Scientists have found a genetic mutation linked to autism, but news coverage of the discovery have made it out to be far more important than it actually is.
The mutations are present in only 1 percent of all kids with autism; in the other 99 percent, something else is going on. However, the heavy news coverage -- including stories in the Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times -- would likely lead a casual reader to believe that something truly significant has taken place.
Journalists tended to posit that the discovery could lead to diagnostic tests, early interventions and further insight into the disease. But this is not justified by the actual discovery.
Sources:
* Wired January 10, 2008
16 January 2008
"Naturally" Raised Meat Standard Includes No Pasturage Requirement
The USDA has released for public comment a proposed voluntary standard for meat products marketed as “naturally raised.”
Under the proposed standard, the “naturally raised” label would apply only to livestock not given antibiotics and growth hormones. However, it fails to address other production practices commonly associated with the idea of “naturally raised,” such as ensuring that the animals are raised on pasture.
The standard as proposed will enable large-scale feedlots to qualify for a USDA label claiming that their product is “naturally raised.”
Sources:
* Center for Rural Affairs January 2008
Under the proposed standard, the “naturally raised” label would apply only to livestock not given antibiotics and growth hormones. However, it fails to address other production practices commonly associated with the idea of “naturally raised,” such as ensuring that the animals are raised on pasture.
The standard as proposed will enable large-scale feedlots to qualify for a USDA label claiming that their product is “naturally raised.”
Sources:
* Center for Rural Affairs January 2008
Schizophrenia Risk Possibly Reduced by Fish Oil
Researchers from the Oxygen Research Center in Melbourne, Australia are surprised at the results of their study showing that fish oil had a dramatically beneficial effect on the prevention of Schizophrenia in those vulnerable to the mind altering disease.
According to the director of the research center, Professor Patrick McGorry, "This research is part of a worldwide focus now, a cutting edge focus on very early treatment of schizophrenia, just like we do in breast cancer, where we're looking for the smallest breast lump and trying to prevent a potentially dangerous disease from getting entrenched. Similarly now, we're looking at that in schizophrenia. And the fish oil, surprisingly, has proved very positive at this stage of illness."
The study was a randomized control trial conducted on 81 at-risk individuals - those who had experienced brief hallucinations or delusions - between the ages of 15 and 25 years old. For a 3 month period, one half of the group received approximately 1.5 grams of a fish oil capsule while the remaining members received a placebo. Upon follow-up 1 year later, of those receiving the placebo, 28 percent had developed psychosis. Of those receiving the fish oil, about 5 percent showed signs of psychosis.
Early prevention was also cited as a key element in halting the disease. Lead researcher, Paul Amminger, states, "The risk in the placebo group was seven times as high to develop psychosis. And I think probably the reason why we saw this quite large effect is that if you receive a treatment early, even a benign treatment, early in the phase of the cause of a disorder, your effects are probably much better than later in this stage."
The study is welcomed news for those desiring to sidestep the use of anti-psychotic drugs. While the early use of these medicines can reduce the incidence of psychosis by about 12 percent, they often have undesirable side effects such as weight gain and an increased risk of heart disease.
"What we have here, it seems, is a very good and non-invasive alternative that could be safely used on at-risk people where only a proportion were ever going to develop the condition," said Professor Amminger.
Fish oil contains omega-3 fatty acids which have also been shown to decrease the risks of numerous health ailments such as bipolar disorder, depression, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
The study will now be attempted to be replicated in 9 other centers around the world.
Sources:
Transcript - ABC's 'Am'. Interview with Paul Amminger and Patrick McGorry by Tony Eastley, Barbara Miller Reporting. (http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2007/s2104682.htm)
Theage.com.au; "Fish Oil May Prevent Schizophrenia"
(http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/fish-oil-may-prevent-shizophrenia/2007/11/29/1196037018110.html)
According to the director of the research center, Professor Patrick McGorry, "This research is part of a worldwide focus now, a cutting edge focus on very early treatment of schizophrenia, just like we do in breast cancer, where we're looking for the smallest breast lump and trying to prevent a potentially dangerous disease from getting entrenched. Similarly now, we're looking at that in schizophrenia. And the fish oil, surprisingly, has proved very positive at this stage of illness."
