An Open Letter to the National Institutes of Health: 54% of American Children Suffer from Chronic Health Problems .
By John Stone
An Open Letter to the National Institutes of Health (Dr Marina Volkov answering on behalf of Director Francis Collins): 54% of American Children Suffer from Chronic Health Problems .
Dear Dr Volkov,
I acknowledge receipt of your e-letter of June 20 in response to my letter to Dr Collins (‘An Open Letter to National Institutes of Health's Dr Francis Collins: 54% of American Children Suffer from Chronic Health Problems, 1 in 6 has a developmental disorder’ reproduced below). I have to admit that I am less disappointed that Dr Collins has not answered in person than that you have insultingly not bothered to address any of the issues I raised in my letter, contenting yourself with a recital of NIH expenditure on autism research, some of which may be directed to looking at environmental causes.
On reflection, it strikes me that you may not be remotely competent to answer, but this does not reflect well on the NIH in any case. With the nation’s health in meltdown the refusal to address the fundamental problems that Dr Collins himself first raised to Congress 5 years ago is astonishing. Let me give a single example – nothing to do with autism - from Dr Collins’s NIH budget request for 2012 which indicates the inadequacy of the position (HERE) .
Dr Collins writes:
"We face a similar economic threat from diabetes. If current trends continue, by 2050 as many as one in three U.S. adults will be diagnosed with diabetes. Total costs of diabetes, including medical care, disability, and premature death, reached an estimated $174 billion in the United States in 2007...According to analysis from the UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform & Modernization, more than 50 percent of Americans could have diabetes or pre-diabetes by 2020...Furthermore, the center’s analysis predicts diabetes and pre-diabetes will account for an estimated 10 percent of total health care spending by the end of this decade, at an annual cost of almost $500 billion.
"But I can offer some hope. NIH spearheaded a landmark clinical trial on type 2 diabetes prevention that showed that people at high-risk for diabetes can dramatically reduce their risk of developing type 2 diabetes through modest exercise and dietary changes that achieve modest weight loss. Called the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), the clinical trial included 3,234 adults at high risk for developing type 2 diabetes, including those with a family history of diabetes, as well as other risk factors. One-third of these individuals participated in a lifestyle program that included exercise training and dietary change implemented under the guidance of lifestyle coaches. The DPP research team found that this approach lowered risk of diabetes by 58%..."
The UnitedHealth Centre report (HERE) projects 15m US citizens with diabetes by 2020 (>5%) and 52% with diabetes or pre-diabetes, but Dr Collins tells us we can only perhaps avert 58% of this by identifiable life-style changes, leaving some unidentified underlying cause of the phenomenon and still more than 1 in 5 Americans with pre-diabetes or diabetes by 2020, according to these figures.
In this regard it is not so unreasonable to ask not what we can do to treat these problems, but a very much more fundamental question of what is causing them in the first place. In a recent study the cost of autism in the UK was calculated at £28b a year (with an undoubted over-projection in the adult population) but leaving a net cost of £50k ($80k) a head (including issues like loss of employment and productivity). If you have just 3m Americans with autism you have an annual cost of $240b on these figures. Frankly, this is unsustainable. 5 years ago Dr Collins stated that the rise of autism was real and could not be genetic, so we have to ask why the present indifference to our concerns?
With regard to the substance of your letter, it has been pointed out to me that (disgracefully) the CHARGE project which you described in your 3rd paragraph will shut next month, funding having been withdrawn by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences and the Environmental Protection Agency, as will the Center for Child Environmental Health, University of California, Davis. Katie Wright has pointed out to me $13m spent on completely useless projects to do with MRI scans and face recognition (Autism Centers of Excellence). But all this money is chicken-feed beside the scope of the catastrophe facing us – and the pharmaceutical is not going to fix this.
Having said which, what I actually believe is that already there is almost enough science published to pinpoint the environmental triggers and processes of autism, it is just being arrogantly sidelined.
