MONSANTO'S MINIONS: The White House, Congress, and the Mass Media

Hamlet Act 1, Scene 4
Marcellus:
'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark'

There's a reason he says "state of Denmark" rather than just Denmark: the fish is rotting from the head down—all is not well at the top of the political hierarchy. Fast forward a few hundred years and substitute USA for Denmark.

For those readers interested in the close links between President Obama, his administration and Monsanto the following paras give the details - at http://www.naturalnews.com/031263_Monsanto_organic_consumers.html.

The United States is rapidly devolving into what can only be described as a Monsanto Nation. Despite Barack Obama (and Hillary Clinton's) campaign operatives in 2008 publicly stating that Obama supported mandatory labels for GMOs, we haven't heard a word from the White House on this topic since Inauguration Day. Michele Obama broke ground for an organic garden at the White House in early 2009, but after protests from the pesticide and biotech industry, the forbidden "O" (organic) word was dropped from White House PR. Since day one, the Obama Administration has mouthed biotech propaganda, claiming, with no scientific justification whatsoever, that biotech crops can feed the world and enable farmers to increase production in the new era of climate change and extreme weather.

Like Obama's campaign promises to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; like his promises to bring out-of-control banksters and oil companies under control; like his promises to drastically reduce greenhouse gas pollution and create millions of green jobs; Obama has not come though on his 2008 campaign promise to label GMOs. His unilateral approval of Monsanto's genetically engineered alfalfa, overruling the federal courts, scientists, and the organic community, offers the final proof: don't hold your breath for this man to do anything that might offend Monsanto or Corporate America.

Obama's Administration, like the Bush and Clinton Administrations before him, has become a literal "revolving door" for Monsanto operatives. President Obama stated on the campaign trail in 2007-2008 that agribusiness cannot be trusted with the regulatory powers of government.

But, starting with his choice for USDA Secretary, the pro-biotech former governor of Iowa, Tom Vilsack, President Obama has let Monsanto and the biotech industry know they'll have plenty of friends and supporters within his administration. President Obama has taken his team of food and farming leaders directly from the biotech companies and their lobbying, research, and philanthropic arms:

Michael Taylor, former Monsanto Vice President, is now the FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods. Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto-funded Danforth Plant Science Center, is now the director of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Islam Siddiqui, Vice President of the Monsanto and Dupont-funded pesticide-promoting lobbying group, CropLife, is now the Agriculture Negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative. Rajiv Shah former agricultural-development director for the pro-biotech Gates Foundation (a frequent Monsanto partner), served as Obama's USDA Under-Secretary for Research Education and Economics and Chief Scientist and is now head of USAID. Elena Kagan, who, as President Obama's Solicitor General, took Monsanto's side against organic farmers in the Roundup Ready alfalfa case, is now on the Supreme Court. Ramona Romero, corporate counsel to DuPont, has been nominated by President Obama to serve as General Counsel for the USDA.

Of course, America's indentured Congress is no better than the White House when it comes to promoting sane and sustainable public policy. According to Food and Water Watch, Monsanto and the biotech industry have spent more than half a billion dollars ($547 million) lobbying Congress since 1999. Big Biotech's lobby expenditures have accelerated since Obama's election in 2008. In 2009 alone Monsanto and the biotech lobby spent $71 million. Last year Monsanto's minions included over a dozen lobbying firms, as well as their own in-house lobbyists.

America's bought-and-sold mass media have likewise joined the ranks of Monsanto's minions. Do a Google search on a topic like citizens' rights to know whether our food has been genetically engineered or not, or on the hazards of GMOs and their companion pesticide Roundup, and you'll find very little in the mass media. However, do a Google search on the supposed benefits of Monsanto's GMOs, and you'll find more articles in the daily press than you would ever want to read.

Although Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio) recently introduced a bill in Congress calling for mandatory labeling and safety testing for GMOs, don't hold your breath for Congress to take a stand for truth-in-labeling and consumers' right to know what's in their food. In a decade of Congressional lobbying, the OCA has never seen more than 24 out of 435 Congressional Representatives co-sponsor one of Kucinich's GMO labeling bills. Especially since the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the outrageous "Citizens United" case gave big corporations like Monsanto the right to spend unlimited amounts of money (and remain anonymous, as they do so) to buy elections, our chances of passing federal GMO labeling laws against the wishes of Monsanto and Food Inc. are all but non-existent. Keep in mind that one of the decisive Supreme Court swing votes in the "Citizen's United' case was cast by the infamous Justice Clarence Thomas, former General Counsel for Monsanto.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031263_Monsanto_organic_consumers.html#ixzz1eLN1b16S

Sigh! Flu jab... here we go again. Flu Vaccine Rebranding job to make lots more pennies

Consumer products, particularly branded products, need 'refreshing' from time to time to make sure that the client base doesn't forget them or get bored with them. As we all know, a salesman's nightmare is not having any new story to tell those he needs to sell to, to convince them to stock his product. Pharmaceutical drugs are no exception, many of them having the added problem that when their patent period expires generic competitor manufacturers will pile in with a cheaper "me too" version. Sometimes the efficacy of the old product therefore has to be downplayed, or even trashed, to tell a convincing story which will pump up the attractiveness of the new refreshed product. Remember the pronouncement of Dr Allen Roses of GlaxoSmithKline, in Dec 2003 the worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline, who noted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who take them - "The vast majority of drugs – more than 90 per cent – only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people"? This was the scene setting for the new story which was that in future drugs would be designed to target just those patients who can benefit most from each medication (called pharmacogenomics)(The Independent. UK. 8 December 2003). And would there be any accountability for all the years the public purse had shelled out for 'useless' drugs, or for the side effects of drugs given to those they would never have worked on? You can bet your bottom dollar not.

So, when we hear the 'new story' for a 'universal flu jab' in place of the old annual flu jab (see NaturalNews below), why should we not yawn?

First, because the researchers in question seem to have decided to try to steal a message which historically has legitimately been the unique preserve of the natural, 'holistic' healthcare community viz. natural remedies are ultimately better for you because they support the body's immune system, not suppress or fight against it, with natural, not artificial substances. For any vaccine to make the same claim, if, as has been the case to date, it contains a laundry list of primary substances and adjuvants which are basically toxic to the body's immune system, and which will be injected in a place which bypasses much of the body's front-line IgA immune system (nose and mouth through to the gastrointestinal tract), would be hogwash - quite apart from the points that NaturalNews feature story by Ethan Huff makes below.

Secondly, because we have heard something like this before. Remember how the adjuvant squalene was added into swine flu vaccine in Europe to boost the immune response/creation of antibodies and how previously it had been in jabs given to Gulf War soldiers? Squalene as an oil molecule consumed normally would have been no problem for the immune system. But injected it had devastating effects on Gulf War veterans and contributed to the cascade of documented reactions called "Gulf War Syndrome".

The symptoms they developed included arthritis, fibromyalgia, lymphadenopathy, rashes, photosensitive rashes, malar rashes, chronic fatigue, chronic headaches, abnormal body hair loss, non-healing skin lesions, aphthous ulcers, dizziness, weakness, memory loss, seizures, mood changes, neuropsychiatric problems, anti-thyroid effects, anaemia, elevated ESR (erythrocyte sedimentation rate), systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), Raynaud's phenomenon, Sjorgren's syndrome, chronic diarrhoea, night sweats and low-grade fevers.

So, when we hear of another compound which has been found to "stimulate our own (immune) response ...and boost it to fight and infection", what's the betting that it will turn out to be "hogwash with side effects" for the human guinea pigs who participate in this annual experiment?

---------------------------

(NaturalNews) The medical community is in the process of unveiling a "universal" influenza vaccine that it claims will prevent all flu strains with a single jab. The only problem is that, in the process, the system has inadvertently admitted that current flu shots are medically useless because they fail to target the correct flu strain in many cases, and they do not stimulate a natural flu-fighting immune response even when the strain is a match.

A recent report by CBS 11 News in Dallas / Fort Worth explains that researchers from the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas have identified a compound they say spurs the growth of a key protein known as REDD-1, which prevents cells from becoming infected. By injecting this compound into patients, REDD-1 will increase, say the researchers, and thus effectively prevent any strain of flu from taking hold.

But what about current flu vaccines? Dr. Beatrice Fontoura, one of the head researchers involved with the new universal flu shot, explained to CBS 11 that it works differently than current flu shots because it "stimulates our own (immune) response which is already there and boost[s] it to fight an infection."

In other words, flu shots being sold today at pharmacies across the country do not actually promote natural immunity at all, which begs an important question. If current flu shots do not boost the immune response, then what, exactly, are they good for?

Not much, according to a recent study published in The Lancet. Though the mainstream media widely reported that the study's findings showed an effectiveness rate of 60 percent for flu shots, actual data in the study reveal that flu shots help about 1.5 out of every 100 adults. This, of course, translates into a measly 1.5 percent effectiveness rate (http://www.naturalnews.com/033998_i...).

And yet, for years, medical professionals everywhere have been hounding the public to get their flu shots or else face horrific sickness and even death. And those who continue to avoid the flu shot based on concerns about its safety and effectiveness have been routinely dubbed "anti-science," or worse.

Ironically, the CBS 11 piece about the universal flu shot also contains an interview with a woman who admits that she stopped getting the flu shot because it made her sick every single year. Once she stopped getting flu shots, she stopped getting the flu. So why, again, do we even need a universal flu shot?

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/034092_universal_flu_shot_vaccines.html#ixzz1d8oAaOqC

Censorship by any other name! Egged on by the enemies of homeopathy the ASA sails into uncharted waters without a navigator and gets out of its depth!

