The Fallacy Game

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Action Alert

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2RXb58M via Aloe for Health

from http://bit.ly/2GdhXrJ

Natural Compound Doubles Cancer Survival Rates

New evidence on a key nutrient offers hope to cancer patients; will the FDA snuff it out? Action Alert!

A new study on annatto-sourced delta-tocotrienol (one of the compounds contained in vitamin E) has showed incredible results for extending the life of ovarian cancer patients. It is a stunning finding that should be hailed as a major breakthrough, but don’t expect to hear much about it from the crony medical establishment, which does everything it can to prevent you from learning about the benefits of natural products.

The study found that delta-tocotrienol, used in combination with Avastin, an FDA-approved drug, was able to stabilize and control ovarian cancer after surgery by 50% at six months; Avastin alone was only able to control the disease by 25%. Delta-tocotrienol used in combination with Avastin nearly doubled survival of ovarian cancer patients after surgery.

It’s hard to over emphasize how ground-breaking this study is. There have been studies on the anti-cancer effect of certain nutrients, but these are generally smaller in scale and use animal or in vitro models; never before has the ability of a nutrient to significantly prolong survival in cancer patients been demonstrated in a study of drug-level quality.

Further, the authors of the study don’t explicitly say it, but implicit in the study’s results is that Avastin might not be required. Overall survival in patients on just Avastin was 5-7 months; for Avastin plus delta-tocotrienol, it was 11 months. This could mean that delta-tocotrienol is just as effective, if not more so, than Avastin—but more study would be required to establish this.

These are astonishing results and great news for women with ovarian cancer. If it were a drug, delta-tocotrienol would be celebrated as the next breakthrough and sold for tens of thousands of dollars a year. But because natural medicines generally cannot be patented—meaning the drug industry can’t make mega-profits from them—the government suppresses what the public can know about their benefits, lest drug companies lose some market share. The feds don’t tell us, for example, about the promising cancer research on vitamin C. In fact, the agency will try to block you from knowing about the benefits of these nutrients because they aren’t FDA-approved drugs, and only drugs can make claims to treat or prevent a disease. The FDA wouldn’t want to upset the cancer drug industry’s more than $100 billion market.

The FDA has in fact shown that it is willing to go to absurd lengths to protect the drug industry from natural products. The agency went after walnut growers for daring to list some of the scientifically proven benefits of walnuts. Similarly, the FDA attacked cherry growers for citing Harvard research indicating cherries can reduce inflammation and pain. For these “crimes,” the FDA threatened jail time.

The FDA even bans many legal structure function claims, arguing that some are “implied disease claims,” a fabricated term meant to further restrict what can be said about supplements and other natural products. For example, a legal claim can describe the role of a nutrient on the structure or function of the body, such as “calcium builds strong bones.” But if the FDA thinks that the structure or function referenced in a claim indicates a disease state, it will ban the claim. The truthful claim that magnesium lowers blood pressure is banned by the FDA because they think it implies that magnesium is a treatment for hypertension, and only FDA-approved drugs can claim to treat hypertension.

When the FDA fails to censure free speech, the FTC picks up the baton. We saw this in the FTC’s case against POM Wonderful, the pomegranate juice company that spent millions on research only to be told by the FTC that it wasn’t the right research, so the claims were illegal. POM even had qualifying language in their claims so as not to mislead consumers, but the FTC wasn’t satisfied, outrageously demanding that POM conduct two randomized clinical trials to substantiate their claims.

These overt attacks on free speech subvert Americans’ ability to take charge of their health by learning about the established benefits of natural products. This isn’t good for anyone but the drug industry monopoly. If the FDA actually cared about cancer patients, they would be shouting from the rooftop about the benefits of delta-tocotrienol. But in our crony medical system, not only will we not hear a peep—the FDA will actively block companies that try to inform the public about its benefits, even though the companies are in the best position to tell us about the science since they are the entities performing the applicable studies.

The FDA’s conduct in this arena is truly shocking. Scientists continue to understand more about the many benefits of natural products, from fish oil to coconut oil, from CoQ10 to vitamin D, but rather than trumpeting these discoveries, the federal government is doing everything in its power to throttle the industry and protect Big Pharma profits. We must stop them.

Action Alert! Send a message to the FDA telling them to permit free speech about natural products, in particular to revise their position on implied disease claims. Please send your message immediately.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2RZle56 via Aloe for Health

from http://bit.ly/2FZeu0A

NY Times Calls for Universally Mandated Vaccines

This is what happens when a free press seeks to eliminate free choice. Action Alert!

A recent editorial piece in The New York Times suggests that more states should enact mandatory vaccination laws, kicking kids out of public and private schools if they do not follow the state’s vaccine schedule. That’s just one of a number of tips given for how to deal with “anti-vaxxers,” which the World Health Organization has deemed one of the top world health threats for 2019. But in decrying the perceived anti-scientific stance of those who question whether vaccines are safe, the NYT editorial writers, like many who agree with them, betray a lack of the skepticism needed for good science to flourish.

The Editorial board states, for example, “Yes, there are chemicals in vaccines, but they are not toxic.” This is undeniably false. As we’ve stated previously, many vaccines contain aluminum, which is a neurotoxin, formaldehyde, and even mercury. Take aluminum: It is normal to ingest aluminum in some of the foods we eat, but the liver clears it. It is a different matter when aluminum and other vaccine ingredients are injected directly into the blood, where they bypass the liver and the gastrointestinal tract. This isn’t pseudo-science: new studies provide stunning information about what happens to aluminum after it’s injected into muscle. In some mice, it travels to the brain, where it can still be detected a year later. It also travels to the spleen and lymph nodes, where it can still be detected 270 days after vaccination.

And that’s not all. As we’ve noted elsewhere, testing proving aluminum adjuvants are safe has never been done. Health authorities rely on EPA safety levels that determine how much orally-ingested aluminum is safe which, as stated above, is a different issue altogether from injected aluminum.

These are facts. To say, “Yes, there are chemicals in vaccines, but they are not toxic,” is a blatant misrepresentation. There are many questions about vaccines that the science has yet to resolve. This isn’t the opinion of a “fringe” organization, as the NYT puts it, but the government’s own National Academies of Science, who conclude in a 2013 report that “key elements of the [vaccine]schedule—the number, frequency, timing, order, and age at administration of vaccines—have not been systematically examined in research studies.”

We’re also told unequivocally by the NYT that unvaccinated kids were the cause of measles outbreaks in California and other states. Again, this widely held theory does not hold up. A recent study looked at 1,789 measles cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) between 2001 and 2015, reporting that 70% were unvaccinated—but the authors admit that there was a “lack of verifiable immunization on nearly half of the adult cases”—meaning that they don’t really know how many of the 1,789 were actually unvaccinated or unvaccinated.  Even if we accept the study’s numbers at face value, it means that 30% of measles cases occurred in those who were vaccinated. So vaccinated kids were still getting the disease.

