The American Revolution and Health Tyranny
Note: We first ran this post on 7/4/14. It's as relevant as ever, perhaps more, as SB277 has taken effect in California, removing almost all vaccine exemptions and punishing families. Why is it a country founded on freedom has so freely relinquished medical rights from coast to coast?
By John Stone
This article is written for HealthChoice.org
I have always been drawn to United States history so I hope it will not be taken amiss if I offer an Independence Day perspective of a British citizen: we are, of course, all heirs of that revolution one way or another across the globe: more so today than ever perhaps. Immediately speaking there are two striking facets (I just had to correct the typographic error “strifing”): the incredible historic dynamism of the nation created by this event but also the great amount of thought that the founding fathers went into trying to prevent the re-emergence of the tyranny which they had just escaped. Perhaps never has so much thought gone into avoiding “oppressive government” even if many of the leading participants in the new republic still regarded it as their right to own slaves.
Nearly two and a half centuries on it is possible to see that powerful interests can buy their way into every aspect of a nation’s life defying almost every measure that was ever laid out against oppressive government. Just over half a century ago, as he left office, President Eisenhower famously warned about the military industrial complex and the domination of intellectual enquiry by commercial interest:
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity...
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific/ technological elite.
As a commentary on this whistleblowing scientist David L Lewis recently bluntly wrote in the “prologue” to his book Science for Sale: How the US govern uses powerful corporations and leading universities to support government policies, silence top scientists, jeopardize our health, and protect corporate profits:
During my thirty-plus years as a research microbiologist in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) and the University of Georgia, I experienced the far-reaching influence of corrupt special interests firsthand. As this book will describe, my dealings with civil servants, corporate manager, elected officials, and other scientists expose the ease – and disturbing regularity – with which a small group , motivated by profit or personal advancement can completely hijack important areas of research science at even our most trusted institutions.
In truth the problem of the takeover of government agencies was not new: half a century before Eisenhower’s address Woodrow Wilson in presidential election speeches was warning:
“If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don’t you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now? Don’t you see that they must capture the government, in order not to be restrained too much by it? Must capture the government? They have already captured it. Are you going to invite those inside to stay? They don’t have to get there. They are there.”
But at least President Wilson could still talk about “big business men”. Coupled with the issue of the invasion of institutions and government by commercial/industrial interest is the lack – notably acute in the field of vaccines - of accountability and liability. In a valuable article of January 1999 veteran economist JK Galbraith highlighted the twin problems of the influence of powerful lobbies in government and the lack of liability for corporate fraud or failure, an insight which apart from anything else foreshadowed the banking collapse of 2008:
“The fraud also conceals a major change in the role of money in the modern economy. Money, we once agreed, gave the owner, the capitalist, the controlling power in the enterprise. So it still does in small businesses. But in all large firms the decisive power now lies with a bureaucracy that controls, but does not own, the requisite capital. This bureaucracy is what the business schools teach their students to navigate, and it is where their graduates go. But bureaucratic motivation and power are outside the central subject of economics. We have corporate management, but we do not study its internal dynamics or explain why certain behaviors are rewarded with money and power. These omissions are another manifestation of fraud. Perhaps it is not entirely innocent. It evades the often unpleasant facts of bureaucratic structure, internal competition, personal advancement, and much else…”
The lack of accountability by “business bureaucrats” is compounded by their capture of the government bureaucracy:
“A more comprehensive fraud dominates scholarly economic and political thought. That is the presumption of a market economy separate from the state. Most economists concede a stabilizing role to the state, even those who urgently seek an escape from reality by assigning a masterful and benign role to Alan Greenspan and the central bank. And all but the most doctrinaire accept the need for regulation and legal restraint by the state. But few economists take note of the cooptation by private enterprise of what are commonly deemed to be functions of the state. This is hidden by the everyday reference to the public and private sectors, one of our clearest examples of innocent fraud.”
If we, for example, consider the pharmaceutical companies today, even when companies become liable for huge fines no individual ever seems to carry the can even to point of losing their job, let alone facing criminal charges: it is simply at best a calculated risk for shareholders. With vaccines since 1986 and Vaccine Injury Act the problem has become even worse since corporations themselves face no effective liability and enjoy a substantially captive and ever growing mandated market for their products, with zero financial incentive to ensure their safety.
There are further troubling aspects to this: generally speaking the government bureaucracy and the medical profession are even less frank about the risks of the products than the manufacturers: they enjoy a revolving door relationship with the manufacturers, notably when Centers for Disease Control director Julie Gerberding left her post to become head of Merck’s vaccine division in the space of less than a year . The CDC is itself affiliated to the pharmaceutical manufacturers through non-profit organizations such as the CDC Foundation and Task Force for Global Health . The debate about autism and vaccine apart from anything else may well have been influenced by the fact that the most prominent autism charity, Autism Speaks, was endowed at its inception by CDC Foundation board member emeritus and billionaire Bernie Marcus to the tune of $25m. Marcus, founder of DIY empire Home Depot, also stated in an interview in 2006 :
The worst thing I could imagine is to be the CEO of a pharmaceutical company today. I can’t think of an industry that has done more to alleviate suffering and improve the human condition than pharmaceuticals. Yet the industry is under a withering assault from plaintiffs’ lawyers and is depicted by some in the media as a pariah. I don’t think that Jonas Salk could have developed the polio vaccine in today’s legal environment.
This was a remarkable claim when pharmaceutical domination of the media was at its financial peak (see below) and effective litigation over vaccine damage had not been possible for 20 years.
The allegedly independent Institute of Medicine Review of 2004 of vaccine safety only slightly masked a complex of conflicted and corrupt relationships. Not only did it turn out that the CDC had instructed the IOM not to find anything , the IOM commissioned flawed and fraudulent studies in themselves controlled by the CDC by various means, notoriously studies co-ordinated by Danish indicted financial fraudster Poul Thorsen . None of these studies has ever been retracted, including a British study which made blatantly false claims about mercury exposure in the developing world in order to endorse World Health Organization vaccine schedule. They were recently cited again without irony before Congress by Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee chairman Thomas Insel, not only as if they were in any way valid but as if they were new science .
On top of this we need to consider the initiative of the Food and Drugs Administration under President Clinton in 1997 to substantially deregulate 'direct to the consumer' pharmaceutical advertising enabling the industry at a stroke to buy out the media. According to one source pharmaceutical advertising rose from $700m in 1996 to $5.41b in 2006 . This may have tailed off to about $4.5b in 2008-10 but the source of revenue would have been ever more critical to an ailing industry. The result of a government agency initiative – never even apparently discussed at a democratic level – was to lead either the exclusion of dissenting voices or organized hate campaigns against anyone who dares speak out of turn notably Andrew Wakefield , Jenny McCarthy and Katie Couric .
Meanwhile, the industry can buy or isolate virtually every politician out of the petty cash.
Happy Independence Day everybody, Happy American Revolution!
Linda1,
"What do we pay doctors for?.....They are responsible to tell us how to achieve and maintain health. If they don't do that - if their excuse is that we won't listen - that's nonsense"
Good in theory; poor in practice!
Suppose e.g. one of your parents died from cancer, another from Alzheimers, and a sibling from Chronic Kidney Disease. On your last physical, the biomarkers showed increased risk for each of these three diseases. You want to know what you should do to prevent these diseases and change the status of the biomarkers. What would your physician have to do to 'tell you how to achieve and maintain health'?
As I emphasized in my eBook, the first step would be to identify and eliminate the main foundational contributing factors to disease, preferably before, but at a minimum in parallel to, instituting 'treatments' for these diseases. For the three diseases above, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of potential contributing factors, as I delineated in my eBook. So, for step 1, your physician would have to identify at least the major contributing factors that apply to you. That means you would have to check off a list of twenty-thirty pages of potential contributing factors that apply to you, not the handful of (mainly) non-foundational contributing factors that are required on today's medical check lists.
Many of them would have to be defined in elaborate detail. How many people would know whether they are exposed to advanced glycation end products, or organic solvents, or biosludge, or organophosphate pesticides, or.....? So, the twenty pages may end up being 100 pages, or more, if sufficient explanatory material is provided. How would you e.g. even know whether you are being exposed to excessive non-ionizing radiation? How many people carry EMF meters with them at all times to measure exposure?
