Lawmakers in Vermont are looking to regulate food labels so customers can know which products are made from genetically modified crops, but agricultural giants Monsanto say they will sue if the state follows through.
If the bill in question, H-722 (the “VT Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act”) passes the state Senate and House, manufacturers will be required to label products that are created either partially or in full from a genetically modified organism, or GMO. Such man-made crops have become a trademark of the billion-dollar Monsanto corporation, and in the past the company has gone to great lengths to keep themselves the number-one name in American agriculture, even if those profits are made possible from playing God.
Monsanto is going mad over the proposal, however, which would also make them unable to label their productions as “natural,” “naturally made,” “naturally grown” or “all natural,” if, in fact, they are not. For the corporation, it would seem that moving products and making money is much more of a worthwhile venture than telling its customers what exactly they are consuming.
With Vermont legislators now standing in the way of what could mean even more money for Monsanto, the company says they will sue the state if H-722 is approved. Now in fear of a lawsuit in the future, lawmakers in Vermont have put a hold on any future voting regarding the bill. If history is any indication, Monsanto is more than likely to have their way and win yet another battle.
Monsanto is no stranger to the American legal system and have forced competing farm after farm to be shut down or bought out by bringing lawsuits against the little guy throughout their history. Between 1997 and 2010, Monsanto’s legal team tried to file nearly 150 lawsuits against independent farmers, often for allegations that their patented GMO-seeds had somehow managed to be carried onto unlicensed farms. Often those farms have been unable to fight against Monsanto’s mega-lawyers and have been forced to fold in response. The Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association tried taking Monsanto to court earlier this year to keep them from following similar suits, but a Federal District Court judge in Manhattan shut down their plea. The group has since filed an appeal.
Regardless of if the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association’s appeal will be granted, Monsanto is making waves in Vermont where they hope to continue creating GMO products and pushing them to consumers without warning. Between state lawmakers putting their vote on hold and past precedents, Monsanto looks more than likely to win their latest battle, though. Back in 1994, Vermont tried to keep dairy corporations from marketing milk made from cows injected with the Bovine Growth Hormone, citing incidents where the rBGH had been tied to cases of cancer. Monsanto was victorious in that battle and numerous others in the years since.
Scientific studies have linked fluoridation of the water supply to lowered IQs, increased risk of cancer, and bone disease, amongst other conditions. So why do we still fluoridate? As researchers like Anthony Gucciardi warn, fluoridation may in fact only be the thin edge of the wedge when it comes to forced medication of the population. This is the GRTV Backgrounder on Global Research TV.
Those long, white streams of persistent, cloudy haze commonly blasted into blue skies by unmarked airplanes are not your typical contrails, says Swedish Green Party leader Pernilla Hagberg. As reported by the Swedish paper Katrineholms Kuriren, Hagberg, the first major political leader to come forward on the issue, has openly admitted that these unusual cloud trails, which fail to dissipate like normal contrails do, are actually a toxic mix of chemicals, viruses, and metals that she has collectively referred to as "chemtrails."
According to Hagberg, the sprayings are a joint endeavor by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), as well as the Swedish government in her own country, to modify atmospheric conditions via deliberate aerosol spraying efforts. And included in this "dangerous" mix of aerosols are various chemical components, viruses and viral fragments, and metals such as aluminum and barium, which have already been shown to be accumulating in water supplies and soils around the world.
Normal contrails, which are composed of mere water vapor that quickly dissipates after emission from jet engines, are far different from chemtrails, which gradually blanket the entire sky in a sea of white. The following video, put together by the FreeTruth Show, a YouTube-based radio broadcast, contains some imagery of what these chemtrails typically look like in the sky:
"It is great to see a politician bringing public attention to this issue and helping add to the credibility of this cause in the mainstream," writes JG Vibes for The Intel Hub about Hagberg's unprecedented public admission. "Unfortunately, this is a political problem that requires many non-political solutions."
Spraying the skies to save the planet?
