Electric or Not?

Last issue I posed a question as to how many of you would actually read the article about your body’s electrical system if I wrote it. I placed that question as the last item in the newsletter. I realize I haven’t been putting in a great deal of time on these newsletter due to summertime outdoor obligations, so maybe you were too bored by this stuff to get all the way to the end. Only a small percentage of you replied to the question. (The percentage was, however, larger than what those National Cancer folks claim for “a breakthrough drug” in clinical studies. J ) Or perhaps you only subscribe to get the Natren discount and don’t read any of this stuff. If you have read this far, however, please send a “yes” or “no” note to mad_scientist@gwtc.net so I’ll know whether or not I am wasting my time in the wee hours of the morning every day to put this article together. Those who have already replied need not do so again. Thank you.

Update on Death by Medicine (and Doctors)

I have heard the following stats given on television, so I looked them up and they are valid (see below for comment). These are deaths in a single year in the USA.

Heart disease: 699,697

Cancer: 553,251

Death by Doctor:

Adverse Drug Reactions (both in hospital and outpatient): 305,000

Malnutrition (due to cancer treatments): 108,800

Medical errors: 98,000

Bedsores: 115,000

Nosocomial Infections: 88,000

Unnecessary Procedures: 37,136

Surgery Mistakes (and complications due to surgery): 32,000

This means doctors and drugs killed 783,936 people in the United States, and that makes them the number one killer in this country.

Source: http://www.ourcivilisation.com/medicine/usamed.htm

It is interesting to note that of those who died from drugs, 16,500 of them were from NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), many of which are OTCs (over-the-counter drugs, like Aleve, etc.). Eight people also died from charcoal briquettes (BBQing in a closed space?), but most interesting is that not one (not even one!) died from taking vitamins, which seems to be one of the things some doctors rant about us using (and the FDA wants to control). One should note that I did validate these stats through NCHS (National Center for Health Statistics), but they were for the year 2001 and several shows/newsletters (Know the Cause and Dr. Mercola at a minimum) are using them as though they are the most current.

There are also many websites giving stats as far back as 1999 as if they are the latest. I have found newer (preliminary) stats for 2004, but they do not break down into the same categories. Maybe they don’t want you to know…

Heart disease: 654,092 (down by 45,605)

Cancer: 550,270 (down by 2,981 – not enough for all those “breakthrough drugs” they claim)

Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 150,147

Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 123,884

Accidents (unintentional injuries): 108,694

Diabetes: 72,815

Alzheimer’s disease: 65,829

Influenza/Pneumonia: 61,472

Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 42,762

Septicemia: 33,464

Source: Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2004, tables 7

Mad Cow Disease (BSE) is More BS

Rather than picking on Big Pharma’s lackey (FDA), today I think I’ll point a finger at Big Ag’s lackey, the USDA.

August 24, 2006 - Canada has just announced their 8th case of BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis). The USDA and proponents of NAIS will undoubtedly tout this as reason for a National Animal Identification System in the United States. But that’s bogus.

1. BSE is not transmitted between animals. BSE is acquired by cows eating cows. Don’t feed cows to cows. It’s that simple. (I know, you’re asking why anyone would do that – well, processed animal meat and byproducts are routinely put in cattle feed.)

2. This animal (the 8^th Canadian case) with BSE was old! It was over 8 years old, which puts it beyond the time of Canada’s ban on feeding cows to cows. Don’t eat old cows. Don’t eat downer cows. It’s that simple.

3. NAIS will not stop BSE. The government enforcing the ban on feeding cows to cows would be more productive. Even better is if the feedlots were abandoned and cows were raised on pasture like they should be. Factory farming and feedlots are a problem. Traditional farming is not the issue. It’s that simple.

So why doesn’t the USDA get it? Because they are in the pockets of Big-Ag, which has a vested interest in controlling markets so they make a profit off of everybody. They don’t like people being independent.

Don’t let the USDA hoodwink people into thinking NAIS is about disease prevention. It isn’t. NAIS and Premises ID are about control over farmers and homesteaders. They are taking away our traditional right to farm and replacing it with a privilege to farm. Once they do that they will start charging you money for that privilege. Then they’ll start taxing that privilege on an annual basis per head. The last thing we need is more government, more regulations, more taxes and more micro-management in our lives by the Ninny State.