The study was a randomized control trial conducted on 81 at-risk individuals - those who had experienced brief hallucinations or delusions - between the ages of 15 and 25 years old. For a 3 month period, one half of the group received approximately 1.5 grams of a fish oil capsule while the remaining members received a placebo. Upon follow-up 1 year later, of those receiving the placebo, 28 percent had developed psychosis. Of those receiving the fish oil, about 5 percent showed signs of psychosis.
Early prevention was also cited as a key element in halting the disease. Lead researcher, Paul Amminger, states, "The risk in the placebo group was seven times as high to develop psychosis. And I think probably the reason why we saw this quite large effect is that if you receive a treatment early, even a benign treatment, early in the phase of the cause of a disorder, your effects are probably much better than later in this stage."
The study is welcomed news for those desiring to sidestep the use of anti-psychotic drugs. While the early use of these medicines can reduce the incidence of psychosis by about 12 percent, they often have undesirable side effects such as weight gain and an increased risk of heart disease.
"What we have here, it seems, is a very good and non-invasive alternative that could be safely used on at-risk people where only a proportion were ever going to develop the condition," said Professor Amminger.
Fish oil contains omega-3 fatty acids which have also been shown to decrease the risks of numerous health ailments such as bipolar disorder, depression, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
The study will now be attempted to be replicated in 9 other centers around the world.
Sources:
Transcript - ABC's 'Am'. Interview with Paul Amminger and Patrick McGorry by Tony Eastley, Barbara Miller Reporting. (http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2007/s2104682.htm)
Theage.com.au; "Fish Oil May Prevent Schizophrenia"
(http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/fish-oil-may-prevent-shizophrenia/2007/11/29/1196037018110.html)
Merck Committed Scientific Fraud in Delays, Distortions of Vytorin Drug Trial
The latest round of scientific fraud from Big Pharma arrives in the form of yet more junk science conducted by Merck on its blockbuster cholesterol drug Vytorin. Results of a clinical trial involving the drug were finally released this week, nearly two years after they were known by Merck, and only after Merck attempted to manipulate the data by redefining the outcome of the trial after the fact!
To help explain the degree of scientific fraud happening with this Vytorin clinical trial, I've released a sixty-second parody video ad featuring Merck's Vytorin drug along with a narrative explanation of the fraud surrounding Vytorin. You can watch the video here: http://www.newstarget.com/022501.html
Deliberate Fraud: What Really Happened with Vytorin
Vytorin has been a top-selling cholesterol drug for several years, generating billions of dollars in revenue for Merck and Schering-Plough. Even though the drug was being prescribed to millions of people, nobody really knew if it worked to remove plaque from arteries (which sort of makes you wonder why it was approved in the first place, right?), so Merck launched a clinical trial called ENHANCE to study the effectiveness of the drug.
The ENHANCE study was completed in April, 2006, and the results were turned over to Merck. As it turns out, Merck didn't like the results of the trial, so instead of releasing them to the public (or the FDA), it sat on them, delaying the release of this data while Vytorin sales continued to ring up billions of dollars in sales.
After sitting on the data for over a year, Merck decided it would commit scientific fraud and "redefine" the goal of the study after the fact! This would involve selectively deciding which data points looked the best, and then reshaping the goal of the study to fit the data. (How's that for "evidence-based medicine?" The deeper you look into the so-called "science" behind Big Pharma's pill-pushing agenda, the more you realize it's based on nothing but fraud...)
When the scientific community got word of this after-the-fact redefinition of the study, they were outraged and demanded that Merck abide by established scientific guidelines. Merck then abandoned its plan to manipulate the goal of the study and decided to sit on the data for several more months.
