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#Post#: 547--------------------------------------------------
Corporate Profits over Patient in the Health Care Field
By: AGelbert Date: December 13, 2013, 11:29 pm
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"Statins for Everyone, and Forget Supplements!”
HTML http://www.coh2.org/images/Smileys/huhsign.gif
December 10, 2013
Dangerous new heart health guidelines could put millions at
risk. Action Alert! :o
For years, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended
statins for children as young as 8. Recently, the American Heart
Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC)
issued new cholesterol guidelines and an online risk calculator
that may make 33 million healthy Americans dependent on statins.
That same day, the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)
declared there is “insufficient” evidence that nutritional
supplements can help prevent heart disease. Coincidence?
The message from powerful, monopolistic medical organizations is
loud and clear: “preventive” heart health should come from an
expensive prescription bottle. Unfortunately, the AHA and ACC’s
new guidelines are based on a flawed understanding of the role
of cholesterol in overall health. They champion the overuse of a
damaging (but lucrative) class of drugs.
Even within the conventional medical community, the new
guidelines are extremely controversial. Many doctors—including
the ACC’s own past president—are calling for the delay of their
implementation and the shutdown of AHA’s online risk calculator,
which may overestimate a patient’s risk for heart attack or
stroke by 75% to 150%! Top heart researchers warned AHA over a
year ago that their calculator was fundamentally flawed, but the
AHA claims they never received the researchers’ critiques.
As illustrated by the AHA’s risk calculator, the focal point of
the new guidelines is to put millions more Americans on statins.
Statins, the most widely prescribed class of drug in the world,
are supposed to reduce LDL levels, which mainstream medicine has
deemed “bad cholesterol” and the main cause of heart disease.
However, as we detail below, there is an abundance of strong
evidence to the contrary.
The guidelines recommend that those with a risk level of even
7.5% for either heart disease or stroke should take statins as a
“precaution.” Translation: under the new guidelines, patients
should be prescribed statins—drugs designed to reduce
cholesterol—whether or not they actually have high cholesterol.
This ignores evidence that statins not only fail to reduce the
risk of death, but fail to reduce even some patients’ chance of
getting heart disease.
Worse, statins are an incredibly dangerous class of drugs that
should not be prescribed lightly: their side effects are well
documented, to the extent that the FDA requires they be
disclosed in labeling.
They can cause memory loss, significantly increase your risk of
type 2 diabetes, block the health benefits of omega-3 fatty
acids, and cause serious muscle aches and pains that can make it
impossible to sleep. We don’t always realize how critical good
sleep is to our health.
Additionally, statins should not be used as a “precaution” when
non-drug interventions may be more effective in preventing heart
disease. For example, the Lyon Diet Heart Study found that the
Mediterranean diet was three times more effective than statin
drugs in preventing recurrent heart disease. This is because a
holistic approach, such as a change in diet, addresses heart
disease and its contributing factors. (Please see our “Natural
Ways to Support Heart Health” article for more information.)
The Lyon study also supports the idea that the very premise on
which statins are based—“LDL bad, HDL good”—is a gross
oversimplification. In fact, LDL has some crucial health
benefits—it can even provide protection from cancer. In
addition, studies show that lower levels of LDL don’t
necessarily lessen your risk of heart disease, and high
cholesterol may not cause it:
In 2008, a major study showed that lowering LDL levels doesn’t
necessarily decrease the risk of having a heart attack. Another
study, released in 2011, shows that raising HDL levels does not
always translate into a healthier heart.
As noted in an article by Dr. Mark Hyman, as many as 75% of
people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol.
One rigorous study showed that patients treated with two drugs
that successfully lowered cholesterol did not have a reduced
risk of heart attack.
Cholesterol is found everywhere in the body. As medical chemist
Shane Ellison explains, if high levels of cholesterol truly
caused plaque (the fatty substance that causes heart attacks and
strokes) rather than simply being a component of plaque, plaque
blockages would be found not just in the heart and brain, but
everywhere in the body, too. This could be why there are no
studies proving that high cholesterol causes heart plaque.
Meanwhile, low total cholesterol has its own documented health
risks, including depression.
So if there’s significant evidence that statins are neither safe
nor effective, what’s behind the AHA’s new guidelines? It seems
simple to us: Big Pharma’s statin industry is valued at $29
billion—and the drug industry is a major funder of the AHA. That
may not be the whole story, but it is enough to warn all of us.
HTML http://www.desismileys.com/smileys/desismileys_0293.gif
A glance at AHA’s 2011-2012 fiscal year shows that 25% of the
AHA’s budget came from corporations—with $15,369,726 coming from
Big Pharma, medical device manufacturers, and health insurance
providers. Additionally, of the fifteen panelists who authored
the new guidelines, six reported ties to drug makers that sell
or are developing cholesterol drugs. [img width=220
height=120]
HTML http://www.whydidyouwearthat.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/tumblr_l7j9nik8Wf1qaxxwjo1_5001.jpeg[/img]
With the recommendations of major medical associations—and,
therefore, the decisions of physicians—being influenced if not
dictated by the pharmaceutical industry, it is vitally important
that natural health practitioners and organizations are standing
up for patients. Mainstream medicine is awash in a sea of
cash-fueled “guidelines” that fail to consider even the basic
science behind heart health.