There have even been cases where measles was transmitted in a school with a documented immunization level of 100%. What this tells us is that vaccination is not as effective at preventing disease as the public is often led to believe. Multiple studies have shown that vaccinated kids, especially those recently vaccinated, can spread disease, because the vaccine contains live virus (vaccines that contain the live virus include chicken pox, measles, rubella, nasal flu, polio, and smallpox).

We were told the same thing about a recent spike in mumps—that the cause was unvaccinated kids. But according even to the CDC, a staunch supporter of the government vaccination schedule, most mumps patients said they had received both shots of the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine. The states with the most cases of mumps had vaccination rates of 90% or higher—a threshold where herd immunity should exist if it is ever going to exist. (The herd immunity hypothesis states that a very high percentage of a community must be vaccinated in order to protect everyone (the herd) from a disease.) The fact that the disease spreads in highly vaccinated communities suggests 1) that the herd immunity hypothesis is incorrect and 2) that the source of the problem isn’t unvaccinated kids, but the ineffectiveness of the vaccine.

Mumps has even occurred in schools that have a 98% vaccination rate. It is also spreading among vaccinated kids on college campuses. At the University of Missouri, there were 193 reported cases of mumps, and all patients treated by the university had received two MMR shots.

The NYT also decries the “dismal rates of HPV vaccination, which doctors say could effectively wipe out cervical cancer if it were better utilized.” Really? Are the editorial writers unmoved by the 57,287 adverse events that have been reported from HPV vaccination, including 419 deaths, which is far more than any other vaccine? What about a recent study showing that women aged 25-29 who received the HPV vaccine have a lower probability of becoming pregnant? Or the fact that, for women who have already been exposed to certain strains of the HPV virus, vaccination can actually increase the risk of precancerous lesions by 44%? Or is all of this evidence just the ravings of pseudo-scientific anti-vaxxers, so it can be dismissed without further comment or study?

Herein lies the problem. There are legitimate safety concerns with some vaccines and with some ingredients. These issues should be studied and explored further so vaccines can be made safer. Saying that all vaccines are safe and cannot be improved will not accomplish this. Rather than undertaking the crucial work of making vaccines safer, members of the media and government health authorities instead cover their ears and insist that anti-vaxxers are irrational idiots who need to be taught a lesson.

Of one thing we can be sure: no real scientist would be so dogmatic, emotional, and combative. A real scientist examines all the evidence dispassionately before reaching a conclusion, and the evidence is clear: many vaccines are simply not effective, are dangerous, or both.

Action Alert! Write to your state legislators and tell them to preserve vaccine choice! Please send your message immediately. 

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2D0N070 via Aloe for Health

from http://bit.ly/2GdhSEr

Want Internal Bleeding? Take Aspirin Every Day

More reasons to avoid this commonly prescribed drug. Action Alert!

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that those taking a daily aspirin are at increased risk of experiencing severe and potentially fatal internal bleeding.

The study analyzed 13 randomized clinical trials involving 164,225 participants with no history of heart disease. Researchers found that, while the absolute risk of heart attack was decreased by a small amount (0.38%), the increased risk of internal bleeding was larger (almost 0.47%). The study’s author concluded from this data that “there is insufficient evidence to recommend routine aspirin use in the prevention of heart attacks, stroke, and cardiovascular deaths in people without cardiovascular disease.”

We warned as far back as 2012 that daily or long-term use of aspirin increases the risk of internal bleeding—and can cause hemorrhagic strokes—and didn’t protect against heart attacks in those who have not had heart problems. Even in healthy older people, research has shown that daily baby aspirin has no benefit.

There’s more evidence that we should avoid aspirin. In 2017 researchers found that, compared to those taking warfarin for atrial fibrillation (irregular and fast beating of the heart that can lead to stroke), patients taking aspirin were 1.9 times more likely to suffer a heart attack. Other studies have shown that NSAIDs increase the risk of heart failure by 20% and cause half of all bleeding ulcers. Aspirin also reduces vitamin B6 levels in the body.

Fortunately, there are natural products that reduce inflammation and improve cardiovascular function:

• Aspirin derives from salycin, which comes from the bark of white willow trees. This natural product can be taken to relieve pain and fight inflammation.
• Nattokinase, an enzyme made from fermented soy, accomplishes many of the same good things without the bad side effects.
• Fish oil and exercise also can improve cardiovascular health.
• Other natural anti-inflammatories might also be a good idea, depending on the advice of your integrative doctor.

Will doctors finally stop recommending daily aspirin for people without a history of heart disease? Probably not. The medical establishment is notorious for continuing practices that have long been proven ineffective or harmful. To provide just one example, the American Medical Association recently admitted that one in ten elective angioplasties—a surgery in which a stent is used to prop open an artery—are completely inappropriate, and another third are questionable.

Action Alert! Tell the FDA to issue a warning about daily aspirin use. Please send your message immediately.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2WxflL2 via Aloe for Health

from http://bit.ly/2FZTIht

The Fallacy Game

Read Full Article 
Action Alert

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2RXb58M via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://bit.ly/2HIdnEc

Natural Compound Doubles Cancer Survival Rates

New evidence on a key nutrient offers hope to cancer patients; will the FDA snuff it out? Action Alert!

A new study on annatto-sourced delta-tocotrienol (one of the compounds contained in vitamin E) has showed incredible results for extending the life of ovarian cancer patients. It is a stunning finding that should be hailed as a major breakthrough, but don’t expect to hear much about it from the crony medical establishment, which does everything it can to prevent you from learning about the benefits of natural products.

The study found that delta-tocotrienol, used in combination with Avastin, an FDA-approved drug, was able to stabilize and control ovarian cancer after surgery by 50% at six months; Avastin alone was only able to control the disease by 25%. Delta-tocotrienol used in combination with Avastin nearly doubled survival of ovarian cancer patients after surgery.

It’s hard to over emphasize how ground-breaking this study is. There have been studies on the anti-cancer effect of certain nutrients, but these are generally smaller in scale and use animal or in vitro models; never before has the ability of a nutrient to significantly prolong survival in cancer patients been demonstrated in a study of drug-level quality.

Further, the authors of the study don’t explicitly say it, but implicit in the study’s results is that Avastin might not be required. Overall survival in patients on just Avastin was 5-7 months; for Avastin plus delta-tocotrienol, it was 11 months. This could mean that delta-tocotrienol is just as effective, if not more so, than Avastin—but more study would be required to establish this.

These are astonishing results and great news for women with ovarian cancer. If it were a drug, delta-tocotrienol would be celebrated as the next breakthrough and sold for tens of thousands of dollars a year. But because natural medicines generally cannot be patented—meaning the drug industry can’t make mega-profits from them—the government suppresses what the public can know about their benefits, lest drug companies lose some market share. The feds don’t tell us, for example, about the promising cancer research on vitamin C. In fact, the agency will try to block you from knowing about the benefits of these nutrients because they aren’t FDA-approved drugs, and only drugs can make claims to treat or prevent a disease. The FDA wouldn’t want to upset the cancer drug industry’s more than $100 billion market.