Finally, after the threat of a Congressional investigation -- and spurred by numerous critics accusing Merck of hiding undesirable study results -- the company agreed to release the results of the clinical trial. And what did the results show? Steven Nissen, head of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic, said, "This drug doesn't work. Period. It just doesn't work. ... In fact, the data on both the rate of progression of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular events are trending in the wrong direction. This is a pretty clear failure. Physicians should now stop using ezetimibe or Vytorin except as a last resort."
In other words, the clinical trial results showed Vytorin to be a complete failure at reducing arterial plaque. This brings up three hugely important questions for modern medicine:
Question 1: Why was Vytorin approved by the FDA if it didn't work?
I find it curious that this test to determine whether Vytorin actually works was being conducted after it was approved by the FDA, don't you? As it turns out, all the millions of people who were prescribed Vytorin were being used as human guinea pigs, shelling out their hard-earned cash for a drug that was medically worthless. So why did the FDA approve Vytorin in the first place? Doesn't the FDA require some kind of proof that the drug works before approving it?
Of course not. You have to remember: The FDA operates as the marketing branch of Big Pharma. It's sole purpose is to promote drugs, not to protect the health of the public. The FDA approved Vytorin simply because Vytorin was poised to be a huge profit generator. At the FDA, real science is not nearly as important as big profits, and the agency maintains a default position of trusting clinical trials funded by the drug companies themselves! There's no real science going on at the FDA anymore (except in the back rooms where real scientists like Dr. David Graham are intimidated, censored or fired from their jobs). Instead, the FDA has become Big Pharma's pimp daddy, exploiting anyone it can to generate more obscene profits for its favorite clients: The drug companies.
It all makes you wonder: Where is the "evidence" in evidence-based medicine? The evidence, it seems, is all fiction. When drug companies are allowed to sell drugs that don't work, and the scientific results are allowed to be kept from the public for nearly two years, it's fairly obvious that the whole system of FDA-approved medicine is nothing more than a grand medical fraud.
The only people still defending this industry are idiots, crooks, politicians or lawyers. (Some people are all four.) There is no rational-minded person who could look at the behavior of Big Pharma and the FDA today and conclude that modern pharmaceutical medicine is based on anything resembling high-integrity science. This Vytorin debacle barely scratches the surface. Remember: This is something they failed to cover up! Imagine all the scientific trials that get buried, distorted or retroactively modified without anyone ever knowing about it!
Watch my Vytorin parody video to see how hilarious this whole situation has truly become:
http://www.newstarget.com/022501.html
Question 2: Why did Merck delay the release of the Vytorin clinical trial results?
The answer to this one is so obvious that it boggles the mind: Merck delayed release of the results because it knew that the minute the medical community learned the truth about Vytorin, prescriptions for the drug would plummet! And that, of course, would mean a drop in revenues and profits for Merck.
The Vytorin results were delayed simply to keep everybody ignorant of the fact that the drug didn't work! By keeping doctors, the FDA and the public ignorant of this fact, Merck allowed literally millions of prescriptions to be written for a drug that it already knew was clinically worthless at reducing arterial plaque.
Does anybody honestly think that if the Vytorin trial had showed extremely positive results, Merck wouldn't have released it immediately? Of course they would have! If this trial showed Vytorin to dramatically reduce plaque in the arteries while reducing deaths from heart attacks and strokes, Merck would have touted the study results way back in 2006. The fact that they intentionally delayed the release of this data just goes to show you that at Merck, it's not patients that come first... it's profits!
Question 3: If Vytorin lowers cholesterol but doesn't reduce arterial plaque, then shouldn't medicine reconsider the idea that high cholesterol causes arterial plaque?
The whole thinking behind Vytorin is that lowering LDL cholesterol would reduce the buildup of arterial plaque. Modern medicine has operated for over two decades on the myth that says cholesterol is solely responsible for atherosclerosis (plaque in the arteries).
Well what if that idea was, in fact, complete nonsense?
As practitioners of natural medicine have known for decades, cholesterol is not the evil disease-causing culprit it's made out to be by Big Pharma. High cholesterol is not a disease! Cholesterol is, in fact, an essential substance manufactured by the body in response to chronic circulatory inflammation caused by other things: Like eating red meat, fried foods, hydrogenated oils or processed foods. Cholesterol doesn't actually cause plaque in the arteries, and in fact this new ENHANCE study demonstrates that quite well: Vytorin caused a significant drop in LDL cholesterol levels, but arterial plaque actually began to increase!