Action Alert! Ask the AHA and ACC to revise their guidelines!
HTML http://www.anh-usa.org/statins-for-everyone-and-forget-supplements/
#Post#: 549--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corporate Profits over Patient in the Health Care Field
By: AGelbert Date: December 13, 2013, 11:58 pm
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DNA Testing: Do You Have a Right to Test Your Own DNA? FDA Says
No! :o >:(
December 10, 2013
There’s a reason your government is whittling away at your
healthcare options and driving costs out of control—and not a
good one.
America spends over $2.6 trillion a year (18% of our GDP) on
healthcare. At the same time, government is tightening the
regulatory reins on nutritional and natural methods to support
health—an approach that isn’t lowering healthcare spending, but
raising it!
On November 22, the FDA sent a warning letter to 23andMe.com to
stop its inexpensive ($99 per test) “do-it-yourself” genetic
testing service for health screening and ancestry purposes,
because consumers could be “misled” and harm themselves by
“self-treating.” For example, the FDA posits that an individual
who learns they have a predilection for cancer would, as a
result, undergo unnecessary preventive surgery, chemotherapy,
and other “morbidity-inducing actions.”
HTML http://www.u.arizona.edu/~patricia/cute-collection/smileys/lying-smiley.gif
The FDA’s argument is, quite clearly, a straw man: of course
patients have to obtain medical advice before making major
health decisions—it’s not as if consumers can go under the knife
without significant medical consultation! The FDA’s true message
is clear: because individuals can’t be trusted to make sound
health decisions, they don’t have a right to private information
on their own DNA.
HTML http://www.websmileys.com/sm/aliens/hae51.gif
It’s also worth noting that FDA action against 23andMe was
sparked, in part, by a complaint by UnitedHealth Group, the
largest publicly traded health insurer. UnitedHealth isn’t
exactly an unbiased observer—they want access to information
about your DNA. After all, if individuals were allowed to keep
their DNA test data private, they wouldn’t have to share their
results with insurers who, for example, could use an inherited
health risk to deny insurance or charge exorbitant rates.
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/acigar.gif
The FDA’s stance on DIY genetic testing could very well drive up
healthcare costs. Besides premiums being raised on those forced
to report DNA results to insurance companies, in-office testing
is far more expensive. As tests are priced anywhere from $300 to
$3,500, this could significantly add to the overall cost of
healthcare. [img width=30
height=30]
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/>
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HTML http://www.anh-usa.org/do-you-have-a-right-to-test-your-own-dna/
#Post#: 1705--------------------------------------------------
Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician Book Revi
ew
By: AGelbert Date: August 16, 2014, 8:06 pm
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[font=times new roman]Doctored: The Disillusionment of an
American Physician[/font]
Sandeep Jauhar
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
EXCERPT
ONE
[font=times new roman]
Awakening[/font]
[font=times new roman]
A young doctor means a new graveyard.[/font]
—German proverb
Snippet:
It was a few minutes past seven-thirty when I arrived at the
hospital, and I was late for morning report. I pulled into the
attending physicians’ lot and parked between two cars whose
license plates read “BEAN DOC” and “GAS MD.” At the sliding
glass doors leading into the lobby, two patients in teal
hospital gowns were leaning on their IV poles, sucking hungrily
on cigarettes. I skipped down a concrete stairwell to the
basement. The corridors were deserted, save for a tardy
first-year fellow racing ahead of me.
When I walked into the conference room, a fellow was presenting
a case from overnight. About a dozen fellows and a half-dozen
faculty members were there. The fellows rotated each month
through the various cardiac subspecialties: electrophysiology
(which focuses on arrhythmias, or heart rhythm disturbances),
echocardiography (cardiac ultrasound), nuclear stress testing
(which uses radioactive tracers to noninvasively detect coronary
disease in hearts under stress from exercise or certain drugs),
cardiac catheterization (Rajiv’s specialty), heart failure, the
general consultative service, and the cardiac care unit (where
the most critically ill patients of any subspecialty usually
ended up). As faculty members we were responsible for teaching
the fellows: scrubbing in with them on procedures, going on
rounds with them, and instructing them over discussions at
morning report or noon seminar. In the conference room, Rajiv
and two of his interventional colleagues were sitting together,
arms folded, legs crossed, in purple scrubs, like some sort of
academic tribunal. My brother looked at me sharply, glanced at a
phantom wristwatch, and winked. I quietly took a seat in the
back.
The fellow was trying to explain his management of a critically
ill patient the previous night. “The patient’s pulmonary artery
saturation was in the mid-forties, so I ended up putting him on
some dobutamine and gave him a little fluid back,” the fellow
said. “He started putting out some urine, and his blood pressure
went up. Over the next twelve hours, his oxygenation improved
dramatically.”
Dr. Morrison, one of the interventional cardiologists, demanded
to know why the fellow had given the patient intravenous fluid.
