Action Alert: Reform the FDA

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

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Action Alert: Reform the FDA

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

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Action Alert: Reform the FDA

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

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Green Medicine Free Copy

Have you heard? Dr. Wright has a new monthly newsletter, and wants to share the good news with a free issue!

———————————–

Jonathan V. Wright, M.D.’s Green Medicineis dedicated to helping you keep yourself and your family healthy by the safest and most effective means possible. This is the only newsletter where you can get Dr. Wright’s cutting-edge adviceabout diet, vitamins, minerals, herbs, natural hormones, natural energies, and other substances and techniques to prevent and heal illness and prolong a healthy life span.

But don’t take our word for it—access your free July issue of Jonathan V. Wright, M.D.’s Green Medicine today. Just fill out a simple form and we’ll send you a free copy, right to your mailbox!

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Green Medicine Free Copy

Have you heard? Dr. Wright has a new monthly newsletter, and wants to share the good news with a free issue!

———————————–

Jonathan V. Wright, M.D.’s Green Medicineis dedicated to helping you keep yourself and your family healthy by the safest and most effective means possible. This is the only newsletter where you can get Dr. Wright’s cutting-edge adviceabout diet, vitamins, minerals, herbs, natural hormones, natural energies, and other substances and techniques to prevent and heal illness and prolong a healthy life span.

But don’t take our word for it—access your free July issue of Jonathan V. Wright, M.D.’s Green Medicine today. Just fill out a simple form and we’ll send you a free copy, right to your mailbox!

[contact-form-7]

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Bad GMO Deal Must Be Stopped

It’s mandatory labeling in name only. It discriminates against the poor. And it is clearly a gift to Big Food. Major Action Alert!

For weeks now, Sens. Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) have been working on a GMO labeling bill that would pre-empt Vermont’s mandatory labeling law. Late last week they finally reached a compromise, and it’s not good.

The bill requires the labeling of packaged food containing GMOs in one of three ways: an electronic code that consumers can scan; a USDA-developed symbol; or a label. The bill leaves it to manufacturers to decide which of the three methods they prefer.

Now guess which method Big Food will choose? We have no doubts that they will choose the electronic code that can only be read with a scanner. They know that few will want to do this and even fewer will be able to.

A recent national survey showed that only 16% of consumers have ever scanned a QR code for any purpose. QR (which stands for “quick response”) codes are those small square boxes you find on advertising material, though they’re also used in manufacturing and commercial tracking applications; they can display text to the user, compose an email or text message, or—most frequently—take the user to a website. Most people use an app on their smartphone to scan the QR code (there are many QR scanner apps for both iPhone and Android), and each works a bit differently. No matter which product you choose, it may take a few tries to actually scan the code properly. Then you’ll wait for the site to pop up on the screen (which could take a long time depending on your network coverage inside the store), after which you might have to sift through the company’s information to find the GMO information you’re looking for.

Customers will, of course, have another choice: take each item that contains a QR code to the grocery store customer service counter and demand a scan! Long lines and major QR hassles might get grocery stores upset—and they can exercise pressure on Big Food.

The QR code is hardly a label in any meaningful sense of the word. It adds a barrier between the consumer and the information he or she wants, and discriminates against those who do not own smartphones—which is half of people living in rural areas, 75% of those over 65, and half of those making less than $30,000 a year. This legislation discriminates against all these people and especially the poorest Americans. Debbie Stabenow and Pat Roberts should be ashamed of this.

Like the Vermont bill, this proposal exempts meat, poultry, and eggs from labeling requirements, but unlike the Vermont bill, packaged foods that contain meat but not as a main ingredient would need to be labeled. Proponents of the Roberts–Stabenow bill estimate that 25,000 more products would be labeled under their law compared to Vermont’s legislation.

The bill contains a number of other troubling provisions. It totally leaves open the question of defining what percentage of a food must be genetically engineered for it to be considered GMO. This leaves room for a deal behind the scenes with the FDA. Or has such a deal already been reached secretly?

Under this bill, foods that are “mislabeled”—that’s the technical term for not meeting all labeling requirements—cannot be recalled, nor do there seem to be any federal penalties for violations and mislabeling. So for those who choose to simply ignore this law, there seem to be very few consequences—unless the state separately imposes fines for mislabeling. The bill also prohibits treating non-GMO foods as being safer than GMO foods, despite the scientific evidence that non-GMO is indeed safer. Since when does Congress legislate science?

An astounding 92% of consumers now want on-package labeling of genetically modified foods. This bill is a sneaky way to give Big Food what it wants while paying lip service to the kind of labeling the overwhelming majority of consumers want.

Action Alert! Write to your senators and tell them to oppose this bill and that you want mandatory, on-package labeling. Please send your message immediately.

 

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

Give FDA Even More Power?

Anti-Cancer Nutrient In Peril?

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Give FDA Even More Power?

That’s what a group of former FDA bigwigs want. If they get their way, natural medicine could be in even greater jeopardy.

This week, six former commissioners of the Food and Drug Administration dating back to President Reagan have called on Congress to give the FDA more power by making it an independent, cabinet-level agency. They argue that the agency, which regulates about a quarter of the nation’s economy, has been hamstrung by red tape and micromanagement from the top.

The ex-commissioners plan on releasing a white paper for the next administration to push the idea.

So let’s see what this means. It means that an agency which receives much of its funding from Big Pharma would sit at the same table with the Departments of State and Defense, answerable to no one other than the president him- or herself! This would represent the total triumph of crony capitalism.

Consider also the FDA’s record. Congressional auditors have reported that the FDA is sorely lacking in both scientific competence and accountability. A 2007 congressional report concluded that the “FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its scientific base has eroded and its scientific organizational structure is weak.”

Most recently, the agency is:

• On the verge of completely eliminating the compounding industry, and along with it, many natural, customized medicines such as intravenous vitamins and bioidentical hormones.
• Throttling innovators in many fields—especially the field of medical testing, which is the future of medicine. Although the agency says this is about protecting patients, it really isn’t. It is about how much money the innovator has to pay the FDA. It is strictly pay-to-
• Demonstrating antipathy toward dietary supplements, seeking to treat them like drugs and thus eliminate many from the market.
• Setting its sights on homeopathy and considering stricter regulations and enforcement policies—all of which are designed to protect the agency’s Big Pharma “clients.”
• Censoring—with threats of fines and even jail—commonsense communication of legitimate, peer reviewed scientific research on natural health products.

There are many examples of FDA failure, the most famous being Merck’s arthritis drug Vioxx. The drug was known to increase the risk of heart attack, yet the agency approved it anyway. Some 55,000 Americans died, and 140,000 others experienced heart attacks before the drug was finally pulled.

In short, more power for the FDA means more power for an incompetent agency and more influence for pharmaceutical companies. Is that what this country wants?

To truly protect the health of this nation, what is really needed is to break up and restructure the FDA so it is no longer servile to the needs of the pharmaceutical industry and can actually serve its stated functions. Supplements and food regulation should not reside in the same agency that supposedly regulates drugs or medical equipment. It is hard enough to keep supplement and food regulators from being captured by junk food companies. To have them under the thumb of junk food and drug companies is a disaster for the American public.

