As someone with a good deal of education in scientific thinking and the scientific method, I have put considerable effort into attempting to find any real scientific evidence backing the widespread use of influenza vaccines (flu season shots). Before learning about nutrition and holistic health, I was a computer software entrepreneur, and I have a considerable scientific background in areas such as astronomy, physics, human physiology, microbiology, genetics, anthropology and human psychology. One of my most-admired thought leaders is, in fact, the late physicist Richard Feynman.

I don’t speak from a “scientific” point of view onNaturalNews very often because it’s often a dry, boring presentation style. But I do know the difference between real science and junk science, and I find examples of junk science in both the “scientific” side of things as well as the “alternative” side of things.

For example, so-called “psychic surgery,” as least in the way it has been popularized, is nothing more than clever sleight-of-hand where the surgeon palms some chicken gizzards and then pretends to pull diseased organs out of the abdominal cavity of some patient. The demonstrations I’ve seen on film are obvious quackery.

Similarly, flu season vaccines are mainstream medicine’s version of psychic surgery: It’s all just “medical sleight of hand” based on nothing more than clever distractions and the obfuscation of scientific facts. Flu season shots, you see, simply don’t work on 99 out of 100 people (and that’s being generous to the vaccine industry, as you’ll see below).

A year ago, I offered a $10,000 reward to any person who could find scientific proof that H1N1 vaccines were safe and effective (http://www.naturalnews.com/027985_H…). No one even made a claim to collect that reward because no such evidence exists.

Conventional medicine, they say, is really “Evidence-Based Medicine” (EBM). That is, everything promoted by conventional medicine is supposed to be based on “rigorous scientific scrutiny.” It’s all supposed to be statistically validated and proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it works as advertised. And in the case of flu vaccines, they are advertised as providing some sort of absolute protection against influenza. “Don’t miss work this flu season. Get a flu shot!” The idea, of course, is that getting a flu shot offers 100% protection from the flu. If you get a shot, they say, you won’t miss work from sickness.

This implication is wildly inaccurate. In fact, it’s just flat-out false. As you’ll see below, it’s false advertising wrapped around junk science.

You see, there was never an independent, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study proving either the safety or effectiveness of the H1N1 swine flu vaccines that were heavily pushed last year (and are in fact in this year’s flu shot cocktail). No such study has ever been done. As a result, there is no rigorous scientific basis from which to sell suchvaccines in the first place.

To try to excuse this, vaccine hucksters claim that it would be “unethical” to conduct a placebo-controlled study of such vaccines because they work so well that to deny the placebo group the actual vaccine would be harmful to them. Everybody benefits from the influenza vaccine, they insist, so the mere act of conducting a scientifically-controlled test is unethical.

Do you smell some quackery at work yet? This is precisely the kind of pseudoscientific gobbledygook you might hear from some mad Russian scientist who claims to have “magicwater” but you can’t test the magic water because the mere presence of measurement instruments nullifies the magical properties of the water.

Similarly, vaccine pushers often insist it’s unethical to test whether their vaccines really work. You just have to “take it on faith” that vaccines are universally good for everybody.

Yep, I used the word “faith.” That is essentially what the so-called scientific community is invoking here with the vaccine issue: Just BELIEVE they work, everybody! Who needsscientific evidence when we’ve got FAITH in vaccines?

Forget about evidence-based medicine. Forget about any rational cost-benefit analysis. Forget about the risk-to-benefit ratio calculations that should be part of any rational decision making about vaccines. No, the vaccine industry (and its apologist bloggers) already know that vaccines are universally good for you, therefore no such rigorous scientific assessment is even required!

The Scientific Method, in other words, doesn’t really apply to the things they already believe in. Faith can override reason in the “scientific” community, if you can believe that! What’s next, are they going to claim vaccines work because some sort of “vaccine God” makes them work?

Here, take your vaccine shot. And don’t forget to pray to the Vaccine God because that’s how these things really work. Vaccine voodoo, in other words. (Hey, that would have been a great title for the vaccine song, come to think of it…)

Unethical to find out if they work?

I got to wondering about the whole explanation of how it would be “unethical” to test whether the H1N1 vaccines actually work. This deflection strikes me as particularly odd, because it comes with an implied follow-up statement. Here’s what they’re actually saying when they invoke this excuse:

#1) It is “unethical” to conduct placebo-controlled studies on seasonal flu vaccines to find out if they actually work.

#2) But at the same time, it is entirely ethical to give these shots to hundreds of millions of people, even while lacking any real evidence that they are safe or effective.

In other words, it’s unethical to conduct any real science, but entirely ethical to just keep injecting people with a substance that might be entirely useless (or even harmful). That’s just a hint of the kind of warped logic and failed ethics that typify our modern vaccine industry.

Vaccine advocates claim that H1N1 vaccines are so effective that NOT giving vaccines to a placebo group would “put their lives at risk.” That alone is apparently enough reason to avoid conducting any real science on these vaccines.

But I’m not buying this. I think it’s just a cover story — an excuse to avoid subjecting such vaccines to rigorous scientific inquiry because, deep down inside, they know vaccines would be revealed as an elaborate medical fraud.

So I poked around to see if there were other randomized studies being conducted that might actually put people’s lives at risk. It didn’t take long to find some. For example, the New England Journal of Medicine recently published two studies regarding post heart-attack patient cooling which seeks to minimize brain damage by physically lowering the temperature of the brain of the heart attack patient until they can reach the acute care technicians at a nearby hospital.

In two studies, researchers who already knew that “cooling” would save lives nevertheless subjected 350 heart attack patient to a randomized study protocol that assigned comatose (but resuscitated) patients to either “cooling” temperatures or normal temperatures.

In one study, while half the cooled patients recovered with normal brain function, only a quarter of those exposed to normal temperatures did. In other words, patient cooling saved theirbrains. And yet the importance of knowing whether or not this procedure really worked was apparently enough to justify withholding the treatment from over a hundred other patients, most of whom suffered permanent brain damage as a result.

You see, when scientists really want to know the answers to questions like, “Does this brain cooling work?” they have no qualms about subjecting people to things like permanent brain damage in a randomized clinical trial. The knowledge gained from such an experiment is arguably worth the loss of a few patient brains because, armed with scientific evidence, such procedures can be rolled out to help save the brains of potentially hundreds of thousands of patients in subsequent years.

