The news has been full of headlines trumpeting the discrediting of Dr. Andrew Wakefield`s 1998 study on vaccines (specifically MMR, measles-mumps-rubella) and childhood autism. While the news outlets in the main stream wax poetic about their belief that this discredits all autism-vaccine links, they ignore several fundamental things about the study, Dr. Wakefield, and the General Medical Council (GMC) which gave him a guilty verdict.

First, Wakefield`s study was only five pages long<sup>1</sup> and was a case study, not a double-blind test drawing conclusive results. It studied 12 children and made no claims, only hypotheses. Thousands of these kinds of reports and studies are published every year and generally are ignored, as they are usually merely springboards towards more scientific research. It should also be mentioned that Wakefield`s observational research in this study has been duplicated by 2 other research institutions, one in Japan and the other in the U.S.²

Dr. Wakefield has published 32 peer-reviewed papers since 1998 and none of those have been mentioned, retracted, or challenged. The 1998 study was, however, the beginnings of an instrumental line of inquiry that would, eventually, lead to a study which will be published inNeurotoxicology, the advance first-phase having published last year.³

In fact, Dr. Wakefield has never been against vaccination and has, instead, been a proponent of single antigen vaccines. In other words, Wakefield is hardly “anti-vaccine” and instead urges pediatricians and vaccine makers to use single-dose vaccines formulated for only one pathogen.

The findings of the GMC had nothing to do with his research or his methodology, but only with his failure to disclose financial links they saw as potentially conflicting and with his alleged treatment of test subjects. The panel went so far as to specifically state that their decision had nothing to do with a vaccine-MMR-autism link.⁴

The findings of the GMC hinged on the supposed treatment of the children in the study`s control group, all of whom were friends of the Wakefield family. During Dr. Kumar`s (GMC panel chair) reading of the findings in this regard, all five of those parents stood and interrupted at various intervals to call the panel liars and unethical miscreants.⁵

That same Dr. S Kumar, who chaired the Fitness to Practice Panel and read the guilty verdicts to Dr. Wakefield and others, is a shareholder in a well-known pharmaceutical company. His predecessor was outed after it was found that Professor Dennis McDevitt was a research fellow for the same pharmaceutical giant.

The entire trial began because a man named Brian Deer brought complaint against Dr. Wakefield, with the help of funding and assistance from Medico-Legal Investigations. MLI is a private inquiry company funded solely by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.

The suit began in 2007 and trudged on for two years. During that time, parents of the children in question attempted to bring their case to court, to force the GMC panel to allow them to testify, but the judge refused. That judge, Sir Nigel Davis, has a brother who was on the board of (again) the same big pharma company.

If you`re not seeing a pattern here, you aren`t paying attention.

Resources:
1 - Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and
pervasive developmental disorder in children by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, et al

2 - Detection and sequencing of measles virus from peripheral mononuclear cells from patients with inflammatory bowel disease and autism by H. Kawashima, T. Mori, et al

2a - Dysregulated innate immune responses in young children with autism spectrum disorders: their relationship to gastrointestinal symptoms and dietary intervention
by H. Jyonouchi, L. Geng, et al

3 - Infant Primate Study Links Vaccination with Autism by Aaron Turpen, NaturalNews.com

3a - Infant Hepatitis B Vaccine Triples Risk of Autism in Boys, Study Says by Aaron Turpen, NaturalNews.com

4 - Fitness to Practice Panel Hearing, January 28, 2010 General Medical Council

5 - Eye Witness Report from the UK GMC Wakefield, Walker-Smith, Murch Hearing by Martin Walker, Age of Autism

In a letter dated February 23 and addressed to the members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, the Coalition for Vaccine Safety (CVS) calls for congressional hearings to investigate and review the role of the Health and Human Services (HHS) department and its constituent agencies and to evaluate their performance in ensuring vaccine safety.¹

“Congress should review the claims of HHS and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that vaccines are safe with a jaundiced eye. The existing evidence on vaccine safety is grossly insufficient and fails to meet the requirements of public confidence.”

The CVS goes on to point out that the HHS has not complied with mandates from Congress in a 1986 law titled The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Compensation Act. That law, now codified as 42 United States Code: 300aa-1 to 300aa-34, reduced the potential liability of vaccine makers from vaccine injury claims.² This law created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP).