The FDA has in fact shown that it is willing to go to absurd lengths to protect the drug industry from natural products. The agency went after walnut growers for daring to list some of the scientifically proven benefits of walnuts. Similarly, the FDA attacked cherry growers for citing Harvard research indicating cherries can reduce inflammation and pain. For these “crimes,” the FDA threatened jail time.

The FDA even bans many legal structure function claims, arguing that some are “implied disease claims,” a fabricated term meant to further restrict what can be said about supplements and other natural products. For example, a legal claim can describe the role of a nutrient on the structure or function of the body, such as “calcium builds strong bones.” But if the FDA thinks that the structure or function referenced in a claim indicates a disease state, it will ban the claim. The truthful claim that magnesium lowers blood pressure is banned by the FDA because they think it implies that magnesium is a treatment for hypertension, and only FDA-approved drugs can claim to treat hypertension.

When the FDA fails to censure free speech, the FTC picks up the baton. We saw this in the FTC’s case against POM Wonderful, the pomegranate juice company that spent millions on research only to be told by the FTC that it wasn’t the right research, so the claims were illegal. POM even had qualifying language in their claims so as not to mislead consumers, but the FTC wasn’t satisfied, outrageously demanding that POM conduct two randomized clinical trials to substantiate their claims.

These overt attacks on free speech subvert Americans’ ability to take charge of their health by learning about the established benefits of natural products. This isn’t good for anyone but the drug industry monopoly. If the FDA actually cared about cancer patients, they would be shouting from the rooftop about the benefits of delta-tocotrienol. But in our crony medical system, not only will we not hear a peep—the FDA will actively block companies that try to inform the public about its benefits, even though the companies are in the best position to tell us about the science since they are the entities performing the applicable studies.

The FDA’s conduct in this arena is truly shocking. Scientists continue to understand more about the many benefits of natural products, from fish oil to coconut oil, from CoQ10 to vitamin D, but rather than trumpeting these discoveries, the federal government is doing everything in its power to throttle the industry and protect Big Pharma profits. We must stop them.

Action Alert! Send a message to the FDA telling them to permit free speech about natural products, in particular to revise their position on implied disease claims. Please send your message immediately.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2RZle56 via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://bit.ly/2BdHldz

NY Times Calls for Universally Mandated Vaccines

This is what happens when a free press seeks to eliminate free choice. Action Alert!

A recent editorial piece in The New York Times suggests that more states should enact mandatory vaccination laws, kicking kids out of public and private schools if they do not follow the state’s vaccine schedule. That’s just one of a number of tips given for how to deal with “anti-vaxxers,” which the World Health Organization has deemed one of the top world health threats for 2019. But in decrying the perceived anti-scientific stance of those who question whether vaccines are safe, the NYT editorial writers, like many who agree with them, betray a lack of the skepticism needed for good science to flourish.

The Editorial board states, for example, “Yes, there are chemicals in vaccines, but they are not toxic.” This is undeniably false. As we’ve stated previously, many vaccines contain aluminum, which is a neurotoxin, formaldehyde, and even mercury. Take aluminum: It is normal to ingest aluminum in some of the foods we eat, but the liver clears it. It is a different matter when aluminum and other vaccine ingredients are injected directly into the blood, where they bypass the liver and the gastrointestinal tract. This isn’t pseudo-science: new studies provide stunning information about what happens to aluminum after it’s injected into muscle. In some mice, it travels to the brain, where it can still be detected a year later. It also travels to the spleen and lymph nodes, where it can still be detected 270 days after vaccination.

And that’s not all. As we’ve noted elsewhere, testing proving aluminum adjuvants are safe has never been done. Health authorities rely on EPA safety levels that determine how much orally-ingested aluminum is safe which, as stated above, is a different issue altogether from injected aluminum.

These are facts. To say, “Yes, there are chemicals in vaccines, but they are not toxic,” is a blatant misrepresentation. There are many questions about vaccines that the science has yet to resolve. This isn’t the opinion of a “fringe” organization, as the NYT puts it, but the government’s own National Academies of Science, who conclude in a 2013 report that “key elements of the [vaccine]schedule—the number, frequency, timing, order, and age at administration of vaccines—have not been systematically examined in research studies.”

We’re also told unequivocally by the NYT that unvaccinated kids were the cause of measles outbreaks in California and other states. Again, this widely held theory does not hold up. A recent study looked at 1,789 measles cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) between 2001 and 2015, reporting that 70% were unvaccinated—but the authors admit that there was a “lack of verifiable immunization on nearly half of the adult cases”—meaning that they don’t really know how many of the 1,789 were actually unvaccinated or unvaccinated.  Even if we accept the study’s numbers at face value, it means that 30% of measles cases occurred in those who were vaccinated. So vaccinated kids were still getting the disease.

There have even been cases where measles was transmitted in a school with a documented immunization level of 100%. What this tells us is that vaccination is not as effective at preventing disease as the public is often led to believe. Multiple studies have shown that vaccinated kids, especially those recently vaccinated, can spread disease, because the vaccine contains live virus (vaccines that contain the live virus include chicken pox, measles, rubella, nasal flu, polio, and smallpox).

We were told the same thing about a recent spike in mumps—that the cause was unvaccinated kids. But according even to the CDC, a staunch supporter of the government vaccination schedule, most mumps patients said they had received both shots of the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine. The states with the most cases of mumps had vaccination rates of 90% or higher—a threshold where herd immunity should exist if it is ever going to exist. (The herd immunity hypothesis states that a very high percentage of a community must be vaccinated in order to protect everyone (the herd) from a disease.) The fact that the disease spreads in highly vaccinated communities suggests 1) that the herd immunity hypothesis is incorrect and 2) that the source of the problem isn’t unvaccinated kids, but the ineffectiveness of the vaccine.

Mumps has even occurred in schools that have a 98% vaccination rate. It is also spreading among vaccinated kids on college campuses. At the University of Missouri, there were 193 reported cases of mumps, and all patients treated by the university had received two MMR shots.

The NYT also decries the “dismal rates of HPV vaccination, which doctors say could effectively wipe out cervical cancer if it were better utilized.” Really? Are the editorial writers unmoved by the 57,287 adverse events that have been reported from HPV vaccination, including 419 deaths, which is far more than any other vaccine? What about a recent study showing that women aged 25-29 who received the HPV vaccine have a lower probability of becoming pregnant? Or the fact that, for women who have already been exposed to certain strains of the HPV virus, vaccination can actually increase the risk of precancerous lesions by 44%? Or is all of this evidence just the ravings of pseudo-scientific anti-vaxxers, so it can be dismissed without further comment or study?

Herein lies the problem. There are legitimate safety concerns with some vaccines and with some ingredients. These issues should be studied and explored further so vaccines can be made safer. Saying that all vaccines are safe and cannot be improved will not accomplish this. Rather than undertaking the crucial work of making vaccines safer, members of the media and government health authorities instead cover their ears and insist that anti-vaxxers are irrational idiots who need to be taught a lesson.

