparative purposes that a mere 1,000,000 patients worldwide are on Copaxone. However, the number of people on Copaxone worldwide today must conservatively number at least several million patients. The drug has far less side effects than the other popular treatment, Beta-Interferon. It's been estimated that about 10 million people in the United States have MS, with thousands more unaware they have it. Teva Pharmaceuticals announced about 2 years ago that a THIRD automated plant built to produce the drug is now operational in Israel.

Did the new Copaxone factory lower the cost of the drug to patients? No - instead the company increased their prices. In fact, in just four years the drug's price has increased about $400.00 a month per patient. So much for mass production reducing patient costs. Greed begets more greed.

For sales over a 5 year period, total sales of Copaxone for just 1,000,000 patients worldwide (at US$1,900.00 per month) will result in the staggering sum of $114,000,000,000.00! Yes, that really is ONE HUNDRED FOURTEEN BILLION DOLLARS. Is this drug available generically? Not at all, and it's also covered by numerous patents. Surely more patents will be filed later to assure the drug company's on-going, tight fisted greed can continue. Or they will cook up another "maintenance drug" supposedly better than Copaxone.

It's very hard to imagine being able to patent anything without knowing how it works. If you were to try to patent any device and not fully explain in your patent filing how it works, it will be flatly rejected by a USA patent examiner. As a patent holder, I quickly learned from a patent lawyer that you cannot withhold any information as to how a patent works. If you do, your patent can be rejected by an examiner or later declared invalid in a courtroom when challenged. USA patent law states that a patent must be written so that someone skilled in the arts can replicate it.

How could Teva been awarded a patent several years ago for Copaxone - a drug which they cannot definitively explain how it works or what it does inside the human body? This is outrageous to say the least.

Copaxone syringes are made on automated production machinery in three modern plants. This drug doesn't require recombinant DNA or other exotic technology like other drugs such as insulin use today.

Copaxone isn't the only medicine an MS patient requires. Other prescription drugs pills and capsules are used to manage the constellation of MS symptoms like sleeplessness, seizures, pain, depression, nausea, etc... These can total 8 or more.

So what is in Copaxone? Although claimed by some to rebuild nerves, this drug has only ONE ingredient: Calcium Glatimer Acetate. And what is a key chemical element in cell and nerve chemistry? Calcium. Get the idea here? Could a dietary change do the same thing Copaxone does? This isn't known yet, but certainly worth exploring.

Remember that doctor's statement earlier? "A patient cured is a customer lost."

Where are the three Copaxone factories? In Israel, where else?

What's next from Israel - prescription toilet-paper? Prescription food?

TREASURE AVAILABLE ALTERNATIVE HEALTH SUPPLIMENTS NOW

Now the FDA is out to kill alternative therapies and medicines by using various regulations such as labeling, and new laws they want to enact. One alternative health care product called SeaSilver was on the FDA hit list - all because of a labeling issue. This product simply made from sea vegetables was hammered off the market by the FDA for more than a year. The FDA demanded they change the label to more clearly define the benefits of the supplement. So they did, but that wasn't enough. Then the FDA demanded they add a preservative to it and change the labeling again. So they did that, too.

The company finally made a comeback after the Gestapo left their lives and were selling product again, but irreversible damage was done. Now SeaSilver has permanently closed as a company. Why? Because the government has taxpayer-funded lawyers on their payroll, but small companies must hire lawyers to defend themselves from them.

In the final analysis, alternative food and supplement companies are hiring lawyers to defend themselves from themselves, because both private and corporate taxes are paying for government lawyers to attack them.

I salute people like Jeff Rense, Rev. Ted Pike, Dr. Patricia Doyle and many others. They sound the alarm when we are threatened with losing our rights, and losing access to alternative non-prescription treatments and supplements. If the Codex Alumentarius model is ever fully enacted in America, it will end access to dietary supplements and hope for better health for millions of people. But then, maybe that really is the government agenda after all - a sick, twisted attempt to "cull the masses."