There are risks to this approach. Big Pharma, wishing to eliminate supplements, would likely argue that food can be regulated separately, but that supplements must stay with drugs! The FDA, which largely does what the drug companies want, would no doubt agree. But supplements, by law, are not drugs—they are food. Unfortunately, being right would not guarantee the right outcome, given the crony capitalist society in which we live. Undoubtedly this issue would become a massive battleground to secure the right outcome.

In the coming weeks we’ll have a more in-depth look at the failure of the FDA to protect and promote the health and safety of Americans.

 

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

Bad GMO Deal Must Be Stopped

Anti-Cancer Nutrient In Peril?

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Anti-Cancer Nutrient In Peril?

More and more research is showing the potential of this nutrient to treat cancer and a variety of other conditions. So why is the FDA targeting it?

The FDA is rapidly eliminating many of the substances that can be made at compounding pharmacies, which make customized medicines for individual patients. The agency has been banning ingredients outright, as well as using prohibitive regulations (such as banning office use and severely limiting how much pharmacies can ship interstate) to drive up the prices of intravenous nutrients so much that they will be out of reach for most patients. This is precisely what has happened to injectable vitamin B12, where the price of a 30cc vial of B12 has increased almost 700% in a decade.

Judging by the FDA’s demonstrated antipathy toward intravenous vitamin C (IV C), there is good reason to believe that the same thing could happen to this vital nutrient. In 2011, the FDA sent a warning letter to McGuff Pharmaceuticals ordering it to stop making IV C because, in the agency’s view, it was an unapproved drug. No safety concerns were cited for this action, so we suspect the real reason is that vitamin C can’t be patented and therefore can’t go through the standard FDA approval process.

At the time, we noted that even though the FDA was going after manufactured IV C, compounding pharmacies were able to step in and fill the gap in supply. The FDA’s current actions, however, jeopardize pharmacies’ ability to do so when the agency decides to go after IV C again. If it doesn’t become illegal to compound IV C, it could become so expensive through the FDA’s new regulations that it would be out of reach for most patients.

It would be tragic if consumers lost access to IV C. In the last few years, numerous studies have demonstrated the potential for IV C to fight cancer, among other conditions, including antibiotic resistant infections. Very-high-dose vitamin C interacts with metals to create hydrogen peroxide, which damages and kills cancer cells as well as harmful pathogens. Crucially, the only way to get blood levels of vitamin C to the concentrations required to have these properties is to administer it intravenously. Liposomal forms of vitamin C help, but do not get the job done.

Those interested in the most up-to-date research on IV C for oncology treatment should consider attending a symposium hosted by the University of Kansas Medical Center and ANH-USA board chair Jeanne Drisko, MD, which will offer opportunities for healthcare professionals to learn more about this vitamin.

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

Bad GMO Deal Must Be Stopped

Give FDA Even More Power?

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Bad GMO Deal Must Be Stopped

It’s mandatory labeling in name only. It discriminates against the poor. And it is clearly a gift to Big Food. Major Action Alert!

For weeks now, Sens. Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) have been working on a GMO labeling bill that would pre-empt Vermont’s mandatory labeling law. Late last week they finally reached a compromise, and it’s not good.

The bill requires the labeling of packaged food containing GMOs in one of three ways: an electronic code that consumers can scan; a USDA-developed symbol; or a label. The bill leaves it to manufacturers to decide which of the three methods they prefer.

Now guess which method Big Food will choose? We have no doubts that they will choose the electronic code that can only be read with a scanner. They know that few will want to do this and even fewer will be able to.

A recent national survey showed that only 16% of consumers have ever scanned a QR code for any purpose. QR (which stands for “quick response”) codes are those small square boxes you find on advertising material, though they’re also used in manufacturing and commercial tracking applications; they can display text to the user, compose an email or text message, or—most frequently—take the user to a website. Most people use an app on their smartphone to scan the QR code (there are many QR scanner apps for both iPhone and Android), and each works a bit differently. No matter which product you choose, it may take a few tries to actually scan the code properly. Then you’ll wait for the site to pop up on the screen (which could take a long time depending on your network coverage inside the store), after which you might have to sift through the company’s information to find the GMO information you’re looking for.

Customers will, of course, have another choice: take each item that contains a QR code to the grocery store customer service counter and demand a scan! Long lines and major QR hassles might get grocery stores upset—and they can exercise pressure on Big Food.

The QR code is hardly a label in any meaningful sense of the word. It adds a barrier between the consumer and the information he or she wants, and discriminates against those who do not own smartphones—which is half of people living in rural areas, 75% of those over 65, and half of those making less than $30,000 a year. This legislation discriminates against all these people and especially the poorest Americans. Debbie Stabenow and Pat Roberts should be ashamed of this.

Like the Vermont bill, this proposal exempts meat, poultry, and eggs from labeling requirements, but unlike the Vermont bill, packaged foods that contain meat but not as a main ingredient would need to be labeled. Proponents of the Roberts–Stabenow bill estimate that 25,000 more products would be labeled under their law compared to Vermont’s legislation.

The bill contains a number of other troubling provisions. It totally leaves open the question of defining what percentage of a food must be genetically engineered for it to be considered GMO. This leaves room for a deal behind the scenes with the FDA. Or has such a deal already been reached secretly?

Under this bill, foods that are “mislabeled”—that’s the technical term for not meeting all labeling requirements—cannot be recalled, nor do there seem to be any federal penalties for violations and mislabeling. So for those who choose to simply ignore this law, there seem to be very few consequences—unless the state separately imposes fines for mislabeling. The bill also prohibits treating non-GMO foods as being safer than GMO foods, despite the scientific evidence that non-GMO is indeed safer. Since when does Congress legislate science?

An astounding 92% of consumers now want on-package labeling of genetically modified foods. This bill is a sneaky way to give Big Food what it wants while paying lip service to the kind of labeling the overwhelming majority of consumers want.

Action Alert! Write to your senators and tell them to oppose this bill and that you want mandatory, on-package labeling. Please send your message immediately.

 

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

Give FDA Even More Power?

Anti-Cancer Nutrient In Peril?

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Give FDA Even More Power?

That’s what a group of former FDA bigwigs want. If they get their way, natural medicine could be in even greater jeopardy.

This week, six former commissioners of the Food and Drug Administration dating back to President Reagan have called on Congress to give the FDA more power by making it an independent, cabinet-level agency. They argue that the agency, which regulates about a quarter of the nation’s economy, has been hamstrung by red tape and micromanagement from the top.

The ex-commissioners plan on releasing a white paper for the next administration to push the idea.

So let’s see what this means. It means that an agency which receives much of its funding from Big Pharma would sit at the same table with the Departments of State and Defense, answerable to no one other than the president him- or herself! This would represent the total triumph of crony capitalism.

Consider also the FDA’s record. Congressional auditors have reported that the FDA is sorely lacking in both scientific competence and accountability. A 2007 congressional report concluded that the “FDA cannot fulfill its mission because its scientific base has eroded and its scientific organizational structure is weak.”