The point here is even identifying potential contributing factors, and whether you have excessive exposure to them, is a major time-consuming task. What doctor is interested in doing that, what insurance company will pay the full costs of such a time-consuming analysis, and, in reality, what patient is interested in spending the time?
Once these potential contributing factors are identified, then the doctor and patient would have to develop a plan to eliminate exposure to ALL the major potential contributing factors on the list. Even if the doctors were willing to expend the time and effort to develop such a plan, and the insurance companies were willing to pay for it, how many patients would be willing to implement and follow it? I'll save you the time: essentially none!
The doctors understand this quite well. If they were to propose a REAL plan that would minimize your risk of developing these major chronic diseases, without drugs/radiation/surgery, the first thing the average patient would do is find another doctor who would recommend treatments that impact their present lifestyle as little as possible and that suppress the symptoms.
What we have in practice is the so-called healthcare provider community serving as the 'pushers', and a willing public addicted to their products. It is the perfect symbiosis!
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | July 10, 2016 at 10:19 AM
"At some point, you need to recognize that we-the-public have some complicity in our myriad health problems!"
What do we pay doctors for? Of course we are responsible. They are responsible to tell us how to achieve and maintain health. If they don't do that - if their excuse is that we won't listen - that's nonsense. What patients do with the information really has nothing to do with the doctor's responsibility to do his or her job. There is no shortage of doctors who eat garbage, have junk food vending machines in their lobbies, who walk around with a "smartphone" in their pocket and use it in front of patients up to their head, hospitals with rooftop cell phone towers that serve McDonalds in their cafeteria. Children learn in school, pre-k through Phd, that all these things (and more) are just fine, that these are authority figures to be emulated. Oh please. Don't even get me started.
Posted by: Linda1 | July 09, 2016 at 12:09 PM
Hi David M Burd;
Unfortunately for a lot of us with autoimmune disease, sun exposure triggers a serious reaction. I know it is an issue for me; I've spent the last week or two recovering from some injudicious time outside in the sun doing gardening and weeding in the absolutely beautiful weather we were having.
Love the sun, but don't love feeling sick for days afterwards.
Not my blog, but some of the sun symptoms are similar
http://autoimmunegal.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-sun-did-it-flares-and-autoimmune_26.html
Seems a common issue with lupus patients also. Anyway, back to evening gardening in a hat for me!
Ronald; thanks for the info on vitamin c and eye disease. Hope your condition gets better.
Have found that with the MTHFR mutation many of the common vitamins, folic acid supplements etc don't actually work/are harmful; apparently it often has to be in a specific form for someone with an MTHFR mutation to use it. Have recently discovered though that plain magnesium oxide supplements are wonderful!
Posted by: Hera | July 09, 2016 at 11:56 AM
Linda1,
"Can you imagine how many millions of people are avoiding vitamin K because they're on Coumadin while at the same time taking megadoses of D3"
I personally know a few, and they exhibit some problems that may be indicative of hypercalcemia. I don't know whether their health practitioners have told them of the potential adverse effects of vitamin D megadoses in the absence of Vitamin K2. See appended abstract for interesting insights to this issue. I would add Magnesium to the author's recommendations.
"Sorry, but I call baloney. That's the standard excuse they give for not doing their job."
If you read my eBook, you know that I am not a fan of mainstream Western medicine for chronic disease treatment and prevention. Nevertheless, that does not mean that we-the-patients have no responsibility for preventing or reversing disease. We know damn well that smoking contributes to myriad diseases, yet, fifty years after the Surgeon General's report, 20% of adults continue to smoke. There is much evidence that wireless radiation at myriad frequencies contributes to many diseases, yet, many people use cell phones frequently, use WiFi, live near cell towers, etc. I could go down the list of the 800 pervasive causes of disease mentioned in my eBook, and show many similar examples. At some point, you need to recognize that we-the-public have some complicity in our myriad health problems!
ABSTRACT
"The dose of vitamin D that some researchers recommend as optimally therapeutic exceeds that officially recognized as safe by a factor of two; it is therefore important to determine the precise mechanism by which excessive doses of vitamin D exert toxicity so that physicians and other health care practitioners may understand how to use optimally therapeutic doses of this vitamin without the risk of adverse effects. Although the toxicity of vitamin D has conventionally been attributed to its induction of hypercalcemia, animal studies show that the toxic endpoints observed in response to hypervitaminosis D such as anorexia, lethargy, growth retardation, bone resorption, soft tissue calcification, and death can be dissociated from the hypercalcemia that usually accompanies them, demanding that an alternative explanation for the mechanism of vitamin D toxicity be developed. The hypothesis presented in this paper proposes the novel understanding that vitamin D exerts toxicity by inducing a deficiency of vitamin K. According to this model, vitamin D increases the expression of proteins whose activation depends on vitamin K-mediated carboxylation; as the demand for carboxylation increases, the pool of vitamin K is depleted. Since vitamin K is essential to the nervous system and plays important roles in protecting against bone loss and calcification of the peripheral soft tissues, its deficiency results in the symptoms associated with hypervitaminosis D. This hypothesis is circumstantially supported by the observation that animals deficient in vitamin K or vitamin K-dependent proteins exhibit remarkable similarities to animals fed toxic doses of vitamin D, and the observation that vitamin D and the vitamin K-inhibitor Warfarin have similar toxicity profiles and exert toxicity synergistically when combined. The hypothesis further proposes that vitamin A protects against the toxicity of vitamin D by decreasing the expression of vitamin K-dependent proteins and thereby exerting a vitamin K-sparing effect. If animal experiments can confirm this hypothesis, the models by which the maximum safe dose is determined would need to be revised. Physicians and other health care practitioners would be able to treat patients with doses of vitamin D that possess greater therapeutic value than those currently being used while avoiding the risk of adverse effects by administering vitamin D together with vitamins A and K."
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | July 09, 2016 at 11:11 AM
Dr. Kostoff,
Re K2 being necessary in order to safely metabolize D3 - Can you imagine how many millions of people are avoiding vitamin K because they're on Coumadin while at the same time taking megadoses of D3?
"Now, the problem is the medical community also recognizes that most people, when given the opportunity, will adopt practices antithetical to a healthful lifestyle. So, in some sense, the medical community is between a rock and a hard place. If they recommend giving up all but the most healthful foods, giving up all exposures to toxic substances (wireless radiation, fluoridated water, etc), giving up sedentary lifestyles, etc, the recommendations will go in one ear and out the other. I have been told this by members of the medical community. "
Sorry, but I call baloney. That's the standard excuse they give for not doing their job. You know why they have to give 4-6 grams of sodium per day in the meals served to nursing home residents? Nursing home residents that are in the nursing home because they have heart disease, high blood pressure and strokes? Well, it's because elders can't taste food very well so the food must be salted. Without the salt, they won't eat. They'll starve, in fact. That would be elder abuse. This is the complete BULL that I've been told by more than one facility over the years. Along those same lines, doctors would never recommend breastfeeding because that would just make mothers feel guilty, because mothers *want* to bottlefeed (while the obstetricians give their patient's names and addresses to Pharma so Pharma could mail *free* samples and coupons to the pregnant women's homes).
When all doctors talk to patients about your list of toxins and how to live a healthy lifestyle, then we'll see how patients react. We live in a toxic culture and are manipulated from all sides. If doctors do their job to educate and that intervention has no short or long term impact on patient health, then I'll accept your point. But not until. Doctors are shirking their responsibility and they should be ashamed to blame their malpractice on their patients when their patients are obviously immersed in a toxic culture and the doctor hasn't done anything to counter those toxic messages.
Patient resistance doesn't stop doctors from recommending vaccines, drugs, surgeries and treatments. The truth is there is no money for the doctor in his spending the time to educate and then helping the patient to be healthy and then not need his expensive "services".
Thanks for telling us what dose of C you were taking. That does seem like a lot and a long time. I hope you're doing ok. You likely have helped a lot of people by sharing here.
Posted by: Linda1 | July 09, 2016 at 09:53 AM
David M. Burd,
"Natural exposure to sunshine is arguably THE best way to have natural, healthy Vit. D levels, and no need for supplements. Fear-mongering of sunshine causing skin cancers, and all our indoor/in-car/office lifestyles, however, has resulted in severely depleted levels for the great majority of Americans. But, of course, this obvious scenario is NEVER a topic of mainstream medical media, that always advocates "sunshine-blocking" lotions."