“At that point his central venous pressure was two,” the fellow
said defensively, describing a state of dehydration. “His
pulmonary artery diastolic pressure was six, and his wedge
pressure was like eight.”
“And you’re sure the transducer was zeroed and level?” Morrison
pressed him. “We see this a lot with the residents. They look up
at the monitor and quote a pressure, but it’s just garbage.”
The fellow hesitated. “When we first put in the catheter, the
wedge pressure was in the thirties—”
“Well, see, that’s what I’m saying,” Morrison interjected, as if
the fellow had just made his point. “This guy wasn’t dehydrated!
He was in florid heart failure. This is a textbook case of acute
heart failure, from the frothy sputum to the missed myocardial
infarction.”
“Anyway, good case,” the chief fellow said, trying to move
things along.
“What this patient really needs is a doctor,” Dr. Morrison added
caustically.
“As opposed to a plumber like us?” Rajiv shot back, coming to
the fellow’s defense.
“Exactly,” Morrison replied, laughing. (Interventional
cardiologists who relieve coronary obstructions with stents are
often disparagingly referred to as plumbers.)
[font=times new roman]Full Excerpt[/font]
HTML http://us.macmillan.com/excerpt?isbn=9780374141394
Review
In his acclaimed memoir Intern,
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcdDLRUJ5k8&feature=player_embedded<br
/>
HTML http://www.sandeepjauhar.com/
Sandeep Jauhar chronicled the formative years of his residency
at a prestigious New York City hospital. Doctored, his harrowing
follow-up, observes the crisis of American medicine through the
eyes of an attending cardiologist.
Hoping for the stability he needs to start a family, Jauhar
accepts a position at a massive teaching hospital on the
outskirts of Queens. With a decade’s worth of elite medical
training behind him, he is eager to settle down and reap the
rewards of countless sleepless nights. Instead, he is confronted
with sobering truths. Doctors’ morale is low and getting lower,
and when doctors are unhappy, their patients are apt to be
unhappy as well. Blatant cronyism determines patient referrals,
corporate ties distort medical decisions, and unnecessary tests
are routinely performed in order to generate income. Meanwhile,
a single patient in Jauhar’s hospital might see fifteen
specialists in one stay and still fail to receive a full picture
of his actual condition.
Unwilling to accept the prevailing norms, Jauhar fights to keep
his ideals intact. But he, too, finds himself ensnared in the
system. Struggling to pay back student loans and support a wife
and son on his hospital salary, he resorts to moonlighting for a
profit-driven private practice that orders batteries of tests
just to drum up fees and ward off malpractice lawsuits.
Provoked by his unsettling experiences, Jauhar has written an
introspective memoir that is also an impassioned plea for
reform. With American medicine at a crossroads, Doctored is the
important work of a writer unafraid to challenge the
establishment and incite controversy.
HTML http://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374141394
#Post#: 1774--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corporate Profits over Patient in the Health Care Field
By: AGelbert Date: August 28, 2014, 5:44 pm
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BREAKING: CDC whistleblower confesses to MMR vaccine research
fraud in historic public statement
HTML http://www.naturalnews.com/046630_CDC_whistleblower_public_confession_Dr_William_Thompson.html
#Post#: 2270--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corporate Profits over Patient in the Health Care Field
By: AGelbert Date: November 27, 2014, 1:09 am
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MORE PROOF that CNN is a FASCIST CORPORATE PROPAGANDA OUTLET:
HTML http://www.u.arizona.edu/~patricia/cute-collection/smileys/lying-smiley.gif<br
/>
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/swear1.gif
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsLuR3X6cpg&feature=player_embedded
Multiple SHORT AUTISM from vaccine U-tube videos at link below:
HTML http://www.runemasterstudios.com/graemlins/images/2thumbs.gif
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WsLuR3X6cpg&list=PLJpPObXpZncOfT0bG2ghgkVb2Nxjd_bNe
[center]Next World Health TV[/center]
How CNN Caused A Vaccine Story It Tried To Crush To Instead Go
Viral ;D
[center]"Hear This Well" Project [/center]
One After Another After Another After Another
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/cowboypistol.gif
In August of 2014, Autism Media Channel published bombshell
recordings of a CDC autism researcher who blew the whistle on
systemic fraud and data-tampering inside the CDC. The main
stream media, months later, kept a near total silence on the
explosive story.
But when CNN's health reporter condescended to parents of
autistic children by insisting "vaccines do not cause autism"
and adding, "some people don't hear this well," she accidentally
triggered a social media video revolution. Parents began
recording one minute videos documenting that their children were
developmentally normal until they got a certain round of
vaccinations.