The Advertising Standards Authority has recently made an Adjudication against parts of a fully referenced New Statesman press release last year by the homeopathic charity, H:MC21 [Homeopathy for the 21st Century] urging integration of homeopathic practitioners into front-line healthcare whilst monitoring both clinical and cost benefits. There are serious concerns both over the manner in which the ASA arrived at its assessment, using discredited sources often quoted by denigrators of homeopathy, and the twisted logic and lack of fairness in the conclusions it arrived at. It took it a staggering 10 months to get there with some clear shifts of goalposts in its challenges of H:MC21 on the way. Its staff seemed hellbent on finding spurious ways of attacking purely factual statements. The outcome flew in the face of commonsense; it is without doubt an unashamed attempt at censorship of facts being published to support the case for an expanded use of homeopathy within the NHS alongside conventional medicine. This is unacceptable in a democratic society which cherishes the principle of freedom of expression1.

Separately the ASA has been attempting with threatening letters to bully a number of individual homeopaths into self-censorship of some of the content of their websites. And at http://asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications/2011/10/Ana-Durning/SHP_ADJ_156642.aspx 
you will also be able to read the ASA’s attack against a qualified herbalist who is stating certain long recorded truths about the benefits of natural herbs such as echinacea, astragalus, goldenseal etc. I have used all these personally on myself. They are part of the wide and very effective range of natural remedies that can often support your immune system sufficiently to enable it to throw off rapidly flu, colds, sore throats, gastro-intestinal problems etc without you having to bother your doctor for chemical drugs and risking the possibility of side effects. They are the remedies every human being has a right to elect to have access to information on, to discuss freely with others on websites or elsewhere, and to be able to purchase at a reasonable price, thereby ensuring that he/she can self-medicate should he/she so wish without accepting blindly the dictates of others.

A bit more about the ASA and its method of operating.

The ASA is a non-statutory body set up and paid for by the advertising industry to regulate advertising. It has no statutory powers to enforce its adjudications. It has only recently extended its activities to websites. We know from what ASA staff have said to H:MC21 and some homeopathic associations that they have inadequate in-house expertise to be able to understand, and accept, that there are significant differences between the homeopathic and conventional medicine paradigms, and the different test methods each of these two medical systems considers most appropriate for testing the effectiveness of its remedies and prescribing procedures. They did not find a suitable external “expert” to advise them in the H:MC21 case. So they defaulted to applying, wrongly, to the H:MC21 case the current mindset of conventional medicine’s controlling clique.

This means that despite the fact that homeopathic medicine is far older than conventional medicine and has been safely practised with much success since the 1800s, and as part of the NHS since 1941, the ASA are unable, or unwilling, to accept that the historical record of homeopathic medicine - two centuries worth of observations, clinical reports and case studies in Europe, the USA and the rest of the world by some of the finest medical minds (fully qualified MDs and other professionals) of their era, including the present - is itself more than sufficient proof for both general and specific statements about its usefulness in treating a very full range of ailments, and certainly to confirm the truth of the statement “Homeopathy has a history of success in chronic illness”. In order for this not to be true i.e. that homeopathy is no more effective than slipping a patient a placebo we would have to assume the greatest case of medical self-delusion across continents and time in the history of science.

References in the text of the ASA adjudication make it clear that their reasoning has been well and truly misinformed by these two things:
1. The very hostile approach taken by the Chairman, Phil Willis, and Dr Evan Harris, both of whom were already wellknown for their extreme anti-homeopathy views, in the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee review which fed through into every paragraph of the Committee Report (Evidence Check 2)3 dated Monday 22nd Feb 2010.
2. The (conventional medicine) notion that the gold standard4 of scientific evidence for their, and hence, in their view, every, medical paradigm is a double blind RCT (randomised controlled trial). As far as we can tell, since they wouldn’t tell H:MC21 (in itself a breach of due process), the ASA justify the upholding of some of the challenges to H:MC21’s statements by reliance on just one flawed meta-analysis in 2005 by Shang et al.

1. Evidence Check 2

As Lord Baldwin of Bewdley, chairman of the House of Lords’ Science and Technology Committee which had carried out a review of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in 2000, commented in a typical British understatement, “The (S&T) Committee however has been less than rigorous in its approach to this evidence. Its choice of witnesses favoured a medical media opponent of homeopathy over a research centre of excellence. It was unwise to rely heavily on the interpretations of one professor of CAM [Ernst], some of whose statements are unsound or in conflict with other statements of his, and who is not without his critics in the worlds of research and academia whose views were given less prominence. The 2005 review by Shang et al has been inaccurately represented as ruling out specific effects of homeopathy, in a summary statement by the Committee that goes beyond present evidence......These limitations make the Committee’s report an unreliable source of evidence about homeopathy”. That is a polite euphemism for saying the conclusions of the report were BS, as 70 MPs also subsequently signalled by supporting the Early Day Motion on 23rd Feb 2010 against the report (extracted at the end of this posting), and as no one reading the report with an open mind could be in any doubt about.

How large and impartial was this socalled Science and Technology Committee?
For the sake of completeness, I would remind the ASA staff and Council in case they overlooked just what a “kangaroo court” lay behind this report and the reason for the follow-up EDM, that the Chairman and Dr Evan Harris were known in advance for their extreme anti-homeopathy views and that out of the THREE MPs who voted for the eventual report (Ian Cawsey, Evan Harris and Doug Naysmith5, now all ex-MPs), two hadn’t even attended the hearings and one of the two was not even a member of the Committee when the hearings were held6! Talk about a stacked deck! See http://www.homeopathyworldcommunity.com/forum/topics/first-they-came-for-the
to understand how blatantly biased the proceedings were and consequently rather irrelevant to a proper consideration of those of H:MC21 statements that have been challenged by homeopathy’s “professional” detractors.

The Government itself followed up in July 2010 when the Secretary of State for Health presented to Parliament the “Government Response to the Science and Technology Committee report 'Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy’ “. Overall, he too was far too polite in responding to the recommendations of the anti-homeopathy Gang of Three MPs, but in doing so he properly stressed the legal requirement under EU directive that patients must have access to the medicinal products of their choice. In his words

“37. Homeopathy has a long tradition in Europe and is a recognised and
widely used system of medicine across the EU. The Government takes
the view that consumers who choose to use homeopathic medicines
should be fully informed about their purpose and assured that standards
of quality and safety are maintained. If homeopathic medicines were not
subject to any kind of regulatory control consumers would not have
access to such information or assurances. Conversely, if regulation was
applied to homeopathic medicines as understood in the context of
conventional pharmaceutical medicines, these products would have to be
withdrawn from the market as medicines. This would constrain
consumer choice and, more importantly, risk the introduction of
unregulated, poor quality and potentially unsafe products on the market
to satisfy consumer demand.
38. The concern to achieve consumer choice while protecting public health is
also reflected at a European level. Thus Recital 9 to Directive
92/73/EEC7 made clear the overall policy position concerning
homeopathic products in the EU: “Whereas, despite considerable
differences in the status of alternative medicines in the Member States,
patients should be allowed access to the medicinal products of their
choice, provided all precautions are taken to ensure the quality and
safety of the said products.”

2. The differences in the two medical paradigms and the relevance of RCT evidence

It has been said that there are two laws of healing –- the law of opposites (allopathy/conventional medicine) and the law of similars (homeopathy).

Conventional medicine is based on the treatment of a diagnosed disease and suppression of its symptoms with material doses of chemicals. Pharma drugs work through the Law of Opposites, eg. antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, anti-convulsants, anti-hypertensives, anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, etc. This can be effective, especially the use of antibiotics for bacterial acutes, but it risks giving the semblance of healing and sometimes plays havoc with the internal ecology of the body, trusting one supposes that the body’s innate immune system is strong enough to come to the rescue. Whatever ... it is a system of medicine for all its faults. Many have benefited from it, though many also have not, and a million Britons are hospitalised by prescription medicines every year, costing the NHS £2 billion8.

Homeopathy is different. It is not suppressive of symptoms. It focuses on triggering the best possible healing reaction from the immune system with the minimum remedy dose (highly diluted and vigorously shaken to ‘energise’ it) after an individualised casetaking of all the symptoms and case history of the patient has identified a remedy known to produce similar symptoms in a healthy person (the law of similars). Importantly, one or more remedies may be prescribed in succession, sometimes in different potencies as symptoms change, and over what may be an extended period.

The mechanics of an RCT based as they are upon the reductionist principle of dividing the whole into ‘parts’ small enough to be measured or monitored in isolation, hence restricting the test to a single remedy, and not taking account of the patient’s overall experience of the treatment being trialled, do not lend themselves well to testing the homeopathic process. For this reason, as well as the very high cost of RCTs, the substantial body of evidence for homeopathy very properly comes from clinical research, from outcome studies9, from cost-effectiveness studies and from empirical evidence (i.e. from practice ‘on the job’). It is therefore truly “evidence based”10. This has been possible because homeopathic remedies won’t kill or damage the patient.

Notwithstanding the above, there are a considerable number of RCTs of individual homeopathic remedies for specific conditions which have been conducted vs placebo11. Of those which came up with conclusive results, more are indeed positive (44%) than negative (7%), as H:MC21 stated; a factual statement which the ASA considered couldn’t be stated, unless accompanied by the information that 49% were (for unexplained reasons) inconclusive.

In the end however the ASA’s hands were over their ears because they wanted only to hear evidence that said that homeopathy was no better than placebo, the corollary to which is that all the people it had helped cure through history had been duped idiots.