While skin exposure to sunshine is an excellent way to stimulate Vitamin D production for many people, caution needs to be exercised in specific cases. There is no one-size-fits-all, as your statement implies. Combined effects of potential toxic stimuli need to be considered.
For example, taking certain types of drugs (phototoxic) can make people more sensitive to the deleterious effects of sunlight exposure, as the appended articles show. Who knows what further skin sensitivities to sunlight result from exposures to vaccines, wireless radiation, glyphosate, atrazine, biosludge, astroturf, etc? What should be a health-giving experience, sun exposure, has been transformed for some people into another potential toxic stimulus exposure.
ABSTRACTS
BACKGROUND & AIMS: Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) who have been exposed to thiopurines might have an increased risk of skin cancer. We assessed this risk among patients in France. METHODS: We performed a prospective observational cohort study of 19,486 patients with IBD, enrolled from May 2004 to June 2005, who were followed up until December 31, 2007. The incidence of nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) in the general population, used for reference, was determined from the French Network of Cancer Registries. RESULTS: Before the age of 50 years, the crude incidence rates of NMSC among patients currently receiving or who previously received thiopurines were 0.66/1000 and 0.38/1000 patient-years, respectively; these values were 2.59/1000 and 1.96/1000 patient-years for the age group of 50 to 65 years and 4.04/1000 and 5.70/1000 patient-years for patients older than 65 years. Among patients who had never received thiopurines, the incidence of NMSC was zero before the age of 50 years, 0.60/1000 for the ages of 50 to 65 years, and 0.84/1000 for those older than 65 years. A multivariate Cox regression model stratified by propensity score quintiles showed that ongoing thiopurine treatment (hazard ratio [HR], 5.9; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.1-16.4; P=.0006) and past thiopurine exposure (HR, 3.9; 95% CI, 1.3-12.1; P=.02) were risk factors for NMSC. They also identified age per 1-year increase as a risk factor for NMSC (HR, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.05- 1.11; P<.0001). CONCLUSIONS: Ongoing and past exposure to thiopurines significantly increases the risk of NMSC in patients with IBD, even before the age of 50 years. These patients should be protected against UV radiation and receive lifelong dermatologic screening.
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Voriconazole's antifungal spectrum, oral bioavailability, and proven efficacy in treatment of invasive mycoses have led to its widespread off-label use for antifungal prophylaxis. There is an increasing recognition that long-term voriconazole use is associated with accelerated sun-induced skin changes that include acute phototoxicity reactions, photoaging, actinic keratosis and esp. among immunocompromised patients, skin cancers. The mechanisms underlying these dermatologic adverse events are not clearly understood. Population-risks of long-term voriconazole use need to be prospectively investigated. This review aims to provide an in-depth assessment of published literature and highlight salient findings from retrospective studies and case series. A broad practical guideline for assessment and management of these patients is provided.
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Oxidative stress and mutagenic DNA lesions formed by reactive oxygen species (ROS) are linked to human malignancy. Clinical treatments inducing chronic oxidative stress may therefore carry a risk of therapy-related cancer. We suggest that immunosuppression by azathioprine (Aza) may be one such treatment. Aza causes the accumulation of 6-thioguanine (6-TG) in patients' DNA. Here we demonstrate that biologically relevant doses of ultraviolet A (UVA) generate ROS in cultured cells with 6-TG-substituted DNA and that 6-TG and UVA are synergistically mutagenic. A replication-blocking DNA 6-TG photoproduct, guanine sulfonate, was bypassed by error-prone, Y-family DNA polymerases in vitro. A preliminary analysis revealed that in five of five cases, Aza treatment was associated with a selective UVA photosensitivity. These findings may partly explain the prevalence of skin cancer in long-term survivors of organ transplantation.
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BACKGROUND & AIMS: Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are at risk for certain malignancies. We aimed to determine the risk of melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) in patients with IBD and how medications affect these risks. METHODS: We performed retrospective cohort and nested case-control studies using administrative data from the LifeLink Health Plan Claims Database from 1997 to 2009. The cohort comprised 108,579 patients with IBD, and each was matched to 4 individuals without IBD. The risk of melanoma and NMSC was evaluated by incidence rate ratio (IRR) and by adjusted Cox proportional hazard ratio (HR) modeling. In nested case-control studies, patients with melanoma or NMSC were matched to 4 patients with IBD without melanoma or NMSC. Conditional logistic regression was used to determine associations between medications and both skin cancers. RESULTS: In the cohort, IBD was associated with an increased incidence of melanoma (IRR, 1.29; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.09-1.53). Risk was greatest among individuals with Crohn's disease (IRR, 1.45; 95% CI, 1.13-1.85; adjusted HR, 1.28; 95% CI, 1.00-1.64). The incidence of NMSC also increased among patients with IBD (IRR, 1.46; 95% CI, 1.40-1.53) and was greatest among those with CD (IRR, 1.64; 95% CI, 1.54-1.74). In the nested case-control studies, therapy with biologics increased the risk of melanoma (odds ratio [OR], 1.88; 95% CI, 1.08-3.29). Patients who had been treated with thiopurines had an increased risk of NMSC (OR, 1.85; 95% CI, 1.66-2.05). CONCLUSIONS: Immunosuppression increases the risk of melanoma and NMSC among patients with IBD. The risk of melanoma is increased by use of biologics, and the risk of NMSC is increased by use of thiopurines. Patients with IBD should be counseled and monitored for skin cancer.
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Background: UV radiation (UVR) exposure is the primary risk factor for basal cell carcinoma (BCC). Although prescription diuretics have photosensitizing properties, the relationship between diuretic use and BCC remains unclear.
Methods: Using data from the United States Radiologic Technologists Study, a large, nationwide prospective cohort, we assessed the relationship between diuretic use and first primary BCC while accounting for sun exposure history, constitutional characteristics, lifestyle factors, and anthropometric measurements for geographically dispersed individuals exposed to a wide range of ambient UVR.
Results: After adjustment for potential confounders, we found a significantly increased risk of BCC associated with diuretic use [HR, 1.22; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.07-1.38]. This relationship was modified by body mass index (P = 0.019), such that BCC risk was increased with diuretic use in overweight (HR, 1.43; 95% CI, 1.16-1.76) and obese individuals (HR, 1.43; 95% CI, 1.09-1.88), but not in normal weight individuals (HR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.81-1.21).
Conclusions: Increased risk of BCC associated with diuretic use in overweight and obese participants may be related to higher dosages, longer duration of medication use, reduced drug metabolism, or drug interactions.
Impact: Future cohort studies should obtain more detailed information on medication use, consider factors that affect drug metabolism, and measure intermediate endpoints such as photosensitivity reactions.
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Photosensitivity is an exaggerated or abnormal response to ultraviolet (UV) or visible light exposure. Many current medications are known photosensitizers; however, the effects of the sensitization can be subclinical and go unnoticed by the person affected. While some of these drugs are used for short and defined periods, others are used indefinitely for the treatment of chronic disease. The question of whether either of these practices translates into an increased risk of skin cancer is an important one. Numerous medications have real, distinct and well-elucidated mechanisms that potentiate the development of skin cancer, while with some medications the mechanism for the observed carcinogenesis remains unclear. In this article we will discuss the clinical, mechanistic and epidemiological evidence supporting photochemical genotoxicity and carcinogenesis.
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Ultraviolet radiation exposure is the most important exogenous risk factor for cutaneous malignancies. It is possible that phototoxic drugs promote the development of cutaneous melanoma (CM) by intensifying the effect of ultraviolet light on the skin. We investigated the association between the use of common systemic phototoxic drugs and development of CM.
This study was a case-control study in a Dutch population-based cohort. The drug dispensing data was obtained from PHARMO, a Dutch drug dispensing and hospital admissions registry, and linked to PALGA, the nationwide pathology network of the Netherlands. The cases were patients diagnosed with pathologically confirmed primary CM between 1991 and 2004. Controls were sampled from the PHARMO population. Exposure to systemic phototoxic drugs was measured and included antimicrobial agents, diuretics, antipsychotic drugs, antidiabetic drugs, cardiac drugs, antimalarials and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). A multivariate conditional logistic regression analysis was performed to study the association between exposure to phototoxic drugs and CM.