As the CVS letter further points out, the requirements given the HHS under that law state that the agency must conduct testing and research to reduce vaccine-related injuries and that it has failed to do so. So far, no tests or studies which include both vaccinated and unvaccinated children have been done; little field surveillance and adverse reaction reporting is happening; and overall the HHS is ignoring their duty.

Further, the HHS has also ignored the spirit and intent of the Combating Autism Act of 2006 (now Public Law No. 109-416).³ The CVS calls on this provision due to the upcoming release of a finding from the Court of Federal Claims on its Omnibus Autism Proceeding. This involves test cases on the possible link between Thimerosal (a preservative containing mercury) and autism.

The letter then goes on to point out several examples of suppressed science, conflicts of interest in hearings and judgments, and more. These include several instances of prominent medical groups and doctors questioning the vaccination regimen and the lack of research into the causes of autism and its possible links to vaccination. Financial conflicts of interest between those charged with ruling on or researching autism-vaccine links are also well-documented.

This includes former CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding who is now president of a well-known vaccine maker⁴ and her statements on CNN in 2008 to the effect that her industry’s knowledge of negative health links and vaccines includes characteristics of autism.

The letter is hard-hitting, full of information, and was copied to the ranking members of the Senate Judiciary Committee as well.

Resources:
1 - Letter to Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Coalition for Vaccine Safety

2 - National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act at the Louisiana State University Law Center’s Medical and Public Health Law Site

3 - Combating Autism Act, Wikipedia

4 - Former head of CDC lands lucrative job as president of Merck vaccine division by Mike Adams, NaturalNews

The greenhouse gasses keep the Earth 30° C warmer than it would otherwise be without them in the atmosphere, so instead of the average surface temperature being -15° C, it is 15° C. Carbon dioxide contributes 10% of the effect so that is 3° C. The pre-industrial level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 ppm. So roughly, if the heating effect was a linear relationship, each 100 ppm contributes 1° C. With the atmospheric concentration rising by 2 ppm annually, it would go up by 100 ppm every 50 years and we would all fry as per the IPCC predictions.

But the relationship isn’t linear, it is logarithmic. In 2006, Willis Eschenbach posted this graph on Climate Audit showing the logarithmic heating effect of carbon dioxide relative to atmospheric concentration:

And this graphic of his shows carbon dioxide’s contribution to the whole greenhouse effect:

I recast Willis’ first graph as a bar chart to make the concept easier to understand to the layman:

Lo and behold, the first 20 ppm accounts for over half of the heating effect to the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm, by which time carbon dioxide is tuckered out as a greenhouse gas. One thing to bear in mind is that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 got down to 180 ppm during the glacial periods of the ice age the Earth is currently in (the Holocene is an interglacial in the ice age that started three million years ago).

Plant growth shuts down at 150 ppm, so the Earth was within 30 ppm of disaster. Terrestrial life came close to being wiped out by a lack of CO2 in the atmosphere. If plants were doing climate science instead of us humans, they would have a different opinion about what is a dangerous carbon dioxide level.

Some of the IPCC climate models predict that temperature will rise up to 6° C as a consequence of the doubling of the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm. So let’s add that to the graph above and see what it looks like:

The IPCC models water vapour-driven positive feedback as starting from the pre-industrial level. Somehow the carbon dioxide below the pre-industrial level does not cause this water vapour-driven positive feedback. If their water vapour feedback is a linear relationship with carbon dioxide, then we should have seen over 2° C of warming by now.

Read the rest at this link.

A study published in the January 2010 edition of the journal Pediatrics shows that childhood pneumococcal vaccination may be linked to an increase in serious pneumonia complications. Of course, reportage claims that the benefits of the vaccine, introduced in 2000, far outweigh the risk. Findings from the study’s researchers, based in the University of California, Davis, show only that the vaccine is not lowering rates of empyema-associated hospitalization, which have actually increased during the vaccine’s use.

Su-Ting Li, MD, MPH and Daniel J. Tancredit, PhD, authored the study and their conclusion says that empyema-associated hospitalization rates have actually increased, not by some small sum, but by a whopping 70% for the study’s window:

“Among children 18 years of age, the annual empyema-associated hospitalization rates increased almost 70% between 1997 and 2006, despite decreases in the bacterial pneumonia and invasive pneumococcal disease rates. Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine is not decreasing the incidence of empyema.”

