Secret list of food companies funding GMO-labeling opposition slush fund revealed after illegal activities of GMA exposed

© Natural News

Secret list of food companies funding GMO-labeling opposition slush fund revealed after illegal activities of GMA exposed
Oct 18, 2013 | Natural News | Mike Adams

As Natural News reported yesterday, the Grocery Manufacturers Association got caught red-handed violating Washington state fair election laws by running a money laundering slush fund designed to conceal the identities of food companies giving money to block I-522.

The CEO of the GMA, Pamela Bailey, reportedly told donors in an email that their identities would be hidden from the public, thereby shielding them from any public backlash even while their money would be used to try to buy the election and defeat GMO labeling (so that consumers would be left in the dark about what they're buying).

In response to this, the Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson accused the GMA of violating state law, and the AG's office asked a Superior Court to issue restraining order to force the GMA to comply with state election laws.

Just one day after this scandal surfaced, the GMA apparently decided to stop violating the law and disclose the list of companies that funneled money into its secret slush fund. That list is published below. You can also find the list at HeraldNet.com.

It goes without saying that all these companies are now subject to a lifetime boycott. The GMA itself has now destroyed its own credibility by engaging in mafia-style illegal activities that discredit itself as well as all its members. We have now entered an era where food companies will knowingly violate the law in their desperate attempt to block GMO labeling and hide genetically engineered ingredients in their toxic, disease-causing foods.

Secret slush fund donors revealed 

The companies that funneled money into the GMA's money laundering slush fund are:

Abbott Nutrition
Bimbo Bakeries USA
Bruce Foods Corp.
Bumble Bee Foods, LLC
Bunge North America, Inc.
Bush Brothers & Co.
Campbell Soup Co.
Cargill Inc.
Clement Pappas & Co. Inc.
The Clorox Co. (owner of Burt's Bees brand)
The Coca-Cola Co. (owner of Odwalla)
ConAgra Foods
Dean Foods Co. (owner of Horizon milk)
Del Monte Foods Co.
Flowers Foods, Inc.
General Mills, Inc. (owned of Larabar)
The Hershey Co.
The Hillshire Brands Co.
Hormel Foods Corp.
The J.M. Smucker Co.
Kellogg Co. (owner of Pop-Tarts)
Knouse Foods Cooperative, Inc.
Land O'Lakes, Inc.
McCormick & Co., Inc
Mondelez Global, LLC.
Moody Dunbar, Inc.
Nestle USA, Inc.
Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc.
PepsiCo, Inc. (owner of Naked Juice)
Pinnacle Foods Group, LLC.
Rich Products Corp.
Shearer's Foods, Inc.
Sunny Delight Beverages Co.
Welch Foods, Inc.

Share this list with others and encourage them to boycott all these brands, too. These are companies that actively participated in an illegal slush fund deception to try to buy the I-522 election by deceiving voters.

That the GMA would actively launch such a slush fund operation just proves that the conventional food industry in America has no ethics whatsoever and will actively pursue illegal activities in order to keep consumers ignorant and confused.

Public school children living in poverty across US in highest numbers since 1960s

Reuters/Rick Wilking

Public school children living in poverty across US in highest numbers since 1960s
Oct 19, 2013 | RT

A new study by the Southern Education Foundation has revealed that the number of low income students enrolled in schools across the United States has surged in recent years to new astronomical numbers.

According to the study, 17 of the 50 states in the country can say that at least half of their students come from households with incomes at or below the poverty line.

The results of the foundation’s research suggest schoolchildren in large parts of the US are coming from less-fortunate backgrounds at numbers not seen in decades. The last time a majority of children in public schools in the South and West placed under or at the poverty line, pollsters determined, occurred in the 1960s.

In Mississippi, 71 percent of public schoolchildren placed into the low income category. New Mexico and Louisiana rounded out the top-three states with regards to low income majorities, and the 17 locales listed with as having more than half of their students included states such as Florida and California, with 56 and 54 percent of its public school students, respectively, considered low income.

Taking into account the whole US, the foundation said 48 percent of all public school children came from homes with incomes low enough to earn those students free or reduced lunches.  They based their data on statistics pertaining to the number of children in grade preschool through 12 who were eligible for the federal meals program in the 2010-11 school year.

“The rate of low income students in the South was 53 percent,” the study’s authors wrote, and “for the first time in recent history, at least half of the public school students in the West were low income.”
 
The foundation predicts that within the next few years, “low income students will become a majority of all public school children in the United States.”
 
“With huge stubborn unchanging gaps in learning, schools in the south and across the nation face the real danger of becoming entrenched, inadequately funded educational systems that enlarge the division in America between the haves and the have-nots and endanger the entire nation’s prospects,” Southern Education Foundation Vice President Steve Suitts wrote in the report.

Sadly, Suitts doesn’t see much changing, either. “There is no real evidence that any scheme or policy of transferring large numbers of low income students from public schools to private schools will have a positive impact on this problem,” he wrote. “The trends of the last decade strongly suggest that little or nothing will change for the better if schools and communities continue to postpone addressing the primary question of education in America today: what does it take and what will be done to provide low income students with a good chance to succeed in public schools? It is a question of how, not where, to improve the education of a new majority of students.”
 
“Without fundamental improvements in how the South and the nation educate low income students, the trends that this report documents will ricochet across all aspects of American society for generations to come,” he wrote.

Michael Rebell, the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Columbia University, described the findings to the Washington Post as “incredible.”
 
"When you break down the various test scores, you find the high-income kids, high-achievers are holding their own and more," Rebell said. "It's when you start getting down to schools with a majority of low-income kids that you get astoundingly low scores. Our real problem regarding educational outcomes is not the US overall, it's the growing low-income population."
 
The US Census Bureau determined that 46.5 million people lived in poverty across America in 2012, or around 15 percent of the population. The same statistics determined that roughly 21 percent of school children in the US were impoverished as of last year.

Getting free of the fast food mentality: why home economics should be mandatory

© University of Houston
Photographs Collection, 1948-2000/Flickr

Getting free of the fast food mentality: why home economics should be mandatory
Oct 16, 2013 | Mother Jones | Tom Philpott

I was a rotten high school student, a shirker and smart-ass of the first rank. I even found myself purged from a typing class for bad behavior - an event I regret to this precise moment, since touch-typing is obviously a convenient skill for someone in my profession. Afterward, I had to choose another "elective." Naturally, I seized upon home economics - in which, I hoped, I'd spend my time amusing girls with wisecracks and whipping up desserts from boxed mixes. If memory serves, that's exactly how it played out - especially the bit about the just-add-water confections. Mmmm, instant cake.

In other words, I retained just as much from my home ec class as I did from my failed stint as a student of the keyboard: which is to say, nothing. Yet Ruth Graham's recent Boston Globe essay "Bring back home ec! The case for a revival of the most retro class in school" strikes me as spot on. Graham isn't talking about the home ec of my wayward '80s youth, nor that of quaint stereotypes featuring "visions of future homemakers quietly whisking white sauce or stitching rickrack onto an apron."

