Things That Make You Go Hmm...

[Guest guest]

Well Being Journal

 

Things That Make You Go Hmm...

News and Views

 

From the Current Issue: Vol. 12, No. 5 ~ September/October 2003

 

 

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ANIMALS REJECT GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS

 

Bill Lashmett watched as two or three cows were let into a feeding

area.... The first trough they came to contained fifty pounds of

shelled Bt (genetically modified) corn. The cows sniffed it,

withdrew, and walked over to the next trough, which contained fifty

pounds of natural shelled corn. The cows finished it off. The next

group of cows did the same thing. Lashmett said the same experiment

was conducted on about six or seven farms in Northwest Iowa in 1998

and again in 1999. Identical trials with hogs yielded the same

results, also for two years in a row. Lashmett, who has a background

in biochemistry and agriculture, says that animals have a natural

sense to eat what is good for them and avoid what isn't.

 

The Washington Post reported that mice, usually happy to munch on

tomatoes, turned their noses up at the genetically modified

FlavrSavr tomato that scientists were so anxious to test on them.

Scientist Roger Salquist said of his tomato, " I gotta tell you, you

can be Chef Boyardee and mice are still not going to like them. " The

mice were eventually force fed the tomato through gastric tubes and

stomach washes. Several developed stomach lesions; seven of forty

died within two weeks. The tomato was approved [for human

consumption] without further tests.

 

According to BBC News, April 27, 2002: " Safety tests on genetically

modified maize currently growing in Britain were flawed, it has

emerged. The crop, T-25 GM maize [corn], was tested in laboratory

experiments on chickens. During the tests, twice as many chickens

died when fed on T-25 GM maize, compared with those fed on

conventional maize. This research was apparently overlooked when the

crop was given marketing approval [for humans] in 1996. " (From Seeds

of Deception, by Jeffrey M. Smith. See companion feature articles,

this issue, pages 32 and 35, for a revealing look at the faulty

science the GMO industry has used to force GM foods onto the

American food marketplace.)

 

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BENEFICIAL MOTIVE FOR SUPPLEMENT REGULATION?

 

Right now a war is being fought over the regulation of supplements,

with the various battles at different stages in countries across the

globe. The European Union already passed its Food Supplements

Directive in July of 2002, framing it on the principle that

supplements should be proven safe and effective in the same manner

as pharmaceuticals. The UK did not immediately implement this

directive, but will do so come the end of this month. Australia,

Canada, New Zealand and a host of other nations are involved in

their own battles, and here in the U.S., Senator Dick Durbin's

proposed " Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2003 " is one of the first

shots in what will undoubtedly become a mounting campaign.

 

I'm sure you wish you could trust the big businesses and governments

to fairly and honestly test vitamins and herbals so we could make

more informed and confident decisions in this respect. But then you

learn things like this: a major study undertaken to discredit the

herbal St. John's wort in 2001 received " unrestricted funding " from

the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. St. John's wort, an anti-

depressant, has sales of over $400 million per year, cutting a niche

into the profit of Pfizer's prescription anti-depressant Zoloft, and

Pfizer doesn't like to lose profit. It's not the first or last time

a supplement was discredited in an " independent " study that received

major pharmaceutical company dollars.

 

Excerpts from an article by Brian Vaszily, chief editor and weekly

columnist of Mercola.com. Full article:

www.mercola.com/2003/jul/19/supplement_regulation.htm.

 

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PHARMACEUTICAL CRIMES?

 

On June 14, 2003 before an international audience in The Hague,

Mathias Rath, M.D., laid a complaint of genocide and other crimes

against humanity against the financial interests behind the

pharmaceutical industry. Full stories at www4.dr-rath-

foundation.org.

 

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YOUR CAR COSTS MUCH MORE BECAUSE OF DRUG COMPANIES' GREED

 

GM is taking on billions of dollars in debt despite recent price

discounts and no-interest financing offers. The reason? Mounting

pension and health care costs for its retired workers.

 

The company's pension [plan] is $19 billion underfunded, and the gap

is threatening to widen as drug prices and health care costs grow

ever higher. While the pension costs are forcing GM—and by default,

other U.S. automakers—to slash prices, ultimately vehicle prices

will rise to help automakers improve profits and stay competitive.—

The Washington Post, June 24, 2003.

 

Dr. Mercola's Comment:

 

The huge profits sought by drug companies have profound impacts on

the economy, as evidenced by their impact on something seemingly

unrelated—car prices.

 

Drug companies are the most powerful industry in the United States.

Their grasp is far-reaching and it seems that very few aspects of

the U.S. economy are unaffected. They also have a major influence on

the majority of studies published and nearly all of medical

education. This influence is what causes physicians to use their

expensive symptomatic Band-Aids as solutions for people's problems.