The study population included 1,318 cases and 6,786 controls. Any phototoxic drug during the study period was dispensed for 46 % of the cases and 43 % of the controls (p = 0.012). The use of quinolones [odds ratio (OR) 1.33, 95 % confidence interval (CI) 1.01-1.76] and propionic acid derivative NSAIDs (OR 1.33, 95 % CI 1.14-1.54) had a positive association with CM.
Our study shows that the use of phototoxic drugs is associated with an increased risk of developing CM. Even a short-term use of phototoxic quinolones and propionic acid derivative NSAIDs may increase the risk for CM. Patient education to promote sun-protective behaviour is essential to avoid immediate adverse effects and possible long-term effects of phototoxic drugs.
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | July 09, 2016 at 06:45 AM
Jenny and Ronald and All,
A simple thought re Vitamin D: Natural exposure to sunshine is arguably THE best way to have natural, healthy Vit. D levels, and no need for supplements. Fear-mongering of sunshine causing skin cancers, and all our indoor/in-car/office lifestyles, however, has resulted in severely depleted levels for the great majority of Americans. But, of course, this obvious scenario is NEVER a topic of mainstream medical media, that always advocates "sunshine-blocking" lotions.
To top it off, our hopelessly corrupt CDC/NIH tells everybody to get fraudulent toxic flu shots** when it is really the lack of sunshine exposure (Vitamin D) that "allows" the classic Winter-time respiratory illnesses. It's not complicated.
**Insanely given during pregnancy thus exposing the fetus to the vaccines' toxins, and then two shots to infants at 6 months and 7 months; this toxic assault on fetuses and infants is UNFORGIVABLE.
Posted by: david m burd | July 08, 2016 at 01:10 PM
Yes, I do wonder what "mega doses" means to you, Ronald. Other good questions when it comes to vitamin C might be what were the additives in the vitamin, and was the vitamin C from GMO corn or non-gmo corn?
Most importantly, what was the rest of the person's diet like? Organic or not, etc. It could go on and on.
Some people get non-gmo vitamin C powder now and add it to other foods that already contain vitamin C, like in a smoothie or after eating an orange they then take the supplement. I'm kind of the mind that isolated vitamins should be taken with food always, since humans wouldn't naturally be getting them in food in isolation, and since it's really a decrease in nutrient content of today's foods, combined with the addition of synthetically created chemicals in our bodies challenging how they would normally function, that is the problem.
Also, its not secret in today's world of nutritional science that most vitamins have co-factors in the presence of which better benefits are found. There is a big difference not just in complex vitamins vs isolated vitamins, but also a whole world of "whole food vitamins" which recognizes that complexity. Of course whole food vitamins tend to be much larger, don't they, unless you use them in powdered form to add to things. And in my opinion, though all cause mortality may sound hunky dory when discussing a reverse J curve, I would have like to see the details of those deaths. For instance, if 90% of them were from heart related issues, hasn't that already been figured out, as in that Vitamin D3 has several cofactors that would 1. let it into the body, not just the blood and 2. use it correctly in the right places. And that vitamin D3 performs more correctly in the presence of K2, otherwise calcium gets directed to the wrong place/function, increasing heart attacks. If a person who ate lots of greens and sources of K2 in their diet, and then took a D3 supplement on top of that, would the all cause mortality number, as well as the causes shift? Also, taking into account that sun/skin exposure is one historically correct way to get vitamin D, there are now skin patches that one can stick on to absorb it, to bypass gastrointestinal ingested challenges, as well as mouth sprays. Will that be better in the end? Who knows, but frankly, I doubt it will be long before we have a probiotic vitamin D3 combo that will come as a body spray or lotion, and a separate one to use in the sun which will just have the cofactors and an encapsulated delayed release astaxathin sun blocker, so that you can get D3 from the sun for the first 30 minutes, have the cofactors so your body can use the D3 correctly right away, all without getting burned. Maybe there's already some out there :-).
According to VitaminDcouncil.org, NHANES also found that "Furthermore, individuals with higher serum vitamin D levels were significantly less likely to die from cardiovascular disease, but only if they had a higher than average magnesium intake." VitaminDCouncil in their article on it state flat out that "Magnesium, along with vitamins A & K, boron, and zinc are cofactors for vitamin D metabolism and action in the body. Vitamin D does not act alone in the body, and understanding its relationship to its cofactors is one key to understanding just how vitamin D functions in the body to prevent disease. That being said, the relationship between vitamin D and its cofactors is still poorly understood and future research, like this present study, should elucidate just how essential they are to each other."
Though from what I can see with vitamin D3 research, all their studies have been for either daily dosing, or monthly doses, and a couple on weekly dosing. None of that truly reflects reality. Who is doing case work on dosing, for instance, 2-4 times a week, which would be a generally more realistic approach more closely resembling natural exposure to the sun, taking into account cloudy days and sitting in the shade when one gets too hot.
Why wouldn't these be the case with vitamin C. Because of the general success of vitamin C in resolving so many problems and preventing them, too, my guess is that without vitamin C in the body, a whole lot of other vitamin related chemical related process in the body don't work right. So a good amount of C would be enough to spur other good things, but too much in the absence of other good nutrition and one could cause the occasional negative issue (but it could be because some other nutrient was missing, like vitamin A or something). I suspect a lot of it resides in good methylation as opposed to hypo or hyper methylation, in any part of the process.
In the end, one cannot deny the multitude of symptomatic improvement cases and research with astronomically lower rates of death and disability type adverse reactions in supplements vs synthetic pharmaceuticals, according to the poison control center, but they are supposed to SUPPLEMENT an already balanced diet, meaning the good stuff starts with cleanly grown, nutrient dense food. Then, if the food is depleted compared to what it's nutrient density was 150 years ago, why not go ahead and make up that difference with high quality supplements. But don't eat nothing but sugars, grains, dirty milk, and hydrogenated GMO oils, all laced with chemicals, and think isolated vitamins in mega doses is the road to health perfection.
If I was forced to take and choose between warfarin or curcumin, I'd choose curcumin any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Greenmedinfo.com is accumulating quite a collection of data on a large range of non-pharmaceutical interventions as well as their chemical implications, if one is curious enough to look.
I'd keep Pauling in my personal book of heros, because even if he died before he could perfect his knowledge (there is no man who's scientific ideology can ever be perfected in the course of his own lifetime) given the state of science back in his day he set the stage for a heck of a lot of what we know today. Heck, one could give him accolades solely on his early recognition of the politics behind the rise of pharmaceuticals.
Posted by: Jenny | July 08, 2016 at 11:14 AM
Linda1,
"I am curious to know how much C you were taking that caused your eye disease and for how long."
Approximately 2.5gm/day for over a dozen years.
"Both C & D may have therapeutic uses"
For ACUTE use of megadoses to save lives, perhaps. The appended Abstract is one of many addressing the potential adverse effects of chronic megadoses.
Vitamin D supplementation has become popular in recent years. I personally know many people who are on this supplement. NOT ONE has been informed by their health provider of potential adverse effects, especially when taken in isolation.
Dr. Mercola explains the need for D3-K2 synergy in plain language (http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/05/16/vitamins-d-and-k2-reduce-osteoporosis.aspx):
"Vitamin D3: As mentioned, vitamin D helps your body to absorb calcium, but vitamin K directs that calcium to your skeleton where it's needed. You can think of vitamin D as the gatekeeper, controlling who gets in, and vitamin K as the traffic cop, directing the traffic to where it needs to go. Lots of traffic -- but no traffic cop -- means clogging, crowding and chaos everywhere!
In other words, without the help of vitamin K2, the calcium that your vitamin D so effectively lets in might be working AGAINST you -- by building up in your coronary arteries rather than your bones. There is even evidence that the safety of vitamin D is dependent on vitamin K, and that vitamin D toxicity (although very rare with the D3 form) is actually caused by vitamin K2 deficiency."
Not only is K2 important in concert with D3, but also adequate amounts of Vitamin A and magnesium are required. What most articles won't tell you is that these four critical substances can all be obtained from foods (and sun exposure for Vitamin D), and in most cases, supplements are not required. Adequate amounts of Vitamin A can be obtained from e.g. sweet potatoes; Vitamin D, wild sockeye salmon, wild sardines, sunshine; Vitamin K2, Natto; Magnesium, raw spinach, pumpkin seeds, mackerel, soybeans.