But when it comes to testing vaccines like the recent H1N1 variety, the official explanation is that it’s too dangerous to withhold vaccines from a treatment group. They say it’s not really important to determine if vaccines are statistically validated, and it’s not worth the “risk” of withholding vaccines from anyone in a randomized clinical trial.

Now, sure, there have been some clinical trials done on many different vaccines over the years, but most of those are industry funded, and there are almost never rigorous trials conducted on each year’s seasonal flu vaccines before they are released for public consumption. As a result, each year’s vaccine is a brand new experiment, carried out across the guinea pig masses of patients who just do whatever they’re told without questioning whether it’s backed by real science.

Because, of course, it isn’t. And I’m not the only one who recognizes this inconvenient fact.

The Cochrane Collaboration

The Cochrane Collaboration, as described on its own website, is, “…an international, independent, not-for-profit organization of over 28,000 contributors from more than 100 countries, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of health care readily available worldwide.”

“We are world leaders in evidence-based health care,” the site goes on to say, followed by a quote from The Lancet which states, “The Cochrane Collaboration is an enterprise that rivals the Human Genome Project in its potential implications for modern medicine.”

Working for the Cochrane Collaboration, an epidemiologist named Dr. Tom Jefferson decided to take a close look at the scientific evidence behind influenza vaccines (seasonal flu vaccines).

The objectives of the study were to: “Identify, retrieve and assess all studies evaluating the effects of vaccines against influenza in healthy adults.”

The Search Criteria: “We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library, 2010, issue 2), MEDLINE (January 1966 to June 2010) and EMBASE (1990 to June 2010).”

Selection Criteria (for inclusion in the study): “Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or quasi-RCTs comparing influenza vaccines with placebo or no intervention in naturally-occurring influenza in healthy individuals aged 16 to 65 years. We also included comparative studies assessing serious and rare harms.”

The Total Scope of the study encompassed over 70,000 people. And just so you know, these the results may strongly favor the vaccine industry. The author even went out of his way to warn that “15 out of 36 trials [were] funded by industry (four had no funding declaration).”

In other words, close to half of the studies included in this analysis were funded by the vaccine industry itself, which as we know consistently manipulates data, bribes researchers or otherwise engages in scientific fraud in order to get the results they want.

The author even goes on to warn how industry-funded studies always get more press, saying, “…industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies independently from methodological quality and size.”

See the study detail page at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/co…

Study results show influenza vaccines are nearly worthless

Now here comes the interesting part: Even though nearly half the studies were funded by the vaccine industry itself, the study results show that in most circumstances, influenza vaccines are virtually worthless:

“The corresponding figures [of people showing influenza symptoms] for poor vaccine matching were 2% and 1% (RD 1, 95% CI 0% to 3%)” say the study authors. And by “poor vaccine matching,” they mean that the strain of influenza viruses in the vaccine are a poor match for the strains circulating in the wild. This is usually the case in the real world because the vaccine only incorporates last year’s viral strains and cannot predict which strains will be circulating this year.

In other words, you would have to vaccinate 100 people to reduce the number of people showing influenza symptoms by just one. For ninety-nine percent of the people vaccinated, the vaccine makes no difference at all!

In a “best case” scenario when the viral strain in the influenza vaccine just happens to match the strain circulating in the wild — a situation that even the study authors call “uncommon” — the results were as follows: “4% of unvaccinated people versus 1% of vaccinated people developed influenza symptoms (risk difference (RD) 3%, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2% to 5%).”

In other words, the matching vaccine (which is uncommon in the real world) reduced influenzainfections in 3 out of 100 people. Or, put another way, 97% of those injected with the vaccine received no benefit (and no different outcome).

Furthermore, the study’s conclusions go on to state:

• “Vaccination had… no effect on hospital admissions or complication rates.”

• “Vaccine use did not affect the number of people hospitalized or working days lost.”

• “The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions…”

• “There is no evidence that [influenza vaccines] affect complications, such as pneumonia, or transmission.” (Got that? Vaccines do not affect transmission of the disease, yet that’s the whole reason vaccines are pushed so heavily during pandemics — to block disease transmission.)

• “In average conditions (partially matching vaccine) 100 people need to be vaccinated to avoid one set of influenza symptoms.”

And finally, the study author’s summary concludes with this whopper of a statement: “Our results may be an optimistic estimate because company-sponsored influenza vaccines trials tend to produce results favorable to their products and some of the evidence comes from trials carried out in ideal viral circulation and matching conditions and because the harms evidence base is limited.”

In other words, taking into account the industry bias, the actual results may be that vaccines prevent influenza symptoms in only 1 out of 1,000 people.

Putting it in perspective

So let’s put all this in perspective in a rational, intelligent way. This far-reaching analysis of influenza vaccine trials shows that under common conditions, seasonal influenza vaccines have no benefit for 99 out of 100 people.

Furthermore, even this result is describe as being “an optimistic estimate” because nearly half of the vaccine trials were funded by the vaccine industry which tends to “produce results favorable to their products.”

Furthermore, some of the studies were carried out in “ideal” viral matching scenarios that rarely happen in the real world.

And finally, some evidence of harm from vaccines was simply thrown out of this analysis, resulting in a “harms evidence base” that was quite limited and likely doesn’t reveal the full picture.

Are you getting all this? Even with industry-funded studies likely distorting the results in their favor, if you take a good hard look at the scientific evidence surrounding the effectiveness of vaccines, you quickly come to realize that influenza vaccines don’t work on 99 out of 100 people. (And the real answer may be even worse.)

Now that’s a far cry from the false advertising of the vaccine industry, which implies that if you get a shot you’re “protected” from influenza. They claim you won’t miss work, you’ll stay well, and so on. Through these messages, they are cleverly implying that vaccines work on 100% of the people.

But based on the available scientific evidence, these are blatantly false statements. And the wild exaggeration of the supposed benefits from vaccines crosses the threshold of “misleading advertising” and enters the realm of “criminal marketing fraud.” Where is the FTC or FDA on speaking out against this quackery?

Vaccine marketing is, essentially, scientific fraud. To claim that vaccines protect everyone when, in reality, they may reduce symptoms in only one out of 100 people is intellectually dishonest and downright fraudulent.

It is, simply put, just pure B.S. quackery.

Now, imagine if an herbal product were advertised on television as offering some health benefit, but it turned out that the product only worked on 1 out of 100 people who took it. That herbal product would be widely branded as “quackery” and the company selling it would be accused of false advertising. The company owners might even be charged with criminal fraud.