This shows a probable unintended consequence of the pneumococcal vaccination regimen (now recommended by the CDC and mandated in several states) to be an increase of empyema. Empyema is a collection of pus in an anatomical cavity, usually in the lungs’ pleura, and is most often associated with serious pneumonia infections.

Pneumococcal disease is a type of pneumonia caused by a virus and the bacteria, pneumococcus, is actually naturally occurring in most people’s bodies. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends vaccinations (called the PCV7 series) in infants and children at 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, and 12-15 months as well as increased dosage and series for several “at risk” categories.

The study looked at the Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID) to estimate the number of children (18 years or younger) who were associated with empyema in 1997, 2000, 2003, and 2006. This was correlated with Census data to get annual incidence rates per 100,000 children. These were then compared to see the rate of growth in empyema hospitalizations amongst children.

The result, with a 95% confidence interval, showed that rates of hospitalization for empyema went from 2.2 per 100,000 in 1997 (pre-vaccination) to 3.7 per 100,000 in 2006. That 70% increase was also accompanied by a 44% increase in pneumonia complications requiring intubation (chest tube insertion). All of this was followed by a 13% decrease in pneumonia infections.

So the study found some interesting correlations. Not only did pneumonia decrease (the intended use of the vaccine) by 13%, but it also gained strength, raising the number of people who had serious complications in their pneumonia infection by 70% and the number of people requiring severe medical intervention (intubation) to treat their infection by 44%.

Note that these numbers are not by number infected, but are by population as a whole. So despite the vaccine being credited with lowering pneumonia infections by a few percentage points, the study shows that by population, serious complications of pneumonia are on a dramatic rise.

Resources:
1 - Empyema Hospitalizations Increased in US Children Despite Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine, Pediatrics, Jan. 2010, Su-Tin T. Li, MD, MPH and Daniel J. Tancredi, PhD

2 - Pneumococcal Disease In-Short, Centers for Disease Control, Vaccines & Immunizations

3 - Empyema, Wikipedia

4 - Vaccine information on NaturalNews

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the American Journal of Therapeutics (AJT) have both published papers criticizing the way in which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves medical devices. Citing a lack of legitimate safety and effectiveness studies, the papers allege that the FDA is approving medical devices without proper scientific evidence proving that they work and will not harm patients.

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, pored over seven years worth of FDA public summaries concerning approved medical devices. Researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston wrote the AJT piece, concluding that the FDA’s safety and effectiveness data for medical devices is inconsistent and unreliable. William Maisel, one of the researchers, indicated that the FDA needs to improve its clinical trial standards for medical devices.

When drugs are approved, they typically go through a series of studies prior to even being evaluated by the FDA. A medical device, however, can be approved based on the results of a single study which may or may not contain important specifics such as who participated in the study. Critics note that, since a medical device is usually a permanent addition to someone’s body, it deserves even more intense scrutiny than prescription drugs which can be discontinued if found to be harmful. This is especially true with heart devices that are necessary in order to keep a person alive.

Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, acting director of the FDA’s device division and co-author of one of the studies, conceded that the FDA’s process for evaluating medical devices is inadequate. He explained that the FDA is working on creating stronger standards for evaluation and approval but that device manufacturers need to work more closely with them to establish study goals.

Janet Trunzo, an executive vice president of AdvaMed, an advocacy group for the medical device industry, defended the FDA’s current approach to approving medical devices. She expressed that device manufacturers submit extensive data to the FDA who spends 1,200 hours reviewing it all prior to approving a device.

Many approved medical devices have been recalled over the years for safety reasons. The FDA maintains a list of the most serious medical device recalls for which the products in question may cause “serious health problems or death.” There are over 30 devices on the list from 2009 alone. Since 2004, there have been 137 medical devices recalled by the FDA.

Read the rest at this link.

The “Climategate” scandal, which broke in November 2009, revealed what many skeptics had privately suspected. Prominent climate scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) had collaborated to keep data out of skeptics’ hands, subverted the peer review process, and used questionable methods to construct the temperature record on which the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel Climate Change (IPCC) based its recommendations.