Of one thing we can be sure: no real scientist would be so dogmatic, emotional, and combative. A real scientist examines all the evidence dispassionately before reaching a conclusion, and the evidence is clear: many vaccines are simply not effective, are dangerous, or both.

Action Alert! Write to your state legislators and tell them to preserve vaccine choice! Please send your message immediately. 

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2D0N070 via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://bit.ly/2To6tFz

Want Internal Bleeding? Take Aspirin Every Day

More reasons to avoid this commonly prescribed drug. Action Alert!

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that those taking a daily aspirin are at increased risk of experiencing severe and potentially fatal internal bleeding.

The study analyzed 13 randomized clinical trials involving 164,225 participants with no history of heart disease. Researchers found that, while the absolute risk of heart attack was decreased by a small amount (0.38%), the increased risk of internal bleeding was larger (almost 0.47%). The study’s author concluded from this data that “there is insufficient evidence to recommend routine aspirin use in the prevention of heart attacks, stroke, and cardiovascular deaths in people without cardiovascular disease.”

We warned as far back as 2012 that daily or long-term use of aspirin increases the risk of internal bleeding—and can cause hemorrhagic strokes—and didn’t protect against heart attacks in those who have not had heart problems. Even in healthy older people, research has shown that daily baby aspirin has no benefit.

There’s more evidence that we should avoid aspirin. In 2017 researchers found that, compared to those taking warfarin for atrial fibrillation (irregular and fast beating of the heart that can lead to stroke), patients taking aspirin were 1.9 times more likely to suffer a heart attack. Other studies have shown that NSAIDs increase the risk of heart failure by 20% and cause half of all bleeding ulcers. Aspirin also reduces vitamin B6 levels in the body.

Fortunately, there are natural products that reduce inflammation and improve cardiovascular function:

• Aspirin derives from salycin, which comes from the bark of white willow trees. This natural product can be taken to relieve pain and fight inflammation.
• Nattokinase, an enzyme made from fermented soy, accomplishes many of the same good things without the bad side effects.
• Fish oil and exercise also can improve cardiovascular health.
• Other natural anti-inflammatories might also be a good idea, depending on the advice of your integrative doctor.

Will doctors finally stop recommending daily aspirin for people without a history of heart disease? Probably not. The medical establishment is notorious for continuing practices that have long been proven ineffective or harmful. To provide just one example, the American Medical Association recently admitted that one in ten elective angioplasties—a surgery in which a stent is used to prop open an artery—are completely inappropriate, and another third are questionable.

Action Alert! Tell the FDA to issue a warning about daily aspirin use. Please send your message immediately.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2WxflL2 via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://bit.ly/2GdvzTV

Vaccinator Maximus

 
Action Alert

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2Tbev4w via Aloe for Health

from http://bit.ly/2FYcB3h

New Super-Vaccine Approved

Here’s what you need to know about the new 6-in-1 jab that’s Pharma’s latest coup. Action Alert!

Merck and Sanofi have teamed up to produce a 6-in-1 combo vaccine to market in the US. Despite the death of six infants in clinical trials and other evidence of dangerous side effects, the FDA has given the thumbs-up for this combo vaccine. This is another example of this agency prioritizing profitability over safety, and could lead to a further erosion of parental choice.

The vaccine, Vaxelis, has been approved for use in children from six weeks to four years of age to protect against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP), polio, hepatitis B, and an invasive disease caused by Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib). According to the package insert, Vaxelis contains a number of the dangerous adjuvants we’ve discussed previously, including aluminum and polysorbate 80. These toxins are combined with active vaccine ingredients such as inactivated polio viruses, influenza, and the others.

This is disturbing on a number of levels.

First, it’s shocking and outrageous that six infants died in the trials and the vaccine was still approved. Of course, the manufacturers claim that the deaths were not related to the vaccine, but how could they know? Unlike drugs, where the trials can last months or years, vaccine trials only last a few days or weeks and the follow up period is also very short. The manufacturer claims that none of the deaths were related to the vaccine, but reports the following causes of death: two cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), asphyxia, sepsis, hydrocephalus, and an “unknown cause.” So, the cause of death is unknown, but definitely not the vaccine?

There is also a connection between SIDS and vaccines. The CDC denies this connection, but the Vaccine Court ruled in favor of a family in 2017 because it concluded that vaccines more likely than not “played a substantial causal role” in the death of their child from SIDS. If vaccines can lead to SIDS, how many deaths listed as SIDS are actually vaccine-related? The FDA and CDC don’t seem interested in pursuing these vital questions further, content instead to turn a blind eye to obvious safety issues lest they undermine the public’s confidence in vaccines and Pharma’s profits.

Vaccine trials also don’t use true placebos, but are instead compared to other vaccines, making it more difficult to determine if adverse events are related to a given vaccine. These simple facts should raise red flags for any sensible person, but apparently, they don’t bother the FDA.

Second, delivering six vaccines in one shot along with the associated adjuvants, is a substantial burden for a young immune system to handle. One study found that vaccines cause more adverse events in children than any other drug—and this is when vaccines are usually given one at a time. Given the inadequacy of the testing done on vaccines in general, caution dictates that we look at this vaccine with a large dose of skepticism.

Third, the approval of this vaccine could spell the end of parents’ ability to follow alternative vaccine schedules. Some parents may choose to vaccinate for one disease but not another based on their research and the advice of their doctor. This possibility is diminished with the approval of multi-shot vaccines, which Merck and Sanofi will undoubtedly market to doctors as the next best thing in pediatric care. Doctors will be sold on the fact that fewer shots means less time per patient and more patients in the door. Less demand for single shot vaccines will mean manufacturers will stop offering them, so parents will face an all-or-nothing choice for vaccinating their child. If single shots become a thing of the past, this multi-shot vaccine creates de facto mandates for the polio and Hib vaccines, which are not currently required by most states, so children will be getting even more vaccines than they are currently.

Doctors are happy because they can vaccinate more children in a shorter time; Big Pharma is happy because they can likely charge a premium for their multi-shot vaccine. Everyone wins but the patient.

Merck and Sanofi do not care about safety or reducing the shots that children get. They care about money. There is no pressing need for a 6-in-1 vaccine when there are already single shot vaccines for each of the diseases it covers. The approval of this vaccine exposes children to unnecessary risk for the benefit of Merck and Sanofi’s bottom line. Consider that the vaccination rates for Hep B and polio are 90.5% and 91%, respectively: the vaccines with the highest rate out of the whole schedule. The rates for DTP and Hib are 83.4% and 81.8%, respectively. This means that there are children getting some vaccines but not others—a missed opportunity for the vaccine makers. If Merck and Sanofi can capture those children with the convenience of a multi-shot vaccine, they sell more vaccines than they would selling single shots as they do now.

And if your child gets injured, too bad! The vaccine makers are shielded from liability by the federal government. Your only recourse is to take your chances in the Vaccine Court, which for most people is an uphill battle that takes years and is often not successful.