She means a revitalized, contemporary home economics for all genders, one capable of at least exposing youth to basic skills that so many adults (i.e., their parents) lack: "to shop intelligently, cook healthily, [and] manage money." And I think such a reimagined home ec should move from the shadowy margins it now occupies - the field has been rebranded as "Family and Consumer Sciences," Graham reports - and become mandatory for all high school kids, and - why not? - even elementary school ones.

I have witnessed firsthand the vexed state of basic cooking skills among the young. When I helped run the kitchen at Maverick Farms for seven years, I noticed that most of our interns couldn't chop an onion or turn even just-picked produce into a reasonably good dish in a reasonable amount of time. And these were people motivated enough about food to intern at a small farm in rural North Carolina. If I had their cooking skills, I'd be tempted to resort to takeout often, just to save time.

It's true that in my home ec class nearly a quarter century ago, we weren't taught how to handle a knife or follow a simple recipe for a from-scratch dish. But home ec wasn't always so vapid. Graham points to New York Times reporter Michael Moss' great 2013 book Salt Sugar Fat, which contains a brief history of the home ec trade in US public schools.

The convenience food industry that's so powerful and entrenched today was just taking root in the 1950s. And as it began to aggressively market its products to a growing US middle class, it faced "one real obstacle," Moss writes: the "army of school teachers and federal outreach workers who insisted on promoting home-cooked meals, prepared the old fashioned way."

Home ec teachers explicitly battled against the industry's claims of convenience, Moss shows. In 1957, he writes, the American Home Economics Association conducted a demo pitting a commercial cake mix against a homemade batter, Moss reports. "As reported in the association's journal, the homemade cake not only cost less and tasted better, it took only five minutes more to prepare, cook, and serve." Plus the batter could be made in advance and stored, "for quick parceling out when a cake was needed." Home-ec teachers also schooled their charges in frugal shopping, teaching them to "avoid buying things they didn't need."

Graham drops a bit more history:

If any single person could be said to be the founder of home economics, it is the formidable Ellen Swallow Richards, a Bostonian who was the first woman admitted to MIT. She served as the first president of the American Home Economics Association and was instrumental in coming up with the term "home economics," officially adopted at a conference "for the betterment of the home" in 1899, just in time for the dawn of a scientifically minded century. Though it may now seem impossible, the discipline was originally rooted in progressive and even feminist thinking. The idea was to bring scientific rigor into the home, and to professionalize women's domestic work, bringing dignity and efficiency to both.

To rebuff this cadre of holdouts within America's schools, the food industry mobilized in two ways, Moss reports. First up was rolling out a school marmish figure called "Betty Crocker" - invented by the marketing department of the company that would become General Mills to extol the wholesomeness and ease of processed crap. The other move was a kind of leveraged buyout of the home ec trade itself: first by pouring money into grants and fellowships for the American Home Economics Association - $288,250 in 1957 alone, Moss writes - and then by "sponsoring candidates for the organization's top leadership posts, candidates who would bring a decidedly pro-industrial view to home economics."

And that is how home ec became the piece-of-instant-cake elective that I so idly enjoyed in the '80s.

But imagine a home ec that taught basic skills like how to prepare a simple pureed vegetable soup, whip up a quick, easy, and much-cheaper-than-bottled salad dressing, or stock up a pantry with inexpensive bulk staples?

Food isn't the only sphere in which millions of American adults - and the kids they are raising - find themselves swimming in a sea of ignorance, at the mercy of an industry peddling dubious wares. Another one is personal finance, as Helaine Olen shows in her indispensable 2012 book Pound Foolish. Over the past two decades, what Olen calls the "personal finance industrial complex" has fooled Americans into such follies as leveraging their futures with deceptively pricey credit cards, dumping hard-earned savings into that casino called the stock market, and buying houses they can't afford and too often can't hold on

In doing so, the industry has made personal finance into something that seems impossibly complex - what the hell is a variable annuity? - and then presented gurus who simplify it along lines convenient for itself. All of that is nonsense, Olen shows. After an interviewing her about what he sees as the "financial industry's most basic dilemma," that the "best advice fits on a 3×5 index card and is available for free at the library," University of Chicago social scientist Harold Pollack actually scribbled out that card. Check it out - it's mostly about saving as much as possible and avoiding the fees of Wall Street charlatans. If those simple principles could be drummed into the heads of high school students, imagine the misery that could be avoided. And what better forum for it than new-wave home ec? After all, the home ec curricula of yore included lessons on household finance.

A revived curriculum could be broader than just food and money, Graham notes. "Even sewing is gaining a certain relevance, as consumers grow increasingly wary of disposable garments made in unregulated factories overseas," she writes. "An ambitious class could also include things like basic household plumbing or car repair." I certainly could have used those skills (though auto mechanics have gotten so complex that I think "How to choose a reliable car you can afford - or get by without one altogether" might be a better theme.)

The main obstacle between where we are now and home ec nirvana is funding, as Graham notes. Public school systems are so strapped that they're already slashing equally worthy classes like art, music, and PE. But producing generation upon generation of people who don't know how to feed themselves healthily or manage their finances is generating massive, cascading societal costs - and the pennies we pinch by not revitalizing home ec seem like a classic false economy, much like those boxed cakes the food industry was already peddling by 1957.

Tom Philpott is the cofounder of Maverick Farms, a center for sustainable food education in Valle Crucis, North Carolina. He was formerly a columnist and editor for the online environmental site Grist and his work on food politics has appeared in Newsweek, Gastronomica, and the Guardian.

Study Finds Ayurveda More Effective than Popular Anxiety Drug

© Natural Society

Study Finds Ayurveda More Effective than Popular Anxiety Drug
Oct 18, 2013 | Natural Society |  Elizabeth Renter

Researchers with India’s National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) have made a dramatic discovery about the effectiveness of ancient Ayurvedic practices in the treatment of anxiety disorders. They have found Ayurveda to be more effective than one of the most popular conventional treatments, and able to deliver this relief without side-effects.

The study tested 72 patients who had been diagnosed with severe generalized anxiety disorder for seven years or more. Most also had a diagnosis of comorbid generalized social phobia. Researchers analyzed their anxiety using something called the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HARS).

Participants were split into three groups. One group received a standard daily dose of Clonazepam (Klonopin); the second received 200 mg of Manasamitra Vataka, an herbal Ayurvedic remedy, and the third group received the Manasamitra Vataka and something called Shirodhara therapy, where the forehead is treated with warm Brahmi taila oil. The three treatment regimens were used for 30 days.

Read: 4 Herbs for Anxiety

While the Clonazepam group saw a 67% improved disposition, the Manasamitra Vataka group experienced an average improvement  of 73%. The group who also received Shirodhara therapy saw the most dramatic change, with a 91% improvement in symptoms.

“Thirty days of treatment with Manasamitra Vataka reduced the anxiety, severity of the disease, increased quality of life and improved clinical profile significantly. Shirodhara as an add-on therapy to Manasamitra Vataka decreased the daytime sleepiness and improved the quality of life in the patients, said the researchers.”

