US pediatrician suggests government should take obese children away from their parents

(NaturalNews) A pediatrician in Boston named David Ludwig has been sharply criticized over the past week for suggesting that obese children might be taken away from their parents by state authorities for their own safety. In his article, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association , he explains that taking these children away from their natural parents and putting them in foster care might, as a “last resort,” be the most ethical choice. His article expresses concern about the over-use of bariatric surgery on children and teens, and he’s looking for an alternative solution that would help these children avoid surgery, which is dangerous and sometimes even deadly. His suggestion that the state might take these children away from their parents in some cases, however, strikes many people as over-the-top outlandish, especially given the truth that state foster care workers are, for the most part, obese people themselves! Dr. Ludwig is a practicing physician as Boston’s Children’s Hospital, where he no doubt sees an endless stream of obese children come and go. He is also a recipient of grant money from the National Institutes of Health. The article published in JAMA is entitled, “State Intervention in Life-Threatening Childhood Obesity” . Its authors are Lindsey Murtagh, JD, MPH, and David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD. Here are some of the highlights of the article, as reprinted from JAMA: • “Ubiquitous junk food marketing, lack of opportunities for physically active recreation, and other aspects of modern society promote unhealthful lifestyles in children. Inadequate or unskilled parental supervision can leave children vulnerable to these obesigenic environmental influences.” (I completely agree. Dr. Ludwig is absolutely right about this point.) • “…poor parenting is analogous to secondhand smoke in the home…” This is starting to get into dangerous territory that could justify the state kidnapping children who don’t offer “proper parenting.” By this logic, many parents who engage in home schooling could also be targeted, especially if they don’t like their children to receive vaccines or chemotherapy. • “Because of the poor outcome of conventional treatment for pediatric obesity, bariatric surgery has become increasingly considered for adolescents with type 2 diabetes. However, the long-term safety and effectiveness of this invasive procedure in adolescents remains unknown, and serious perioperative and long-term morbidity and mortality have been reported. As an alternative therapeutic approach, placement of the severely obese child under protective custody warrants discussion. ” At least he’s not calling for it to be a mandatory policy. But he is calling for “discussion” of the issue, and that’s where these things always start. He goes on to state that doctors in many states are required to contact Child Protective Services and “tattle” on the parents of obese children, resulting in those children being taken away by CPS workers: • “…mandated reporter laws may obligate physicians to contact child protective services in the cases of children for whom chronic parental neglect has resulted in severe weight-related health complications.” • “State intervention may serve the best interests of many children with life-threatening obesity, comprising the only realistic way to control harmful behaviors. …In severe instances of childhood obesity, removal from the home may be justifiable from a legal standpoint because of imminent health risks and the parents’ chronic failure to address medical problems.” Pay special attention to that last quote. In it, he reasons that using guns (“removal from the home” must always be done by men with guns) to take children away from their parents if those parents fail to “address medical problems.” Well, gee, under this logic, the states could also kidnap children if the parents don’t have them all vaccinated. It’s a dangerous slippery slope when you start calling for state intervention in families. Tearing families apart almost never results in a positive outcome. In fact, statistics show that children are many times more likely to be sexually abused while under foster care than they ever were with their original families. This doctor at least seems open to other solutions Notably, Dr. David Ludwig isn’t outright calling for the state to take away obese children en masse . Not yet, anyway. In fact, he describes such actions as something of a “last resort” and clearly talks about the truth that foster care in no way guarantees a better health outcome. (He has no idea, actually, of how terrible foster care can really be…) More importantly, he does seem to hint at some solutions that could avoid the whole situation when he says: “Ultimately, government can reduce the need for such interventions through investments in the social infrastructure and policies to improve diet and promote physical activity among children.” There is a lot of truth in this statement. And yet it doesn’t go quite far enough. Allow me to explain, in blunt, uncensored language, what really needs to happen in America if we are to save our children from runaway obesity and diabetes. Why I oppose state medical intervention into the privacy of families And in the mean time, I want to be clearly on the record saying that I completely oppose state intervention in families for “medical reasons.” We’ve already seen states POISON teenagers with chemotherapy (at gunpoint, essentially) while charging their natural parents with kidnapping for trying to protect their own children from out-of-control cancer doctors (http://www.naturalnews.com/019617.html). We’ve also seen states go crazy and threaten parents with jail time for not vaccinating their children (http://www.naturalnews.com/022267.html). We also watched Maryanne Godboldo charged with multiple felony crimes for merely trying to prevent her own daughter from being kidnapper by state authorities who were trying to drug her with mind-altering psychotropics (http://www.naturalnews.com/032091_Maryanne_Godboldo_gun_rights.html). The track record of states intervening in families is a terrible one. And I don’t even have the space in this story to get into the more jaw-dropping truths about Child Protective Services — an organization that is heavily engaged in child trafficking and so-called “white slavery” (the selling of children to the wealthy elite who use them as objects of perverted stimulation, so to speak). (http://thetruthproject.us/2007/05/24/dyncorp-haliburton-sex-slave-trade-scandal/) Real solutions to our nation’s obesity epidemic What we need now are real solutions that seek to end our nation’s obesity epidemic at the source: The food and media companies that peddle poison to the population. Here’s my action item wish list of steps I’d love to see take place to protect our children’s future: STEP ONE: Form an armed citizens’ brigade of fed-up parents to march into the headquarters of all the processed junk food companies and fast food companies that push onto our children high-fructose corn syrup, MSG, aspartame, artificial food colors and all the other synthetic chemical additives that destroy human health. Make citizens’ arrests of all the corporate CEOs and top executives at these companies, which should include Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald’s, Burger King, etc. If they resist, charge them with resisting arrest, of course! STEP TWO: Hold public trials where these corporate CEOs face charges of poisoning the population with their toxic, refined, nutrient-depleted junk food products that promote degenerative disease and have crippled our nation’s economy through runaway health care costs. STEP THREE: While all this is going on, have the armed citizens’ brigade march into the executive offices of all the mainstream media outlets that advertise and promote all this crap food. Arrest their CEOs for conspiracy to engage in the mass poisoning of our children by promoting toxic junk foods. Charge them with felony crimes and hold public trials for them as well. Send a message that any company caught promoting processed junk foods, sodas or obesity-causing products will be targeted for citizens’ arrest. Yes, even those who routinely advertise obesity-promoting foods are GUILTY of conspiracy to harm our children . STEP FOUR: Make it publicly known that any company engaged in the promotion or production of obesity-inducing synthetic chemicals or highly-refined food ingredients will be targeted for arrest and prosecution by the armed citizens’ brigade; sort of a “People’s Army” of armed parents who are fed up with the corruption and the mass poisoning of their children and who are willing to enforce common law to protect our children from criminal corporate CEOs in the food industry and the mainstream media. These four steps, of course, may seem entirely unlikely to happen right now. But there will be a day in the not-so-near future when society as we know it collapses under economic bankruptcy, and justice will be dealt out by local groups of concerned citizens who adhere to common law (and common sense!) rather than the perverse and outdated federal laws that protect all the world’s largest and most evil corporations. When the People take back their power to govern their own lives, you can bet there will be citizens’ law enforcement groups that will do what is necessary to protect their children from the mass poisoning of the food supply that has been allowed under the FDA and the obscenely corrupt U.S. federal government.

Land around Fukushima now radioactive dead zone; resembles target struck by atomic bomb

(NaturalNews) It is nothing short of astonishing that the nuclear catastrophe we’ve all been told was “no big deal” has now escalated into the worst nuclear disaster in the history of human civilization. It’s so bad now that soil samples taken from outside the 12-mile exclusion zone (the zone considered safe enough by the Japanese government for schoolchildren to attend school there) are higher than the 1.48 million becquerels a square meter limit that triggered evacuations outside Chernobyl in 1986. In other words, the radiation level of the soil 12 miles from Fukushima is now higher than the levels considered too dangerous to live in near Chernobyl. This is all coming out in a new research report authored by Tomio Kawata, a fellow at the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan. That same report also reveals that radiation from Fukushima has spread over 230 square miles . What we’re facing here, folks, is a Fukushima dead zone where life will never return to its pre-Fukushima norms. Radiation levels similar to nuclear bomb test site Bloomberg is now reporting, “Tetsuya Terasawa said the radiation levels are in line with those found after a nuclear bomb test, which disperses plutonium. He declined to comment further.” (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-30/japan-risks-chernobyl-like-dead-zone-as-fukushima-soil-radiation-soars.html) One soil sample taking 25 kilometers away from Fukushima showed Cesium-137 exceeding 5 million becquerels per square meter . This level, of course, makes it uninhabitable by humans, yet both the Japanese and U.S. governments continue to downplay the whole event, assuring their sheeple that there’s nothing to worry about. By their logic, since all the people are sheeple anyway, as long as the area is safe enough for sheep, it’s also safe enough for the human population. Both Japan and the U.S. have made huge efforts to raise the limits of allowed radiation exposure in foods and beverages. This was, of course, a deceitful tactic to try to reclassify radiation contamination as somehow magically being “safe” by redefining it. The outright lying and tactics of deception that have been used to try to downplay the severity of the radioactive fallout from Fukushima are nothing less than despicable. In a time when radiation threatens the safety and food supply of hundreds of millions of people, we are getting nothing but a Fukushima whitewash . Fukushima is now far worse than Chernobyl ever was and yet we’re all being told it’s no problem and that the government has it all under control. I ask: How is 5 million becquerels per square meter not a problem? It’s amazing that we even got this information, considering how frequently TEPCO claims its sensors and meters aren’t working (basically any time they get a reading that’s “too high”). The Japanese government can’t wait to corral the sheeple back onto the radioactive soil, by the way. “Basically, the way in which the current zones have been drawn up aren’t a concern in terms of the impact on health,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano. “Using Mr. Kawata’s report as a guide, we want to do what we can to improve the soil, so people can return as soon as possible.” (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-30/japan-risks-chernobyl-like-dead-zone-as-fukushima-soil-radiation-soars.html) Barely two weeks ago, TEPCO finally admitted Fukushima suffered multiple core meltdowns in the hours following the tsunami strike (http://www.naturalnews.com/032378_nuclear_meltdown_TEPCO.html) (http://www.naturalnews.com/032437_Fukushima_nuclear_meltdown.html). This was the first time TEPCO openly admitted to something the alternative media had been reporting for months. What has become perfectly clear in the reporting on Fukushima is that: • Governments lie to the people • Mainstream media lies to the people • Only the alternative media was correct in reporting the severity of the core meltdowns and the release of radioactive material into the environment. That’s why more and more people are turning away from traditional sources of (mis)information and instead relying on the alternative media to get accurate information about world events.