Most recently, the agency is:

• On the verge of completely eliminating the compounding industry, and along with it, many natural, customized medicines such as intravenous vitamins and bioidentical hormones.
• Throttling innovators in many fields—especially the field of medical testing, which is the future of medicine. Although the agency says this is about protecting patients, it really isn’t. It is about how much money the innovator has to pay the FDA. It is strictly pay-to-
• Demonstrating antipathy toward dietary supplements, seeking to treat them like drugs and thus eliminate many from the market.
• Setting its sights on homeopathy and considering stricter regulations and enforcement policies—all of which are designed to protect the agency’s Big Pharma “clients.”
• Censoring—with threats of fines and even jail—commonsense communication of legitimate, peer reviewed scientific research on natural health products.

There are many examples of FDA failure, the most famous being Merck’s arthritis drug Vioxx. The drug was known to increase the risk of heart attack, yet the agency approved it anyway. Some 55,000 Americans died, and 140,000 others experienced heart attacks before the drug was finally pulled.

In short, more power for the FDA means more power for an incompetent agency and more influence for pharmaceutical companies. Is that what this country wants?

To truly protect the health of this nation, what is really needed is to break up and restructure the FDA so it is no longer servile to the needs of the pharmaceutical industry and can actually serve its stated functions. Supplements and food regulation should not reside in the same agency that supposedly regulates drugs or medical equipment. It is hard enough to keep supplement and food regulators from being captured by junk food companies. To have them under the thumb of junk food and drug companies is a disaster for the American public.

There are risks to this approach. Big Pharma, wishing to eliminate supplements, would likely argue that food can be regulated separately, but that supplements must stay with drugs! The FDA, which largely does what the drug companies want, would no doubt agree. But supplements, by law, are not drugs—they are food. Unfortunately, being right would not guarantee the right outcome, given the crony capitalist society in which we live. Undoubtedly this issue would become a massive battleground to secure the right outcome.

In the coming weeks we’ll have a more in-depth look at the failure of the FDA to protect and promote the health and safety of Americans.

 

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

Bad GMO Deal Must Be Stopped

Anti-Cancer Nutrient In Peril?

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://ift.tt/292sPKV via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/29l7A2x

Anti-Cancer Nutrient In Peril?

More and more research is showing the potential of this nutrient to treat cancer and a variety of other conditions. So why is the FDA targeting it?

The FDA is rapidly eliminating many of the substances that can be made at compounding pharmacies, which make customized medicines for individual patients. The agency has been banning ingredients outright, as well as using prohibitive regulations (such as banning office use and severely limiting how much pharmacies can ship interstate) to drive up the prices of intravenous nutrients so much that they will be out of reach for most patients. This is precisely what has happened to injectable vitamin B12, where the price of a 30cc vial of B12 has increased almost 700% in a decade.

Judging by the FDA’s demonstrated antipathy toward intravenous vitamin C (IV C), there is good reason to believe that the same thing could happen to this vital nutrient. In 2011, the FDA sent a warning letter to McGuff Pharmaceuticals ordering it to stop making IV C because, in the agency’s view, it was an unapproved drug. No safety concerns were cited for this action, so we suspect the real reason is that vitamin C can’t be patented and therefore can’t go through the standard FDA approval process.

At the time, we noted that even though the FDA was going after manufactured IV C, compounding pharmacies were able to step in and fill the gap in supply. The FDA’s current actions, however, jeopardize pharmacies’ ability to do so when the agency decides to go after IV C again. If it doesn’t become illegal to compound IV C, it could become so expensive through the FDA’s new regulations that it would be out of reach for most patients.

It would be tragic if consumers lost access to IV C. In the last few years, numerous studies have demonstrated the potential for IV C to fight cancer, among other conditions, including antibiotic resistant infections. Very-high-dose vitamin C interacts with metals to create hydrogen peroxide, which damages and kills cancer cells as well as harmful pathogens. Crucially, the only way to get blood levels of vitamin C to the concentrations required to have these properties is to administer it intravenously. Liposomal forms of vitamin C help, but do not get the job done.

Those interested in the most up-to-date research on IV C for oncology treatment should consider attending a symposium hosted by the University of Kansas Medical Center and ANH-USA board chair Jeanne Drisko, MD, which will offer opportunities for healthcare professionals to learn more about this vitamin.

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

Bad GMO Deal Must Be Stopped

Give FDA Even More Power?

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Action Alert: Stop the New GMO Labeling Bill!

Related article: Bad GMO Deal Must Be Stopped

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

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Action Alert: Stop the New GMO Labeling Bill!

Related article: Bad GMO Deal Must Be Stopped

Trouble Taking Action? Click here.

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Why Are All Doctors Being Threatened With Jail…

Just for doing their job? Please support Senator Hatch’s new bill! Action Alert!

There are now over 5,000 federal statutory crimes and over 300,000 regulatory crimes on the books—though Americans are unaware of overwhelming majority of them. As a result, it has been estimated that the typical professional unknowingly commits several federal crimes in the course of a single workday. (Dog owners, beware! It is now a federal crime to walk your dog on federal lands with a leash that is longer than six feet!)

It may sound absurd, but these obscure crimes have become a problem of real consequence, especially for those in the healthcare profession.

Doctors operating in today’s labyrinth of regulations—particularly integrative doctors, who are often targeted by the medical establishment and federal authorities, though all doctors face the same problem—are extremely vulnerable to prosecution and jail time on arbitrary or even trumped-up charges.

Many of these “crimes” derive from new laws and regulations enacted through the 1990s with the stated goal of preventing healthcare fraud and abuse. While there is certainly massive fraud in Medicare, these laws in practice have created a situation where an innocent error or the slightest deviation from standard practice can land a doctor in jail.

The reason? For most crimes, the statutory language explicitly requires that there be criminal intent, also called mens rea (Latin for “guilty mind”). Mens rea means that prosecutors must prove that a defendant acted with the knowledge that he or she was committing a crime. It is meant to prevent Americans from unwittingly becoming criminals by breaking a law, particularly an obscure one. Unfortunately the mens rea concept has been omitted from too many obscure laws—particularly the newer ones.

US attorneys know this. They have also discovered that even the threat of prosecution and arbitrary penalties is enough to intimidate most doctors into paying hefty settlements to avoid jail time, even larger fines, and/or having his or her license revoked. The money collected through these schemes is then used to fund more fraud investigations.

Happily, new legislation introduced by Sen. Orin Hatch (R-UT) seeks to address this problem by adding a default mens rea standard for all statutes and regulations that lack an explicit intent requirement.