But vaccines get a free pass on this issue. While an herbal product might be heavily investigated or even confiscated by the FDA, vaccines that only work on 1% of the people receive the full backing of the FDA, CDC, WHO, FTC and local hospitals and clinics to boot. The fact that the vaccine is pure quackery apparently doesn’t matter to any of these organizations: It’s full speed ahead, regardless of what the science actually says.

Once you understand all this, you now understand why it is an accurate statement to say “The FDA promotes medical fraud.”

Similarly, “The CDC promotes medical fraud.” As does the WHO.

These are scientifically accurate statements, assuming you agree that a product that only works on 1 out of 100 people fits the definition of “fraud” when it is marketed as if it helped everyone. And most people would agree with that reasonable definition of fraud.

It’s a totally different story if the efficacy ratio is higher. If influenza vaccines actually produced some benefit in 25 out of 100 people, that might be worth considering. But it’s nowhere near that.

The FDA, by the way, will often approve pharmaceuticals that only produce results in 5 percent of the clinical trial subjects. The world of modern medicine, in fact, is full of pharmaceuticals that simply don’t work on 95% of the patients who take them.

Read the Cochrane summary yourself at:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/co…

It’s entitled, “Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults”

Authors: “Tom Jefferson, Carlo Di Pietrantonj, Alessandro Rivetti, Ghada A Bawazeer, Lubna A Al-Ansary, Eliana Ferroni”

Enter the vaccine zombies!

With these study results in mind, take a look at some of the lyrics in my recent hip hop song, “Vaccine Zombie” (http://www.naturalnews.com/vaccine_…)

I forgot how to think for myself
I don’t understand a thing about health
I do the same as everyone else
I’m a vaccine zombie, zombie

Now you can see where these lyrics come from. If influenza vaccines are worthless for 99 percent of those who receive them, then why are people lining up to get injected?

The answer is because they fail to think critically about vaccines and their health. They don’t understand health, so they just go along with everybody else and do what they’re told. Hence their earning of the “Vaccine Zombie” designation.

The song goes on to say:

I’m a sucker for the ads, a sucker for the labs
A sucker for the swine flu jabs
and I don’t mind followin’ a medical fad
Cause livin’ without a brain ain’t half bad

Yes, people who line up for influenza vaccines are “suckers” who have been bamboozled by fraudulent vaccine propaganda. But they’re following a “medical fad” and it’s easier to just do what you’re told rather than engage your brain and think critically about what you’re doing.

“Livin’ without a brain ain’t half bad” because it takes the burden of decision making out of the loop and allows you to just rely on whatever the doctors and health officials tell you to do.

How the scientific community lost touch with real science

But what if they were all lying to you? Or what if they, themselves, were ignorant about the fact that influenza vaccines are worthless on 99% of those who receive them? (Very few doctors and scientists, it turns out, are aware of this simple truth.)

Or what if the vaccine pushers had all convinced themselves of a falsehood? What if they truly believed that vaccines were really, really good for everyone but that belief was based onwishful thinking rather than rigorous scientific review?

Because that, my friends, is exactly what has happened. We have an entire segment of the scientific community that has been suckered into vaccine propaganda. They’ve convinced themselves that seasonal flu shots really work and that virtually everyone should be injected with such shots. And they believe this based on irrational faith, not on scientific thinking or rigorous statistical evidence.

They are, in other words, pursuing a vaccine religion (or cult). The is especially curious, given that most vaccine pushers don’t believe in God or any organized religion — except for their own vaccine religion, where real scientific evidence isn’t required. All you gotta do is believe in vaccines and you can join their religion, too.

And so all across the ‘net, so-called “science bloggers” embarrass themselves by promoting near-useless influenza vaccines as “evidence-based medicine,” apparently unaware that the evidence shows such vaccines to be all but worthless.

They might as well say they support vaccines “Just ‘cuz.”

And “just ‘cuz” is no reason to inject yourself with a chemical cocktail that even the industry admits causes extremely dangerous neurological side effects in a small number of vaccine recipients.

Vitamin D would actually make vaccines work better

To top this all off, here’s the real kicker of this story: You can beat the minimal protective benefits of vaccines with a simple, low-cost vitamin D supplement. Vitamin D, you see, is the nutrient that activates your immune system to fight off infectious disease. Without it, vaccines hardly work at all.

In fact, the very low rate of vaccine efficacy (1%) is almost certainly due to the fact that most people receiving the vaccines are vitamin D deficient. (Anywhere from 75% – 95% of Americans are deficient in vitamin D, depending on whom you ask.)

Hilariously, the way to make vaccines work better would be to hand out vitamin D supplements to go along with the shots! Even more hilariously, if people were taking vitamin D supplements, they wouldn’t need the vaccine shots in the first place!

Influenza vaccines, in other words, have no important role whatsoever in preventing influenza infections. This goal can be accomplished more safely, reliably and at far lower cost by promoting vitamin D supplements for the population at large.

What we really need to see from the scientific world is a study comparing vitamin D supplements to influenza vaccines (and using realistic vitamin D doses, not just 200 or 400 IUs per day). I have absolutely no doubt that healthy-dose vitamin D supplementation (4000 IUs a day) would prove to be significantly more effective than influenza vaccines at preventing flu infections.

But such a study will almost certainly never be done (at least not anytime soon) because it would expose the false propaganda of the vaccine industry while giving consumers a far better way of protecting themselves from influenza that doesn’t involve paying money to vaccine manufacturers.

In medicine, as in war, truth is often the first casualty. And when the lies are repeated with enough frequency, they begin to be believed. The flu shot lie has been repeated with such ferocity and apparent authority that it has snookered in virtually the entire “scientific” community.

That even rational-minded scientists can be so easily hoodwinked by the vaccine industry is causing more and more people to question the credibility of not just modern medicine, but the entire scientific community as well.

Because if so-called “rational” scientists and thought leaders can be so easily suckered into an obvious falsehood, what other fictions might they be promoting as fact?

Medicine, you see, makes all the other sciences look bad. The obvious scientific fraud going on in the name of “science” in the pharmaceutical industry makes a mockery of real scientific thought. The ease of which medical scientists have been hoodwinked by the drug industry calls into question the rationality of all sciences.

And in doing so, it brings up an even bigger question: Is science the best path to gaining knowledge in the first place? This is obviously a philosophical question, not a scientific question, and it’s beyond the scope of this article, but it’s one I will likely visit here on NaturalNews very soon in an upcoming article.