EPA to raise limits for radiation exposure while Canada turns off fallout detectors

(NaturalNews) The mass radioactive contamination of our planet is now under way thanks to the astonishing actions taking place at the Fukushima nuclear facility in Japan. As of last night, TEPCO announced it is releasing 10,000 tons of radioactive water directly into the Pacific Ocean. That 2.4 million gallons of planetary poison being dumped directly into the ocean. This water is being released because they have run out of places to keep it on land. It’s too deadly to transport anywhere else, and all the storage pools around Fukushima are already overflowing. So they’re dumping it into the ocean, then calling it “safe” because they claim the ocean will “disperse” all the radiation and make it harmless. But because there’s more radioactive water being produced every day at Fukushima, this process of releasing radioactive water into the ocean could theoretically continue for years , easily making Fukushima the worst nuclear disaster in the history of our world. Quick, fudge the numbers before anybody notices! Fukushima, you see, is doing to the Pacific Ocean what BP and the Deepwater Horizon did to the Gulf of Mexico last summer. Except that in the case of Fukushima, that radiation doesn’t just disappear with the help of millions of gallons of toxic chemicals. Nope, that radiation sticks around for decades . So what to do? If you’re the United States Environment Protection Agency, there’s only one option: Declare radiation to be safe! Yes indeed, friends, we have reached a moment of comedic insanity at the EPA, where those in charge of protecting the environment are hastily rewriting the definition of “radioactive contamination” in order to make sure that whatever fallout reaches the United States falls under the new limits of “safe” radiation. The EPA maintains a set of so-called “Protective Action Guides” (PAGs). These PAGs are being quickly revised to radically increase the allowable levels of iodine-131 (a radioactive isotope) to anywhere from 3,000 to 100,000 times the currently allowable levels. The group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is all over this issue, having obtained internal emails from a FOIA requests that reveal some truly shocking revelations of the level of back-stabbing betrayal happening inside the EPA. For example, under the newly-revised PAGs, drinking just one glass of water considered “safe” by the EPA could subject you to the lifetime limit of radiation . (http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1325) “In addition,” PEER goes on to say, “it would allow long-term cleanup limits thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted. These new limits would cause a cancer in as much as every fourth person exposed.” These new PAGs would also vastly increase the allowable levels of radiation in soil and food, too. That way, when the radioactive fallout from Fukushima’s massive release of raw radioactive water begins to rain down upon the West Coast, the EPA can officially announce that all the radiation is “below accepted limits.” That’s very comforting to many people, you see. And why is it below the limits? Because the EPA just raised the limits by as much as 100,000 times! Quack science is alive and well as the government Truly, this is science at its most delightful. When the facts don’t fit your fairy tale, simply rewrite the fairy tale to discard the facts! That’s science for you today, folks: There’s nothing that can’t be denied, censored, oppressed or ignored if you just fudge the numbers with enough determination and arrogance. The U.S. government does the exact same thing with vitamin D, of course. By lowering the definition of vitamin D deficiency to mean only those with a blood level below 30, the government magically and instantly transforms a wildly deficient American population into a “sufficiently nourished” population! It’s magic, friends. Magic with numbers. But even the EPA’s sleight-of-hand magic isn’t fooling very many people this time around. Even the most TV-obsessed, CNN-watching news zombie has by now figured out that too much radiation is bad for you. After all, the media has been screaming at people about the dangers of sunlight radiation for years, insisting that the mere act of sunlight touching your skin could kill you from skin cancer. And yet, thanks to the EPA’s magically-morphing numbers, even though sunlight radiation might kill you, Fukushima radiation is perfectly safe for ya! You have a front row seat in this entertaining charade Isn’t it amazing? Watching the U.S. government try to fudge its way out of the physical realities of Fukushima probably beats the best stage magic show you’ll ever find in Vegas. Sure, in Vegas they can make white tigers disappear right in front of your very eyes, but with the help of the U.S. government, they can cause the world’s largest nuclear catastrophe to vanish by simply redefining radiation exposure limits. You may wonder, dear readers, where the U.S. government learned these amazing and fantastic tricks of fudging the numbers. The answer, as regular NaturalNews know all too well, is that they learned it from the U.S. Treasury , where fudging the numbers is an essential skill to keep things running. After all, if the federal government can pretend that trillions of dollars in toxic debt have no impact on the U.S. economy, it’s a no-brainer to also pretend that massive doses of radioactive fallout have no impact on environmental health, either. That’s the new mantra in Washington: We just wish it away! It should be Obama’s new campaign slogan, actually: Are you ready to wish it all away? Watch the distraction in my right hand while I steal the money out of your wallet with my left… British scientists have the solution: Spread it all around! Getting back to the absolutely glowing situation in Fukushima, if you can’t believe the U.S. EPA, then perhaps you can take comfort in the authoritative words of a British newspaper, which assures us that: “Scientists also confirmed that ocean currents will swiftly dilute the radioactive iodine-131, eliminating risks to human health and the environment.