This is the channel where all the "Hear This Well" videos are
gathered, now numbering in the hundreds. They tell the true
story
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/301.gif
of vaccines and
autism the mainstream media refuses to tell. >:(
I wrote about this when it first happened:
HTML http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/933954-autism-parents-reply-to-cnn-hear-this-well/
--Celia Farber
Celia Farber is an investigative science reporter and cultural
journalist who has written for several magazines including
Harper’s, Esquire, Rolling Stone, SPIN and more. She is the
author of “Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of
AIDS” (Melville House Press/ Random House). Known for bold
exposes of the pharmaceutical industry and related media cover
ups, Celia Farber shines a spotlight on the very subjects that
have been taboo for too long: What is Cancer? Does HIV cause
AIDS? Do Vaccinations Cause Brain Damage? And many more...
Visit her website at www.truthbarrier.com
- See more at:
HTML http://www.nextworldhealthtv.com/videos/vaccination/how-cnn-caused-a-vaccine-story-it-tried-to-crush-to-instead-go-viral-.html#sthash.Es6WVADj.dpuf
#Post#: 2570--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corporate Profits over Patient in the Health Care Field
By: AGelbert Date: January 20, 2015, 3:03 pm
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[b]
Please Allow 88 Year-Old, Dr. Carrol Frazier Landrum, to keep
his Mississippi medical license
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/47b20s0.gif
[/b]
author: Jennifer "Jenny" Speir Wilson, Kathy Speir Martin
target: Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure
[quote]A. G.,
The state of Mississippi wants to stop one of the few doctors in
a poor, rural town from providing care to his patients, simply
because he uses his car for an office! Sign my petition to make
sure Dr. Landrum can keep caring for the health of his poor
patients.
Growing up, my family was always proud of my second cousin, Dr.
Carroll Frazier Landrum. As a child, I spent many summers with
his family. I vividly recall what a genuinely caring soul he
had, and those summers spent with his family are my most fond
and cherished memories from my childhood. In the evenings I
would see him drive up, go into his house with his briefcase in
tow; then further dedicating his life to the care of his elderly
mother and family.
One of the only doctors in the rural, poor town of Edwards, MS,
Cousin Frazier was doing important work for folks with few
healthcare options. When gun violence outside his clinic's front
door forced him to lock up for good, his patients had nowhere
else to go, and pleaded with him to continue caring for them.
So, he started working from his car in order to continue in his
dedication of providing health care to his needy patients.
But now the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure is
trying to stop him! No one has complained about the care they
have received, but because of his unconventional practice, the
board has requested he surrender his medical license. This World
War II veteran who has always sought to serve his country and
his fellow man is now being forced to defend his most modest and
humble work.
Dr. Landrum will have to appear before a hearing of the
Mississippi State Board soon, so I started this petition to show
the state what Dr. Landrum means to the community, and how
important it is that he be allowed to continue to care for his
patients.
Sign my petition and tell Mississippi: Let Dr. Landrum keep
providing care for the rural poor in Edwards.
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/computer3.gifhttp://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-300614160245.gif
HTML http://www.thepetitionsite.com/113/603/550/please-petition-88-year-old-dr-carrol-frazier-landrum-to-keep-his-mississippi-medical-license/
Thank you,
Jennifer "Jenny" Speir Wilson
Florence, MS
Care2 member
[/quote]
Agelbert NOTE: I signed with this comment: Dr. Carrol Frazier
Landrum understands that health care is a VOCATION, not a
business! It's time our greed poisoned country (AND BIOSPHERE
POISONED TOO!) realized it as well.
HTML http://www.thepetitionsite.com/420/529/456/demand-liberty-from-fossil-fuels-through-100-renewable-energy-wwii-style-effort/
#Post#: 2704--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corporate Profits over Patient in the Health Care Field
By: AGelbert Date: February 20, 2015, 11:55 pm
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HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QZHHBGFwcs&feature=player_embedded
Documentary Reveals Shocking Extent of Government-Big Business
Collusion to Eradicate Freedom of Choice
HTML http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/02/21/freedom-from-choice-documentary.aspx
[img width=740
height=740]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-210215010009.jpeg[/img]
[move]Monsanto Government Revolving Door Corruption[/move]
#Post#: 2712--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corporate Profits over Patient in the Health Care Field
By: AGelbert Date: February 21, 2015, 9:08 pm
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[quote author=Surly1 link=topic=785.msg68345#msg68345
date=1424532149]
Is Scurvy the New Diabetes?
HTML https://medium.com/matter/is-scurvy-the-new-diabetes-27e99d679f53
[img width=640
height=280]
HTML https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/2000/1*xt0dRaY7CW3SgWfY8EbeqQ.jpeg[/img]
It’s horrible, deadly — and insanely easy to fix.
But America’s troubles with food insecurity means millions are
closer to the scurvy zone than we admit.[/b]
By Leigh Cowart
Right now, there’s about a cup of orange juice in my gut,
sloshing around and mingling with my stomach acid as it delivers
all the vitamin C that I require for the day. I’ve got some
major bruises on my knees, and so once the essential nutrient
hits my body’s internal transport system, the orange juice that
I just drank will play an important role in wound healing,
preventing future capillaries from bleeding too easily, and with
any luck helping me perform enough sweet, sweet collagen
synthesis to make it look like I sleep regularly. Vitamin C may
be the most important water-soluble antioxidant in human plasma,
and is required for all plants and animals. But while most other
animals can synthesize their own supply,
humans — along with other primates, guinea pigs,
capybaras, some fish, and some bats — have to get
theirs elsewhere. Hence the orange juice.
