Vitamin B6, naturally present in a variety of foods, is necessary for proper nerve function, protein synthesis, regulating blood sugar, and producing antibodies and hemoglobin. In other words, it’s pretty important stuff. But, while many people get their B6 through supplements, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is looking to make things a lot more difficult—by slowly taking all forms of B6 supplements off the market so Big Pharma can make millions off of prescriptions instead.
According to the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH), the FDA has already begun their crusade. They removed Pyridoxamine (a natural form of B6) supplements from the market at the request of BioStratum, a pharmaceutical company. Why? Because BioStratum thinks it might be nice to use Pyrdoxamine in a prescription drug. They haven’t developed the drug, we don’t know what it is, and who knows when it will come to fruition, but the FDA honored a request from the big corporation to protect the company’s interest.
Now, the FDA is poised to pull another B6 product: P5P.
You see, the human body must convert B6 to P5P to make it usable within the body. Fortunately, some supplement companies have created P5P and it is currently available as a natural supplement. But, another pharmaceutical giant has petitioned the FDA to “protect its interests”.
Medicure Pharma would like all P5P removed from the supplement market so they can begin to work on a drug containing the crucial form of B6. In their petition, they state:
“Pharmaceutical companies developing new drugs must be protected from companies that may seek to market the ingredients in those drugs as dietary supplements. The marketing of such products has the potential to undermine the incentive for the development of new drugs because many people may choose to purchase the supplements rather than the drugs.”
So, that basically sums it up. In order to protect the money-grabbing interests of this company, at whatever risk to the health of the general public, the federal government should step in and take the supplements out. I suppose that line of thought makes sense if you are a top official with Medicure Pharma.
But, the FDA has not yet honored the ANH’s petition yet concerning the B6 supplements. And while the FDA doesn’t always care what is in the best interest of the people, we hope that by joining the ANH, we can make our voices heard.
You can help. Contact the FDA and Congress today and let them know that not all consumers are interested in drugs over supplements. You can find a petition here on the Alliance for Natural Health’s website.
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Two other equally upsetting cases come to mind. Through examining and following the FDA’s decisions, anyone can see that the organization continuously pushes pharmaceutical drugs while censoring health food and supplements and their ability to heal. Such is the case with a company known as Fleminger, Inc. and their green tea product, where the FDA threatened to seize Fleminger Inc.’s products, in addition to making them completely change their claim statement. The company claimed green tea reduces the risk of breast and prostate cancer, so the FDA insisted they use the claim:
“Green tea may reduce the risk of breast or prostate cancer. FDA does not agree that green tea may reduce the risk because there is very little scientific evidence for the claim.”
In another situation, claims made by Diamond Foods that omega-3′s found in walnuts produce health benefits make their walnuts “drugs”. As far as the FDA is concerned, these “drugs” can not be legally marketed in the United States without an approved new drug application.
Over many years, the media and corporations have mounted a concerted effort to demean religious faith and to portray certain religious groups as dangerous to modern society. Darwin and evolution are often the means, pitting "modern science" against "religious dogma."
The problem is that "science" has become the pawn of the corporations. People are recognizing that very keenly as they watch the endless lies by Monsanto about genetically engineered food be exposed.
A recent Stanford "study," blasted all over the country by media, purporting to show that organic food is no different from pesticide-ridden crops, is a prime example, with only a bit of investigating revealing that the person behind the study had once done bogus studies for the Tobacco Industry as well. The study is so loose with reality that it even says agribusiness "slows pace of global warming" even though agribusiness's seeds (and the pharmaceutical industries vaccines and pills) are based on petrochemicals, central to driving global warming.
Science is being cavalierly twisted by the corporations and media, and in a direction that is anti-life. One of the most important protections people have against such falsehoods is, ironically, religious belief.
That belief is meant to be based on conscience and morality. It was the truth-filled, loving force that rid India of the British Empire. It was a strong force against the Vietnam War as priests were willing to go to jail to stop it. It is a force in Burma where Buddhist monks have stood against a repressive government. It is a force in Tibet now as monks have burned themselves to death in response to the totalitarian Chinese rule attempting to stamp out religious life there. There has been a demonization of those opposed to abortion, but has anyone stopped to think what it would mean for this culture to be fine with killing fetuses, not faced with the moral questions raised by those arguing we have no right to take a life?