Please, what are you going to do? Presently, the ship is going down while the captain salutes the flag.
John Stone
An Open Letter to National Institutes of Health's Dr. Francis Collins: 54% of American Children Suffer from Chronic Health Problems
Dear Dr Collins,
I am writing to you about the health catastrophe currently engulfing US children, but not only US children. Just five years ago you gave testimony to Congress as director of the Human Genome Research Institute (HERE ):
‘But genes alone do not tell the whole story. Recent increases in chronic diseases like diabetes, childhood asthma, obesity or autism cannot be due to major shifts in the human gene pool as those changes take much more time to occur. They must be due to changes in the environment, including diet and physical activity, which may produce disease in genetically predisposed persons. Therefore, GEI [Genes and Environment Initiative] will also invest in innovative new technologies/sensors to measure environmental toxins, dietary intake and physical activity, and using new tools of genomics, proteomics, and understanding metabolism rates to determine an individual's biological response to those influences.’
The calamity that we face today is that in 5 years barely a single child has been saved from environmental harm by any government initiative, and new studies report that no less than 54% of US children suffer from the chronic diseases (HERE ) and from the CDC itself that 1 in 6 has a developmental disability (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/05/19/peds.2010-2989.abstract ), all of which you indicated all that time ago are due to environmental changes. These new studies come in the same week as one which shows that in an investigation of pregnant Canadian women 93% tested positive for the presence a GM insecticide Cry1Ab (HERE ). It comes as the pharmaceutical industry and its scientists plot to further exploit vaccination mandates and their newly established prosecution immunity ever more widely (HERE ), with US children already expected to receive over one hundred vaccines in combination by the time they become adult (HERE ) – and without any studies which investigate their cumulative impact on a child’s immune system (HERE ), even if they were individually adequately tested (which they are not HERE ). I do not know when it was scientifically established that it was safe to modify a child’s immune system in this way, even before we consider all the adjuvants and excipients that are a concomitant exposure of the programme: substances which enter a child’s body through their muscles and blood stream, and not through their digestive tract. It comes with the Food and Drug Administration displaying ever greater pusillanimity over the toxic substances to which adults and children are daily exposed.
Bearing in mind that in 2006 you held a brief for gene research I cannot help thinking that your request to Congress for funding was nevertheless putting the cart before the horse. The real imperative can only be to stop the great industrial experiment on our children by reducing and eliminating toxic exposures whether through food or pharmaceuticals. Investigating which random gene combinations might indicate greater susceptibility to those toxic harms will be barely productive in the face of what is becoming a slow but inexorable genocide of children, many of whom will not outlive their parents, not have children of their own, and be further prey to the pharmaceutical industry (HERE), at the same time as placing an ever more impossible social, medical and financial burden on the shrinking pool of the fit and able.
In 2006 you at least spoke plain about the general causes of the chronic sickness phenomenon. The new reports are far more evasive, and years have been wasted. Immense resources and effort have been put by government agencies and industrial lobby groups into denouncing and abusing people who are simply stating the obvious: that it cannot go on any longer. It is long passed time that the public dance of lies, misinformation and evasion came to an end. I believe you know truth and it is time to speak out so that your nation and the world finally hears.
John Stone
UK Editor, Age of Autism
Response from Marina Volkov, Acting Director, Office of Science Policy, Planning and Communications, National Institute of Mental Health, June 20, 2011 (Subject: Your recent email to Dr Collins)
Dear Mr. Stone:
Thank you for your May 24 e-mail to Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Collins’ office asked that the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) respond to your inquiry. We would like to address your concerns regarding the role of genetics research in addressing autism, and the interplay between NIH’s genetics research programs and environmental research programs. There has been considerable research and progress related to autism in the last several years, particularly in the last two years, thanks to funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). In addition, your concerns are echoed and reflected in the 2011 strategic plan of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), which identifies priorities for autism research across the Federal Government and provides a basis for partnerships between Federal agencies and private organizations to further biomedical and services research efforts.