The problem is that not everyone gets enough. And when vitamin C
goes missing from a diet for long enough, the results can be
explicitly unpleasant: scurvy.
We act like scurvy is long left behind, a throwback disease,
forgotten and dust-covered and banished to antiquity. But this
scourge of sailors is, in fact, not something that humanity has
outgrown. It still happens, and probably more than you realize.
[float=left]
HTML https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/634/1*WQ4eAZ861phpkZuuU9F5kA.png[/float]
Scurvy, the most extreme result of prolonged lack of vitamin C,
is, in a word, unpleasant. In three, it’s “fatal if untreated.”
The disease kicks off with the universal symptoms of “ugh”:
low-grade inflammation, fatigue, bleeding gums, and swollen
joints. Vitamin C is absolutely necessary for healthy collagen,
which matters greatly because it makes up one fourth to one
third of all of the protein that makes up you. It’s in your
skin, your tendons, your bones, your gut, and your blood
vessels, just to name a few. Your body is forever making more of
it, knitting yourself together with a kind of sticky meat yarn.
Without enough vitamin C, the collagen is made poorly and is
therefore unstable: capillaries burst, wounds remain open, and,
since your body is constantly replacing the collagen in scar
tissue, old scars can reopen. As the owner of a C-section scar,
I find this possibility very distressing.
If you think of your body like a car or a building, collagen is
doing a hell of a lot of the upkeep. But no vitamin C means no
collagen, means no upkeep, means open, suppurating sores that
will never heal, means the kind of sores that do not smell okay.
Scurvy can also loosen the teeth, which is a literal nightmare I
have at least twice a year.
A diet devoid of vitamin C is always fatal, if left untreated;
without it, you basically just fall apart because your body
can’t make the collagen that keeps you glued together.
The exact details of scurvy eluded explorers for centuries. It
was hard to keep a boat full of sailors alive at sea by feeding
them stale carbs, salted meat, and booze, but then again, it was
pretty hard to keep a boat full of sailors alive in general. Of
course, just because humans didn’t always fully understand the
disease doesn’t mean they weren’t on the case. People had their
suspicions regarding the correlation between the lack of fresh
foods and withering sailors for centuries. By the late 1400s,
the healing powers of citrus were known, but it wouldn’t be
until the mid-18th century that medicine gave us definitive
answers. In what is famously known as the first clinical trial
ever (owing to his use of control groups), ship surgeon James
Lind formally concluded that scurvy could be cured by citrus
fruits, debunking the popular theory that it was caused by a
lack of acids. Lind, however, waited to inform the British Navy
about his findings because of citrus’s high price; it would be
nearly 50 years before lemon juice would become a required
ration in the Navy.
Yes, yes, but what does this have to do with me?
It’s true: Scurvy is not something that you will readily
encounter in mainstream American life, since death from lack of
vitamin C requires poor medical care and consistent and
prolonged lack of access to fresh or fortified foods. It also
often involves a cofactor such as alcoholism, being an elderly
shut-in, or inadequate infant nutrition. But that doesn’t mean
you’re off the hook: Like so many diseases with social roots,
scurvy doesn’t come on like flipping a switch; it’s not as if
one day you’re fine, and the next all your old scars are opening
up and your tongue is covered in sores. This kind of
malnutritive illness exists on a sliding scale of grays. Vitamin
C deficiency is no joke, and acting like we don’t have to worry
about historical diseases is arrogant and stupid. Here’s why.
[img width=640
height=530]
HTML https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1080/1*WloVSfnImI6qjWZNO9LhPw.png[/img]
Source: State Indicator Report on Fruits and Vegetables, CDC,
2013
There’s a trap that we fall into in our ostensibly affluent
country, a mirage flanked by skyrocketing obesity trends on one
hand, and our obsession with image on the other. It tells us
that in the land of plenty — one of the wealthiest
and fattest countries on this blue, agrarian
marble — there is no hunger, no malnutrition. How
could anyone see our supermarkets and think that children go
hungry on the weekends without school lunch? How could they
understand bones softened by rickets, or that scurvy is still
making gums bleed? Like keeping a lucky rabbit’s foot with your
keys, we delude ourselves into thinking that proximity to
medical care and healthy food is enough to keep us all well.
[img width=440
height=980]
HTML https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/393/1*WBzuEFFk0x85guoXKrdfXg.png[/img]
*Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000-calorie diet.
But hunger and poverty are quiet monsters, the ones content to
burden its victims with the job of concealment. As far as
society is concerned, it’s easy to miss what you didn’t want to
see in the first place. But in 2013, 49.1 million Americans were
food insecure — a status defined by the USDA as “a
household-level economic and social condition of limited or
uncertain access to adequate food” — and homes with
children were more likely to struggle. That year, almost one in
five homes with children were food insecure; for households run
by a single mother, the rate jumped to over 1 in 3.