Here are just a few examples of the absurdities created by this system—and why Sen. Hatch’s bill is so important:

• The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) added anti-fraud provisions providing jail terms of up to ten years. According to the law, if a patient dies while being given a “medically unnecessary” treatment paid for an outside party and the government decides that the treatment caused the death, the doctor can go to jail for life. Yet even Medicare cannot tell a doctor in advance what it considers “medically unnecessary.” This legislation also extended the anti-fraud provisions to cover bills submitted to any “healthcare benefit program.” Under federal law, healthcare benefit programs include private insurance as well as federal programs. So a doctor can go to jail for getting on the wrong side of a private insurance company.
• Medicare and Medicaid rules represent a hopeless minefield for doctors. Some of the laws passed in the ’90s were designed to punish cheating both in federal programs and in state programs with any federal financing. The trouble with these laws is their vagueness. “Not medically necessary” and “fraud” are defined the same way, even though they are potentially very different. This also provides an opening for the AMA and the pharmaceutical industry to try to rule what doctors can and cannot do. In most cases, natural therapies—which are usually much safer and often more effective—are categorized as “not medically necessary,” thus fraudulent, thus criminal. In this way, medical care has become a very high-risk profession. Note also that drug companies themselves could, in theory, run afoul of the fraud regulations, sending Big Pharma execs to jail. But federal rules specify that if this happens, the government cannot purchase drugs from the company in question for years, with the result that Big Pharma executives never go to jail, not matter what frauds they commit.
• It is also very easy for a doctor to make a false claim. In one experiment, a researcher contacted five different government Medicare billing advisors about a possible claim, and got five different answers about how to handle it. And relying on these advisors is not allowed as a legal defense! So even if a doctor stopped practicing and instead spent all of his or her time supervising each and every bill, the government can easily claim error and thus fraud. It isn’t that every errorwill be treated as fraud. It is just that it could  This is a powerful weapon of intimidation and reprisal.
• We told you in 2014 that Medicare will no longer pay for more than one medical test a year that is not directly related to an illness being treated by your doctor. In theory, the patient could pay for the additional testing, but if those tests are deemed “medically unnecessary,” your doctor could go to jail for writing that prescriptionif he or she bills Medicare for the test. And here is a further Catch-22: it is illegal for your doctor to bill you personally for something that Medicare does cover, even though finding out what Medicare does or doesn’t cover may be next to impossible. And if your doctor wants to discuss the results of the test and prescribe a course of treatment, all discussion and treatment during your visit must be about that original ailment, even if you’re now sick with bronchitis instead. If you want to discuss the bronchitis, you must make another appointment.

You can avoid all these problems by staying out of Medicare. Then your doctor can prescribe what he or she thinks best. But even if you can get or afford alternative medical insurance, keep in mind that the government will deny you any Social Security payments if you have not signed up for Medicare. Another alternative is to sign up for Social Security, which will automatically enroll you in Medicare A and B, but then tell the government to remove you from Part B. Part A is hospital services, and that is enough to keep your Social Security. Part B covers the doctor’s office, and if you don’t have it, then the doctor cannot be charged with billing you for services covered by Medicare.

• This same broken system also discourages technological innovation, since each new test or treatment must go through the time-consuming process of getting a Medicare billing code and then convince Medicare to actually pay for the service, which is very difficult and often takes many years.

The irony is that this criminalization of doctors—particularly doctors who favor natural treatments—has done little to actually stop the medical fraud perpetrated mostly by real criminals but also by some doctors. We’ve previously reported that when Medicare reduced reimbursements for oncologists in 2003, some physicians started giving their patients more expensive chemotherapy and other cancer treatments in return for kickbacks from the pharmaceutical companies. A study found that these doctors could buy drugs at a discount and then dispense them at the higher Medicare rates in their offices, in effect profiting at the expense of the patient.

This brief list of abuses raises the question: who in his or her right mind would choose to practice medicine under these conditions? There’s no easy fix, but Sen. Hatch’s legislation requiring evidence of criminal intent will at least curb many of the more arbitrary and ridiculous abuses.

Action Alert! Please write your senator now to support this vital bill. Please send your message immediately.

 

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

GMOs and Glyphosate Safe?

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GMOs and Glyphosate Safe?

Two recent studies would have us think so! But who, exactly, is behind the research?

Major studies just released claim that genetically modified (GM) foods—and the chemical used on them, glyphosate—are safe to eat. Following publication, there has been a steady drumbeat in the media essentially claiming that the case is now closed: GMOs are safe.

We say, “Not so fast.”

The National Research Council (NRC)—the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)—“examined epidemiological data on incidence of cancers and other human health problems over time,” and says there is no reason to be wary of genetically modified foods.

The NRC further suggests that genetic modification is no different than conventional breeding methods humans have been using for thousands of years to improve their crops. This is totally false—and there are good reasons to doubt the motives of the authors.

First, there are the conflicts of interest. More than half the authors of the NRC report are involved in GMO development or promotion or have other ties to the biotech industry. It is shameful that the National Academy of Sciences cannot police this. Indeed, it seems too intimidated even to try.

Ties between the NRC and the biotech industry are far-reaching, and completely undermine the integrity of the group’s findings. The NRC, along with the NAS, take millions of dollars from the biotech industry; invites representatives of companies like Monsanto to sit on boards overseeing the work of NRC; and draws scientific conclusions based on industry science.

The idea that GMO is similar to traditional plant breeding has no basis in reality. As we point out on our GMO Fact Check page, mixing genetic material from different organisms is not “natural,” e.g., salmon with antifreeze DNA (AquAdvantage™ Salmon), or tomatoes with fish genes (Flvr Savr™ tomatoes). Further, manipulating one or two genes does not just produce one or two desired traits—a single change at the level of DNA alters the entire DNA blueprint, often in unexpected and unwanted ways, which can be passed down over generations.

The report’s claims are even more extraordinary given the preponderance of independent, peer-reviewed research (that is, research not paid for by industry) demonstrating the dangers GMOs pose to human health:

• A 2009 study found that rats consuming Roundup Ready corn for ninety days developed deterioration of liver and kidney function.
• Another study found irregularities in the livers of rats fed a Roundup Ready soybean diet.
• Mice on a diet of Roundup Ready soybeans had impaired embryonic development.
• A study by Egyptian scientists on rats fed a GMO diet found a wide range of toxic effects including DNA damage, abnormal sperm, blood changes, and damage to the liver, kidney, and testes.
• Another Egyptian study found that a GM diet caused the death of spermatogonial cells in rats, and a Brazilian study found that Roundup causes infertility in rats.
• Famed professor Gilles-Eric Séralini republished a study showing that rats fed a diet of Roundup Ready corn developed mammary tumors, suffered severe liver and kidney damage, and had a higher incidence of premature death. This study had been bitterly attacked by industry, which forced its retraction by the first journal publishing it despite its methodological validity, as further evidenced by its republication in another respected journal.
• Another study by Professor Séralini demonstrated that GMO crops commercialized for animal feed were toxic to cows, causing partial paralysis, fatigue, kidney problems—and, in 10% of cases, death.
• Séralini also analyzed the industry studies supposedly proving the safety of GMOs when fed to mammals, and found much of the evidence wanting. Very few tests were for more than 90 days or on more than one generation of animal.
• GM potatoes were shown to damage the gastrointestinal tract in rats; GM peas were shown to cause allergic reactions in mice.
• A study that compared pigs fed GM feed over their lifetime to pigs fed non-GM feed found that those on the GMO diet had a higher rate of severe stomach inflammation. Another study comparing the effects of a GM diet versus a non-GM diet for Atlantic salmon also found higher incidence of inflammation in the fish that were fed GM soybeans.
• A study showed that long-term exposure to GM corn reduced the growth and fertility rates of water fleas.
• The heavy use of herbicides like Roundup and 2,4-D made possible by GMO crops also may be contributing to antibiotic resistance.

