Category Archives: Medical Censorship

Saving Your Child from an Over-Sanitized World

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let-them-eat-dirt

Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Your Child from an Over-Sanitized World

By B. Brett Finlayy and Marie-Claire Arrieta

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (2016)

Book Review

Let Them Eat Dirt is a down-to-earth parental guide to the latest research about the role of intestinal bacteria in preventing obesity, diabetes, autism, schozophrenia, depression, anxiety, asthma, eczema, allergies, autoimmune illness, inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome. The book also provides a lot of practical suggestions for parents seeking to promote healthy gut bacteria in their kids.

Most research points to the avoidance of antibiotics during pregnancy and the first few months of life as being most important in preventing the gut-relaed illnesses described above. In addition to recommending that expectant mothers take probiotics and give them to their infants, the authors also emphasize the importance of vaginal birth and breast feeding in transferring maternal gut bacteria to the infant. Where C-section can’t be avoided, they recommend inoculating a newborn with a swab from the mother’s vagina.

Let Them East Dirt also provides numerous tips on increasing the diversity of gut bacteria to maximize immunity. In infants and children, this is done by exposing them to a wide variety of foods and indulging their natural urge to get dirty and put things in their mouths. Finlay and Arrieta believe children are biologically programmed to engage in these behaviors to increase gut bacteria diversity.

In discussing the science behind their recommendations, they point out that only 100 species of bacteria cause human illness, out of a total of 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bacterial species on the planet. They also discuss the essential role “friendly” bacteria play in training the human immune system, as well as the devastating health consequences of disrupting this process through antibiotic overuse.

The part of the book I found most helpful gives useful suggestions for ways parents can work with pediatricians to safely minimize antibiotic use in their kids.

2020 Olympics: Fukushima to Host Baseball/Softball

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One of the gate guards in a hazmat suit, helmet and dual intake respirator

Photo credit: Steve Herman Wikimedia Commons

Hundreds of Ultra Fit Athletes and Thousands of International Visitors to be Irradiated in 2020

What’s wrong with this picture? In what utterly corrupt and debased universe could this possibly happen?

According to the Japan Times, Tokyo 2020 Olympic organizers have given the green light for disaster-affected Fukushima Prefecture to host baseball and softball games. The position of Japan’s government is that Fukushima has been “decontaminated” by removing five centimeters (a little under two inches) of topsoil and placing it in gigantic plastic bags.

Independent radiation measurements by Greenpeace (see video below) suggest that radiation levels remain extremely high and hazardous to human health. Despite this fact, the Japanese government are pressuring Fukushima refugees to return to their homes later this year by discontinuing their government assistance.

Some international observers question whether the decision to hold the 2020 Olympics in Japan is part of the on-going cover-up of the ongoing radiation risk posed by the ongoing core meltdowns at Fukushima that continue to spew radiation into the air, groundwater and Pacific Ocean.

At present, French prosecutors are investigating the Japanese Olympic Committee for a 2.8 million Singapore dollars bribe linked to the 2013 decision to award them the 2020 Olympics.

 

The NFL Coverup: Pro-football and Permanent Brain Damage

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Concussion

Directed by Peter Landesman (2015)

Film Review

Concussion is a fact-based film about a brilliant Nigerian pathologist named Dr Bennet Omalu, who is systematically demonized and harassed by the National Football League (NFL) after publishing a scientific paper establishing that repeated head trauma places professional footballers at high risk for a brain disorder called chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Prior to Omalu’s groundbreaking research, the literature was dominated by the NFL’s own spurious studies that supposedly “proved” that repeated head injuries occurring in pro-football – unlike those that occur in boxing – do not produce long term brain damage.

The harassment Omalu experienced included death threats, getting a brick thrown thrown through his window, gang stalking and pressure on his employer to terminate his position with the county coroner.

When his supervisor refused to fire him, the FBI launched an investigation against his boss resulting in bogus charges for using supplies and equipment for personal use.