Right now, true concern for health is being ignored by the WHO, which has turned its back on 47,500 children paralyzed by Bill Gates' polio campaign in India as well as children damaged or killed in Pakistan. The WHO, the World Bank and Gates are using media to tell the world that the vaccines are eliminating polio, when in fact the scientific community has known for 10 years that it can never be eliminated now that the biotech industry has synthesized the virus (which is twice as deadly as wild polio). Corporate media is a means to seek funds to continue this catastrophe, even suggesting American women personally participate, and to hide from the world that, in fact, polio is being systematically spread across Asia and Africa.
When imams in Africa or groups in Asia object to vaccines, worried that children are being crippled and dying, media is used to assault them for being anti-science, anti-progress, and often imply religious stupidity. Yet it was a religious group that exposed the reality of tetanus vaccines being used to sterilize people.
Americans are aware that the country is being plundered - losing its homes, its jobs, its farms, its access to real food, its economy, its rights - by politicians and corporations both operating without moral values. Americans' bodies are also under assault. If those bodies can be made ill, they become the source, over a lifetime of sickness, of a fortune for corporations selling vaccines.
This is another form of the Idiot Cycle, in which the companies which sicken people with their toxins then provide the "medicines" to treat those illnesses.
Religious belief is a sizable roadblock to such power, and when it comes to vaccines, it is precisely moral commitment to the life of children and of their community that has stood in the way. That morality often (though not solely) comes from religious belief.
In that context, it is vital to note what is occurring in the US in terms of efforts to undermine religious rights.
The religious exemption to vaccination is now under heavy attack across the country. In the video below, Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), discusses this important exemption, and why it's so vital we defend our right to opt out of vaccinations for medical, religious, or conscientious belief reasons.
All Americans need to know their options for legally opting-out of vaccinations, and you also need to know why it's so important to protect this legal option, whether you choose to use every federally recommended vaccine for yourself and your children or not.
The Nuremberg Code was established after the Holocaust to prevent the pharmaceutical industry from ever again forcing "medical procedures" on people against their wil. It is this defense against such industry power that is under attack. Without exemptions, people would be forced to submit their children to vaccines (and perhaps submit themselves if laws are written to include adults). As it is becoming clear the vaccines are actually causing diseases, people are also recognizing that there is profit in diseases (the article is by a Jewish cardiologist).
People, faced with the thought that vaccines may not in fact be the saving miracle of modern medicine, often fall back on what they have been told about the polio and smallpox vaccines as evidence of people's lives being saved. Polio and smallpox are the big threats that leave people vulnerable to doing whatever the government says if thet announce an outbreak of some infectious disease. Yet what we were told about the polio vaccine is as false as what we have been told about the Smallpox vaccine. We have been fed fear on a steady basis so the public will be willing to submit to whatever "solution" is suggested.
West Nile virus is the latest such scare, with people being told it's incurable and that spraying of toxic chemicals to kill mosquitoes must be done. Yet West Nile virus has never even been isolated and may actually be a collections of symptoms related to toxins (in which case spraying more is an even more terrible idea that people know it already is), and there is cure but it has been suppressed (as was an easy cure for polio).
(In fact, there is a proven cure for over 70 infectious diseases - meningitis, anthrax, hepatitis, dengue, West Nile, polio, swine flu, etc. See this video), making vaccines obsolete, even if they weren't dangerous.)
What if a Smallpox outbreak (or any other disease) were announced and the CDC said everyone must get the vaccine? Here is where religious exemptions become vital as a means to refuse, for the CDC has admitted the small pox vaccine caused Smallpox. And in addition, the CDC has admitted the vaccine causes heart problems and warns people should not get it if (quote):
You have been told by a doctor that you have high blood pressure.
You have been told by a doctor that you have high blood cholesterol.
You have been told by a doctor that you have diabetes or high blood sugar.
You have a first degree relative (for example mother, father, brother, or sister) who had a heart condition before the age of 50.
Powerful governments have a long history of undermining religious belief. In its quiet way, such beliefs stand against power and support the moral life and spiritual grounding of human beings. "Science" captured by corporations has been used to demean religious belief. Those same corporations have used media to promote vaccines, to cover up crippling and deaths, and to suppress actual cures. So human thoughts based on moral beliefs are vital protection for life. The assault on religious exemptions for vaccines is meant to remove morality as a roadblock to profits.