The list of evidence continues; much, much more—including the adverse effects of pesticides and herbicides used on GM crops—can be found here.

The NRC report additionally misleads by noting that some of the promises of GMO technology have been exaggerated such as increased crop yield. The fact is that decreased crop yields have been reported.

The report also fails to address the issues of “superweeds,” contamination of organic crops, biodiversity of plants and the wildlife they support, and the necessity of using increasing amounts of pesticides on GM crops.

Separately, a United Nations panel on pesticide residues has ruled that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s popular Roundup herbicide, is probably not carcinogenic. This contradicts the finding of the World Health Organization that glyphosate is a “probable carcinogen.” In this same vein, the Environmental Protection Agency recently posted—and then quickly removed—a report that said glyphosate was likely not carcinogenic, as if the public was not supposed to see it.

The United Nation panel’s exoneration of glyphosate is also tainted by a $500,000 donation from Monsanto and a $528,000 from Croplife International, which appears to be a front group for Monsanto, Syngenta, and Dow, among other multinationals.

Glyphosate has been linked to the mysterious epidemics of kidney disease killing sugar cane workers in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. This doesn’t even take into account the damage being wrought on human health by the pesticides that are dumped on our crops—which is made possible by GMO technology.

In our recent coverage on the problem of pesticide exposure particularly in Hawaii, we noted how glyphosate may be causing birth defects at ten times the national rate. We also reported on a recent study that showed Roundup was many times more toxic to human cells than glyphosate alone, because of the toxicity of other ingredients, which have previously been falsely presented as “inert.”

Who is to be trusted when it comes to the dangers of GMOs—industry-supported science, or independent researchers?

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

Why Are All Doctors Being Threatened With Jail…

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Why Are All Doctors Being Threatened With Jail…

Just for doing their job? Please support Senator Hatch’s new bill! Action Alert!

There are now over 5,000 federal statutory crimes and over 300,000 regulatory crimes on the books—though Americans are unaware of overwhelming majority of them. As a result, it has been estimated that the typical professional unknowingly commits several federal crimes in the course of a single workday. (Dog owners, beware! It is now a federal crime to walk your dog on federal lands with a leash that is longer than six feet!)

It may sound absurd, but these obscure crimes have become a problem of real consequence, especially for those in the healthcare profession.

Doctors operating in today’s labyrinth of regulations—particularly integrative doctors, who are often targeted by the medical establishment and federal authorities, though all doctors face the same problem—are extremely vulnerable to prosecution and jail time on arbitrary or even trumped-up charges.

Many of these “crimes” derive from new laws and regulations enacted through the 1990s with the stated goal of preventing healthcare fraud and abuse. While there is certainly massive fraud in Medicare, these laws in practice have created a situation where an innocent error or the slightest deviation from standard practice can land a doctor in jail.

The reason? For most crimes, the statutory language explicitly requires that there be criminal intent, also called mens rea (Latin for “guilty mind”). Mens rea means that prosecutors must prove that a defendant acted with the knowledge that he or she was committing a crime. It is meant to prevent Americans from unwittingly becoming criminals by breaking a law, particularly an obscure one. Unfortunately the mens rea concept has been omitted from too many obscure laws—particularly the newer ones.

US attorneys know this. They have also discovered that even the threat of prosecution and arbitrary penalties is enough to intimidate most doctors into paying hefty settlements to avoid jail time, even larger fines, and/or having his or her license revoked. The money collected through these schemes is then used to fund more fraud investigations.

Happily, new legislation introduced by Sen. Orin Hatch (R-UT) seeks to address this problem by adding a default mens rea standard for all statutes and regulations that lack an explicit intent requirement.

Here are just a few examples of the absurdities created by this system—and why Sen. Hatch’s bill is so important:

• The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) added anti-fraud provisions providing jail terms of up to ten years. According to the law, if a patient dies while being given a “medically unnecessary” treatment paid for an outside party and the government decides that the treatment caused the death, the doctor can go to jail for life. Yet even Medicare cannot tell a doctor in advance what it considers “medically unnecessary.” This legislation also extended the anti-fraud provisions to cover bills submitted to any “healthcare benefit program.” Under federal law, healthcare benefit programs include private insurance as well as federal programs. So a doctor can go to jail for getting on the wrong side of a private insurance company.
• Medicare and Medicaid rules represent a hopeless minefield for doctors. Some of the laws passed in the ’90s were designed to punish cheating both in federal programs and in state programs with any federal financing. The trouble with these laws is their vagueness. “Not medically necessary” and “fraud” are defined the same way, even though they are potentially very different. This also provides an opening for the AMA and the pharmaceutical industry to try to rule what doctors can and cannot do. In most cases, natural therapies—which are usually much safer and often more effective—are categorized as “not medically necessary,” thus fraudulent, thus criminal. In this way, medical care has become a very high-risk profession. Note also that drug companies themselves could, in theory, run afoul of the fraud regulations, sending Big Pharma execs to jail. But federal rules specify that if this happens, the government cannot purchase drugs from the company in question for years, with the result that Big Pharma executives never go to jail, not matter what frauds they commit.
• It is also very easy for a doctor to make a false claim. In one experiment, a researcher contacted five different government Medicare billing advisors about a possible claim, and got five different answers about how to handle it. And relying on these advisors is not allowed as a legal defense! So even if a doctor stopped practicing and instead spent all of his or her time supervising each and every bill, the government can easily claim error and thus fraud. It isn’t that every errorwill be treated as fraud. It is just that it could  This is a powerful weapon of intimidation and reprisal.
• We told you in 2014 that Medicare will no longer pay for more than one medical test a year that is not directly related to an illness being treated by your doctor. In theory, the patient could pay for the additional testing, but if those tests are deemed “medically unnecessary,” your doctor could go to jail for writing that prescriptionif he or she bills Medicare for the test. And here is a further Catch-22: it is illegal for your doctor to bill you personally for something that Medicare does cover, even though finding out what Medicare does or doesn’t cover may be next to impossible. And if your doctor wants to discuss the results of the test and prescribe a course of treatment, all discussion and treatment during your visit must be about that original ailment, even if you’re now sick with bronchitis instead. If you want to discuss the bronchitis, you must make another appointment.

You can avoid all these problems by staying out of Medicare. Then your doctor can prescribe what he or she thinks best. But even if you can get or afford alternative medical insurance, keep in mind that the government will deny you any Social Security payments if you have not signed up for Medicare. Another alternative is to sign up for Social Security, which will automatically enroll you in Medicare A and B, but then tell the government to remove you from Part B. Part A is hospital services, and that is enough to keep your Social Security. Part B covers the doctor’s office, and if you don’t have it, then the doctor cannot be charged with billing you for services covered by Medicare.