NIH is dedicated to addressing the growing public health challenge that autism spectrum disorders (ASD) present. In FY 2010, NIH invested $160 million from its annual appropriation in research on autism and another $58 million in ARRA funding. A total of $122 million in ARRA funding was devoted to ASD research from FY 2009 through FY 2010. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) recently highlighted these efforts on their ARRA website (http://www.hhs.gov/recovery/programs/autismandrecovery.html). Funded projects address a broad range of topics, including diagnosis; disparities; potential risk factors, such as infection during pregnancy and the impact of immune response on fetal development; behavioral and potentially pharmacological interventions for improving social interactions; and, job skill development for transition-age youth. In addition, NIH has issued several funding opportunity announcements to encourage research designed to elucidate the causes, epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, and optimal means of service delivery related to ASD. Thus, while NIH continues to support groundbreaking research on genetic risk factors for autism, that represents only a portion of the agency’s ongoing commitment to autism research.
The 2011 IACC Strategic Plan for ASD Research also addresses some of the concerns you mentioned in your e-mail. Chapter 3 of the Strategic Plan, titled “What Caused This to Happen and Can It Be Prevented?,” addresses research related to the possible causes of autism. This chapter contains several research objectives on environmental factors, gene-environment research, and longitudinal epidemiologic studies. Moreover, NIH continues to support a range of studies focused on environmental factors. For example, in 2003, researchers jointly funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched CHARGE (Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and Environment), a large case-control investigation of underlying environmental and genetic causes for autism and triggers of regression. The CHARGE study has enrolled over 1200 children to date and is addressing a wide spectrum of chemical and biologic exposures, susceptibility factors, and their interactions. Environmental risk factors under investigation include pesticides, flame retardants, chemicals in plastics, mercury and air pollutants.
Finally, NINDS continues to support an epidemiological study in a large Norwegian cohort of mothers and their infants to explore how multiple genetic, environmental, and clinical history factors might contribute to the development of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
In a section of Chapter 3 focused on the new gap areas that have arisen, the 2011 Plan highlights the need for greater collaboration between genetic and environmental science investigators. That is, the IACC recognizes that studies collecting genetic information should include data on environmental exposures and vice versa; that large data sets are needed to allow mapping of detailed genetic, environment, and phenotypic information, including co-occurring medical conditions, inflammatory markers, pattern of onset, developmental course, and family history—echoing the concerns you have raised.
NIH is constantly monitoring the latest science, including developments in the areas you mentioned, and regularly updates its funding priorities to reflect new breakthroughs and research needs, to help people autism and their families.
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts and concerns.
Sincerely,
Marina Volkov, Ph.D.
Acting Director
Office of Science Policy, Planning and Communications
National Institute of Mental Health
National Institutes of Health
humanati;
Also the head line news it talking about Roundup a weed killer. I suppose the stuff that causes the plant poison to be absorbed through the plant could be potentially cancer causing, but I can't do without.
It was not always so, that I depended upon it. I never heard of the stuff or knew about the stuff when I was raising my vaccine injuried children. we only started using it about 10 years ago when my kids were teenagers.
I have not had to weed eat or mow miles of fence line since!
So I for sure will not die of a heart attack or heat exhaustion which I at one time was pretty sure was the way I was going to go.
Posted by: Benedetta | June 25, 2011 at 09:10 PM
Asthma, Eczema, Alzheimer's, Cancer, are all being linked to toxicity, vaccine's, malnutrition & artificial/GMO food additives, plastic food & drinks packaging electromagnetic 'smog' as in mobile phones & wi-fi, & water fluoridation...
Anyone else seeing a pattern here?
Know your enemy or you are their fool.
“Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible.”
“Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton.”