Now a new “Climategate” scandal is emerging, this time based on documents released by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in response to several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suits filed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The newly released emails further demonstrate the politicized nature of climate science, revealing a number of questionable practices that cast doubt on the credibility of scientific data provided by NASA.

The emails reveal that GISS, like CRU, has done a poor job of preserving and managing its data. Although there is no evidence that GISS has destroyed its data, as CRU did in the late 1980s, Dr. Reto Ruedy of GISS admits in an email that “[The United States Historical Climate Network] data are not routinely kept up-to-date.” In another email, he reveals that NASA had inflated its temperature data since 2000 on a questionable basis. “[NASA's] assumption that the adjustments made the older data consistent with future data… may not have been correct,” he says. “Indeed, in 490 of the 1057 stations the USHCN data were up to 1C colder than the corresponding GHCN data, in 77 stations the data were the same, and in the remaining 490 stations the USHCN data were warmer than the GHCN data.”

Read the rest at this link.

Hat Tip: MilitantLibertarian

A flurry of news surrounded the announcement by United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack that the controversial National Animal Identification System (NAIS) would be scrapped. The measure met stiff resistance from homesteaders, small farmers, organic growers, and raw milk and whole foods advocates. The problem is, the news is wrong. The NAIS isn’t being scrapped, it’s just being shelved “pending more review.”

There is a mixture of good and bad news in the USDA’s decision. The decision was likely not made to benefit the small producer or the homesteader. Rather, it was probably made in order to take them out of the debate so that the tracking system could go through.

The original NAIS plan would have required onerous costs on small agricultural producers – whether they were selling product or not – and distinctly favored the large agricultural conglomerates, who could easily afford the new rules. Rules which applied differently to them.

In the NAIS, each animal on a farm would require a tracking number and 48-hour reporting of its whereabouts and condition. This applied to everything from backyard poultry to cattle herds in the hundreds of thousands. The big difference was that large (industrial) livestock herds could be tracked as a single unit, whereas small homestead or farm herds had to be tracked as individual animals.

Besides the economic reasoning, however, whole foods advocates like Judith McGeary of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance say that the system itself is a waste of taxpayer’s money. Tracking the animals does nothing but allow for finding the source after the fact, but nothing to prevent anything up front. The whole excuse for the NAIS was to be able to prevent diseases like mad cow from spreading.

“USDA’s claim that we need 48-hour traceback of all animal movements is not supported by scientific studies or logic. The agency should focus on high risk situations, namely the factory farms. The agency should also look at the specific diseases of concern and how they are spread. A one-size-fits-all approach will not work.”⁵

Now, any animal that does not cross state lines upon its sale is not required to be tracked. This eliminates most small farms, local sellers, and homesteaders out of the equation, which would, in turn, give them no reason to combat the USDA’s plans for a future NAIS.

However, it will still effect many of us in the whole foods and organic lifestyle movements. Anyone who has homesteaded realizes that you cannot produce everything you need all on your own. You need neighbors with whom you can barter and do business. A small farmer on the eastern edge of Wyoming, for instance, may need chicks to replenish his hen house after an unfortunate fox attack. He is as likely to go into Nebraska, next door, as anywhere else. Except now he`s crossed state lines, so those chicks must be registered with NAIS.

That is only one example and assumes that the USDA will not expand the reach of its program once it’s in place. Further, it’s obvious that the USDA’s plan to track animals will do nothing to prevent disease and only allow them to point the finger to lay blame when an outbreak occurs.

The real problem here are the huge, commercial meat producers who handle their cattle as if they were merely cogs in the wheel at a factory. This industrial agriculture means huge stockyards with thousands of pens holding hundreds upon hundreds of animals packed in shoulder-to-shoulder, wallowing in their own filth. This is a disease bomb just waiting to explode onto the market.

The USDA’s plan for NAIS is not to scuttle the project, but only to change it and re-introduce the same idea in a couple of years. This does nothing to prevent disease and everything to cater to the huge agricultural conglomerates and industrial meat producers.

All while making life more difficult, even impossible, for the small farmer and homesteader.