And of course this is far from the first study on the remarkable benefits of Ayurvedic treatments. This ancient healing art has been around for more than 5,000 years and is one of the world’s oldest. It has been credited with healing some of the most common diseases and ailments.

Some of the most extensive research has been done on the effects of Ayurveda in the treatment of cancer, with some studies marking a 90% success rate.

Though the components of an Ayurvedic formula are all natural and plant-derived, they are complex. The Manasamitra Vataka used in this anxiety study, for example, had no less than 73 ingredients and natural extracts.

Natural medicine isn’t always the simplest, but it is usually the safest. For the millions that suffer from anxiety disorders, Ayurveda could offer a side-effect-free solution.

Biotech's Dark Promise: Involuntary Cannibalism for All

© Green Med Info

Biotech's Dark Promise: Involuntary Cannibalism for All
Oct 15, 2013 | Green Med Info | Sayer Ji

" Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal." ~ Albert Einstein

Whereas the quote above could easily be dismissed as the 'progress-denying' sentiment of a disgruntled anti-GMO activist, the fact is that it came from a scientist representing the very epitome of Western rationality and accomplishment.

Perhaps Einstein was reflecting on the inevitable existential consequences of the so-called "technological imperative"--whatever can be done, will be done.  Fundamentally amoral and irrational economic and political forces drive technology's feverish pace, infusing a certain arbitrary cruelty and disequilibrium into everything it touches.

In our continual drive to 'improve upon Nature' in the name of much-hyped, 'life-saving' biotechnological innovations, the line between humane and inhumane eventually is crossed, and there seems no going back.  Biopollution from defective or dangerous GMO genes, for example, is virtually impossible to undo once unreleased into the biosphere; you can't "recall" a defective gene like you can an automobile. Nor can we remove from our bodies the surreptitious viruses (e.g. simian virus #40 (SV40)) that contaminated millions of first-generation polio vaccines. In many ways our moral fiber suffers from the same susceptibilities. Once we have crossed a certain line – be it theft, lying, or worse, etc., – it is difficult, if not impossible to 'go back' and regain our innocence. Such is the human condition. And this is why we must carefully consider the medico-ethical implications of new technologies, whose developments we must first be aware of in order to guide, regulate and sometimes terminate.

The Scientific Community Moves To Embrace Embryo Cloning for Medical Purposes

For example, few are aware that the cloning of human embryos for 'therapeutic purposes' was made legal in the UK in January, 2001 through an amendment to the Human Embryology Act.[i]  Not long after, in August 2004, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) approved the first license for cloning human embryos in the UK.  Media reports at the time alleged the legal changes would result in the use of cloned human embryos to create "spare body parts."   

In an article published in 2000 titled, "Biotech Cannabalism,"[ii] C. Ben Mitchell, PhD reflects on the pro-cloning movement by quoting a proponent's justification: "If you could use tissue from human embryos to save hundreds of lives, there must be a moral imperative to do it." Mitchell disagrees, countering: "[C]reating a human being for the purposes of killing that person for another human being's health, sounds an awfully lot like cannibalism, only worse."

Calling Vaccines From Aborted Fetuses What They Are: Cannibalistic

Whereas cannibalism is considered by most modern societies to be the ultimate expression of uncivilized or barbaric behavior, it is intrinsic to many of the Western world's most prized biotechnological and medical innovations. Probably the most 'taken for granted' example of this is the use of live, aborted fetus cell lines from induced abortions to produce vaccines. Known as diploid cell vaccines (diploid cells have two (di-) sets of chromosomes inherited from human mother and father), they are non-continuous (like cancer cells), and therefore must be continually replaced, i.e. new aborted, live fetal tissue must be harvested periodically.  A good portion of the CDC's immunization schedule requires the use of these human fetus-originated vaccines, and these include: rubella, measles, mumps, rabies, polio, smallpox, hepatitis A, chickenpox, and herpes zoster. Additionally, so-called "abortion tainted vaccines" cultivated on transformed fetal cells (293, PER.C6) are in the developmental pipeline, including: "flu, Respiratory Syncytial and parainfluenza viruses, HIV, West Nile virus, Ebola, Marburg and Lassa, hepatitis B and C, foot and mouth disease, Japanese encephalitis, dengue, tuberculosis, anthrax, plague, tetanus and malaria." [iii]

Unfortunately, to millions who find injecting living aborted fetal cells or their biological derivatives into their bodies, or their children's, morally objectionable, an increasingly Draconian biomedical establishment is either pressuring, coercing or mandating this to occur, using the faulty concept of "herd immunity" and concomitant biosafety concerns to override an individual's right to refuse them. And most are completely unaware that aborted cells are used and being injected into their bodies, because the medical ethical principle of informed consent remains just that: a principle, not practiced regularly. Furthermore, beyond the obvious moral/ /religious/philosophical reasons to reject aborted fetal cell derived vaccines, there are real health concerns associated with the introduction of this type of biological material into the human body that are largely considered taboo to discuss.

Biopharming: The End of Choice for Those Who Do Not Want to Ingest Human Proteins

Another way in which the dark specter of cannibalism is resurfacing in our lives is through biotech's intense investment in biopharming technologies. Also known as molecular farming, biopharming involves creating "drug-producing" GMOs by inserting a gene that code for useful pharmaceuticals or biological products (e.g. antibodies, lactoferrin) into host plants, insects or animals that do not naturally express those genes.

Concerns over the unintended, adverse effects of this technology are growing, primarily because once the genes are inserted into laboratory- or field-trialed organisms, their escape into the biosphere is not just possible, but a statistical inevitability. As we have seen with GMO crops, contamination is a default business strategy for biotech stakeholders, whose GM plants pollinate (some say "biorape") organic or wild plants rendering them also GMOs. This means that -- short of using 'terminator technology' which renders the plants incapable of reproduction – foolproof GM containment is impossible. Eventually we will all be exposed to these GMO plants, insects and animals in some form or other.

There is intense work being done today to create biopharmed "edible vaccines," which contain deadly viral or bacterial vectors. Obviously, the biopollution created by inserting these genes into plants traditionally used for human consumption and which could find their way into the human food supply could cause life-threatening health problems.  But edible vaccines are only a subset of biopharmed products in the developmental pipeline. There are a broad range of human proteins being 'pharmed' using genetically modified animals expressing human genes as 'bioreactors.'