There are many paths to truth, you see. Science — good science — is one of them, but it is not the only one. Any scientist who believes that science has a monopoly on all knowledge is himself a fool. Just read a little Feynman and you’ll quickly come to discover that the very brightest minds in the history of science consistently recognized there were other pathways leading to truth.

I believe if Feynman were alive today and saw the vaccine propaganda taking place in the name of “science,” he would respond with something like, “Surely you’re joking.”

Shocking new research out of the University of Buffalo has revealed that popular prescription opioid medications are causing people to become addicted to street drugs. Once addicted, nearly half of patients prescribed opioid pain pills end up transitioning to street drugs like heroin because these drugs are generally cheaper and can be easier to obtain.

Of 75 patients hospitalized at Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo, New York, for detoxification, over 41 percent told their doctorsthat they became addicted to street drugs after being prescribed opioid medications — like methadone, oxycodone and fentanyl — by their doctors. Ninety-two percent of all patients in the program indicated that these prescription opioids actually led them to street drugs.

“This information suggests that there is a progressive nature to opioid use, and that prescription opioids can be the gateway to illicit drug addition,” explained Richard Blondell, M.D., professor of family medicine and senior author of the study, in a press release.

The majority of patients in the detoxification program first began taking prescription opioids for pain following injuries or surgeries. In other words, the legitimate use of prescription drugs prescribed to patients by their doctors is a leading cause of substance abuse.

To make matters worse, most doctors fail to even ask patients if they have ever had a substance abuse problem prior to writing them an opioid prescription. So many doctors are directly responsible for helping to induce drug addiction through their neglect and carelessness in monitoring patients.

Additionally, a 2009 study found that the majority of patients who die from opioid overdoses did so due to prescription opioids anyway, indicating that even if patients do not transition to street drugs, their health is still at risk from legal opioids.

Sources for this story include:
http://www.buffalo.edu/news/11652

http://www.naturalnews.com/027794_n…

When the world’s largest pharmaceutical company was found to have engaged in a massive illegal marketing campaign, federal prosecutors decided the company was too big to punish — so they let it set up a shell corporation to take the blame.

In 2001, the FDA approved Bextra for the relief of arthritis and menstrual cramps, but did not approve it for more severe surgical pain. Yet Pfizer aggressively promoted the drug to anesthesiologists and surgeons — “anyone that use[d] a scalpel for a living,” in the words of one internal company document. Company employees also told doctors that the FDA had approved Bextra as safe in doses as high as 40 milligrams, whereas the agency had actually only approved doses up to 20 milligrams.

Yet when the government threatened Pfizer with prosecution for off-label marketing fraud, it realized that a conviction would, under federal law, require that Pfizer be excluded from Medicare and Medicaid — and that this would probably put the company out of business.

“If we prosecute Pfizer, they get excluded,” said federal prosecutor Mike Loucks. “A lot of the people who work for the company who haven’t engaged in criminal activity would get hurt.”

Prosecutors were also concerned that forcing the company out of business might take important drugs off the market.

“We have to ask whether by excluding the company, are we harming our patients,” said Lewis Morris of the Department of Health and Human Services.

So Pfizer and the government agreed that a subsidiary of the company would plead guilty instead. That subsidiary, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc., was formed in 2007 to plead guilty to another charge and has never conducted any business.

“It is true that if a company is created to take a criminal plea, but it’s just a shell, the impact of an exclusion is minimal or nonexistent,” Morris said.

In the end, Pfizer ended up paying $1.5 billion in fines and another billion to settle multiple lawsuits — the equivalent of three months’ profit.

Sources for this story include: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/….

by Martin DelGado, DailyMail

A mother whose son suffered severe brain damage after he was given the controversial MMR vaccine as a baby has been awarded £90,000 compensation.

The judgment is the first of its kind to be revealed since concerns were raised about the safety of the triple jab.

Robert Fletcher, 18, is unable to talk, stand unaided or feed himself.

He endures frequent epileptic fits and requires round-the-clock care from his parents Jackie and John, though he is not autistic.

He suffered the devastating effects after being given the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine when he was 13 months old.

The Department of Health had always denied that the jab was the cause of Robert’s disability.

But now, in a judgment which will give hope to hundreds of other parents whose children have been severely affected by routine vaccinations, a medical assessment panel consisting of two doctors and a barrister has concluded that MMR was to blame.

Robert’s mother Jackie said the money would help with his care, though she described the amount as ‘derisory’.

Her first application for compensation under the Government’s Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme was rejected in 1997 on the grounds that it was impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt what had caused Robert’s illness.

But Mrs Fletcher appealed and in a ruling delivered last week, a new panel of experts came to a different conclusion.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1307095/Family-win-18-year-fight-MMR-damage-son–90-000-payout-concerns-vaccine-surfaced.html#ixzz0y4cnx6rj

It’s not been easy being green since the revelations of Climategate and mounting evidence that the science behind man’s influence on climate change is far from accurate, let alone settled. No wonder then that many greens chose to vent their frustration at skeptics and blame their ideological opponents for their troubles.

In the past decade, leaders of the global warming movement have won international fame and acclaim, including Nobel prizes and Oscars. They have been feted by celebrities and world leaders alike as a supportive press looked on and wrote glowing tomes about their wisdom and importance. Politicians and businesses were cowed into submission by the mighty green machine and eagerly adorned themselves with a green mantle to appeal to voters and consumers.

Despite this support and for no want of funding, time and again the green agenda stumbled and failed to achieve action. Despite regular and desperate cries of alarm that the conference du jour represented mankind’s ‘last hope’, nothing meaningful happens. The Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, but few industrialized western nations have come close to meeting their emission reduction targets. Since Kyoto there have been significant failures in Bali, Copenhagen, Bonn and next up is Cancun. There is no reason to suspect that the outcome will be different there.

The green movement is a conglomerate of many disparate causes, but one thing most agree on is that skeptics are to blame for any failure. According to greens, these ‘fringe’ people who oppose the theory that man influences climate are powerful enough to stop the entire world from taking action. In fact, this is just a lazy excuse to absolve themselves of blame for their own incompetence and ineffectiveness.