Just as morality in general is critical to maintain and even to expand, so too are religious exemptions. Some people may use such exemptions to say "No" to vaccines because they believe they violate a deeply held religious conviction that the body is a blessed gift from God and may not be intruded on by a government. Some may say "No" to being experimented on based on a historical awareness that the pharmaceutical industry worked to develop a means to sterilize people at doctor's appointments without their knowing. Others may fight for religious exemption because they see the Nuremberg Code as a phoenix rising out of the Holocaust and believe it is their religious obligation to protect it ("the informed consent" of religious exemptions) as part of "Never again." Other may from religious conviction object to the immorality of an industry generating "diseases for profits."
Whatever the moral conviction, religious exemptions to vaccines are a spiritual counterbalance to power and profit, and in that, they are essential to all Americans.
Abby Goodnough of The New York Times is reporting as the California state government is setting up its ObamaCare exchange, the exchange has hired a PR firm (with federal government money).
"Realizing that much of the battle will be in the public relations realm, the exchange has poured significant resources into a detailed marketing plan — developed not by state health bureaucrats but by the global marketing powerhouse Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, which has an initial $900,000 contract with the exchange," she wrote. Ogilvy's plan is to tap major network TV shows like "Grey's Anatomy" and "Modern Family" to sell Americans on the health care law:
Hollywood, an industry whose major players have been supportive of President Obama and his agenda, will be tapped. Plans are being discussed to pitch a reality television show about “the trials and tribulations of families living without medical coverage,” according to the Ogilvy plan. The exchange will also seek to have prime-time television shows, like “Modern Family,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and Univision telenovelas, weave the health care law into their plots. “I’d like to see 10 of the major TV shows, or telenovelas, have people talking about ‘that health insurance thing,’ ” said Peter V. Lee, the exchange’s executive director. “There are good story lines here.” Although the exchange will not start advertising until next year, the California Endowment, a foundation that has spent $15 million promoting the law, is running newspaper and television ads, including one in which the television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz exhorts viewers to “get educated, get engaged, get enrolled.” That campaign has targeted Hispanics, who make up more than half of the state’s uninsured population.
Goodnough added "The exchange itself has so far been financed by three grants, worth $237 million, from the federal government. Most of the money is committed to consultants, including Accenture, which has a $327 million contract to build and support the initial operation of the enrollment portal."
Remember that the liberal media was furious that the federal government would promote the war in Iraq inside Iraq, and furious that the Department of Education would hire PR flacks like Armstrong Williams to talk up Bush education programs on cable news. So where is their outrage at the idea that federal grants would promote ObamaCare advertising inside network TV entertainment programs?
Abstract: The health effects of a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize (from 11% in the diet), cultivated with or without Roundup, and Roundup alone (from 0.1 ppb in water), were studied 2 years in rats. In females, all treated groups died 2–3 times more than controls, and more rapidly.
Women who possess the BRCA gene, the mutations of which are linked to so-called hereditary breast and ovarian cancers, may be particularly susceptible to the deleterious effects of ionizing radiation, suggests a fresh analysis of earlier research on the subject. According to the fresh data, women with BRCA who are exposed to diagnostic scans that emit ionizing radiation -- this includes naked body scanners at the airport -- have a significantly heightened risk of developing cancer.
Dr. Flora E. van Leeuwen, Ph.D., from the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NCI) in Amsterdam and her colleagues evaluated a series of data on cancer rates with respect to diagnostic scans like mammograms that blast women's chests with ionizing radiation, and found that any diagnostic use of radiation before age 30 increases breast cancer risk by 90 percent among carriers of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations.
Published online in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the research also revealed that any history of mammography prior to age 30 increases cancer risk by about 43 percent. And if all women who are BRCA carriers underwent even just one mammogram before age 30, the overall number who end up developing breast cancer by age 40 would jump from nine to 14 out of every 100.
"The results support the use of non-ionizing radiation imaging techniques (such as MRI) for surveillance in young women with BRCA1/2 mutations," wrote the authors in their conclusion, affirming what earlier studies have found linking mammograms, CT scans, and other radiation-based diagnostic scans to cancer.
TSA naked body scanners are a serious cancer threat to BRCA gene carriers
What the study also suggests is that the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA)'s naked body scanners are also a serious cancer threat, particularly among young women with the BRCA gene. The TSA's backscatter version of its naked body scanner blasts a narrow beam of high-intensity radiation at travelers' bodies, which is "absorbed almost entirely by the skin and tissue directly under the skin," according to WeWontFly.com.
