Action Alert: Protect Vaccine Choice in Virginia

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

.errordiv { padding:10px; margin:10px; border: 1px solid #555555;color: #000000;background-color: #f8f8f8; text-align:center; width:500px; }
var ai_iframe_width_iframe2813 = 0; var ai_iframe_height_iframe2813 = 0;var aiIsIe8=false;var aiReadyCallbacks = ( typeof aiReadyCallbacks != ‘undefined’ && aiReadyCallbacks instanceof Array ) ? aiReadyCallbacks : [];var onloadFirediframe2813 = false; function aiShowIframe() { jQuery(“#iframe2813”).css(“visibility”, “visible”);} function aiShowIframeId(id_iframe) { jQuery(id_iframe).css(“visibility”, “visible”);} function aiResizeIframeHeight(height) { aiResizeIframeHeight(height,iframe2813); } function aiResizeIframeHeightId(height,width,id) {aiResizeIframeHeightById(id,height);} http://ift.tt/1SdADrNvar ifrm_iframe2813 = document.getElementById(“iframe2813”);
var hiddenTabsDoneiframe2813 = false;
function resizeCallbackiframe2813() {}

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1ORFZVs via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/1nqhy84

Action Alert: Protect Vaccine Choice in Virginia

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1ORFZVs via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1nAzi1e

Massive Vaccine Cover-Up

New evidence shows that members of a global vaccine committee may have been involved in a massive cover-up regarding the safety of the HPV vaccine. Action Alert!

Earlier this month, Cornell-trained clinical pathologist Sin Hang Lee, MD, sent an open letter to the director general of the World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan, alleging that members of the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) are guilty of gross misconduct and criminal malfeasance in their efforts to mislead the global public on the safety of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.

The controversy revolves around Dr. Lee’s study finding that Gardasil (Merck’s HPV vaccine) contains HPV L1 gene DNA fragments. In a separate case study, Dr. Lee found HPV-16 L1 DNA fragments in post-mortem blood samples of a teenager who died six months after receiving three Gardasil injections. Dr. Lee hypothesizes that the HPV L1 gene DNA fragments bind to aluminum adjuvants in the vaccine and are carried through the blood stream by macrophages to the brain, causing the adverse effects many experience after receiving HPV shots. Based on this evidence, Dr. Lee called for further study of the HPV vaccines.

One would think the scientific community would take heed—especially scientists on the GACVS, who are responsible for advising the world on vaccine safety. Aluminum in vaccines is a serious issue that we’ve addressed at length in previous coverage. There are studies that have linked aluminum to all kinds of negative health effects ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s disease. Other researchers have noted that, despite eighty years of use, the safety of aluminum adjuvants rests largely on assumptions rather than experimental evidence.

Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request indicate that members of GACVS saw Dr. Lee as an inconvenient adversary to their pro-vaccine agenda from the start. Note that this was all taking place before a public hearing in Japan to determine whether or not the Japanese government would recommend the vaccine to its citizens. Because there were no peer-reviewed studies refuting Dr. Lee’s claims, GACVS needed to get creative to reassure the Japanese government that the HPV vaccine was totally safe and Dr. Lee’s findings could be ignored.

GACVS did this through a presentation at the hearing and an official statement afterward. However, as Dr. Lee argues in his open letter, the official statement contains numerous—and in his view, intentional—misrepresentations of peer-reviewed science that conflate the facts in an attempt to mislead the public. Dr. Lee also alleges that members of GACVS knew that the HPV vaccine, more so than other vaccines, caused an increased inflammatory response and the release of cytokines and tumor necrosis factors (TNF)—yet still assured the public that the HPV vaccine was safe. Release of TNF can cause cell death and a wide range of inflammatory reactions—including death in some instances.

GACVS admits in its statement that it did not even review Dr. Lee’s work but claims it was reviewed by a “panel of experts.” No names are provided, nor are any further credentialing details about this “panel.”

Dr. Lee’s letter cites many more instances of GACVS scrambling to refute the science by misstating the facts and misleading the non-scientific public. Interested readers should consult Dr. Lee’s full letter for a more detailed account of this shameful, possibly criminal, manipulation of the facts.

This is only the latest cause for concern in regard to the HPV vaccine’s safety. You can consult our previous coverage for more of that information, especially of the former Merck doctor who said that Gardasil would become the “greatest medical scandal of all time.” There have also been as-yet-unexplained (or even acknowledged) cover-ups of other vaccine research as well, for example the decision to hide evidence that the MMR vaccine caused autism among black male infants.

Science is ever-evolving, with new evidence coming to light all of the time which throws doubt on previously held assumptions. What this scandal shows is that the proponents of the vaccine industry, who consistently and vehemently claim the mantle of “science” to defend their elimination of our freedoms, care less about the actual science than about pushing their own agenda, regardless of the evidence or the cost in human life—the very antithesis of the scientific method. Unfortunately, governments and world health organizations are now integrated into the vaccine industry in a way that can only be described as cronyism.

Action Alerts! On American soil, multiple states are pressing forward with legislation that would limit or restrict your freedom of choice when it comes to vaccination. If you haven’t done so already, check below to see if your state is one of them and please contact your state legislators immediately.

Indiana

Minnesota

New York

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Dakota

Tennessee

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Has PBS Become a Front for Big Pharma?

Nominee for FDA Commissioner Clears Another Hurdle

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1K8KSuh via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/1OWvnCD

Has PBS Become a Front for Big Pharma?

A PBS Frontline documentary argues that supplements are useless—relying on “expert testimony” from paid Pharma representatives.

Last week, PBS’s Frontline aired an hour-long program titled “Supplements and Safety.” Jointly produced by Frontline, the New York Times, and the Canadian Broadcasting Commission, the program was clearly intended to leave viewers with the one-sided impression that dietary supplements are unregulated, unsafe—and that ultimately you, the consumer, should not have the right to stay healthy in a manner of your choosing.

There is too much to comment on in this corrupt documentary. But we’ll address a few key points.

Medical Establishment Says Supplements are Useless!

The overarching narrative of one especially egregious segment was that supplementation of any sort is unnecessary and does not impart any benefits—and worse, that it may even be dangerous.

For example, the documentary has longtime natural health foe and vaccine millionaire Dr. Paul Offit explaining that one 1000 milligram tablet of vitamin C is equivalent to eating “seven or eight entire cantaloupes,” and that this is bad because the body was not meant to eat so much. Never mind that this says nothing about how many milligrams might be required for certain individuals to achieve optimal nutrition, nor that a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that food alone does not provide enough nutrients to the human body! Considering also that 93% of Americans are nutrient deficient, how does Dr. Offit propose we correct nutrient imbalances?

With respect to C, he also skips over the abundant scientific evidence that early humans, when everyone lived in a tropical environment, consumed much more C than we do today (which means our bodies evolved to handle C in abundance). We need to consume our vitamin C, unlike most animals whose bodies simply make it as needed, often in very large quantities.

As for vitamin D, other “experts” were lined up to argue that any dose higher than the antiquated, absurdly low 600 IU recommendation from the ponderously conservative Institute of Medicine (IOM) is not only “not beneficial,” it may even be harmful—a claim that is patently bogus.

An old editorial titled “Enough is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements”—which was based on three studies which even conventional practitioners have dismissed as flawed and inconclusive—was resurrected to further bolster the documentary’s case (see our detailed rebuttal to this editorial here).

Fish oil was specifically targeted, with claims that almost no clinical studies have shown a benefit to consuming fish oil supplements—an astoundingly false claim, considering the vast preponderance of scientific evidence to the contrary. Fish oil has been found to be so beneficial, in fact, that Big Pharma has patented expensive fish oil-derived drugs (more on this below).