We continually hear the refrain that vaccines have been studied over and over without any negative findings, so we should just keep quiet about vaccines. If that were true, why did the National Academy of Medicine, which advises the government on issues relating to medicine and health, conclude in a 2013 report that “key elements of the schedule—the number, frequency, timing, order, and age at administration of vaccines—have not been systematically examined in research studies”? Are proponents of vaccines not bothered by this lack of research?

Reasonable people can ask reasonable questions about vaccination—indeed, we must ask these questions given the risks that are involved. When the government pays out billions of dollars over the years to families damaged by vaccines, we have a right to call for safer vaccines. We also have a right to consider the evidence and come to our own decisions about whether to vaccinate and on what schedule, yet state governments around the country are following California’s authoritarian example, where even the medical exemption is coming under attack.

Action Alert! Write to Congress and the FDA, telling them to revoke approval of Vaxelis pending further safety studies. Please send your message immediately.

 

State-based alerts! If you live in one of the states below, click the link to take action on bad vaccine bills that your legislature is currently considering that either restrict exemptions or mandate one or more vaccines for school-aged children.

Florida

Massachusetts

Mississippi

New Jersey

New York

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2Mt8jSN via Aloe for Health

from http://bit.ly/2sLHv7b

Vaccinator Maximus

 
Action Alert

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2Tbev4w via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://bit.ly/2DwB8uF

America’s Fraudulent Organics Industry

We thought the problem was limited to fraudulent overseas suppliers; but fake organics are also grown in the US, and the USDA is clueless. Action Alert!

A Missouri farmer has been charged with ripping off food companies and consumers by falsely marketing more than $140 million worth of corn, soybeans, and wheat as organic. Observers have called the scale of this fraud “jaw dropping” and likely the largest case of its kind involving US farmers. The level of deception in the organic industry has reached epidemic proportions: a USDA study found that 40% of all organic food sold in the US tested positive for prohibited pesticides. This is an outrage, but the USDA shows no signs of deviating from business as usual.

The long-running scheme started as far back as 2004, when the Missouri man, Randy Constant, allegedly recruited three Nebraska farmers to supply him with crops. The Nebraska farmers turned a blind eye to Constant’s false marketing because of the premium prices their crops were fetching. The Nebraska farmers pleaded guilty last October.

This episode highlights what we’ve been saying for months now: the USDA, who is responsible for ensuring the integrity of the organic label, is absolutely inept. First, we had fake organics flooding in from overseas. We were told the problem was with foreign certifiers and that more oversight over the supply chain would reduce the fraud. But now it appears the problem is much deeper, and the USDA simply lacks the will to enforce the law. How else could such large-scale fraud occur on American soil over the course of a decade?

In fact, it wasn’t even the USDA that discovered the fraud; it was reportedly detected by a buyer after the grain he bought tested positive for GMOs.

We don’t know precisely where the oversight process broke down. The USDA does not perform inspections of organic producers; that is supposed to be taken care of by USDA-accredited, third-party organic certifiers. Farmers submit an organic system plan to a certifier, describing the methods used on the farm to produce organic crops. Certifiers review the plan and, if approved, are supposed to perform annual inspections which may include residue testing to ensure organic crops have not come into contact with prohibited substances. Judging from the fraud coming from overseas from certifiers like ETKO, it seems likely that these third-party organic certifiers are also in on the fraud.

What does the USDA’s organic seal mean anymore if the game can be rigged so easily? How many more farmers or businesses are similarly capitalizing on the premium for organic crops without adhering to organic standards? Does the USDA even care?

Take action below and tell the USDA to take steps to address organic fraud.

Action Alert! Write to the USDA and Congress, telling them that the level of organic fraud going on is an outrage, and major steps must be taken to address it. Please send your message immediately.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2FMJnVZ via Aloe for Health

from http://bit.ly/2S2PAmm

EPA Actively Deceiving Public on Glyphosate

New analysis shows the agency willfully ignored evidence of glyphosate’s danger. Action Alert!

A former executive director of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) board on agriculture has published an analysis comparing the World Health Organization’s (WHO) and the EPA’s evaluation of glyphosate. The WHO famously concluded that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen, while the EPA approved the herbicide ingredient as safe. The analysis finds that, compared with the WHO review, the EPA did not review the pertinent science when evaluating glyphosate. It is the latest in a saga that has seen the EPA act as Bayer/Monsanto’s accomplice in making sure that glyphosate stays on the market.

The main takeaway from the analysis was that the EPA disregarded scientific evidence of genotoxicity associated with glyphosate—that is, the ability of glyphosate to damage cells’ genetic material, which can cause mutations that lead to cancer.

The former NAS director, Charles Benbrook, concluded that “Clearly, compared to EPA’s genotoxicity review, the [WHO] review is grounded on more recent, more sensitive, and more sophisticated genotoxic studies, and more accurately reflects real-world exposures.”

Benbrook also points out that the EPA largely relied on industry studies rather than independent research. The studies paid for by Monsanto tended to look at glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup, in isolation. This is a critical point, as previous research we’ve reported on found that pesticides and herbicides can be up to 1,000 times more toxic to humans than just the active ingredients themselves due to the various adjuvants that are added to the active ingredient to make a complete herbicide. The EPA seems to have taken great care to avoid any research that might suggest glyphosate and the herbicides that contain it could be dangerous.

Remember, too, that news reports revealed in 2017 that a top EPA official, Jess Rowland, promised Monsanto he would quash an effort by the Department of Health and Human Services Department (HHS) to conduct its own review of glyphosate. He was successful—the HHS review never happened.

You can refer to our previous coverage of glyphosate for a review of the many dangers associated with this compound. It’s been associated with kidney failure, birth defects, and endocrine disruption, to name a few.

Once again, a government agency that is charged with safeguarding the well-being of Americans is instead safeguarding the profits of the industry it is supposed to regulate. This isn’t an anomaly, but rather the norm in our crony capitalist system.

Action Alert! Write to Congress and the EPA, demanding that glyphosate be removed from the market. Please send your message immediately.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2Tb8jcF via Aloe for Health

from http://bit.ly/2HsdweD

New Super-Vaccine Approved

Here’s what you need to know about the new 6-in-1 jab that’s Pharma’s latest coup. Action Alert!

Merck and Sanofi have teamed up to produce a 6-in-1 combo vaccine to market in the US. Despite the death of six infants in clinical trials and other evidence of dangerous side effects, the FDA has given the thumbs-up for this combo vaccine. This is another example of this agency prioritizing profitability over safety, and could lead to a further erosion of parental choice.

The vaccine, Vaxelis, has been approved for use in children from six weeks to four years of age to protect against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP), polio, hepatitis B, and an invasive disease caused by Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib). According to the package insert, Vaxelis contains a number of the dangerous adjuvants we’ve discussed previously, including aluminum and polysorbate 80. These toxins are combined with active vaccine ingredients such as inactivated polio viruses, influenza, and the others.