Since young children are routinely sent through such machines as part of the TSA's digital strip search procedure, this is highly alarming, particularly for young women with the BRCA gene. Since no credible safety testing has ever been conducted on the TSA's backscatter machines, including any legitimate measure of how much radiation is actually absorbed by travelers that pass through them, there is no way to know the cumulative effects of exposure.
We do know; however, that the type of radiation emitted by backscatter naked body scanners is the same type emitted during mammography and CT scans, and potentially even in the same or higher doses. For this reason, naked body scanners are very likely just as risky for women with the BRCA gene as are diagnostic scans, which means they should be avoided at all costs.
Researchers at NYU School of Medicine have revealed a significant association between obesity and children and adolescents with higher concentrations of urinary bisphenol A (BPA), a synthetic chemical recently banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from sippy cups and baby bottles. Still, the chemical continues to be used in aluminum cans, such as those containing soda.
The study appears in the September 19 issue of JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), dedicated to the theme of obesity.
“This is the first association of an environmental chemical in childhood obesity in a large, nationally representative sample,” said lead investigator Leonardo Trasande, MD, MPP, associate professor of pediatrics and environmental medicine. “Our findings further demonstrate the need for a broader paradigm in the way we think about the obesity epidemic. Unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity certainly contribute to increased fat mass, but the story clearly doesn’t end there.”
BPA, a low-grade estrogen, was until recently found in plastic bottles labeled with the number 7 recycling symbol, and is still used as an internal coating for aluminum cans. Manufacturers say it provides an antiseptic function, but studies have shown the chemical disrupts multiple mechanisms of human metabolism that may increase body mass. BPA exposure has also been associated with cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, prostate cancer, neurological disorders, diabetes and infertility.
“In the U.S. population, exposure [to BPA] is nearly ubiquitous, with 92.6 percent of persons 6 years or older identified in the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) as having detectable BPA levels in their urine. A comprehensive, cross-sectional study of dust, indoor and outdoor air, and solid and liquid food in preschool-aged children suggested that dietary sources constitute 99 percent of BPA exposure,” the investigators wrote.
Using a sample of nearly 3,000 children and adolescents, ages 6 through 19 years, randomly selected for measurement of urinary BPA concentration in the 2003-2008 NHANES, Dr. Trasande and his co-authors, Jan Blustein, MD, PhD, and Teresa Attina, MD, PhD, MPH, examined associations between urinary BPA concentrations and body mass.
After controlling for race/ethnicity, age, caregiver education, poverty to income ratio, sex, serum cotinine level, caloric intake, television watching, and urinary creatinine level, the researchers found children with the highest levels of urinary BPA had 2.6 times higher odds of being obese than those with the lowest measures of urinary BPA. Among the participants with the highest levels, 22.3 percent were obese compared with 10.3 percent of the participants with the lowest levels.
Further analyses showed this association to be statistically significant in only one racial subpopulation, white children and adolescents. The researchers also found that obesity was not associated with exposure to other environmental phenols commonly used in other consumer products, such as sunscreens and soaps.
“Most people agree the majority of BPA exposure in the United States comes from aluminum cans,” Dr. Trasande said. “This data adds to already existing concerns about BPA and further supports the call to limit exposure of BPA in this country, especially in children. Removing it from aluminum cans is probably one of the best ways we can limit exposure. There are alternatives that manufacturers can use to line aluminum cans.”
The researchers wrote in their study that advocates and policy makers have long been concerned about BPA exposure. “We note the recent FDA ban of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups, yet our findings raise questions about exposure to BPA in consumer products used by older children. Last year, the FDA declined to ban BPA in aluminum cans and other food packaging, announcing ‘reasonable steps to reduce human exposure to BPA in the human food supply’ and noting that it will continue to consider evidence on the safety of the chemical. Carefully conducted longitudinal studies that assess the associations identified here will yield evidence many years in the future.”
Promotion of GM mosquitoes as a way to tackle a tropical disease is simply part of a PR strategy intended to pave the way to a new global business selling GM agricultural pests, says Helen Wallace
In November 2010, Oxford University spin-out company Oxitec announced it had released 3 million genetically modified (GM) male mosquitoes in the Cayman Islands. Shock and surprise was muted by enthusiastic press coverage of its claims to have reduced the wild population of the Aedes aegypti species of mosquitoes by 80 per cent. This is one of two species of mosquito that can transmit the tropical disease dengue fever. In January 2011, the company submitted its results to the journal Science. This week – two years after completing the experiments – the findings have finally been published as Correspondence to the Editor of journal Nature Biotechnology.