There is no need for NAIS. If the exporters and big producers want a trace-back system for their customers, then let them create a voluntary, market driven, non-governmental system of animal ID and trace-back. Taxpayer money should not be wasted on it and nobody should be forced into it. Mandatory is fascism plain and simple. Let the market decide - that’s good capitalism and what this country was founded upon. http://nonais.org/index.php/2006/08/24/canadas-8th-bse-case/ At the moment, the only state in this country that has told the USDA to pound sand is Vermont. They have said they will not release the names of any premises (farm owners) until the USDA can guarantee confidentiality. When Wisconsin and Massachusetts discovered this fault in the system, they also decided to withhold that information from USDA. In my mind, this is not enough. NAIS will not do what it claims and there is no need at all for any of us to have to register our premises. We do not deal in buying or selling animals. They do not need to know how many of each kind of animal we have here (cows, chickens, pigs, horses, and yes, even dogs and cats). It is none of their damn business! – Period!!!

Watchdog

1. Here’s the headline: FDA OKs bacteria-eating virus to treat meat. I don’t want to quote this article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14410160/ because I don’t believe one damn word of their reasoning and justifications (you can poke that link and read their foolishness if you so desire). To me, it sounds too much like a military maneuver – “We’re gonna go kill hundreds of thousands of people in the name of peace!” My ass! Let’s turn a bunch of viruses loose on the land in hopes they will eat a few bacteria. They have everyone worried about avian flu mutating. What’s this one going to do inside your body? This is a food additive, damn it! That means you will eat those viruses. What will they kill once inside your body? Government idiots! Lannie did a little checking on this and discovered that the bacteria they are trying to kill on the meats you buy at the store are Listeria, which is a “gram positive facultative anaerobe.” Guess what else is inside of your intestines already that would also fit that target? Yes, folks, besides the Listeria, L. acidophilus, B. bifidum, and L. bulgaricus (and probably all of the good bacteria in your gut) are non-spore forming, gram positive facultative anaerobes (B. bifidum is an obligate anaerobe). So if this virus kills the Listeria bacteria, what’s going to keep it from wiping out all the bacteria you need in your digestive process? This is akin to some “all natural” dog food manufacturer Lannie also found that added (deliberately!) Aspergillus niger to their product claiming it is a probiotic! Idiots! Aspergillus niger is a killer and so is this FDA-approved virus! Now here’s a note for Prez Bushy and his Homeland Security Gestapo: If you want to find the terrorists who intend to quietly kill all Americans, just go down the street a few doors until you come to the sign that says United States Food and Drug Association. There they are, hiding in plain sight, so don’t overlook these idiots who are committing murder for profit and claiming it’s for our own good.

2. You really should go read this entire article in the San Francisco Chronicle: The obesity epidemic is caused by a “poisoned” food supply that is altering people’s biochemistry and driving them to eat more and move less, according to a hypothesis proposed by a UCSF doctor who culled results from thousands of studies on obesity. It is unfair and unhelpful to blame personal behaviors, especially a lack of self-control, for the country’s rising obesity rates, says Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatrician and nationally renowned obesity expert. The processed food that is most readily available to Americans -- from potato chips and cookies to yogurt and white bread -- is loaded with sugars that cause the body to believe that it is hungry, which makes people feel compelled to consume more calories and conserve energy, he said. Sugar makes the body produce more insulin, which blocks hormones that would normally tell the brain to stop eating, he said. (And let’s not forget that insulin also signals the body to store any fat consumed along with the sugar.) Breaking the pattern of sugar consumption -- a pattern that Lustig compares to nicotine addiction -- is more than just a matter of willpower. It will take a grassroots effort of doctors, community leaders and consumers to force the government and the food industry to get those sugary foods out of mainstream American diets, he said. “Everyone’s assuming you have a choice, but when your brain is starving, you don’t have a choice,” Lustig said. “When you look at it that way, all of a sudden Big Food looks like the perpetrator, and the patient becomes the victim. Congress says you can’t sue McDonald’s for obesity because it’s your fault. Except the thing is, when you don’t have a choice, it’s not your fault.” http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/08/12/MNGBUKHEOM1.DTL Where I disagree with their assessment is that you do have a choice. We have told you in these newsletters for the past year how to beat the processed-food system, and our bodies, now no longer overweight and mostly free of pains, are the proof that this does work. Once again, the system is offering an excuse for those who choose to continue the roller-coaster ride and blame someone else. You can get healthy. You can lose weight. All you have to do is stop believing their marketing BS, stop making excuses for your decisions, and make the change to a healthier lifestyle. In a distantly-related story (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4793455.stm), it seems that of the 6.5 billion people on this planet today, over one billion of them are overweight. Doesn’t that just shout out that there is something wrong with the food we are eating?

3. WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 — A federal judge ordered strict new limitations on tobacco marketing on Thursday after finding that cigarette makers deserved to be punished for a decades-old conspiracy to deceive the public about the dangers of smoking. The deception, Judge Gladys Kessler of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia said, resulted in “an immeasurable amount of human suffering.” More at:

http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/washington/18tobacco.html&OQ=_rQ3D1Q26thQ26emcQ3Dth&OP=3be78d01Q2FQ255KQ5DQ25Q2BkCsFkkiQ3FQ25Q3FAA(Q25AjQ25DjQ255PsQ5CBxdikxQ25DjikQ5DPCCkqQ5Ciy, I do not present this because I want anyone to quit smoking (your choice), but because it makes me wonder, when will a judge come along who has the cajones to do the same thing to Big Pharma? The drug manufacturers have lied to us in the same way as Big Tobacco and they actually kill more people per year because of those lies.

4A. Aha! What did we tell you? An increasing number of marketers are apparently implanting Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID) into products to monitor consumer behavior after they leave stores. The tiny chips, hidden unnoticeably in the product or its packaging, can be read though your home’s walls, thereby allowing marketers to know exactly when and where you are using a specific product. Marketers claim it’s completely legal, while opponents refer to them as “spy chips”. Check out this website to see a short animated video depicting some of RFID’s current capabilities: http://www.spychips.com/RFIDclothingstoredemo.html I am not willing to live in that world! Where do I sign up for the next mission to Mars?

4B. I told you this was coming. Now CDC wants to enact it for sure. In recent email dispatch it was announced that the Center for Disease Control has discovered 13 cases of human plague in four states leading to the proposal for a new National People Identification System (NPIS) to use implantable, satellite GPS based, active RFID for tracking the movements and interactions of all humans to control the spread of disease. More at: http://nonais.org/index.php/2006/08/27/cdc-plans-npis/ This is Big Brother to the max and they’ll have to shoot me because I will not allow them to do this to me.

5A. BENEFITS OF GRASS-FED BEEF AND DAIRY: 1) Animals raised on factory farms are routinely fed genetically modified grains, slaughterhouse waste, chicken manure, and municipal garbage. 2) Because ruminants have evolved to eat fibrous grasses (not starchy low fiber grain) they are more prone to disease when they are reared on a diet of grains rather than pasture and pasture forage. 3) Compared to corn and grain-fed cattle, beef and dairy products from grass-fed animals have higher levels of vitamin E, beta-carotene, vitamin C, and omega-3 fatty acids. 4) The manure from pasture-fed animals is easily taken up by the soil as natural fertilizer. In factory farm feedlots, the animals are confined to such a small space, the manure collects and runs-off into area waterways, increasing algae and bacteria levels. Source: http://www.eatwild.com

 5B. The USDA is now trying to destroy the term “grass-fed” just as they co-opted and destroyed the term “organic.” Each year they continue to water down the term “organic” to the point where factory farms can now get away with deceiving consumers into believing they are producing organically. The USDA has published for comment grass fed standards to define what the term Grass Fed means. This claim defines grass fed to mean animals who receive 99% of their lifetime energy supply from grass and forage. However, it falls short of defining where this forage diet can be fed. To most consumers the term grass fed means cattle humanely raised in grass pastures from birth to harvest, the way nature intended. The USDA proposal would allow animals to be kept in confinement, fed harvested forage, corn silage and other grains that have not been separated from their stalks. If this proposed claim passes into regulation you could see feedlot beef fed antibiotics, hormones and legally be labeled grass fed Beef. See http://nonais.org/index.php?s=grass+fed Oh, and you’re going to pay more for it, just because of the current health-food drive to buy things labeled “organic” and “grass fed.” Why? Because they can. To read more of this type of stuff, visit http://www.nonais.org/ (an anti-national animal identification system organization, speaking out to protect the rights of the family farmers).