"C. Colin Campbell argues against the routine consumption of vitamins (except B-12 for vegans).....his position is that man should not be cavalierly interfering with extremely complex physiological processes by taking supplements. His position is that people should consume high quality whole foods."
He is correct. Here is the bigger picture as I see it. The medical community, for the most part, recognizes the validity of your quote above. They also recognize much of what is contained in my eBook; namely, the road to good health is through elimination of contributing factors to disease, and the adoption of a healthful lifestyle.
Now, the problem is the medical community also recognizes that most people, when given the opportunity, will adopt practices antithetical to a healthful lifestyle. So, in some sense, the medical community is between a rock and a hard place. If they recommend giving up all but the most healthful foods, giving up all exposures to toxic substances (wireless radiation, fluoridated water, etc), giving up sedentary lifestyles, etc, the recommendations will go in one ear and out the other. I have been told this by members of the medical community. So, their compromise is to recommend drugs/surgery/radiation (sound, light, ionizing and non-ionizing) that will suppress the symptoms reflective of an unhealthy lifestyle and keep the patients functional. This way, the patients can continue their present lifestyle and are happy, and the doctor can process many patients in a short period of time.
Orthomolecular medicine fits right into this narrative. Rather than eat the right combinations of foods that will supply all the vitamin and mineral needs, or get adequate sunshine, or eliminate those harmful substances that deplete critical vitamins and minerals, why, all we need to do is continue our present harmful practices and take megadoses of C, D, and the whole alphabet. It's like substituting methadone for heroin and believing you have made progress!
******************************************************
TITLE: Safety of Vitamins and Minerals: Controversies and Perspective
Abstract
Available information suggests that currently over 47% of males and 59% of females use dietary supplements for health benefits, and the number of users is rapidly increasing. However, numerous studies published over more than a decade have linked some supplements (including vitamins E, C, D, A, and B, as well as selenium) to no health benefits or even to adverse health effects. Recent studies with negative results, which drew media attention, include the following: a 2008 study on the ability of vitamin E and selenium to lower the risk of prostate cancer was halted amidst fear of potential harm; vitamin C may do more harm than good as it may protect cancer cells; intake of vitamins E and C by 15,000 male physicians for 10 years had no health benefits. In contrast, there are compelling cause and effect data linking the use of folic acid with consistent and significant reductions in fetal adverse pregnancy outcomes, demonstrating no beneficial effects of calcium and vitamin D supplements in improving bone strength and reducing fractures. These equivocal and conflicting findings on the effects of supplements on health outcomes have left consumers confused about their benefits and wary of the possible adverse effects of vitamin and mineral supplementation. The objectives of this session are to characterize the current state of the science as it relates to the impact of vitamin and mineral supplementation on human health, review the statutory and regulatory perspective of vitamin use from a safety perspective, assess the credibility of meta-analysis in the safety assessment of vitamins, and elicit the mechanisms of these interactions-pro-oxidant versus antioxidant effects and beneficial versus adverse effects.
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | July 08, 2016 at 10:50 AM
Hans Litten,
"Vitamin C proven to cure over 30 major diseases"
We can cherry-pick studies all day long to support our viewpoints. Why don't you quote Paul Offit's studies on the virtues of vaccines? I have no interest in going down this Orthomolecular Medicine path with a True Believer!
"You don't consider a two time nobel prize winner a hero lol"
I am well aware of his work. I stated specifically "He was a very good chemist, and did much valuable work for world peace." However, in my view, his misguided advocacy of chronic high doses of Vitamin C adversely impacted many people, including myself, and disqualifies him from hero status.
From Wikipedia, Maurice Hilleman was an American microbiologist who specialized in vaccinology and developed over 40 vaccines, an unparalleled record of productivity.[1][2] Of the 14 vaccines routinely recommended in current vaccine schedules, he developed eight: those for measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia and Haemophilus influenzae bacteria.[1] He also played a role in the discovery of the cold-producing adenoviruses, the hepatitis viruses, and the cancer-causing virus SV40. He is credited with saving more lives than any other medical scientist of the 20th century.[3][4][5] Robert Gallo described him as "the most successful vaccinologist in history".[3]. Given that record, would you view him as a hero?
Hitler made the trains run on time, and put many unemployed Germans back to work. Would you view him as a hero? You need to take the totality of a person's actions and impacts into account before bestowing 'hero' status!
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | July 08, 2016 at 09:26 AM
Just want to comment re supplements, in particular D and C.
A,D,E and K are the fat soluble vitamins. They are stored in fatty tissue and one can build up toxic levels.
Both C & D may have therapeutic uses, but that doesn't mean that how the average consumer takes them will be therapeutic for that individual. D is supposed to be manufactured mostly from processes connected to sun exposure. My reasoning is that the body is not expecting so much GI ingestion of this hormone. I don't think the variables are well understood. Same with chronically ingesting megadoses of C.
C. Colin Campbell argues against the routine consumption of vitamins (except B-12 for vegans) in his book, _Whole_. He understands nutrition science down to the cellular level and his position is that man should not be cavalierly interfering with extremely complex physiological processes by taking supplements. His position is that people should consume high quality whole foods.
Adding to his argument, going into a store to buy vitamins is telling too. No two formulations are exactly alike. Hundreds of choices with little to no guidance as to what is best or appropriate for any individual.
I am not against supplements being freely available as they are now. But I do think that people may be causing themselves short or long term harm from whatever it is they are or are not taking.
Dr. Kostoff, I am curious to know how much C you were taking that caused your eye disease and for how long. "Megadose" means different things to different people. Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm sorry you were injured.
Posted by: Linda1 | July 08, 2016 at 09:09 AM
Bayareamom,
"I tend to agree with you on this one, most especially with the Vitamin D3 issue. I understand how vital having Vitamin D3 in our system is important for overall good health, but some of the mega doses I have seen in so called alternative media bothers me. I know that high doses of Vitamin D3 (if I'm not mistaken) can accumulate in the liver."
I have examined this D3 issue recently. Serious studies show that both too low and too high serum levels increase mortality (see Abstracts appended below). Optimal levels can be achieved by a combination of eating high D content food (e.g., wild sockeye salmon, wild sardines, etc), and getting adequate skin exposure to sunshine! In some cases, short-term acute high doses may be warranted, but I have not seen the evidence for the benefits of chronic long-term high doses.
ABSTRACTS:
TITLE: Is There a Reverse J-Shaped Association Between 25-Hydroxyvitamin D and All-Cause Mortality? Results from the U.S. Nationally Representative NHANES
Context: A reverse J-shaped association between serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) concentration and all-cause mortality was suggested in a 9-year follow-up (1991-2000) analysis of the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III, 1988-1994).
Objective: Our objective was to repeat the analyses with 6 years additional follow-up to evaluate whether the association persists through 15 years of follow-up.
Participants: The study included 15 099 participants aged >= 20 years with 3784 deaths.
Main Outcome Measure: Relative risk (RR) of death from all causes was adjusted for age, sex, race/ethnicity, and season using 2 Poisson regression approaches: traditional categorical and cubic splines. Results were given for 9 25(OH) D levels: <20, 20 to 29, 30 to 39, 40 to 49, 50 to 59, 60 to 74, 75 to 99 (reference), 100 to 119, and >= 120 nmol/L.
Results: The reverse J-shaped association became stronger with longer follow-up and was not affected by excluding deaths within the first 3 years of follow-up. Similar results were found from both statistical approaches for levels <20 through 119 nmol/L. Adjusted RR (95% confidence interval [CI]) estimates for all levels <60 nmol/L were significantly >1 compared with the reference group. The nadir of risk was 81 nmol/L (95% CI, 73-90 nmol/L). For 25(OH)D >= 120 nmol/L, results (RR, 95% CI) were slightly different using traditional categorical (1.5, 1.02-2.3) and cubic splines approaches (1.2, 0.9-1.4). The association appeared in men, women, adults ages 20 to 64 years, and non-Hispanic whites but was weaker in older adults. The study was too small to evaluate the association in non-Hispanic black and Mexican-American adults.
Conclusions: A reverse J-shaped association between serum 25(OH)D and all-cause mortality appears to be real. It is uncertain whether the association is causal.