Below is a small sample of biopharmed organisms in development that could at some point in the future result in the inadvertent ingestion of human proteins (technically, cannibalism):

• GMO Bulls expressing human lactoferrin in their tissues, intended for human consumption.[iv]
• GMO Mice expressing a human granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor under control of a goat gene (goat alpha-S1-casein gene).[v]
• GMO Cattle milk expressing the human breastmilk proteins human α-lactalbumin (TC-LA), lactoferrin (TC-LF) or lysozyme (TC-LZ).[vi]
• GMO Pigs designed to express human α-galactosidase.[vii]
• GMO Chickens designed to express human urokinase-type plasminogen activator.[viii]
• GMO Chickens designed to express human parathormone.[ix]
• GMO Flies expressing human taste receptor genes.[x]
• GMO Silkworm cells expressing human glycoproteins.[xi]
• GMO Tomatoes expressing a human brain protein (humanβ-secretase).[xii]
• GMO Tobacco expressing human erythropoietin intended to be used to treat tissue injury.[xiii]
• GMO Tobacco expressing human interferon alpha intended for medical use.[xiv]
• GMO Yeast expressing human Apolipoprotein A-II intended for study.[xv]
• GMO Lettuce and chicory expressing human interferon alpha intended for medical use.[xvi]
• GMO Rapeseed expressing human interferon alpha intended for medical use.[xvii]
• GMO Rice expressing human serum albumin (blood protein) intended for medical purposes.[xviii]
• GMO Rice expressing human lactoferrin intended for medical use.[xix]
• GMO Rice expressing human CYP1A1 enzyme (found in placenta and liver) intended to help remediate pesticides in soil.[xx]
• GMO Rice expressing human amyloidβ-peptide 'Alzheimer's brain protein' intended as an oral vaccine producing plant.[xxi]

With biotech weaving into the web of life arbitrarily placed human genes and their biological products, cannibalism (human consumption of human proteins) will become an inevitably in the future.  The question is, will we stand for this reworking of the very molecular and genetic infrastructure of life, or pretend like it won't also result in the genetic modification of our own bodies.

---

[i] BBCNews.com, Scientists given cloning go-ahead, 11 August, 2004

[ii] The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, Biotech Cannabalism, 4 April, 2000

[iii] José Luís Redondo Calderón. [Vaccines, biotechnology and their connection with induced abortion]. Cuad Bioet. 2008 May-Aug;19(66):321-53. PMID: 18611078

[iv] Jie Zhao, Jianxiang Xu, Jianwu Wang, Ning Li. Nutritional composition analysis of meat from human lactoferrin transgenic bulls.

[v] GMI-Cite:
I A Burkov, I A Serova, N R Battulin, A V Smirnov, I V Babkin, L E Andreeva, G A Dvoryanchikov, O L Serov. Expression of the human granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (hGM-CSF) gene under control of the 5'-regulatory sequence of the goat alpha-S1-casein gene with and without a MAR element in transgenic mice.

[vi] Ran Zhang, Chengdong Guo, Shunchao Sui, Tian Yu, Jianwu Wang, Ning Li. Comprehensive assessment of milk composition in transgenic cloned cattle.

[vii] J Zeyland, B Gawrońska, W Juzwa, J Jura, A Nowak, R Słomski, Z Smorąg, M Szalata, A Woźniak, D Lipiński. Transgenic pigs designed to express humanα-galactosidase to avoid humoral xenograft rejection.

[viii] Sung Ho Lee, Mukesh Kumar Gupta, Young Tae Ho, Teoan Kim, Hoon Taek Lee. Transgenic chickens expressing human urokinase-type plasminogen activator.

[ix] S H Lee, M K Gupta, D W Han, S Y Han, S J Uhm, T Kim, H T Lee. Development of transgenic chickens expressing human parathormone under the control of a ubiquitous promoter by using a retrovirus vector system.

[x] Ryota Adachi, Yuko Sasaki, Hiromi Morita, Michio Komai, Hitoshi Shirakawa, Tomoko Goto, Akira Furuyama, Kunio Isono. Behavioral analysis of Drosophila transformants expressing human taste receptor genes in the gustatory receptor neurons.

[xi] Jia-Biao Hu, Peng Zhang, Mei-Xian Wang, Fang Zhou, Yan-Shan Niu, Yun-Gen Miao. A transgenic Bm cell line of piggyBac transposon-derived targeting expression of humanized glycoproteins through N-glycosylation.

[xii] H-S Kim, J-W Youm, K-B Moon, J-H Ha, Y-H Kim, H Joung, J-H Jeon. Expression analysis of humanβ-secretase in transgenic tomato fruits.

[xiii] Farooqahmed S Kittur, Mamudou Bah, Stephanie Archer-Hartmann, Chiu-Yueh Hung, Parastoo Azadi, Mayumi Ishihara, David C Sane, Jiahua Xie. Cytoprotective Effect of Recombinant Human Erythropoietin Produced in Transgenic Tobacco Plants.

[xiv] I M Gerasymenko, L O Sakhno, M G Mazur, Y V Sheludko. Multiplex pcr assay for detection of human interferon alpha2b gene in transgenic plants.

[xv] Manman Su, Yitian Qi, Mingxing Wang, Weiqin Chang, Shuang Peng, Tianmin Xu, Dingding Wang. Expression and Purification of Recombinant Human Apolipoprotein A-II in Pichia pastoris.

[xvi] N A Matveeva, Iu I Kudriavets, A A Likhova, A M Shakhovskiĭ, N A Bezdenezhnykh, E Iu Kvasko. [Antiviral activity of extracts of transgenic cichory and lettuce plants with the human interferon alpha-2b gene].

[xvii] L O Sakhno, O Y Kvasko, Z M Olevinska, M Y Spivak, M V Kuchuk. Creation of transgenic Brassica napus L. plants expressing human alpha 2b interferon gene.

[xviii] Qing Zhang, Hui Yu, Feng-Zhen Zhang, Zhi-Cheng Shen. Expression and purification of recombinant human serum albumin from selectively terminable transgenic rice.

[xix] Chaoyang Lin, Peng Nie, Wei Lu, Qing Zhang, Jing Li, Zhicheng Shen. A selectively terminable transgenic rice line expressing human lactoferrin.

[xx] Hiroyuki Kawahigashi, Sakiko Hirose, Hideo Ohkawa, Yasunobu Ohkawa. Transgenic rice plants expressing human CYP1A1 remediate the triazine herbicides atrazine and simazine. J Agric Food Chem. 2005 Nov 2;53(22):8557-64. PMID: 16248553

[xxi] Taiji Yoshida, Eiichi Kimura, Setsuo Koike, Jun Nojima, Eugene Futai, Noboru Sasagawa, Yuichiro Watanabe, Shoichi Ishiura. Transgenic rice expressing amyloidβ-peptide for oral immunization. Int J Biol Sci. 2011;7(3):301-7. Epub 2011 Mar 25. PMID: 21448341

About the Author

Sayer Ji is the founder of GreenMedInfo.com, an author, researcher, lecturer, and an advisory board member of the National Health Federation. Google Plus Profile.

He founded Greenmedinfo.com in 2008 in order to provide the world an open access, evidence-based resource supporting natural and integrative modalities. It is widely recognized as the most widely referenced health resource of its kind.

Chemotherapy actually increases cancer growth, cancer cells becoming resistant to treatment: Study

© Natural News

Chemotherapy actually increases cancer growth, cancer cells becoming resistant to treatment: Study
Oct 18, 2013 | Natural News | Jonathan Benson

The cancer treatment scam that is chemotherapy has once again been shown in the scientific literature to be a major cause of, rather than a cure for, cancer. According to a new study recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, chemotherapy not only promotes the growth and spread of cancer cells by damaging the healthy tissue that surrounds tumors, but it also causes cancer cells to develop full-on resistance to the popular treatment, morphing them into "super" cancer cells.