In the United States, Democrats have controlled the White House and both houses of Congress since 2008 with outright majorities, yet the ‘vital’ climate bill failed to pass. Democrats blame Republicans, but had the Democrats had the courage of their political convictions they could have passed any legislation they pleased, just as they did with health care reform. The climate bill failed because Democrats needed the political cover of a bipartisan vote and when they failed to get it, they simply walked away and in the process demonstrated that alarmist talk about global doom if the bill failed was so much hot air.

Al Gore this week blogged about the Koch brothers who have funded right-leaning causes to the tune of $100 million. The inference is that the Koch’s blocked climate change legislation by funding skeptics. Yet Al Gore and his Alliance for Climate Protection have outspent the Koch’s by a factor of 3 to 1. If it was just a question of money, Gore and his followers would have won a long time ago, so why haven’t they?

In large part, Gore must blame his own conspicuous consumption. Ordinary people looked at his mansions, his boat and the globe-trotting in private planes and limos and wondered how he could be so extravagant if there truly were a ‘climate crisis.’ Greens may blame skeptics for pointing out Gore’s hypocrisy, but it was his own decision to not lead by example and leave himself open to criticism.

A common argument against skeptics is that they are ‘flat-earthers’, the people who denied the Earth was round. This is a flawed view; the fact is it is the other way around. Those who believe in mans affect on global temperatures today are the ones who would think the Earth flat, for they are the followers of the popular consensus. It was skeptics that stood against the perceived wisdom of the day to teach the world that the ground they stood on was a sphere, a reminder that skeptics are vital to progress.

The inconvenient truth is that greens have failed to convince the world that man’s activity affects climate. They have tried bullying and emotional blackmail without success. It’s easy to blame those who disagree with them, but the failure to make progress on an issue they claim vital to man’s survival is entirely theirs.

Greens outspent skeptics, they had the ear of the political class, effectively demonized and even silenced opponents and still it was not enough to convince the world that anything was wrong with the weather. It’s hard to think of any movement in history that enjoyed the funding, support and momentum that the greens once had and yet achieved so little.

Now the momentum is gone, shattered by the revelations that climate science is little more than guesswork and bad statistical analysis. Celebrities are moving on to other, more fashionable causes and soon the only people left to rail against skeptics will be the ones with reputations or fortunes so heavily vested in their global warming theory that they can never retreat.

It’s not much of an end for ‘the greatest scam in history‘, but it is the end.

Read the rest at this link.

by Paul Driessen, CFACT

If 10% ethanol in gasoline is good, 15% (E15) will be even better. At least for some folks.

We’re certainly heading in that direction – thanks to animosity toward oil, natural gas and coal, fear-mongering about global warming, and superlative lobbying for “alternative,” “affordable,” “eco-friendly” biofuels. Whether the trend continues, and what unintended consequences will be unleashed, will depend on Corn Belt versus consumer politics and whether more people recognize the downsides of ethanol.

Federal laws currently require that fuel suppliers blend more and more ethanol into gasoline, until the annual total rises from 9 billion gallons of EtOH in 2008 to 36 billion in 2022. The national Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) also mandates that corn-based ethanol tops out at 15 billion gallons a year, and the rest comes from “advanced biofuels” – fuels produced from switchgrass, forest products and other non-corn feedstocks, and having 50% lower lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum.

These “advanced biofuels” thus far exist only on paper or in laboratories and demonstration projects. But Congress apparently believes passing a law will turn wishes into horses and mandates into reality.

Create the demand, say ethanol activists, and the supply will follow. In plain-spoken English: Impose the mandates and provide sufficient subsidies, and ethanol producers will gladly “earn” billions growing crops, building facilities and distilling fuel.

Thus, ADM, Cargill, POET bio-energy and the Growth Energy coalition will benefit from RFS and other mandates, loan guarantees, tax credits and direct subsidies. Automobile and other manufacturers will sell new lines of vehicles and equipment to replace soon-to-be-obsolete models that cannot handle E15 blends. Lawmakers who nourish the arrangement will continue receiving hefty campaign contributions from Big Farma.

However, voter anger over subsidies and deficits bode ill for the status quo. So POET doubled its Capital Hill lobbying budget in 2010, and the ethanol industry has launched a full-court press to have the Senate, Congress and Environmental Protection Agency raise the ethanol-in-gasoline limit to 15% ASAP. As their anxiety levels have risen, some lobbyists are suggesting a compromise at 12% (E12).

Not surprisingly, ethanol activism is resisted by people on the other side of the ledger – those who will pay the tab, and those who worry about the environmental impacts of ethanol production and use.

Taxpayer and free market advocates point to the billions being transferred from one class of citizens to another, while legislators and regulators lock up billions of barrels of oil, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, and vast additional energy resources in onshore and offshore America. They note that ethanol costs 3.5 times as much as gasoline to produce, but contains only 65% as much energy per gallon as gasoline.

Motorists, boaters, snowmobilers and outdoor power equipment users worry about safety and cost. The more ethanol there is in gasoline, the more often consumers have to fill up their tanks, the less value they get, and the more they must deal with repairs, replacements, lost earnings and productivity, and malfunctions that are inconvenient or even dangerous.

Ethanol burns hotter than gasoline. It collects water and corrodes plastic, rubber and soft metal parts. Older engines and systems may not be able to handle E15 or even E12, which could also increase emissions and adversely affect engine, fuel pump and sensor durability.

Home owners, landscapers and yard care workers who use 200 million lawn mowers, chainsaws, trimmers, blowers and other outdoor power gear want proof that parts won’t deteriorate and equipment won’t stall out, start inadvertently or catch fire. Drivers want proof that their car or motorcycle won’t conk out on congested highways or in the middle of nowhere, boat engines won’t die miles from land or in the face of a storm, and snowmobiles won’t sputter to a stop in some frigid wilderness.

All these people have a simple request: test E12 and E15 blends first. Wait until the Department of Energy and private sector assess these risks sufficiently, and issue a clean bill of health, before imposing new fuel standards. Safety first. Working stiff livelihoods second. Bigger profits for Big Farma and Mega Ethanol can wait. Some unexpected parties recently offered their support for more testing.

Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA), Ed Markey (D-MA), Joe Barton (R-TX) and Fred Upton (R-MI) wrote to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, advising her that “Allowing the sale of renewable fuel … that damages equipment, shortens its life or requires costly repairs will likely cause a backlash against renewable fuels. It could also seriously undermine the agency’s credibility in addressing engine fuel and engine issues in the future.”