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8425719/Japan-nuclear-crisis-workers-using-newspaper-and-sawdust-to-block-pipes.html) Surely this logic is impeccable, no? Any amount of toxic radiation can simply be declared safe by dumping it into the ocean and watching the waves sweep it all away. By this same logic, you could clean up a toxic chemical spill by swishing it around with wet mops and then declaring the zone to be safe again. Didn’t we try this already with pesticides, herbicides and agricultural runoff? And didn’t it create massive ocean dead zones all around the planet? Now we’re going to add Chernobyl-sized radiation releases to that equation, too? Fukushima is a massive dirty bomb I’m reminded that if an Islamic-looking individual conducted such an act anywhere near a U.S. shoreline, it would be considered an act of terrorism . A dirty bomb, actually. And those individuals would be shipped off the Guantanamo Bay to be interrogated in a facility that President Obama once promised the voters would be closed down if he were elected. He was lying, of course. But that’s not even the news here. Everybody already knows he was lying about Gitmo. So why is unleashing a dirty bomb an act of terrorism if you’re Islamic-looking, but if you’re Japanese suddenly it’s all officially safe? And by what contortions in its twisted agenda of anti-public service does the EPA go to these extraordinary lengths to redefine the very margins of radiation exposure? If Fukushima goes into a total meltdown, will the EPA just add more zeroes to the end of its safety margin numbers until we’re all assured our food is U.S. government approved 100% safe even while our hair falls out from eating it? Will the FDA soon tell us that radioactive milk is safe to drink , but RAW milk is deadly? Canada tries to out-stupid the USA Ah, the fascination of watching this tragic comedy of errors unfold in the U.S. government almost cannot be exceeded. But Canada is sure trying. Its own nuclear monitoring network has simply been shut off, and its website now reads “Please note that as of March 25, 2011, the frequency of data collection by NRCan using the mobile surveys has been decreased due to the low levels of radiation being detected.” Seriously, see the bottom of the page: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hc-ps/ed-ud/respond/nuclea/_data/nrcan-rncan-eng.php Yep, since they’re detecting low levels of radiation, this is apparently justification for turning off the monitors altogether , which of course is the kind of brilliant early warning plan that could have only been dreamed up by a brain-dead bureaucrat. It’s as if these morons are sitting around a table having a conversation that goes something like this: Bureaucratic Moron #1: Remember how we spent a hundred million dollars installing a national network of radiation detectors? Bureaucratic Moron #2: Yeah. Bureaucratic Moron #1: And remember how we started to detect some of the radioactive fallout from Fukushima as it began raining down upon Canada? Bureaucratic Moron #2: Yeah. Bureaucratic Moron #1: Well, I have a great idea. Let’s turn OFF all the detectors so that we stop detecting radiation! Bureaucratic Moron #2: That’s brilliant! You’re a genius! Bureaucratic Moron #1: I know I am. And we wouldn’t want to waste this expensive equipment, you know. Bureaucratic Moron #2: Right, we want to save it for a scenario when we might really need it, eh? Bureaucratic Moron #1: Exactly! And we’ll save millions of dollars in operating fees, because the best way to save money on radiation detectors is to not use them. Bureaucratic Moron #2: You’re a genius! You should run for Prime Minister! Yes there is a plan, but you’re not in it Obama, of course, is trying to best his Canadian counterpart by simply urging the American people to do nothing in the case of radioactive fallout. Don’t worry, my little consumer sheeple, you don’t need to prepare in any way whatsoever, Obama says from his nuclear fallout shelter that’s stocked with 10 years of food, water, emergency medical supplies, government ammunition and military communications equipment. It’s okay for the President to prepare for emergencies, I guess. Just not YOU. There is a plan, you see, for the government to survive every disaster that comes our way. You’re just not part of it. The government feels that its own survival is far more important than yours. And just to make sure you don’t interfere with its own plans, the government is going to turn off the radiation detectors, raise the official EPA limits of radioactive exposure, urge Americans to avoid preparing for fallout, and then pretend absolutely nothing’s wrong. Keep on buying, consuming and paying your bills, all you voters! Punch your time clock at your job if you still have one, and don’t ask any questions about radiation, vaccines or the chemical additives they put in hot dogs. Some food ingredients, you see, are only disclosed on a need-to-know basis. And you don’t need to know. Run for the cure. Vote in the next election. Buy diet sodas and watch lots of sports programs on television with occasional interruptions from the news programs now featuring “info babes” regurgitating scripted mindless propaganda bracketed by flying news network logos. Report suspicious activities at Wal-Mart (http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=5A4B5D4B84344D5D9CBD262A53D8B071). Call 911 on your Arab-looking neighbors just because they look Arab-looking. Watch “Ow, My Balls!” on your television set (http://www.naturalnews.com/021558_Idiocracy_Hollywood.html) and stop thinking about your future. Your government already has your future planned for you. That’s why there’s no need for you to expend any effort considering it yourself. Why bother thinking when you can just passively consume everything you’re being spoon-fed by the State? And don’t worry about the radioactive fallout. It’s all safe now. I’ve been assured of that by the EPA.