If citizens in America don't start standing up for their right to cure and treat themselves for their illnesses, their hands will be tied by greedy big pharma. And when these same sick people find that big pharma "designer drugs" won't cure any of their serious illness, it may be too late to obtain an alternative. But that might be the master plan all along.

Remember this the next time you're ill - "A patient cured is a customer lost."

Ted Twietmeyer
www.data4science.net




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Labels: big pharma, conspiracy, copaxone, drugs

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by Mary Sparrowdancer
Copyright © 2003
12-14-3

It was due to my growing concerns about our country's growing health problems as well as the erosion of our civil liberties that, in November of 2002, I published a paper focusing upon both of these issues and spoke about them on several radio programs. The paper quietly made its way through Washington, D.C., and then around the world.

The paper detailed the "revolving door" in Washington, D.C., an apparent turnstile between private industries and the United States government. Through this invisible door, industry managers pass directly into the very agencies that govern industry - the government's food, drug, agricultural and chemical regulatory departments - in order to influence regulations or speed the approval of their company's products. The paper, "Let Them Eat Anything," showed this unholy alliance, the conflict of interest that has contributed to a mounting epidemic of health problems in the United States. (1)

I expected the paper to provoke comments, but I did not expect it to result in my being contacted by a nutrition expert who had worked in the USDA. She called to thank me for writing the paper. Incredibly, because light was the topic of my previous book detailing a personal Near Death Experience and ongoing, unexplained encounters with light phenomena, in an example of incomparable synchronicity, the name of the former USDA expert who contacted me was Luise Light.

I read the first email I received from Luise Light with a sense of astonishment. Luise had been the former team leader and Special Nutrition Assistant to USDA's Carol Tucker Foreman - who is described as "a prominent food safety advocate" by Eric Schlosser in his best-selling book, Fast Food Nation.

From her personal experience, Dr. Light confirmed not only the revolving door I had described in my paper, but in addition, the corruption within the "government" taking place just on the other side of that door. Here, from an eyewitness, came the truth that individuals representing corporations are not only holding key government positions, they have also been determining which studies are done, who receives grants, and they have been "adjusting" the reports in order to create a false sense of security about their favored products and services.

With the promise of corporate gain and personal profit, the industry "representatives" have been making important decisions affecting all of us profoundly. For the most part, the general public has been unaware of this partnership between private business and our publicly funded federal government.

Of special interest to Luise was what I had presented as the "absurd American food pyramid" - a dietary guide that first came out in the 1980s, and in which our "government" recommended starch as the foundation of our diet. This was of particular interest to Luise because, as I read in awe, it was she and her team of nutrition experts who had created the concept of the food pyramid - but with a very major twist. The real food pyramid, Luise wrote, was completely different from the "adjusted" pyramid that was distributed to an unsuspecting American public.

The true pyramid that Luise and her team developed was not absurd, at all. It did not have starch as the foundation. Instead, it called for a base of a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, with 5 to 9 servings daily. Whole grain cereals and grains were recommended in amounts of 2 to 4 servings daily - with the smaller amount for females and those with less active lifestyles. The real pyramid that Luise and her team created placed baked goods, crackers, sweets and other low-nutrient foods up with the sugars and fats at the top of the pyramid, where they were recommended only as occasional treats.

"But what happened?" Luise wrote, stating that there had been a deliberate, unexplained switch made at the political level that completely distorted the pyramid - which is the subject of her forthcoming book, Ketchup is Not a Vegetable; Sane Eating in a Toxic Food World.

"Instead of fruits and vegetables making up the base of the diet," she wrote, "the cereals and wheat products were made the base of the pyramid, and the recommendation [for starchy foods] was no longer 2 to 4 as we had determined but switched 6 to 11 servings! We couldn't believe it! What possible rationale could there be for such an unprecedented and unjustified switch? In fact the health consequences of encouraging the public to eat so much refined grain, which the body processes like sugar, was frightening! But our exhortations to the political heads of the agency fell on deaf ears. The new food guide, replacing the 'Basic Four,' would be a promotional tool to get the public to buy and consume more calories, sugar and starch." Ultimately, this would result in a poorer quality diet.