The pretext for all of this, of course, is to undermine the credibility of supplements and to make the case that more regulation and oversight is required—ostensibly, a pre-approval system similar to the one suggested by supplement foes Sens. Durbin (D-IL) and Blumenthal (D-CT). What is not mentioned in the Frontline piece is how profoundly such a system would infringe upon the rights of millions of Americans who rely on dietary supplements to maintain and optimize their health. It would drive the cost of supplements through the roof, which would then sweep them off the shelves and into the hands of drug companies.

The Frontline piece propagates the false notion that supplement users are only using supplements to treat or prevent diseases. This is an incomplete and misleading picture. Many consumers of supplements are just trying to bolster their overall health in combination with diet, exercise, and lifestyle choices. The integrative community knows there’s no “magic pill” for health, and therefore strives for holistic solutions. However, the medical establishment seems to believe that Americans should not have the freedom to stay healthy the way they choose. Instead, Americans should stay healthy in a manner the medical establishment chooses—that is, in a way that lines the coffers of pharmaceutical companies and the doctors on their payroll.

Supplement Safety—Same Old Story

Other segments perpetuated the same lies we’ve heard many times before from the likes of Sens. Durbin and Blumenthal, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and others. The documentary writers highlight a few supplements containing adulterated (illegal) ingredients that led to adverse reactions, holding these illegal products up as examples of why the industry needs more regulation. As we’ve argued time and time again, the FDA has the authority to remove dangerous and illegal products from the market—and actually did so in each instance cited in the documentary, proving once again that the current system works when the FDA enforces the law.

The documentary also fails to highlight the overwhelming safety record of supplements for the millions of Americans who take them every day.

Big Pharma Pulling the Strings

All of this comes into focus, however, in a segment in which fish oil supplements were attacked as being inferior to their pharmaceutical counterparts.

To substantiate these claims, the documentary’s primary expert, Preston Mason, PhD, cuts open fish oil supplements and points out how different they are from a pharmaceutical fish oil drug.

As it turns out, Dr. Mason is very familiar with that particular drug. It’s called Vascepa, and for the past several years he has worked as an advocate for the drug. He even lobbied the FDA on behalf of Amarin Pharma, the drug’s manufacturer, to broaden the uses it was originally approved for. Apparently the producers of the Frontline piece did not think viewers needed to be informed of this conflict of interest.

It gets worse. Immediately following the broadcast, Amarin was ready with a website that highlights the documentary, as well as a media campaign (sponsored by Amarin) that features Dr. Mason and a fellow Vascepa advocate, Eliot Brinton, MD. According to OpenPayments.cms.gov, Dr. Brinton earned $366,698.68 from pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Mason is not a medical doctor, so he is not required, under the Sunshine Act, to make his compensation public.

Was the Frontline documentary a coordinated effort to boost sales of Amarin’s Vascepa by attacking the more popular and affordable competition? The facts speak for themselves.

We also suspect that this documentary could be the opening salvo in renewed attempts by Sens. Durbin and Blumenthal to implement a pre-approval system for supplements, which we are expecting to come out some time this year.

As always, we will closely monitor the happenings in and out of Capitol Hill, and keep you informed of developments.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Massive Vaccine Cover-Up

Nominee for FDA Commissioner Clears Another Hurdle

 

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1Up5fny via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/1nNveuB

Massive Vaccine Cover-Up

New evidence shows that members of a global vaccine committee may have been involved in a massive cover-up regarding the safety of the HPV vaccine. Action Alert!

Earlier this month, Cornell-trained clinical pathologist Sin Hang Lee, MD, sent an open letter to the director general of the World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan, alleging that members of the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) are guilty of gross misconduct and criminal malfeasance in their efforts to mislead the global public on the safety of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.

The controversy revolves around Dr. Lee’s study finding that Gardasil (Merck’s HPV vaccine) contains HPV L1 gene DNA fragments. In a separate case study, Dr. Lee found HPV-16 L1 DNA fragments in post-mortem blood samples of a teenager who died six months after receiving three Gardasil injections. Dr. Lee hypothesizes that the HPV L1 gene DNA fragments bind to aluminum adjuvants in the vaccine and are carried through the blood stream by macrophages to the brain, causing the adverse effects many experience after receiving HPV shots. Based on this evidence, Dr. Lee called for further study of the HPV vaccines.

One would think the scientific community would take heed—especially scientists on the GACVS, who are responsible for advising the world on vaccine safety. Aluminum in vaccines is a serious issue that we’ve addressed at length in previous coverage. There are studies that have linked aluminum to all kinds of negative health effects ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s disease. Other researchers have noted that, despite eighty years of use, the safety of aluminum adjuvants rests largely on assumptions rather than experimental evidence.

Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request indicate that members of GACVS saw Dr. Lee as an inconvenient adversary to their pro-vaccine agenda from the start. Note that this was all taking place before a public hearing in Japan to determine whether or not the Japanese government would recommend the vaccine to its citizens. Because there were no peer-reviewed studies refuting Dr. Lee’s claims, GACVS needed to get creative to reassure the Japanese government that the HPV vaccine was totally safe and Dr. Lee’s findings could be ignored.

GACVS did this through a presentation at the hearing and an official statement afterward. However, as Dr. Lee argues in his open letter, the official statement contains numerous—and in his view, intentional—misrepresentations of peer-reviewed science that conflate the facts in an attempt to mislead the public. Dr. Lee also alleges that members of GACVS knew that the HPV vaccine, more so than other vaccines, caused an increased inflammatory response and the release of cytokines and tumor necrosis factors (TNF)—yet still assured the public that the HPV vaccine was safe. Release of TNF can cause cell death and a wide range of inflammatory reactions—including death in some instances.

GACVS admits in its statement that it did not even review Dr. Lee’s work but claims it was reviewed by a “panel of experts.” No names are provided, nor are any further credentialing details about this “panel.”

Dr. Lee’s letter cites many more instances of GACVS scrambling to refute the science by misstating the facts and misleading the non-scientific public. Interested readers should consult Dr. Lee’s full letter for a more detailed account of this shameful, possibly criminal, manipulation of the facts.

This is only the latest cause for concern in regard to the HPV vaccine’s safety. You can consult our previous coverage for more of that information, especially of the former Merck doctor who said that Gardasil would become the “greatest medical scandal of all time.” There have also been as-yet-unexplained (or even acknowledged) cover-ups of other vaccine research as well, for example the decision to hide evidence that the MMR vaccine caused autism among black male infants.

Science is ever-evolving, with new evidence coming to light all of the time which throws doubt on previously held assumptions. What this scandal shows is that the proponents of the vaccine industry, who consistently and vehemently claim the mantle of “science” to defend their elimination of our freedoms, care less about the actual science than about pushing their own agenda, regardless of the evidence or the cost in human life—the very antithesis of the scientific method. Unfortunately, governments and world health organizations are now integrated into the vaccine industry in a way that can only be described as cronyism.

Action Alerts! On American soil, multiple states are pressing forward with legislation that would limit or restrict your freedom of choice when it comes to vaccination. If you haven’t done so already, check below to see if your state is one of them and please contact your state legislators immediately.

Indiana

Minnesota

New York

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Dakota

Tennessee

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Has PBS Become a Front for Big Pharma?

Nominee for FDA Commissioner Clears Another Hurdle

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1K8KSuh via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/23rfhui

Has PBS Become a Front for Big Pharma?

A PBS Frontline documentary argues that supplements are useless—relying on “expert testimony” from paid Pharma representatives.

Last week, PBS’s Frontline aired an hour-long program titled “Supplements and Safety.” Jointly produced by Frontline, the New York Times, and the Canadian Broadcasting Commission, the program was clearly intended to leave viewers with the one-sided impression that dietary supplements are unregulated, unsafe—and that ultimately you, the consumer, should not have the right to stay healthy in a manner of your choosing.