The last time CDC researchers looked at vitamin C deficiency
among the American public, they found that an estimated 8.4
percent of adults aged 20 and older were at risk of developing
scurvy. Like scurvy-scurvy, with wound-healing problems and
weird rashes and bleeding gums, the whole sick-pirate bit.
Prolonged vitamin C levels this low are incredibly dangerous.
But it’s not just scurvy-scurvy, either. There’s also latent
scurvy, which happens when vitamin C concentrations are low but
not super low. Research suggests it’s associated with fatigue
and irritability, as well as vague, dull, aching pains; one
study showed 15.7 percent of adults had vitamin C levels in this
low range.
There is good news, however. Vitamin C levels are actually going
up. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, the overall prevalence of
deficiency was much higher — it had halved a decade
later, and continued to fall. But the dramatic decrease is not
for the reasons you may think. There was, in fact, no uptick in
fruit and vegetable intake over that time: Consumption held
steady for fruit at 1.6 servings a day on average, while for
vegetables it dropped slightly, from 3.4 to 3.2. We’re actually
eating just a little bit worse than we used to. But at the same
time there was a decrease in smoking, and smoking makes it
harder to properly absorb vitamin C.
The rest of the news is, unfortunately, bad.
Perhaps most distressing is the clear influence of socioeconomic
status. The study found that the average vitamin C
concentrations increase, and prevalence of vitamin C deficiency
decrease, with improving socioeconomic circumstances. Of the men
in the lowest bracket, 17.4 percent were deficient and in the
range for developing scurvy, but on the other end of the
spectrum, males with high socioeconomic status clocked in at a
mere 7.9 percent. The same trend is apparent in women, whose
rate of vitamin C deficiency drops from one in 10 in the lower
income bracket to one in 20 in the high.
[img width=340
height=480]
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The way we eat now versus the way we ate then has long inspired
dieting fads — just think paleo — but
you cannot pin scurvy on the advent of processed food. It’s true
that cooking, canning, and other forms of preservation can and
do degrade the amount of vitamin C present, but many food
manufacturers add it (under the name ascorbic acid) as a
preservative. And with the ubiquity of enriched beverages and
“immune-boosting supplements,” it’s not as if the nutrient is
hard to find.
Even so, with one in three single-mother households dealing with
food insecurity, and one in 10 women with diminished
socioeconomic status verifiably in the scurvy zone when it comes
to vitamin C levels, it’s clear that there is a failure of the
system.
Like Type 2 diabetes, scurvy is well-known, diet-related and
just as avoidable — even if it may never be as
widespread or as omnipresent.
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As hard as it may be to believe, a significant proportion of the
U.S. population is at risk. Huge swaths of the populace are
unknowingly flirting with scurvy — and yet the
treatment is incredibly simple: Consuming vitamin C–rich foods
like brightly colored fresh fruits and vegetables, oysters, or
even (as soldiers in Napoleon’s army discovered) fresh horse
meat is enough to treat the disease. But treatment is easy; the
solution is hard.
Scurvy isn’t malevolent; it is merely the poster child for a
broken social contract.
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The kind where the
wealth gap widens and people are slipping deeper into poverty as
the federal government cuts $93 million in spending to Women,
Infants and Children — a program offering
nutritional support to low-income women and their kids. Combine
that with the fact that processed foods are cheap and filling,
and suddenly vitamin C levels in the scurvy zone start to make
more sense.
We worry so much about the illnesses we pass on to each other:
Measles, ebola, all the rest. But what do we do when sickness
isn’t spread by germy fingers, but by apathy? [/quote]
Agebert NOTE: There is a bit more than APATHY at work here (see
[b][i]MENS REA).[/i][/b]
Surly,
Great article on scurvy! [img width=60
height=50]
HTML http://us.cdn2.123rf.com/168nwm/lenm/lenm1201/lenm120100200/12107060-illustration-of-a-smiley-giving-a-thumbs-up.jpg[/img]<br
/>Captain Cook would force his crew to eat raw seal and tried to
get fresh plants whenever he could. As your article points out
about those days, it was a struggle.
I believe the main problem is processed foods ADDICTION caused
by flavonoids in the crap that passes for foods. The normal
biochemistry that unconsciously tells us to eat this or that has
been blunted, shunted and fooled by said flavonoids to make the
person think everything is hunky dory.
The fist step requires a detox from processed foods. I went an
internet tirade a month ago against some vegetarians carrying on
about how "meat eaters" are hurting the environment. The Paul
McCartney article recommended "meatless mondays". Here's my
comment thread. It is the solution to Vitamin C deficiency and
many other daily nutritional vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
Our Corporate overlords just do not want to hear it because they
MADE MONEY CREATING these non-food foods that are addictive
CRAP. They don't want their profit over people parade
interrupted by CFS.
a month ago
[quote]When you are poor, "meatless" happens a LOT MORE OFTEN
that just on Mondays!
I think it is great if you can go Vegan. But for all you Vegans
with lots of money and STOCK in fruit and vegetable
corporations, I SUGGEST you lower the price of nutritious fruit
and vegetables.