What was given to the public in the 1980s was a pyramid with a foundation based (in more ways than one) on dough. And the American people - with full and innocent trust in the health advice given to them by the government - then attempted to follow the new health-based plan. The result would be profit and gain for some, and the torments of ill health and weight gain for countless others.

As Americans complied with the new dietary suggestions, within a few years the results of this unsuspecting compliance began to surface.

According to studies and charts provided by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), during the years 1988 to 2000 the percentage of children and teens suffering from obesity more than doubled. During those same years, the CDC reported that the prevalence of adults suffering from overweight and obesity rose steadily to 64%. In 2001, the second most frequently prescribed drug sold in America was a synthetic hormone drug, indicating a vast number of individuals were now suffering from thyroid malfunction. Tied in with the overweight and obesity problems resulting from thyroid malfunction are a host of additional, potentially deadly afflictions suggesting that "overweight" might be only a symptom rather than a diagnosis - it is actually only one of the more visible clues that something is not right, that something is out of kilter. (2, 3, 4)

According to the CDC, between the years 1980 and 1994 the overall incidence of asthma increased 75%. Since 1991, the number of US adults with diagnosed diabetes has increased 61%, and the number is projected to more than double by the year 2050. (5, 6)

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine stated that the incidence of gastric/esophageal cancer (adenocarcinoma) has inexplicably risen more rapidly than any other cancer incidence in the United States. Yale New Haven Hospital and the National Cancer Institute list that rate of increase at 350%. Also noted was the observation that the majority of the unfortunates suffering from gastric cancer in this particular study were white males, and the majority of those white males first presented with Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD). Adult white males were not the only ones suffering from GERD, however. By the CDC's own definition of "epidemic," GERD appears to be an epidemic of staggering proportions in the United States, today. (7)

The motto of The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is "Safer, Healthier People." The CDC mission statement is, "To promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability." Yet, when I contacted the CDC because I was having difficulty in locating their statistical reports on the increasing prevalence of GERD, the response I received was, "CDC does not have activities related to GERD."

With CDC unable to supply statistics on this epidemic, it was necessary to look elsewhere. A reasonable idea of prevalence and trends could be obtained by "following the money" and looking at pharmaceutical marketing data.

What was found was stunning, and it suggested that medicine focused on the treatment of chronic symptoms results in a dependency on chronic treatment. People struggling for relief and a chance to live normal lives become dependent on the pharmaceutical industry for relief. If they can pay the price, they will be served.

Americans are apparently now paying the price because the marketing information indicates this country is now considered "the world leader" in the overall consumption of pharmaceutical products.

By following records of drug sales, one can follow the trend of GERD, and America once again has somehow become a "world leader," this time in the prevalence of caustic heartburn in its citizenry.

Beginning in 1997, the top-selling prescription drug being purchased by Americans was a pharmaceutical preparation that promised relief from ulcers, GERD and other conditions related to excessive, corrosive acid in the stomach and esophagus. In 1998, 1999 and 2000, that acid-relief drug remained the number one prescribed drug in the country.

An editorial that appeared in the March 18, 1999 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, (Volume 340:878-879, Number 11), by Sidney Cohen, M.D. and Henry P. Parkman, M.D. noted, "It is ironic that the incidence of adenocarcinoma of the esophagus has increased dramatically in the very period in which highly effective therapies have provided symptomatic relief and mucosal healing."

Indeed.

In treating the symptoms of GERD, are we silencing true "gut instinct?" Are we silencing a divinely designed warning system that is trying to tell us we are ingesting something toxic, corrosive and dangerous? Are we silencing with drugs a signal that is warning us we must stop ingesting a toxic substance before it kills us?

It was not until 2001, that the most popularly prescribed drug was overtaken by drugs being purchased by Americans seeking relief from something else tormenting them within. In 2001, Americans were spending their money in an attempt to seek relief from personal and profound depression - another symptom that, along with weight problems, is known to occur as a result of thyroid malfunction. It was another signal telling us that something was affecting not only our bodies, but our minds and emotions.