This is disturbing on a number of levels.

First, it’s shocking and outrageous that six infants died in the trials and the vaccine was still approved. Of course, the manufacturers claim that the deaths were not related to the vaccine, but how could they know? Unlike drugs, where the trials can last months or years, vaccine trials only last a few days or weeks and the follow up period is also very short. The manufacturer claims that none of the deaths were related to the vaccine, but reports the following causes of death: two cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), asphyxia, sepsis, hydrocephalus, and an “unknown cause.” So, the cause of death is unknown, but definitely not the vaccine?

There is also a connection between SIDS and vaccines. The CDC denies this connection, but the Vaccine Court ruled in favor of a family in 2017 because it concluded that vaccines more likely than not “played a substantial causal role” in the death of their child from SIDS. If vaccines can lead to SIDS, how many deaths listed as SIDS are actually vaccine-related? The FDA and CDC don’t seem interested in pursuing these vital questions further, content instead to turn a blind eye to obvious safety issues lest they undermine the public’s confidence in vaccines and Pharma’s profits.

Vaccine trials also don’t use true placebos, but are instead compared to other vaccines, making it more difficult to determine if adverse events are related to a given vaccine. These simple facts should raise red flags for any sensible person, but apparently, they don’t bother the FDA.

Second, delivering six vaccines in one shot along with the associated adjuvants, is a substantial burden for a young immune system to handle. One study found that vaccines cause more adverse events in children than any other drug—and this is when vaccines are usually given one at a time. Given the inadequacy of the testing done on vaccines in general, caution dictates that we look at this vaccine with a large dose of skepticism.

Third, the approval of this vaccine could spell the end of parents’ ability to follow alternative vaccine schedules. Some parents may choose to vaccinate for one disease but not another based on their research and the advice of their doctor. This possibility is diminished with the approval of multi-shot vaccines, which Merck and Sanofi will undoubtedly market to doctors as the next best thing in pediatric care. Doctors will be sold on the fact that fewer shots means less time per patient and more patients in the door. Less demand for single shot vaccines will mean manufacturers will stop offering them, so parents will face an all-or-nothing choice for vaccinating their child. If single shots become a thing of the past, this multi-shot vaccine creates de facto mandates for the polio and Hib vaccines, which are not currently required by most states, so children will be getting even more vaccines than they are currently.

Doctors are happy because they can vaccinate more children in a shorter time; Big Pharma is happy because they can likely charge a premium for their multi-shot vaccine. Everyone wins but the patient.

Merck and Sanofi do not care about safety or reducing the shots that children get. They care about money. There is no pressing need for a 6-in-1 vaccine when there are already single shot vaccines for each of the diseases it covers. The approval of this vaccine exposes children to unnecessary risk for the benefit of Merck and Sanofi’s bottom line. Consider that the vaccination rates for Hep B and polio are 90.5% and 91%, respectively: the vaccines with the highest rate out of the whole schedule. The rates for DTP and Hib are 83.4% and 81.8%, respectively. This means that there are children getting some vaccines but not others—a missed opportunity for the vaccine makers. If Merck and Sanofi can capture those children with the convenience of a multi-shot vaccine, they sell more vaccines than they would selling single shots as they do now.

And if your child gets injured, too bad! The vaccine makers are shielded from liability by the federal government. Your only recourse is to take your chances in the Vaccine Court, which for most people is an uphill battle that takes years and is often not successful.

We continually hear the refrain that vaccines have been studied over and over without any negative findings, so we should just keep quiet about vaccines. If that were true, why did the National Academy of Medicine, which advises the government on issues relating to medicine and health, conclude in a 2013 report that “key elements of the schedule—the number, frequency, timing, order, and age at administration of vaccines—have not been systematically examined in research studies”? Are proponents of vaccines not bothered by this lack of research?

Reasonable people can ask reasonable questions about vaccination—indeed, we must ask these questions given the risks that are involved. When the government pays out billions of dollars over the years to families damaged by vaccines, we have a right to call for safer vaccines. We also have a right to consider the evidence and come to our own decisions about whether to vaccinate and on what schedule, yet state governments around the country are following California’s authoritarian example, where even the medical exemption is coming under attack.

Action Alert! Write to Congress and the FDA, telling them to revoke approval of Vaxelis pending further safety studies. Please send your message immediately.

 

State-based alerts! If you live in one of the states below, click the link to take action on bad vaccine bills that your legislature is currently considering that either restrict exemptions or mandate one or more vaccines for school-aged children.

Florida

Massachusetts

Mississippi

New Jersey

New York

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2Mt8jSN via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://bit.ly/2AZtEig

America’s Fraudulent Organics Industry

We thought the problem was limited to fraudulent overseas suppliers; but fake organics are also grown in the US, and the USDA is clueless. Action Alert!

A Missouri farmer has been charged with ripping off food companies and consumers by falsely marketing more than $140 million worth of corn, soybeans, and wheat as organic. Observers have called the scale of this fraud “jaw dropping” and likely the largest case of its kind involving US farmers. The level of deception in the organic industry has reached epidemic proportions: a USDA study found that 40% of all organic food sold in the US tested positive for prohibited pesticides. This is an outrage, but the USDA shows no signs of deviating from business as usual.

The long-running scheme started as far back as 2004, when the Missouri man, Randy Constant, allegedly recruited three Nebraska farmers to supply him with crops. The Nebraska farmers turned a blind eye to Constant’s false marketing because of the premium prices their crops were fetching. The Nebraska farmers pleaded guilty last October.

This episode highlights what we’ve been saying for months now: the USDA, who is responsible for ensuring the integrity of the organic label, is absolutely inept. First, we had fake organics flooding in from overseas. We were told the problem was with foreign certifiers and that more oversight over the supply chain would reduce the fraud. But now it appears the problem is much deeper, and the USDA simply lacks the will to enforce the law. How else could such large-scale fraud occur on American soil over the course of a decade?

In fact, it wasn’t even the USDA that discovered the fraud; it was reportedly detected by a buyer after the grain he bought tested positive for GMOs.

We don’t know precisely where the oversight process broke down. The USDA does not perform inspections of organic producers; that is supposed to be taken care of by USDA-accredited, third-party organic certifiers. Farmers submit an organic system plan to a certifier, describing the methods used on the farm to produce organic crops. Certifiers review the plan and, if approved, are supposed to perform annual inspections which may include residue testing to ensure organic crops have not come into contact with prohibited substances. Judging from the fraud coming from overseas from certifiers like ETKO, it seems likely that these third-party organic certifiers are also in on the fraud.

What does the USDA’s organic seal mean anymore if the game can be rigged so easily? How many more farmers or businesses are similarly capitalizing on the premium for organic crops without adhering to organic standards? Does the USDA even care?

Take action below and tell the USDA to take steps to address organic fraud.