6. Aug 23, 2006 ATLANTA - U.S. health officials have placed the genetic blueprints of more than 650 flu viruses into a public database, in an attempt to increase flu research and set an example for other nations. Article at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14482693/ Excuse me, but isn’t this making it a little too easy for bioterrorists to release an old strain back into the environment? If anyone can access this, I guarantee someone will do so with malice aforethought.

7. Despite years of public outcry, based on recommendations by President Bush’s New Freedom Commission to screen all school children for mental illness, TeenScreen is now being administered in the nation’s public school system and children are being regularly diagnosed with one, or more, disorders chosen from the close to 400 listed in the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV” (DSM), also known as the psychiatric “Billing Bible.” More at: http://www.newstarget.com/020092.html TeenScreen is obviously a front for Big Pharma, backed and enforced by the feds.

8. The placebo effect has been proven to be real: Now, using PET scanners and MRIs to peer into the heads of patients who respond to sugar pills, researchers have discovered that the placebo effect is not “all in patients’ heads” but rather, in their brains. New research shows that belief in a dummy treatment leads to changes in brain chemistry. Read the rest of the story at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14309026/ Now I find this very interesting because I just gave you folks my Field of Intentions guide and this placebo effect appears to work the same way. That is, you get better because you have told your subconscious to get better, which then alters your brain chemistry to achieve the desired effects. Same story, different name.

9. Here’s another one that you should read in full: The FDA is now poised to dramatically change the health and well being of all Americans. Unfortunately, they are headed in the wrong direction--straight over a cliff. The FDA is supposed to make sure drugs are safe and effective; they are mandated to protect the public. However, the top two positions at the FDA are now headed by Big Pharma representatives. The Bush-appointed new FDA leadership is intent on removing any brakes being applied to the drug approval process, quite happy to turn ill Americans into human guinea pigs. Piloting this sinking ship is Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D., a Bush family friend. Since last October, he has been the temporary head of the FDA. We are now in the midst of his Senate confirmation process to be the permanent head of the FDA (a vote is expected mid September). Von Eschenbach is up to his eyeballs in Big Pharma and elite political connections, making his confirmation likely. Once the Plan B political hurdle is overcome, von Eschenbach plans to transform the FDA into a drug company. To avoid consumer confusion the FDA should change its name to something more fitting, like the Fast Drug Approval organization. The rest of the story is at: http://www.newstarget.com/020118.html

10. Monsanto’s Genetically Engineered Grasses Will ‘Wreak Havoc’ on Native Species This might not seem like a health-related issue, but it makes a point: An experimental variety of genetically engineered bentgrass has escaped from its test plot in Oregon and has been found growing in the wild as far as three miles away, according to scientists from the U.S. EPA. The biotech plant, designed for golf courses, has not been approved by the USDA, but has already been found dispersing among native grasses in six different locations. Scientists say they don’t know how it will behave in the wild but admit it may have a strong advantage over native grasses, and could therefore irreversibly damage the ecosystem as it spreads. According to Tom Stohlgren, an ecologist at the US Geological Survey’s National Institute of Invasive Species Science, the experimental bentgrass “can tend to outcompete other species...It doesn’t need to sexually reproduce - it’s like The Blob. It could potentially hit rare species or national parks.” More at: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_1575.cfm And my point is? Go back and read item #1 of this Watchdog column. Here we have some idiots thinking they are making something new and good for one sector of the economy who have loosed the demons on the world and it might not be correctable. Does it make any difference whether it is golf-course grass or a quick fix to meat-borne bacteria? Once you’ve killed us (or the native grass), are we not dead forever?