- Bertrand Russell, “The Impact of Science on Society”, 1953, pg 49-50
President Obama’s top science and technology advisor John P. Holdren co-authored a 1977 book in which he advocated the formation of a “planetary regime” that would use a “global police force” to enforce totalitarian measures of population control, including forced abortions, mass sterilization programs conducted via the food and water supply, as well as mandatory bodily implants that would prevent couples from having children.
Ecoscience discusses a number of ways in which the global population could be reduced to combat what the authors see as mankind’s greatest threat – overpopulation. In each case, the proposals are couched in sober academic rhetoric, but the horrifying foundation of what Holdren and his co-authors are advocating is clear. These proposals include;
- Forcibly and unknowingly sterilizing the entire population by adding infertility drugs to the nation’s water and food supply.
- Legalizing “compulsory abortions,” ie forced abortions carried out against the will of the pregnant women, as is common place in Communist China where women who have already had one child and refuse to abort the second are kidnapped off the street by the authorities before a procedure is carried out to forcibly abort the baby.
- Babies who are born out of wedlock or to teenage mothers to be forcibly taken away from their mother by the government and put up for adoption. Another proposed measure would force single mothers to demonstrate to the government that they can care for the child, effectively introducing licensing to have children.
- Implementing a system of “involuntary birth control,” where both men and women would be mandated to have an infertility device implanted into their body at puberty and only have it removed temporarily if they received permission from the government to have a baby.
- Permanently sterilizing people who the authorities deem have already had too many children or who have contributed to “general social deterioration”.
- Formally passing a law that criminalizes having more than two children, similar to the one child policy in Communist China.
- This would all be overseen by a transnational and centralized “planetary regime” that would utilize a “global police force” to enforce the measures outlined above. The “planetary regime” would also have the power to determine population levels for every country in the world.
Page 787-8: Mass sterilization of humans though drugs in the water supply is OK as long as it doesn’t harm livestock
“Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems.
No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.”
Page 942-3: A “Planetary Regime” should control the global economy and dictate by force the number of children allowed to be born
Toward a Planetary Regime
“Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment.
Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist.
Thus the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans.
The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market.”
“The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.”
Now have a think about how mercury induced autism affects the individual in terms of their ability to form relationships & procreate...
I realise this is almost too horrific to contemplate for most ordinary, loving people, but what I am trying to demonstrate is that many people HAVE contemplated it & in my opinion, are enacting it ON OUR CHILDREN.
Vaccines are just one way they are imposing this agenda.
New Study Finds Direct Link Between Vaccines & Infant Mortality.
http://www.infowars.com/new-study-finds-direct-link-between-vaccines-and-infant-mortality/
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars
Thursday, June 23, 2011
A shocking new study published in a prestigious medical journal has found a direct statistical link between higher vaccine doses and infant mortality rates in the developed world, suggesting that the increasing number of inoculations being forced upon children by medical authorities, particularly in the United States which administers the highest number of vaccines and also has the highest number of infant deaths, is in fact having a detrimental impact on health.
Despite the fact that the United States administers the highest number of vaccine doses to children in the entire developed world, 26 before infants reach the age of one, its infant mortality rate is higher than 33 other nations, all of which administer less vaccines. The study clearly illustrates the fact that developed countries which administer less vaccines have lower infant mortality rates, suggesting a direct statistical link between vaccination side-effects and infant deaths.
For example, the two developed countries that require children be immunized with the least amount of vaccines, Japan and Sweden, also top the table for the lowest infant mortality rates.
Of the top ten developed countries with the lowest infant mortality rates, seven of the ten also appear in the top ten table of countries that administer the least vaccines.
The correlation between higher numbers of vaccines and infant mortality figures takes on an altogether more sinister context when we consider the fact that during the February 2010 TED conference, Bill Gates, an enthusiastic proponent of vaccination programs, openly stated that vaccines should be used to lower global population in the pursuit of reducing CO2 emissions. (Man made global warming is a myth & another weapon being used to inflict harm!)