While this surge in both corrosive gastric disorders and mental anguish was easily dismissed as the price to pay for "the daily stress of life," the same theory cannot be used to explain away the surge in rates of mental torment and GERD now afflicting infants and children.

During the five-year period ending in 2001, the sale of drugs prescribed to treat reflux, heartburn and other gastrointestinal disorders in children soared 660 percent. In a report looking at four of those same years, the cost of treating behavioral problems presently referred to as ADHD in children also increased 120 percent. (8, 9)

According to an annual report of the US Department of Education to Congress, the number of "children aged 0 to 21" being treated for autism and traumatic brain injury rose from the first 5,000 reported cases in 1992/93 (at the start of mandatory reporting), to 94,000 cases in 2000/01. In looking at individual states, a troubling mosaic forms. States showing the highest increase (a two thousand percent increase or greater) in the number of children being treated for autism include Alaska, Colorado, Kentucky, Mississippi, Maryland and Oregon. This is not to say that the other states were faring well - in California from 1987 through 2002, the number of people being treated for autism by the Department of Developmental Services increased by 634%. In Indiana the percentage of children suffering from autism rose by 860%. In Michigan, the increase was over 1000%. The 1999 Journal of Pediatrics indicated that the majority of autistic children who were followed in one study were also suffering from reflux and other digestive problems. (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)

Unfortunately, it appears that little boys are far more likely than little girls to suffer from autism as well as from a variety of childhood behavioral disorders. Typically, even as infants these boys also appear to be suffering from reflux and sleep disturbances. It is while noting the surge in ADHD that another disturbing fact emerges: Some of the states with the worst surges in behavioral problems - including Colorado, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alaska and Oregon - are also states in which still-unexplained behavior in juvenile males has manifested in horrific school shootings.

While the brain and its workings are still not fully understood, it is within the frontal lobes of the brain that the capacities for moral judgment, attention and memory are now thought to be situated. PET scans and functional MRIs of the boys afflicted with autistic disorders have revealed what appears to be "decreased glucose metabolic rate in the medial frontal region,"and "hypometabolism [lowered metabolism] demonstrated in the temporal and parietal regions." (16)

Tests have also indicated that, in the brains of the afflicted boys there is a "decreased activity and reduced anatomical size, particularly in the right brain . . . " Other brain disturbances, including disturbances in the brain's processing of tryptophan, serotonin and melatonin are becoming known, as is damage to the hippocampus area, thought to be associated with memory problems and obsessive thoughts. (17)

Pharmaceuticals such as methylphenidate, now in popular use, stimulate the frontal lobes in order to heighten the brain's ability to filter out noncritical parts of the daily barrage of stimuli. This pharmaceutical appears to at least temporarily improve the behavioral symptoms of agitation, hyperactivity and inattention in children whose brains are otherwise unable to filter stimuli on their own.

While stimulants might improve outward symptoms, though, research now indicates that within the right brain, most notably within the right temporal lobe and hippocampus regions, there exists an extremely unusual area of neuroreceptors and transmitters. It is this area of the brain that is believed to be the connection between the human individual and the still unexplained realm of the mystical and the divine - the realm of divinely perceived Light. For this reason, this area of the brain is now being referred to by some researchers as the "God Spot"- what might be our most important connection of all.

Despite the fact that this extraordinary realm of Light is largely bypassed as noncritical by the majority of researchers, many individuals have now described numerous, similar experiences with the Light, indicating such experience is not as uncommon as orthodox science has assumed. In examining some of the oldest texts in human history, it is apparent that interactions with Beings of Light have, since the earliest of times, been the most cherished and desired of all human experiences. Writings from ancient Egypt describe journeys into the Light and contact with beings and messengers. "Manna," was the expression voiced by startled Egyptians on seeing the living entities emerging from the light. "Manna," meant, "what is this?"