The drug companies, however, love to promote simplistic explanations for diseases -- especially ones that can be reduced to a single number, like your cholesterol score. That way, they can define a "disease" as being a number that's too high, and then they can claim to "treat" the disease by giving you a chemical that causes the number to drop.
That way, they can even produce test results that convince you their drug is working. "See? Your number is lower now. The drug works!"
Big Pharma loves the idea of reducing medical treatments to one-dimensional number-pushing games that completely overlook the complexities of human biology. High cholesterol wasn't even considered a disease, by the way, until the drug companies started marketing cholesterol drugs and engaging in aggressive disease mongering to convince the public that their cholesterol numbers were too high.
The way to naturally lower your cholesterol numbers, by the way, is to simply stop eating all animal products and processed foods. A plant-based diet will radically improve your cardiovascular health, removing plaque, normalizing cholesterol levels and dramatically reducing your risk of heart attack or stroke.
Read the book, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn to learn the shocking truth about how easy it is to normalize your cardiovascular health through simple dietary changes (no drugs needed!).
Conclusion: Vytorin fraud demonstrates lack of scientific integrity in the pharmaceutical industry today
If there's one thing to take away from this whole fiasco, it's that when it comes to pharmaceuticals, you simply can't trust the science anymore.
Let me repeat that: You can't trust the science anymore!
There's so much fraud, distortion, corruption, misrepresentation, exaggeration and outright lying by drug companies and the FDA that the whole drug-pushing industry comes down to nothing but sophisticated (and profitable) quackery. The biggest quacks in the history of medicine are, without question, the drug companies operating today.
If you haven't already, be sure to check out my video parody at http://www.newstarget.com/022501.html which makes fun of this outright quackery.
So where does this put us? It means that any person choosing to use pharmaceuticals is playing the role of a human guinea pig, carrying out the medical experiments of the richest corporations in the world, while paying for it all the while!
It also means the entire foundation of modern medicine is a cruel hoax, rotten at the core, based on nothing more than wishful thinking and manipulative marketing.
It means that the doctors who have been prescribing these pills are fools. They've been easily manipulated by Big Pharma money, dazzled by distorted science, and transformed into puppet profit generators.
It means that pharmaceutical medicine (if you can even call it that) is finally being exposed as the grand fraud it has truly become.
Intelligent people have already largely turned away from drug-based medicine, realizing that the only medicines that are safe, effective and affordable are those medicines provided by Mother Nature in the form of herbs, foods, superfoods and phytonutrients. Mother Nature doesn't need to conduct fraudulent science to market her medicines -- they work naturally! Mother Nature needs no patent protection, no television ads, no defense attorneys and no bribery for her medicine. It simply works naturally and automatically, without asking for anything in return.
That's why informed consumers are turning to natural medicine. Only uninformed, ignorant consumers continue to rely on pharmaceuticals today. And my prediction? Most of those people are going to pay for their ignorance with their lives. Even though the causes of death will likely be listed as "natural causes," the truth is that most people who routinely take pharmaceuticals are ultimately killed by them through the failure of internal organs damaged by such drugs -- usually the liver, heart, pancreas or kidneys.
What Big Pharma has done -- and continues to do -- to human beings in North America and around the world is nothing less than an atrocious crime against humanity. That crime remains, as yet, unpunished. But I believe there will come a day when the backlash against these drug companies will be unleashed, and when that happens, even God will not be able to help these Big Pharma CEOs escape the terrible punishment likely to be inflicted upon them by four outraged generations of the People who have lost so much life, health and happiness at the hands of these malicious drug companies who have, at every opportunity, traded the People's lives for Pharma profits.
