TSA continues to hire child porn criminals

A statewide crackdown on sexual deviants in Massachusetts has led to the arrest and criminal charge of U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screener Jose E. Salgado, a 59-year-old from Chelsea that had been working at Logan International Airport in Boston…

Dentist used paper clips in root canals as part of fraudulent Medicare scam

A former Fall River, Massachusetts, dentist has pleaded guilty to bilking the Medicaid system out of $130,000, illegally prescribing prescription drugs, intimidating a witness, and committing assault and battery. CBS Connecticut reports that Michael Clair had been running…

Natural cranberry juice more effective than pills for fighting infections

A new study from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts confirms that natural cranberry juice is more effective in fighting infections than pills containing concentrated doses of the flavonoids found in cranberries. The study published in the Food…

Advanced electrical stimulation technology can repair damaged nerves, restore neuron function with virtually no side effects

(NaturalNews) Patients suffering from nerve damage or paralysis may soon be able to better regain function, thanks to a new electrical stimulation technique developed by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston, Mass., and engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Science Daily reports that the new method of functional electrical stimulation (FES) reduces electrical output by 40 percent and better protects surrounding nerves and tissues from damage by focusing energy directly to the damaged site. Published in the journal Nature Materials , the findings reveal a method of stimulating neuronal activity in patients with nerve damage that is superior to traditional FES technologies. By reducing the amount of electrical current emitted and better concentrating it into damaged areas, scientists have successfully developed a safer and more efficient method of helping nerve-damaged patients regain function with less damaging side effects. “This new device works by manipulating the concentration of charged ions surrounding the nerve,” said Samuel J. Lin, MD, a surgeon at BIDMC’s Divisions of Plastic Surgery and Otolaryngology, Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, and co-author of the study. “This could potentially mean reduced risk to surrounding nerves because less electrical current is required to stimulate the affected nerve.” Since sensory nerves and the nerves that control movements are located very closely together, reducing both the amount of electrical current as well as its spread is crucial to maximizing the benefits and reducing the side effects of FES treatments. And after experimenting with the various ions in the fluid that surrounds nerves, the research team discovered that removing the positively charged calcium ions helps to focus the electrical current on the damaged nerve areas while protecting the healthy areas. “Nerve fibers fire their signals based on the message they receive from the interaction of ions, or charged particles,” added Lin. “The nerves that control movements and the sensory nerves that carry pain signals are extremely close together, so existing FES therapy has had limitations. This (new discovery) is an important step towards the design of a device to help patients suffering from nerve paralysis and chronic neurological conditions.” Sources for this article include: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111121194131.htm

Eating certain foods alters expression of heart disease genes

(NaturalNews) Did your mother or father have a heart attack? Did your grandfather and a couple of aunts and uncles or maybe a brother or cousin die from heart disease? Do you feel doomed that having a bad ticker “runs” in your family? Actually, you may have good reason to worry if several of your relatives have suffered from cardiac problems. There is a gene passed down in families that researchers say is the strongest marker for heart disease. But now there’s breaking news that shows you can actually change that genetic heritage. No, we aren’t talking about some gene zapping drug or high tech genetic medical therapy. Instead, you simply need to eat a lot of raw natural fruit and veggies. This isn’t a joke and it isn’t an unsubstantiated “health nut” claim. Instead, it’s the result of a study headed by an international team of scientists and directed by researchers at McMaster and McGill universities. These researchers have made an amazing discovery, which was just published in the journal PLoS Medicine : the gene responsible for much heart disease can be modified by eating generous amounts of fruits and raw vegetables. “We know that 9p21 genetic variants increase the risk of heart disease for those that carry it,” Dr. Jamie Engert, joint principal investigator of the study, who is a researcher in cardiovascular diseases at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and associate member in the Department of Human Genetics at McGill University, said in a media statement. “But it was a surprise to find that a healthy diet could significantly weaken its effect.” Huge study investigated gene and diet link The research represents one of the largest gene and diet interaction studies ever conducted on cardiovascular disease. It involved studying more than 27,000 individuals(European, South Asian, Chinese, Latin American and Arab) to see if what they ate had an effect on the 9p21 gene. The results showed that individuals with the high risk genotype who ate a diet rich in mainly raw vegetables, fruits and berries, had no more risk of heart attack than people who lacked the heart disease-linked gene. “We observed that the effect of a high-risk genotype can be mitigated by consuming a diet high in fruits and vegetables,” stated Sonia Anand. She is the joint principal investigator of the study, and a researcher at the Population Health Research Institute and a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University. Sonia also commented, “Our results support the public health recommendation to consume more than five servings of fruits or vegetables as a way to promote good health.” According to the study’s lead author Dr. Ron Do (who conducted this research as part of his PhD at McGill and is now based at the Center for Human Genetics Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston), the new study suggests there may be an important interplay between genes and diet in cardiovascular disease. “Future research is necessary to understand the mechanism of this interaction, which will shed light on the underlying metabolic processes that the 9p21 gene is involved in,” Dr. Do said. Sources for this article include: http://www.plosone.org/home.action http://fhs.mcmaster.ca/media /media_mcmaster_mcgill_greens_genes_20111011.htmlhttp://www.genetichealth.com/HD_Genetics_of_Coronary_Artery_Disease.shtml