 

Poisoning Workers and Consumers for Profit

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The Toxins Return

Directed by Inge Altmeier and Reinhard Hornung (2009)

Film Review

The Toxins Return is a German documentary about the failure of western governments to regulate the toxic chemicals present in their imports from third world countries.

Most of the film focuses on textiles. Textile manufacturing has virtually collapsed in the developed world, with most multinational corporations moving  their factories to Asian countries that pay sweat shop wages. Unsurprisingly these third world countries also make no effort to regulate the toxic chemicals used to bleach, “soften” and dye these textiles – nor the toxic pesticides used to protect them from insect pests during their long journey to the industrialized world.

Organophosphates, organochlorine compounds and methyl bromide*, toxic chemicals long banned in the EU (but not in the US), are used routinely in China and India, where 90% of European textiles are produced. Most third world textile workers survive at most two years in the industry before they become too ill with work.

Meanwhile German workers who come in direct contact with the shipping containers and/or textiles are also at high risk of developing chronic occupational illnesses.

One-fifth of shipping containers that enter through the Hamburg port are found to contain toxic gasses. In Hamburg, customs workers have special instruments to detect toxic gasses before the containers are opened. Yet only a minority of textile containers are opened in Hamburg. Most on on-shipped by train to the Czech Republic for opening and redistribution of the goods they contain.

The Czech Republic has no protocol in place to protect their workers from toxic shipping containers. Although the EU has laws regulating toxic imports, there is virtually no mechanism in place for enforcing them.

The last third of the documentary examines the toxic chemicals Chinese companies use in children’s toys. Although phthalates (chemicals used to soften plastic toys) have been banned in the EU for more than a decade, all German children tested in a three year study continued to excrete phthalates in their urine (from  exposure to imported toys). Phthalates are known to cause reproductive cancers and low sperm counts.

Update: Although the film is eight years, there seems to be little progress in regulating the toxins we are exposed to in imported textiles. See Health Risks in International Container and Bulk Cargo Transport Due to Volatile Toxic Compounds

Progress seems to be somewhat better in terms of phthalates. Last year the US banned six phthalates in toys (including imports) children are likely to put in their month (though the enforcement mechanism is unclear) – see Phalates Information

The EU, meanwhile is proposing a total ban on all phthalates.

*The US ban on methyl bromide only extends to indoor use.

 

Old Pirates Yes They Rob I

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Modern Times: The Way of All Flesh

Directed by Adam Curtis (1997)

Film Review

“Old pirates, yes, they rob I, sold I to the merchant ships” – Bob Marley (Redemption Song)

The Way of All Flesh is an early Adam Curtis documentary about an African American woman named Henrietta Lacks. While being treated for cancer in 1951, Lacks had her unique genetic material stolen without the knowledge or permission of her family. Copied and distributed around the world, her cells were referred to as HeLA cells. Unique for their ability to reproduce in a test tube, they were the source of obscene profits for several biotech and cosmetic companies.

Her children only found out after scientists approached them in the 1960s to to request samples of their genetic material. Outraged at the outright theft of their mother’s cells, they tried to sue some of the companies and were told the statute of limitations had expired.

The documentary also examines the ability of the cancer research community to shamelessly blackmail Congress and nonprofit foundations into funding research boondoggles that have no evidence base. In the 1960s they milked the unsubstantiated claim that viruses cause cancer for hundreds of millions of dollars. In the 1990s they would do the same with claims that cancer has a genetic basis.

All this, I might add despite unequivocal historical and anthropological evidence that cancer was virtually unknown before 1900 and the introduction of hundreds of toxic chemicals into our air, water and food chain.

Fluoridegate

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Fluoridegate: An American Tragedy

Directed by Dr David Kennedy DDS (2012)

Film Review

Fluoridegate is about the blatant corruption in Washington DC, particularly the EPA, that allows the continued poisoning of local water supplies with the industrial toxin hydrofluorosilic acid (aka “fluoride”).