Resources:
1 – USDA Plans to Drop Program to Trace Livestock, William Neuman, New York Times, Feb. 5, 2010

2 – USDA Announces New Framework for Animal Disease Traceability, USDA, Feb. 5, 2010

3 – Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance Weighs in on NAIAS, Hartke Is Online, June8, 2009

4 – Q&A: New Animal Disease Traceability Framework, USDA APHIS, February 2010

5 – Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance Weighs in on NAIAS, Hartke Is Online, June 8, 2009

Contamination of drinking water by a common herbicide poses a greater health threat than previously believed, according to a report issued by the nonprofit environmental organization Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) monitors average yearly levels of the popular herbicide atrazine in drinking water supplies, based on four tests per year. But the NRDC notes that levels of the toxin in drinking water regularly spike after heavy rains or during the spring when it is being widely applied, and that the four yearly testings may miss these events. The organization’s researchers found several such spikes in its own testing of water supplies in towns in agricultural regions of the South and Midwest.

“Our biggest concern is early-life-stage development,” said Jennifer Sass of the NRDC. “If there’s a disruption during that time, it becomes hard-wired into the system. These endocrine disrupters act in the body at extremely low levels. These spikes matter.”

Because atrazine is compatible with no-till farming, it is popular among farmers seeking to acquire a “green” label by reducing their carbon footprint. It is known to disrupt the hormonal system, and may cause cancers and menstrual problems in adults. It is considered especially dangerous to the developing reproductive systems of fetuses and children. The chemical has been shown to kill aquatic microorganisms and suppress the immune systems of larger animals, and it can cause limb or reproductive deformities in amphibians at levels as low as 0.1 parts per billion.

The EPA has set a threshold of 3 billion parts per billion for permissible atrazine levels, which the NRDC says would be too high even without periodic spikes. The NRDC analysis of 139 different municipal water systems found that 54 of them had a one-time spike higher than 3 parts per billion at some point in 2003 or 2004.

Home or municipal carbon filters can remove atrazine from water, but many municipal treatment plants do not use such procedures.

Sources for this story include: www.washingtonpost.com.

Read the rest at this link.

McCain’s bill requires all dietary supplement manufacturers (vitamins, herbs, minerals, etc.) to come under FDA control and registration. Further, everyone in the supplement supply chain, from manufacturers to retail stores, must be registered so they can be monitored.¹

Meanwhile, the Canadian government is on the brink of approving genetically modified pigs (called “enviropigs”) for use in the food supply. This is the first step towards pigs that have been crossed with mice being on the dinner plates of Canadians throughout the provinces.²

At the same time, a Canadian regulatory authority has told pharmacies to remove supplements from their shelves unless they have met with Health Canada standards – standards which have a five year backlog, currently.³

The biggest threat to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Codex Alimentarius implementation is the health supplement market and the well-educated people who tend to purchase those products for their own use.  Despite health supplements not being able to list their health benefits on their packaging in America, supplements are one of the fastest-growing markets in the health industry overall.

The enemy of Codex Alimentarius, therefore, is people like you and I and the companies who provide us with the supplements and whole foods we rely on for our own health.

Health Canada, for its part, is good friends with the Codex Alimentarius.⁴ The United States isn’t far behind, with the USDA having a special task force within the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) for the Codex.⁵ That’s not all, the primary force behind the World Health Organization’s Codex Alimentarius agenda is.. the United States.⁶

This, of course, is done on behalf of the multi-national pharmaceutical (aka Big Pharma) companies, conglomerate agribusiness, and (as always) the banks that back them. So far, the WHO’s Codex group has been instrumental in insuring the adoption of GMO and GM food crops around the world, especially in many of the world’s major food producers in the second and third worlds.

The ultimate goal of the Codex, once you look past it’s feel-good mission statement, is to remove the real health movement and its supplements and foods, so that they can be replaced with the “well regulated” foods of the huge corporate conglomerates that mass-produce garbage and poison and call it “food.”

We are well on the way towards full implementation of the Codex Alimentarius. Will you stand by and watch it happen?

Resources:
1 – McCain’s Dietary Supplement Bill, by Brandon Turbeville, Black Listed News

2 – Canada to approve GM ‘enviropigs’, UPI

3 – Natural Remedies and Supplements Take Blow in Canada, Brace for One in U.S., by Aaron Turpen, NaturalNews

4 – Health Canada Codex Alimentarius page

5 – USDA FSIS Codex Alimentarius page

6 – Codex Alimentarius: Population Control Under the Guise of Consumer Protection by Dr. Gregory Diamato, PhD, NaturalNews