Action Alert! Write to the USDA and Congress, telling them that the level of organic fraud going on is an outrage, and major steps must be taken to address it. Please send your message immediately.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2FMJnVZ via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://bit.ly/2WfEZ6X

EPA Actively Deceiving Public on Glyphosate

New analysis shows the agency willfully ignored evidence of glyphosate’s danger. Action Alert!

A former executive director of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) board on agriculture has published an analysis comparing the World Health Organization’s (WHO) and the EPA’s evaluation of glyphosate. The WHO famously concluded that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen, while the EPA approved the herbicide ingredient as safe. The analysis finds that, compared with the WHO review, the EPA did not review the pertinent science when evaluating glyphosate. It is the latest in a saga that has seen the EPA act as Bayer/Monsanto’s accomplice in making sure that glyphosate stays on the market.

The main takeaway from the analysis was that the EPA disregarded scientific evidence of genotoxicity associated with glyphosate—that is, the ability of glyphosate to damage cells’ genetic material, which can cause mutations that lead to cancer.

The former NAS director, Charles Benbrook, concluded that “Clearly, compared to EPA’s genotoxicity review, the [WHO] review is grounded on more recent, more sensitive, and more sophisticated genotoxic studies, and more accurately reflects real-world exposures.”

Benbrook also points out that the EPA largely relied on industry studies rather than independent research. The studies paid for by Monsanto tended to look at glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup, in isolation. This is a critical point, as previous research we’ve reported on found that pesticides and herbicides can be up to 1,000 times more toxic to humans than just the active ingredients themselves due to the various adjuvants that are added to the active ingredient to make a complete herbicide. The EPA seems to have taken great care to avoid any research that might suggest glyphosate and the herbicides that contain it could be dangerous.

Remember, too, that news reports revealed in 2017 that a top EPA official, Jess Rowland, promised Monsanto he would quash an effort by the Department of Health and Human Services Department (HHS) to conduct its own review of glyphosate. He was successful—the HHS review never happened.

You can refer to our previous coverage of glyphosate for a review of the many dangers associated with this compound. It’s been associated with kidney failure, birth defects, and endocrine disruption, to name a few.

Once again, a government agency that is charged with safeguarding the well-being of Americans is instead safeguarding the profits of the industry it is supposed to regulate. This isn’t an anomaly, but rather the norm in our crony capitalist system.

Action Alert! Write to Congress and the EPA, demanding that glyphosate be removed from the market. Please send your message immediately.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2Tb8jcF via Aloe for Health
from Tumblr http://bit.ly/2RdAJkq

The New GMO Labels Are An Outrage

 
Action Alert

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2VLvkVx via Aloe for Health

from http://bit.ly/2RNL2jP

USDA Makes GMOs Disappear

It’s official: the “mandatory” GMO labeling rule will obscure more than it makes transparent. Action Alert!

The USDA has released its final GMO labeling rule, and it’s not good. As we feared when the agency released its proposal earlier this year, the so-called GMO labeling law will apply only to a narrow set of foods. Congress and the USDA have offered a number of loopholes and exemptions to food companies, undermining any semblance of a consumer’s right to know. It’s as if the USDA asked the food industry to write the rule themselves.

The problems start right at the foundation. The agency has decided to use the term “bioengineered”—a term many Americans may not be familiar with—rather than GMO. When the proposal was released, we pointed out that this is straight out of an Orwellian playbook. Many Americans know the term “GMO” and can connect it to the labeling debate—so the government decides to use a different term that sounds more innocuous. If the government was actually concerned with communicating information clearly to consumers, they would simply use the term “GMO” and not other terminology with which Americans may not be familiar.

The problems continue with the definition of “bioengineered.” The final rule defines bioengineered as a food that 1) contains genetic material that has been modified through in vitro recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) techniques and 2) for which the modification could not otherwise be obtained through conventional breeding or found in nature”—essentially, combining DNA from two different sources, usually two different organisms.

This definition is preposterous and entirely inadequate to capture all the different techniques for genetically modifying food that are currently being used or are in development. Gene-editing using CRISPR is one example, where scientists manipulate an organism’s own DNA to silence certain genes or express otherwise silent genes. This technology does not look like it will be covered under the final rule because the USDA argues that gene editing produces results that could have been obtained through conventional breeding. For example, the USDA recently decided that a CRISPR-created non-browning mushroom did not have to be regulated, and following the USDA’s logic, the GMO labeling rule will not apply. That’s right: a genetically modified mushroom will not have to be labeled as GMO because the USDA thinks that the genetic change could be accomplished through normal means. A similar determination could be made regarding the Arctic Apple, a non-browning apple made through a technology called RNA interference (RNAi), a gene editing technique for blocking the expression of certain genes. There are other techniques, including TALENs and ZFNs, the products of which will likely not have to be labeled.

The issue is that these technologies are the future of agriculture, with some observers noting that “with new gene editing techniques, [GMOs] will no longer be necessary.” The USDA, taking cues from Congress, has written a labeling rule that applies exclusively to obsolete technology. The USDA’s definition of a GMO completely misses the point. Even if a particular change could have been brought about through traditional breeding, the fact that it was brought about through genetic modification in a laboratory means that consumers have a right to know, end of story.

It seems likely that this was the endgame all along. Remember that the food industry supported the legislation that underpins this rule. It isn’t hard to imagine that they were given assurances that the rule would do nothing to disrupt business as usual.

The problems don’t stop there. The rule establishes a threshold for the “inadvertent or technically unavoidable” presence of GMO material of up to five percent; foods that meet this criteria will not have to be labeled as bioengineered. What is galling here is that the USDA was considering three alternatives for this threshold, one of them being 0.9%, but chose the option most generous to industry. So, an ingredient in a food can have up to 5% of its weight be GMO if it is “unavoidable” or “inadvertent” and not have to identify that there is GMO material in the food.  (Note: food containing any amount of a bioengineered substance that is not inadvertent or unintentional must be labeled.) The plain fact, once again, is that even if the presence of a small number of GMOs is “inadvertent or unavoidable,” consumers still have a right to know.

There is another way that the USDA has narrowed the foods that will have to carry GMO labeling. So-called “highly-refined foods” made from GMO crops—such as sugar from GMO sugarbeets or high fructose corn syrup from GMO corn—will not require a label. The USDA argues that the presence of GMOs cannot be detected in refined products. Once again, consumers have been sold out. Just because current testing techniques cannot detect GMO material in a finished product does not mean there is no modified genetic material in the food. The whole point of a GMO labeling law is to provide consumers with information, so those who wish to avoid GMO foods can easily do so. If refined foods made from GMO ingredients are exempted, the spirit of the law is undermined.

Finally, the USDA has altered the symbol that may be used by companies to communicate the presence of GMOs. Some early proposals looked like a smiling face. The symbol the USDA chose says “bioengineered” rather than GMO and depicts a field and a sun, which is intentionally deceptive. These are natural images used to communicate the presence of decidedly un-natural ingredients in a food. It’s as if the PR department at Bayer/Monsanto came up with it themselves!

If you think that your state can pass a stronger labeling law, think again. The law passed by Congress prevents states from instituting labeling laws that differ with the federal law.