• This same broken system also discourages technological innovation, since each new test or treatment must go through the time-consuming process of getting a Medicare billing code and then convince Medicare to actually pay for the service, which is very difficult and often takes many years.

The irony is that this criminalization of doctors—particularly doctors who favor natural treatments—has done little to actually stop the medical fraud perpetrated mostly by real criminals but also by some doctors. We’ve previously reported that when Medicare reduced reimbursements for oncologists in 2003, some physicians started giving their patients more expensive chemotherapy and other cancer treatments in return for kickbacks from the pharmaceutical companies. A study found that these doctors could buy drugs at a discount and then dispense them at the higher Medicare rates in their offices, in effect profiting at the expense of the patient.

This brief list of abuses raises the question: who in his or her right mind would choose to practice medicine under these conditions? There’s no easy fix, but Sen. Hatch’s legislation requiring evidence of criminal intent will at least curb many of the more arbitrary and ridiculous abuses.

Action Alert! Please write your senator now to support this vital bill. Please send your message immediately.

 

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

GMOs and Glyphosate Safe?

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GMOs and Glyphosate Safe?

Two recent studies would have us think so! But who, exactly, is behind the research?

Major studies just released claim that genetically modified (GM) foods—and the chemical used on them, glyphosate—are safe to eat. Following publication, there has been a steady drumbeat in the media essentially claiming that the case is now closed: GMOs are safe.

We say, “Not so fast.”

The National Research Council (NRC)—the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)—“examined epidemiological data on incidence of cancers and other human health problems over time,” and says there is no reason to be wary of genetically modified foods.

The NRC further suggests that genetic modification is no different than conventional breeding methods humans have been using for thousands of years to improve their crops. This is totally false—and there are good reasons to doubt the motives of the authors.

First, there are the conflicts of interest. More than half the authors of the NRC report are involved in GMO development or promotion or have other ties to the biotech industry. It is shameful that the National Academy of Sciences cannot police this. Indeed, it seems too intimidated even to try.

Ties between the NRC and the biotech industry are far-reaching, and completely undermine the integrity of the group’s findings. The NRC, along with the NAS, take millions of dollars from the biotech industry; invites representatives of companies like Monsanto to sit on boards overseeing the work of NRC; and draws scientific conclusions based on industry science.

The idea that GMO is similar to traditional plant breeding has no basis in reality. As we point out on our GMO Fact Check page, mixing genetic material from different organisms is not “natural,” e.g., salmon with antifreeze DNA (AquAdvantage™ Salmon), or tomatoes with fish genes (Flvr Savr™ tomatoes). Further, manipulating one or two genes does not just produce one or two desired traits—a single change at the level of DNA alters the entire DNA blueprint, often in unexpected and unwanted ways, which can be passed down over generations.

The report’s claims are even more extraordinary given the preponderance of independent, peer-reviewed research (that is, research not paid for by industry) demonstrating the dangers GMOs pose to human health:

• A 2009 study found that rats consuming Roundup Ready corn for ninety days developed deterioration of liver and kidney function.
• Another study found irregularities in the livers of rats fed a Roundup Ready soybean diet.
• Mice on a diet of Roundup Ready soybeans had impaired embryonic development.
• A study by Egyptian scientists on rats fed a GMO diet found a wide range of toxic effects including DNA damage, abnormal sperm, blood changes, and damage to the liver, kidney, and testes.
• Another Egyptian study found that a GM diet caused the death of spermatogonial cells in rats, and a Brazilian study found that Roundup causes infertility in rats.
• Famed professor Gilles-Eric Séralini republished a study showing that rats fed a diet of Roundup Ready corn developed mammary tumors, suffered severe liver and kidney damage, and had a higher incidence of premature death. This study had been bitterly attacked by industry, which forced its retraction by the first journal publishing it despite its methodological validity, as further evidenced by its republication in another respected journal.
• Another study by Professor Séralini demonstrated that GMO crops commercialized for animal feed were toxic to cows, causing partial paralysis, fatigue, kidney problems—and, in 10% of cases, death.
• Séralini also analyzed the industry studies supposedly proving the safety of GMOs when fed to mammals, and found much of the evidence wanting. Very few tests were for more than 90 days or on more than one generation of animal.
• GM potatoes were shown to damage the gastrointestinal tract in rats; GM peas were shown to cause allergic reactions in mice.
• A study that compared pigs fed GM feed over their lifetime to pigs fed non-GM feed found that those on the GMO diet had a higher rate of severe stomach inflammation. Another study comparing the effects of a GM diet versus a non-GM diet for Atlantic salmon also found higher incidence of inflammation in the fish that were fed GM soybeans.
• A study showed that long-term exposure to GM corn reduced the growth and fertility rates of water fleas.
• The heavy use of herbicides like Roundup and 2,4-D made possible by GMO crops also may be contributing to antibiotic resistance.

The list of evidence continues; much, much more—including the adverse effects of pesticides and herbicides used on GM crops—can be found here.

The NRC report additionally misleads by noting that some of the promises of GMO technology have been exaggerated such as increased crop yield. The fact is that decreased crop yields have been reported.

The report also fails to address the issues of “superweeds,” contamination of organic crops, biodiversity of plants and the wildlife they support, and the necessity of using increasing amounts of pesticides on GM crops.

Separately, a United Nations panel on pesticide residues has ruled that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s popular Roundup herbicide, is probably not carcinogenic. This contradicts the finding of the World Health Organization that glyphosate is a “probable carcinogen.” In this same vein, the Environmental Protection Agency recently posted—and then quickly removed—a report that said glyphosate was likely not carcinogenic, as if the public was not supposed to see it.

The United Nation panel’s exoneration of glyphosate is also tainted by a $500,000 donation from Monsanto and a $528,000 from Croplife International, which appears to be a front group for Monsanto, Syngenta, and Dow, among other multinationals.

Glyphosate has been linked to the mysterious epidemics of kidney disease killing sugar cane workers in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. This doesn’t even take into account the damage being wrought on human health by the pesticides that are dumped on our crops—which is made possible by GMO technology.

In our recent coverage on the problem of pesticide exposure particularly in Hawaii, we noted how glyphosate may be causing birth defects at ten times the national rate. We also reported on a recent study that showed Roundup was many times more toxic to human cells than glyphosate alone, because of the toxicity of other ingredients, which have previously been falsely presented as “inert.”

Who is to be trusted when it comes to the dangers of GMOs—industry-supported science, or independent researchers?

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

Why Are All Doctors Being Threatened With Jail…

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Related article: Why Are All Doctors Being Threatened With Jail…

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Action Alert: Stop the Criminalization of Doctors!

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Are Antibiotics Finished, With Millions of Casualties Coming?

The headlines say yes, but the medical establishment is ignoring some important new evidence that could yet save antibiotics. 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 news, this could be coming a lot sooner.

Earlier this year we reported that a strain of Carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae (CRE, dubbed by health officials as “nightmare bacteria”) that is resistant to colistin—an antibiotic of last resort—has been quickly spreading across the world. In other words, the “nightmare bacteria” has become resistant to conventional medicine’s last resort drug, which itself has horrendous side effects.