To help explain the degree of scientific fraud happening with this Vytorin clinical trial, I've released a sixty-second parody video ad featuring Merck's Vytorin drug along with a narrative explanation of the fraud surrounding Vytorin. You can watch the video here: http://www.newstarget.com/022501.html
Deliberate Fraud: What Really Happened with Vytorin
Vytorin has been a top-selling cholesterol drug for several years, generating billions of dollars in revenue for Merck and Schering-Plough. Even though the drug was being prescribed to millions of people, nobody really knew if it worked to remove plaque from arteries (which sort of makes you wonder why it was approved in the first place, right?), so Merck launched a clinical trial called ENHANCE to study the effectiveness of the drug.
The ENHANCE study was completed in April, 2006, and the results were turned over to Merck. As it turns out, Merck didn't like the results of the trial, so instead of releasing them to the public (or the FDA), it sat on them, delaying the release of this data while Vytorin sales continued to ring up billions of dollars in sales.
After sitting on the data for over a year, Merck decided it would commit scientific fraud and "redefine" the goal of the study after the fact! This would involve selectively deciding which data points looked the best, and then reshaping the goal of the study to fit the data. (How's that for "evidence-based medicine?" The deeper you look into the so-called "science" behind Big Pharma's pill-pushing agenda, the more you realize it's based on nothing but fraud...)
When the scientific community got word of this after-the-fact redefinition of the study, they were outraged and demanded that Merck abide by established scientific guidelines. Merck then abandoned its plan to manipulate the goal of the study and decided to sit on the data for several more months.
Finally, after the threat of a Congressional investigation -- and spurred by numerous critics accusing Merck of hiding undesirable study results -- the company agreed to release the results of the clinical trial. And what did the results show? Steven Nissen, head of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic, said, "This drug doesn't work. Period. It just doesn't work. ... In fact, the data on both the rate of progression of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular events are trending in the wrong direction. This is a pretty clear failure. Physicians should now stop using ezetimibe or Vytorin except as a last resort."
In other words, the clinical trial results showed Vytorin to be a complete failure at reducing arterial plaque. This brings up three hugely important questions for modern medicine:
Question 1: Why was Vytorin approved by the FDA if it didn't work?
I find it curious that this test to determine whether Vytorin actually works was being conducted after it was approved by the FDA, don't you? As it turns out, all the millions of people who were prescribed Vytorin were being used as human guinea pigs, shelling out their hard-earned cash for a drug that was medically worthless. So why did the FDA approve Vytorin in the first place? Doesn't the FDA require some kind of proof that the drug works before approving it?
Of course not. You have to remember: The FDA operates as the marketing branch of Big Pharma. It's sole purpose is to promote drugs, not to protect the health of the public. The FDA approved Vytorin simply because Vytorin was poised to be a huge profit generator. At the FDA, real science is not nearly as important as big profits, and the agency maintains a default position of trusting clinical trials funded by the drug companies themselves! There's no real science going on at the FDA anymore (except in the back rooms where real scientists like Dr. David Graham are intimidated, censored or fired from their jobs). Instead, the FDA has become Big Pharma's pimp daddy, exploiting anyone it can to generate more obscene profits for its favorite clients: The drug companies.
It all makes you wonder: Where is the "evidence" in evidence-based medicine? The evidence, it seems, is all fiction. When drug companies are allowed to sell drugs that don't work, and the scientific results are allowed to be kept from the public for nearly two years, it's fairly obvious that the whole system of FDA-approved medicine is nothing more than a grand medical fraud.
The only people still defending this industry are idiots, crooks, politicians or lawyers. (Some people are all four.) There is no rational-minded person who could look at the behavior of Big Pharma and the FDA today and conclude that modern pharmaceutical medicine is based on anything resembling high-integrity science. This Vytorin debacle barely scratches the surface. Remember: This is something they failed to cover up! Imagine all the scientific trials that get buried, distorted or retroactively modified without anyone ever knowing about it!
Watch my Vytorin parody video to see how hilarious this whole situation has truly become:
http://www.newstarget.com/022501.html
Question 2: Why did Merck delay the release of the Vytorin clinical trial results?