Gates is an avowed eugenicist who is committed to drastically reducing the world’s population in the name of combating global warming.
This is alarming given the fact that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds the production and distribution of vaccines to the third world.
Decrying the fact that the global population was heading towards 9 billion, Gates said, “If we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 per cent.”
Posted by: humanati | June 25, 2011 at 07:21 PM
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/simply-raw-reversing-diabetes-in-30-days/
Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days is an independent documentary film that chronicles six Americans with diabetes who switch to a diet consisting entirely of vegan, organic, uncooked food in order to reverse disease without pharmaceutical medication.
The six are challenged to give up meat, dairy, sugar, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, soda, junk food, fast food, processed food, packaged food, and even cooked food for 30 days.
The film follows each participant’s remarkable journey and captures the medical, physical, and emotional transformations brought on by this radical diet and lifestyle change.
We witness moments of struggle, support, and hope as what is revealed, with startling clarity, is that diet can reverse disease and change lives.
The film highlights each of the six before they begin the program and we first meet them in their home environment with their families.
Each participant speaks candidly about their struggle to manage their diabetes and how it has affected every aspect of their life, from work to home to their relationships.
Heidi, watch this film & copy it for your friends.
I was a nurse for 20 years & gave countless insulin injections.
A year ago, I saw this film.
Imagine the possibilities in helping the body heal as part of heavy metal detox & biomedical interventions...
Posted by: humanati | June 25, 2011 at 07:19 PM
I find the comparison to diabetes interesting especially when one considers the use of neonatally-injected MSG to create obese lab rats for use in the study of diabetes. Should it be any surprise that a generation of children raised on formula containing MSG and given vaccines containing MSG/glutamic acid suddenly show signs of increases in obesity and childhood diabetes? Should we be shocked that cancer is the #2 cause of death in children ages 5-14, when they're being injected with carcinogenic formaldehyde? Is the rise in asthma any great surprise, when Canadian Occupational Health and Safety lists the childhood vaccine ingredients glutaraldehyde, formalin and formaldehyde as triggers for occupational asthma in health care workers, nurses and lab workers? Would dangerous food allergies be soaring if food ingredients weren't used in vaccines and the carrier solutions for their adjuvants? How much neurotoxic aluminum is that polysorbate-80 carrying across the blood-brain barrier? Has anyone actually looked at the epigenetic effects of injected HERV and PCV viral contaminants? The vaccine safety issue goes so far beyond thimerosal, MMR and autism, and health authorities seem willfully blinkered to the big picture. They just can't or won't see the forest (chronic health issues) for the trees (vaccine preventable diseases). The scientific carelessness our children have been subjected to is a moral outrage! Anyone who refuses to admit so is acting in bad faith.
Posted by: Garbo | June 25, 2011 at 06:23 PM
If 54% of kids with chronic health problems doesn't qualify as a national emergency, I don't think there's much hope. Unless the magic number is perhaps 70%. but I don't think so.
Posted by: Kristina | June 25, 2011 at 01:39 AM
"Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible." - Bertrand Russell, “The Impact of Science on Society”, 1953, pg 49-50
Posted by: humanati | June 24, 2011 at 10:29 PM
re: "it has been pointed out to me that (disgracefully) the CHARGE project... will shut next month, funding having been withdrawn by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences and the Environmental Protection Agency, as will the Center for Child Environmental Health, University of California, Davis."
What?!?!? The CHARGE project is defunded and ending?!?! What is the rationale for that? Were they on the verge of finding a vaccine/autism correlation?!?
Posted by: Lilly | June 24, 2011 at 10:25 PM
In Lies We Trust by Dr Len Horowitz
http://youtu.be/pgfxcuWq4oA
Posted by: humanati | June 24, 2011 at 10:18 PM
My take on this may seem extreme to some people, but I do not think the now apparent onslaught on our health, the lack of government & corporate action to identify the causes & develop treatments is incompetence or an accident.