Investigation panel concludes U.S. government guilty of medical crimes against humanity in secret Guatemalan medical experiments

(NaturalNews) U.S. government medical researchers, including those from the National Institute of Health (NIH), engaged in heinous crimes through secret medical experiments on Guatemalan medical experiments , concluded an investigative report commissioned by President Obama. The report concluded that: • The U.S. government knowingly funded and deliberately engaged in criminal medical experiments against Guatemalan prisoners. • At least 5,500 people were drafted into the experiments, including children , women and the mentally ill. The number deliberately infected with sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs) exceeded 1,300 (that we know of). • U.S. doctors and medical researchers knowingly and deliberately violated all the fundamental medical ethics including “do no harm.” • The victims of this criminal, government-run pharmaceutical experiment were mentally ill prisoners who were deliberate infected with STDs just to see what would happen. • The victims were “not treated like human beings” but rather like laboratory animals and were deprived of basic human dignity in these heinous medical crimes. • The purpose of the medical experiment was to test the effectiveness of penicillin for the pharmaceutical companies so they could sell the drug at high profit while claiming it had been “scientifically and clinically tested” to prevent the contraction of STDs. • Victims were not even informed they were being infected with STDs. The entire experiment was a clandestine operation involving an admitted conspiracy between Big Pharma and the U.S. government . Undeniable evidence has now emerged that the doctors and medical researchers involved in the experiment actively took steps to hide what they were doing. (Because they knew they were engaged in EVIL actions.) (Gee, I guess conspiracies really do exist, huh? All those people who dismiss “conspiracy theorists” have obviously never read actual U.S. history and have no knowledge of the way the pharmaceutical industry really works…) • One purpose of these experiments was to “…find a reliable way of infecting subjects for future studies,” reports the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-scientists-knew-1940s-guatemalan-std-studies-were-unethical-panel-finds/2011/08/26/gIQA2CxLoJ_story.html). “Doctors also poured bacteria onto wounds they had opened with needles on prisoners’ penises, faces and arms. In some cases, infectious material was injected into their spines.” • Today, of course, the medical industry has long since found the perfect way to infect subjects for experimental studies — Vaccines! Seriously: If these doctors, NIH researchers and government authorities would inject mentally ill prisoners with infectious diseases (directly into their spines), do you honestly think they wouldn’t load up today’s vaccines with live viruses and unleash mass vaccination campaigns to cause cancer , pandemics and other diseases that generate Big Pharma profits? (Grow up, folks. The medical industry is based on fundamental evils and criminal madness. The sooner you get that through your heads, the sooner you’ll understand why there are no pharmaceutical cures for any disease — they WANT you to be sick!) “They should shock the conscience not in spite of their medical context, but precisely because of it,” said commission chairwoman Amy Gutmann, who also serves as president of the University of Pennsylvania. “The people who were in the know, did want to keep it secret because if it would become more widely known, it would become the subject of public criticism,” she said. (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/29/usa-guatemala-syphilis-idUSN1E77S0XW20110829) • Guatemala condemned the medical experiments as “crimes against humanity” and vowed to prosecute the United States government for its role in international courts. • The Institute of Medicine was asked by President Obama to take part in the investigation of the criminal medical experiments on Guatemalans but had to recuse itself because of past ties with the research. (http://www.naturalnews.com/033455_Institute_of_Medicine_vaccines.html) Details about Dr. John Cutler, the M.D. who carried out these medical crimes on behalf of the U.S. government and the NIH • These crimes in Guatemala were carried out by a conventional medical doctor named Dr. John Cutler who was funded by a grant from the NIH. • Dr. Cutler acted with complete alignment alongside the pharmaceutical industry’s total disregard for human life. When one of the mentally ill victims who was infected with STDs began to show signs that she might die , Dr. Cutler proceeded to infect her with yet more syphilis and did nothing while she suffered and then died. This is how the pharmaceutical industry routinely operates in conspiracy with the NIH and government entities (see below). • These medical experiments were not merely conducted in “foreign countries,” by the way. After successfully sacrificing Guatemalans on the altar of pharmaceutical profits, Dr. John Cutler was granted permission to take part in the infamous Tuskegee experiments that targeted African Americans. That experiment went on for four decades until it was finally ended in 1972. Yes — FOUR decades of government-run medical experiments on black Americans. • After the Tuskegee experiments, Dr. John Cutler continued to run medical experiments on Americans in Terre Haute, Indiana, where prison inmates were deliberately infected with STDs. • Dr. Cutler died in 2003 and probably went to Hell. He never apologized for his research, insisting that he was acting in an ethical manner as a doctor. (Seriously. This is yet another great example of how doctors suffer from egomaniacal self delusion that allows them to justify vaccines, chemotherapy and other deadly procedures that kill millions of innocent people every year.) Other facts about Dr. John Cutler • Dr. Cutler was a eugenicist — a person obsessed with population control and shaping the future gene pool of the human race by deliberately killing “inferior” races. This is why his medical experiments, by the way, often targeted blacks, South Americans and other groups that he saw as “inferior.” • The U.S. government was so impressed with the criminal medical experiments and eugenics projects run by Dr. Cutler that he was made assistant U.S. Surgeon General in 1958! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Charles_Cutler) Job well done, doctor! Here, have a raise! • The medical university system was also impressed with Dr. John Cutler’s crimes against blacks and Guatemalan prisoners, so he was appointed a professor of international health at the University of Pittsburgh in 1967. There, he served as the chairman of the department of health administration and was the dean of the Graduate School of Public Health (1968 – 1969). The University of Pittsburgh even held a lecture series in his name to honor his legacy! (Yes, this is how much the medical university system worships criminal murderers and soulless death dealers who run the pharmaceutical establishment.) • As the truth about these experiments has surfaced, and the criminals involved in it are starting to be exposed, all the usual suspects are predictably coming out and insisting it’s all terrible, terrible stuff. “This is a dark chapter in our history. It is important to shine the light of day on it. We owe it to the people of Guatemala who were experimented on, and we owe it to ourselves to recognize what a dark chapter it was,” said Amy Gutmann of the University of Pennsylvania. Adding to that, Anita L. Allen, also of the University of Pennsylvania, added “Actually cruel and inhuman conduct took place. These are very grave human rights violations.” (Yet they say nothing about similar crimes being conducted right now through the mass vaccination of our children with live viruses and chemical adjuvants…) • Dr. Cutler’s wife has admitted that he was steeped in the industry of population control . Both he and his wife reportedly contributed to the Population Council and Pathfinder International (http://saynsumthn.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/population-control-was-the-passion-of-john-c-cutler-author-of-controversial-guatemala-syphilis-study-the-us-now-apologizes-for/). His wife, Eliese Cutler, later served as a board member of Planned Parenthood. The real story is that this is all Standard Operating Procedure for the medical industrial complex The real story in all this is not that the U.S. government waged a murderous medical experiment with the help of medical doctors who totally knew they were murdering people but did it anyway — although that might seem like a whopper of a discovery all by itself. No, the real story here is that this is how the government pharmaceutical medical industrial complex operates every single day. You think these experiments have stopped? You think the Guatemalan experiments were an isolated case of some mad doctor? Think again. Both the U.S. government and the pharmaceutical giants (especially the vaccine companies) have waged hundreds of illegal, inhumane medical experiments in just the last century. We’ve published a list of the worst ones, in fact. And these are only the ones that somehow got found out. Behind the scenes, probably thousands of illegal medical experiments have been conducted in prisoners, mentally ill patients, children, senior citizens, soldiers and other people. See the list we’ve published at: http://www.naturalnews.com/019189.html and http://www.naturalnews.com/019187.html In fact, Dr. Jonas Salk , the widely-worshipped “God” of the vaccine industry and the hero of all those brainwashed scientists who ridiculously believe vaccines halted the polio pandemic, was himself a medical criminal who conducted illegal experiments on mentally ill patients (http://www.naturalnews.com/031564_Jonas_Salk_medical_experiments.html). And no, polio vaccines did not stop polio. But we’ll save that report for another day. The vaccine industry is driven by profits, not any sort of respect for human life The kind of heinous medical crimes against humanity that took place in Guatemala continue to this very day. The pharmaceutical industry (and the vaccine industry in particular) has zero respect for human life and will routinely sacrifice any number of lives to test some new experimental drug or vaccine they want to sell for profit. In 2008, for example, Pfizer was caught engaging in illegal drug trials on Nigerian children. The crimes were so malicious — eleven Nigerian children DIED in the trials — that Nigerian officials actually issued arrest warrants for Pfizer researchers (http://www.naturalnews.com/023654.html). Just recently, Pfizer has reluctantly been forced to begin compensating the families of some of those victims of the illegal drug trials (http://www.naturalnews.com/033358_Pfizer_drug_experiments.html). Merck has long engaged in the use of the population for vaccine experiments involving things such as SV40 cancer viruses which even Merck’s own top vaccine scientist admits was knowingly contained in the Polio vaccines given to tens of millions of Americans. Watch this stunning video of a Merck scientist admitting all this: (seriously, watch this video and you will be absolutely stunned that the old media never reports any of this) http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=13EAAF22CDA367BB3C2F94D2CD90EF7B