There is too much to comment on in this corrupt documentary. But we’ll address a few key points.

Medical Establishment Says Supplements are Useless!

The overarching narrative of one especially egregious segment was that supplementation of any sort is unnecessary and does not impart any benefits—and worse, that it may even be dangerous.

For example, the documentary has longtime natural health foe and vaccine millionaire Dr. Paul Offit explaining that one 1000 milligram tablet of vitamin C is equivalent to eating “seven or eight entire cantaloupes,” and that this is bad because the body was not meant to eat so much. Never mind that this says nothing about how many milligrams might be required for certain individuals to achieve optimal nutrition, nor that a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that food alone does not provide enough nutrients to the human body! Considering also that 93% of Americans are nutrient deficient, how does Dr. Offit propose we correct nutrient imbalances?

With respect to C, he also skips over the abundant scientific evidence that early humans, when everyone lived in a tropical environment, consumed much more C than we do today (which means our bodies evolved to handle C in abundance). We need to consume our vitamin C, unlike most animals whose bodies simply make it as needed, often in very large quantities.

As for vitamin D, other “experts” were lined up to argue that any dose higher than the antiquated, absurdly low 600 IU recommendation from the ponderously conservative Institute of Medicine (IOM) is not only “not beneficial,” it may even be harmful—a claim that is patently bogus.

An old editorial titled “Enough is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements”—which was based on three studies which even conventional practitioners have dismissed as flawed and inconclusive—was resurrected to further bolster the documentary’s case (see our detailed rebuttal to this editorial here).

Fish oil was specifically targeted, with claims that almost no clinical studies have shown a benefit to consuming fish oil supplements—an astoundingly false claim, considering the vast preponderance of scientific evidence to the contrary. Fish oil has been found to be so beneficial, in fact, that Big Pharma has patented expensive fish oil-derived drugs (more on this below).

The pretext for all of this, of course, is to undermine the credibility of supplements and to make the case that more regulation and oversight is required—ostensibly, a pre-approval system similar to the one suggested by supplement foes Sens. Durbin (D-IL) and Blumenthal (D-CT). What is not mentioned in the Frontline piece is how profoundly such a system would infringe upon the rights of millions of Americans who rely on dietary supplements to maintain and optimize their health. It would drive the cost of supplements through the roof, which would then sweep them off the shelves and into the hands of drug companies.

The Frontline piece propagates the false notion that supplement users are only using supplements to treat or prevent diseases. This is an incomplete and misleading picture. Many consumers of supplements are just trying to bolster their overall health in combination with diet, exercise, and lifestyle choices. The integrative community knows there’s no “magic pill” for health, and therefore strives for holistic solutions. However, the medical establishment seems to believe that Americans should not have the freedom to stay healthy the way they choose. Instead, Americans should stay healthy in a manner the medical establishment chooses—that is, in a way that lines the coffers of pharmaceutical companies and the doctors on their payroll.

Supplement Safety—Same Old Story

Other segments perpetuated the same lies we’ve heard many times before from the likes of Sens. Durbin and Blumenthal, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and others. The documentary writers highlight a few supplements containing adulterated (illegal) ingredients that led to adverse reactions, holding these illegal products up as examples of why the industry needs more regulation. As we’ve argued time and time again, the FDA has the authority to remove dangerous and illegal products from the market—and actually did so in each instance cited in the documentary, proving once again that the current system works when the FDA enforces the law.

The documentary also fails to highlight the overwhelming safety record of supplements for the millions of Americans who take them every day.

Big Pharma Pulling the Strings

All of this comes into focus, however, in a segment in which fish oil supplements were attacked as being inferior to their pharmaceutical counterparts.

To substantiate these claims, the documentary’s primary expert, Preston Mason, PhD, cuts open fish oil supplements and points out how different they are from a pharmaceutical fish oil drug.

As it turns out, Dr. Mason is very familiar with that particular drug. It’s called Vascepa, and for the past several years he has worked as an advocate for the drug. He even lobbied the FDA on behalf of Amarin Pharma, the drug’s manufacturer, to broaden the uses it was originally approved for. Apparently the producers of the Frontline piece did not think viewers needed to be informed of this conflict of interest.

It gets worse. Immediately following the broadcast, Amarin was ready with a website that highlights the documentary, as well as a media campaign (sponsored by Amarin) that features Dr. Mason and a fellow Vascepa advocate, Eliot Brinton, MD. According to OpenPayments.cms.gov, Dr. Brinton earned $366,698.68 from pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Mason is not a medical doctor, so he is not required, under the Sunshine Act, to make his compensation public.

Was the Frontline documentary a coordinated effort to boost sales of Amarin’s Vascepa by attacking the more popular and affordable competition? The facts speak for themselves.

We also suspect that this documentary could be the opening salvo in renewed attempts by Sens. Durbin and Blumenthal to implement a pre-approval system for supplements, which we are expecting to come out some time this year.

As always, we will closely monitor the happenings in and out of Capitol Hill, and keep you informed of developments.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Massive Vaccine Cover-Up

Nominee for FDA Commissioner Clears Another Hurdle

 

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1Up5fny via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1OWrihH

Nominee for FDA Commissioner Clears Another Hurdle

Dr. Robert Califf has deep ties to the drug industry—and he’s one step closer to becoming the new FDA commissioner. We must stop this. Action Alert!

He recently cleared the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and is now headed for a full floor vote.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Bernie Sanders (D-VT), and Ed Markey (D-MA) have placed holds on his nomination. Sen. Murkowski is rightly concerned about the FDA’s approval of GMO salmon and its decision not to mandate the labeling of the fish as genetically modified. Sen. Sanders has voiced the need for an FDA commissioner who will stand up to the pharmaceutical industry, noting that Califf is “not that person.” Sen. Markey is blocking Dr. Califf’s nomination in protest of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) role in the opioid abuse epidemic—specifically the agency’s approval of OxyContin for children.

Although the abuse of prescription drugs and the labeling of GMO salmon are important issues, even if they are somehow “solved” we are still left with a nominee for FDA commissioner with substantial ties to the drug industry. It is on this basis that we would like to see Dr. Califf’s nomination blocked.

As we noted in previous coverage, Dr. Califf’s lucrative dealings with the drug industry are well known. He ran a clinical research center at Duke University that received the majority of its multi-million-dollar budget from Big Pharma. According to financial disclosures from last year, Dr. Califf received money for consulting with at least seven drug and medical device companies, and, according to the New York Times, six other companies at least partially underwrote his university salary, including Merck, Novartis, and Eli Lilly. The conflict-of-interest section of a paper he wrote for the European Heart Journal last year lists financial support from more than twenty companies.

All of this has led Daniel Carpenter, a Harvard political science professor and an expert on the FDA, to call Califf the “ultimate industry insider.” Indeed, the New York Times notes that “he has deeper ties to the pharmaceutical industry than any FDA commissioner in recent memory.”

It seems increasingly likely that Congress will approve Califf’s nomination—unless enough advocates speak out and urge their senators to block his nomination. Califf’s nomination shows that federal officials are dropping all pretenses of picking someone who would actually protect public health or stand up to industry, and instead are baldly installing a fox to guard the henhouse.

Action Alert! Write your senators, thanking them if they are blocking Dr. Califf’s nomination and urging them to do so if they haven’t. Please send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Massive Vaccine Cover-Up

Has PBS Become a Front for Big Pharma?

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1K8KSuj via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/202ba8T

Action Alert: Block Califf’s Nomination!