The last decade has produced an abundance of peer reviewed research establishing unequivocally that chronic exposure to fluoridated water causes osteoporosis, decreased IQ and other neurodevelopmental problems, hypothyroidism, birth defects, cancer and dental and skeletal fluorosis. All the pertinent federal agencies (EPA, FDA, CDC) acknowledge that 1) using fluoridated water in kidney dialysis can be lethal and 2) using fluoridated water to dilute formula causes serious fluoride toxicity in infants. Yet there is absolutely no effort to warn the public of these dangers.

The documentary highlights the case of Dr William Marcus, the former chief toxicologist at the EPA’s Office of Drinking Water. In 1994, Marcus was fired after a colleague leaked one of his reports to the media identifying fluoride as a probable carcinogen. In the wrongful dismissal suit Marcus filed, he established that the EPA had engaged in perjury, forgery and witness tampering in their efforts to destroy his career and reputation. The court rescinded the dismissal and awarded him back pay, damages and all legal fees.

Last year the US Department of Health and Human Services reduced their maximum recommended fluoride level for drinking water from 1.2 parts per million to 0.7 parts per million. This despite volumes of research indicating there is no safe level of chronic fluoride exposure – just as there is no safe level of lead or mercury exposure.

The primary source of fluoride used in public drinking water is hydrofluorosilic acid, a toxic byproduct of the fertilizer industry. Prior to the decision to add “fluoride” to drinking water in the 1950s, exposure of this extremely toxic chemical was a major headache for car makers and the aluminum and chemical industry. For more background on the conspiracy Alcoa, Dupont, GM and propaganda specialist Edward Bernays cooked up to dump it in our water (by telling us it was good for our teeth) see Ending Water Fluoridation: One We Can Win

Nearly all of Europe, except for the UK, has banned the use of fluoride in drinking water. In 2011, I and 60 other members of Fluoride Free New Plymouth successfully campaigned to have fluoride removed from our water.

Residents of over 100 US communities have successfully ended water fluoridation. For a full list see link.

Another Book on the Perils of Corporate Science

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hidden half of nature

The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Death

David R Montgomery and Anne Bikle

Book Review

The Hidden Half of Nature explores parallels between the microbiome* (see The Care and Feeding of Gut Bacteria) that inhabits the human intestine and the microbiome surrounding the roots of healthy plants. As in humans, the plant microbiom (aka the rhizosphere) co-evolved with higher plants to perform functions they couldn’t perform for themselves. In other words, the rhizosphere is just essential to plant health and growth as our microbiome is to our own health. Sadly industrial agriculture (particularly synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides) have been just as harmful to the rhizosphere and plant health as the corporatization of food production and medicine has been to the human microbiome and human health.

Montgomery and Bikle describe in elegant detail the research into the rich exudates plants secrete into the soil to attract helpful bacteria and fungi. In turn, the latter produce a broad range of chemicals that promote plant growth, as well as forming a defensive wall of antimicrobial compounds (most antibiotics used in western medicine are derived from these compounds) that protect the plant against pathogens.

This book also traces the history of our scientific understanding of microbes in the development of early vaccines, antibiotics and synthetic fertilizers. Like many important scientific discoveries, the process for manufacturing synthetic nitrogen fertilizer grew out of the war industry. The production of dynamite (ie nitroglycerine) employs the same chemical pathways as the production of synthetic fertilizer. Thus in the lead up to World War II, both the British and the US government required farmers to switch from organic to synthetic fertilizers due to the easy conversion of fertilizer factories to munitions factories and vice versa.

After the war, the heavy use of synthetic fertilizers would lead to the systematic destruction of healthy soil on western farms. As they gradually lost the friendly bacteria that protected them, they because increasingly susceptible to pests and required heavier and heavier use of synthetic pesticides that totally wiped out the rhizosphere.