The answer to this one is so obvious that it boggles the mind: Merck delayed release of the results because it knew that the minute the medical community learned the truth about Vytorin, prescriptions for the drug would plummet! And that, of course, would mean a drop in revenues and profits for Merck.
The Vytorin results were delayed simply to keep everybody ignorant of the fact that the drug didn't work! By keeping doctors, the FDA and the public ignorant of this fact, Merck allowed literally millions of prescriptions to be written for a drug that it already knew was clinically worthless at reducing arterial plaque.
Does anybody honestly think that if the Vytorin trial had showed extremely positive results, Merck wouldn't have released it immediately? Of course they would have! If this trial showed Vytorin to dramatically reduce plaque in the arteries while reducing deaths from heart attacks and strokes, Merck would have touted the study results way back in 2006. The fact that they intentionally delayed the release of this data just goes to show you that at Merck, it's not patients that come first... it's profits!
Question 3: If Vytorin lowers cholesterol but doesn't reduce arterial plaque, then shouldn't medicine reconsider the idea that high cholesterol causes arterial plaque?
The whole thinking behind Vytorin is that lowering LDL cholesterol would reduce the buildup of arterial plaque. Modern medicine has operated for over two decades on the myth that says cholesterol is solely responsible for atherosclerosis (plaque in the arteries).
Well what if that idea was, in fact, complete nonsense?
As practitioners of natural medicine have known for decades, cholesterol is not the evil disease-causing culprit it's made out to be by Big Pharma. High cholesterol is not a disease! Cholesterol is, in fact, an essential substance manufactured by the body in response to chronic circulatory inflammation caused by other things: Like eating red meat, fried foods, hydrogenated oils or processed foods. Cholesterol doesn't actually cause plaque in the arteries, and in fact this new ENHANCE study demonstrates that quite well: Vytorin caused a significant drop in LDL cholesterol levels, but arterial plaque actually began to increase!
The drug companies, however, love to promote simplistic explanations for diseases -- especially ones that can be reduced to a single number, like your cholesterol score. That way, they can define a "disease" as being a number that's too high, and then they can claim to "treat" the disease by giving you a chemical that causes the number to drop.
That way, they can even produce test results that convince you their drug is working. "See? Your number is lower now. The drug works!"
Big Pharma loves the idea of reducing medical treatments to one-dimensional number-pushing games that completely overlook the complexities of human biology. High cholesterol wasn't even considered a disease, by the way, until the drug companies started marketing cholesterol drugs and engaging in aggressive disease mongering to convince the public that their cholesterol numbers were too high.
The way to naturally lower your cholesterol numbers, by the way, is to simply stop eating all animal products and processed foods. A plant-based diet will radically improve your cardiovascular health, removing plaque, normalizing cholesterol levels and dramatically reducing your risk of heart attack or stroke.
Read the book, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn to learn the shocking truth about how easy it is to normalize your cardiovascular health through simple dietary changes (no drugs needed!).
Conclusion: Vytorin fraud demonstrates lack of scientific integrity in the pharmaceutical industry today
If there's one thing to take away from this whole fiasco, it's that when it comes to pharmaceuticals, you simply can't trust the science anymore.
Let me repeat that: You can't trust the science anymore!
There's so much fraud, distortion, corruption, misrepresentation, exaggeration and outright lying by drug companies and the FDA that the whole drug-pushing industry comes down to nothing but sophisticated (and profitable) quackery. The biggest quacks in the history of medicine are, without question, the drug companies operating today.
If you haven't already, be sure to check out my video parody at http://www.newstarget.com/022501.html which makes fun of this outright quackery.
So where does this put us? It means that any person choosing to use pharmaceuticals is playing the role of a human guinea pig, carrying out the medical experiments of the richest corporations in the world, while paying for it all the while!
It also means the entire foundation of modern medicine is a cruel hoax, rotten at the core, based on nothing more than wishful thinking and manipulative marketing.
It means that the doctors who have been prescribing these pills are fools. They've been easily manipulated by Big Pharma money, dazzled by distorted science, and transformed into puppet profit generators.