We can judge from the unprecedented volume of prescriptions for psychiatric drugs that something is having a profoundly depressing influence upon the human mind at this time. Something is happening within our brains that is manifesting as anxiety, depression and impaired cognitive abilities - this much we know. Because adequate research of the God-Spot is not an "approved" field of study, however, we have no scientific reports warning us if the God connection in the brain is also being damaged at this time. Again, we have only outward signs to observe - signals indicating something is blocking our access to the most important light of our lives, and symptoms that speak to a growing angst, darkness and the loneliness of godlessness.

Researchers who dare to study this area of human experience, do so facing professional humiliation from peers, although such research may actually be critical to the well-being of humanity. Those who guard the borders of acceptable research are often quite skeptical or disapproving of what they contend is mere "paranormal" speculation, and for this reason, that area of study has been largely avoided by professionals and researchers.

Melvin Morse, M.D., pediatrician and author of Closer to the Light, is one of very few professionals who has dared to explore this uncharted territory. In summing up this unfortunate situation of acceptable study versus study that is dismissed as paranormal, he writes, "This lack of a theoretical scientific model to allow interaction with an interconnected universe has led to a 100 year 'skeptic' versus 'believer' debate which has not advanced our understanding of human consciousness." (18, 19, 20)

Although our increasing inability to perceive the divine and understand the full extent of our human capabilities remains largely ignored by those discrediting or rejecting "paranormal" research, the growing epidemic of anxiety, depression and overwhelming despair in this country's children deserves the attention of all of us. It should be considered a national emergency, and a national tragedy.

In Colorado, the rate of suicide among teenagers, children and young adults has been consistently above the national average since 1980. Suicide is, sadly, the second-leading cause of death in children between the ages of 10 through 19 in Colorado. In Kentucky, suicide is also the second leading cause of death in children, teens and young adults. In Mississippi, the number of teen and young-adult suicides has increased 126% since 1969, with more than 90% of the victims being males. In Alaska, the suicide rate among teenagers is nearly twice that of the national average - twice. (21, 22, 23, 24)

Other strange surges in human suffering have been noted, as well. In Colorado, from 1990 through 1999, the percentage of children with orthopedic impairments rose 484%. In Alaska, during 1990-98, the incidence of diabetes increased by 152%, (much greater than the national rate), and now Alaska is among the top three states with the highest incidence of squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus. (25, 26)

In the midst of all this growing and tragic suffering, in the year 2000 the Surgeon General issued a "first ever" call to action in response to what was noted as a "silent epidemic" of dental problems in the United States. Something strange is happening in the mouths of Americans. (27)

According to the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, an estimated 80% of American adults currently have some form of periodontal (gum) disease. In parts of Kentucky, nearly half of the toddlers have cavities in their teeth, which is approximately twice the national average. In addition to Kentucky, the top five states cited in a 1997 table used in the Surgeon General's report on toothlessness included West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas and Maine. (28, 29, 30)

Perhaps it is at this point that one might begin to reasonably suspect that whatever lies at the cause of this epidemic of epidemics - whatever is disabling Americans in body, mind and spirit - just might be something we are putting into our mouths or otherwise absorbing into our bodies. This is not an unreasonable suspicion.

Given the avalanche of starch that is now figuratively suffocating us and literally fattening us, given the strange new bioengineered oddities now secretly passing as food in America, given the relatively new insertion of soy compounds in seemingly infinite forms and aliases into nearly every packaged, jarred and canned food on the grocery shelves - given the chemicals, the mandatory cocktails of highly questionable and extremely toxic vaccines all being inserted into the American population - it does not appear at all unreasonable to think that what is wrong with our health and well-being might have something to do with what we are taking in with mouths, skin and lungs.

It does not appear to be at all unreasonable to suspect that our new status as world leader in pursuit of relief-seeking drugs has a cause, and that cause just might be something unnatural that is entering our bodies en masse.