The Adjudication says that the ASA had been given “a substantial review of over 100 placebo controlled trials (which) showed no convincing evidence that homeopathy was superior to placebo”. The ASA told H:MC21 about this very late in the investigation and refused to say exactly what review that was (another lack of due process). The only review it could have been was the 2005 Shang et al review which was a meta-analysis which selectively eliminated all but 8 RCTs out of the 110 they started with in order - surprise surprise - to come to a conclusion which would say homeopathy was no better than placebo. Shang et al’s methods and conclusions have - no surprise - since been found to be flawed as HMC21 pointed out [A.L.B.Rutten and C.F.Stolper, ‘THE 2005 meta-analaysis of homeopathy: the importance of post-publication data’, Homeopathy, 97 (2008), 169-177, - “Re-analysis of Shang's post-publication data did not support the conclusion that homeopathy is a placebo effect. The conclusion that homeopathy is, and that conventional is not, a placebo effect was not based on comparative analysis and not justified because of heterogeneity and lack of sensitivity analysis. If we confine ourselves to the predefined hypotheses and the part of the analysis that is indeed comparative, the conclusion should be that quality of homeopathic trials is better than of conventional trials, for all trials (p=0.03) as well as for smaller trials (p=0.003).” and Lüdtke R, Rutten AL , J Clin Epidemiol. 2008 Dec;61(12):1197-204. Epub 2008 Oct 1. “Homeopathy had a significant effect beyond placebo ..... Shang's negative results were mainly influenced by one single trial on preventing muscle soreness in 400 long-distance runners“].

In conclusion, if one was overly suspicious one might suspect that the ASA needed 10 months to find some stretched “interpretations” of the true facts in plain English which H:MC21 had used in its press release (see previous post), which could, just possibly, provide them with an excuse to Uphold some of the challenges which the rather nasty Nightingale Collaboration and fellow travellers had made. Something which would allow them to say, with fingers crossed behind their backs and ignoring the length of their own noses, “we note that you H:MC21 believe that you have provided evidence for certain factual statements known already by millions around the world that e.g. “Homeopathy has a history of success in chronic illness” and that “In Cuba, an integrated approach to healthcare has led to homeopathy being used to enable 2.3 million ... to be cheaply and effectively protected against endemic Leptospirosis”, but we, the ASA, concluded (after referring to the skewed information the kind people at the Nightingale Collaboration gave us) that you hadn’t supplied sufficient evidence.”

“Phew! (sighs of relief). That got us out of a possibly embarrassing position with the companies which help pay ASA salaries and spend such a lot of money on advertising in the UK, and have such close links with important people in government and the medical profession”.

But, hang on a moment fellows. Isn’t what you have said the same as saying "we don’t believe that your metal boat can float because we have seen no convincing evidence" when it has merrily been floating in sight of everyone for over 200 years and the majority of those choosing to be carried by it are very happy with the boat's progress!" And didn’t the homeopathic associations, including one, the BHA,that represents 400+ qualified doctor homeopaths, send you loads of evidence in 2008?

So now we are awaiting The Independent Reviewer’s decision whether to hear H:MC21’s appeal, and, if he does, what he will make of this Big Muddle. Could he indeed decide that what we have here is in fact a clash between two ideologies, and point out to the ASA that the CAP Code specifically states “IV These criteria apply to the Code: ... j. the ASA does not arbitrate between conflicting ideologies.” ?

Whatever the Independent Reviewer says, what we have seen here is an attempt at CENSORSHIP, which incidentally if allowed to pass through would be a considerable assistance to one medical paradigm - conventional medicine - which already has a near monopoly within the UK, enjoys well over 99% of the funds available from H.M Government for healthcare, and wants the remaining percent, and no competition, please - regardless of some of their taxpayer patients' wishes. Time for the OFT to step forward. And, on judicial review if it comes to that one trusts the ASA will get another heavy ruler on the knuckles. 11




Early Day Motion
EDM 908
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE REPORT ON HOMEOPATHY
23.02.2010

Tredinnick, David


That this House expresses concern at the conclusions of the Science and Technology Committee's Report, Evidence Check on Homeopathy; notes that the Committee took only oral evidence from a limited number of witnesses, including known critics of homeopathy Tracy Brown, the Managing Director of Sense About Science, and journalist Dr Ben Goldacre, who have no expertise in the subject; believes that evidence should have been heard from primary care trusts that commission homeopathy, doctors who use it in a primary care setting, and other relevant organisations, such as the Society of Homeopaths, to provide balance; observes that the Committee did not consider evidence from abroad from countries such as France and Germany, where provision of homeopathy is far more widespread than in the UK, or from India, where it is part of the health service; regrets that the Committee ignored the 74 randomised controlled trials comparing homeopathy with placebo, of which 63 showed homeopathic treatments were effective, and that the Committee recommends no further research; further notes that 206 hon.Members signed Early Day Motion No. 1240 in support of NHS homeopathic hospitals in Session 2006-07; and calls on the Government to maintain its policy of allowing decision-making on individual clinical interventions, including homeopathy, to remain in the hands of local NHS service providers and practitioners who are best placed to know their community's needs.

1 For another recent case involving Freedom of Expression which the ASA lost at judicial review see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-12818480 . Art 10 European Convention on Human Rights: Judge Treacy - “Article 10 protects not only the content and substance of information but also the means of dissemination since any restriction on the means necessarily interferes with the right to receive and impart information.”
2 The Adjudication mentions this report as having been “noted” by the ASA, in a paragraph headed Assessment, which precedes their findings on each challenged statement, which makes it clear that the “noted” is code for “we believed the S&TC report and not HMC21‘s evidence”
3 Sir Michael Rawlins (Chair of NICE and no supporter of homeopathy/CAM) pointed out - Harveian Oration 2009,
"RCTs, long regarded as the 'gold standard' of evidence, have been put on an undeserved pedestal. Their appearance at the top of hierarchies of evidence is inappropriate; and hierarchies are illusory tools for assessing evidence. They should be replaced by a diversity of approaches that involve analysing the totality of the evidence base."
4 in an earlier life an immunologist at Beecham Laboratories. Later a researcher at Edinburgh and Bristol Universities.
5 http://vonsyhomeopathy.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/stop-funding-nhs-homeopathy-mps-urge-who-are-these-mps/#more-293
6 http://eurex.europa.eu/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexplus!prod!CELEXnumdoc&numdoc=392L0073&lg=en
7 Sarah Boseley, The Guardian
8 such as the Bristol Homeopathic Hospital study of 6,500 patients mentioned in H:MC21’s press release where the researchers recorded that 50.7% of patients reported that improvement in their symptoms was “much better” and, in all, 70.7% reported a degree of improvement.
9 See Dr Lionel Milgrom http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/homeopathy/ucm0402.htm
10 Up to the end of 2010, 156 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in homeopathy have been reported in 135 full papers in peer-reviewed journals. This represents research in 75 different medical conditions. Of these 156 RCTs, 41% were positive, 7% negative and 52% non-conclusive.http://www.facultyofhomeopathy.org/research/
11 I am indebted to James Panozzi, Dana Ullman, and Lionel Milgrom, and NaturalNews for excerpts from material they have posted on the internet

H:MC21 New Statesman Homeopathy Cares ad 2010

As the ASA has been asked by the anti-homeopathy Nightingale Collaboration and fellow travellers to attack some factual statements made by the charity Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century in its 2010 New Statesman advert, I have posted the full text of the ad below. A follow-up blog will discuss the ASA response.

Homeopathy Cares

Homeopathy has a history of success in chronic illness
• At Bristol Homeopathic Hospital 70.7% of 6,500 patients with chronic conditions
  benefited from homeopathic treatment and had reduced need for conventional
  medication. [1]
• Other clinical outcome studies indicate similar levels of benefit, and more randomised controlled trials are positive than negative. For more see www.britishhomeopathic.org.
• In Cuba an integrated approach to healthcare has led to homeopathy being used to enable 2.3 million people, including the elderly, to be cheaply and effectively protected against endemic Leptospirosis. [2]
• About 6 million people in the UK choose homeopathy despite the fact that for the vast majority this means that they have to pay for their treatment. [3]

Homeopathy offers a caring alternative
• The NHS spends £11 billion annually on conventional drugs out of a budget of £100 billion, and this cost keeps rising, as there is an increasing need to treat long-term conditions. [4]
• Only 0.001% of the NHS drugs budget is spent on homeopathic medicines, but these are mainly used to treat patients with chronic health problems who have not been helped, despite great cost, by conventional means. [5,6]
• The NHS also spends £2 billion annually on treating the adverse side effects of conventional drugs. Homeopathy has no side effects. [7]
• Even a small increase in spending on homeopathy could produce dramatic benefits, reducing care needs and increasing patient quality of life.

Opposition to homeopathy is based on propaganda
• Homeopathy has a growing evidence base, but according to the British Medical Journal, of the 2,500 most commonly used treatments in the NHS, 51% have unknown effectiveness, and only 11% have been shown to be beneficial.[8,9]
• The leading so-called ‘expert’ and critic of homeopathy, Professor Edzard Ernst, has admitted that he has no qualifications in homeopathy.[10]
• The leading organisation opposing homeopathy, Sense About Science, is funded by pharmaceutical companies and relies on a strategy of propaganda stunts rather than scientific research.[11,12]
• The leading popular book critical of homeopathy (Trick or Treatment?) has been shown to be scientifically unreliable. It was co-authored by Simon Singh (a trustee of Sense About Science) and Professor Ernst.[13]
• The recent Science and Technology Committee report on homeopathy was voted for by only three MPs. Of these only one attended the hearings and he has strong links to Sense About Science (Dr Evan Harris).[14,15,16]

A vision for an economic and effective medical future

H:MC21 believes that the NHS should increase the integration of homeopathic practitioners into front-line healthcare whilst monitoring both clinical and cost benefits.

H:MC21 believes that, by sharing clinical experience and skills in this way, homeopathic and conventional practitioners can provide the safest, most economic and most effective service to patients.

H:MC21 believes that this will allow the NHS to confirm the benefits of homeopathy in the real world of clinical practice.