Related article: Nominee for FDA Commissioner Clears Another Hurdle

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

.errordiv { padding:10px; margin:10px; border: 1px solid #555555;color: #000000;background-color: #f8f8f8; text-align:center; width:500px; }
var ai_iframe_width_iframe2810 = 0; var ai_iframe_height_iframe2810 = 0;var aiIsIe8=false;var aiReadyCallbacks = ( typeof aiReadyCallbacks != ‘undefined’ && aiReadyCallbacks instanceof Array ) ? aiReadyCallbacks : [];var onloadFirediframe2810 = false; function aiShowIframe() { jQuery(“#iframe2810”).css(“visibility”, “visible”);} function aiShowIframeId(id_iframe) { jQuery(id_iframe).css(“visibility”, “visible”);} function aiResizeIframeHeight(height) { aiResizeIframeHeight(height,iframe2810); } function aiResizeIframeHeightId(height,width,id) {aiResizeIframeHeightById(id,height);} http://ift.tt/1RLsBpqvar ifrm_iframe2810 = document.getElementById(“iframe2810”);
var hiddenTabsDoneiframe2810 = false;
function resizeCallbackiframe2810() {}

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1OWjVH4 via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/1nlPsLk

Nominee for FDA Commissioner Clears Another Hurdle

Dr. Robert Califf has deep ties to the drug industry—and he’s one step closer to becoming the new FDA commissioner. We must stop this. Action Alert!

He recently cleared the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and is now headed for a full floor vote.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Bernie Sanders (D-VT), and Ed Markey (D-MA) have placed holds on his nomination. Sen. Murkowski is rightly concerned about the FDA’s approval of GMO salmon and its decision not to mandate the labeling of the fish as genetically modified. Sen. Sanders has voiced the need for an FDA commissioner who will stand up to the pharmaceutical industry, noting that Califf is “not that person.” Sen. Markey is blocking Dr. Califf’s nomination in protest of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) role in the opioid abuse epidemic—specifically the agency’s approval of OxyContin for children.

Although the abuse of prescription drugs and the labeling of GMO salmon are important issues, even if they are somehow “solved” we are still left with a nominee for FDA commissioner with substantial ties to the drug industry. It is on this basis that we would like to see Dr. Califf’s nomination blocked.

As we noted in previous coverage, Dr. Califf’s lucrative dealings with the drug industry are well known. He ran a clinical research center at Duke University that received the majority of its multi-million-dollar budget from Big Pharma. According to financial disclosures from last year, Dr. Califf received money for consulting with at least seven drug and medical device companies, and, according to the New York Times, six other companies at least partially underwrote his university salary, including Merck, Novartis, and Eli Lilly. The conflict-of-interest section of a paper he wrote for the European Heart Journal last year lists financial support from more than twenty companies.

All of this has led Daniel Carpenter, a Harvard political science professor and an expert on the FDA, to call Califf the “ultimate industry insider.” Indeed, the New York Times notes that “he has deeper ties to the pharmaceutical industry than any FDA commissioner in recent memory.”

It seems increasingly likely that Congress will approve Califf’s nomination—unless enough advocates speak out and urge their senators to block his nomination. Califf’s nomination shows that federal officials are dropping all pretenses of picking someone who would actually protect public health or stand up to industry, and instead are baldly installing a fox to guard the henhouse.

Action Alert! Write your senators, thanking them if they are blocking Dr. Califf’s nomination and urging them to do so if they haven’t. Please send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Massive Vaccine Cover-Up

Has PBS Become a Front for Big Pharma?

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1K8KSuj via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1SIpJK9

Action Alert: Block Califf’s Nomination!

Related article: Nominee for FDA Commissioner Clears Another Hurdle

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1OWjVH4 via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1SIpJK5

Jonathan Wright MD Introduces Green Medicine

>

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1QhuDKE via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/1ZPCC9O

Jonathan Wright MD Introduces Green Medicine

>

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1QhuDKE via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1nBexCg

Toxic Nursery Rhymes

For More Information CLICK HERE.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1SxoEEX via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/1P6enxe

Toxic Nursery Rhymes

For More Information CLICK HERE.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1SxoEEX via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1T5AghY

Attack on Vaccine Choice Rolls East

As we predicted, more states are following in the footsteps of California and restricting parents’ freedom to protect their children’s health. Check below to see if your state is one of them. State-based Action Alerts!

New York is considering a bill, S6017, that would eliminate all non-medical exemptions to vaccination. According to news coverage, Assembleyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, the bill’s sponsor, said that parents worried for their children’s safety “have bought into the garbage that these vaccinations can cause autism. That’s a lot of crap.”

Bold statements from someone who is neither a doctor nor a scientist! Assemblyman Dinowitz also appears to be unaware of the facts. Someone should tell him about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) cover-up—revealed by Dr. William Thompson, an epidemiologist at the CDC’s National Center of Birth Defects and Development Disabilities—of data linking the MMR vaccine to an increased incidence of autism in African American boys.

Assemblyman Dinowitz may also want to consult the data from the government’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). The government’s own data show that, since 1988, the VICP has awarded almost $3 billion to over 4,000 families who were harmed by vaccines—even though the window to file a claim is so tight that many families miss it, and the system makes it very difficult to demonstrate a connection between the shot and the ensuing health issue. In other words, even after making it next to impossible for patients to make a claim and prove their case, the government still concedes that thousands of us have been harmed by vaccines—and has paid patients billions of dollars in compensation.

In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) receives an average of 30,000 reports each year, 13% of which are considered “serious”—that is, associated with “disability, hospitalization, life-threatening illness, or death.” As we have noted, the government’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) dismisses these reports because they are not “peer reviewed,” but then refuses to provide the peer review needed. This is not surprising since the government has become so deeply enmeshed in the vaccine industry, which has become a poster child for crony capitalism. Its ability to evaluate vaccines honestly has long since been compromised.

Want more? A law review article published in 2011 found eighty-three cases of autism among those compensated by the VICP for vaccine-induced brain damage. Of those eighty-three cases, thirty-nine of them (47%) confirm autism or an autistic disorder resulting from the shot, with the findings published by the Court of Federal Claims. Further, twenty-one decisions by VICP acknowledged autism or autism-like symptoms associated with vaccine-induced encephalopathy and seizure disorder.

But that’s just “a lot of crap,” right, Assemblyman Dinowitz?

State governments are eliminating freedom of choice in even more backhanded ways. Rhode Island’s Department of Health, for example, recently decided to mandate the HPV vaccine for all 7th graders. This is perhaps the single most dangerous vaccine and also the least scientifically justified. The Department of Health has such power because Rhode Island incorporates all CDC-recommended vaccines into the state’s school immunization regulations. The only “public” part of this process was when the state held hearings to provide information to parents and to answer questions about the new mandate.

Readers may remember our previous coverage of a former Merck physician predicting that the company’s HPV vaccine, Gardasil, would “become the greatest medical scandal of all time.” He remarked that Gardasil “is useless and costs a fortune,” in addition to being linked to Guillain-Barré syndrome, paralysis of the lower limbs, vaccine-induced MS, and vaccine-induced encephalitis. You may also recall that the former head of the CDC, Julie Gerberding, actually handed this vaccine over to Merck (it had been developed by government researchers) and personally pushed and fast-tracked it—then left the CDC to become president of Merck’s vaccine division.

This is exactly what we feared—that the passage of California’s bill eliminating all non-medical exemptions to vaccination would embolden other states to follow suit. We must act swiftly to prevent to preserve freedom of choice.

State-based Action Alerts! New York residents, write to your legislators and urge them to oppose S6017. Rhode Island residents, ask your Department of Health to reverse its recent mandate to give 7th graders the HPV vaccine. Please send your message immediately.

New York residents, click here.

Rhode Island residents, click here.

Other states with pending legislation:

Minnesota

Pennsylvania

Tennessee

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Poisoning Our Children, Even in the Womb

Grass-Fed Label For Meat—Gone!