 

A large part of the reason why the drug companies have been able to

get away with their outrageous prices is that the vast majority of

people do not pay for their medications directly anymore. Insurance

companies are picking up the tab....

 

Intuitively nearly everyone realizes that using a drug is rarely

solving the foundational cause of the problem....

 

The system is desperately broken and in need of a change. We cannot

spend over $1 trillion for health care just to improve profits for

drug companies. We have the capital to more than adequately treat

nearly all people. It is just a matter of shifting our priorities

and perspectives.

 

If you want to further understand how corporations—and government—

manipulate science and the media by preying upon the public trust—

and you want to know how to protect yourself—I highly recommend the

book Trust Us, We're Experts. It is truly one of those books that

all Americans should read, and would make an important gift for any

young adult who wants to maintain control over him or herself [while

entering] " the real world. "

www.mercola.com/2003/july/9/car_costs.htm.

 

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WEBSITE TURNS TABLES ON GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS

 

Annoyed by the prospect of a massive new federal surveillance system

( " TIA " ), two researchers at MIT are launching " GIA " —a new Internet

service that will let citizens create dossiers on government

officials. " It's sort of a citizen's intelligence agency, " said

Chris Csikszentmihalyi, assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab.

Here's the link for the Government Information Awareness (GIA)

project: http://opengov.media.mit.edu. Full story at:

http://business.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2003/07/04/website

_turns_tables_on_government_ officials.

 

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WHEAT PRODUCTION LINKED TO BIRTH DEFECTS

 

Babies born in wheat-producing counties were found to be twice as

likely to have birth defects. The story appeared in the July issue

of Environmental Health Perspectives, a journal of the National

Institutes of Health. The study was conducted by Dina

Schreinemachers, Ph.D., an Environmental Protection Agency

researcher in North Carolina. She studied over 43,000 births and

divided the counties by rates of wheat production based on U.S.D.A.

data. She relied on birth defect rates reported by the National

Center for Health Statistics. Schreinemachers noted that rural,

agricultural counties with high wheat production where farmers use

chlorophenoxy herbicides evidenced significantly higher rates of

certain birth defects. Web site for Environmental Health

Perspectives is http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/.

 

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AS YOU SOW AND REAP

 

When Monsanto Corporation accused Saskatchewan farmer Percy

Schmeiser of stealing its patented genetically modified (GM) canola

seed, writes Erica Sagrans (Utne Reader, p. 33, Jan/Feb 2003), it

ignited a legal battle that has serious implications for the rights

of farmers around the world.

 

The genetically modified seeds, which Schmeiser claimed drifted into

his fields from neighboring farms, destroyed the 70-year-old

farmer's life-long work developing a variety of canola seeds ideally

adapted to local conditions. Worse, the corporation sued him for

using its patented seed without paying for it.

 

When brought to court, the judge sided with the biotechnology giant,

ruling that the way the seed got to Schmeiser's land was irrelevant.

Schmeiser appealed, mortgaging his home to pay legal bills. Last

September he lost that appeal, but Canada's Supreme Court has now

agreed to hear the case.

 

" Unfortunately, Schmeiser's ordeal is not an isolated case, " reports

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero in CorpWatch (Oct. 21, 2002), a San Francisco-

based online publication covering issues in corporate

accountability. Agribusiness corporations now use new satellite

imaging technologies to find crops containing patented GM seed, and

then sue the farmers who didn't purchase it. Monsanto is currently

suing other farmers in Canada and the U.S. For his resistance to

Monsanto's legal attacks, Schmeiser was one of nine environmental

pioneers honored with a Bioneers Award at the organization's annual

conference in October.

 

Updates and for donations to the case, see www.percyschmeiser.com.

 

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IMAGINE...HEALTH

 

Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the

object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at

last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death

only one tiny creature...and to found that edifice on its un-avenged

tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?

Tell me, and tell the truth.— Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

 

For whom is it kind to inevitably torture to death tiny creatures,

and more than one? Who justifies this with " in the interest of

research and health " ? When that intense suffering is rare we can

live with it in our consciousness. Today though the cry of suffering

is all around us and we hardly hear it, though we see it on the

television all the time. Hardly a soul is blind to the increasing

levels of suffering around the globe, yet are we feeling more

empathy for it?

 

" I can assure you that death from vaccination is neither quick nor

painless. I helplessly watched my daughter suffer an excruciatingly

slow death as she screamed and arched her back in pain, while the

vaccine did as it was intended to do and assaulted her immature

immune system. The poisons used as preservatives seeped through her

tiny body, overwhelming her vital organs one by one until they

collapsed. It is an image that will haunt me forever and I hope no

other parent ever has to witness it. A death sentence considered too

inhumane for this county's most violent criminals was handed down to

my beautiful, innocent, infant daughter, death by lethal injection. " —

Christine Colebeck, whose daughter died twenty-four hours after

receiving DPT OPV vaccinations.

 

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