Especially when, at the same time, they spend massive amounts of time & money attacking, smearing, burying or just ignoring the mass of evidence that supports the detrimental health effects of fluoride in water, GM foods, vaccines, Bisphenol A in plastics, aspartame, wi-fi, chemtrails, GM E. Coli, & protecting themselves from prosecution & attempting to accelerate our exposure to all of these poisons...
Then you have the attempts to remove access to, or outlaw nutrients, vitamins, supplements & wholefoods which they pursue vigorously through Codex Alimentarius & the UN & surpressing access to alternative cancer therapies, biomedical treatments for autism, energy medicine... & this list is incomplete!?
Endgame by Alex jones
http://youtu.be/PSd09kNU7Vc (15 minute clip)
Mercury, Autism & the Global vaccine Agenda by Dr David Ayoub
http://youtu.be/q9UKec6durQ
The Elite's Plan for Global Depopulation
Webster Tarpley
http://youtu.be/v-I1Om-0Zj0
The Idiot Cycle
http://youtu.be/CcwCK4AWKdM
World Depopulation Agenda & the Environment Movement.
http://youtu.be/VSm1mDWinFQ
http://youtu.be/PSd09kNU7Vc
Agenda 21 For Dummies
http://youtu.be/TzEEgtOFFlM
Fluoride, Aspartame & Agenda 21
http://youtu.be/Sd_Mg0xCvcM
"When the conspirators get ready to take over the United States they will use fluoridated water and vaccines to change people's attitudes and loyalties and make them docile, apathetic, unconcerned and groggy. According to their own writings and the means they have already confessedly employed, the conspirators have deliberately planned and developed methods to mentally deteriorate, morally debase, and completely enslave the masses. They will prepare vaccines containing drugs that will completely change people. Secret Communist plans for conquering America were adopted in 1914 and published in 1953. These plans called for compulsory vaccination with vaccinescontaining change agent drugs. They also plan on using disease germs, fluoridation and vaccinations to weaken the people and reduce the population."
The Impact of Science on Society, London 1952, by Bertrand Russell
Posted by: humanati | June 24, 2011 at 10:13 PM
Believe me, they don't care. I dealt with the NIH from 1995 to 2001 and communicated with them personally in Maryland. Millions of dollars on stupid research in the past through the present into the future. The best a parent can do is realize when their child becomes an adult that they will need to be placed in a residential center somewhere. One parent I know couldn't handle her daughter so she dropped her daughter at a residential center run by the state in NJ and left. They had to take her daughter. We went through a lawyer who we had to pay $5,000.00 to get our son in an out of state residential center. The state and Federal government now have to pay for our son and others like him. Some kids as young as 5 years old. That is why the states and Federal government are going broke.
But so what!!!
Nobody cares except the families and kids involved. The medical community doesn't care. The school system doesn't care. The governments don't care. So life goes on and the taxpayer will get stuck with the tab.
So what!!!
Nothing has changed and nothing will change. Parents and families can jump up and down but in the end no one cares other than them. The state and Federal government rather just spend money taking care of these kids over their lifetimes in residential centers than to help them get better and become productive members of society. What do you expect from a world and society where everything is disposable?
Am I cynical? You bet I am.
I have seen what happens to my son from birth to adulthood and I have met other families in the same boat I am in. We are all out there on our own with no support or help until the time comes for a residential center. A few kids will be lucky to be cured, the rest (most of the population) wind up in residential centers.
Posted by: Ray Gallup | June 24, 2011 at 10:02 PM
Australia,
The same 'form letters' are standard practice from our politicians too, your concerns are never properly addressed.
Our governments merely acknowledgment your letter with a letter! These letters have no substance!
In the meantime our children's health is deteriorating and this puts added pressure on our public health system to deal with the increasing numbers being rushed to hospital.