Researchers from the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, learned this after observing the effects of chemotherapy on healthy cell tissue. What they found is something that we here at NaturalNews have been saying for years, but that the medical system as a whole is only just now waking up to -- chemotherapy, which is a recognized poison, damages the DNA of healthy, non-cancerous cells, causing them to produce molecules that in turn produce more cancer cells.

It does not take a rocket scientist to make this deduction, of course, as simple common sense dictates that blasting healthy cells along with unhealthy cells is going to cause damage to all of the cells. But this is apparently big news up in the Northwest, where scientists are apparently baffled as to how this can be. And we are not talking about minor damage here -- according to the figures, major damage to healthy cells occurs as a result of routine chemotherapy treatments.

"[T]he researchers found that chemotherapy can cause fibroblasts (cell DNA) to increase production of a molecule called WNT16B by 30-fold in tissues surrounding a tumor," explains the group Cancer Research U.K. in a recent report on the study. "This then helps cancer cells to grow, invade neighboring cells and resist chemotherapy," it adds.

'Super' cancer cells caused by chemotherapy more deadly than ever 

As if this is not bad enough, the same team found that another major side effect of chemotherapy is cancer cells grow more virulent than they were before the treatment. Like "superbugs" and "superweeds," which we now know developed resistance in response to conventional drug therapies and chemical sprayings, respectively, these "super" cancer cells no longer respond even to the most aggressive forms of chemotherapy, which means cancer itself is becoming more deadly.

"These results delineate a mechanism by which genotoxic therapies given in a cyclical manner can enhance subsequent treatment resistance through cell nonautonomous effects that are contributed by the tumor microenvironment," explains the study abstract.

You can read the fully study abstract here:
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v18/n9/full/nm.2890.html

Not surprisingly, at least one doctor heavily vested in the cancer industry has already come out to call not for an end to chemotherapy but rather for the development of new treatments that might alter the body's natural resistance mechanisms to better accommodate the toxic effects of chemotherapy. This is how the conventional medical system operates, of course -- simply add new drugs into the mix to cover up the side effects of other drugs, and lather, rinse, repeat.

"Most cancer patients in this country die of chemotherapy," explains Dr. Allen Levin, M.D., from the University of California, San Francisco, in his book, The Healing of Cancer. "Chemotherapy does not eliminate breast, colon, or lung cancers. This fact has been documented for over a decade, yet doctors still use chemotherapy for these tumors."

If you or a loved one suffers from cancer, there are alternatives to chemotherapy and radiation. The Gerson Therapy; Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski's antineoplastons; cannabis oil containing high levels of healing cannabinoids; and freshly-juiced marijuana leaves are all viable cancer treatment protocols that have healed many people. You can learn more about each of these methods at the following links:

http://gerson.org
http://www.burzynskiclinic.com
http://www.sfweekly.com
http://www.naturalnews.com

Sources for this article include:

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org

http://www.nature.com

http://tv.greenmedinfo.com

http://www.cancertutor.com

http://gerson.org

Washington state sues lobbying group opposed to GMO food labeling effort

Reuters / Ints Kalnins

Washington state sues lobbying group opposed to GMO food labeling effort
Oct 16, 2013 | RT

A lobbying group for major US manufacturers has violated Washington state campaign finance law while opposing a ballot initiative that would require labeling genetically-modified foods, according to a lawsuit filed by the state attorney general Wednesday.

The Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA) ran afoul of state law in collecting and spending $7.2 million against ballot initiative 522 - which voters will consider in November - while not disclosing the individual donors funneling contributions to the organization, alleged State Attorney General Bob Ferguson.

"Truly fair elections demand all sides follow the rules by disclosing who their donors are and how much they are spending to advocate their views," Ferguson said in a statement.

The measure would require the proper labeling of goods which contain ingredients with genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), as well as the labeling of seeds and seed products containing GMOs sold in the state.

With over $7 million spent, GMA is the largest donor to the “No on I-522” campaign. GMA and other opponents have raised over $17 million, spending $13 million thus far, in the effort to block labeling.

The “Yes on I-522” campaign has raised around $5.5 million in support of the labeling. They believe it is crucial for the public’s right to know what is in their food and say the labeling is a positive move considering the numerous questions surrounding the safety of GMOs to human health.

Ferguson’s office alleges GMA set up a “Defense of Brands Strategic Account” and asked its numerous high-powered members to contribute money in an effort to oppose the ballot initiative.

In the process of spending the money, GMA shielded contributors’ identification from public disclosures, the lawsuit alleges.

GMA has a total of 300 member organizations in its ranks.

The attorney general is seeking a temporary restraining order to force GMA to comply with disclosure laws. In addition, civil penalties are included in the suit.

GMA claimed to be surprised by the developments, though it did not say if it asked members to fund the drive to oppose I-522, which would have required a political action committee and disclosure of donors.

"GMA takes great care to understand and comply with all state election and campaign finance laws," the organization said. "GMA will review its actions in Washington state and relevant statutes and continue to cooperate with state authorities to fully resolve the issue as promptly as possible."
 
Supporters of the ballot initiative pushed a similar claim that was rejected by a Thurston County judge, who said the matter needed to go through the state Public Disclosure Commission, which Ferguson is representing in the suit filed Wednesday.

Washington’s consideration of a GMO labeling measure comes one year after a similar measure was rejected by California voters after companies like Monsanto contributed $44 million for "No on Prop 37.”
 
Proponents of the California labeling measure only raised $7.3 million in defeat.

Monsanto has contributed about $5 million in opposition to Washington’s I-522. Corporate giants Bayer, Dupont, BASF, and Dow have also contributed to block labeling.

In June, Connecticut became the first state to pass a labeling bill, though legislative requirements demand it would only go into effect once four states - including one adjacent to the state - passes similar regulations.

Vitamin C proven to cure over 30 major diseases

© Natural News

Vitamin C proven to cure over 30 major diseases
Oct 17, 2013 | Natural News | Jonathan Landsman

Over 75 years of medical research and clinical practice reveals, overwhelmingly, that vitamin C has the power to ignite the 'self-healing response'. I know what you're thinking - if vitamin C is so good for us - why haven't you been told about this curative nutrient? Well, the answer will soon become painfully obvious.

Medical students receive little nutritional training - only 2 hours in 4 years! Vitamin C therapy for a host of chronic diseases has been systematically ignored by conventional medicine for decades. On the next NaturalNews Talk Hour, meet Dr. Andrew Saul and learn about the true power of high-dose vitamin C therapy.

Visit: http://www.naturalhealth365.com and enter your email address for show details + FREE gifts!