I was very surprised to learn the basic principles of organic farming were identified in the late 19th century and abandoned due to government and corporate pressure.

The role of probiotics in human health was identified even earlier – when Turkish visitors to the court of France’s Francis I cured him of life threatening diarrhea by offering him some yogurt.

Envoys from the Ottoman Empire were also the first to introduce inoculation to Europe in 1716. Inoculation against infectious diseases was first introduced in the US by African slaves.

The Care and Feeding of Gut Bacteria

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diet myth

The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat

by Tim Spector

Weidenfeld and Nicholson (2015)

Book Review

The Diet Myth is all about looking after our intestinal bacteria – which are ultimately responsible for the proper functioning of our digestive, immune, endocrine and nervous system. As Professor Tim Spector explains, all mammals co-evolved over millions of years with the bacteria that inhabit their intestines. Because these bacteria produce a number of vital biochemicals that our bodies are genetically incapable of producing, without them the species homo sapiens would not exist. This relatively recent discovery has led many scientists to classify the microbiome (the collective name given to gut bacteria) as a vital organ like the brain, liver or kidneys.

Civilization hasn’t been kind to our intestinal bacteria. For various reasons (overuse of antibiotics, processed foods and pesticides like Roundup), urban life has caused us to lose half of the septillions of gut bacteria we started out with. Nearly all the chronic illnesses that plague modern society (obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disease, depression, autism, schizophrenia and possibly drug addiction and alcoholism) can be traced to loss or malfunction of intestinal bacteria.

For this book, Spector has chosen to focus on dietary research into foods that improve the health and diversity of our remaining gut bacteria. He blames the myriad of contradictory diet fads on the reality that each human being has their own distinct collection of bacteria. This means the foods that keep them healthy depend on the preferences of their particular bacteria.

Fortunately he’s able to make a few general recommendations that seem to apply to most people.

According to Spector, people with the most diverse profile of gut bacteria are the healthiest. The best way to promote this diversity is through a diverse fiber-rich diet that includes:

  • At least 20 different food types per week
  • A daily serving of 5 vegetables and 2 fruits
  • Daily servings of probiotic foods (fermented foods, such as yogurt, sauerkraut and miso, raw milk and unpasteurized cheeses) that contain beneficial bacteria.*
  • Daily servings of prebiotic foods rich in polyphenols that gut bacteria love**
  • A strict limitation on red meat,*** sugar, refined carbohydrates, transfats (hydrogenated fats found in vegetable oils, margarine and Crisco) and processed foods

Research also indicates that lifestyle factors such as exercise (athletes have the most diverse microbiomes) also promote bacterial diversity (and good health). As does episodic fasting.****

*These mainly provide different strains of lactobacillus and bifidobacteria that crowd out harmful inflammatory gut bacteria.

**Foods rich in polyphenols include dark chocolate, coffee, green tea, turmeric, red wine, onions, garlic, (uncooked) extra-virgin olive oil, roasted nuts, Jerusalem artichokes, chicory root, leeks, asparagus, broccoli, bananas, wheat bran and fermented fruits and vegetables.

***Citing numerous studies, Spector totally debunks the claim that red meat is harmful due to its fat content. He maintains the risk associated with red meat is the conversion (by gut microbes) of L-carnitine to trimethylamine oxide, which causes plaque build-up in arteries (in Europeans – this effect appears to be absent in other ethnic groups). He recommends that Europeans limit their intake of red meat to ½ serving or less per day. Those who eat more than this have a 10% increase in mortality. Those who eat one daily serving or more of processed meat (sausages, ham, salami, etc) have a 40% increase in mortality.

****When people fast, a gut organism caused Akkermansia cleans up gut inflammation by feeding off the intestinal lining. Research reveals specific benefit from the 5/2 diet in which people fast two days a week and eat normally the other five.