11. AFTER 70-YEAR BAN: HEMP MAY SOON BE LEGALLY GROWN ON U.S. SOIL After receiving thousands of emails and letters from grassroots constituents, including organic consumers, the California Senate has approved a bill (26-13) that would allow farmers to grow industrial hemp. Senate Republican Tom McClintock spearheaded the bill on the Senate floor and noted that hemp “bears no more resemblance to marijuana than a poodle bears to a wolf...you would die from smoke inhalation before you would get high.” Industrial hemp was inaccurately equated with marijuana in a 1937 ban on the crop, despite the fact that it was a staple crop for U.S. Farmers for decades, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The $270 million U.S. hemp market is currently supplied by Canadian farmers. With the current bill, California lawmakers believe they can get around the federal ban by restricting the sale of California-grown hemp to the state itself, thereby not infringing on any interstate commerce laws. The bill now goes back to the California Assembly. Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_1568.cfm Hoorah for the Californian legislature (for a rare change)! Now we can start making real ropes again, and make paper cheaply without cutting down all our forests (it was Hearst, by the way, who originally got hemp banned). Anyway, now if we can just get the FDA to see a similar light and allow free-market use of other herbs.

12. TIP OF THE WEEK: THE MOST DANGEROUS INGREDIENTS IN CONVENTIONAL FOODS 1) Sodium nitrite -- causes cancer, found in most processed meats like hot dogs, bacon, sausage. Used to make meats appear red (a color fixer chemical). 2) Hydrogenated oils -- causes heart disease, nutritional deficiencies, general deterioration of cellular health, and much more. Found in cookies, crackers, margarine and many “manufactured” foods. Used to make oils stay in the food, extending shelf life. Sometimes also called “plastic fat.” 3) Excitotoxins -- aspartame, monosodium glutamate and others (see below). These neurotoxic chemical additives directly harm nerve cells, over-exciting them to the point of cell death, according to Dr. Russell Blaylock. They’re found in diet soda, canned soup, salad dressing, breakfast sausage and even many manufactured vegetarian foods. They’re used to add flavor to over-processed, boring foods that have had the life cooked out of them. Source: A new book by Mike Adams, entitled “Grocery Warning” takes a scientific look at a plethora of problematic ingredients in the everyday foods we eat. Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_705.cfm We have pointed the guilty finger at these foods before, so this might seem redundant to our regular readers. What I find most interesting here is that the Organic Consumers Association has jumped on Mike Adams’ bandwagon. Perhaps there is hope…

13. It could have ended three years ago, when a leaky FedEx box containing an arm and legs turned up in Missouri. Or years before that, when a judge convicted him of embezzling money from the sale of a corpse that belonged to a medical school in California. But nothing stopped Philip Joe Guyett Jr. from moving steadily eastward, mining gold from the lucrative body parts trade. Federal officials shut down this flesh-and-bone prospector in Raleigh, N.C., earlier this month, saying his products posed a danger to public health. By then, he had supplied hundreds of tissues for knee repairs, spine surgeries and other medical procedures around the nation, many of them allegedly procured in an unsterile funeral home embalming room. Despite his conviction, he twice was able to register companies with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to provide tissue for transplants. Given the probable source of body parts, even when not trying to construct Frankenstein, are you sure you want that transplant surgery? More at: http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/08/27/D8JP01J00.html

14. Dark Chocolate Sales Soar 40% Top Hershey Exec Calls it ‘Real Consumer Behavior Change’ NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Reports (“reports” my butt – you mean their intense lying ad campaign) that it can be heart-healthful have sent milk chocolate’s once-poor second cousin, dark chocolate, on a tear. Sales are up 40% and introductions of new dark chocolate products are skyrocketing. These people should be charged with a crime (false advertising). Chocolate is not heart-healthy. Cocoa, a supposed ingredient in chocolate, is heart-healthy, but what passes for chocolate today contains very little (if any) actual cocoa. And the risks from the other ingredients in a candy bar (sugar or high fructose corn syrup and other chemicals) far outweigh any potential benefits the consumer might get from the extremely tiny amount of cocoa. Candy bars are still a killer, regardless of what lies you are hearing in their advertisements.