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1NiSDsf via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/1JgeLc9

Poisoning Our Children, Even in the Womb

Birth defects, premature births, endocrine disruption, cancer, Parkinson’s—why are we doing this to our kids? Action Alert!

According to a new study published in the journal Endocrinology, oil and natural gas operations are contaminating surface and ground water with chemicals that wreak havoc on birth and growth hormones. Other recent reports show toxic levels of selenium contamination in the groundwater near fracking operations. This is leading to premature births.

The fracking study found that twenty-three commonly used fracking chemicals “can activate or inhibit the estrogen, androgen, glucocorticoid, progesterone, and/or thyroid receptors, and mixtures of these chemicals can behave synergistically, additively, or antagonistically in vitro.” The chemicals caused decreased sperm counts and increased body, heart, and thymus weights, which means the chemicals attack multiple organ systems at once. The potential adverse developmental and reproductive health effects on humans could be devastating. There is already evidence this is happening.

The fracking chemicals that scientists have tested so far are just the chemicals that have been identified. The larger problem, as we noted in September, is that we simply don’t know what chemicals are used in fracking liquid, as companies often avoid disclosing the chemicals they use by claiming their particular recipe is a proprietary “trade secret.”

Living near fracking operations is associated with pre-term births. In a study of 10,496 births from 2009 to 2013 in Pennsylvania, where fracking is conducted, scientists found that 25% of mothers who were exposed to fracking the most were 40% more likely to give birth prematurely.

Let’s not forget that organic produce in California may be contaminated with repurposed fracking water.

Unfortunately, exposure to fracking chemicals is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the federal government caving to Big Food, Big Pharma, and Big Oil and relying on their biased studies to set policy.

Nowhere is this more apparent than Hawaii, the “ground zero for experimentation with GE crops” according to a recent report by the Center for Food Safety (CFS). Hawaii contains more than a thousand test-field plots for GMO crops—more than any other state, and glyphosate (Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide) is used in abundance. Biotech companies, taking advantage of Hawaii’s extended growing season, sprayed seventeen times more restricted-use pesticides on just one of Hawaii’s islands than on typical cornfields on the US mainland. Between 2007 and 2012, DuPont-Pioneer alone sprayed 90 different pesticide formulations containing 63 active ingredients on two-thirds of the days each year on Hawaii’s Kauai island.

Pesticide ingredients have been linked to a wide spectrum of nasty health effects including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, bladder and colon cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, depression, and hormone disruption, to name just a few. In Hawaii, glyphosate is now causing birth defects at ten times the national rate.

This pesticide use is taking a heavy toll on Hawaiians, but not necessarily because they are eating chemical-laden food. Pesticide drift is a serious problem for communities in close proximity to the GE crop fields. Local residents report that when the spraying is underway, the wind can pick up the pesticide clouds and blow them into nearby residential neighborhoods, causing stinging eyes, headaches, and vomiting. A special education teacher was quoted by The Guardian as saying:

Your eyes and lungs hurt, you feel dizzy and nauseous. It’s awful. Here, 10% of the students get Special Ed services, but the state average is 6.3%. It’s hard to think the pesticides don’t play a role.

Pesticides can also be carried in the wind by becoming attached to dust. As Moms Across America founder Zen Honeycutt explains in a recent op-ed, a Hawaii Department of Agriculture test of a home in Maui came back positive for six different herbicides, meaning residents are being exposed to these chemicals over extended periods of time. (Honeycutt also demonstrated, for the first time, that high levels of glyphosate could be found in breast milk.)

Epidemiological evidence shows how dangerous pesticide drift can be. One study, for instance, found that expectant mothers living within 500 meters of fields sprayed with organochlorine insecticides during early pregnancy were six times more likely to bear children with autism.

Although Hawaii is an extreme example, the issue goes far beyond just one state. In fact, 3,200 elementary schools and 12,000 churches in the 48 contiguous states are located near fields where GMO corn and soybeans are likely grown. One can only imagine the effects of decades of exposure to pesticide drift on these communities.

Fracking fluid is in our water, soil, and food. Pesticides and herbicides are on our food, in the air, and in our homes. None of this is all that surprising when we consider that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) relies almost entirely on industry-funded science when it evaluates these chemicals for safety. When the EPA does evaluate a pesticide or herbicide, the agency only evaluates the active ingredient in isolation, even though people in the real world are exposed to multiple pesticides at once that can have additive and synergistic effects.

Only a strong response from the public can have a chance at getting the federal government to put the safety of its citizens first.

Action Alert! Write to the EPA and urge them to revoke their approval of glyphosate; consider pesticide drift as they continue to evaluate pesticides and herbicides for safety; and require independent analysis of the incredibly toxic chemicals being used in fracking. Please send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Attack on Vaccine Choice Rolls East

Grass-Fed Label For Meat—Gone!

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1nwdMus via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/1ls89vq

Grass-Fed Label For Meat—Gone!

The US Department of Agriculture is nixing its grass-fed standard, but they’re doing it for the most absurd reason imaginable.

Last week, the USDA announced it would be withdrawing its standard for the grass-fed meat label. The agency is giving producers who used the grass-fed label thirty days to (1) convert the current “grass-fed” standard, in which 99% of the animal’s feed must be from grass or forage, into their own private standard; (2) use some other “recognized grass-fed standard,” or else (3) develop a new, voluntary, grass-fed standard—whatever the company decides is fine with the USDA.

All of this is being implemented through the USDA’s Process Verified Program (PVP). As others have pointed out, PVP is not an inspection program intended to hold producers accountable to their claims, but rather a marketing program that allows producers to make their own claims about their products and slap a USDA logo on the label.

This is the same program that allows Perdue Foods, for example, to market their chicken as being “Humanely Raised,” “Raised Cage Free,” on an “All-Vegetarian Diet”, or with “No Animal By-Products.” The “Humanely Raised” label was such a sham that it drove a Perdue chicken farmer to start a campaign to stop the USDA from putting their stamp of approval on the company’s meat because consumers were, in the farmer’s words, being “hoodwinked.”

So if producers can create their own standard and call their product “grass-fed,” and if there are no labeling regulations, it could contain 80%, or even 50%, and the rest grain-fed. There is just no way to know.

How will all this play out? It would not surprise us if the USDA either made it too difficult for small producers to get approval of any label, or censored what they can say on the label. Remember that it wasn’t long ago that the USDA refused to allow meat producers to state that they had tested their cows for mad cow disease, even when they had. The USDA didn’t allow this because large meat producers did not want to test their cattle, and did not want to have to compete against those who did. Why have to compete when you can get the government to forbid competition? In the long run, competition is often an excellent regulator, but bought regulators all too often forbid it.

We have already seen the dilution of organic standards through industry influence. What if cows that are 50% grass-fed can use some kind of “grass-fed” label? We can only expect larger companies to abuse this system to the detriment of consumers and small farmers.

Why is this happening? The official reasoning offered by the USDA is rather bizarre: the agency claims that, since a different USDA department, the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), must approve meat labels, there is no guarantee that a USDA-approved marketing claim such as “grass-fed” will be approved by FSIS.

In plain English: because two departments under the same agency cannot coordinate, the grass-fed standard is being eliminated!

This is also one step away from eliminating a grass-fed claim altogether, which would be great for Big Ag—when consumers have less information to differentiate good from bad products, all the better for the companies producing low quality products.