It Is Against The Law To Cure Cancer In America — Dublinmick’s Breaking News

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Why raw almonds are illegal in the US:

Bittermandeln

Forbidden Fruits: Whatever Medicinal Foods The F.D.A. Forbids Written by Sarah C. Corriher Category: Reports Published: November 28, 2009 “Drop the almonds! NOW MISTER!” Vitamin B-17, Raw Bitter Almonds, and Apricot Seeds In 2007, bitter almonds were becoming popular throughout alternative medicine for their vitamin B-17 (laetrile) content. Health food stores had stopped selling B-17 in the form of apricot seeds in 2002, due to armed raids. The F.D.A. openly banned apricot seeds and laetrile extracts, because they had been published as a cure for cancer. Curing cancer is illegal in America. The British government followed suit, and did the very same things during 2002. Innocent people in both countries were arrested and wrongfully charged as criminals for merely selling apricot seeds, a carrier of vitamin B-17.

Bitter almonds were later discovered to be the highest source of this vitamin. Vitamin B-17 was still somewhat a newly-discovered vitamin, and it is rare in nature. In fact, there are organizations that are affiliated with orthodox medicine which still refuse to officially recognize laetrile as a vitamin. The reason for the exploding popularity of vitamin B-17, and thereby bitter almonds, was due to the fact that vitamin B-17 has dramatic and miraculous tumor-killing properties. While alternative medicine has had other effective and non-toxic cancer cures since the 1930’s, this new vitamin really looked like the magic bullet. There were reports everywhere of cancers being killed merely from patients eating bitter almonds daily. Soon there would be almond extract capsules, so that these same patients would only need a cheap, non-toxic pill per day. This did not bode well for the most lucrative segment of the medical industry. Hundreds of billions of dollars were expected to be lost in the oncology market.

In September of 2007, the F.D.A. made the claim that raw almonds had been linked to two salmonella outbreaks in five years, and that all almonds needed to be pasteurized for safety. Almonds had suddenly become “dangerous”. The salmonella outbreaks were not due to organic almonds, which is reminiscent of the many meat recalls. Salmonella and e-coli are present in our foods only because of grossly unhygienic factory conditions; not because our foods are inherently putrid. For bitter almonds, the required pasteurization would bring forth only one significant change to them. It would neutralize the vitamin B-17, and that was their agenda. Pristine bitter almonds are the most easily accessible source of vitamin B-17. They are illegal now by F.D.A. fiat. The bitter almond tree had already been banned from the U.S. in 1995. They even went so far as to make the tree itself illegal.

Forbidden Fruits

via It Is Against The Law To Cure Cancer In America — Dublinmick’s Breaking News

Photo credit: By Sally Meyer (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

How Our Food and Health Systems Are Killing Us

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Mask of Deception

Directed by Phillip Rainford and Gail Blundell (2013)

Film Review

Mask of Deception, whose title is somewhat misleading, is best described as an Australian public service documentary about ways our food and health system are killing us. Overall I think viewers will find it useful to have all the major health risks covered in one place.

Unfortunately the film finishes a bit raggedly, with a diffuse attack on the Australian health care system and its long waiting lists, shortage of nurses, and efforts to suppress natural food supplements. The call for civil disobedience at the end seems to come out of nowhere.

Sadly western medicine has grown into an industry dedicated to marketing pharmaceuticals. In a a health system geared towards health promotion and disease prevention, our doctors would be warning us about these health risks instead of handing us prescriptions.

Some of the specific risks (gluten, fluoride, mercury-laden dental amalgam, white sugar, artificial sweeteners, transfats, liquid vegetable oils, vaccinations, mammograms, statins and chemical food additives) mentioned are fairly well covered by Natural News, Dr Mercola and similar natural health sites.

Others are less well known. For example, I was totally unaware of the link between high soy diets (especially for infants on soy formula) and hypothyroidism and type I diabetes.*

*The soy common in Asian diets has been heavily fermented, in some cases 5-7 years, to make it more digestible.