References
1. D.S. Spence, E.A. Thompson, S.J. Barron, ‘Homeopathic Treatment for Chronic Disease: A 6-Year, University-Hospital Outpatient Observational Study’, JACM, 2005, 11:793-798.
2. G. Bracho et al., ‘Large-scale application of highly-diluted bacteria for Leptospirosis epidemic control’, Homeopathy, 99 (2010),156-66, available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20674839.
3. Professor Kent Woods, Chief Executive of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), response to Q211, House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, Evidence Check: Homeopathy (2010), p. Ev 70, at
 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/45/45.pdf
4. Mr Mike O’Brien, Minister for Health Services, Department of Health, response to Q244, Evidence Check, p. Ev 73.
5. O’Brien, response to Q244, Evidence Check, p. Ev 73.
6. Spence et al.
7. Sarah Boseley, ‘Adverse drug reactions cost NHS £2bn’, The Guardian, 3 April 2008,
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/apr/03/nhs.drugsandalcohol, accessed 14 November 2008.
8. http://www.britishhomeopathic.org /research/
9. ‘How much do we know?’, BMJ Clinical Evidence at http://clinicalevidence.bmj.com/ceweb/about/knowledge.jsp.
10. ‘Interview mit Professor Edzard Ernst, Exeter’, Homöopathische Nachrichten, April 2010, 1-3, translation at http://www.hmc21.org/ #/edzard-ernst/4543212059.
11. Funding information taken from the annual accounts at the Charity Commission.
12. Strategy information from the ‘Memorandum submitted by Sense About Science’ (HO36), Evidence Check, pp. Ev 7-8.
13. William Alderson, Halloween Science (Stoke Ferry: Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century, 2009), available at http://www.hmc21.org/#/ halloween-science/4535659799.
14. ‘Formal minutes’, Evidence Check, pp. 48-50.
15. Register of Members’ Interests, available at http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=10261, accessed 22 May 2010.
16. http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/other/491/, accessed 22 May 2010.

Merck vaccine scientist Dr. Maurice Hilleman admitted presence of SV40, AIDS and cancer viruses in vaccines

Thank you to Mike Adams of Natural News for publishing the transcript below, which comes I guess you would say from the horses mouth. I thought it worth posting it particularly for those of my doctor friends, and an MP I wrote to, who still take it on trust that the research process which develops novel drugs and vaccines for them to give their patients is always conducted with the utmost care and integrity.

(NaturalNews) One of the most prominent vaccine scientists in the history of the vaccine industry -- a Merck scientist -- made a recording where he openly admits that vaccines given to Americans were contaminated with leukemia and cancer viruses.

In response, his colleagues (who are also recorded here) break out into laughter and seem to think it's hilarious. They then suggest that because these vaccines are first tested in Russia, they will help the U.S. win the Olympics because the Russian athletes will all be "loaded down with tumors." (Thus, they knew these vaccines caused cancer in humans.)

This isn't some conspiracy theory -- these are the words of a top Merck scientist who probably had no idea that his recording would be widely reviewed across the internet (which didn't even exist when he made this recording). He probably thought this would remain a secret forever. When asked why this didn't get out to the press, he replied "Obviously you don't go out, this is a scientific affair within the scientific community."

In other words, vaccine scientists cover for vaccine scientists. They keep all their dirty secrets within their own circle of silence and don't reveal the truth about the contamination of their vaccines.

You can hear this interview at: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=13EAA...Here is the full transcript. (Thanks are due to Dr. Len Horowitz for finding this recording and making it publicly available.)

Transcript of audio interview with Dr. Maurice HillemanDr.

Len Horowitz: Listen now to the voice of the worlds leading vaccine expert Dr Maurice Hilleman, Chief of the Merck Pharmaceutical Company's vaccine division relay this problem he was having with imported monkeys. He best explains the origin of AIDS, but what you are about to hear was cut from any public disclosures.

Dr Maurice Hilleman: and I think that vaccines have to be considered the bargain basement technology for the 20th century.

Narrator: 50 years ago when Maurice Hilleman was a high school student in Miles City Montana, he hoped he might qualify as a management trainee for the local JC Penney's store. Instead he went on to pioneer more breakthroughs in vaccine research and development than anyone in the history of American medicine. Among the discoveries he made at Merck, are vaccines for mumps, rubella and measles…

Dr Edward Shorter: Tell me how you found SV40 and the polio vaccine.

Dr Maurice Hilleman: Well, that was at Merck. Yeah, I came to Merck. And uh, I was going to develop vaccines. And we had wild viruses in those days. You remember the wild monkey kidney viruses and so forth? And I finally after 6 months gave up and said that you cannot develop vaccines with these damn monkeys, we're finished and if I can't do something I'm going to quit, I'm not going to try it. So I went down to see Bill Mann at the zoo in Washington DC and I told Bill Mann, I said "look, I got a problem and I don't know what the hell to do." Bill Mann is a real bright guy. I said that these lousy monkeys are picking it up while being stored in the airports in transit, loading, off loading. He said, very simply, you go ahead and get your monkeys out of West Africa and get the African Green, bring them into Madrid unload them there, there is no other traffic there for animals, fly them into Philadelphia and pick them up. Or fly them into New York and pick them up, right off the airplane. So we brought African Greens in and I didn't know we were importing the AIDS virus at the time.

Miscellaneous background voices:…(laughter)… it was you who introduced the AIDS virus into the country. Now we know! (laughter) This is the real story! (laughter) What Merck won't do to develop a vaccine! (laughter)

Dr Maurice Hilleman: So what he did, he brought in, I mean we brought in those monkeys, I only had those and this was the solution because those monkeys didn't have the wild viruses but we…

Dr Edward Shorter: Wait, why didn't the greens have the wild viruses since they came from Africa?

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …because they weren't, they weren't, they weren't being infected in these group holding things with all the other 40 different viruses…

Dr Edward Shorter: but they had the ones that they brought from the jungle though...

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …yeah, they had those, but those were relatively few what you do you have a gang housing you're going to have an epidemic transmission of infection in a confined space. So anyway, the greens came in and now we have these and were taking our stocks to clean them up and god now I'm discovering new viruses. So, I said Judas Priest. Well I got an invitation from the Sister Kinney Foundation which was the opposing foundation when it was the live virus…

Dr Edward Shorter: Ah, right…

Dr Maurice Hilleman: Yeah, they had jumped on the Sabin's band wagon and they had asked me to come down and give a talk at the Sister Kinney Foundation meeting and I saw it was an international meeting and god, what am I going to talk about? I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to talk about the detection of non detectable viruses as a topic.

Dr Albert Sabin …there were those who didn't want a live virus vaccine… (unintelligible) …concentrated all its efforts on getting more and more people to use the killed virus vaccine, while they were supporting me for research on the live viruses.

Dr Maurice Hilleman: So now I got to have something (laughter), you know that going to attract attention. And gee, I thought that damn SV40, I mean that damn vaculating agent that we have, I'm just going to pick that particular one, that virus has got to be in vaccines, it's got to be in the Sabin's vaccines so I quick tested it (laughter) and sure enough it was in there.

Dr Edward Shorter: I'll be damned

Dr Maurice Hilleman: … And so now…

Dr Edward Shorter: …so you just took stocks of Sabin's vaccines off the shelf here at Merck…

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …yeah, well it had been made, it was made at Merck…

Dr Edward Shorter: You were making it for Sabin at this point?

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …Yeah, it was made before I came…

Dr Edward Shorter: yeah, but at this point Sabin is still just doing massive field trials…

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …uh huh

Dr Edward Shorter: okay,

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …in Russia and so forth. So I go down and I talked about the detection of non detectable viruses and told Albert, I said listen Albert you know you and I are good friends but I'm going to go down there and you're going to get upset. I'm going to talk about the virus that it's in your vaccine. You're going to get rid of the virus, don't worry about it, you're going to get rid of it… but umm, so of course Albert was very upset...

Dr Edward Shorter: What did he say?

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …well he said basically, that this is just another obfuscation that's going to upset vaccines. I said well you know, you're absolutely right, but we have a new era here we have a new era of the detection and the important thing is to get rid of these viruses.

Dr Edward Shorter: Why would he call it an obfuscation if it was a virus that was contaminating the vaccine?

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …well there are 40 different viruses in these vaccines anyway that we were inactivating and uh,

Dr Edward Shorter: but you weren't inactivating his though…

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …no that's right, but yellow fever vaccine had leukemia virus in it and you know this was in the days of very crude science. So anyway I went down and talked to him and said well, why are you concerned about it? Well I said "I'll tell you what, I have a feeling in my bones that this virus is different, I don't know why to tell you this but I …(unintelligible) …I just think this virus will have some long term effects." And he said what? And I said "cancer". (laughter) I said Albert, you probably think I'm nuts, but I just have that feeling. Well in the meantime we had taken this virus and put it into monkeys and into hamsters. So we had this meeting and that was sort of the topic of the day and the jokes that were going around was that "gee, we would win the Olympics because the Russians would all be loaded down with tumors." (laughter) This was where the vaccine was being tested, this was where… so, uhh, and it really destroyed the meeting and it was sort of the topic. Well anyway…

Dr Edward Shorter: Was this the physicians… (unintelligible) …meeting in New York?

Dr Maurice Hilleman …well no, this was at Sister Kinney…

Dr Edward Shorter: Sister Kinney, right…

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …and Del Becco (sp) got up and he foresaw problems with these kinds of agents.

Dr Edward Shorter: Why didn't this get out into the press?

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …well, I guess it did I don't remember. We had no press release on it. Obviously you don't go out, this is a scientific affair within the scientific community…

Voice of news reporter: …an historic victory over a dread disease is dramatically unfolded at the U of Michigan. Here scientists usher in a new medical age with the monumental reports that prove that the Salk vaccine against crippling polio to be a sensational success. It's a day of triumph for 40 year old Dr. Jonas E Salk developer of the vaccine. He arrives here with Basil O'Connor the head of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis that financed the tests. Hundreds of reporters and scientists gathered from all over the nation gathered for the momentous announcement….