Interestingly, the United Nations (UN) and various Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed groups have recently been forced to admit that such sprayings are taking place, and that the emitted particles are not normal contrails. But their excuse for why chemtrail sprayings are being done is that they will somehow save the planet from the devastating effects of so-called "global warming," that ever-present, pseudoscientific environmental theory that is often used as justification for all sorts of outlandish policy proposals.
In the case of chemtrails, everything from blocking the sun in order to lower the earth's average temperatures, to deliberately shifting weather patterns for the purpose of offsetting the allegedly melting polar ice caps, have been used as excuses for trying to legitimize the seeding of our skies with a cornucopia of poisons. And if re-elected to another term, Hagberg says she will continue to fight such chemtrailing efforts in her own country, which she says have been co-opted by the Swedish government.
There is a substantial amount of science devoted to characterizing the gliadin protein in wheat. There are thousands of versions of this molecule, varying in amino acid sequence. But there are sequences shared by most forms of gliadin proteins. (These sequences can also be found in the gluten and glutenin proteins of wheat, as well.) Gliadin has been the recipient of many of the changes in modern high-yield, semi-dwarf wheat.
What is fascinating is that many of the adverse effects of gliadin consumption in humans have been drilled down to their structural basis:
Note the following on the gliadin “map”:
Red = direct cytotoxic segment (intestinal cell-destroying)
Light green = immune-stimulating segment (responsible for celiac disease)
Blue = bowel permeability segment (via zonulin activation)
Dark green = inflammatory interleukin release
Also scattered about (not shown in diagram) are the 4- and 5-amino acid sequences that, when released, bind to the opiate receptors of the brain, exerting their myriad effects that differ depending on individual susceptibility (appetite-stimulation, food obsessions, anxiety, mental “fog,” paranoia, auditory hallucinations, social disengagement, behavioral outbursts, reduced concentration, sleep disruption, depression, mania).
Intestinal cell destruction, immune stimulation, intestinal permeability, inflammation, opiates . . . and that’s just one protein in modern wheat!
The full text of Dr. Fasano’s summary can be viewed here.
Breast cancer (and its mainstream treatments) kill thousands of women every year. In 2009 (the last year for which data is available), the CDC says over 40,000 women were killed by this arguably preventable disease. Everyone knows that this is a horrible disease – including corporations. These companies have made a pretty penny by playing on people’s passionate feelings about cancer.
This past year, CoverGirl graciously flew a 13-year old girl and cancer patient to appear on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show”. Talia Castellano is a young make-up blogger and admitted to “adoring” makeup. CoverGirl gave her $20,000 and made her an honorary CoverGirl. But there’s one problem; the company manufactures products with toxic ingredients known to increase cancer risk.
Parabens, formaldehyde, and phthalates, to be specific. While Johnson & Johnson reportedly bowed to the Breast Cancer Fund’s requests to remove such ingredients, Procter and Gamble (the parent company behind CoverGirl) has dodged the issue completely. Now, Procter and Gamble is donating $1 for every breast exam pledge on Facebook to go towards early detection campaigns. But even experts admit that breast cancer screens are very often unnecessary and could actually cause harm.
One would think that a company who truly cared about cancer would instead try to prevent it.
Continuing onward, a household name in breast cancer charities, the Susan G. Komen Foundation partners with numerous bottled water companies for their For the Cure races around the country. The problem with this—most of these bottled water companies use bottles that contain BPA, a known hormone disrupter, one that increases the risk of cancer. Interestingly, Athena bottled water is similarly sold in BPA bottles and was founded by a breast cancer survivor.
And if you need another example of misdirected “good will”, the Progresso company, that makes soup, serves up cans on grocery store shelves around the world. These cans are lined with a resin containing BPA. Yes the same hormone-disrupting BPA. And now they are using pink ribbon labels to help sell more. General Mills says a portion of their proceeds will go to breast cancer research, but they won’t spend a dime to reduce breast cancer by changing packaging until a consumer-driven upheaval begins.
So, what is it these companies really care about? Is it the hundreds of thousands of women that will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, or is it cashing in on the disease to boost their bottom line. After all, the bigger the problem (breast cancer) is, the more people will support that pink ribbon!
In my previous article, I examined the silence of the lambs (media) concerning the collusion between Monsanto and the FDA.