Action Alert! While the withdrawal of the grass-fed standard is a done deal—it is not going through any formal rulemaking process in which the public can comment and register their concerns—please contact the USDA immediately and raise your voice in protest. Send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Attack on Vaccine Choice Rolls East

Poisoning Our Children, Even in the Womb

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1nwdMuk via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/1ls8bDC

Action Alert: Poisoning Our Children

Related article: Poisoning Our Children, Even in the Womb

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

.errordiv { padding:10px; margin:10px; border: 1px solid #555555;color: #000000;background-color: #f8f8f8; text-align:center; width:500px; }
var ai_iframe_width_iframe2800 = 0; var ai_iframe_height_iframe2800 = 0;var aiIsIe8=false;var aiReadyCallbacks = ( typeof aiReadyCallbacks != ‘undefined’ && aiReadyCallbacks instanceof Array ) ? aiReadyCallbacks : [];var onloadFirediframe2800 = false; function aiShowIframe() { jQuery(“#iframe2800”).css(“visibility”, “visible”);} function aiShowIframeId(id_iframe) { jQuery(id_iframe).css(“visibility”, “visible”);} function aiResizeIframeHeight(height) { aiResizeIframeHeight(height,iframe2800); } function aiResizeIframeHeightId(height,width,id) {aiResizeIframeHeightById(id,height);} http://ift.tt/20csK6Lvar ifrm_iframe2800 = document.getElementById(“iframe2800”);
var hiddenTabsDoneiframe2800 = false;
function resizeCallbackiframe2800() {}

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1nwdMui via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/1T25Dtz

Action Alert: Grass-Fed Label Gone

Related article: Grass-Fed Label For Meat—Gone!

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

.errordiv { padding:10px; margin:10px; border: 1px solid #555555;color: #000000;background-color: #f8f8f8; text-align:center; width:500px; }
var ai_iframe_width_iframe2800 = 0; var ai_iframe_height_iframe2800 = 0;var aiIsIe8=false;var aiReadyCallbacks = ( typeof aiReadyCallbacks != ‘undefined’ && aiReadyCallbacks instanceof Array ) ? aiReadyCallbacks : [];var onloadFirediframe2800 = false; function aiShowIframe() { jQuery(“#iframe2800”).css(“visibility”, “visible”);} function aiShowIframeId(id_iframe) { jQuery(id_iframe).css(“visibility”, “visible”);} function aiResizeIframeHeight(height) { aiResizeIframeHeight(height,iframe2800); } function aiResizeIframeHeightId(height,width,id) {aiResizeIframeHeightById(id,height);} http://ift.tt/20csK6Lvar ifrm_iframe2800 = document.getElementById(“iframe2800”);
var hiddenTabsDoneiframe2800 = false;
function resizeCallbackiframe2800() {}

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1nwdMuf via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/1T25Ddc

Attack on Vaccine Choice Rolls East

As we predicted, more states are following in the footsteps of California and restricting parents’ freedom to protect their children’s health. Check below to see if your state is one of them. State-based Action Alerts!

New York is considering a bill, S6017, that would eliminate all non-medical exemptions to vaccination. According to news coverage, Assembleyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, the bill’s sponsor, said that parents worried for their children’s safety “have bought into the garbage that these vaccinations can cause autism. That’s a lot of crap.”

Bold statements from someone who is neither a doctor nor a scientist! Assemblyman Dinowitz also appears to be unaware of the facts. Someone should tell him about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) cover-up—revealed by Dr. William Thompson, an epidemiologist at the CDC’s National Center of Birth Defects and Development Disabilities—of data linking the MMR vaccine to an increased incidence of autism in African American boys.

Assemblyman Dinowitz may also want to consult the data from the government’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). The government’s own data show that, since 1988, the VICP has awarded almost $3 billion to over 4,000 families who were harmed by vaccines—even though the window to file a claim is so tight that many families miss it, and the system makes it very difficult to demonstrate a connection between the shot and the ensuing health issue. In other words, even after making it next to impossible for patients to make a claim and prove their case, the government still concedes that thousands of us have been harmed by vaccines—and has paid patients billions of dollars in compensation.

In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) receives an average of 30,000 reports each year, 13% of which are considered “serious”—that is, associated with “disability, hospitalization, life-threatening illness, or death.” As we have noted, the government’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) dismisses these reports because they are not “peer reviewed,” but then refuses to provide the peer review needed. This is not surprising since the government has become so deeply enmeshed in the vaccine industry, which has become a poster child for crony capitalism. Its ability to evaluate vaccines honestly has long since been compromised.

Want more? A law review article published in 2011 found eighty-three cases of autism among those compensated by the VICP for vaccine-induced brain damage. Of those eighty-three cases, thirty-nine of them (47%) confirm autism or an autistic disorder resulting from the shot, with the findings published by the Court of Federal Claims. Further, twenty-one decisions by VICP acknowledged autism or autism-like symptoms associated with vaccine-induced encephalopathy and seizure disorder.

But that’s just “a lot of crap,” right, Assemblyman Dinowitz?

State governments are eliminating freedom of choice in even more backhanded ways. Rhode Island’s Department of Health, for example, recently decided to mandate the HPV vaccine for all 7th graders. This is perhaps the single most dangerous vaccine and also the least scientifically justified. The Department of Health has such power because Rhode Island incorporates all CDC-recommended vaccines into the state’s school immunization regulations. The only “public” part of this process was when the state held hearings to provide information to parents and to answer questions about the new mandate.

Readers may remember our previous coverage of a former Merck physician predicting that the company’s HPV vaccine, Gardasil, would “become the greatest medical scandal of all time.” He remarked that Gardasil “is useless and costs a fortune,” in addition to being linked to Guillain-Barré syndrome, paralysis of the lower limbs, vaccine-induced MS, and vaccine-induced encephalitis. You may also recall that the former head of the CDC, Julie Gerberding, actually handed this vaccine over to Merck (it had been developed by government researchers) and personally pushed and fast-tracked it—then left the CDC to become president of Merck’s vaccine division.

This is exactly what we feared—that the passage of California’s bill eliminating all non-medical exemptions to vaccination would embolden other states to follow suit. We must act swiftly to prevent to preserve freedom of choice.

State-based Action Alerts! New York residents, write to your legislators and urge them to oppose S6017. Rhode Island residents, ask your Department of Health to reverse its recent mandate to give 7th graders the HPV vaccine. Please send your message immediately.

New York residents, click here.

Rhode Island residents, click here.

Other states with pending legislation:

Minnesota

Pennsylvania

Tennessee

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Poisoning Our Children, Even in the Womb

Grass-Fed Label For Meat—Gone!

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1NiSDsf via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1RRJiA2

Poisoning Our Children, Even in the Womb

Birth defects, premature births, endocrine disruption, cancer, Parkinson’s—why are we doing this to our kids? Action Alert!

According to a new study published in the journal Endocrinology, oil and natural gas operations are contaminating surface and ground water with chemicals that wreak havoc on birth and growth hormones. Other recent reports show toxic levels of selenium contamination in the groundwater near fracking operations. This is leading to premature births.

The fracking study found that twenty-three commonly used fracking chemicals “can activate or inhibit the estrogen, androgen, glucocorticoid, progesterone, and/or thyroid receptors, and mixtures of these chemicals can behave synergistically, additively, or antagonistically in vitro.” The chemicals caused decreased sperm counts and increased body, heart, and thymus weights, which means the chemicals attack multiple organ systems at once. The potential adverse developmental and reproductive health effects on humans could be devastating. There is already evidence this is happening.

The fracking chemicals that scientists have tested so far are just the chemicals that have been identified. The larger problem, as we noted in September, is that we simply don’t know what chemicals are used in fracking liquid, as companies often avoid disclosing the chemicals they use by claiming their particular recipe is a proprietary “trade secret.”

Living near fracking operations is associated with pre-term births. In a study of 10,496 births from 2009 to 2013 in Pennsylvania, where fracking is conducted, scientists found that 25% of mothers who were exposed to fracking the most were 40% more likely to give birth prematurely.