In our previous coverage we noted this new strand of CRE is especially dangerous because it can transfer the resistant genetic material to other families of bacteria. This is precisely what has happened. The first case of colistin-resistant bacteria has been confirmed in the US. Researchers found a forty-nine-year-old Pennsylvania woman who carried a colistin-resistant form of E.coli. The researchers chillingly observed that the discovery “heralds the emergence of a truly pan-drug-resistant bacteria.”

Government health officials are not optimistic. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tom Frieden, said:

[This] basically shows us that the end of the road isn’t very far away for antibiotics—that we may be in a situation where we have patients in our intensive care units, or patients getting urinary tract infections for which we do not have antibiotics.…I’ve been there for TB patients….I’ve cared for patients for whom there are no drugs left. It is a feeling of such horror and helplessness. This is not where we need to be.

It’s also telling that colistin had become so crucial to mainstream medicine’s fight against antibiotic resistance. The drug is over fifty years old and can cause major kidney damage to those who take it.

As Dr. Frieden noted, 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.

And let’s also keep in mind that many people are allergic to antibiotics or especially prone to serious side effects. The world is full of people with recurrent infections of one kind or another, such as urinary tract infections, who are taking antibiotics because they think there is no other choice—even though the traditional antibiotic itself may be making them seriously ill, or the Cipro may be destroying their tendons. What do many doctors tell these patients? “Sorry, there are no other choices”—which is simply not true.

Tens of thousands of reputable research studies support the use of natural medicines for bacterial infections. What is even more shocking, and especially pertinent for today’s headlines, is that there are research studies showing that the addition of natural medicines such as silver to antibiotics makes them far more potent, so that either a smaller dose can be used, or resistance can be overcome.

Russell Blaylock, MD, a leading integrative physician, discussed several important studies on silver in his May 2016 newsletter:

• One study found that adding just a small amount of nano-sized silver to antibiotics made the treatment much more potent in killing a resistant type of bacteria.
• Subsequent studies showed that this approach was not harmful to human cells. Animal studies showed that the toxicity that can result from higher concentrations of silver can be avoided by administering silymarin (from milk thistle) and vitamin E in conjunction with the silver.
• Nanosilver can also destroy the bacterium’s biofilm—a protective organic coating that helps protect the bacteria from antibiotics. One study showed that nanosilver destroyed the biofilm, making the bacteria susceptible to lower doses of antibiotics. Researchers found this strategy to be effective against some of the most dangerous bacteria.

Silver on its own is a powerful killer of bad bugs, but together with antibiotics it may be even better. It is very difficult, for example—probably impossible—for bacteria to become resistant to silver. It is safe enough to be commonly used to purify water in developing countries. It is even approved by the EPA for use in consumer products as a sanitizing agent—a use we do not approve of! It may even be in your shirt or a pair of your socks.

If medical authorities think it is safe enough for people to drink silver routinely in their water and to use it as a sanitizing agent, why does the FDA so stubbornly oppose its use in medicine? Presumably because silver is a natural substance and therefore isn’t patentable, so it won’t make big money for Big Pharma, who is the FDA’s partner and the source of its funding.

The FDA won’t even approve the use of silver in hospitals! Copper is used in hospitals for its antibacterial properties, but silver, which is stronger, is not. Must millions die because of this out-of-control corruption?

Meanwhile, the FDA hasn’t even addressed the underlying reasons why antibiotic resistant bugs have proliferated. We know that one major source of the problem is the misuse and overuse of antibiotic drugs on factory farms, where animals are routinely fed drugs to prevent the spread of disease amid 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 voluntary compliance 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.

Another part of the problem is the routine overuse of antibiotics by doctors’ offices. A report by the CDC found that, of the 262 million people who received prescriptions for antibiotics between 2010 and 2011, 30% were unnecessary. Another estimate, cited on NPR, says up to 50% were unnecessary.

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 scientifically ignorant stance against natural health alternatives, including:

• vitamin D to stay healthy;
• grapefruit seed extract, uva ursi, cat’s claw, and many other herbs to fight different bacterial infections;
• high-dose vitamin A, especially for viral infections; and
• silver, intravenous and lipospheric vitamin C, and olive leaf extract to fight both viral and bacterial illness.

All of these are supported by good research which, for example, will tell us which herb to use for which bacterial infection. And if we want to save antibiotics, we should consider combining them with natural antimicrobials such as silver.

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

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

Protecting Higher-Dose Supplements

Supplement Access Threatened in Puerto Rico

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Protecting Higher-Dose Supplements

A new study reveals why the science behind European and other anti-supplement regulations is completely outmoded.

Last week, our partners at ANH-International released a report by the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research. It offers an approach to determining the precise amount of vitamins and minerals each individual needs for optimal health, depending on age, stage of life, gender, and other individual requirements.

This information is sorely needed. For years now, European authorities have been working to restrict access to supplements in the European Union—both limiting the products that can be sold, and also establishing scientifically unsound minimum and maximum permitted levels for vitamins and minerals. For example, European authorities have proposed setting the maximum limit for a beta carotene supplement at the amount found in half a large carrot, while that for selenium would be no more than what is typically available in one-third of a Brazil nut. We believe that this anti-supplement agenda is largely driven by the desire of drug companies either to eliminate competition from supplements or to control the industry.

This isn’t just a problem in Europe. Most recently we’ve seen the US Food and Drug Administration, which also seems to be controlled by drug companies, stubbornly refuse to reconsider reference daily intakes (RDIs) for key nutrients—the amount of a nutrient considered sufficient to meet the minimum requirements of most individuals in different demographic groups.

As we have pointed out previously, current knowledge concerning appropriate dosage levels of vitamins and minerals in relation for different population groups means that few practicing clinical nutritionists would agree with the RDIs proposed by the FDA. Instead of reflecting optimal intakes, the proposed RDIs reflect only minimum—that is, insufficient—intakes. Considering the large percentages of Americans who are deficient in key nutrients such as vitamin D and magnesium, the FDA is making a bad problem even worse.

For example, the FDA will be lowering the RDI for vitamin B12 from 6 mcg per day to 2.4 mcg per day—meaning that a 5,000-mcg.-per-day B12 product will have to be labeled as 208,333% of the daily value. This will mislead consumers into thinking such a level is too high or dangerous, despite a total lack of evidence of potential harm to the vast majority of people. We must also keep in mind that vitamin B12 is both vital to health and notoriously hard for the body to absorb. This is why physicians have often given shots, but as we have recently pointed out, the FDA is now thwarting that as well.

An additional threat is posed by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a UN and World Health Organization sponsored group charged with developing global food standards and guidelines. There are good reasons to believe that Codex guidelines relating to vitamins and minerals will follow the European model. When these provisions are ratified, it is possible that US government agencies will try to use Codex standards to set US policy, despite legislative barriers to doing so (For more background on Codex and related issues, see our white paper.)