This process has been a complete sham since the beginning, starting with the fact that food companies can label their food with scannable codes rather than plain language on the package. That’s right: a company can avoid putting a plain language GMO label on their food altogether and instead slap a scannable code which they know most people won’t scan anyway, and which requires the customer to have a smart phone handy. The rule to implement the law favors the food industry at every conceivable turn. This is the definition of cronyism: the US government catering to special interests rather than citizens.

Action Alert! Write to Congress and the USDA, telling them that this rule is an outrage and must be changed to better represent a consumer’s right to know. Please send your message immediately.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2QBOUj8 via Aloe for Health

from http://bit.ly/2H3gxSF

Social Media’s Assault on Natural Health

Natural health sites are under attack. It’s time to fight back. Action Alert!

The internet has profoundly changed how humans communicate and receive information. It allows disparate individuals to form communities around shared interests. It is a new kind of forum where ideas can be disseminated freely and openly. At least, that’s what sites like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Wikipedia, and other titans of the internet would have us believe. But the current reality of the internet is less an open sandbox and more a story of the dominance of a few powerful gatekeepers increasingly exerting control over what kind of information can be shared.

As far as we can tell, the issue of vaccination is particularly susceptible to censorship. This isn’t surprising, as vaccination is a controversial issue. However, reasonable people can ask reasonable questions about the safety and efficacy of vaccines—indeed they should, since it is undeniable that vaccines are not without risk. One only need consult the government’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the millions it has paid out to victims of vaccines to verify this fact. Yet organizations that post information about the dangers of vaccination are singled out as “fake news” purveyors and censored.

This censorship has affected ANH and other organizations. We had posts related to vaccines removed from Pinterest for violating the site’s misinformation policy. An email from the site stated that the policy includes “things like promotion of false cures for terminal or chronic illnesses, and anti-vaccination advice.”

What were the offending posts that were too dangerous for public consumption? One simply said, “A growing number of victims are coming forward to report serious and deadly adverse reactions after receiving the controversial HPV vaccine.” Another said, “New studies show autism rates in vaccinated children are nearly five times higher than in unvaccinated children.” Another said, “The amount of injected heavy metals in vaccines has never been studied for safety, only efficacy.” Is this content really worthy of censorship?

Pinterest went on to explain that it relies on information from the CDC and WHO to help determine if content violates their guidelines, but if government health authorities become the sole arbiter of what a “false cure” is, then we’re in big trouble. The implications should be obvious: is any treatment that isn’t FDA-approved a “false cure”? Is a doctor who doesn’t toe the line of mainstream medicine and the orthodoxy of the American Medical Association pedaling “false cures”?

Pinterest has also gone after GreenMedInfo, another natural health site, for “violating their misinformation policy” with content on vaccines, except this time the site went further and removed all of GreenMedInfo’s content. The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), Mercola.com, and others have been similarly censored by Pinterest.

Censorship of natural health is also occurring on Wikipedia, the free internet encyclopedia. Our friends at ANH-International point out that Wikipedia articles promoting natural, non-drug therapies have been targeted for deletion or manipulation. Scottish diabetes expert Dr. Malcolm Kendrick’s Wiki page has been deleted because his views on cholesterol and heart disease don’t match up with mainstream narrative. Visit the diabetes page on Wikipedia, and you won’t find any information on the efficacy of certain diets in tackling type 2 diabetes because those references have been removed by skeptics lest the public learn about non-drug interventions for that illness.

Facebook has also gotten in on the action, having allegedly deleted over 80 pages dedicated to natural or alternative health. These were pages with millions of followers, not insignificant pages on the periphery.

It’s no secret that ownership of traditional media (newspapers, television networks, etc.) has become increasingly concentrated. A few corporations control the vast majority of traditional media, and it shows: read the pages of most mainstream publications and you’ll find an almost unwavering dedication to the medical establishment—probably because these publications rely on the advertising dollars of the pharmaceutical industry to stay afloat. The internet promised to democratize the news, to allow people searching for content outside of the mainstream to find organizations they identify with. The fact of the matter is that most of this sharing of information is happening on platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, and others, but we are in danger of losing this autonomy to the censors.

If we continue down this path, there will be grave consequences. Science advances through skepticism, through the questioning of orthodoxy and accepted norms. If anything that deviates from the party line of the FDA or CDC is forbidden or censored, how can we improve our health system? How can medicine advance if the safety of statins cannot be questioned, as one NYT writer would have it? Science also changes over the years as new research and evidence come to light, and what was once considered “alternative” becomes the mainstream. Consider that the government’s Dietary Guidelines committee recently withdrew longstanding recommendations to avoid high-cholesterol foods—something natural health experts have been saying for years.

We must push back against this growing trend of gagging free speech.

Action Alert! Write to Congress and urge them to ask their colleagues in the Energy and Commerce Committee to hold a hearing on internet gatekeepers restricting free speech. Please send your message immediately. 

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2VDc3FD via Aloe for Health

from http://bit.ly/2RK2eGw

FDA Flouting Congress on CBD

While Congress gives CBD the green light, FDA still has its stop sign up. Action Alert!

For a while now, we’ve been telling you about the threats to cheap CBD oil. One of those threats has been that the DEA includes hemp and CBD in the definition of marijuana, which is a Schedule 1 drug—that is, it has no recognized medical benefit. This was plainly inaccurate, and Congress has rectified the error: the Farm Bill removes “hemp” from the definition of marijuana. While there are still some challenges and uncertainty, this is an important step towards ensuring consumer access to affordable CBD oil.

The legalization of hemp means that so long as CBD oil is extracted from hemp and has less than 0.3% THC (the compound that gives the “high” associated with marijuana), it is no longer considered a controlled substance.

The main hurdle that is still in place is the FDA. After the Farm Bill was approved, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb released a statement reminding us that, while CBD may no longer be a controlled substance, it is still subject to FDA jurisdiction. The statement reiterates the FDA’s position that CBD is not a dietary ingredient (and thus illegal to put in a supplement) because it is the active ingredient in an approved drug and was the subject of clinical investigations before it was sold in supplements. For more background on these issues, read our article on the back channel at the FDA that allows Big Pharma to turn supplements into drugs.

CBD shows much promise. There are also thousands of published scientific studies on CBD and its beneficial health effects on pain, inflammation, seizures, rheumatoid arthritis, and other inflammatory conditions. If the FDA’s position doesn’t change, the only way for consumers to legally get CBD will be by buying the FDA-approved drug, which will cost $32,500 a year.

While we work to eliminate this nutrient-to-drug pipeline at the FDA, this is still an important victory for CBD. Let’s express our appreciation by writing to Congress and thanking them for this step.

Action Alert! Write to Congress and thank them for taking steps to legalize CBD oil; write to the FDA and tell them to back off CBD oil supplements. Please send your message immediately.

from The Alliance for Natural Health http://bit.ly/2QGhjVm via Aloe for Health

from http://bit.ly/2H4H4Px