Dr Albert Sabin: …it was too much of a show, it was too much Hollywood. There was too much exaggeration and the impression in 1957 that was, no in 1954, that was given was that the problem had been solved , polio had been conquered.

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …but, anyway we knew it was in our seed stock from making vaccines. That virus you see, is one in 10,000 particles is not an activated… (unintelligible) …it was good science at the time because that was what you did. You didn't worry about these wild viruses.

Dr Edward Shorter: So you discovered, it wasn't being inactivated in the Salk vaccine?

Dr Maurice Hilleman: …Right. So then the next thing you know is, 3, 4 weeks after that we found that there were tumors popping up on these hamsters.

Dr. Len Horowitz: Despite AIDS and Leukemia suddenly becoming pandemic from "wild viruses" Hilleman said, this was "good science" at that time.

NaturalNews wishes to thank Dr. Len Horowitz for uncovering this interview from the national archives, and for getting it released so the public can learn the truth behind the deadly vaccine industry.Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/033584_Dr_Maurice_Hilleman_SV40.html#ixzz1YL2vNp5G

PCTs as Gatekeepers shutting out effective Natural Healthcare for osteoarthritis

Take a look at this. Assuming PCTs do indeed get swept away in the Coalition's NHS reforms, everyone will need to keep a beady eye, and be prepared to report, on the behaviour of "the new Gatekeepers" if these turn out to be NHS Commissioning Boards just staffed by doctors with no lay representation sympathetic to ensuring patients access to homeopathic treatment if they want it. Any sign of restrictive practices by orthodox doctors on such Boards should be referred to the Office of Fair Trading.

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NHS. No Choice for Marjorie!
We are rightly proud of our health service. The principles of the 1947 NHS Act still apply, in the most part, that any citizen, when sick, will have access to health treatment - regardless of his or her ability to pay.

But is everyone getting access to the type of treatment they want?

All the main political parties now parade ‘patient choice’ as an important objective for the future of the NHS. The previous Labour government, in its White Paper, (“Our Health, Our Care, Our Say: a new direction for community services. January 2006)” confirmed this. Patricia Hewitt, Health Secretary at the time, stated this:

“(more) people (are) wanting a different approach to services, looking for real choices, more local care, taking greater control over their health, supported to remain independent wherever possible”.

The new coalition Government’s White Paper, “Equity and Excellence: liberating the NHS. July 2010” says this:

“We want the principle of "shared decision making" to become the norm: no decision about me without me. International evidence shows that involving patients in their care and treatment improves their health outcomes, boosts their satisfaction with services received, and increases not just their knowledge and understanding of their health status but also their adherence to a chosen treatment. It can also bring significant reductions in cost, as highlighted in the Wanless Report, and in evidence from various programmes to improve the management of long-term health conditions.

Yet is this anywhere near close to reality within the NHS?

Marjorie Titchen is 93 years old. She lives in Bournemouth, where she continues to run a small hotel. She says that she will retire when she is 100 years old! By this time she will have paid taxes for over 80 years, so she has certainly paid her dues, and her entitlement to health treatment should surely be unquestioned.

Yet despite this she has been fighting now for several years for treatment for her osteoarthritis. But the Bournemouth and Poole PCT has refused to consider it. Why? Because Marjorie wants to see a homeopath, and the PCT insists that they will allow her access only to conventional treatment.

Marjorie refuses to accept conventional treatment, and her arthritis is getting worse. She says she has heard too much about the ‘adverse reactions’ to drugs, and does not want to go down that route.

Even her GP supports her, and has referred her for homeopathy treatment - but still the PCT remains unmoved. She has made representations, and formal complaints; she had written to the Department of Health; she has talked to her MP; she has highlighted her case in the local media. All to no avail.

The PCT refuses to budge on its paternalistic belief that it knows best. Their primary defense appears to be that there is ‘no evidence’ that homeopathy is effective in treating osteoarthritis.

Wrong, says Marjorie! She developed osteoarthritis over 12 years ago, and was referred to homeopathic treatment by the PCT at that time. This relieved her pain, and for several years she was pain free. So as she says, she is living proof of the effectiveness of homeopathy.

Wrong, says the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths, referring to the research that has been carried out into arthritis that shows it can be effective in the treatment of the disease.

This includes research that found homeopathy provided a level of pain-relief superior to a conventional drug, used as a control. This research, carried out in 1998, also found that homeopathy produced ‘no adverse reactions’.

So what is happening here? Mrs Titchen wants to access homeopathic treatment. Her GP supports her. Her homeopath is willing to treat her, as he did, successfully, several years ago. Homeopathic treatment is not expensive, indeed, it is less expensive than the conventional treatment she is being offered.

Yet the PCT still sees fit to make the purely bureaucratic decision to deny her the treatment she is asking for.

The NHS is dominated by conventional medicine, and it has become a monopoly. The bureaucrats in charge of PCTs in most areas don’t want to consider homeopathic treatment because they don’t want us to breach their monopoly. They also don’t want to allow homeopathy to prove more effective in the treatment of diseases, such as arthritis, than the favour medicine - in which, of course, they have a personal vested interest.

Government policy on patient choice is a mess. It talks about ‘patient choice’ but what it allows to happen within the NHS runs contrary to this objective. When the Department of Health is asked to comment on this kind of situation, it says that the decision rests at the local level, with the local PCT, which has to take ‘local needs’ into consideration. No doubt this is part of their laudable policy to devolve NHS power from the centre to local areas. But devolving power from London to local PCTs it acts against patient choice, as can be seen in Marjorie Titchen’s case.

The Bournemouth and Poole PCT, and its bureacracy has decided not to offer Mrs Titchen homeopathy. It know better than Marjories, her GP, and her homeopath. Such a decision is anathema ‘patient choice’, and all patients looking for drug-free treatment are certainly not getting the medicine of their choice.

And the only person who is suffering, literally, is Marjorie............
Posted by Alliance of Registered Homeopaths

Comment: Yep. University of Bergen, Norway study found NSAIDs reduced pain short-term but this benefit dropped off significantly longterm; NSAIDs were then hardly better than placebo. The more serious side effects can include high blood pressure leading to congestive heart failure, stomach irritation that may result in bleeding, ulcers, or perforation of the stomach or intestines, and damage to the kidneys. All in all a high risk treatment and the sufferer would be well advised to look first at natural alternatives such as homeopathy or acupuncture.

Unreliable Research

Jeffrey Smith is a doughty opponent of Genetically Modified Anything. For the reason why it is totally unacceptable to rely on tests by the manufacturers of GMO products as opposed to independent tests take a look at this 2 minute video at

http://vimeo.com/22310092

I expect the message in it would be equally valid in the field of Pharmaceuticals i.e you can't rely on, and Doctors and the regulatory authorities shouldn't be relying on, manufacturer conducted RCT tests on their own products eg vaccines, anti-depressants, statins. But of course, they are!

Dr Burzynski's cancer cure and fights with the FDA

Have just watched a riveting video at http://www.cmn.tv/blog/burzynski-cancer-is-serious-business/ which is only free to watch this weekend, if you have the time.

Two very interesting things about it

1. If anyone wanted seemingly cast-iron proof that the FDA needs rebuilding from the ground up this is it

2. The socalled anti-neoplastons which Dr Burzynski uses have achieved in tests a complete cancer remission rate of around 27% even in very serious eg brain and metastasised tumours, as against the chemo/radiation therapy survival of 1 out of 140 patients in the study (and that 1 patient died after the 5 yr period).
The FDA allied to Big Pharma have been using everything they can since the '80s to shut Burzynski down, but so far have failed.

His antineoplastons are nontoxic compounds (so no side effects) of proteins and aminoacids extracted from - wait for it - human urine! And he has patented them (the specific mix I suppose), making him the first individual, as opposed to pharmaceutical giant, to be in this position, which is unacceptable to the US authorities, of course! Now urine therapy either in material dose or potentised as a homeopathic has for long been regarded with potentised patient's blood as being the remedy of last resort for the most serious pathologies. So perhaps a case of "what goes around, comes around"!

Forensic evidence emerges that European e.coli superbug was bioengineered

For the interesting possible background to the recent killer e.coli outbreak in Germany - thought to have originated in Spain - go to

http://www.naturalnews.com/032622_ecoli_bioengineering.html

It does indeed seem likely that it was manufactured in a lab.

Low Salt Diet Increases Death Rate Over 500%

Yep. Always have liked salted butter. Always will. But one does wonder why the study mentioned below turned out these results when there have been so many previous ones supporting the health benefits of a low salt diet?

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At http://drdavidbrownstein.blogspot.com/
An article in The Journal of The American Medical Association (May 4, 2011. Vol. 305, N. 17) looked at the influence dietary salt had in cardiovascular disease. The authors studied 3681 subjects for a median of 7.9 years. What the researchers found made headlines in major newspapers.

The scientists reported that there was a direct, inverse linear correlation between the amount of salt ingested and the rate of cardiovascular deaths. What that means is that as salt intake went up, cardiovascular deaths went down. They stratified the subjects into three groups; a low, medium and high salt intake group. The death rates declined as the subjects ate more salt: from 4.1% in the lowest group to 1.9% in the medium group and 0.8% in the highest group.

For those who have read my book, Salt Your Way to Health, there really wasn’t anything new in this study. However, the media (at MSNBC.com) had large headlines proclaiming, “Eating less salt doesn’t cut heart risks.” However, MSNBC missed it here. The headline should have read, “Eating less salt increases your cardiovascular death rate over 5x as compared to those who eat a high salt diet.”

The human body was designed to crave and utilize salt. We have hundreds of grams of salt in our bodies at any one time. As I showed you above, eating a low salt diet does not decrease your risk for heart disease, it actually increases it—this has also been shown in many other studies. Furthermore, restricting salt to very low levels has almost no effect on blood pressure for the vast majority of people.