This new study will, we hope, show authorities on both sides of the Atlantic that traditional methods of determining recommended nutrient levels are woefully out of date and do not adequately reflect optimal levels of intake for particular nutritional benefits. Using this new approach to determine optimal levels of micronutrient intake could offer a significant advance for personalized nutrition.

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

Are Antibiotics Finished, With Millions of Casualties Coming?

Supplement Access Threatened in Puerto Rico

 

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Supplement Access Threatened in Puerto Rico

But there’s still time to stop it. Action Alert!

Health officials in Puerto Rico recently issued an administrative order imposing a number of new regulations and fees on island supplement manufacturers and retailers. The new regulatory scheme mirrors much of what is already submitted to the FDA to register supplements, so it is likely that the order is little more than a money grab. If allowed to stand, it could spread to other parts of the US.

Under the rules, companies must pay a $25 fee to register every variation of a supplement by size—a particularly ridiculous fee given the wide range of products some companies offer. This fee is in addition to other burdensome administrative requirements and other fees. The order also requires some testing procedures that go beyond what the FDA requires.

This order will likely produce a situation similar to California after the passage of Proposition 65—it will become so burdensome and difficult to do business in Puerto Rico that supplement companies will simply choose to close down their operations on the island. The policy also disproportionately effects smaller companies, which will find it much more difficult to comply with the host of new regulations. Small businesses, then, will be on the losing end—and so will consumers, who will lose access to quality products.

Congress has the power to stop this administrative order. Lawmakers are in the process of passing legislation on Puerto Rico’s sizeable debt. The House recently approved a bill that includes a provision to study the economic impacts of the order—but this isn’t enough.

The best chance of stopping this is to get language inserted into the Senate’s companion bill on Puerto Rico’s debt that explicitly strikes the administrative order.

Action Alert! Write to your senators and urge them to support the inclusion of language in the Senate bill to strike Puerto Rico’s administrative order on dietary supplements. Please send your message immediately.

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

Are Antibiotics Finished, With Millions of Casualties Coming?

Protecting Higher-Dose Supplements

 

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Action Alert: Protect Supplement Access in Puerto Rico!

Related article: Supplement Access Threatened in Puerto Rico

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Are Antibiotics Finished, With Millions of Casualties Coming?

The headlines say yes, but the medical establishment is ignoring some important new evidence that could yet save antibiotics. 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 news, this could be coming a lot sooner.

Earlier this year we reported that a strain of Carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae (CRE, dubbed by health officials as “nightmare bacteria”) that is resistant to colistin—an antibiotic of last resort—has been quickly spreading across the world. In other words, the “nightmare bacteria” has become resistant to conventional medicine’s last resort drug, which itself has horrendous side effects.

In our previous coverage we noted this new strand of CRE is especially dangerous because it can transfer the resistant genetic material to other families of bacteria. This is precisely what has happened. The first case of colistin-resistant bacteria has been confirmed in the US. Researchers found a forty-nine-year-old Pennsylvania woman who carried a colistin-resistant form of E.coli. The researchers chillingly observed that the discovery “heralds the emergence of a truly pan-drug-resistant bacteria.”

Government health officials are not optimistic. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tom Frieden, said:

[This] basically shows us that the end of the road isn’t very far away for antibiotics—that we may be in a situation where we have patients in our intensive care units, or patients getting urinary tract infections for which we do not have antibiotics.…I’ve been there for TB patients….I’ve cared for patients for whom there are no drugs left. It is a feeling of such horror and helplessness. This is not where we need to be.

It’s also telling that colistin had become so crucial to mainstream medicine’s fight against antibiotic resistance. The drug is over fifty years old and can cause major kidney damage to those who take it.

As Dr. Frieden noted, 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.

And let’s also keep in mind that many people are allergic to antibiotics or especially prone to serious side effects. The world is full of people with recurrent infections of one kind or another, such as urinary tract infections, who are taking antibiotics because they think there is no other choice—even though the traditional antibiotic itself may be making them seriously ill, or the Cipro may be destroying their tendons. What do many doctors tell these patients? “Sorry, there are no other choices”—which is simply not true.

Tens of thousands of reputable research studies support the use of natural medicines for bacterial infections. What is even more shocking, and especially pertinent for today’s headlines, is that there are research studies showing that the addition of natural medicines such as silver to antibiotics makes them far more potent, so that either a smaller dose can be used, or resistance can be overcome.

Russell Blaylock, MD, a leading integrative physician, discussed several important studies on silver in his May 2016 newsletter:

• One study found that adding just a small amount of nano-sized silver to antibiotics made the treatment much more potent in killing a resistant type of bacteria.
• Subsequent studies showed that this approach was not harmful to human cells. Animal studies showed that the toxicity that can result from higher concentrations of silver can be avoided by administering silymarin (from milk thistle) and vitamin E in conjunction with the silver.
• Nanosilver can also destroy the bacterium’s biofilm—a protective organic coating that helps protect the bacteria from antibiotics. One study showed that nanosilver destroyed the biofilm, making the bacteria susceptible to lower doses of antibiotics. Researchers found this strategy to be effective against some of the most dangerous bacteria.

Silver on its own is a powerful killer of bad bugs, but together with antibiotics it may be even better. It is very difficult, for example—probably impossible—for bacteria to become resistant to silver. It is safe enough to be commonly used to purify water in developing countries. It is even approved by the EPA for use in consumer products as a sanitizing agent—a use we do not approve of! It may even be in your shirt or a pair of your socks.

If medical authorities think it is safe enough for people to drink silver routinely in their water and to use it as a sanitizing agent, why does the FDA so stubbornly oppose its use in medicine? Presumably because silver is a natural substance and therefore isn’t patentable, so it won’t make big money for Big Pharma, who is the FDA’s partner and the source of its funding.

The FDA won’t even approve the use of silver in hospitals! Copper is used in hospitals for its antibacterial properties, but silver, which is stronger, is not. Must millions die because of this out-of-control corruption?

Meanwhile, the FDA hasn’t even addressed the underlying reasons why antibiotic resistant bugs have proliferated. We know that one major source of the problem is the misuse and overuse of antibiotic drugs on factory farms, where animals are routinely fed drugs to prevent the spread of disease amid 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 voluntary compliance 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.

Another part of the problem is the routine overuse of antibiotics by doctors’ offices. A report by the CDC found that, of the 262 million people who received prescriptions for antibiotics between 2010 and 2011, 30% were unnecessary. Another estimate, cited on NPR, says up to 50% were unnecessary.

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 scientifically ignorant stance against natural health alternatives, including:

• vitamin D to stay healthy;
• grapefruit seed extract, uva ursi, cat’s claw, and many other herbs to fight different bacterial infections;
• high-dose vitamin A, especially for viral infections; and
• silver, intravenous and lipospheric vitamin C, and olive leaf extract to fight both viral and bacterial illness.

All of these are supported by good research which, for example, will tell us which herb to use for which bacterial infection. And if we want to save antibiotics, we should consider combining them with natural antimicrobials such as silver.

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

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

Protecting Higher-Dose Supplements

Supplement Access Threatened in Puerto Rico

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