Let’s not forget that organic produce in California may be contaminated with repurposed fracking water.

Unfortunately, exposure to fracking chemicals is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the federal government caving to Big Food, Big Pharma, and Big Oil and relying on their biased studies to set policy.

Nowhere is this more apparent than Hawaii, the “ground zero for experimentation with GE crops” according to a recent report by the Center for Food Safety (CFS). Hawaii contains more than a thousand test-field plots for GMO crops—more than any other state, and glyphosate (Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide) is used in abundance. Biotech companies, taking advantage of Hawaii’s extended growing season, sprayed seventeen times more restricted-use pesticides on just one of Hawaii’s islands than on typical cornfields on the US mainland. Between 2007 and 2012, DuPont-Pioneer alone sprayed 90 different pesticide formulations containing 63 active ingredients on two-thirds of the days each year on Hawaii’s Kauai island.

Pesticide ingredients have been linked to a wide spectrum of nasty health effects including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, bladder and colon cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, depression, and hormone disruption, to name just a few. In Hawaii, glyphosate is now causing birth defects at ten times the national rate.

This pesticide use is taking a heavy toll on Hawaiians, but not necessarily because they are eating chemical-laden food. Pesticide drift is a serious problem for communities in close proximity to the GE crop fields. Local residents report that when the spraying is underway, the wind can pick up the pesticide clouds and blow them into nearby residential neighborhoods, causing stinging eyes, headaches, and vomiting. A special education teacher was quoted by The Guardian as saying:

Your eyes and lungs hurt, you feel dizzy and nauseous. It’s awful. Here, 10% of the students get Special Ed services, but the state average is 6.3%. It’s hard to think the pesticides don’t play a role.

Pesticides can also be carried in the wind by becoming attached to dust. As Moms Across America founder Zen Honeycutt explains in a recent op-ed, a Hawaii Department of Agriculture test of a home in Maui came back positive for six different herbicides, meaning residents are being exposed to these chemicals over extended periods of time. (Honeycutt also demonstrated, for the first time, that high levels of glyphosate could be found in breast milk.)

Epidemiological evidence shows how dangerous pesticide drift can be. One study, for instance, found that expectant mothers living within 500 meters of fields sprayed with organochlorine insecticides during early pregnancy were six times more likely to bear children with autism.

Although Hawaii is an extreme example, the issue goes far beyond just one state. In fact, 3,200 elementary schools and 12,000 churches in the 48 contiguous states are located near fields where GMO corn and soybeans are likely grown. One can only imagine the effects of decades of exposure to pesticide drift on these communities.

Fracking fluid is in our water, soil, and food. Pesticides and herbicides are on our food, in the air, and in our homes. None of this is all that surprising when we consider that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) relies almost entirely on industry-funded science when it evaluates these chemicals for safety. When the EPA does evaluate a pesticide or herbicide, the agency only evaluates the active ingredient in isolation, even though people in the real world are exposed to multiple pesticides at once that can have additive and synergistic effects.

Only a strong response from the public can have a chance at getting the federal government to put the safety of its citizens first.

Action Alert! Write to the EPA and urge them to revoke their approval of glyphosate; consider pesticide drift as they continue to evaluate pesticides and herbicides for safety; and require independent analysis of the incredibly toxic chemicals being used in fracking. Please send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Attack on Vaccine Choice Rolls East

Grass-Fed Label For Meat—Gone!

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1nwdMus via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1PotVIn

Grass-Fed Label For Meat—Gone!

The US Department of Agriculture is nixing its grass-fed standard, but they’re doing it for the most absurd reason imaginable.

Last week, the USDA announced it would be withdrawing its standard for the grass-fed meat label. The agency is giving producers who used the grass-fed label thirty days to (1) convert the current “grass-fed” standard, in which 99% of the animal’s feed must be from grass or forage, into their own private standard; (2) use some other “recognized grass-fed standard,” or else (3) develop a new, voluntary, grass-fed standard—whatever the company decides is fine with the USDA.

All of this is being implemented through the USDA’s Process Verified Program (PVP). As others have pointed out, PVP is not an inspection program intended to hold producers accountable to their claims, but rather a marketing program that allows producers to make their own claims about their products and slap a USDA logo on the label.

This is the same program that allows Perdue Foods, for example, to market their chicken as being “Humanely Raised,” “Raised Cage Free,” on an “All-Vegetarian Diet”, or with “No Animal By-Products.” The “Humanely Raised” label was such a sham that it drove a Perdue chicken farmer to start a campaign to stop the USDA from putting their stamp of approval on the company’s meat because consumers were, in the farmer’s words, being “hoodwinked.”

So if producers can create their own standard and call their product “grass-fed,” and if there are no labeling regulations, it could contain 80%, or even 50%, and the rest grain-fed. There is just no way to know.

How will all this play out? It would not surprise us if the USDA either made it too difficult for small producers to get approval of any label, or censored what they can say on the label. Remember that it wasn’t long ago that the USDA refused to allow meat producers to state that they had tested their cows for mad cow disease, even when they had. The USDA didn’t allow this because large meat producers did not want to test their cattle, and did not want to have to compete against those who did. Why have to compete when you can get the government to forbid competition? In the long run, competition is often an excellent regulator, but bought regulators all too often forbid it.

We have already seen the dilution of organic standards through industry influence. What if cows that are 50% grass-fed can use some kind of “grass-fed” label? We can only expect larger companies to abuse this system to the detriment of consumers and small farmers.

Why is this happening? The official reasoning offered by the USDA is rather bizarre: the agency claims that, since a different USDA department, the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), must approve meat labels, there is no guarantee that a USDA-approved marketing claim such as “grass-fed” will be approved by FSIS.

In plain English: because two departments under the same agency cannot coordinate, the grass-fed standard is being eliminated!

This is also one step away from eliminating a grass-fed claim altogether, which would be great for Big Ag—when consumers have less information to differentiate good from bad products, all the better for the companies producing low quality products.

Action Alert! While the withdrawal of the grass-fed standard is a done deal—it is not going through any formal rulemaking process in which the public can comment and register their concerns—please contact the USDA immediately and raise your voice in protest. Send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Attack on Vaccine Choice Rolls East

Poisoning Our Children, Even in the Womb

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1nwdMuk via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1PotVIh

Action Alert: Poisoning Our Children

Related article: Poisoning Our Children, Even in the Womb

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1nwdMui via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1ZKJLIq

Action Alert: Grass-Fed Label Gone

Related article: Grass-Fed Label For Meat—Gone!

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1nwdMuf via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1ZKJMfq

Superbugs to Kill Millions Soon?

Just because Big Pharma can’t make big money from the potential solutions is not a reason for further delay. Action Alert!

Antibiotic-resistant illnesses currently kill an estimated 700,000 people a year globally. By 2050, these illnesses are expected to kill 10 million people. Based on recent research, it could be even worse—and coming even sooner.

We have had a taste of this over the winter, with an especially nasty Avian (or Type A) influenza bug hitting people, and in some cases being followed by secondary bacterial infection such as bronchitis or pneumonia. From what we hear, many of the people infected by the virus had the flu shot—which may have been more on target than last year, but which is never very protective, as we have pointed out before, and still contains mercury. Fortunately in most cases antibiotics still work against the secondary bacterial infections, which could otherwise be life-threatening.

That bacterial infections are becoming resistant to antibiotics is not exactly news. But a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now details the rise of a dangerous new superbug that scientists are calling the “phantom menace.” Separately, scientists recently announced the discovery of another deadly superbug in Chinese pigs.

The bug that is referenced in the CDC report is from the same family of bacteria that are infecting colonoscopes and endoscopes. In previous coverage we noted that in the past few years alone there have been four major Carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae (CRE) outbreaks in US hospitals, killing dozens and sickening even more. We noted at the time that CRE is often completely untreatable by antibiotics and has a mortality rate of 40% or more.