Alien mind wipe failure (comic)

(NaturalNews) Nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis according to a CDC report that was just released (1). Nearly a third of Americans use two or more drugs, and more than one in ten use five or more prescription drugs regularly. The report also revealed that one in five children are being regularly given prescription drugs, and nine out of ten seniors are on drugs. All these drugs came at a cost of over $234 billion in 2008. The most commonly-used drugs were: • Statin drugs for older people • Asthma drugs for children • Antidepressants for middle-aged people • Amphetamine stimulants for children America has become a nation of druggies . The seniors are being drugged for nearly every symptom a doctor can find, children are being doped up with (legalized) speed, and middle-aged soccer moms are popping suicide pills (antidepressants). Prescription drug addictions are on the rise, too. Prescription drugs are so dangerous that now even the DEA is hosting “take back your pills” day allowing citizens to anonymously surrender their unused prescription painkillers to DEA agents. (http://www.herald-dispatch.com/news/briefs/x1431852393/DEA-hosting-take-back-initiative-for-unused-pills) Interestingly, DEA agents will only accept “legal” amphetamine drugs such as Ritalin but not “illegal” methamphetamine drugs. You’re only off the hook if you paid monopoly prescription prices for your drugs. And it’s only going to get worse The percentage of Americans taking prescription drugs is expected to rise even further as the health reform insurance regulations kick in. Much of the bill was specifically designed to favor pharmaceutical industry interests by putting even more people on medication. Expect to see more “screening” too — a thinly disguised drug recruitment method that primarily seeks to ensnare new patients in a high-profit drug regimen. The mass medication of American citizens has reached a disturbing tipping point where the future of the nation itself is at risk. That’s because pharmaceuticals cause cognitive decline , and once you get to the point where over 50 percent of the voters can’t think straight, you’re trapped in a crumbling Democracy. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the financial cost of America’s addiction to drugs: With nearly one out of every five dollars out of the entire U.S. economy now being spent on sickness and disease, America finds herself stuck in a cycle of high-cost drug treatments that cure no one. That’s right: No one gets healthier from taking prescription drugs. They don’t cure anyone and they don’t prevent disease. They only maintain patients in a kind of “pre-death stasis” where they’re alive just enough to keep buying more medication. Drug companies don’t want you dead because that would cut off their profits. But they don’t want you healthy, either, because then they wouldn’t have you as a customer. So their drugs are actually designed to keep you in a state of ongoing disease without curing your condition but also without killing you outright. You sort of chemically limp along, shelling out dollars while your memory fades and your skin starts to show signs of severe toxicity. Big Pharma is not merely sapping the life out of you; it’s also draining you financially. Isn’t it obvious that pharmaceuticals don’t work? If pharmaceuticals really worked to make people healthy, then the half of America currently taking pharmaceuticals would be the healthiest half , and the people who don’t take pharmaceuticals would be unhealthy, right? But in fact it’s the other way around: People who take pharmaceuticals remain unhealthy and really never get cured of anything. Meanwhile, those who avoid taking pharmaceuticals are, by and large, far healthier individuals. If America were running a grand experiment to determine whether pharmaceuticals really work — and trust me, the country really is running precisely that experiment — any reasonable observer would have to conclude that pharmaceuticals really don’t improve the health of those who take them. The more pharmaceuticals you take, in fact, the sicker you will become . That’s because drugs cause an imbalance in the body that soon leads to the emergence of other side effects. At the same time, many of the drugs people take actually cause the very things they claim to prevent. Osteoporosis drugs cause hip fractures. Cancer drugs cause cancer. Antidepressants cause suicidal thoughts. The list goes on and on. The people who are really, truly healthy in America are those who avoid pharmaceuticals . (http://www.naturalnews.com/028789_pharmacies_health_food_stores.html) They take care of their own health through regular exercise, time in nature, sensible sunshine exposure and healthy eating. They distrust the pharmaceutical industry and they don’t let television advertising hypnotize them into making poor decisions like getting a flu shot (http://www.naturalnews.com/029641_vaccines_junk_science.html). Yet even though it is blatantly obvious that pharmaceuticals really don’t work to improve the health of any population, the drug industry insists the only thing wrong with America’s health is that not enough people are taking medication! If we could only get 100% of the population on drugs instead of 50%, they seem to be saying, then we’d all be healthy! The logic is absurd, of course. And that goal has nothing to do with actual health but everything to do with increasing drug company profits. While drug companies may not know much at all about health, they do know one thing: How to commit marketing fraud by making outrageous benefit claims for their drugs while whitewashing the very real dangerous side effects. Big Pharma will bankrupt America Mark my words: Big Pharma will bankrupt America. And quite possibly the UK as well. Any nation that hands over its health care system to the drug industry is committing financial suicide. That’s because Big Pharma absolutely will not halt its single-minded mission to extract as much money as possible from the population, corporations and governments. It will do anything and everything it can to accomplish this goal: Bribe researchers to commit research fraud, engage in false and fraudulent marketing, lie to the public, hide negative study results, conduct experiments on children in third-world countries, pollute the planet with drug factory runoff, influence legislators with campaign finance contributions, dominate the pages of medical journals with false and misleading advertising, submit “scientific” articles to the journals ghost-written by the drug companies themselves… this list never ends. Drug companies will knowingly keep dangerous drugs on the market that kill tens of thousands of people. They will knowingly withhold research from the FDA if it might make their drugs look bad. They will knowingly distort clinical trial data to eliminate whatever outcome they don’t want to see. This is all “routine” in the drug industry. These aren’t exceptions, mind you: They are the way the drug industry operates on a daily basis. The worst part of it is that Big Government is now fully in bed with Big Pharma . I already exposed Sen Harry Reid’s efforts to swing a sweet deal for Big Pharma in the recent health care reforms (http://www.naturalnews.com/029450_Harry_Reid_Big_Pharma.html). The FDA’s collusion with drug companies, meanwhile, is legendary: There is hardly a decision made by the FDA that doesn’t in some way protect drug company profits. The med schools and science journals have been overrun by drug company influence. Drug companies are so large and powerful now that the U.S. government considers them “too big to nail.” When Pfizer was recently found guilty of felony crimes, the government allowed it to create a shell company to take the hit so that Pfizer itself could remain in business and keep selling drugs to the government. (http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/02/pfizer.bextra/index.html) A federal prosecutor actually went on the record saying, “If we prosecute Pfizer… a lot of people who work for the company who haven’t engaged in criminal activity would get hurt.” Therefore, the logic goes, they have to let Pfizer off the hook. And so it goes; Big Government protecting the criminals in the drug industry, making excuses for looking the other way when scientific fraud and marketing fraud is routinely being carried out right under their noses. The Dept of Justice isn’t even interested in taking down criminal drug companies! How this will end So where does this medication madness ever end? It will end, I predict, with the economic downfall of the United States of America. When the nation is too broke, too medicated and too chemically compromised to stay afloat, it will suffer an enormous economic collapse. Following the financial failure of big government, Big Pharma will implode virtually overnight. Without the government buying its products, Big Pharma will find few willing private customers. Ordinary people will seek out affordable and safer natural remedies, and the drug industry will collapse to perhaps 10% of its current size. This will be a great day for the health of all Americans who have suffered under the chemical assault of Big Pharma. To live without the daily onslaught of Big Pharma’s chemicals is to live a healthier life with improved brain function and awareness. Once people get off all their drugs, we might have hope to thoughtfully rebuild a nation based on nutrition rather than monopoly-priced medications. I’ve said this at least a hundred times, and I’ll say it again: No nation that ignores the nutritional health of its citizens has any real future . A successful long-term society MUST, at its core, invest in real nutrition and the holistic health education of its citizens. Without good nutrition, every society is ultimately doomed to fail. Modern medicine, in other words, is destroying our country. And the “cure” for this disease is to throw out what doesn’t work (pharmaceuticals) and start embracing the things that do work (nutrition and superfoods) to keep people healthy. Additional sources: (1) National Center for Health Statistics: “NCHS Data Brief No. 42, September 2010.”