"A bit of a vicious circle" Big Pharma pushing doctors to administer drugs/vaccines, children and adults getting sicker and sicker then end up visiting the doctors more and more.....!
Elizabeth-AussieMum
Posted by: AussieMum | June 24, 2011 at 10:01 PM
John, thank you for this effort, and congratulations on at least getting a response. In November 2002 I sent an open letter to President Bush with my educational credentials in biochemistry and neuroscience, and expressing my interest in participating in a Whitehouse Conference on Autism.
A year later I wrote to every member of the newly formed IACC, and traveled to DC with the promise of being able to make an oral presentation of 3 to 5 minutes. By the time I was allowed to speak, I had about half a minute when everyone was getting up and putting on their coats.
I went to the 2nd annual IMFAR in 2002, and one of the people I was with said, "They don't want to find the cause of autism. Autism is their bread and butter!"
How many families have found themselves having to deal with autism since 2002 or 2003? It makes me feel sick at heart. I am sick of form letters in response to my letters to representatives and senators. We need to find a way to demand that families be included in discussions with research funders, and keep insisting that irrelevant projects not be supported.
Posted by: Eileen Nicole Simon | June 24, 2011 at 07:29 PM
Heidi
I am sure that one important mechanism in all of this is that people will do what is expected of them so that they cannot be responsible if it still goes wrong. And it is always scary going against the professionals. What, however, we find is that professional can't be seen for dust. There is no equity in this.
John
Posted by: John Stone | June 24, 2011 at 06:35 PM
I have several friends with diabetes. The care they get is shocking. They get all kinds of insurance paid and free care for stuff that only extends their life. They are not getting better; they are all getting worse. They get gobs of medicine, dialysis, etc., but they continue to get worse. One went on the Internet, looked up how to cure her diabetes, and took herbs and changed her diet and now no longer has diabetes. The rest are slowly dying with kidney failure, vision problems, heart disease, etc. When I tell them there is more that can be done for them, they tell me that they are doing what their doc says and he knows best. Yikes! Did I mention that most are on disability. I say if your doctor is not making you well, get a new doctor!!!!
Posted by: Heidi N | June 24, 2011 at 06:11 PM
Jenny
Yes, a close relative was pestered in a Post Office queue last year to take a cholesterol test by NHS reps: I guess its anthoer racket.
John
Posted by: John Stone | June 24, 2011 at 02:44 PM
I have two neighbors on either side of me that are diabetic.
They got this way as young adults.
They are not fat, in fact they are thin!
They are very health concious.
They are very educated people.
They have good jobs and good insurance.
No one in their family ever had diabeties.
I am sure, so very sure, that we all have been tricked and tricked for a very long time; We have all been given a vaccines, walk out of the office thinking all is fine. A few months to a few years go by as a very slow, but progressive autoimmune diseases from diabeties to hypothyrodism (acquired mitrochrondrial cytopathy)takes place.
Life changes that Collins talked about would work. The main life change is never ever get a tetanus shot or hep B shot, or flu shot.
Posted by: Benedetta | June 24, 2011 at 01:47 PM
John -re statins
Professor Nicholas Wald recently went on BBC breakfast TV in the UK, extolling the vitues of statins for all the over 50's. He had that manic zeal we are all only too familiar with and dispensed dodgy statistics like factoids!! The female presenter attempted to argue against this 'mass medication' but was patronised and dismissed.
All of these pro pharma persons claim to save both lives and the NHS billions. In fact this initiative, if implemented would COST the NHS billions!!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1558663/All-men-over-50-should-take-statins.html
Posted by: Jenny Allan | June 24, 2011 at 01:28 PM
I guess there is also the issue of how much pre-diabetes is itself an industry construct. For the pharmaceutical industry less illness is not good news.