Finally, it is important to eat the right kind of salt—unrefined salt. Unrefined salt contains over 80 minerals that are essential to the human body. I have successfully used unrefined salt in my medical practice for nearly 20 years. Unrefined salt actually helps to lower blood pressure. More information about salt can be found in my book, Salt Your Way to Health.

Dr Chopra's Book - "Corrupt to the Core"

No apologies for ensuring that readers don't miss this article from Dr Mercola's website. The scientist interviewed, who worked in Canada's health authority for decades, reveals how difficult it was for a conscientious scientist to get governmental health authorities not to take risks with the public's health.

-----------------------

Dr. Shiv Chopra is a world renowned scientist, author and public speaker. As a former employee of Health Canada (the Canadian equivalent of the US FDA) for 35 years, he was the Senior Scientific Advisor for the regulatory assessment of food and drugs, including new vaccines. When he changed job titles from human prescription drugs to the Bureau of Veterinary Drugs, the first file that landed on his desk was Eli Lilly's application to use rBGH in Canada.

In this interview he discusses subjects covered in his most recent book, Corrupt to the Core, which chronicles his many decades fighting for scientific principles against profit-hungry corporations and ultimately against his own bosses and the Canadian government itself.

Sources:
Video Transcript


Dr. Mercola's Comments:


You may remember Dr. Shiv Chopra from my interview with him in 2010, discussing some of the same subjects covered in his new book. He is truly an expert on these topics, having spent 18 years on vaccines and antibiotics for humans with Health Canada. But he also spent another 17 years in the Human Safety Evaluation of Drugs given to food-producing animals, with the Bureau of Veterinary Drugs.

He was eventually removed from his Veterinary Drugs post for "insubordination", a charge that he not only refutes, but is currently pursuing a wrongful dismissal suit in the Canadian legal system.

Dr. Chopra's First Battle: Vaccines

As a member of Canada's Food and Drug Directorate starting in 1969, Dr. Chopra had a seat on the governmental agency charged with protecting consumers against harmful drugs, and immediately he was pressured to approve vaccines that he objected to on scientific grounds. Despite his objections, after experts from the United States were brought in and "yelled and screamed" at his staff, the vaccines were approved.

According to Dr. Chopra:

"After 1967, after the thalidomide affair, there was going to be very rigorous health and safety standards for all drugs including vaccines in both the United States and Canada… Canada was ahead of the United States [in] that they started to consider vaccines as drugs.

The moment I joined…the first vaccines that landed on my desk were rubella and later on, mumps, and some later versions of measles. I objected to it. I said, 'I see problems in these because these are minor diseases and most people get immune by age 15. Why are we going to give these vaccines that have never been tested?'

I knew they were made in monkey kidney tissue and we have had problems with the polio vaccine…

… My suggestion was, why don't we test women at the age of 15 and 16? Those who are not yet immune then may be given the vaccine?

Of course, the companies didn't want that. They wanted 100 percent or at least 80 percent of the children vaccinated. That was the only way they were going to make money. So they flew in hordes of people from the United States -- of all people, Dr. Hilleman, you may remember him. He himself came. He was effectively yelling and screaming at my department that the United States has passed it and so forth. In any case, the vaccines were passed.

We now know from history that those vaccines have been used for more than 40 years and the diseases, all of them, are still here. Meanwhile, autism, diabetes, and all kinds of autoimmune diseases have increased.

We don't know what damage we're doing -- actually we know that in association with those vaccines, chronic diseases in children have increased. But nobody is paying attention. Everybody is denying that."

At the time of the Canadian approval of scientifically questionable vaccines, even government studies in the US questioned the effectiveness of vaccines.

But not only was no one listening to the arguments about vaccine efficacy, the medical community at that time, according to Dr. Chopra, was also in deep denial about the steep drop in infectious diseases before vaccines gained widespread usage:

"…Back in 1971, there was an investigation in the United States that influenza vaccines was not working and one man, Dr. Anthony Morris, a senior scientist, was fired. And then an investigation occurred and there was a congressional inquiry. They looked at 200 vaccines and they ruled that they were all useless vaccines.

Ironically, those vaccines have never been removed from the ledgers and DPT was never talked about. Again, medical people know, a lot of scientists know, the CDC, U.S. FDA, other departments, medical departments, medical professionals, they are all denying that all these infectious diseases had started to decrease in the early 1940s."

With this early battle over vaccines, Dr. Chopra witnessed the pattern that would become familiar during his tenure as a scientist at various governmental regulatory agencies. First, the findings of scientists would be neglected, overruled or ignored. Second, corporations would use their influence and money to bend governmental policy towards maximum corporate profits.

This model has dominated governmental health policy for the last 40 years, and has recently taken a turn for the worse. Today, the regulators are merely corporate insiders from the very industries they are assigned to regulate.

Just how Much Protection are Government "Regulators" Providing?

According to Dr. Chopra's 35 years of experience as a scientist fighting to protect the public health in Canada – not much!

Corrupt to the Core is a fascinating commentary on the entire system of drug approvals, and how the system originally designed to protect the public health, whether in the US or Canada, has been hopelessly corrupted by corporate money and corporate cronyism that views industry as the "client" instead of the public.

Again and again, we see this repeating pattern: when concerned scientists who really understand the issues voice their concerns, they're oftentimes fired or overruled by bureaucrats holding MBA's. According to Dr. Chopra:

"Non-technical people, accountants, lawyers, and MBAs and all kinds of people were appointed as our bosses; who didn't want to listen [to our scientific findings]. That was the style. MBAs can buy science and scientists don't know how to manage science. That was the trend. It all came out of Harvard -- the idea of how to manage scientific areas and health areas.

That is part of the corruption that began a long time ago. It was triggered out of the United States, particularly the Harvard model; everybody has to be an MBA. Doctors are sidelined, the scientists are sidelined, and engineers are sidelined... It will be those accountants and MBAs who will make the decisions."

Scientists are dismissed because they interfere with the collusion between government and these large multinational corporations whose primary intent is to increase their profits – not to serve the public health.

The Canadian system is perhaps even worse than the US, as Canada only performs paper verification and doesn't do any testing of their own on these products, which the US has the capacity to do.

Either way, the regulatory system we now have in the US and in Canada is a well greased, politically run operation where companies are NOT required to prove the safety and efficacy of their product in peer-reviewed scientific literature.

All they have to do is manipulate the regulatory authorities to approve their product, and they can then use that approval as proof and documentation -- rather than the actual science -- that their product is declared safe! Then they have plausible deniability for any health catastrophes that follow, since they can just blame the government for giving them approval.

If you think you deserve better protection than this from your government, then I encourage you to make your voice heard. As long as the masses stay silent on this subject, the systemic silencing of government scientists is guaranteed to continue.

Dr. Chopra's Second Battle: Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH)

In 1988, Dr. Chopra's plan was to transfer to the less contentious public policy branch of Veterinary Drugs in the Canadian government, where he might enjoy a few quiet years before retirement, but no sooner did he arrive when the application from Eli Lilly for rBGH in Canada's dairy cows landed on his desk.

So much for a few quiet years before retirement!

Dr. Chopra questioned the safety of rBGH and fought to keep it out of Canada's food supply. According to Dr. Chopra:

"My colleagues were saying, it's the same as natural. We don't need to ask any questions. The recommendation was "Just pass it." I said, "you can't pass it. You have to ask questions. It's genetically modified." They said, it's the same as the cow's own. I said, "It doesn't matter. Even if you took natural BST/BGH and you gave injections of it, it could harm the cow and ultimately it might come out in the milk, anything else may happen, people are going to drink that milk."

They kept on arguing. I said,"'Can you give insulin when it's not needed? No, you'll kill people if you give more than what is necessary." I used the same argument.

They said, 'What test can we do?' I said, 'Normal tests.' This is a growth hormone.

If you inject it in some animals, rats, we should find out whether it produces some other hormones. For instance, it could affect the pancreas. There could be more insulin. There could be more progesterone. There could be more thyroxin. This is a normal thing for a veterinarian to ask.

Veterinarians are effectively toxicologists.

Unlike medical people, we learn comparative medicine. So therefore, this is a way to compare and see what species do. The law is that every drug, any product that directly or indirectly gets into the human body must be tested in at least two species of animals, one of which must be non-rodent. It must also be tested in pregnant animals. Then it also must be tested to see whether it produces cancer by lifetime studies in rats and mice and so forth.

None of these studies have been done on the bovine growth hormone.

Anyway, the product sat there unapproved. And then we saw that when it was actually given to cows it produced double births in cows, and their hooves were elongated, the horns and joints were swollen. They said, don't worry about the cow, we're only concerned about the milk so don't worry about the cow's safety. But what about the human safety aspect of it?

This went on and on and ultimately, I had dug my heels in, my colleagues also did the same thing… [Then] pressure [for approval] came from the highest offices of the Canadian government, including the Prime Minister and the Privy Council, the highest offices."

So as rBGH neared regulatory approval despite the scientific concern, Dr. Chopra and his colleagues took their argument directly to the public:

"We couldn't do anything about it, so we filed complaints. Because we filed the complaints through our union, it became public. When it became public, the farmers of Canada, the public of Canada, they all were complaining about rBGH.

This now got their attention and I, with my colleagues, were hauled before the Canadian Senate. This is where the first spillage of information occurred before it became very public. Finally, rBGH was not approved in Canada. The U.S. approved it, where it is still approved. .

The U.S. is now the only major country where [rBGH] is approved. Mind you, a lot of people now object to it."

As I said earlier, which was proven by this Canadian example concerning rBGH, if the public stands up for their right to a safe food and drug supply and lets their collective voice be heard, then the system may be forced to stop the "business as usual" practice of subverting scientific concern over approving dangerous food and drugs.