Corn growers will benefit from a higher ethanol RFS. However, government mandates mean higher prices for corn – and other grains, as corn and switchgrass incentives reduce farmland planted in wheat or rye. Thus, beef, pork, poultry and egg producers must pay more for corn-based feed; grocery manufacturers face higher prices for grains, eggs, meat and corn syrup; and folks who simply like affordable food cringe as their grocery bills go higher.

Blue collar, minority, elderly and middle class families would be disproportionately affected, Affordable Power Alliance co-chairman Harry Jackson, Jr. points out, whether the issue is food, vehicles or equipment. They have to pay a larger portion of their smaller incomes for food, and own older cars and power equipment that would be particularly vulnerable to E15 fuels.

Ethanol mandates also drive up the cost of food aid – so fewer malnourished, destitute people can be fed via USAID and World Food Organization programs.

Biotechnology will certainly help, by enabling farmers to produce more biofuel crops per acre, using fewer pesticides and utilizing no-till methods that reduce soil erosion, even under drought conditions. If only Greenpeace and other radical groups would cease battling this technology. However, there are legitimate environmental concerns.

Oil, gas, coal and uranium extraction produces large quantities of high-density fuel for vehicles, equipment and power plants (to recharge batteries) from relatively small tracts of land. We could produce 670 billion gallons of oil from Arctic land equal to 1/20 of Washington, DC, if ANWR weren’t off limits.

By contrast, 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol requires cropland and wildlife habitat the size of Georgia, and for 21 billion gallons of advanced biofuel we’d need South Carolina planted in switchgrass.

Ethanol has only two-thirds the energy value of gasoline – and it takes 70% more energy to grow and harvest corn and turn it into EtOH than what it yields as a fuel. There is a “net energy loss,” says Cornell University agriculture professor David Pimental.

Pimental and other analysts also calculate that growing and processing corn into ethanol requires over 8,000 gallons of water per gallon of alcohol fuel. Much of the water comes from already stressed aquifers – and growing the crops results in significant pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer runoff.

Ethanol blends do little to reduce smog, and in fact result in more pollutants evaporating from gas tanks, says the National Academy of Sciences. As to preventing climate change, thousands of scientists doubt the human role, climate “crisis” claims and efficacy of biofuels in addressing the speculative problem.

Meanwhile, Congress remains intent on mandating low-water toilets and washing machines, and steadily expanding ethanol diktats. And EPA wants to crack down on dust from livestock, combine operations and tractors in farm fields.

“With Congress,” Will Rogers observed, “every time they make a joke it’s a law, and every time they make a law it’s a joke.” If it had been around in 1934, he would have added EPA. Let’s hope for some change.

Corruption in Washington is nothing new. Lobbyists for special interests have been padding the pockets of amoral politicians for longer than most of us have been alive, and they’ve been doing so with the help of a controlled media that rarely presents the facts without shrouding them in terms of “left” or “right” in order to confuse people. But as you’ll see in this story, the corruption goes far deeper than most people realize, and a perfect example of this is the dishonorable legacy of Nevada Senator and U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid. Reid was recently exposed for accepting large sums of money from Big Pharma in order to craft and guide the recently-passed health care bill in Big Pharma’s favor.

Reid’s political career dates back to the 1960s. He’s been a member of Congress since 1982, and a Nevada Senator since 1986. And since the early days of his career, Reid has been accepting contributions from lobbyists as payment for political favors.

One of the earliest stories I found about Reid accepting money from lobbyists is a 1987Washington Post article about how Reid and several other Nevada politicians had accepted money from mob sources that had connections to the Nevada gaming industry. (The full text of the article is available for purchase, but the part about Reid is visible in the abstract for free).

In 2006, Reid ranked tenth in Judicial Watch’s Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians. According to the allegations, he failed to report a $700,000 land deal to Congress, and accepted $30,000 in bribe money from Nevada Indian gaming.

Again in 2007, Reid made the same top ten list. This time, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times that year, Reid abused his power in Washington to negotiate a lucrative real estate deal for developer Havey Whittemore. The same report explained that Whittemore had contributed “tens of thousands of dollars” to Reid’s campaign, and hired Reid’s son, Leif, to act as the company’s lawyer in order to “negotiate” the deal with federal officials.

There are likely other historical scandals involving Reid, but these should give you a taste of the type of activities in which you might typically find him engaged. (And you may want to check out Judicial Watch for yourself to see who else is on these lists; you might be surprised to see that politicians from both sides of the aisle regularly appear there).

But the biggest issue I want to bring to your attention is Harry Reid’s open and obvious connections to Big Pharma, particularly in relation to the recent health care bill. This is perhaps the most damning and far-reaching scandal in Reid’s history yet, illustrating just how powerful Big Pharma is when it comes to controlling Washington for its own gain.

Big Pharma used politicians like Harry Reid to steer health care reform

According to a recent Washington Examiner article, Big Pharma has had its tentacles deeply intertwined in health legislation for years, and the industry has been involved in virtually every aspect of crafting the recent health care “reform” bill.

Last summer, Billy Tauzin, then President of the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), visited the White House to work out a deal on the health care bill. Mind you, PhRMA is the largest single-industry lobbying group in the nation. According to reports, he negotiated with government officials to make sure all existing drug industry favors would remain intact in any proposed health care legislation.

But this wasn’t all. Tauzin was able to convince Democrat politicians — many of the same ones who promised during the Obama campaign to rid Washington of special interest control — to add to the bill additional drug industry perks including subsidies, mandates, and a completemonopoly on complex drugs that will last 12 years. So much for transparency and reform, huh?

When all was said and done, PhRMA got what it wanted and Big Pharma won yet another long-term financial victory in the name of “reform.”

So how does Harry Reid play into all this? Well for starters, Reid successfully stopped Byron Dorgan’s drug reimportation amendment from being added to the bill, which would have helped to reduce drug costs for consumers (and cut Big Pharma’s profits).

The Dorgan amendment was basically a government price control option that would have reduced drug prices for consumers and limited Big Pharma’s complete monopoly over drugs. Even though it was a far cry from a true free market that would lower drug prices through real competition, the amendment would have cut costs for consumers, employers and states at the expense of Big Pharma’s monopoly.

Nevertheless, Big Pharma quickly squashed the amendment through one of their right-hand men, Harry Reid, who coordinated a Democratic filibuster of the bill until PhRMA could convince the politicians who supported the amendment to change their minds. One of the ways PhRMA achieved this was by convincing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to write a letter to the Senators who were about to vote on the bill.