**********************************************************************************
TITLE: A reverse J-shaped association of all-cause mortality with serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D in general practice: the CopD study.
CONTEXT: Optimal levels of vitamin D have been a topic of heavy debate, and the correlation between 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels and mortality still remains to be established.
OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to determine the association between all-cause mortality and serum levels of 25(OH)D, calcium, and PTH.
DESIGN AND SETTING: We conducted a retrospective, observational cohort study, the CopD Study, in a single laboratory center in Copenhagen, Denmark.
PARTICIPANTS: Serum 25(OH)D was analyzed from 247,574 subjects from the Copenhagen general practice sector. In addition, serum levels of calcium, albumin-adjusted calcium, PTH, and creatinine were measured in 111,536; 20,512; 34,996; and 189,496 of the subjects, respectively.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Multivariate Cox regression analysis was used to compute hazard ratios for all-cause mortality.
RESULTS: During follow-up (median, 3.07 yr), 15,198 (6.1%) subjects died. A reverse J-shaped association between serum level of 25(OH)D and mortality was observed. A serum 25(OH)D level of 50-60 nmol/liter was associated with the lowest mortality risk. Compared to 50 nmol/liter, the hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals) of all-cause mortality at very low (10 nmol/liter) and high (140 nmol/liter) serum levels of 25(OH)D were 2.13 (2.02-2.24) and 1.42 (1.31-1.53), respectively. Similarly, both high and low levels of albumin-adjusted serum calcium and serum PTH were associated with an increased mortality, and secondary hyperparathyroidism was associated with higher mortality (P < 0.0001).
CONCLUSION: In this study from the general practice sector, a reverse J-shaped relation between the serum level of 25(OH)D and all-cause mortality was observed, indicating not only a lower limit but also an upper limit. The lowest mortality risk was at 50-60 nmol/liter. The study did not allow inference of causality, and further studies are needed to elucidate a possible causal relationship between 25(OH)D levels, especially higher levels, and mortality.
*********************************************************************************
EXCERPT FROM FULL TEXT
TITLE: Vitamin D and the Goldilocks Principle: Too Little, Too Much, or Just Right?
It is in this context that the study in this issue of the JCEM by Amrein et al (10) is of significant interest. In their retrospective study, the authors analyzed the association between serum 25(OH)D levels measured in the year preceding hospital admission with all-cause mortality after hospitalization in > 24 000 adults admitted for acute care to two large teaching hospitals in Boston. After adjustment for multiple potential confounding variables, patients who had a 25(OH)D level measured before hospitalization, which was either < 30 ng/mL or ≥ 60 ng/mL, had a significantly increased risk for all-cause 90-day mortality when compared to subjects with vitamin D levels between 30 and 60 ng/mL. When placed in the context of recent studies that have reported higher mortality rates in community-dwelling subjects at both the lower and upper ends of the 25(OH)D spectrum (8, 9), the results of Amrein et al (10) strengthen the notion that a U-shaped optimal 25(OH)D range exists in humans that—to paraphrase Goldilocks—is not “too little or too much, but just right.”
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | July 08, 2016 at 05:52 AM
http://www.naturalnews.com/042541_vitamin_C_natural_cures_Andrew_W_Saul.html
Vitamin C proven to cure over 30 major diseases
You don't consider a two time nobel prize winner a hero lol
And apparently he could have won a third (Watson & Crick narrowly beat him to the DNA structure ) .
Are you Paul Offit in disguise ? lol
Posted by: Hans Litten | July 08, 2016 at 05:05 AM
david m burd, thanks for your response re the Washington Post and NIH/CDC. It seems the entire mainstream media has been captured by the pharmaceutical industry, certainly there seems to be little in the way of critical analysis of this area, particularly the burgeoning international vaccines market.
We also have to consider how much are governments making out of vaccines, both money and power? For example, how much is the US government making out of HPV vaccines? This is a secret apparently, see this response to Dr Eric Suba’s enquiry about royalties the NIH receives from the sales of HPV vaccines: http://www.vietnamcervicalcancer.org/dmdocuments/ogis%20suba%2024%20november%202010.pdf
Also in regards to the NIH, it emerged in 2012 that this US organisation had funded research into making H5N1 more transmissible. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up. This created a furore in the scientific community with a number of scientists rightfully concerned about the risks of this research. I forwarded some letters on this matter from a citizen’s perspective. Links to these letters and other relevant material can be accessed on this webpage: https://over-vaccination.net/2014/10/27/arrogant-scientists-and-dangerous-gain-of-function-experiments-a-letter-to-the-us-national-science-advisory-board-for-biosecurity-nsabb/
There is so much to be critically analysed in regards to the explosion in vaccine development in recent years, including concerning parallels with the over-use of antibiotics and possible similar problems with the over-use of vaccines. Unfortunately it seems we have no independent infectious diseases experts considering the ‘big picture’ as most seem to have conflicts of interest via their relationships with the vaccine industry.
Posted by: Elizabeth Hart | July 08, 2016 at 01:52 AM
Ronald Kostoff, et al. -- Our discourse on Vitamin C is right out of a Mel Brooks/Shakespeare parody.
I submit that Linus Pauling was mostly all right, and Lyndon Johnson and his Great Society was mostly all wrong with his hatching of everybody else paying for irresponsible single mothers, and with everybody else paying for their subsequent generations of "single mother families."
Let's get real; ordinary people should be responsible and accountable for personal actions, and consequences - and not dependent upon unaccountable Government Agencies such as CDC, NIH, FDA, who are spending other peoples' taxes, people who actually work.
Cheers! to all.
Posted by: david m burd | July 07, 2016 at 09:53 PM
@Ronald Kostoff:
You stated, "If I knew then what I know now, I would do then what I do now! Namely, I would follow the recommendations in my eBook on eliminating as many of the pervasive causes of disease as possible. All the other recommendations of supra-physiological doses of vitamins et al we see propounded in the media and the literature are alternate ways of transferring money from your pocket to someone else's pocket; if you're lucky, you won't experience too many adverse effects!!!"
I tend to agree with you on this one, most especially with the Vitamin D3 issue. I understand how vital having Vitamin D3 in our system is important for overall good health, but some of the mega doses I have seen in so called alternative media bothers me. I know that high doses of Vitamin D3 (if I'm not mistaken) can accumulate in the liver.
I'm an advocate for taking supplements when needed, but am unsure about some of the hype I've read in our alternative medical sourced blogs, etc.
Thoughts?
Posted by: Bayareamom | July 07, 2016 at 05:39 PM
Hans Litten,
"Like you , I consider Linus Pauling a hero"
I never stated I consider him a hero! He was a very good chemist, and did much valuable work for world peace. However, I think he led many people down the wrong path with his (flawed) Vitamin C advocacy, and that detracts greatly from his positive work. Sort of how I view LBJ. Great work with the Great Society programs, counterbalanced by his escalation of the Vietnam War.
"Its very interesting what you say about overdosing on VitaminC , if you could do it over again , how would you play it?"
One reason I took megadoses of Vitamin C was to reduce the risk of cancer. I had a few close relatives who died of cancer, and one of the selling points of Vitamin C megadoses was its supposed benefits in reducing cancer risk. It was no more than equal hype to the 'benefits' of vaccines, fluoridated water, etc.
If I knew then what I know now, I would do then what I do now! Namely, I would follow the recommendations in my eBook on eliminating as many of the pervasive causes of disease as possible. All the other recommendations of supra-physiological doses of vitamins et al we see propounded in the media and the literature are alternate ways of transferring money from your pocket to someone else's pocket; if you're lucky, you won't experience too many adverse effects!!!
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | July 07, 2016 at 04:18 PM
Ronald , please tell us the outcome of your eye issues ? and the source & doses of the vitamin C you used. Like you , I consider Linus Pauling a hero . Its very interesting what you say about overdosing on VitaminC , if you could do it over again , how would you play it ?
"for chronic diseases, it is abysmal" , I don't think this comment is fair . The authorities actually block and criminalise anyone trying to take a look at cancer with fresh eyes for instance .
(Burzynski , Jeff Bradstreet and many more) .
And similarly the same is true for Autism , they are trying to make it illegal to treat Autism .
They almost seem to want to prevent progress at all costs to protect their lucrative industry (an industry created by their products in the first place , a profit driven Hg-enocide) .