In the case of medical care in America, that purposeful silence reigns supreme as well.
By the most conservative estimate, researched and published by mainstream medical sources, the US medical system kills 225,000 people each year.
That’s 2.25 MILLION deaths per decade.
You’d think such a mind-boggling fact would rate a relentless series of page-one stories in the press, along with top-story status on the network evening news.
But no. It’s wall-to-wall silence.
Why? We can list the usual reasons, the medical/pharmaceutical advertising dollars spent on television and in newspapers being the most obvious reason.
We have the reality that, of those 225,000 annual deaths, 106,000 occur as a direct effect of pharmaceutical drugs. The FDA is the single government agency tasked with certifying all medicines as safe and effective before they’re released for public use. Any exposure of the medical death statistics would automatically indict the FDA. Major media won’t take on the FDA at that level.
One of the many truths which would come to light in the event that the press did attack the FDA full-on? The FDA spends an inordinate amount of time, energy, and money going after the nutritional supplement industry, which causes virtually no deaths in any year or decade.
The public would of course discover that, by certifying medical drugs as safe and effective, drugs that kill, like clockwork, 106,000 people a year, the FDA is colluding with, and serving, Big Pharma.
You can’t possibly approve so many drugs that wreak so much human destruction through mere incompetence. Apologists for the FDA might like to think so, but they are terribly, terribly wrong. They are whistling in the dark, trusting “science” as our guide.
Since I’ve been reporting these medically-caused death figures—I started 12 years ago—people have told me, “This is impossible. If it were true, the media would be reporting it.”
That argument is upside down. The statistics are real and true. In fact, they are very low estimates. Therefore, the press is colluding to keep them well under the radar.
The mainstream press is built to be able to maintain silence on issues such as this. It’s part of their job. Although many reporters and editors are simply ignorant and clueless, at the highest levels of media we are looking at sheer manipulation. We are looking at the crime of accessory to murder.
I don’t say murder in any non-literal way. It’s murder because, when you know the facts, when you know what a huge government institution (FDA) is doing to the population, and when that institution itself is well aware of its lethal impact on the public and does nothing about it, year after year, decade after decade, it’s FDA murder and it’s media’s accessory to murder.
It’s not merely negligent homicide. There is no negligence here, any more than there would be if you took a loaded gun out into the street and started firing randomly at crowds of people.
Underneath it all, the press maintains silence because they are not permitted to hammer a huge fracture in what is called “the public trust.”
And what is the public trust? It’s the false illusion that basically things are all right. That’s the simplest way to say it. Things are all right.
They’re especially all right when it comes to the medical profession. Doctors are modern priests in white coats.
But the priests are the ones who are prescribing the drugs that are killing people. If the extent of their crimes were made known, trust would evaporate in seconds. And not just trust in the medical profession. Trust, or the lack of it, is contagious. It spreads to other areas quickly.
“Well, if they’re lying abut this, and killing people, then who else is lying and killing?”
“We know that people die in wars. But the doctors are supposed to be saving lives. They’re not supposed to be giving people drugs that kill them at the rate of 106,000 a year, every year.”
The press and the people who own media companies are aware they are guardians of the public trust. However, that has nothing to do with telling the truth. The press is guarding the illusion of truth. That’s how they interpret their mandate.
Nowhere is this perversion more clear than in the medical arena.
As I do every so often, I’m presenting my interview with the late Dr. Barbara Starfield, who for many years was a revered public health authority at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She was the researcher who exposed the truth about medically caused death in America.
Her review, “Is US Health really the best in the world?”, was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on July 26, 2000.
It presented three key facts. Every year, the US medical system kills 225,000 people. 106,000 die from the direct effects of FDA-approved medical drugs. 119,000 die from the effects of treatment in hospitals.
Soon after her review was published, it gained some media attention. Not headline attention, but the press carried the story. Then, like a report of a car crash or a storm, Starfield’s revelation disappeared, vanished without a trace.