This video was compiled by Dr. Len Horowitz, a leading vaccine researcher who exposes Big Pharma’s lies about vaccinations, infectious disease and much more. (www.DrLenHorowitz.com) Vaccines ARE the medical experiment! Today, pharma-run medical experimentation on humans continues en masse through mass vaccination schemes. Vaccines are made with experimental, unproven viral fragments and often contain LIVE viruses that cause infectious disease. The Institute of Medicine even admitted all this in its latest report on vaccine adverse reactions (http://www.naturalnews.com/033447_Institute_of_Medicine_vaccines.html). Every year, flu vaccines are pushed onto the population with no randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies whatsoever. There is absolutely no scientific evidence to show that flu vaccines are either safe or effective. In fact, all the evidence shows that flu vaccines are all but worthless in actually preventing flu infections (http://www.naturalnews.com/029641_vaccines_junk_science.html). At the same time, vaccines contain thimerosal (methyl mercury), aluminum, polysorbate and chemical adjuvants that are highly toxic to the human nervous system. When these are all injected into little children, they often suffer seizures or even death (http://www.naturalnews.com/029586_Australia_vaccines.html). This is no different from Dr. John Cutler and the U.S. government injecting the spinal columns of Guatemalan prisoners with infected materials. This is ROUTINE in the medical industry. They do it every single day in the vaccine industry. The Gardasil HPV vaccine, by the way, has been linked with numerous deaths of teenage girls (http://www.naturalnews.com/030991_Gardasil_vaccine.html). Medical conspiracy becomes medical fact The really astonishing thing about this story is that these Guatemalan medical experiments only became widely known through the conventional media after Susan M. Reverby, a historian at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, discovered the Guatemalan experiments while researching information on the Tuskegee medical experiments. All this suddenly burst onto the scene in 2010 only because an academic in the university system went public with it. If the alternative media had published a story about all this, the mainstream media would have totally ignored it and pretended it was all some “conspiracy theory.” But as you quickly learn if you read NaturalNews, what was once dismissed as conspiracy theory eventually becomes acknowledged as conspiracy fact . Most of the medical industry’s top priorities are all pursued through conspiracies involving drug companies, the CDC, the FDA, medical journals and countless doctors and researchers who routinely accept bribes and falsify “scientific” studies to produce the results they want (http://www.naturalnews.com/028194_Scott_Reuben_research_fraud.html). Of course, nearly everything the alternative media like NaturalNews.com and InfoWars.com publishes about vaccines, the FDA, the pharmaceutical companies and processed food companies is completely true — and much of that truth reveals crimes against humanity that are far worse than the Guatemalan medical experiments. Yet these things go completely unreported. Don’t expect Anderson “CIA” Cooper to cover this on CNN. Don’t expect any admission by the media that the vaccine industry or the government does anything bad to anyone, ever! To hear the old media tell it, vaccines are good for you. Drug companies are loving, compassionate companies that respect life and are seeking cures. What they don’t tell you is that vaccines are essentially manufactured by taking rooms full of primates imprisoned in cages, injecting them with diseases, waiting for those diseases to fester in their organs, then “harvesting” those diseased organs from the dying primates, blending them up into a bloody liquid mass, then processing that into a liquid that’s loaded into vaccine vials and injected into the bodies of little children. That’s the truth about the vaccine industry, and it’s a truth you will never hear reported in the sick, deceptive mainstream media which only reluctantly reported this Guatemalan story because they couldn’t cover it up quickly enough. All the vaccine pushing “skeptics” and “quack watchers” out there, by the way, think these Guatemalan medical experiments are just great! The more experiments, the better. They fully support any and all crimes against humanity as long as pharmaceutical profits can be achieved in the process. Know one thing: Wherever on planet Earth that you find the most heinous, barbaric and inhumane crimes being committed (Nazi Germany, for example), you always find a medical doctor nearby , often running the show. Who oversaw the gassing of the Jews in Nazi Germany? Medical doctors. Who ran the Guatemalan medical experiments? Medical doctors. Who pushed for the mass fluoride poisoning of the populations of North American cities? Medical doctors. Throughout the history of modern medicine, medical doctors have been the criminals, the masterminds, the henchmen and the slithering serpents who carried out the worst crimes ever recorded in human history. No wonder the symbol of western medicine is the Caducaes — two serpents intertwined in the shape of human DNA, climbing a staff which indicates domination and control. The message of this symbol which adorns countless hospitals, doctor’s offices and clinics across the western world, is very clear: We shall wield control over human biology in the name of pure evil (the serpents). And if you think these murderous, government-funded medical experiments conducted in Guatemala were bad, then I dare you to look in the mirror . If you take vaccines in 2011, YOU ARE THE EXPERIMENT.