Posted by: Hans Litten | July 07, 2016 at 11:34 AM
David M. Burd,
"but at least it seems (from your comment) that the condition was ameliorated (or solved) by your stopping the megadoses and getting appropriate medical care"
I never said that! It was neither ameliorated nor solved.
"Nutrition and vitamin supplements are orders of magnitude less apt to be dangerous (and can be stopped anytime) than vaccines' INJECTED toxic excipients (and contaminants) that are not retrievable. I would hope you generally agree?"
I have not seen the credible long-term safety studies on either orthomolecular medicine or vaccines that would allow me to agree or disagree with that statement. Look, here's the real problem. For treatment of wounds and injuries, the American medical system is by and large very good. For infectious diseases, it is moderate, and for chronic diseases, it is abysmal. Many people have become disillusioned with the drug-radiation-surgery approach to chronic diseases, and they have searched for alternatives. The alternative breach has been filled with a wide spectrum of practitioners, ranging from credible to the polar opposite. Unfortunately, many of those disillusioned with mainstream medicine have become advocates of some of the more questionable alternatives, based more on faith than on science. When I see long-term safety and efficacy studies of 'orthomolecular medicine' that are credible and show benefits, then I might agree with you.
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | July 07, 2016 at 10:00 AM
Ronald Kostoff, Thanks for pointing out that Vitamin C megadoses caused serious eye problems for you, but at least it seems (from your comment) that the condition was ameliorated (or solved) by your stopping the megadoses and getting appropriate medical care.
However, as we all discuss here on AoA, a large majority of permanent damages and deaths are demonstrably caused by today's vaccines injected into pregnant mothers and infants/children and are NOT reversible or solvable. Also, needless adult vaccines and needless pharma products are also destroying our adult family members and friends, their iatrogenic deaths and health deterioration being another common denominator of many (if not most) contributors on this forum.
Nutrition and vitamin supplements are orders of magnitude less apt to be dangerous (and can be stopped anytime) than vaccines' INJECTED toxic excipients (and contaminants) that are not retrievable. I would hope you generally agree? --- I do agree with you about the dangers of EMF and glyphosate, and appreciate your taking time to contribute here on the AoA forum.
Posted by: david m burd | July 07, 2016 at 09:04 AM
David M. Burd,
"5 decades ago NIH/NCI corruptly trashed Linus Pauling claims for Vitamin C for the obvious reason there was no money to be made by good nutrition or vitamin therapy"
What makes you believe that chronic megadoses of Vitamin C, or any vitamin, are any safer than vaccines or chronic doses of drugs? For years, I took megadoses of C in the belief (based on books by Pauling and other propagandists) that C was a preventive for many types of ailments. I ended up with some serious eye problems. Vitamin C concentrates forty times as much in the eye, and megadoses place an enormous burden on the eye tissue. Only after I had experienced the eye problems did I find that there were researchers (mainly optometrists, not ophthalmologists) who had made the connection between C megadoses and the eye problems, due to the softening effects of excessive C on the vitreous. To put it mildly, their findings were not widely advertised!
It is not clear to me that the long-term safety data for megadoses of vitamins are any more credible than that for vaccines, drugs, wireless radiation, etc.
Now, does that mean that every person who takes chronic doses of Vitamin C will suffer eye problems? Obviously not, just as every child that receives the MMR vaccine does not get autism, and every person who smokes does not get lung cancer. Are there people that might benefit from acute megadoses of vitamins, and perhaps in some cases from chronic megadoses? Could be; we all have different genetics, and we all have different exposures to combinations of toxic stimuli. But, there is nothing 'natural' about megadoses of any isolated substance, especially vitamins, despite the hype put out by the hucksters. The Vitamin C issue is one time I wish that I had listened to the voices that doubted its claims.
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | July 07, 2016 at 06:03 AM
Elizabeth Hart,
The Washington Post (WP) has forever promoted all things Pharmaceutical and CDC/NIH Knows Best; A few miles outside of Washington, DC are the National Institutes of Health (NIH); under its Giant umbrella are such as NIAID, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the National Institute of Metal Health, etc, etc., that are extravagantly budgeted more and more every year by a medically ignorant Congress (think about the latest ludicrous Zika virus funding).
NIH (and its sub-Institutes) are loved by the WP, and all the Area newspapers run ads for citizens to come forward to participate (and be paid) in all kinds of "trials."
At any rate, the WP has long sold out to $Billions of dollars of Pharma advertising, and ever rising, and the Post's suscribers & readers make up a large part of their income -- of course, everybody at NIH has to toe the "party line" that Pharma will save us. For instance, 5 decades ago NIH/NCI corruptly trashed Linus Pauling claims for Vitamin C for the obvious reason there was no money to be made by good nutrition or vitamin therapy, as recently espoused by Dr. Suzanne Humphries and many others.
The WP is just another example of Progressive/Liberal media owners & editors accepting (and getting huge income) what our Federal Government National Medical Institutions dictate to them. Anthony Fauci, Director of NIAID, deserves the annual Dr. Josef Mengele Award every year (just kidding, there's no such Award, but Fauci loves every toxic drug that comes down the pike).
Posted by: david m burd | July 06, 2016 at 01:19 PM
Maurine meleck , you may very well be right , but it is still a hell of a quote given all that has happened since .
Posted by: Hans Litten | July 06, 2016 at 08:00 AM
Maurine, Your distain of "Ike" is very puzzling.
Eisenhower being elected in 1952 (with his deserved reputation as a great Army General) was the primary impetus ending the Korean War ("United Nations' Police Action"), he deplored deficit Federal Budgets and spending with half his eight years in Office being a balanced budget despite the necessity of military spending to counter Soviet expansion and aggression. His frugal "vacations" were to Newport, Rhode Island, or Colorado, or to Augusta, Georgia; mostly car travel to a mountain retreat at Camp David 50 miles from the White House (unlike the $Billions of taxpayer dollars blown by the Obama Clan lavishly traveling around the world, and Obama's countlessly using Air Force One flying around the country to raise Democratic campaign funds).
Eisenhower's whole life was of service to his country, and his warning of the Industrial/Military Complex was prescient, and comparable to the Govt/Pharma/Medical Complex today currently destroying the U.S. Very puzzling -- your comment about Ike.
Posted by: autism uncle | July 06, 2016 at 07:30 AM
Re the HPV vaccines - the aggressive promotion of HPV vaccination is astounding, only lip service is paid to any idea of real evaluation of risks and benefits and 'informed consent' before this vaccination. At this stage we have no idea of the long-term repercussions of the Cervarix and Gardasil vaccine products, but how many children and parents know this? Precious few I would wager. The children are guinea pigs and they don't know this.
In regards to aggressive marketing see for example this recent editorial in the Washington Post: The critical public-health benefits of the HPV vaccine: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-critical-public-health-benefits-of-the-hpv-vaccine/2016/06/22/2cfbdb44-3720-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html
This editorial indicates the opinion of one MD is "doctors who are not recommending this vaccine are not doing their job". So what's their job, working for Merck and GSK? Also consider who is behind 'continuing education' for doctors, i.e. Big Pharma, and I guess their university education is also tainted by Big Pharma funding.
Also consider the concluding sentence in the Washington Post editorial, i.e. what appears to be a call for mandatory HPV vaccination: "Doctors need to heed that sound advice, and further efforts must be made throughout society to tear down misconceptions about the HPV vaccine and to encourage its use. In particular, states that were scared off early from including the vaccine in the portfolio of shots required (with parental op-out) for school attendance should revisit this critical public-health issue."
"Critical public-health issue"? This is such a beat-up! Apparently the human papillomaviruses are commonplace and not a problem for most people. We have no idea what we could be unleashing by interfering in the natural progression of these viruses.
Why is the Washington Post taking it upon itself to aggressively promote HPV vaccination, and calling for it to be "required" for school attendance? Who exactly is behind this editorial and what gives them the right to demand this questionable medical intervention be foisted upon children?
What is really ironic is that the Executive Editor of the Washington Post is Martin Baron, the same guy who was editor of the Boston Globe when that paper's Spotlight team exposed the breadth of the Boston Catholic sexual abuse scandal (the movie Spotlight won an Academy Award for Best Picture). While Baron was part of exposing that child exploitation scandal, he's now the editor of a newspaper connected to an aggressive promotion of a very questionable medical intervention, and supporting mandated use of lucrative HPV vax products for children, you couldn't make it up!