Throughout this entire process, Reid was the primary catalyst for guiding health care reform legislation the way PhRMA wanted it to go, and in the end, he made sure it got passed the way Big Pharma wanted. A far cry from actual reform, the health care bill drastically expanded Big Pharma’s control over health care under the guise of being a “public option”.

Follow the money to Sen. Reid’s office

Big Pharma rewarded Reid nicely for his services by paying him tens of thousands of dollars. In fact, the money began flowing almost immediately after Tauzin first visited the White House back in July 2009.

According to news reports, drug giant Eli Lilly sent Reid a $5,000 check just two days after Tauzin’s first visit to Washington. By the following Monday, Reid received two more $5,000 checks, one from PhRMA and one from Pfizer, the nation’s largest drug company. And by the end of the following week, Merck and Astra-Zeneca sent their checks as well.

So in less than two weeks after a visit from a Big Pharma lobbyist, a single politician receives at least $23,000.

But that’s just the money Reid received for the initial meeting. After successfully getting the bill passed, Big Pharma sent Reid plenty of “thank you” money for his compliance with their agenda. As of May 30, 2010, Reid’s Big Pharma gifts totaled at least $154,000, setting him one place behind Big Pharma’s number one man, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC).

It’s important to note that Sen. Harry Reid, a Democrat, and Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican, hold the top two positions on Big Pharma’s political donation payroll. Both political parties, you see, are deep in bed with Big Pharma.

Reid’s re-election campaign being driven by Big Pharma

Naturally, the passage of Obamacare has sent shock waves throughout the nation, including in Harry Reid’s home state of Nevada. Reid’s support for re-election dropped tremendously in his home state following the passage of Obamacare, with approval ratings hovering in the 30 percentile.

Fortunately for Reid, part of Big Pharma’s payment for his services includes funding an ad campaign for his re-election this fall.

One of the ads they’ve made for Reid includes laud and praise for the many supposed ways that he’s helped Nevada families and improved the condition of the state, but the ad was bought and paid for by, guess who? PhRMA.

It’s exactly this type of apparent corruption in Washington that the Obama campaign spoke so heavily against on the campaign trail. But in its actions, the Obama administration wholly supported handing Big Pharma even more monopolistic control over America’s health care system. This type of doublespeak seems sadly typical in Washington, and it comes from both parties.

Reid, and countless other Washington politicians from both sides of the aisle, regularly accept money from powerful lobbyists like Big Pharma that control our government and shape our public health care policies.

Big Pharma operates a multi-billion dollar monopoly on medicine that it uses to financially influence politicians who write industry laws. And the facts show that this type of corruption exists on both sides of the aisle. Those whose campaigns are the most heavily funded are almost always the same candidates receiving money from the pharmaceutical industry, regardless of their political affiliations.

Real candidates like Representative Ron Paul will always be marginalized because they refuse to be political prostitutes for the corporate elite who want to control our nation. They serve based on principle, not based on which industry hands them the most money.

Sadly, both the Republican and Democratic party have been largely hijacked by pharmaceutical interests, and until we get the corporations out of politics — and the crooks out of Washington — this situation is unlikely to change.

Global warming data apparently cooked by U.S. government-funded body shows astounding temperature fraud with increases averaging 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

The tax-payer funded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has become mired in fresh global warming data scandal involving numbers for the Great Lakes region that substantially ramp up averages.

A beleaguered federal agency appears to be implicated in the most blatant and extreme case of climate data fraud yet seen. Official records have been confirmed as evidence that a handful of temperature records for the Great Lakes region have been hiked up by literally hundreds of degrees to substantially inflate the average temperature range for the northeastern United States.

The web pages at the center of this latest climate storm were created by NOAA in partnership with Michigan State University.

Disgraced Administration Mired in Another Climategate-style Data Fix

Someone under the pseudonym ‘Sportsmen’ anonymously tipped off skeptic blog, Climatechangefraud.com. Independent analysts affirm the web pages as genuine.

In his email the faceless whistleblower explains that what precipitated the scoop was “a rather dubious report in the media that the Great Lakes temperatures have risen 10 to 15 degrees, I found it was downright laughable.” (Just a few examples of media hysteria here and here and here and here)

He continues, “ Prior to this report I would frequent the ‘Coastal Watch’ temperature maps for northern Lake Michigan. When this report came out it dawned on me that the numbers didn’t match what I had been reading on the Coastal Watch temperature page.”

Under a scheme called ‘Sea Grant’ NOAA collaborates with national universities to compile an official federal temperature record. In this instance, the partnersip is with Michigan University’s ‘Coastal Watch.’

Together the two institutions show temperature maps for northern Lake Michigan registering an absurd 430 degrees Fahrenheit -yes, you read it right –that’s four hundred and thirty degrees-and this is by no means the highest temperature recorded on the charts.

In the heated debate about Earth’s ever-changing climate you certainly don’t need to be scientist to figure out that the Great Lakes would have boiled away at a mere 212 degrees so something has seriously gone awry inside this well-funded program.

In addition to its civilian employees, NOAA research and operations are supported by 300 uniformed service members who make up the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps. But don’t bet on anyone being court-marshalled over this latest global warming fiasco.

Paid for entirely from federal taxes, the shamed public body’s key responsibilities include warning of dangerous weather and protection of ocean and coastal resources, and conducts research to improve understanding and stewardship of the environment.

Michigan State University Also Complicit in Fraud?

The worst evidence of hyper-inflated global warming data is on a web page entitled, ‘Michigan State University Remote Sensing & GIS Research and Outreach Services.’

While another web page identifies that Michigan State University’s ‘Coastal Watch’ site is officially connected to NOAA thus implicating both institutions in a climate data conspiracy. At the bottom of the web page mention is made of ‘Sea Grant’ that is described as a “unique partnership of public and private sectors that combines research, education and technology transfer for public service.“

The legend further boasts that such data is shared across “ a national network of universities meeting the changing environmental and economic needs of Americans in coastal ocean and Great Lakes regions.”

NOAA Makes it White Hot in Wisconsin

But our intrepid anonymous whistleblower wasn’t done yet. He pointed out that Egg Harbor, Wisconsin, really got cooking this July 4^th around 9:59AM, according to NOAA and Coast Watch. It was there, at the bottom left row of the temperature data points, that the records reveal on that day a phenomenally furnace-like 600 degrees Fahrenheit.(Click here if CoastWatch link does not work or disappears)

Further analysis of the web pages shows that the incredibly wide temperature swings were occurring in remarkably short 10-hour periods-and sometimes in less than 5 hours. Strangely, none of the 250 citizens of the 78 families living in the village appeared to notice this apocalyptic heatwave during their holiday festivities.