This new strand of CRE could be even more dangerous. Many bacteria become resistant to antibiotics by evolving their own genome in ways that deactivate antibiotics. This resistance cannot be shared outside that bacterium’s biological family. But this new superbug is resistant because it carries a plasmid (a small circular DNA strand in the cytoplasm of a bacterium or protozoan) containing the DNA to break down antibiotics, and this plasmid can be transferred to normal bacteria that are already present in our bodies. This shortcut allows bacteria to develop antibiotic resistance without having to obtain it through evolution.

Because this new form of CRE is not as resistant as other forms of CRE, it went unnoticed by the medical community, leading scientists and researchers to dub it the “phantom menace.” The CDC has confirmed forty-three cases in the past five years of this particular strain of CRE, but scientists think that this is just the tip of the iceberg. The new strain of the resistant bacteria is difficult to detect using the standard test for CRE, so there could be many more cases than are currently reported.

This news coincides with a paper recently published in The Lancet describing a new strain of e. coli in Chinese pigs that has evolved to withstand colistin, a powerful antibiotic that is considered to be a last resort treatment for antibiotic-resistance diseases. Keep in mind that as more and more powerful antibiotics are developed in response to resistance, even if they work, they often bring serious side effects of their own.

Like the new strain of CRE, the colistin-resistant gene is easily transferable between bacterial species, and the authors of the paper warn that this superbug is likely to go global. Bacteria with the same resistance gene have already been found in Denmark.

Let’s also not forget that drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis (TB) are also spreading, with health experts saying that this bacterium is “virtually untreatable” and one of our “most significant global threats.” About one-third of the world’s population carry latent TB, and about 10% of these carriers will become sick.

So what has the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) done about this? Little or nothing. We know that one major source of antibiotic resistance is the misuse and overuse of antibiotic drugs on factory farms, where animals are routinely fed drugs to prevent the spread of disease amidst the squalid conditions that often prevail in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations). In 2013 the FDA released a set of voluntary guidelines to try to curb this practice, but recent progress reports show how ineffective this has been. The sale and use of antibiotics for animals actually increased by 4% between 2013 and 2014. Animals also received more drugs important for human medicine, with those sales up 3% between 2013 and 2014.

Clearly a lot more needs to be done if we want to avoid the “post-antibiotic era” that the World Health Organization warns about. Most importantly, the FDA needs to reconsider its stance towards natural health alternatives like vitamin D to stay healthy; silver, grapefruit seed extract, olive leaf extract, and other herbs to fight bacterial illnesses; and high-dose vitamin A and intravenous and lipospheric C to fight viral and bacterial illness. It is very difficult, for example—perhaps impossible—for bacteria to become resistant to silver. It is safe enough to be commonly used to purify water in developing countries. It is approved by the EPA for use in consumer products as a sanitizing agent! If medical authorities think it is safe enough for people to drink routinely in their water and to use as a sanitizing agent, why does the FDA oppose its use in medicine? Presumably because it isn’t patentable and therefore won’t make big money for Big Pharma, the FDA’s partner and the source of its funding. The agency doesn’t even approve its use in hospitals! Must millions die because of this corruption?

Check out our new video, Rise of the Phantom Menace.

Action Alert! Write to the FDA and urge them to do more to combat antibiotic resistance and to approve the use of alternative remedies such as silver. Please send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

FDA: Your Own Cells Are a Drug!

Who Will Give Us Trustworthy Diet Advice?

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/22Y4dVn via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/1OZE30m

FDA: Your Own Cells Are a Drug!

To protect Big Pharma, the FDA is coming after stem cell therapies. Don’t let the agency classify your body as a pharmaceutical drug. Action Alert!

In the next few months, the FDA will hold a public meeting to discuss its recent actions to clamp down on the use of autologous stem cell treatments. This is when a doctor removes adult stem cells from a patient, processes them, and returns the cells to the same patient.

The public meeting will discuss four guidance documents the agency has released over the last two years (here, here, here, and here). They are meant to clarify which treatments containing human cells, tissues, and cellular or tissue-based products (HCT/P) are considered the “practice of medicine” and therefore subject to minimal regulation and which therapies are considered unapproved biological drugs and subject to much more stringent regulation.

Unsurprisingly, the agency is claiming that even if your own stem cells are being used to treat you, if those cells are not directly related to the part of your body being treated, they constitute a drug and in effect can’t be used.

In fact, if a treatment utilizes a patient’s own stem cells to treat an ailment or chronic disease that is not directly related to the source of those stem cells, an Investigational New Drug (IND) application must be filed or the treatment must be pre-approved by the FDA—both of which are long, expensive processes that will likely eliminate these therapies.

This is an all-too-familiar power grab by the FDA that will effectively eliminate an entire industry—one that is on the cusp of some exciting discoveries. Mesenchymal stem cells, which can change into a variety of cell types such as muscle cells, fat cells, and bone cells, show incredible potential to treat a wide variety of chronic illnesses and autoimmune diseases—a powerful testament to the idea that the body possesses powerful mechanisms and tools with which to heal itself. A search of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) clinical trials database lists thousands of trials exploring the uses and benefits of adult stem cells, including improving cardiovascular function after a heart attack and treating multiple sclerosis and chronic heart failure. Other types of stem cells derived from adipose (fat) tissue also show great promise.

Even if stem cells are intended for homologous use (to treat an ailment or chronic disease that is directly related to the source of the stem cells), they must also meet the government’s definition of “minimally manipulated” to avoid being regulated like drugs. The regulation states that minimal manipulation is when the tissue is processed in a way that “does not alter the original relevant characteristics of the tissue.” The FDA has indicated that it views stem cells derived from adipose tissue as more than minimally manipulated and therefore a drug.

If the FDA goes through with its proposals, exciting discoveries that could alleviate the suffering of millions of patients could be delayed for years, be lost forever, or cost a fortune.

This power grab first revealed itself a number of years ago when the FDA sued a Colorado clinic over its Regenexx-C™ stem cell procedure. The FDA claimed it had the right to regulate the clinic’s procedure because stem cells are drugs and the clinic was engaged in interstate commerce. Now it appears the FDA is seeking to complete its takeover of stem cell treatment as drugs.

Why is this happening? We noted when the FDA made its first move, the agency stated outright in court documents that it wanted to protect the market for FDA-approved drugs—a statement rare in its level of candor about the agency’s real intentions. Stem cell clinics threaten the profits of large pharmaceutical companies—the FDA’s patrons—so they must be stopped.

The FDA has similarly declared other parts of our body to be “drugs.” You may remember our report on the agency’s attack on platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections for bone and joint pain. PRP injections involve removing blood from a patient, spinning it in a centrifuge to separate the platelets, and injecting the platelets back into the patient. It is unclear, however, whether this treatment falls under the agency’s definition of a drug or whether it is exempted—meaning doctors are in the dark and perform the procedure at their own risk. The FDA often uses ambiguity like this as a form of intimidation.

At one point, the FDA even argued that a patient’s own feces or that of a family member, if used therapeutically to restart healing bacteria, would become a “drug” and would therefore be subject to FDA approval, although it later backed off this ridiculous claim.

Where will it end? We must forcefully oppose the government’s efforts to regulate what we can do with our own bodies.

Action Alert! Write to the FDA and protest their planned takeover of stem cell therapies. Please send your message immediately.

Other articles in this week’s Pulse of Natural Health:

Superbugs to Kill Millions Soon?

FDA: Your Own Cells Are a Drug!

Who Will Give Us Trustworthy Diet Advice?

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/1Q34GAj via Aloe for Health

from http://ift.tt/1KbMeiD