In other articles, I’ve made it clear that Starfield’s journal paper is confirmed by other sources. In fact, on a page of the FDA’s own web site, it is admitted that 100,000 people die every year in America from the effects of pharmaceutical drugs. However, as in the case of every psychotic criminal, the FDA takes no responsibility.
Here are excerpts from my interview with Dr. Barbara Starfield:
What has been the level and tenor of the response to your findings, since 2000?
The American public appears to have been hoodwinked into believing that more interventions lead to better health, and most people that I meet are completely unaware that the US does not have the ‘best health in the world’.
In the medical research community, have your medically-caused mortality statistics been debated, or have these figures been accepted, albeit with some degree of shame?
The findings have been accepted by those who study them. There has been only one detractor, a former medical school dean, who has received a lot of attention for claiming that the US health system is the best there is and we need more of it. He has a vested interest in medical schools and teaching hospitals (they are his constituency).
Have health agencies of the federal government consulted with you on ways to mitigate the [devastating] effects of the US medical system?
NO.
Since the FDA approves every medical drug given to the American people, and certifies it as safe and effective, how can that agency remain calm about the fact that these medicines are causing 106,000 deaths per year?
Even though there will always be adverse events that cannot be anticipated, the fact is that more and more unsafe drugs are being approved for use. Many people attribute that to the fact that the pharmaceutical industry is (for the past ten years or so) required to pay the FDA for reviews [of its new drugs]—which puts the FDA into an untenable position of working for the industry it is regulating. There is a large literature on this.
Aren’t your 2000 findings a severe indictment of the FDA and its standard practices?
They are an indictment of the US health care industry: insurance companies, specialty and disease-oriented medical academia, the pharmaceutical and device manufacturing industries, all of which contribute heavily to re-election campaigns of members of Congress. The problem is that we do not have a government that is free of influence of vested interests. Alas, [it] is a general problem of our society—which clearly unbalances democracy.
Can you offer an opinion about how the FDA can be so mortally wrong about so many drugs?
Yes, it cannot divest itself from vested interests. (Again, [there is] a large literature about this, mostly unrecognized by the people because the industry-supported media give it no attention.)
Would it be correct to say that, when your JAMA study was published in 2000, it caused a momentary stir and was thereafter ignored by the medical community and by pharmaceutical companies?
Are you sure it was a momentary stir? I still get at least one email a day asking for a reprint—ten years later! The problem is that its message is obscured by those that do not want any change in the US health care system.
Are you aware of any systematic efforts, since your 2000 JAMA study was published, to remedy the main categories of medically caused deaths in the US?
No systematic efforts; however, there have been a lot of studies. Most of them indicate higher rates [of death] than I calculated.
What was your personal reaction when you reached the conclusion that the US medical system was the third leading cause of death in the US?
I had previously done studies on international comparisons and knew that there were serious deficits in the US health care system, most notably in lack of universal coverage and a very poor primary care infrastructure. So I wasn’t surprised.
Did your 2000 JAMA study sail through peer review, or was there some opposition to publishing it?
INTERVIEWER COMMENTS:
This interview with Dr. Starfield reveals that, even when an author has unassailable credentials within the medical-research establishment, the findings can result in no changes made to the system.
Many persons and organizations within the medical system contribute to the annual death totals of patients, and media silence and public ignorance are certainly major factors, but the FDA is the assigned gatekeeper, when it comes to the safety of medical drugs.
The buck stops there. If those drugs the FDA is certifying as safe are killing, like clockwork, 106,000 people a year, the Agency must be held accountable. The American people must understand that.
As for the other 119,000 people killed every year as a result of hospital treatment, this horror has to be laid at the doors of those institutions. Further, to the degree that hospitals are regulated and financed by state and federal governments, the relevant health agencies assume culpability.
It is astounding, as well, that the US Department of Justice has failed to weigh in on Starfield’s findings. If 225,000 medically caused deaths per year is not a crime by the Dept. of Justice’s standards, then what is?
To my knowledge, not one person in America has been fired from a job or even censured as result of these medically caused deaths.