It means that pharmaceutical medicine (if you can even call it that) is finally being exposed as the grand fraud it has truly become.
Intelligent people have already largely turned away from drug-based medicine, realizing that the only medicines that are safe, effective and affordable are those medicines provided by Mother Nature in the form of herbs, foods, superfoods and phytonutrients. Mother Nature doesn't need to conduct fraudulent science to market her medicines -- they work naturally! Mother Nature needs no patent protection, no television ads, no defense attorneys and no bribery for her medicine. It simply works naturally and automatically, without asking for anything in return.
That's why informed consumers are turning to natural medicine. Only uninformed, ignorant consumers continue to rely on pharmaceuticals today. And my prediction? Most of those people are going to pay for their ignorance with their lives. Even though the causes of death will likely be listed as "natural causes," the truth is that most people who routinely take pharmaceuticals are ultimately killed by them through the failure of internal organs damaged by such drugs -- usually the liver, heart, pancreas or kidneys.
What Big Pharma has done -- and continues to do -- to human beings in North America and around the world is nothing less than an atrocious crime against humanity. That crime remains, as yet, unpunished. But I believe there will come a day when the backlash against these drug companies will be unleashed, and when that happens, even God will not be able to help these Big Pharma CEOs escape the terrible punishment likely to be inflicted upon them by four outraged generations of the People who have lost so much life, health and happiness at the hands of these malicious drug companies who have, at every opportunity, traded the People's lives for Pharma profits.
15 January 2008
Can Eating Like an Ape Change Your Health in 12 Days?
In an experiment filmed for TV, nine British volunteers set up camp for twelve days in a tented enclosure at Paignton Zoo in Devon, next to the ape house, and ate the diet our ape-like ancestors likely consumed.
The volunteers consumed up to five kilos of raw fruit and vegetables each day, in a diet regime devised by nutritionist.
The diet was based on research showing that such a diet could have health benefits for cholesterol levels and blood pressure.
The volunteers lived on a three-day rotating menu of fruit, vegetables, nuts and honey. In the second week, standard portions of cooked oily fish were added. Salt intake was cut to 1 gram a day (from a previous average of 12 grams), saturated fat consumption was cut to 5 to 13 percent of daily calories, and levels of soluble fiber, which binds cholesterol in the gut, were increased significantly.
Over the twelve days, the volunteers lost weight and saw their blood pressure and cholesterol levels fall. The average volunteer lost almost 10 pounds, their cholesterol levels dropped 23 percent, and their average blood pressure fell from 140/83 (very nearly hypertensive) to 122/76.
BBC News January 11, 2007
BBC.co.uk
The volunteers consumed up to five kilos of raw fruit and vegetables each day, in a diet regime devised by nutritionist.
The diet was based on research showing that such a diet could have health benefits for cholesterol levels and blood pressure.
The volunteers lived on a three-day rotating menu of fruit, vegetables, nuts and honey. In the second week, standard portions of cooked oily fish were added. Salt intake was cut to 1 gram a day (from a previous average of 12 grams), saturated fat consumption was cut to 5 to 13 percent of daily calories, and levels of soluble fiber, which binds cholesterol in the gut, were increased significantly.
Over the twelve days, the volunteers lost weight and saw their blood pressure and cholesterol levels fall. The average volunteer lost almost 10 pounds, their cholesterol levels dropped 23 percent, and their average blood pressure fell from 140/83 (very nearly hypertensive) to 122/76.
BBC News January 11, 2007
BBC.co.uk
Four Ways to Lower Your Blood Pressure Without Drugs
Up to 90 percent of high blood pressure cases are thought to be caused by lifestyle habits that constrict blood vessels.
When your blood vessels are constricted tightly, your heart must work much harder to keep your blood flowing, hence the higher blood pressure.
Increasing a compound in your blood known as nitric monoxide can help to open constricted blood vessels and lower your blood pressure. Four ways to increase nitric monoxide in your blood are:
* Aerobic exercise
* Taking a warm bath
* Breathing in and out through one nostril (by closing the other nostril and your mouth)
* Eating bitter melon, which is rich in amino acids and vitamin C
Indigo World 2007
Cholesterol Has Benefits, Too
Researchers have discovered that lower cholesterol levels can reduce muscle gain from exercising.