Instead, make your own by melting some healthy and antifungal coconut oil, stir in cocoa powder until it’s nice and dark, then add liquid stevia to taste. Refrigerate in a waxed-paper lined loaf pan until hard. This chocolaty treat is healthy. No sugar… no man-made chemicals… no preservative to make it last forever…

15. Designed by power company researchers, a new system called Toxecon prevents gaseous mercury from escaping into the atmosphere by mixing it with carbon, creating ash that is collected in the fabric bags and trucked to landfills. http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=11143 A good story, and I applaud their start at controlling these toxins, but what about the mercury-containing coal ash they truck off to the landfill? Won’t that come back to us in our water supply?

16. The British medical journal The Lancet is appealing to the medical community to stop using the term “asthma” as it misleads people to believe it is a disease rather than a group of symptoms with various origins and characteristics. Symptoms of asthma include wheezing, coughing and breathing difficulties, and it is generally accepted that attacks are brought on by inflamed airways, but the actual spark for the inflammation is not known, nor is the reason why some people contract asthma while others do not. More at: http://www.newstarget.com/020176.html I am glad someone in the hierarchy of medicine has decided to call a spade a spade, but I also wish they’d look into fungal infections in the lungs and treat accordingly.

17. And across the Atlantic, to go with our lead story this issue: LONDON, Aug. 28 (UPI) -- Britain’s National Patient Safety Agency has said thousands of people are killed in the country every year by medical errors. The agency said 526,599 people were harmed and 2,159 died as a result of improper care from doctors, nurses and ambulance staff, This Is London reported Monday. The recorded errors included incorrect prescriptions, botched operations, lost medical records, misdiagnoses and misplaced patients. “All those deaths were preventable,” said Katherine Murphy, of the country’s Patients’ Association. “People go into hospital to get better. One can have some sympathy with staff because we know they are working under huge pressure but someone must be held accountable.” More at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20060828-19305100-bc-britain-medicalerrors.xml Obviously, this is a global problem and not restricted to the United States of Halliburton.

18. WASHINGTON - The labels on Cipro and similar antibiotics should bear more serious warnings about a possible link to tendon injuries, petitioners told federal health officials Tuesday. Between 1997 and 2005, the Food and Drug Administration received 262 reports of ruptured tendons in patients using drugs from the fluoroquinolone class of antibiotics, the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said in its petition to the FDA. The state of Illinois filed a similar petition last year and asked Tuesday that the two requests be combined. More at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14574467/

19. WASHINGTON - The gravy train — make that the sausage, biscuits and gravy train — just kept on rolling in most of America last year, with 31 states showing an increase in obesity. Mississippi continued to lead the way. An estimated 29.5 percent of adults there are considered obese. That’s an increase of 1.1 percentage points when compared with last year’s report, which is compiled by Trust for America’s Health, an advocacy group that promotes increased funding for public health programs. Meanwhile, Colorado remains the leanest state. About 16.9 percent of its adults are considered obese. That mark was also up slightly from last year’s report, but not enough to be considered statistically significant. Is there no place in this country where people aren’t eating bad food? More at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14569615/ Clearly, the purple and dark red states on the map below are those places where the consumers have the most inclination to eat cheap food (i.e., it contains sugar and/or corn or corn syrup). That could be from low income (= cheap food) or they are in too much of a hurry to cook (= McBarf burgers on the go).

20. The Pennsylvania Farms Premise Identification Project has expanded the NAIS Premises ID from just livestock to also include premises that raise plants. They want to know what you’re doing no matter what the excuse. This is getting to be a very lucrative business for the vendors who supply software and other supplies for the newly mandated identification systems. Wouldn’t you like to have the government tell everyone they had to get their pork chops from an approved source, which is you?!? It will be lucrative for the properly greased pigs (um, those who kiss the right government ass) who will get approvals as a preferred source. This is too much. Maybe they should go down to their big city and see that cracked bell and remember that we fought the revolutionary war for far less than what they are doing here. If you want to read their words, try: -PAFarms.org