The price of fruit is TOO HIGH and the wages paid to those who
pick them are TOO LOW. How about walkin' the Vegan Talk for all
of us!!? Give us affordable fruit! You can pay your executives a
lot less and your pickers a lot more and still reduce fruit and
vegetable prices. Don't tell us you can't!
And while you are at it, why don't you GET RID OF THE FOOD
DESERTS in poor neighborhoods by putting premium quality fruit
and vegetable (discounted for the poor) grocery stores there?
Oh, there isn't enough profit in that?
Well then, spare us the Vegan tears about how much meat eating
is destroying the planet. YOU are helping by not EATING a LARGE
PART of the fruit price profits on behalf of the overwhelming
mass of humans that are poor and middle class.
Have a nice day.[/quote]
[quote]empirical evidence guy > agelbert • a month ago
The US govt subsidizes meat, but not fruits and veggies.
Probably should be the inverse. But then again, someone that
eats too much meat and other processed foods {along with couch
potato lifestyle} is more unhealthy and visits a doctor more
often. Medical costs + potentially unnecessary drug costs ($$ &
side effects, etc.) make citizens more likely to refrain from
active participation in our democracy.
Conspiracy? perhaps[/quote]
[quote]
agelbert > empirical evidence guy • 24 days ago
Conspiracy? Of course! The collusion of business interests in
the USA to keep average IQ down among the middle and lower class
is well documented. Besides being a dumping ground for processed
food, every sort of air, soil and liquid pollution from
industrialization and automobiles is far more prevalent in poor
and middle class communities. Just research where coal, fossil
fuel and nuclear power plants have been sited since
electrification began in this country in the 1930's.
It was PLANNED that way. But the planetary sewers are backing up
now so the "elite" are scrambling to keep their environment and
food "safe". They think they KNOW where to run to and hide.
The biosphere has a message for them:
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height=100]
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[/quote]
[quote]Don-Flyboy • a month ago
I agree with agelbert....alternative eating habits are expensive
to design to eliminate meat from the diet, and get the required
nutrition elsewhere. Now, I agree with a couple days a week
without meat. I love salad, but a really good salad with Romain
lettuce and several vegetables is expensive and short lived in
the refrigerator. But I am "wealthy" enough (moderately poor) to
be able to afford to eat well. Many people are not so fortunate
(not as strongly motivated for education, to become a
professional and have the benefit of a good paying job). Now I
also eat fish...and I know some vegans who eat "sea food" why is
that different than eating animals? Air breathing sea creatures
such a dolphins (Mahi-Mahi) are "animals" by definition. But
shrimp, fish, crab and even shell creatures are "alive" & so are
plants!!
So....
I believe in moderation....So I eat meat....mankind really is a
omnivore....but not every day....some days I have mixed fruit
salad for breakfast, some days cereal or oatmeal with fruit, or
turkey bacon & eggs, or pancakes or Belgian waffles (a personal
favorite)...but for lunch I usually have soup & sandwiches...
tuna or turkey...never beef.... if I have lunch....and for
dinner I vary my diet a lot. Very rarely eat large meat
portions....usually my plate has very large vegetable portions,
when I eat potatoes its almost always sweet potatoes or
yams...they have more flavor and a wider range of
nutrients....and I frequently include things like applesauce or
other fruit....like raspberries & raisin cranberries in a dinner
salad. And I eat really good substitutes like eggplant &
portobello mushrooms. So I follow a frequent meatless meal
philosophy. But my vegan friends disapprove. Oh well. As I wrote
above...I believe humans are omnivores by nature. Do we
disrespect the dog, cat, wolf or lion because they are
carnivores? I do not. And I openly confront animal cruelty and
"Factory Farms" mentality and practice. We need MORE organized
resistance and grass roots initiated legislation to give animals
a decent life and humane death for consumption. That part of the
vegan philosophy I agree with totally. I often buy uncaged eggs
from free range chickens.
[/quote]
#Post#: 3158--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corporate Profits over Patient in the Health Care Field
By: AGelbert Date: May 17, 2015, 4:14 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Altered Genes, Twisted Truth—How GMOs Took Over the Food Supply,
Part 2 Druker
March 15, 2015 | 239,764 views
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqfAXOcmezY&feature=player_embedded
SNIPPET from the article following the video:
[quote][color=teal]Misrepresentations by Molecular Biologists
Led to the Creation of One of the Biggest Frauds in History
[/color]
Ultimately, the blame for this fraud has to be put at the feet
of the molecular biology establishment—the main scientific
establishment in the life sciences—which Steven discussed in
Part 1 of this interview. His book goes into this part of
history in great detail, demonstrating how the aggregate
misleading statements about the science behind GMOs and their
purported safety were born back in the early 1970s when genetic
engineering was first established. Within the context of the
history of science, the fraud related to GE foods is one of the
biggest and most pernicious ever committed by scientists, and it
began with molecular biologists who wanted to protect the
budding science of genetic engineering by whitewashing potential
concerns.