New NASA images show what appears to be liquid water on Mars

(NaturalNews) Images recently captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter undoubtedly illustrate the strongest evidence yet that the “Red Planet” likely contains liquid water, and potentially even life forms of some sort. Topping previous speculation linked to suggestive observation that frozen water may exist under Mars’ rock and sand formations, the new discovery suggests that during the planet’s warmer months, liquid water actually comes up from the ground and flows on its surface. “If the features identified, recurring slope lineae (RSL), can be confirmed to represent briny flows, this would be a very significant finding,” stated Christopher Carr, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who is building a device to detect DNA and RNA on Mars. “It wouldn’t dramatically change our understanding of present-day Mars as generally cold and dry, but it would be important to the search for life on Mars.” NASA’s website contains a time-lapse image of the apparent RSL, which researchers believe are gradual trickles of salty water each spanning about half a yard wide and hundreds of yards long. You can view that image here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/pia14472.html Most exploration and research of Mars has been undertaken with the assumption that life may have existed there in the past. But the new observation of liquid water flow during the spring and summer months may indicate that life exists on Mars right now, say scientists. And if this is the case, the next step may be to send manned missions, rather than just unmanned robot missions, to Mars. “That there is water on the surface means that explorers could go to Mars and potentially find extant life on the surface of Mars,” said Robert Zubrin, president and founder of the Mars Society, to SPACE.com. “It underscores the reason why Mars should be the target for human exploration. You’re not going to find life on the moon, you’re not going to find life on an asteroid. We need to send human explorers to the complex environments where the complex skills of human beings are actually useful.” Sources for this story include: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/04/nasa-finds-evidence-of-liquid-water-on-mars/ http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/10/scitech/main20090617.shtml

Study: Homeopathic remedy helps treat migraine headaches naturally

(NaturalNews) A new study published in the journal Headache has found that a homeopathic preparation of ginger and the medicinal herb feverfew is effective at treating migraine headaches. Based on their findings, researchers found that 63 percent of those who took the remedy at the first signs of a migraine experienced pain relief, while only 39 percent of those taking a placebo experienced any perceived relief. Funded by PuraMed Bioscience, the study assigned 45 participants the homeopathic treatment, and 15 the placebo. None of the participants knew which treatment they had been assigned. At the first sign of a migraine, participants were instructed to place the preparation under their tongue for sublingual absorption. Roughly one-third of those taking the homeopathic remedy experienced complete relief within two hours. “The results are really intriguing, but definitely preliminary,” said Dr. Rebecca Erwin Wells, an instructor at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Massachusetts, concerning the findings. And although the study was funded by the company producing the remedy, she and others still consider its findings to be relevant and important for the development of complementary and alternative medicines. According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, feverfew has long been used as a European folk medicine to treat headaches, arthritis, and fevers. In fact, the name “feverfew” was first hatched after it was discovered that the herb effectively treated fever symptoms. For treating migraines, the center says adults can take 100-300 milligrams (mg) of the standardized extract up to four times daily. “We found that 50 percent of adults with migraine or severe headaches, which is 13.5 million Americans, used complementary and alternative medicine in the previous year,” added Wells. “We need more research to understand the mechanisms, benefits, side effects and risks of complementary and alternative therapies.” Sources for this story include: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/06/17/migraines-eased-after-ginger-and-herb-treatment

National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society skewered in new book by leading cancer expert