The team studied 55 men and women, ages 60-69. Three days a week for 12 weeks, they performed several exercises, including stretching, stationary bike riding and vigorous weight lifting.
The researchers found a significant association between dietary cholesterol and change in strength. Those with higher cholesterol intake also had the highest muscle strength gain. Cholesterol circulating in the blood also appeared to have contributed to greater muscle gain. Subjects who were taking cholesterol-lowering drugs also showed lower muscle gain.
The lead researcher added, “We were not expecting to get these kind of results.”
Sources:
* Eurekalert January 9, 2008
14 January 2008
48 Percent of Doctors Admit to Prescribing Placebos Just to Shut You Up
According to a survey by the University of Chicago, 48 percent of doctors said "they have given at least one treatment when there was no evidence it would work."
One of the most common placebo treatments was the prescription of antibiotics for viral infections that do not respond to antibiotics.
The reasons the doctors gave for their actions included calming a patient down, responding to demands for medication that the doctor felt was unnecessary, or simply trying to do something after all other clinical treatment options had failed.
Ninety-six percent of the physicians surveyed believe that dummy pills can have real therapeutic effects. However, 12 percent thought placebos should be banned completely from regular clinical practice, and 20 percent admitted to outright lying to patients by claiming a placebo was an active medication.
Sources:
* The Consumerist January 9, 2008
One of the most common placebo treatments was the prescription of antibiotics for viral infections that do not respond to antibiotics.
The reasons the doctors gave for their actions included calming a patient down, responding to demands for medication that the doctor felt was unnecessary, or simply trying to do something after all other clinical treatment options had failed.
Ninety-six percent of the physicians surveyed believe that dummy pills can have real therapeutic effects. However, 12 percent thought placebos should be banned completely from regular clinical practice, and 20 percent admitted to outright lying to patients by claiming a placebo was an active medication.
Sources:
* The Consumerist January 9, 2008
Vitamin C Linked to Lower Stroke Risk
A large European study has found that increased levels of the vitamin C can significantly cut stroke risks.
The study, part of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer, looked at more than 20,000 people over a period of more than 9 years.
The highest average blood levels of vitamin C were associated with a 42 per cent lower risk of stroke, after adjusting for age, sex, smoking habits, alcohol consumption, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, BMI, and physical activity. Results were the same when participants who consumed vitamin C-containing supplements were excluded form the results, suggesting that the benefits likely came from vitamin C-rich foods.
Sources:
* NutraIngredients.com January 7, 2008
The study, part of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer, looked at more than 20,000 people over a period of more than 9 years.
The highest average blood levels of vitamin C were associated with a 42 per cent lower risk of stroke, after adjusting for age, sex, smoking habits, alcohol consumption, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, BMI, and physical activity. Results were the same when participants who consumed vitamin C-containing supplements were excluded form the results, suggesting that the benefits likely came from vitamin C-rich foods.
Sources:
* NutraIngredients.com January 7, 2008
Doctors Told to Stop Giving Antibiotics for Colds
Doctors in Britain will soon be told to stop prescribing antibiotics for coughs, colds and sore throats. Overuse of the drugs is fuelling the spread of deadly antibiotic-resistant superbugs. A new government program aims to diminish the use of the drugs.
Most colds, coughs and flu are caused by viruses, which cannot be treated with antibiotics anyway.
Overuse of antibiotics has been blamed for the rise of drug-resistant tuberculosis. If antibiotic use is not curbed, doctors could run out of effective treatment for some diseases.
Sources:
* The Telegraph January 9, 2008
Most colds, coughs and flu are caused by viruses, which cannot be treated with antibiotics anyway.
Overuse of antibiotics has been blamed for the rise of drug-resistant tuberculosis. If antibiotic use is not curbed, doctors could run out of effective treatment for some diseases.
Sources:
* The Telegraph January 9, 2008
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