21. Beware those touting HGH (Human Growth Hormone). Not only is this illegal except for a few rare conditions (online purchases of HGH are not really HGH, but bogus snake oil). People want this because it supposedly can restore sagging physiques, flagging endurance and wilting libidos as well as cure depression and sharpen mental acuity. What they don’t tell you is that HGH can alter the body’s ability to metabolize carbohydrates, leading to blood-sugar imbalances and, in some cases, diabetes. It can cause bones to thicken, contributing to joint pain and severe arthritis. Amounts of HGH even slightly beyond the normal range can result in high blood pressure, edema and, in the worst cases, congestive heart failure. Some doctors worry about another possible danger: it might trigger unbridled cell growth (gee, what is a single two-syllable word for that?). The whole article on this is at (you might have to sign up): http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20hgh.html?ex=1157083200&en=1d4fe020df4b004b&ei=5070

22. AUGUST 18, Mexican researchers have genetically modified maize to create an edible vaccine against Newcastle disease, a major killer of poultry in developing countries. The scientists, who published their findings online in Transgenic Research on 12 August, hope their approach can help small-scale poultry farmers protect their flocks. Read more at:

 http://www.scidev.net/content/news/eng/gm-maize-protects-chickens-from-deadly-virus.cfm And they think this is a good thing? It might save a chicken’s life, but chickens that are full of corn are not good for you. The mycotoxins in the corn they eat will be in the chicken meat, then in you if you eat them. So don’t.

23A. Food and drinks high in sugar should be taxed just like cigarettes, says economists who say it is the only way to combat the global crisis in obesity. This BS (um, line of reasoning) can be read at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9787-can-taxation-curb-obesity.html Let me see… First, we are told what to eat by the food manufacturers (who are probably owned by drug companies), then when we get really sick from that and go to the doctor, we are told that our diet didn’t do this, so keep eating that crap, but here’s some drugs to take for the rest of your life, and now they want to tax us for eating those same foods. When I was a kid, four out of five doctors smoked Camels… the TV told me so, and if doctors smoke, cigarettes must be OK, although my first cigarette was a Marlboro because that cowboy (the Marlboro man died in an iron lung by the way) was cooler than a doctor – well, that, and my mom smoked Marlboros, so if I was gonna kipe a pack, that was all that was available. So what lies will you believe next? And how much will you have to pay to be sick tomorrow? Like cigarettes, they now say, “This stuff is killing you, but we know you won’t give up your Coke and Burgers, so instead we’re going to tax them to make more money on top of the money you already pay to buy it and the drugs you have to take to stay alive after having eaten it.” Can you say, “Revolutionary War”?

23B. And for the economist-minded readers: 22 Aug 2006 - The U.S. already spends nearly 16 percent of its gross domestic product on health care and it is almost impossible to know where all that money goes. Really? Duh! Read more at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/health/policy/22pros.html?ex=1157083200&en=65008097a93e83d6&ei=5070 Yup, the United States of America, a wholly owned subsidiary of Merck.

24. 23 Aug 2006 - China’s first polio outbreak in more than a decade was caused by a virus derived from the live but weakened virus used as a polio vaccine, say scientists. It was the world’s fifth outbreak of vaccine-derived polio since 2000. Another reason to stay away from all vaccines. More at: http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=3062&language=1

That kind of puts the lie to all the medical people who say vaccines are “perfectly safe” because the viruses in them are dead, doesn’t it? If you have two brain cells to rub together, you should be able to figure out that a dead virus will incite no immune response, and would therefore be useless as a vaccine. Sometimes I wonder how they ever got through med school...

25. No one much noticed, but thousands of family-planning clinics across the country went into a tailspin last month. They were reacting to a drastic price increase by Ortho-McNeil, a major supplier of birth-control pills and maker of the popular contraceptive patch. The company used to charge publicly funded clinics as little as a penny a pack for the pills. Then, as of July 1, the price of some pills jumped to more than $18 a pack. Ortho’s move was apparently legal under federal pricing rules. But it’s anybody’s guess as to why the company chose to do this now, without giving the clinics any real notice. http://www.slate.com/id/2148264/?nav=tap3 Gee, I can tell you why they did this. They are greedy SOBs and now that they have the consumers hooked, they’re going to make ‘em pay! Jerks!

26. WASHINGTON - Cancer doctors received about $275 million from the federal government and the elderly last year as part of a yearlong research project that many doctors believe won’t produce any useful findings. Well, hey, they went to college to become doctors to make money, and they found out how to make the big bucks, didn’t they? Only they’re not doing it the way we think they should. More at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14575285/