Dr. Starfield’s findings have been available for 12 years. She has changed the perception of the medical landscape forever. In a half-sane nation, she would be accorded a degree of recognition that would, by comparison, make the considerable list of her awards pale. And significant and swift action would have been taken to punish the perpetrators of these crimes and reform the system from its foundations.
The pharmaceutical giants stand back and carve up the populace into “promising markets.” They seek new disease labels and new profits from more and more toxic drugs. They do whatever they can—legally or illegally—to influence doctors in their prescribing habits. Many studies which show the drugs are dangerous are buried. FDA panels are filled with doctors who have drug-company ties. Legislators are incessantly lobbied and supported with Pharma campaign monies.
Nutrition, the cornerstone of good health, is ignored or devalued by most physicians. Meanwhile, the FDA continues to attack nutritional supplements, even though the overall safety record of these nutrients is excellent, whereas, once again, the medical drugs the FDA certifies as safe are killing 106,000 Americans per year.
Physicians are trained to pay exclusive homage to peer-reviewed published drug studies. These doctors unfailingly ignore the fact that, if medical drugs are killing a million Americans per decade, the studies on which those drugs are based must be fraudulent. In other words, the whole literature is suspect, unreliable, and impenetrable.
It was rejected by the first journal that I sent it to, on the grounds that ‘it would not be interesting to readers’!
Do the 106,000 deaths from medical drugs only involve drugs prescribed to patients in hospitals, or does this statistic also cover people prescribed drugs who are not in-patients in hospitals?
I tried to include everything in my estimates. Since the commentary was written, many more dangerous drugs have been added to the marketplace.
If follow natural healing along with some truth news, you know all too well that processed and fast food giants care very little about the weight and overall wellbeing of children. As a health-conscious parent, you must fight tooth and nail to counteract the bombardment of advertising and marketing tricks these companies use to ensure their health-compromising products sell. But this is more than a parental issue, as unhealthy kids are everyone’s responsibility.
So, just how do food makers encourage ill health and obesity among the youngest of us? There are several ways. And all of it begins with marketing.
According to the Prevention Institute, fast food companies spend more than $5 million each day targeting kids with unhealthy foods. The food and beverage industry as a whole spends more than $2 billion each year on marketing to children. And these commercials, print ads, and colorful boxes aren’t being used to sell healthful foods.
Just 6 Ways the Food Industry is Hurting Our Children
Television advertisements for food directly affect a child’s food intake. Scientists found that a group of children eating in front of a television show with food advertisements ate 50% more calories than those who didn’t have any commercials. They determined that at this rate, the commercials could lead to a 10-pound weight gain throughout the course of a year.
The food industry invade the schools. School systems often aren’t necessarily wealthy, and when a giant corporation offers to help in exchange for advertising or vending machines, it’s hard for these educational institutions to pass up the offer. As a result, your child is targeted everywhere they go.
Despite pledging to do better, the companies simply don’t. A 2011 review of such pledges and promises made by food companies found that these vows are largely empty and fail to protect children at all. One recent pledge (sort of) brought forth by Coca-Cola deals with the company’s claims of fighting obesity and bettering the nation by offering low-calorie and sugar-free products. But in reality, they are fueling obesity and feeding disease with some of the most popular beverages on the planet.
About 98% of food advertisements that children see are for products that are high in fat, sugar, or sodium.
Food makers know that people identify them with nurturing. At a young age, American children identify food labels and company names with comforting feelings and these food companies seek to capitalize on this through feel-good commercials and filling foods devoid of nutritional integrity. This is equally true with the presentation of various symbols and characters such as the McDonald’s golden arches or Toucan Sam.
Using words like “wholesome”, “made with natural ingredients”, and “part of a good diet” are used despite having no real meaning. These words make parents feel like the prepackaged and prepared foods aren’t that bad after all, that they can feel okay about giving their children a meal in a box.
Food makers don’t care about children. They care about their bottom line. If they truly cared about health, we would see free toys offered with fruits and vegetables and exciting, high budget commercials for whole, natural foods. But we don’t.
Because the food makers could care less, it’s up to parents and role models to take the reins. If your child watches television, at least make them mute the commercials and do your best to fight the misinformation your child might be receiving from web-ads, billboards, food product placement in stores, and even their teachers.