Oxitec reports several different estimates of the temporary reduction in the wild population of mosquitoes, ranging from 60 per cent to 85 per cent. There is no baseline data on mosquito populations at the site. At different times, Oxitec moved mosquito traps from one location to another and changed the size of the release site. It is unstandable then that a succession of peer reviewers have rejected its results.
To achieve the claimed effect, Oxitec had to significantly increase the number of adult GM mosquitoes it released each week and focus on a 500m by 200m area where it added GM pupae at locations spaced 70 to 90m apart. The release ratio of 25 GM mosquitoes to one wild one means that adult GM males are very inefficient at finding and mating with wild females. Preliminary unpublished results from Brazil are even worse: a release ratio of 54 was needed. The well-established public health approach of removing the flower pots and water containers where mosquitoes breed is likely to be more effective and has the added benefit of reducing both mosquito species that spread dengue, not just one of them.
Ethical standards in the paper are as poor as scientific ones. Oxitec failed to send the required risk assessment which meets European standards to the EU and UK authorities before exporting GM mosquito eggs to the Cayman Islands. Informed consent is not possible without a published risk assessment, which did not exist. Scientists, as well as environmental groups, have criticised the company for conducting its first experiments in a British Overseas territory which has no biosafety law, and for not meeting these legal and ethical requirements.
Oxitec’s GM mosquitoes are not “sterile”: they mate with wild mosquitoes and produce offspring which survive to the late larval or pupal stage. Some 3-4 per cent of these survive to adulthood and this can rise to 15% in the presence of the common antibiotic tetracycline: information which Oxitec tried to conceal from public scrutiny. When Oxitec was forced to release a risk assessment, following the trials, scientists from the Max Planck Institute published a critique arguing that the risk of releasing GM biting females, and the survival of GM mosquito offspring, should have been properly considered.
It is hard to justify planned commercial releases based on these results. Poorly effective approaches to reducing mosquito populations can actually increase the risk of the more severe form of dengue in dengue-endemic countries (such as Brazil), due to the loss of cross-immunity to different dengue virus serotypes. Other risks include a possible increase in the numbers of the Asian Tiger mosquito, which also transmits dengue; and increases in the number of surviving GM mosquitoes over time.
Back in 2010, Oxitec’s exaggerated claims that it had a GM solution to the dengue virus were widely reported despite no published results. A Nature News blog even stated that the company had wiped-out the disease although dengue is not endemic in the Cayman Islands and no tests have ever been conducted of the impacts on the illness. The effect of suppressing mosquito populations on the incidence of dengue is poorly understood and may be very limited. Plans to scale-up releases of GM mosquitoes in Brazil to 2.5 million a week may still go ahead regardless, following a 2007 agreement between the Brazilian and UK governments. UK Trade and Investment is targeting developing countries as potential markets to help Oxitec commercialise its patents, and helping Brazil to secure venture capital investment. Experiments are also planned in Florida and Panama.
Oxitec’s funders include the multinational pesticide and GM seed company Syngenta. Most of its management team and consultants are ex-Syngenta staff. Promotion of GM mosquitoes as a way to tackle a tropical disease is part of a PR strategy intended to pave the way to a new global business selling GM agricultural pests. GM olive flies, tomato borers, diamond back moths (which eat cabbages and broccoli), fruit flies and pink bollworms (cotton pests) will be just the start. Other ideas for the future include GM pesticide-resistant bees.
Oxitec’s GM insects could soon end up in your food. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)’s new Guidance on risk assessments for GM animals could be adopted as early as December, opening the door for large-scale commercial releases of GM insects in the EU. Oxitec has indicated that it wishes dead and surviving GM larvae, pupae and adult insects on food crops to be treated as “technically unavoidable”: allowing them to enter the food chain without any labelling. If used commercially, many GM pests will die as larvae inside olives and tomatoes, as well as on the outside of some other crops. Ecosystem impacts are poorly understood and surviving GM pests could spread across national borders and into sensitive environments and organic crops.
Concerned individuals should - urgently - be thinking about contacting their MPs and MEPs and writing to supermarkets to ask them not to stock such products.