Dr. Fredrick R. Klenner discovers the real power of vitamin C and how to cure disease

Believe it or not, in the 1940's, Dr. Klenner used vitamin C to cure 60 out of 60 cases of polio and that was back in the days when the polio vaccine didn't even exist. Dr. Klenner even presented his findings - at a large medical conference about his success with high dose vitamin C therapy and it was largely ignored.

Instead, big pharma has a stranglehold 'death grip' over the I.Q. of most doctors - brainwashing them into believing that toxic antibiotics that destroy intestinal flora (and the immune system) is a 'wiser' choice.

Dr. Klenner was one of the first physicians to cure disease with vitamin C. In fact, he consistently eliminated chicken pox, measles, mumps, tetanus and polio with huge doses of IV vitamin C. And, keep in mind, Dr. Klenner did this when vaccines didn't even exist.

These are the medical facts. Dr. Klenner cured pneumonia, encephalitis, herpes zoster (shingles), herpes simplex, mononucleosis, pancreatitis, hepatitis, rocky mountain spotted fever, bladder infections, alcoholism, arthritis, some cancers, leukemia, atherosclerosis, ruptured intervertebral disc, high cholesterol, corneal ulcers, diabetes, glaucoma, radiation burns - the list goes on and on.

He published dozens of papers - just 'google' Dr. Klenner and you'll be amazed at what you find.

Want to learn more about vitamin C therapy? Jonathan Landsman and Andrew Saul, Ph.D. invite you to join us on the next NaturalNews Talk Hour - Sunday, Oct. 20th for an informative program on how to virtually eliminate disease with high dose vitamin C therapy.

Visit: http://www.naturalhealth365.com and enter your email address for show details + FREE gifts!

What do experts have to say about the healing power of vitamin C?

"Some physicians would stand by and see their patient die rather than use ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) because in their finite minds it exists only as a vitamin." - Dr. Fredrick Klenner

"Vitamin C is the world's best natural antibiotic, antiviral, antitoxin and antihistamine. Let the greats be given their due. The importance of vitamin C cannot be overemphasized." - Andrew Saul, Ph.D.

"Man's body was designed to function best with high blood and cellular levels of vitamin C - synthesized as needed by the liver." - Thomas E. Levy, MD, JD, board-certified cardiologist

"I always look upon high dose vitamin C as nature's way of dealing with crisis in terms of your health. This notion however does not exist in the conventional thinking of the medical mind." - Ronald Hunninghake, M.D. - personally supervised over 60,000 intravenous (IV) vitamin C sessions

"More and more physicians are getting convinced about the value of large doses of Vitamin C." - Linus Pauling, 2-time Nobel Prize winner

If you're still not convinced at the safety and effectiveness of vitamin C therapy - I encourage you to look up the work of the Riordan Clinic plus many other experts in vitamin C like, Drs. Irwin Stone, Abram Hoffer, Robert Cathcart plus many others - listed above. Or, on the next NaturalNews Talk Hour, join us for an interesting show about how vitamin C can cure disease.

This week's guest: Andrew Saul, Ph.D., natural healthcare pioneer and nutritional therapy expert

Find out what conventional medicine has never been taught about vitamin C and healing - Sun. Oct. 20

Andrew W. Saul, Ph.D. taught nutrition, addiction recovery, health science, and cell biology for a total of nine years for the State University of New York, and clinical nutrition for New York Chiropractic College. Since 2005, Dr. Saul has served as Editor-In-Chief of the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service for over 140 issues.

In 2006, Psychology Today named Dr. Saul as one of seven natural health pioneers. He has won the Citizens for Health Outstanding Health Freedom Activist Award, is an Honorary Director of the Gerson Institute, and is featured in the documentary Dying to Have Known: The Evidence Behind Natural Healing and the very popular FoodMatters movie. The author or co-author of many books - his expertise on the topic of nutritional therapies for disease is second to none.

Join us for a life-changing event! On the next NaturalNews Talk Hour, Jonathan Landsman and Dr. Andrew Saul talk about how high dose vitamin C therapy can literally reverse disease - safely and effectively. After this program, you'll have a new found appreciation for the power of vitamin C.

Visit: http://www.naturalhealth365.com and enter your email address for show details + a FREE gift!

Obamacare is either the product of mentally retarded criminals or a conspiracy to destroy the American healthcare system

© Blacklisted

Obamacare is either the product of mentally retarded criminals or a conspiracy to destroy the American healthcare system
Oct 16, 2013 | Blacklisted News | Lee Rogers

The on-going disaster of the Affordable Care Act otherwise known as Obamacare is undoubtedly the most poorly planned implementation of any government program in American history. This law which forces people to buy health insurance or face a fine is one of the dumbest ideas ever conceived but it is the implementation of it that has been even dumber. The implementation has been so horrible that one has to question if this was done intentionally to plunge the entire healthcare system into chaos.

This might sound counterintuitive but it really isn't. The reason for the Obama regime to do something like this is that it would give them the pretext to justify a complete government takeover of America's healthcare system. This would be presented as the false solution to a problem that they created in the first place. If this wasn't part of a broader conspiracy, the only other explanation for the piss poor implementation is that the Obama regime put mentally retarded criminals in charge of its drafting, planning and execution.

There are so many facets to this but the Affordable Care Act should really be called the Unaffordable Care Act because it is actually increasing the cost for existing insurance policies. The amount of regulations, taxes and fees the law requires insurance companies to comply with forces them to pass on additional costs to customers. Both individuals and businesses have been severely impacted by this. Since the law has gone into effect it has caused businesses to hire more part time workers and less full time workers. This is because the law only forces businesses to provide health insurance for full time workers but not part time workers. By mandating that businesses shell out more money to provide health insurance for full time workers it discourages them from bringing on more full time help. Many businesses simply can't afford these additional costs and especially not with Obamacare dramatically increasing the cost of health insurance.

Simply put, any law that forces a business or an individual to buy a product or face consequences is morally wrong. Now that there is a precedent for this type of insanity it is anybody's best guess as to what they will force people to buy next. What if the government required every individual in America to purchase a battery operated masturbation device in order to subsidize dildo manufacturers? Besides dildo manufacturers and mentally ill perverts, would anybody really be happy about this? It is the same concept with Obamacare as the only people who are happy with this law are insurance providers and mentally ill people. Whether or not they are also perverts could be debated but it would not be surprising if that were indeed the case. The stock prices of health insurance providers have risen substantially as Obamacare has been rolled out. This has undoubtedly made the people running these operations very happy as it is forcibly increasing their customer base.

Perhaps the most ridiculous aspect of the Obamacare implementation is healthcare.gov the web site that is supposed to allow people to sign up for health insurance through the newly mandated exchanges. The site has been completely non-functional since its launch a few weeks ago. A CNN reporter who recently tried to enroll in an insurance plan through healthcare.gov has been unable to do so despite trying continuously for two straight weeks. At an Obamacare enrollment event with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius present, staff members failed to get one person to enroll properly. In fact, it has been virtually impossible to find anyone who has been able to successfully enroll in an insurance policy through the site. To add insult to injury, check out the Sebelius interview on The Daily Show in which she tries but utterly fails to put a positive spin on the situation. It is painful to watch.