The influence of social media, games consoles and mobile phones on pupils’ lives is one of the biggest crises facing the modern education system, it is claimed.
David Boddy, chairman of The Society of Heads, which represents more than 100 independent schools, says the country is in the grip of a “national attention deficit syndrome” because children spend so much time plugged into screen-based entertainment.
In a speech today, he will warn that children are now unable to concentrate “for more than the shortest of periods”.
The decline is being fuelled by a breakdown in traditional family units, with children expending large amounts of energy being pulled between divorced parents, he says.
Mr Boddy, headmaster of St James Senior Boys’ School in Ashford, Surrey, also claims that pupils are losing the art of “proper concentrated conversation” because they are so used to communicating with friends via Facebook.
Speaking to the association’s annual conference, he will call on private schools to focus on a number of key priorities needed to improve the education system over the next 20 or 30 years, including “cultivating every child’s powers of concentration”.
He will tell the conference, which will be attended by the Princess Royal, that schools should focus on developing pupils’ creativity and emotional awareness instead of a “narrow” emphasis on improving exam results.
The comments follow those made by on Sunday by Richard Harman, the headmaster of Uppingham and chairman of the Boarding Schools Association, who claimed that teachers and parents risked causing damage to children’s long-term development by hothousing them to pass tests at a young age.
Mr Boddy, a former journalist, who acted as Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary between 1979 and 1983, claims that Britain’s independent schools are among the best in the world.
He warns that this breeds the “politics of envy” in those parents who want the best education for their children but cannot afford the fees.
But addressing the society’s conference in south Wales, he will claim that schools need to use their independence to respond to a series of challenges facing the modern education system, including combating the influence of modern technology and family breakdown.
“Every teacher knows this: the real crisis in education today is the inability of children to concentrate for more than the shortest of periods,” he says.
“There is a national attention deficit syndrome and it is by no means limited to medicated children, of whom there are far too many. We need to understand why this is.
“What part does being perpetually plugged into iPods and the like play in this? What part does family becoming dysfunctional play in this?
“What part does endless hours of screen-watching play in this? What part does not learning how to write with a pen play in this?”
Mr Boddy suggests that children are also struggling to make face-to-face conversation with their peers because of the influence of social networking websites.
“Children think they have friends when Facebook tells them so, but they are losing the art of proper concentrated conversation; they are losing the ability to respond to seeing a need because they are not aware enough that the need is there,” he says.
In his speech, he warns that schools have to focus on much more than exam preparation.
Mr Boddy says heads must take action to “ensure that we do not have to say sorry to a generation of young people; to apologise to them in 20 or 30 years from now that we did not meet their needs because our outlook was too narrow and too short-sighted”.
“What part have we played in allowing the idea that only academic success is a measure of human capability?” he says. “That a definition of a ‘good’ school is one that rises to the top of exam league tables and the definition of a ‘bright’ pupil is one that gets A* grades?”
Mammograms are in the news again, and it doesn’t look good for those who continue to advocate using them to “detect cancer early” in asymptomatic populations. The science increasingly runs directly counter to the screening guidelines produced by both governmental and nongovernmental health organizations claiming to be advocates for women’s health.
Remember that only last November, the New England Journal of Medicine published a shocking analysis of the past 30 years of breast screening in the US, finding that 1.3 million women were overdiagnosed and overtreated for breast cancer – euphemisms for misdiagnosed and mistreated.
This finding, released cunningly from scientific embargo to the media on the eve of Thanksgiving, was so devastating in its implications that many either did not understand its meaning, or could not bear to accept the truth that the quarter of a century clarion call of breast cancer awareness month – get your annual mammogram or lose your life! – caused more unnecessary suffering, pain and harm to women than it is possible to calculate. The only calculable dimension of this world-historical failure is the billions of dollars that were made in the process of converting healthy, asymptomatic women into “patients”, and if fortunate enough to make it through treatment, “survivors”.
Now, a new study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, finds that those women who follow the American Cancer Society’s guidelines for the early detection of breast cancer, namely, annual screening for women 40 or older, are not only receiving no additional protection against aggressive breast cancer, but are experiencing greater harm through increased rates of false positives and unnecessary biopsies.