Americans drowning in prescription drugs

(NaturalNews) Nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis according to a CDC report that was just released (1). Nearly a third of Americans use two or more drugs, and more than one in ten use five or more prescription drugs regularly. The report also revealed that one in five children are being regularly given prescription drugs, and nine out of ten seniors are on drugs. All these drugs came at a cost of over $234 billion in 2008. The most commonly-used drugs were: • Statin drugs for older people • Asthma drugs for children • Antidepressants for middle-aged people • Amphetamine stimulants for children America has become a nation of druggies . The seniors are being drugged for nearly every symptom a doctor can find, children are being doped up with (legalized) speed, and middle-aged soccer moms are popping suicide pills (antidepressants). Prescription drug addictions are on the rise, too. Prescription drugs are so dangerous that now even the DEA is hosting “take back your pills” day allowing citizens to anonymously surrender their unused prescription painkillers to DEA agents. (http://www.herald-dispatch.com/news/briefs/x1431852393/DEA-hosting-take-back-initiative-for-unused-pills) Interestingly, DEA agents will only accept “legal” amphetamine drugs such as Ritalin but not “illegal” methamphetamine drugs. You’re only off the hook if you paid monopoly prescription prices for your drugs. And it’s only going to get worse The percentage of Americans taking prescription drugs is expected to rise even further as the health reform insurance regulations kick in. Much of the bill was specifically designed to favor pharmaceutical industry interests by putting even more people on medication. Expect to see more “screening” too — a thinly disguised drug recruitment method that primarily seeks to ensnare new patients in a high-profit drug regimen. The mass medication of American citizens has reached a disturbing tipping point where the future of the nation itself is at risk. That’s because pharmaceuticals cause cognitive decline , and once you get to the point where over 50 percent of the voters can’t think straight, you’re trapped in a crumbling Democracy. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the financial cost of America’s addiction to drugs: With nearly one out of every five dollars out of the entire U.S. economy now being spent on sickness and disease, America finds herself stuck in a cycle of high-cost drug treatments that cure no one. That’s right: No one gets healthier from taking prescription drugs. They don’t cure anyone and they don’t prevent disease. They only maintain patients in a kind of “pre-death stasis” where they’re alive just enough to keep buying more medication. Drug companies don’t want you dead because that would cut off their profits. But they don’t want you healthy, either, because then they wouldn’t have you as a customer. So their drugs are actually designed to keep you in a state of ongoing disease without curing your condition but also without killing you outright. You sort of chemically limp along, shelling out dollars while your memory fades and your skin starts to show signs of severe toxicity. Big Pharma is not merely sapping the life out of you; it’s also draining you financially. Isn’t it obvious that pharmaceuticals don’t work? If pharmaceuticals really worked to make people healthy, then the half of America currently taking pharmaceuticals would be the healthiest half , and the people who don’t take pharmaceuticals would be unhealthy, right? But in fact it’s the other way around: People who take pharmaceuticals remain unhealthy and really never get cured of anything. Meanwhile, those who avoid taking pharmaceuticals are, by and large, far healthier individuals. If America were running a grand experiment to determine whether pharmaceuticals really work — and trust me, the country really is running precisely that experiment — any reasonable observer would have to conclude that pharmaceuticals really don’t improve the health of those who take them. The more pharmaceuticals you take, in fact, the sicker you will become . That’s because drugs cause an imbalance in the body that soon leads to the emergence of other side effects. At the same time, many of the drugs people take actually cause the very things they claim to prevent. Osteoporosis drugs cause hip fractures. Cancer drugs cause cancer. Antidepressants cause suicidal thoughts. The list goes on and on. The people who are really, truly healthy in America are those who avoid pharmaceuticals . (http://www.naturalnews.com/028789_pharmacies_health_food_stores.html) They take care of their own health through regular exercise, time in nature, sensible sunshine exposure and healthy eating. They distrust the pharmaceutical industry and they don’t let television advertising hypnotize them into making poor decisions like getting a flu shot (http://www.naturalnews.com/029641_vaccines_junk_science.html). Yet even though it is blatantly obvious that pharmaceuticals really don’t work to improve the health of any population, the drug industry insists the only thing wrong with America’s health is that not enough people are taking medication! If we could only get 100% of the population on drugs instead of 50%, they seem to be saying, then we’d all be healthy! The logic is absurd, of course. And that goal has nothing to do with actual health but everything to do with increasing drug company profits. While drug companies may not know much at all about health, they do know one thing: How to commit marketing fraud by making outrageous benefit claims for their drugs while whitewashing the very real dangerous side effects. Big Pharma will bankrupt America Mark my words: Big Pharma will bankrupt America. And quite possibly the UK as well. Any nation that hands over its health care system to the drug industry is committing financial suicide. That’s because Big Pharma absolutely will not halt its single-minded mission to extract as much money as possible from the population, corporations and governments. It will do anything and everything it can to accomplish this goal: Bribe researchers to commit research fraud, engage in false and fraudulent marketing, lie to the public, hide negative study results, conduct experiments on children in third-world countries, pollute the planet with drug factory runoff, influence legislators with campaign finance contributions, dominate the pages of medical journals with false and misleading advertising, submit “scientific” articles to the journals ghost-written by the drug companies themselves… this list never ends. Drug companies will knowingly keep dangerous