Posted by: John Stone | June 24, 2011 at 11:30 AM
Jack
Of course, it is not clear that they are hoping that the problem will go away. One of the issues I highlighted in my original letter, which they have chosen not address is the predatory stance adopted by Autism Speaks and "pre-competitive pharmaceutical consortium" to the entire US population, scouring them for hints autism to provide them with their newly developed medications.
http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/05/1-in-38-autism-speaks-new-normal-is-the-biggest-business-bonanza-ever.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsW8Wf9kpWU
It has to be said that though Collins praises the contribution of the industry to the US economy in terms of employment and exports it pales into insignificance compared to the cost of the illnesses they only ocasionally address. He mentions for instance the cholesterol loweing drugs which do nothing to extend life expectancy and have all sorts of other harms:
http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowFreePage&ArtikelNr=000235714&Ausgabe=0&ProduktNr=249214&filefp=000235714fp.pdf
Malcolm Kendrick, author of 'The great Cholesterol Con' wrote to BMJ:
"The true benefit of statins is actually much less than Des Spence outlines. This is mainly because the use of the term NNT is inappropriate, as the 'T' suggests treatment/cure. Statins do not treat/cure death, they only delay it.
"For how long is that death delayed? There is not enough room in a rapid response to do the maths. However, if you model the Kaplan Meier survival curves, it is considerably less than one year. However, for the sake of arguement, let us assume that you do gain one entire extra year of life for every 700 years of taking a statin. Then, clearly, if you treat for 700 years you will create one added life year.
"Using this (over-optimistic) figure this means that if you treated someone for 30 years you can expect to provide them with 30/700 added years of life. This is 15.64 days, or, a shade over two weeks.
"In short, if a fifty year old man asked you how much longer he could expect to live if he took a statin for thiry years you can inform him 'just over two weeks - max.'"
http://www.bmj.com/content/336/7637/174.5.extract
To which no response has ever been made. I wonder how many billions of dollars are currently spent on statins in the US (apparently a triumph of medical intervention)?
Posted by: John Stone | June 24, 2011 at 11:21 AM
Volkov, "of the National Institute of Mental Health" just about says it all John. ASDs are not mental health problems, they are physical health problems that generate sensory and emotional health problems, clearly Collins through Volkov has extraordinarily little to say on this. Perhaps the propping up of "mental health" as a (pseudo)-science by big pharma has much to do with this if only because their default position on ASDs cannot be right, it has to be wrong by the nature of the paradigm under which they function within that (pseudo)-science.
As was seen with GWS and ME/CFS in the UK one has "mental health" faculties, at eg. Kings College London, generating pseudo-scientific rejections of the physical bases for GWS and ME/CFS that are clearly at odds with the realities facing sufferers, and the science such as the discovery of XMRV and MLS viral DNA in sufferers of ME/CFS that suggests laboratory (not wild) viral infectious processes in these sufferers thereby lending support to the high probablity of there being a vaccine origin in much ME/CFS.
The same ruse is being carried out in the US obviously, using "mental health" as a pigeon hole for any potentially pharma-created devastating iatrogenic process in large populations hoping the problem will go away - unfortunately the problem is increasing exponetially whether ASDs, or ME/CFS, or cancers, or diabetes and the answers have long been presented - multifarius vaccines not least Hib and childhood diabetes.
It goes without saying that so long as America (the UK and others) subjugates itself to "mental health" professionals whose professional practices are driven purely by pharmaceutical industry support, Americans will continue to see a dramatic unrelenting decline in health of their once famously healthy children.
Posted by: Jack Hep | June 24, 2011 at 09:43 AM
GH
Well, Collins's office handed it to Marina Volkov PhD, who is perhaps just a bureaucrat and didn't have clue what to say - obviously would not be authorised to extend discussion in any way.
Posted by: John Stone | June 24, 2011 at 08:56 AM
I wonder what those samep people claim behind closed doors.
Posted by: GH | June 24, 2011 at 08:20 AM