Although an exact cost of the site is unknown, it has been estimated by various news outlets that it has cost the federal government many millions of dollars to build. Digital Trends has estimated the cost to be roughly around $500 million dollars. This is an obscene amount of money for a web site that doesn't work. Information technology experts who have analyzed the site have been extremely critical of how it was put together. Some have criticized the poor architecture where as others have commented on how the site seems to have been rushed and thrown together. If that weren't bad enough the site appears to also have a number of major security flaws. Considering the amount of sensitive information the site is supposed to process the security flaws represent a potential gold mine for identity thieves. At this point the only thing preventing hackers from stealing data appears to be the fact that the system is so broke that it even makes hacking it difficult. One would think that somebody would have been smart enough to delay the Obamacare implementation until the site was ready but it should be clear by now that common sense is something that does not exist within the Obama regime.

The on-going debacle with the site alone should have resulted in a number of people getting fired. It is completely ridiculous that Sebelius who is ultimately responsible for the Obamacare roll out still has a job. In fact it doesn't appear as if Obama has fired anybody over what should be a major embarrassment to his regime. This is supposed to be Obama's signature achievement as our dear leader and many are viewing it as an abject failure. What makes this even more comical is the fact that Obama recently fired several top military generals over comparatively trivial issues. Obama has continued to express confidence in Sebelius despite everything that has happened which raises a number of questions. This actually gives credence to the possibility that they engineered Obamacare to fail. This would at least explain why Sebelius and others have not been fired because if this were the case she did exactly what she was supposed to do.

It is also possible that healthcare.gov is just designed to collect personal information from people so they can be harassed by the Internal Revenue Service and other draconian government entities at a later date. Admittedly this is speculation but considering how horrible the site launch has gone, it is something that must be considered. The site does appear to at least be successfully collecting data from some people but has been entirely unsuccessful at enrolling people in insurance plans.

Another problem with Obamacare is the fact that it is one of the most complex laws ever written and there is no way that any single human being will ever have a full understanding of it. In fact current U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi once famously remarked that they needed to pass the Obamacare bill in order for people to see what's in it. What sort of insane person would support something that they haven't read let alone understand? Unfortunately this is the type of mental illness we are dealing with from the people who mindlessly support Obamacare. If you were to try and read the law, the actual text is over 2,000 pages and the associated regulations are 30 times longer than the law. Who the hell has time to sort through all of that shit? The complexity of Obamacare is a big reason why the implementation has gone so horribly wrong and this is proven with everything we are seeing unfold. Only criminals who sought to benefit special interests in the insurance industry or a bunch of mentally ill morons would have crafted a law such as this. Take your pick but it is most likely that it was a combination of both.

There is no question that Obamacare is a complete and total failure if you believe that this was meant to provide affordable health insurance to all Americans. It has in fact done the opposite and raised the cost of health insurance making it unaffordable for many Americans. The official site for Obamacare is so screwed up that even after a couple of weeks people still cannot properly enroll in an insurance plan. We actually have the federal government requiring people to buy a product on a site that doesn't work, and if you don't buy the product you will be fined. This is such bull shit. In a sane world Obama would be removed from office for incompetence on just this issue alone. Of course he would have been impeached earlier for many other high crimes and offenses he has already committed during his time in office.

None the less, this failure is so ridiculously obvious that we have to consider this to be part of a larger agenda to intentionally destroy America's healthcare system so the government can take it over. Only time will tell, but what is really sad is that there are still people who are defending and promoting Obamacare. Why on earth would anybody continue to do this? It is undeniable that these people have to be mentally ill and should seek treatment immediately. It is too bad that Obamacare will probably prevent them from getting this treatment so for the time being these people should be avoided at all costs. After all, those who use this type of thought process and avoid using common sense and logic to form opinions are extremely dangerous to themselves and others.

Study Proves Sustainable Farms, Organic Farming Beats Factory Farms

© Natural Society

Study Proves Sustainable Farms, Organic Farming Beats Factory Farms
Oct 15, 2013 | Natural Society | Christina Sarich

For those who are appalled at the way animals are treated in conventional livestock production, there is a better way. Sustainable livestock production practices include providing greater animal welfare, increasing biodiversity, and extending good working conditions to those who care for the animals, all while maintaining a profitable business. A new study clarifies this further, showing how sustainable livestock care outperforms that of factory farms.

More and more people are turning to small farms and more sustainable practices as a means to get their meat. New research from the University of Cambridge (U of C) has identified silvopastoral systems of livestock production as a means of sustainable, ethically sourced food production. This system differs from the tiny cages and infinitesimal square footage that our livestock is most often raised in now. It includes shrubs, and trees with edible leaves or fruits and lots of herbs for natural grazing.

Professor Donald Broom of U of C states that:

“Consumers are now demanding more sustainable and ethically sourced food, including production without negative impacts on animal welfare, the environment and the livelihood of poor producers. Silvopastoral systems address all of these concerns with the added benefit of increased production in the long term.”

Read: Russians Prove Small-Scale Organic CAN Feed World

Now, even cows that are lucky enough to go to pasture are relegated to GMO grains as a means to fatten them for slaughter. They are also often pumped full of hormones and antibiotics which have led to all sorts of health issues in the humans who consume their meat. The current agricultural and livestock production methods also dramatically decrease biodiversity, as well as pollute the soil and waterways due to the chemicals and artificial fertilizer that is necessary to grow animal feed, and maintain the pasture. In the current paradigm, animal feed is rife with GMOs, too.

Instead of this outdated means of livestock production, the researchers from U of C advocate using a diverse group of edible plants that will help with soil and water retention and cause less pesticide-laden run-off. This in turn:

• Reduces stress and injury to animals

• Improves the working conditions and overall satisfaction for farm workers

• Encourages biodiversity which affects the entire food chain – from plant to insect to bird, bee, and bovine

Further, the researchers point out that varying types of shrubs and trees provide more edible leaves and shoots per unit of land area than cleared pasture land. Trees and shrubs also provide shade to the animals and allow them to hide from any perceived danger. In short, it is a more natural environment for them to live in.

 “The planting as forage plants of both shrubs and trees whose leaves and small branches can be consumed by farmed animals can transform the prospects of obtaining sustainable animal production,” said Professor Broom. “Such planting of ‘fodder trees’ has already been successful in several countries, including the plant Chamaecytisus palmensis which is now widely used for cattle feed in Australia.”

Video: Chipotle Blasts Factory Farms

Farmers have already attempted this more bio-diverse way of pasturing animals in Columbia where a combination of the shrub Leucaena along with common pasture grass increased dry matter for food and protein production for the animals by 64%.

The silvopastoral system applies for cows, sheep, goats, and even chicken. It even increases milk production by several kilograms a day without having to pump the animals full of hormones. With its increases in biodiversity and the reduction of animal cruelty, this system is a much more sustainable way of feeding the world, without an increase of land use – which means we can stop mono-cropping and start perma-culture farms in the land we lost in urban sprawl and GMO company monopolies in the past decade.