drugs on the market that kill tens of thousands of people. They will knowingly withhold research from the FDA if it might make their drugs look bad. They will knowingly distort clinical trial data to eliminate whatever outcome they don’t want to see. This is all “routine” in the drug industry. These aren’t exceptions, mind you: They are the way the drug industry operates on a daily basis. The worst part of it is that Big Government is now fully in bed with Big Pharma . I already exposed Sen Harry Reid’s efforts to swing a sweet deal for Big Pharma in the recent health care reforms (http://www.naturalnews.com/029450_Harry_Reid_Big_Pharma.html). The FDA’s collusion with drug companies, meanwhile, is legendary: There is hardly a decision made by the FDA that doesn’t in some way protect drug company profits. The med schools and science journals have been overrun by drug company influence. Drug companies are so large and powerful now that the U.S. government considers them “too big to nail.” When Pfizer was recently found guilty of felony crimes, the government allowed it to create a shell company to take the hit so that Pfizer itself could remain in business and keep selling drugs to the government. (http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/02/pfizer.bextra/index.html) A federal prosecutor actually went on the record saying, “If we prosecute Pfizer… a lot of people who work for the company who haven’t engaged in criminal activity would get hurt.” Therefore, the logic goes, they have to let Pfizer off the hook. And so it goes; Big Government protecting the criminals in the drug industry, making excuses for looking the other way when scientific fraud and marketing fraud is routinely being carried out right under their noses. The Dept of Justice isn’t even interested in taking down criminal drug companies! How this will end So where does this medication madness ever end? It will end, I predict, with the economic downfall of the United States of America. When the nation is too broke, too medicated and too chemically compromised to stay afloat, it will suffer an enormous economic collapse. Following the financial failure of big government, Big Pharma will implode virtually overnight. Without the government buying its products, Big Pharma will find few willing private customers. Ordinary people will seek out affordable and safer natural remedies, and the drug industry will collapse to perhaps 10% of its current size. This will be a great day for the health of all Americans who have suffered under the chemical assault of Big Pharma. To live without the daily onslaught of Big Pharma’s chemicals is to live a healthier life with improved brain function and awareness. Once people get off all their drugs, we might have hope to thoughtfully rebuild a nation based on nutrition rather than monopoly-priced medications. I’ve said this at least a hundred times, and I’ll say it again: No nation that ignores the nutritional health of its citizens has any real future . A successful long-term society MUST, at its core, invest in real nutrition and the holistic health education of its citizens. Without good nutrition, every society is ultimately doomed to fail. Modern medicine, in other words, is destroying our country. And the “cure” for this disease is to throw out what doesn’t work (pharmaceuticals) and start embracing the things that do work (nutrition and superfoods) to keep people healthy. Additional sources: (1) National Center for Health Statistics: “NCHS Data Brief No. 42, September 2010.”

US almond growers achieve court victory in fight against mandatory fumigation

(NaturalNews) Three years after the USDA destroyed the U.S. raw almond business by forcing almond producers to fumigate or pasteurize their nuts, a significant victory has been achieved that could overturn that onerous regulation. A federal appeals court has ruled that California almond farmers may now challenge the USDA regulation in the courts. Why is this a victory? Because for years, a federal district court has ruled that almond growers could not even challenge the rule . The USDA’s power over farmers was absolutely, the court seemed to say, and no mere peasants can challenge the King. But today that has all changed. A Cornucopia Institute press release announces the details of this court decision: From the Cornucopia Institute… See original release at http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/federal-court-victory-almond-farmers-can-challenge-usda-pasteurization-rule/ WASHINGTON, DC , A federal appeals court ruled today, overturning a lower court decision, that a group of California almond farmers have the right to challenge a USDA regulation requiring the treatment of their raw almonds with a toxic fumigant or steam heat prior to sale to consumers. For the past three years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has denied American consumers the right to buy raw almonds, grown in the USA, when they shop in grocery and natural food stores. A group of almond growers sued the government to challenge USDA’s rule, but the federal district court ruled that courtroom doors were closed to the growers’ claims. The controversial rule has cost individual farmers millions of dollars in lost sales since it was enacted in September 2007. “We are delighted by the court’s decision,” said Will Fantle, Cornucopia’s Research Director. Cornucopia has been coordinating the legal strategy for the farmers’ lawsuit. “At long last the farmers who have been injured by this rule will have the opportunity to stand in court and state why this poorly thought out regulation should be thrown out,” Fantle added. The USDA and the Almond Board of California imposed the treatment scheme to minimize the risk of salmonella contamination outbreaks like those that had occurred with almonds in 2001 and 2004. USDA investigators were never able to determine how salmonella bacteria somehow contaminated the raw almonds that caused the food illnesses but they were able to trace back one of the outbreaks, in part, to the country’s largest “factory farm,” growing almonds and pistachios on over 9000 acres. Family-scale growers have argued that the onerous and expensive mandated treatment regime is only needed by the giant industrial producers, who have less control over the quality of their nuts, and has hurt their market because it consumer resistance. Many in the industry have questioned the logic exempting foreign-grown almonds from the treatment scheme. Imports have displaced raw domestic nuts in many major markets and retail locations across the U.S. This regulatory loophole is part of what has been crushing California producers. “I am very happy with