Researchers examined the records of over 140,000 women ages 66 to 89 who had mammograms between 1999 and 2006. They found that women who had more frequent mammograms (every year versus every two years) did not have a reduced risk of being diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, as would be expected if mammograms actually were working to “find deadly breast cancer early” as widely claimed. Even after researchers adjusted for confounding factors such as age, place of residence and race, they found no benefit to more frequent screenings.
More concerning, the researchers found that the more times women were screened the greater their odds of getting “false positives” on mammograms. As reported by the LA Times:
For example, among women between the ages of 66 and 74 who already had health problems, 48% of those who had annual mammograms had at least one false-positive reading during a 10-year period. But among those who were screened every other year, only 29% had a false-positive result.
And among women between the ages of 75 and 89 with preexisting health problems, 48.4% of those screened every year had at least one false-positive reading during a 10-year span, compared with only 27.4% of those who had less frequent tests.“
The LA Times article went on to estimate that if all American women between 66-89 had annual mammograms instead of biannual ones, this would result in 3.86 million more false-positives and 1.15 million more recommendations for biopsies.
These statistics obviously do not account for how many of these over-diagnosed and over-biopsied women in this study ended up being unnecessarily treated for abnormal breast findings such asductal carcinoma in situ, which would never have progressed to cause them harm. It does however, show just how dangerous and inaccurate breast mammography can be.
Another “invisible” problem is the fact that the so-called “low-energy” radiation wavelengths used in breast mammography are far more carcinogenic than “high energy” waves to which they are compared. This means that x-ray mammography is planting the seeds of future radiation-induced breast cancer into millions of women, all in the name of “prevention” and “awareness.”
The time has come for folks to look deeper into the true causes of cancer, as well as the research indicating that natural breast cancer solutions (many of which are empirically-confirmed) abound.
It is widely know amongst well researched individuals that cell phones emit radiation.
However, the FCC and the US Government continue to do everything in their power to not let this issue come to light by claiming tests are flawed (therefore we don’t know the truth).
ABC reports: A government test used to measure the radiation people absorb from their cellphones might underestimate the levels to which most adults and children are exposed, according to a group of doctors and researchers whose stated mission is to promote awareness of environmental health risks they believe may be linked to cancer.
Researchers from the Environmental Health Trust released a report this morning noting that the Federal Communications Commission test to determine radiation exposure is flawed.
The reason for the discrepancy, the group says, is that the process to determine radiation exposure from cellphones involves the use of a mannequin model that they say approximates a 6-foot-2, 220-pound person. Because the model represents only about 3 percent of the population, the authors report, the test will not accurately predict the radiation exposure of the other 97 percent of the population, including children. The group is pushing for a new testing system to measure radiation exposure in a wider range of consumers.
“The standard for cellphones has been developed based on old science and old models and old assumptions about how we use cellphones, and that’s why they need to change,” said Dr. Devra Davis, former senior adviser in the Department of Health and Human Services under the Clinton administration and one of the report’s authors.
Apparently the government of India gets it. India is issuing a mandatory requirement to cell phone manufactures requiring them to document the dangers of radiation emissions from mobile devices.
A ZD Net article reports: The debate on whether cell phones and cell towers are injurious to health has no decisive winner. The companies say it’s all good; the skeptics say these companies have deep pockets that make it appear all good. The role of a government in this discussion therefore becomes more important and the Indian government has decided not to sit quiet on this topic. The government has directed cell phone manufacturers to display radiation information on the cell phones.
Earlier this year, the government came out strong on the topic of cell phone radiation and instructed all phone manufacturers to limit the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) to 1.6 Watt/Kg. SAR is the rate at which a human body absorbs energy due to an electromagnetic field. The rate set by the government of India is 1.6 Watt/Kg per 1 g of human tissue. The Federal Communications Commission in the US has prescribed the same levels for cell phone manufacturers in the US; the EU, however, is different.The new SAR levels will be in effect starting September of this year and OEMs are expected to have the SAR mentioned on the handsets going forward. The rule applies to all handsets sold in India irrespective of where they are manufactured.