Final Thoughts

According to Dr. Chopra, corruption is not only systemic in the regulatory process, it's also infected the judicial branch of government; and it's now threatening to infect all corners of the globe. And this corruption is leading to very real public health consequences.

In Dr. Chopra's words:

"[Recently] the United States Supreme Court said that if people get damaged, if the children get damaged due to vaccine, they can't sue either the government or the companies -- by what right?

Who is to decide to shove vaccines into people who don't want it?

Who decides what food they should eat, whether it's GMO or contaminated with all those toxic products: antibiotics, and GMO's and pesticides and slaughterhouse waste?

Seventy-six million people in the United States get food-borne infections every year. About 5000 people die. In Canada, 11 million people, 1/3 of the population every year gets acute food-borne disease. Nobody talks about chronic food-borne disease; diabetes, obesity, heart attacks. All those things that are happening and nobody seems to care.

…Corruption is now hitting us all over. Every country is involved in this.

The U.S. has passed this bill, 510. Canada has passed a similar bill. India is passing a similar bill. They are even saying that if you criticize a government approved product without your own proof, you go to jail."

To read more about Dr. Chopra's battles as a scientist against the corrupting influence of corporations seeking to maximize their profits at the expense of public health, please read his newest book Corrupt to the Core.

EU takes an Axe to all Herbal remedies to support Pharmaceutical Industry!

New EU regulations on herbal medicines come into force
By Dominic Hughes
Health correspondent, BBC News

New European Union rules have come into force banning hundreds of traditional herbal remedies.

The EU law aims to protect consumers from possible damaging side-effects of over-the-counter herbal medicines.

For the first time, new regulations will allow only long-established and quality-controlled medicines to be sold.

But both herbal remedy practitioners and manufacturers fear they could be forced out of business.

To date, the industry has been covered by the 1968 Medicines Act, drawn up when only a handful of herbal remedies were available and the number of herbal practitioners was very small.

But surveys show that about a quarter of all adults in the UK have used a herbal medicine in the past two years, mostly bought over the counter in health food shops and pharmacies.

The regulations will cover widely used products such as echinacea, St John's Wort and valerian, as well as traditional Chinese and Indian medicines.


Herbal remedies that have been approved for sale under the new regulations will come with this logo
But safety concerns have focused on the powerful effects of some herbal remedies, as well as the way they interact with conventional drugs.

For example, St John's Wort can interfere with the contraceptive pill, while ginkgo and ginseng are known to have a similar effect to the blood-thinning drug warfarin.

From now on only products that have been assessed by the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) will be allowed to go on sale.

Manufacturers will have to prove that their products have been made to strict standards and contain a consistent and clearly marked dose.

And to count as a traditional medicine, products must have been in use for the past 30 years, including 15 years within the EU.

They will also only be approved for minor ailments like coughs and colds, muscular aches and pains, or sleep problems.

Remedies already on sale will be allowed to stay on the shelves until they reach their expiry date.

Free from contamination
Richard Woodfield, head of herbal medicine policy at the MHRA, says so far there have been 211 applications, of which 105 have been granted registration.

"We're very concerned that patients appreciate they must be very careful when they take these medicines and ideally should talk to their doctor or pharmacist”

Prof Jayne Lawrence
Royal Pharmaceutical Society
"Crucially, this EU directive and the registration scheme puts consumers in the driving seat so they can identify that a product meets assured standards on safety, quality and information about safe use.

Safety speaks for itself, but quality means, are they using the right part of the plant? Is it free from contamination? Is the claimed shelf life suitable?

"Product information will include possible side effects and interactions with other drugs, but above all it must make very clear that it is based on traditional use."

And that is a key point for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, which believes the new regime is a step forward in improving safety and quality.

But Prof Jayne Lawrence, chief science adviser to the society, says there are still some concerns about herbal products.

They certainly haven't been tested on the same basis as a conventional medicine and some of these compounds are very potent.

Patients might not realise that in some cases they should not take other medicines with them, or if they're going for surgery they should tell their doctors they are taking these particular medicines because there may be complications.

So we're very concerned that patients appreciate they must be very careful when they take these medicines and, ideally, should talk to their doctor or pharmacist."

The manufacturers of herbal remedies have had seven years to prepare for the new rules after the European Directive on Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products was introduced in 2004.

Too onerous?
These regulations apply to over-the-counter sales, which form the bulk of herbal remedies sold in the UK.

But some manufacturers and herbal practitioners have expressed concern, arguing the new rules are too onerous for many small producers.

Michael McIntyre, chairman of the European Herbal and Traditional Medicines Practitioners Association, says there will be a significant impact on herbal medicine practitioners and their suppliers, but admits the rules do need bringing up to date.

"Products that go on the market now will definitely do what it says on the bottle, while we didn't know how good they were in the past.

But registration is expensive so perhaps there may be fewer products on the market and a smaller range.

It's difficult to argue that the market should stay as it is, without any regulation, but how many businesses will pack up and walk away? I can't say."

A Department of Health spokesperson said: "We have swiftly introduced a system to register herbal practitioners using unlicensed herbal medicines, so consumers will be able to continue to use unlicensed herbal medicines if they wish."

TNM Comment: The EU steamroller has, as we predicted, now rolled over more of our fundamental human rights - in this case to have free access to the natural herbal healthcare products that yesterday we were able to choose to treat ourselves with - and the UK Government has stepped aside, instead of saying "Bugger off, we know what's behind all this i.e. protection of the pharmaceutical industry's monopoly position to drug up UK patients, ably assisted by supine or ignorant doctors".

The Dept of Health spokesman (or woman) is using "Legal-Speak". How can consumers continue to use unlicensed herbal medicines when they won't be available on shop shelves any more, or be able to be imported, and when many competent practising therapists dispensing them won't be able to any longer because they aren't "qualified"? Make them themselves from herbs in the hedgerows?

More comment on this awful development when I have the time. Creative solutions welcomed on how to stick it to 1) The EU 2) Big Pharma and their medical fundamentalist supporters within the UK Medical Profession 3) the BBC who can't be relied on to stick up for natural, safe healthcare which has been practised in this country for hundreds of years and is now under grave threat.

Best solution? Leave the EU. Repeal all this extra regulation garbage which was totally unnecessary, because "Where are all the bodies?" if it was, and use the £9bn a year we are now paying to the EU FOR NOTHING to expand natural, safe healthcare in the UK and help educate the public to take more responsibility for their own health in a revamped NHS system.

How safe is your medication? The FDA Exposed: An Interview With Dr. David Graham, the Vioxx Whistleblower

There's some riveting "whistle-blowing" stuff giving the inside story on how the American Food and Drug Administration are falling down in their job of ensuring that drugs allowed on the world-wide market are really effective, and, above all, safe to use, and that people are dying as a result-
at http://www.naturalnews.com/011401_Dr_David_Graham_the_FDA.html

The person doing the whistle-blowing is Dr David Graham, the top FDA epidemiologist (the branch of medicine that deals with the study of the causes, distribution, and control of disease in populations).

The Case for Homeopathic Medicine: dealing with the medical fundamentalists and other crackpots

There are a good many "Medical Fundamentalist" doctors, and some "useful idiot" journalists (who couldn't find their way out of a paper bag as the saying goes) who call homeopathy "bogus" and go into auto-loop trotting out the hoary old myths about there being no evidence for it working or that it's no better than placebo, which means "dangerous" because it might put off people getting proper (conventional)(poisonous) medication etc etc. The other part of their auto-loop is that conventional medication is always backed up by the best "scientific evidence" (selectively chosen) and inconvenient side effects, including death, are to be ignored.

For these types Dana Ullman put together an article last August entitled "The Case for Homeopathic Medicine: Consider the Historical and Scientific Evidence" which can be found at
http://www.naturalnews.com/029419_homeopathic_medicine_evidence.html#ixzz1KZNBSErz

It's best when dealing with such crackpots not to indulge in time-wasting discussion with them but just to point them to such an article and tell them to read it. They won't of course, because they have no intention of changing their auto-loop mantras and their minds are closed.

And that would be fine if they confined themselves to poisoning their own minds and bodies and naturally thereby slowly selected themselves out of existence. The problem is that they are doing that for a lot of innocent people as well if they are conventional doctors, and those in the higher echelons are telling lies about other safe, natural healthcare therapies and attempting to use their influence to shaft them. That's criminal.

In 1542 Henry VIII was confronted by the Physicians and Surgeons wanting essentially a monopoly over treating patients and dispensing medications, and the suppression of the competition, which at that time was the herbalists. He took advice and found that the herbalists did a lot of good to the public treating a range of diseases for no payment, as compared with the Surgeons, who often did harm and yet demanded excessive payment. Much to the annoyance of the Physicians and Surgeons, he promptly passed the Herbalists Charter in 1543 to provide that "it shall be lawful to every Person being the King's subject, having Knowledge and Experience of the Nature of Herbs, Roots and Waters, or of the Operation of the same, by Speculation or Practice" ..."to practice, use and minister in and to any outward Sore, Uncome Wound, Aposelmations, outward Swelling or Disease, any Herb or Herbs, Ointments, Baths, Pultess, and Emplaisters, according to their Cunning, Experience and Knowledge in any of the Diseases, Sorea and Maladies beforesaid, and all other like to the same, or Drinks for the Stone, Strangury or Agues".I believe this Act hasn't been repealed.

Now that's the kind of King or Queen we need today!

BTW as I haven't yet discovered what Aposelmation means I'm going to accord it the following meaning: a malignant condition of the mind which denies the usefulness of any natural form of healing regardless of the evidence for it. Yes, there are homeopathic remedies such as Arsenicum, Arg. Nit etc which could well make considerable inroads into such a condition.

Is your Doctor really to blame for the stuff he prescribes?