The list of possible suspected toxins, though lengthy, can be shortened by a deductive process. Not all of us consume soy - some avoid it by preference, others because of allergies, and still others avoid it who have been alerted to questions raised by research about its safety. Not all parents permit their children to take the vaccines mandated by government. A significant number of Americans avoid bioengineered food by purchasing organic, GE-free products, and still others have cut large amounts of starch from their diets in order to maintain proper weight and health. Not all of us have similar lifestyles that might be blamed as the cause for physical distress, mental despair, stress, cognitive malfunctions and uncompassionate apathy now upon us.

The toxic suspect is unlikely to be an elective, avoidable substance. More likely the toxin is in something that we all consume because we need it, like flowers need the rain. It might be something undetectable at first - something that we willingly ingest without knowing it. It would be a toxin that could be added into virtually every food and beverage, with no mention of it required on the labels.

The substance would also be now causing problems in a bizarre geographical manner. As though it were seemingly able to sense invisible county boundary lines, it would be a toxin that is leaving a trail which jumps from county to county, state to state, missing some counties and entire states while hitting other counties and states particularly hard.

The search is for a substance that can be absorbed through the skin and lungs as well as by swallowing it. Undetectable to us except by scientific measuring, it is a substance that does its work quietly and in extremely low doses. Working at a molecular level, it would cause a gradual onset of disease and disability observable only after the slow passage of years. It is then, after that slow, slow passage of years, that an epidemic of epidemics would be noticed while its cause long forgotten in the mists of time.

After a process of elimination, the substance that meets all of the criteria and stands alone in the crosshairs of our search is a substance that does not appear to be suspect. In fact, it raises no suspicions in most of us, whatsoever, because most of us are unaware of the research pertaining to this substance.

It is a substance that, according to government reports, has been known since 1930 to have such a powerful effect upon thyroid function, it has been used in prescription medications to treat hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid). It can, therefore, along with our pyramid of dough, be reasonably marked as a suspicious agent contributing to the current epidemic of obesity and thyroid problems. (31, 32, 33, 34)

It is a substance that has also long been known to cause or exacerbate the exact periodontal disease resulting in the tooth loss that has caught the attention of the Surgeon General. In addition to being a causative agent in periodontal disease, it is a substance that is known to accumulate in the teeth and bones creating brittleness, and for this reason it has also been associated with osteoporosis and other bone diseases and disorders that are also now being seen in America.

The mysterious substance is so corrosive, when added to water it will eat its way through a titanium container. Since it will eat its way through titanium, perhaps it should not come as a great surprise to learn that it is also known to act as a severe corrosive agent on human gastric and mucosal tissues. (35, 36, 37, 38)

As Americans' afflictions continue to unfold unlike anything else that humanity has known and brought upon itself, we also learn that the material, once thought unable to cross the blood-brain barrier, crosses it rather well. It also concentrates in the pineal gland that is located within the brain. (39, 40, 41, 42)

Any agent that passes through the brain can be expected to affect behavior, mood and cognitive function, and this substance has been repeatedly shown to create a depressing, numbing effect.

As early as 1954 this substance was reported by George L. Waldbott, M.D., to cause his patients to become "incoherent, drowsy, lethargic and forgetful." His reports are not isolated. Government reports indicate similar findings of "impaired cognition and memory." So well-known is the impact of this chemical on the human brain and mental function, it continues to be incorporated in and sold in a variety of popular, well-known psychiatric drugs. (43, 44, 45)

Given the existing reports of this substance's presence within the brain - including its effects on the right temporal lobe, hippocampus and the pineal gland - perhaps it should come as no wonder that a growing number of people, children in particular, are now behaving strangely, unpredictably, and sometimes very badly while also noting gross memory impairment after ingesting or absorbing this substance.

Reports also indicate that the substance is not as effectively eliminated from the body in young males as it is in others. Thus retained in the body, its effect upon juvenile males appears to be quite different from its effect on females or even adult males. (46)

Because of its known toxic side effects, this substance requires a prescription when administered by medical professionals, but in a bizarre and quite deadly paradox enabled by industry masterminds working within the government, it can be administered en masse to the general public by dealers who have no medical training whatsoever, no license to dispense medications whatsoever, and who, in fact, have no idea to whom they are administering this corrosive, toxic, mind-altering substance.