Additional Sources:

ScienceDaily

7.2 Earthquake Strikes the Philippines!

7.2 Earthquake Strikes the Philippines!
Oct 14, 2013 | DAHBOO7


Massive quake strikes at a shallow depth of only 33 km.

http://quakes.globalincidentmap.com/

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/site/ind...

Related?
 M1.7 Solar Flare & EARTH DIRECTED CME - Oct 13, 2013

Doctors and patients lose trust as drug companies are fined over $11 billion for criminal wrongdoing

© Natural News

Doctors and patients lose trust as drug companies are fined over $11 billion for criminal wrongdoing
Oct 14, 2013 | Natural News | Sue Woledge

Pharmaceutical companies have racked up over $11 billion in fines over the last three years for many cases of criminal misconduct. Twenty-six pharmaceutical companies around the world, including eight of the ten largest companies, have been charged and fined for various criminal behaviors, including withholding safety data for new drug approval applications and promoting drug uses beyond the conditions they have been approved to treat.

According to two papers published in the New England Journal of Medicine, public and professional trust is being eroded by the regular criminal wrongdoings of the pharmaceutical industry, and lawyers have warned that the fines are not sufficient to change the criminal behavior of the industry.

The largest fine of $3 billion was paid by Glaxosmithkline (GSK) in 2012 after they were found guilty of withholding safety data, marketing drugs for unauthorized uses and cheating the US government's Medicaid system in the largest case of healthcare fraud ever. GSK marketed their antidepressant drug Paxil as being suitable for children under the age of 18 when it was approved for adult use only, distributed a fraudulent medical journal article and convinced doctors to prescribe more of their drugs by lavishing them with gifts such as meals and spa treatments.

Other companies have received fines ranging from $420 million to a massive $2.3 billion, but a lawyer at Boston University has pointed out that, although the fines are huge, when compared to the massive profits that these companies are making, they amount to only a small percentage of total revenue. The fact is that the drug companies consider the fines to be a cost of doing business, and when the fines are paid, the government that allows this criminal behavior to continue benefits by recouping a portion of industry profits.

Meanwhile, pharmaceutical associations are trying to work out how to resolve the problems. With so much criminal wrongdoing, the doctors whose role it is to prescribe these companies' products are now finding that their trust has been broken. Many physicians report that they are now dismissing industry-funded clinical trials and research. Due to the regular scandals, patients are also realizing that the industry can't be trusted, contributing, no doubt, to the rise in interest in natural medicines.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.independent.co.uk

http://www.wanttoknow.info

http://www.abc.net.au

http://www.mja.com.au

About the author:

Sue Woledge is a natural therapist, writer and owner of Creating A Toxin Free Future Sue is an advocate for natural health and responsible living and is passionate about life-long learning, natural health, nutrition, healthy living, the environment and natural medicines. Sue believes that living as naturally as possible and eating a diet consisting of natural, unprocessed foods is key to good health, as is reducing exposures to synthetic and toxic chemicals.

What the Homeopathy Controversy is Really All About

© Natural Society

What the Homeopathy Controversy is Really All About
Oct 13, 2013 | Natural Society | Paul Fassa

A German physician, Samuel Hahnemann, started homeopathy in the late 1700s to early 1800s. This was a period when mainstream medicine consisted of using bloodsucking leeches, mercury, arsenic, and lead to treat illness. His approach was kinder, gentler, and much more effective.

Homeopathy caught on in other parts of Europe and North America during the mid-19th Century and beyond. John D. Rockefeller reportedly used homeopathy for himself and his family.

But he made sure his fledgling pharmaceutical interests and petroleum monopoly would benefit from the manufacture and prescription of petrochemical based pharmaceuticals along with his merger with IG Farban, the largest international pharmaceutical company of that time.

Rockefeller basically bankrolled medical education and licensing for allopathic practitioners to exclude both homoeopathics and herbalists. By the early 20th Century, The American Medical Association (AMA) became a major influence for deciding what is and isn’t medicine.

Homeopathy was displaced from mainstream consciousness as the Medical Mafia took over.

How Hanemann Developed Homeopathy 

Hahnemann conducted trials on volunteers and patients. This was truly evidence based medicine for establishing specific results. But his premises were unusual to the Western world.

Hahnemann believed that a vital energy runs through our bodies. This became known as vitalism. Chinese acupuncture had not arrived to the West yet, so this was a startling position to assume.

First he decided that a substance producing symptoms similar to the symptoms of the ailment being treated could heal the ailment. This became known as the “law of similars”. Since Hahnemann was using some toxic plant derivatives at first, he had to dilute those potions with water.

He soon discovered that increased dilutions proved to be even more potent than stronger solutions. First, a sample is taken from a mother solution, is diluted, then shaken vigorously. It can be diluted again and again and shaken each time. This is known as potentization.

Even though a solution can be diluted to a point of containing only one molecule of the original substance, the potentized solutions offer healing by transferring the electromagnetic properties to the water with each shaking. This is how the vital energy or chi is influenced by homeopathic remedies.

The Medical Mafia’s Real Objections to Homeopathy 

This is too subtle for average materialistic practitioners and research scientists. So the AMA mainstream medicos maintain that they’re too weak to work. But that’s the cover story for the real reasons why “orthodox” medicine is against homeopathy, even as more from their ranks slip away and choose to use it.

Big Pharma runs Allopathic medicine from top to bottom. They are in the faces of medical students before they graduate and continue haunting them after they get their licenses. The AMA, FDA, and regional licensing agencies are Big Pharma’s Medical Mafia “enforcers”.

Big Pharma and medical equipment manufacturers would be ruined financially if enough discovered that very inexpensive homeopathic diluted solutions can be used to actually heal without side effects from a homeopathic practitioner who requires practically no expensive medical equipment.

Homeopathy requires dialogue between practitioner and patient. It is patient specific. That takes time and patience, something MDs don’t have time for. Practicing homeopathy is more subtle and demanding than cookie-cutter “here’s your prescription” medical practice.

But this is also the one downside of homeopathy. It’s important to consult a good classical homeopathic practitioner to get optimum results.

But it’s hard to go too wrong with homeopathy because homeopathic solutions are without side effects and are much less expensive than pharmaceuticals. Treating an autistic child often comes to a couple of hundred dollars worth of homeopathic remedies over a year’s treatments.

Meanwhile, orthodox oncologists make up to a half-million or more dollars per year off the chemo drugs they drip into their visiting patients. Yes, they get a cut of the action from those hideously expensive chemo drugs that often kill patients before cancer can.

In summary, allopathic medicine condemns homeopathy because it is more effective but less profitable than the Medical Mafia’s racket. You’ve just been told the real truth. Investigate further starting with the sources below.

Additional Sources:

How PhD computer scientist Amy Lansky became a homeopathy advocate when her son’s autism was cured by it - Mercola

How Modern Medicine displaced homeopathy - Sott

ImpossibleCure

DrZimmermann.org

HealthMaven