Here is a comment from a naturopathic US doctor which explains the modern day pressures they are under which, he believes, leads his (non-complementary minded) colleagues to prescribe in ways that, under other circumstances, they mightn't do. I think commonsense tells us laymen that he is speaking the truth. But what a damning indictment it is on the top hierarchy of the medical profession that they don't do anything to change this. Whatever happened to that fundamental precept of medical ethics "First, do No Harm" ? [The follow-up comments appended below came from the same website]


"As a naturopathic physician, I am always looking to new scientific findings to help explain why the treatments I provide work so well, despite often not having been subjected to "gold standard double-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over studies." We vastly undervalue empiricism in medicine, yet many experienced conventional docs use unproven empirical treatments all the time. They figure out what works, despite what the "gold standard" research says.

Some of the treatments I provide have been around for thousands of years and I continue to be surprised how well my patients respond to acupuncture, nutrients, herbs, homeopathy, hydrotherapy and other approaches. I use several therapies simultaneously with my patients, an approach that is difficult to study using "gold standard" methodology. Additionally, you have to consider that "gold standard" methodology makes a massive and impossible assumption right out of the gate, that the population being studied is socially, phenotypically and genetically homogenous.

Perhaps my medicine's focus on the individual's overall health and function does work best -not labelling him with a diagnosis for the purpose of justifying a FDA/ industry accepted, standard-of-care treatment. The treatment X for condition Y approach sounds scientific and rational; but the catch is in determining the "condition," the whole health picture of the patient, not just that they have an affected part.

Yes, I use the available science to best direct my treatments, whether the approach is "conventional" or "alternative." I just like to practice good medicine; what I know works based upon my experience and what has worked for doctors who've come before me.

It's ironic that the word, physician, means 'one who knows nature.'

It seems that THE ONLY THING CONVENTIONAL PHYSICIANS KNOW THESE DAYS IS WHAT IS TAUGHT TO THEM IN MEDICAL SCHOOL FROM DRUG REPS AND PRACTICE GUIDELINES THAT ARE DICTATED BY THEIR INDUSTRY, DRUG COMPANIES AND INSURANCE FIRMS(my emphasis added).

I actually feel sorry for MDs these days. Even if they wanted to do things differently, the various industry influences would prevent it.

In addition, with ever-dwindling reimbursement from insurance, they have to provide even less individualized care than ever before; having to squeeze in more patients in a day just to pay their bills.

MANY MDS THESE DAYS ARE VIRTUALLY SLAVES WITH NO CHOICE BUT TO PRACTICE MEDICINE IN A WAY THAT IS BOTH ACCEPTABLE TO THEIR PEERS AND PROFITABLE FOR DRUG COMPANIES.

No, everyday MDs aren't evil. They are (most of them) very decent, well-intentioned individuals who are, unfortunately, caught up in a meat grinder of an industry. MOST of them aren't the ones churning the meat-grinder handle, so don't lump them all together. I say this even though MOST OF THEM HAVE BOUGHT INTO THE ANTI-COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE BIAS THAT IS FED TO THEM."


--------------------

The constructive vision is there, in the article!
1. Take more time caring for your patients - listen to them, think about what is going on, what are the real causes/triggers of their individual condition?
2. Don't give too much emphasis to routine test results.
3. Avoid prescribing cocktails of drugs routinely and thoughtlessly. Take your patients off drugs whenever possible.
4. Resist the pressure from colleagues, manufacturers and journals to accept research at face value.
5. Don't get attached to trendy theories (e.g. dietary cholesterol causes heart disease - disproved decades ago, but still trotted out by many medics)

I get really flabbergasted by the opaqueness of many physicians vision when the answer is staring them in the face: YOU HAVE BECOME TOO DEPENDENT ON DRUGS TO SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS FOR YOU!

[TNM COMMENT: One could well add the advice to conventionally trained doctors .... Have the humility to understand that in any given case you may well not be the person in the best position to help the patient back to full health if all you can think of dosing them with is an antibiotic, statin, steroid, antidepressant etc which will just mask the symptoms and not cure but potentially damage the patient's immune system. It may well be that unless it is a case for acute emergency treatment the patient's best interests would be better served by you attempting a diagnosis and then handing the casenotes on to a qualified complementary healthcare practitioner eg homeopath, naturopath, nutritionist, accupuncturist, chiropracter, osteopath etc]

-----------------------------

- For many physicians it is very difficult to keep up with every single new guideline because publishing increases at an exponential rate every year (despite 90% of research being rejected by publishers).

- Only 54% of people seen in hospitals get what is considered the standard of care.

- The standard of care is usually based on gold & platinum standard large randomized control trials, of which around 10-25% may be wrong.

- Pharmaceutical companies fund about 90% of Randomized Control Trials performed globally. (WHY? Because these are REALLY EXPENSIVE).

- These RCTs rarely produce results that are unfavourable to the [pharmaceutical] companies' products. AND, overall, studies funded by a [pharmaceutical] company were four times more likely to have results favourable to the company than studies funded from other sources.

[TNM COMMENT: RCTS have been and doubtless still are being "fudged". Take a look at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269.

For testing homeopathic remedies conventional medicine's RCT test is totally unsuitable and inappropriate because homeopathy, as properly practised, treats each patient individually and most often with a succession of different remedies depending upon the aetiology in the case, that patient's vital state and the totality of their symptoms, to nudge the patient's system back to full health. This would be the case even where, say, each individual had been diagnosed as having eg arthitis. There is no way an RCT could begin to accurately test this process, but that has never stopped homeopathy's detractors from clamouring for the homeopathic profession to use RCTs!]

Do your homework before subjecting your children to any vaccine.

An update on the HPV vaccine ..... which no girl (or boy) should ever take.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/02/18/leading-vaccine-doctor-states-cancer-linked-to-polio-vaccine.aspx

Following on from my 28th Oct blog reporting the 40 UK children killed by the MMR vaccine, we hear that for the HPV vaccine as of December 13, 2010, 20,915 adverse reactions had been reported in the United States alone, INCLUDING 89 DEATHS, 297 miscarriages or stillbirths, and 370 reports of abnormal pap smears post vaccination. (NB these stats may be vastly too low because of the normal under-reporting of adverse events by the medical profession).

According to the US National Vaccine Information Center, the incidents of miscarriage and still birth events from Gardasil supersede the same event from all other vaccinations.

According to a recent Sane Vax press release on PR Log:

"There is no doubt the vaccine's safety and efficacy has not been thoroughly investigated. And independent investigation on the safety and efficacy of the HPV vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix must be conducted before there are more injuries and deaths."

What's most frustrating about this is that not a single one of these 21,000 children and young women needed to be harmed or die.

In the case of the HPV vaccine (Gardasil and Cervarix) the choice is clear. It has a high rate of risk and the potential benefits are unproven:

In more than 70 percent of cases, HPV clears up on its own within a few weeks or months. In over 90 percent of cases, it's gone within two years, causing no symptoms or disease.

Only about 26 percent of girls and women ages 14 to 59 have been exposed to any HPV strain at all; and

Only 2 percent have been exposed to strains 16 or 18 – the two that Gardasil and Cervarix protect against – meaning this vaccine is completely unnecessary because HPV infection very rarely leads to cancer.

Women whose partners wore condoms during vaginal intercourse are 70 percent less likely to become infected with HPV. That's a FAR greater level of protection than you can get from this vaccine!


Vaccines' Unsavory Assortment of Toxins

Mercury continues to be a major health concern, since it is still being used in a number of different vaccines, without sufficient safety testing. The science is increasingly clear about the dangers of mercury for children.

The latest studies confirm that mercury can damage children's brains and immune systems. Most childhood vaccines are finally mercury-free, but thimerosal continues to be used in multi-dose vials of DTwP, DT and most flu shots.

Besides mercury, vaccines also contain other dangerous ingredients conveniently disregarded by the pharmaceutical industry, including:

Formaldehyde, a known cancer-causing agent
Phenol (carbolic acid)
Resin and gelatin, known to cause allergic reactions
Polysorbate 80 (Tween80™), which can cause anaphylactic reactions, and may cause miscarriage and infertility
Triton X100 (detergent)

Increasing numbers of concerned parents are opting out of vaccines for their children after concluding that the risks far outweigh the benefits. But if you live in Washington State, your right to file this kind of exemption is in jeopardy.

A bill that jeopardizes the freedom for Washington state residents to make informed, voluntary decisions about vaccination was fast tracked and rammed through the state legislature by special interest lobbyists promoting forced vaccination. The legislators ignored the pleas of more than 100 parents and holistic health professionals, who showed up in Olympia to testify against the bill that would require parents to get a signature from a doctor or medical worker if they wanted to file a religious or philosophical belief exemption to vaccination.
The health committee chairpersons in the state House and Senate blocked the oral testimony of all but a handful of parents and then went on to ignore the thousands of phone calls by Washington state voters protesting the assault on their informed consent rights by the medical and pharmaceutical lobby.

Despite the public protest, the legislation passed the legislature on March 26 and is headed for Governor Christine Gregoire's desk for her signature after final touches are put on the legislation in the House and Senate.

The proposed new law discriminates against parents by failing to give them equal protection under the Federal Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (PL 99-660).
According to the National Vaccine Information Center, if the Governor of Washington signs this legislation into law, it will give doctors and other vaccine providers the power to sit "in judgment of," or interfere with, the free exercise of religious, spiritual or conscientious beliefs of their patients. It will also make it easier for physicians to deny children medical care as a way to punish parents for making selective vaccine choices, which is, unfortunately, the official policy of many American pediatricians.

Informed consent is especially important when it comes to vaccination, because there is no way for you or your physician to predict if your child will be one of the children who has a devastating vaccine reaction, such as brain inflammation, immune dysregulation, or even death.


REMEMBER with just a few minutes research on the internet you will probably be in a far more informed position than most doctors would have the time to be about these vaccines.