Those who avoid non-prescribed pharmaceutical substances might feel safe as a result of personal choices to refrain from unapproved drugs and substances. We have dutifully repeated the "just say no to drugs" mantra, and we have instructed our children to repeat the same after us. We would not think of taking mind-altering drugs from a dealer, and would never consider giving such a substance in unregulated doses to our infants and children.

However, we have been innocently doing just that. In a growing number of geographical areas that begin and end with invisible county lines, the substance is almost impossible to avoid. Some of the hardest hit counties are located in Alaska, Colorado, Kentucky, Michigan and Mississippi.

As the old saying goes, when no other agent can be located as the cause for our problems, blame it on the water. "It must be something in the water," the saying has been said for ages, usually with a shrug and chuckle.

Perhaps it's time for us as individuals and as a nation to repeat this phrase again - this time as though our lives depended upon it, this time without a shrug and chuckle - and while we are at it, take a closer look at our water.

Maybe there is something in the water, after all.

* * * * * * * * *

The strange, corrosive, toxic but still controversial agent in the water is fluoride.

The atomic symbol for the negatively charged halogen known as fluorine is, simply, "F" or "F-." When the negatively charged ions - or anions - of fluorine gas combine with another element, a fluoride compound is formed. If the F combines with sodium (Na), for instance, the compound would then be known as sodium fluoride, or NaF. If it combines with calcium (Ca), the compound formed is calcium fluoride, or CaF. If it combines with arsenic, it becomes AsF. And so on.

Fluoride is a trace element in nature, but manmade fluoride compounds became grossly abundant as a result of the invention of weapons of mass destruction in World War II. Fluoride and uranium are key components in the atomic bomb, and fluoride is also a key ingredient in fluorinated organophosphate nerve agents, such as Sarin.

Radioactive uranium is naturally present in phosphate ore, but it must be "enriched" if it is to become a nuclear weapon or a reactor fuel. After the phosphate is mined, the uranium "yellow cake" is removed and sent to an enrichment facility such as the plant owned by the Department of Energy in Paducah, Kentucky. There, the uranium is fluorinated and uranium hexafluoride (UF6) is produced. Paducah's enrichment plant stopped making UF6 for weapons in the 1960s, and began creating it, instead, for commercial purposes as a reactor fuel.

Uranium fission was first discovered in the late 1930s by German scientists. In 1939, there was a reported fear that the Nazis were about to develop a bomb using uranium fission. In 1942, Americans began similar research, facilitated by the knowledge of scientists who had fled their own countries and moved to the United States. Thus, America was the first to achieve both creation - and use - of atomic weaponry in 1945.

That year, 1945, was one of many changes. With World War II over, 1945 marked the year in which the Nuremberg Trials began - trials that presumably reaffirmed the sanctity of life, and human rights - trials which would eventually address the atrocities of Nazi human experimentation.

As the world breathed a sigh a relief in knowing that the Nazi health officials' experimentation on human beings had been halted in Germany, 1945 marked the year that "public health officials" in America began their experimentation on human beings with water fluoridation.

In what would turn out to be the biggest human experimentation in history, sodium fluoride - NaF - was added into American's drinking water in selected communities under the medical claim that the F would prevent dental caries (cavities) in children. Those receiving this experimental, medicinal treatment in their drinking water, received it then as they do now: They are forced to ingest it, inhale it, bathe and shower in it, whether or not they want or even need this toxic chemical in their bodies.