In the 12th chapter of Steven’s book, “Unfounded Foundational
Presumptions,” he shows that even when the evidence goes against
the genetic engineers of today, they always fall back on some of
those initial presumptions made by the molecular biology
establishment—presumptions that support the notion genetic
engineering is a safe enterprise—and they never really
acknowledge that those presumptions have been solidly refuted.
"One of the key ones of those, which I think is important to
bring out, is that somehow, no matter how unruly and
unpredictable somebody can demonstrate genetic engineering to
be, they will always say, 'Well, conventional breeding is worse.
Nature is far more random, unruly, and risky.' That is a very
important point to bring out, because there are so many
Americans who probably, just as a matter of course, believe what
they're being told about this.
They don't understand that that is actually a foundational
assumption—that you can't actually trust food that's been here
for a long, long time; that nature is somehow being slandered
and disparaged as being far more unruly, unpredictable, and
dangerous. Every act of pollination is somehow supposed to be at
least as risky, if not riskier, and more unpredictable than
these radical insertions of foreign genetic material into
soybeans, corn, and zucchinis. That I found to be gross slander
against nature. I think more and more people need to understand
that."
[/quote]
HTML http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/03/15/altered-genes-twisted-truth-gmo-part-2.aspx
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[center] [img width=200
height=180]
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#Post#: 3168--------------------------------------------------
Re: Corporate Profits over Patient in the Health Care Field
By: AGelbert Date: May 18, 2015, 7:18 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Agelbert NOTE: The following comment on a story about a
scientist chasing funding is better than the story ;D.
The (scientifically well referenced
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/34y5mvr.gif)
comment sheds much
needed light on how scientists have become corrupt, money
chasing and mendacious, thanks to the corporate destruction of
good science in the service of profit over patient (AND PLANET
TOO!). [img width=160
height=095]
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[center] [img width=75
height=50]
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/>[/center]
[quote]This story leaves out some important context about its
protagonist, David Sinclair.
Sinclair was the chief person behind the series of high-profile
papers in the 2000s linking red wine, resveratrol, sirtuins and
aging. During this period, Sinclair's work was repeatedly
featured in the New York Times and he became a minor scientific
celebrity. He founded a company, Sirtris, with the goal of
making sirtuin activators to treat aging related diseases, and
Sirtris was purchased by GSK in 2007 for the staggering sum of
$720 million. This was despite the fact that the company had
never shown that any of its compounds had activity in humans.
Shortly after the Sirtris sale, it began to emerge that the
whole red wine/resveratrol/aging story was not true.
It turned out that resveratrol and the compounds discovered by
Sirtris were not sirtuin activators, as claimed by Sinclair in a
series of Nature papers. Rather, the activity of the compounds
was an artifact resulting from a poorly controlled biochemical
essay.
Likewise, evidence emerged that sirtuins were not nearly as
important for aging as Sinclair and others had claimed, and that
several of the key biological results making this link,
published by Sinclair and others in Science and Nature, were
again not reproducible due to sloppy experimental design.
Recently, Sirtris was shut down by GSK, and the consensus in the
pharmaceutical industry is that their $720M Sirtris investment
led to nothing of value. I have copied below a series of papers
and other links that go into greater detail regarding this
story. [img width=100
height=60]
HTML http://cliparts.co/cliparts/Big/Egq/BigEgqBMT.png[/img]
This information provides a different context for the funding
saga of David Sinclair recounted above. It is possible that
Sinclair found it difficult to obtain NIH funding because his
much-hyped work had been thoroughly discredited, such that NIH
study sections decided (rightly) that it would be a mistake to
give him any more money.
In this context, the fact that Sinclair has nonetheless been
able to find private backers so that he can again maintain a 22
person lab is remarkable.
It suggests that there is a profound failure in the mechanisms
by which we ensure accountability in academic science. By
writing a story that fails to mention any of this, and in fact
portrays Sinclair as the hero, the author Bob Grant is
contributing to the problem.
HTML http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7365/full/nature10296.html
HTML http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19843076
HTML http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20061378
HTML http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21428798
HTML http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/03/12/sirtis_gets_shut_down_in_cambridge.php
HTML http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/01/12/the_sirtris_compounds_worthless_really.php
HTML http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/11/05/what_exactly_does_resveratrol_do.php
[/quote]
HTML http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/42799/title/Follow-the-Funding/
As you can see, GREED is destroying the scientific method along
with the environment. [img width=100
height=080]
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[quote]
"The core responsibility assigned to governments in democracies
is the public welfare, protecting the human birthright to basic
needs: clean air, water, land, and a place to live, under
equitable rules of access to all common property resources.
It is astonishing to discover that major political efforts in
democracies can be turned to undermining the core purpose of
government, destroying the factual basis for fair and effective
protection of essential common property resources of all to feed
the financial interests of a few. These efforts, limiting
scientific research on environment, denying the validity of
settled facts and natural laws, are a shameful dance, far below
acceptable or reputable political behavior.
It can be treated not as a reasoned alternative, but scorned for
what it is – simple thievery." —George M. Woodwell, Woods Hole
Research Center founder[/quote]
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