(NaturalNews) A new book by leading cancer expert, Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, skewers the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society and blames the organizations for America losing the war against cancer. In the book, “National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society: Criminal Indifference to Cancer Prevention and Conflicts of Interest,” Epstein argues that the NCI and ACS have spent tens of billions of taxpayer and charity dollars focusing on treatment to the exclusion of prevention, which has allowed cancer rates to skyrocket, with the disease now affecting nearly one in two men and more than one in three women. Furthermore, the author claims that not only do numerous conflicts of interest exist within the NCI and ACS, but the NCI and ACS are also withholding a mass of information on avoidable causes of cancer. Epstein, who has served as a consultant for the U.S. Senate Committee on Public Works, is an internationally recognized authority on avoidable causes of cancer, particularly carcinogen exposure through conduits such as food, air, water, household products, cosmetics, prescription drugs or industrial carcinogens in the workplace. Epstein is professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health and chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition. He has published more than 270-peer reviewed articles and 20 books, including the prize-winning 1978 The Politics of Cancer , and has appeared on national media, including NPR, 60 Minutes, Face the Nation, Meet the Press, The McNeil/Lehrer News Hour, Good Morning America and The Today Show. He was a key expert in the banning of hazardous products including DDT, chlordane and aldrin. In his new book, he is now the leading critic of the cancer establishment for its indifference to prevention of the disease, which, for the ACS, he claims, borders on hostility. Cancer funding skyrockets along with cancer rates, followed by exaggerated claims of progress The cancer industry has made a series of misleading claims about the advances in the war against cancer over the past three decades, wrote Epstein. Some of the false claims, according to Epstein, include the industry’s 1984 announcement by the NCI that cancer mortality would be halved by 2000, the 1998 NCI and ACS Report Card announcement of a reversal in the almost twenty-year trend of increasing cancer incidence and death, and the 2003 pledge by NCI Director and former ACS president-elect Andrew von Eschenbach to “eliminate suffering and death from cancer by 2015.” The NCI, ACS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also claimed that “considerable progress has been made in reducing the [number of people with cancer] in the U.S. population” in its 2003 “Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, 1975-2000.” The claim, however, is not consistent with NCI’s own data, Epstein said, which shows the overall number of people with cancer and incidence rates actually increased by 18 percent. The data also shows a dramatic increase in nonsmoking-related cancers, according to Epstein, including a 104 percent increase in liver cancer, an 88 percent increase in prostate cancer, a 54 percent increase in thyroid and testicular cancer, a 29 percent increase in breast cancer and a 14 percent increase in brain cancer. Epstein also notes the overall cancer mortality rates have remained unchanged and have increase by 6 percent for blacks. It seems that the more we spend on cancer, the more cancer we get, Epstein said, because while the number of people with cancer goes up, so does the NCI budget paid for by tax payers and charity. The NCI budget has increased 25-fold, from $220 million to $4.6 billion, between 1971 and 2000. Prevention is the key The fixation on “damage control” instead of prevention is the root cause of the booming cancer rates in the face of billions of dollars aimed at elimination of the disease, according to Epstein. He claims the NCI priorities are all wrong. The opening statement of the NCI’s 2001 Cancer Facts report says that “cancer prevention is a major component and current priority — to reduce suffering and death from cancer.” Meanwhile the report claimed that only 12 percent of the NCI’s then $3.75 billion budget was allocated to prevention. Epstein shows that the actual attention to prevention is probably even less, by citing an analysis of a 1992 NCI budget showing that less than 2.5 percent of its then $2 billion budget was spent on prevention. Epstein further crucifies NCI stating that prevention tactics defined by NCI only covered the value of avoiding smoking and a bad diet, while wholly ignoring the myriad of environmental and occupational carcinogens. NCI and ACS withholding a mass of cancer prevention information The NCI has failed to inform the public of published scientific information on a wide range of avoidable causes of multiple cancers, Epstein said. According to Epstein, there are three major categories of avoidable causes including: 1. Environmental contaminants in air, water, soil, the workplace, and food; 2. Carcinogenic ingredients in consumer products, particularly pesticides; 3. Carcinogenic prescription drugs and high-dose diagnostic radiation, particularly pediatric CAT scans. Epstein wrote, “NCI’s silence on cancer prevention is in flagrant violation of the 1971 National Cancer Act’s specific charge to disseminate cancer information to the public. This silence is in further violation of the 1988 Amendments to the National Cancer Program, which called for an expanded and intensified research program for the prevention of cancer caused by occupational or environmental exposure to carcinogens.” Epstein blamed this NCI failure to inform Congress and regulatory agencies of avoidable carcinogens for encouraging petrochemical and other industries to continue manufacturing products containing carcinogens and encouraging corporate polluters to continue polluting. NCI’s aversion to publicizing avoidable carcinogens has even gone as far as suppression and denial, Epstein said, quoting the following examples: “In 1983, the Department of Health and Human Services directed NCI to investigate the risks of thyroid cancer from I-131 radioactive fallout following atom bomb tests in Nevada in the late 1950s and early 1960s.” “NCI released its report in 1997, based on data which had been available for over fourteen years, predicting up to 210,000 thyroid cancers from radioactive fallout. These cancers, whose incidence has almost doubled since 1973, could have been readily prevented had the NCI warned the public in time and advised them to take thyroid medication.” “At a September 1999 hearing by the Senate Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Affairs, former Senator John Glenn (D-OH) charged that the NCI investigation was plagued by lack of public participation and openness. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) charged that NCI’s conduct was a travesty.” [Just] as serious is NCI’s frank suppression of information. At a 1996 San Francisco Town Hall Meeting on breast cancer, chaired by Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), former NCI director Richard Klausner insisted that “low level diagnostic radiation does not demonstrate an increased risk.” However, this was contrary to long-term studies on patients with spinal curvature (scoliosis), which showed that such radiation was responsible for 70% excess breast cancer mortality. ACS has just as abysmal a track record on prevention as NCI, according to Epstein, and it has been and remains the target of periodic attacks by leading scientists and public interest groups. One attack in a 1994 press release by the Center for Science in the Public Interest stated, “A group of 24 scientists charged that the ACS was doing little to protect the public from cancer-causing chemicals in the environment and workplace. The scientists urged ACS to revamp its policies and to emphasize prevention in its lobbying and educational campaigns.” The scientists criticized ACS for requiring human evidence of carcinogenic effects before implementing regulation, saying that they had an unrealistically high action threshold. The scientists included: Harvard University Nobel Laureates Matthew Meselson and George Wald; former Occupational Safety and Health Director Eula Bingham; and past president of the Public Health Association, Anthony Robbins. One major instance of ACS ignoring the science, according to Epstein, was in 1993 when they came out in support of the pesticide industry just before the airing of the PBS Frontline special, “In Our Children’s Food.” ACS released a memorandum in which it trivialized pesticides as a cause of childhood cancers, and reassured the public that pesticide residues were safe, even for infants. Possibly most shocking is the failure of the NCI and ACS to inform the public of the increasing incidence of childhood cancers, which has escalated to alarming rates, according to Epstein. The Cancer Prevention Coalition’s 2003 report said that childhood cancers have increased by 32 percent between 1975 and 2000 and that cancer is one of the leading causes of death in children, second only to accidents. Even more shocking, the NCI claims that “the causes of childhood cancer are largely unknown.” This is diametrically opposed to substantial scientific evidence, according to Epstein, which shows that children are exposed to numerous avoidable carcinogens, including everything from X-rays, prescription drugs, pesticides and contaminants in beauty products to petrochemical and industrial pollutants, radioactive pollutants in the air and drinking water, and pollutants from hazardous waste sites. In 2000, the industry publication Cancer Letter had a commentary on ACS’ behind-the-scenes creation of a legislative committee to gain major control of national cancer policy, according to Epstein. In the commentary, former executive president of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists Dr. John Durant shared his assessment of ACS behavior. “It has always seemed to me that was an issue of control by the ACS over the cancer agenda,” Durant said. “They are protecting their own fundraising capacity [from competition by survivor groups.]” Conflicts of Interest But emphasis on treatment looks likely to remain if, as Epstein shows, the ACS and NCI are in bed with those who profit from a treatment focus. Approximately half of the members of the ACS board are doctors and scientists with close ties to the NCI, Epstein said. Many of the board members and their colleagues obtain funding from both the ACS and NCI, he said. Frank conflicts of interest are evident in many ACS priorities, according to Epstein, including the two major examples of mammography and cancer drugs. “The ACS has close connections to the mammography industry,” Epstein writes. “Five radiologists have served as ACS presidents, and in its every move, the ACS reflects the interests of the major manufacturers of mammogram machines and films … In fact, if every woman followed the ACS and NCI mammography guidelines, the annual revenue to health care facilities would be a staggering $5 billion. ACS promotion continues to lure women of all ages into mammography centers, leading them to believe that mammography is their best hope against breast cancer. A leading Massachusetts newspaper featured a photograph of two women in their twenties in an ACS advertisement that promised early detection results in a cure “nearly 100 percent of the time.” An ACS communications director responded …. “The ad isn’t based on a study. When you make an advertisement, you just say what you can to get women in the door. You exaggerate a point. Mammography today is a lucrative [and] highly competitive business.” “The ACS exposes premenopausal women to radiation hazards from mammography with little or no evidence of benefits,” Epstein said. “The ACS also fails to tell them that their breasts will change so much over time that the ‘baseline’ images have little or no future relevance.” The cancer drug industry is even more lucrative than mammography with annual sales over $12 billion. The intimate association between ACS and the pharmaceutical industry is illustrated, Epstein said, by the unbridled aggression which ACS directs at its critics. “ACS maintains a Committee on Unproven Methods of Cancer Management, which periodically reviews unorthodox or alternative therapies,” Epstein wrote. “This committee is comprised of volunteer health care professionals, carefully selected proponents of orthodox, expensive, and usually toxic drugs patented by major pharmaceutical companies, and opponents of alternative or unproven therapies that are generally cheap, and minimally toxic.” Periodically, the committee updates its statements on unproven methods, which are then widely disseminated to clinicians, cheerleader science writers, and the public. Once a clinician or oncologist becomes associated with unproven methods, he or she is blackmailed by the cancer establishment. Funding for the accused quack becomes inaccessible, followed by systematic harassment. “The highly biased ACS witch-hunts against alternative practitioners are in striking contrast to its extravagant and uncritical endorsement of conventional toxic chemotherapy. This despite the absence of any objective evidence of improved survival rates or reduced mortality following chemotherapy for all but some relatively rare cancers.” The cancer industry’s favor of pharmaceutical products is evidenced, Epstein said, “by the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved approximately 40 patented drugs for cancer treatment, while it has yet to approve a single nonpatented alternative drug.” According to Epstein, “Dr. Samuel Broder, NCI director from 1989 to 1995, frankly admitted, in a 1998 Washington Post interview, that ‘the NCI has become what amounts to a government pharmaceutical company.’ Taxpayers have funded R and D and expensive clinical trials for over two-thirds of cancer drugs on the market. These drugs are given, with exclusive rights, to the industry, which sells them at inflated prices.” Epstein calls for change NCI reform is two decades overdue, Epstein wrote, based in part on “The Stop Cancer Before it Starts Campaign: How to win the Losing War against Cancer,” which is a 2003 report sponsored by eight leading cancer prevention experts and endorsed by over one hundred activists and citizen groups. Numerous NCI reforms were proposed in 1992 at a Cancer Prevention Coalition press conference, a group of 68 leading cancer prevention and public health experts, past directors of federal agencies, and citizen activists across the nation. But prophetically, the press release concluded, “There is no likelihood that such reforms will be implemented without legislative action.” And the ACS has done no better, according to Epstein. “The verdict is unassailable,” Epstein said. “The ACS bears a major decades-long responsibility for losing the winnable war against cancer. Reforming the ACS is, in principle, relatively easy and directly achievable. Boycott the ACS. Instead, give your charitable contributions to public interest and environmental groups involved in cancer prevention. Such a boycott is well overdue and will send the only message this charity can no longer ignore.”