As with all medicinal compounds - indeed, as with virtually everything on Earth - some individuals can be expected to have extreme side effects and allergic reactions. Individuals having severe allergic reactions to penicillin, poison ivy or peanuts are very likely to use common sense and avoid those substances. Unlike the penicillin, poison ivy or peanuts, however - in fact, unlike any other medicinal compound in history - over 60% of Americans at this time are now unable to electively avoid the F product unless they also can find a way to avoid their water. While the list of side effects from fluoride has been falsely minimized or completely concealed by fluoride promoters, the side effects are well documented. Side effects have been so severe that previously approved medications containing high-grade F compounds have been removed from the market by the FDA. (47, 48, 49, 50, 51)

In a recent paper authored by Myron Coplan, PE, and Roger Masters, PhD, a professor at Dartmouth, the authors discovered that a subtle but potentially lethal change in F additives took place shortly after the fluoride experimentation on Americans began. In 1947 instead of higher-grade NaF or sodium fluoride - silicofluorides, or SiFs, were substituted as the fluorinating compound in drinking water. This switch was carried out under the gross misconception that all F compounds are the same. As outlined in some largely ignored research, however, one part of SiF is substantially more potent than six parts of NaF. Despite this evidence, and despite the fact that it is now SiF rather than NaF primarily being used in American water fluoridation, Masters and Coplan found that "virtually all the extensive laboratory research on the biological properties and effects of fluoride in water has been performed using NaF rather than SiFs..." (52)

Merck gives the definition of silicofluoride as, "fluorosilicate is a compound of silicon and some other base with fluorine, such as sodium silicofluoride; fluorosilicates are sometimes used as insecticides, and are very toxic when ingested. Called also silicofluoride." (53)

While many are still assuming that the SiF compounds being added to drinking water are high-grade pharmaceuticals, the CDC's National Fluoridation Engineer has publicly stated that all fluoride compounds currently used for water fluorination are "byproducts of the phosphate fertilizer industry." (54)

Because of the toxic nature of this compound, the SiF being added to drinking water is an industrial waste that would otherwise have to be disposed of by the industry that created it, and it would have to be disposed of according to the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HAZMAT). Disposal of toxic substances under hazmat regulations, however, results in an expense for the industries.

This costly disposal dilemma - and its clever marketing remedy - was expertly summed up in a 1983 letter written by EPA's Rebecca Hanmer, (formerly the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Water), who stated that by putting the SiF waste into drinking water rather than disposing of it, an important financial savings is made for the industry. Miss Hanmer wrote that this industrial plan is "...an ideal solution to a long standing problem. By recovering by-product fluosilicic acid (sic) from fertilizer manufacturing, water and air pollution are minimized, and water authorities have a low-cost source of fluoride..." (55)

Ongoing research by Dr. Roger Masters' team revealed that the effect of SiF in young, growing boys differs from its effects on adult males. In juvenile males, ingested fluoride is not excreted from the body as efficiently as it is excreted from the body of adult males. It is this finding that perhaps explains why this substance might be creating an extreme reaction in boys. In addition, after comparing blood lead levels of over 400,000 children in communities using SiF-treated water, it was found that SiF water was also significantly associated with increased levels of lead in the children tested. This should be cause for alarm because the findings of other recent studies show a distinct correlation between blood concentrations of lead and unusual, aggressive behavior. (56)

Information published in 2003 detailed the findings of a controlled study funded by the National Institutes of Health. Researchers found in this study that elevated amounts of lead in the blood "may cause aggressive and even violent behavior." Dr. John D. Bogden, Professor of Preventive Medicine and Community Health participated in this study at the New Jersey Medical School. He stated, "The data of this study demonstrate that lead exposure enhances predatory aggression in animals, and provide support for lead exposure as a cause of aggressive behavior in humans." Among other researchers also participating in this study was Dr. Donald B. Louria, Chairman Emeritus of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health. Dr. Louria stated, "The results support other recent investigations that have found associations between lead in blood or bones and delinquent and aggressive behavior in teenagers." (57)

In seeking further documented evidence regarding aggressive behavior and its association with SiF water, Dr. Masters contacted personnel in the EPA in 2000 and asked them if they had empirical, scientific data on the effects of SiFs on health and behavior. Robert Thurnau, Chief, Water Supply and Water Resources Division of the EPA responded. ". . . our answer is no." (58)

In spite of the increasing evidence pointing directly to a potential calamity stemming from massive fluoride poisoning, there remain outspoken groups that continue to advocate the blanket dosing of entire communities with still-untested, unapproved fluoridation. Among t