Hidden Data Spike Hikes Heating Averages

But our sharp-eyed stranger comments, “ As I understand it, the current available Gif data maps are several for the latest dates, but the archives have less dates to choose from. It’s possible that in the past these numbers were incorrect but in the archive system you do not see the numbers that could have been in gross error.”

So it may reasonably be inferred climate fraudsters had a perfect opportunity here to fraudulently apply overcooked and overlooked data so that America’s Joe Public would be none the wiser that a few climate numbers vastly ramped up the national temperature averages.

Laughably, NOAA publishes a caveat at the bottom right corner of their web page warning about their data is “Not to be used for navigation purposes!”

The current head of NOAA is Dr. Jane Lubchenco, nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the United States Senate on March 19, 2009 and is the first woman to serve as NOAA administrator. On her appointment Lubchenco declared that science would guide the agency and that she expects it to play a role in developing a green economy. You can say that again!

Readers now interested in doing their own detective work may wish to peruse the further data found here and here

to further ascertain whether climate doomsayers have rigged more ‘real world’ temperatures in a shabby scheme to win support for green energy tax hikes. If you find anything be sure to drop Lubchenco a line here.

Author’s Addendum:
Of major concern here is whether the false data has been fed into climate models ascertaining the broader temperature averages for the entire United States. The alleged response from NOAA as shown in the comments below this article, indicates evasiveness by Chuck Pistis, NOAA Program Coordinator, in answering the question. Why so?

I also applied due diligence and asked internationally renowned climatologist, Dr. Timothy Ball to take a look at the numbers. Here is what Dr. Ball observed:

have read your article and believe it is a very valid observation of the data as reported. At best the entire incident indicates gross incompetence, at worst it indicates a deliberate attempt to create a temperature record that suits the political message of the day.”

Moreover, I have written to NOAA but am still awaiting their reply. I specifically asked whether this extravagantly false data was fed into climate models to help ramp up the U.S. climate numbers by “400%” as commented on by analyst, Jo Nova (more here). The Australian researcher provides an excellent summary to an important paper that removes all doubt that climate models are utterly flawed. As Dr. Ball points out—perhaps we know why.

by Aaron Turpen, CannaCentral

There is a growing body of evidence that marijuana and its components possess anti-cancer properties. Yet you won’t likely see this in mainstream news and you definitely won’t see pharmaceutical companies running advertisements stating this.

The latest research comes from the State University of New York (SUNY) in Syracuse whose study in the Journal of Pharmacology (June 2010) concludes that cannabinoids delta8- and delta-9-THC stopped growth in human oral cancer cells.¹ This is specifically true of Tu183, a particularly difficult oral cancer. This was just the latest in many research reports and studies to have been published on the cancer-treating properties of marijuana and derivatives.

It’s been known for quite some time that THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) has cancer-inhibiting properties. A government-funded study in 1974 was quickly quashed after a favorable press account appeared in the Washington Post, only to resurface in the late 1990s and recently re-created by researchers in Madrid, Spain.^{2 & 3} The studies show the inhibitory effect of cannabis on brain tumors.

Marijuana has also been shown to have positive effects on other cancers, including breast cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, and more.⁴

A review of clinical studies involving cannabis from 2005 to 2009 shows that 37 studies just on the therapeutic effects of marijuana or its derivatives were done in that time frame.⁵ This is over and above hard science, laboratory research into the use of cannabis as a medication.

So why is it that those who oppose marijuana as a medicine seem to have such a hard time acknowledging the huge body of evidence that’s accumulated for the past 30 or more years showing that cannabis has distinct and measurable medical benefits?

President Obama has told the Drug Enforcement Agency to stand down on marijuana raids and prosecutions in jurisdictions where marijuana has been made legal, including the 14 states plus Washington, D.C. that have medical marijuana laws on the books. Yet even with evidence in hand showing the efficacy of marijuana, government funding for studies with it are nearly non-existent. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration continues to approve drugs whose background studies and effects are nowhere near as comprehensive or prolific as are those for cannabis.

It’s time that opponents to marijuana admit that their reasons for blocking the medicinal use of this plant are entirely social and emotional and have no grounding in fact. Death, injury, and violent behavior is far more often done under the influence of alcohol than it is under pot, yet alcohol is perfectly legal. By contrast, more arrests for victimless crimes such as mere possession or use of marijuana are made every year than are busts for any other drug – legal or illegal.

As marijuana begins to receive more and more public advocacy and as more states legalize it, opponents of its decriminalization need to admit that they may be fighting it purely for nonsensical reasons.

References:
1 – Cannabinoids inhibit cellular respiration of human oral cancer cells. by DA Whyte, S Al-Hammadi, et al

2 – Pot Shrinks Tumors; Government Knew in ’74 by Raymond Cushing, AlterNet

3 – Cannabinoids as potential new therapy for the treatment of gliomas by Daniela Parolaro and Paola Massi, Expert Review of Naurotherapeutics, Jan. 2008

4 – A Couple Of Recent Studies The Mainstream Media Forgot To Mention by Paul Armentano, NORML

5 – Review on clinical studies with cannabis and cannabinoids 2005-2009 by Arno Hazekamp and Franjo Grotenhermen, Cannabinoids 2010

Dammit. I even emailed Marc Morano asking when there’d be video of exploding heads. Little did I know that James Cameron, who said he wanted to “shoot it out” with “deniers,” at the Aspen AREDAY Eco-fest had already chickened out–even after he won Gore-like concessions that there would be no media and no audio or video record kept.

Then finally James Cameron, who so publicly announced that he “wanted to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out,” decided to ban the media from the shoot out.

He even wanted to ban the public. The debate/roundtable would only be open to those who attended the conference.

No media would be allowed and there would be no streaming on the internet. No one would be allowed to record it in any way.

We all agreed to that.

And then, yesterday, just one day before the debate, his representatives sent an email that Mr. “shoot it out “ Cameron no longer wanted to take part. The debate was cancelled.

An AGW fanatic who can’t stand debate, where have I heard that before? Well, at least they gave Morano 90 minutes, maybe there’s some Scanners footage anyway.