this first step in overturning this destructive regulation,” said Nick Koretoff, an almond farmer and plaintiff in the lawsuit. “The treatment mandate has been a financial catastrophe for me. My consumers want raw, untreated healthy almonds and I have been denied the opportunity to sell them what they want.” Attorney John Vetne, who has been representing the almond farmers, said the Appeals Court made a “very strong decision affirming farmers’ rights.” The USDA had been arguing that farmers did not even have the right to legally challenge the USDA regulation. “We are pleased that the Appeals Court rejected USDA’s argument that courthouse doors are closed to farmers. We now intend to demonstrate to the federal district court that USDA acted outside of authority granted by Congress when it denied California almond growers a consumer market for raw almonds,” Vetne added. Tens of thousands of consumers have expressed their discontent with the raw almond treatment rule in comments to the USDA. Organic and raw foods enthusiasts were particularly incensed that the nuts, despite being processed with propylene oxide (identified as a carcinogen by the federal EPA) or steam-heat, were still allowed to be labeled as “raw” — many believe that essential nutrients in food can be destroyed by heat, radiation and toxic chemicals. The Cornucopia Institute, an organization known for its research and defense of family farmers involved in organics, artisan and local food production, was impressed with how many consumers have a real passion for maintaining the availability of raw food and nuts, including almonds, and have been willing to financially support the farmers in their legal challenge. “Contributions continue to flow in supporting this effort,” Fantle noted. “I and many of my friends look forward to the day when we will once again be able to easily purchase truly raw, authentic almonds from California in my local store,” said Joan Levin, a Chicago resident and raw foods consumer. “We hope this Appeals Court ruling brings that day closer,” she said. Learn more at: http://www.cornucopia.org/almonds/

The total failure of modern psychiatry

(NaturalNews) Modern psychiatry went wrong when it embraced the idea that the mind should be treated with drugs, says Edward Shorter of the University of Toronto, writing in the Wall Street Journal . Shorter studies the history of psychiatry and medicine. Modern U.S. psychiatry has adopted a philosophy that psychological diseases arise from chemical imbalances and therefore have a very specific cluster of symptoms, he says, in spite of evidence that the difference between many so-called disorders is minimal or nonexistent. These “disorders” are then treated with expensive drugs that are no more effective than a placebo. “Psychiatry seems to have lost its way in a forest of poorly verified diagnoses and ineffectual medications,” he writes. Shorter calls for U.S. psychiatry to abandon its emphasis on “psychopathology” and instead adopt the European approach, which focuses on the symptoms and needs of people as individuals. Yet the draft of the latest edition of psychiatric diagnostic “Bible,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), shows that U.S. psychiatry has no intention of changing course. “With DSM-V, American psychiatry is headed in exactly the opposite direction: defining ever-widening circles of the population as mentally ill with vague and undifferentiated diagnoses and treating them with powerful drugs,” Shorter writes. U.S. psychiatry was not always obsessed with psychopharmacology, he notes. Its early years were marked by a psychoanalytic approach that categorized mental disorders in broad, fluid categories such as “nerves,” “melancholia” or “manic-depressive illness.” These categories sufficed because similar treatments would work for people suffering from any version thereof: lithium treated both mania and severe depression, for example, while the specific symptoms experienced by an anxious person had little influence on the therapies needed. “Our psychopathological lingo today offers little improvement on these sturdy terms,” Shorter said. “A patient with the same symptoms today might be told he has ‘social anxiety disorder’ or ‘seasonal affective disorder.’ … The new disorders all respond to the same drugs, so in terms of treatment, the differentiation is meaningless and of benefit mainly to pharmaceutical companies that market drugs for these niches.” In the 1950s and ’60s, a new wave of psychiatrists sought to turn away from psychoanalysis — perceiving it as focusing excessively on “unconscious psychic conflicts” — and toward a more “scientific” model instead. As a result, the DSM-III introduced the vague new categories of “major depression” and “bipolar disorder,” even though evidence suggests that there is no substantial difference between the two conditions. At the same time, “major depression” absorbed what Shorter calls two very different conditions, “neurotic depression” and “melancholia.” “This would be like incorporating tuberculosis and mumps into the same diagnosis, simply because they are both infectious diseases,” he writes. DSM-V only continues the trend of extending the disordered label to more and more normal people, Shorter warns: “To flip through the latest draft of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, in the works for seven years now, is to see the discipline’s floundering writ large.” For example, the new disorder of “psychosis risk syndrome” associates a whole new class of people with full-blown schizophrenia, under the logic, Shorter says, that “even if you aren’t floridly psychotic with hallucinations and delusions, eccentric behavior can nonetheless awaken the suspicion that you might someday become psychotic.” The implication, of course, is that such people should be treated with antipsychotics. Symptoms of “psychosis risk syndrome” include such vague descriptors as “disorganized speech.” Other new “disorders” include hoarding, mixed anxiety-depression and binge eating. “Minor neurocognitive disorder” describes a reduction in cognitive function over time, such as that normally experienced by people over the age of 50, while “temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria” refers to children who suffer from outbursts of temper. “DSM-V accelerates the trend of making variants on the spectrum of everyday behavior into diseases,” Shorter says, “turning grief into depression, apprehension into anxiety, and boyishness into hyperactivity.” Sources for this story include: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704188104575083700227601116.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_lifestyle.