A new line of energy bars are being marketed on the health benefits of their most unusual ingredient – crickets.
The bars are produced by Chapul, a Salt Lake City-based company, which claims that using insects reduces the amount of fat in their bars.
Chapul claims that while both cows and insects are 57 percent protein, cows are 43 percent fats, while insects are just 22 percent fats.
‘It basically means that insects have similar protein contents to livestock, but are healthier because they have less fat,’ said Chapul founder Pat Crowley.
Insects are a common element of diets throughout the world. Some 80 percent of the world’s population intentionally eats 1,700 species of insects for food including bee larvae in Japan and grasshoppers in Mexico.
Now Crowley believes the time is right to convince mainstream America that insects should become part of their diet too.
The crickets in Chapul’s energy bars are ground into the flour used to make them and so there are no legs, claws or antennae present to put off squeamish American tastes.
‘We thought the people who would be most receptive are environmentally conscious and food conscious people who already eat healthy products and energy bars,’ he told ABC.
Crowley likens current American attitudes to eating insects as similar to how people were repulsed by the idea of eating raw fish before sushi became extremely popular.
However many Americans will be shocked to learn that they already consume lots of things such as rice, beans and floor that have traces of insects in them.
The Food and Drug Administration allows all kinds of 'insect fragments' in food - up to 60 per 100 grams of chocolate, 30 per 100 grams of peanut butter, and up to 10 whole insects per 8 ounce of raisins.
The Chapul Bars - it means cricket or grasshopper in Aztec - are sold for about $3 in 30 locally-owned stores in 12 states, and Crowley expects to double the retail locations in the near future.
There are currently two flavors - the Chaco bar (peanut butter and chocolate) and Thai bar (coconut, ginger and lime), but that is expected to double also.
Seattle’s ban on plastic bags may be good for the planet, but some local store owners say it has proven catastrophic for their bottom line.
Mike Duke, who runs the Lake City Grocery Outlet grocery store, said that since the City Council unanimously passed the ban last July, he has lost at least $5,000 in shoplifted produce and between $3,000-$4,000 in swiped frozen food.
‘We’ve never lost that much before,’ Duke told KBOI News.
Besides outlawing the use of plastic bags, businesses in Seattle are also required to charge a nickel for paper bags in order to encourage consumers to use the more environmentally friendly reusable bags.
But according to Duke, the 'green' canvas totes make it much harder for loss-prevention officers to detect what the customers have purchased and what they may have brought with them, which inevitably gives rise to shoplifting, SeattlePI.com reported.
According to data released in January by Seattle Public Utilities, more than 21 per cent of business owners surveyed said increased shoplifting because of the plastic bag ban has become a problem.
Eight per cent of the responders called shoplifting a 'big' problem, while about six per cent said it was a 'medium' or 'small' problem.
‘Across the United States we have seen these bag bans, and the shoplifting has always had a substantial leap,’ Jan Gee, president of the Washington Food Industry Association, said to KBOI, ‘and so it was not a surprise to us.’
However, results of another survey conducted by an environmental advocacy group that same month found the ban 'popular and successful,' and had no mention of a spike in shoplifting.
The Lake City grocery store operator said that another negative side effect of the plastic-bag ban is an increase in the number of hand baskets lifted from the supermarket to the tune of thousands of dollars.
Shoplifters would load up their baskets with groceries - both stolen and purchased - and walk out of the store, Duke said.
In a desperate bid to stop the rampant shoplifting, the owner attempted to get rid of the hand baskets, but his customers were not happy with the move.
But loss of revenue due to shoplifting is not the only problem that has been linked to the ban.
According to a study released last summer, the bag ban coincided with a jump in the number of E. coli cases and a spike in deaths caused by food-borne illnesses.
Another study published in 2011 found E. coli in eight per cent of all reusable bags from randomly selected individuals in California and Arizona stores.
Washing the bags eliminated nearly all of the harmful bacteria, but evidence presented in the paper suggested that not all consumers bother to do it.
RT
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