Fukushima already ten times worse than Chernobyl in ocean waters, suggests data

(NaturalNews) Recent readings taken roughly 19 miles out to sea from the Fukushima nuclear power facility in Japan have revealed radioisotope levels ten times higher than those measured in the Baltic and Black Seas after the massive Chernobyl disaster. Because Fukushima is much closer to water than the Chernobyl plant is, the ongoing fallout there is shaping up to be far worse than Chernobyl, at least as far as the world’s oceans are concerned, and time will tell just how devastating this massive disaster will be on the entire world as radiation continues to circulate around the globe. “Given that the Fukushima nuclear power plant is on the ocean, and with leaks and runoff directly to the ocean, the impacts on the ocean will exceed those of Chernobyl, which was hundreds of miles from any sea,” said Ken Buessler, Senior Scientist in Marine Chemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, several months back. Since that time, it has been revealed that Fukushima reactors 1, 2, and 3 have all experienced “melt-throughs,” which are considered to be the worst possible outcome in a nuclear disaster (http://www.naturalnews.com/032657_Fukushima_meltdown.html). Various atomic experts are now in agreement that the unfolding situation in Japan truly is “as serious as it gets in a nuclear disaster.” Even the Japanese government itself is now admitting the grave reality of the situation, having recently announced it will submit a report to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) explaining the details of the melt-throughs, which basically mean that radioactive fuel appears to have burned through the outer containment vessels of the reactors and have gone directly into bare earth. “Dangerous levels of radioactive iodine and cesium have already contaminated the sea, the soil, groundwater, and the air,” said reporter Mark Willacy of the Australian Broadcast Corporation in a recent Lateline interview (http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2011/s3241508.htm). “This week plutonium was detected for the first time outside the stricken plant, and Strontium-90, known as a bone seeker because it can cause bone cancer and Leukemia, has now been found as far away as 60 kilometers (37+ miles) from the facility.” Sources for this story include: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/26-7

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