Posted by: Elizabeth Hart | July 06, 2016 at 02:43 AM
@john stone. Well said, thanks!
Posted by: Tim Lundeen | July 05, 2016 at 06:11 PM
Autism Media Channel : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8fWPLX7BEQ
Posted by: reader | July 05, 2016 at 04:13 AM
@JohnStone - I think Larry Cook is a poseur and would not use his link as the source for Del Bigtree's MUST VIEW VIDEO. During the SB277 fight, Cook's site posted videos of so-called first person accounts by parents of vaccine injured children very different from the legitimate #HearThisWell project. Cook's parent's displayed totally inappropriate affect (weird giant smiles) and stories of "an ear infection" following vaccination, etc. I think it was an effort to discredit the real faces of this movement.
Posted by: reader | July 04, 2016 at 02:59 PM
Benedetta,
"a large majority of the people have to have morals. From that large majority comes leaders that have been taught to self sacrifice, service to the people"
With all due respect, I think your basic premise is wrong. How many people had classified material access similar to Snowden's, yet how many were willing to take the risk of exposing this material? How many hundreds of people had classified material access similar to Manning's, yet how many were willing to take the risk of exposing this material? Same question related to Daniel Ellsberg?
We can ask similar questions about the thousands of 'experts' who understand quite well the dangers of vaccines, drugs, non-ionizing radiation, pesticides, fluoridation, biosludge, etc. They are not 'dupes'; they are not 'deluded'; they know exactly what the score is. Unfortunately, many 'experts' have spent almost a decade in higher education, added years in residency or post-doctoral work, have accumulated much debt and family responsibilities, and the economic considerations become front and center.
The 'leaders' we get represent us, as much as we might not like to admit it. If, on rare occasions, leaders emerge who place self-sacrifice about self-aggrandizement, the campaign donations and other aspects of the candidate filtering process will insure they have no chance of assuming powerful positions. Expect nothing from the present slate of serious Presidential candidates on major (or even minor) changes in vaccine, drug, non-ionizing radiation, agrichemical, fluoridation, biosludge, et al, practices!
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | July 04, 2016 at 12:45 PM
Temperament -- Winston Churchill's temperament was not sweet, nor rosy.
Posted by: Benedetta | July 04, 2016 at 12:20 PM
I think a long with a great Republic the majority - a large majority of the people have to have morals. From that large majority comes leaders that have been taught to self sacrifice, service to the people - not going down to Haiti and setting up a charity foundation to take all the money coming in from the entire world to help a bunch of really poor people in a time of crisis.
Bob, as everyone knows -- I too think Trump is the real deal.
Posted by: Benedetta | July 04, 2016 at 12:14 PM
I find it hard to believe that the ones selling the vaccines (they know who they are) are not now directly inflicted or know somebody that is, but yet they sell the poison. What sort of creatures are they where monetary gain aces everything. So far as wishing our Political leaders for change , I realised it is a new moon this morning and so today lets plant seed of change and hope for a spiritual change.
MMR RIP
Posted by: angus files | July 04, 2016 at 11:45 AM
Please watch the Del Bigtree video posted by John Stone in the comments section of this article. It is very powerful and should be shared with all of our state legislators to open their eyes.
Posted by: Not an MD | July 04, 2016 at 09:41 AM
The 4th of July was going fairly well until I saw a HPV commercial this morning.
The word Gardasil was "not mentioned" as they would then have to list the known side effects of the damn vaccine... now banned in France, banned in Japan... and never made it though testing in India.
A girl and a boy were featured in the HPV ad, both had some sort of cancer, (boys do not get cervical cancer....) ...The "typical guilt trip statement" were given to the parents as the children looked straight into the camera...
The goal is 12 million doses a year at 130 dollars each, 3 doses for each of the 4 million children born each year in the USA.
Sadly, children with Autism cannot make commercials, they often cannot speak or look into a camera to make a statement.
Posted by: go Trump | July 04, 2016 at 09:39 AM
Maurine
It is still a useful quote. Here we are another five and half decades further into the mire, and perhaps there were other people saying it at the time but it comes immediately to hand. I think it is implicit that it comes from his experience in government.
Posted by: John Stone | July 04, 2016 at 09:24 AM
I think it is hard for the public to get their brains around the idea
that the CDC is corrupt and the pediatricians are deluded, but that is what has happened.
**************
“It’s easier to fool
people than to
convince them that
they have been fooled.”
Mark Twain
Posted by: Barry | July 04, 2016 at 09:21 AM
Rebecca Lee,
"pediatricians are deluded"
I don't agree with use of the word 'deluded'. This implies they have been misled, or fooled, and attempts to remove their responsibility. While there are undoubtedly many forces that have attempted to mislead or fool members of the medical profession, given that Pediatricians can observe what happens to children who take their drugs or vaccines, and given that they have not been shielded from the Thompson controversy or the many publications in the literature describing adverse effects, I don't think they are fooled. What we are seeing is a combination of self-preservation and the belief that the 'benefits' of vaccines outweigh the costs.
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | July 04, 2016 at 09:11 AM
John, I don't know why everybody refers to Eisenhower's historical statements as something monumental. Even if he warned against the growth of the military and industrial complex, he and his administration were every bit a part of it. I give him no kudos.
maurine
Posted by: Maurine meleck | July 04, 2016 at 09:09 AM
Hi Bob
I appreciate your point, and - could not possibly imagine voting for Hillary, but I also write from a country which has just voted for Brexit, and I can tell you the picture now looks very confused. What is particularly deplorable - though I am sure it is not what a lot of people voted for and it was not directly on the tongues of the politicians - is that there appears to have been a significant upswing in racism. You may well be correct - in fact I am sure you are - that a lot of what Trump signals is inadvertant, but nevertheless I can see why people are concerned. Good community relations requires good rhetoric. Plainly, also, the battle will just need to intensify whoever comes to office.
Posted by: John Stone | July 04, 2016 at 08:39 AM
Bob Moffit,
" I respectfully suggest there is only ONE candidate seeking election that gives hope .. in my opinion .. to a much needed peaceful revolution in our great country .. and .. that candidate would be Donald Trump. "
Trump has gone out of his way to shoot himself in the foot wherever possible. I sincerely believe he does not want the job of President. He has neither the qualifications nor the temperament for the Office, although he certainly has addressed the rightful grievances of a large number of Americans. Given the fierce opposition of all the interests you identify, and the clout behind the opposition, there is no way he will win, in my opinion. And, I state this within the context that his opponent is the most vulnerable presidential candidate in my memory!
Nigel Farage, the leader of the UKIP Party and person probably most responsible for the Brexit victory, has announced he is stepping down from his position. I suspect this will allow a less-polarizing person to exploit more effectively whatever 'benefits' from Brexit (if any) may emerge. In my view, both Trump and his major opponent should do the same!
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | July 04, 2016 at 08:37 AM
I think it is hard for the public to get their brains around the idea
that the CDC is corrupt and the pediatricians are deluded, but that is what has happened.
Posted by: Rebecca Lee | July 04, 2016 at 08:06 AM
Ronald
"How does differ from the telecommunications industry, the agrichemical industry, the weapons industry, and other similar industries too numerous to mention?"
It is very clear from my article that in many ways it does not at all. I have pointed to the particularly privileged situation of the vaccine industry and the way the realationship between the pharma and the media was altered by executive decree under Bill Clinton. I do not wish to diminish any of these other issues by writing about what I am writing about: indeed I referred to President Eisenhower's wider concerns including the militiary industrial complex, I referred to my good friend David Lewis's experiences with the Environmental Protection Agency, I mentioned JK Galbraith and financial fraud - but I did not admittedly mention telecommunications (except as an adjunct of media), though I might have done. I think it is evident that the issue of corporate tyranny goes well beyond vaccines, and anybody reading my article would be equipped by it to conclude the same. However, it is certainly very important to talk about the vaccines - in fact it could not be more critical at this present time - and I don't apologise for doing so.
Posted by: John Stone | July 04, 2016 at 08:05 AM
thanks bob -- i guess we've each taken a vow of silence on trump and the election! -- dan
Posted by: Dan Olmsted | July 04, 2016 at 08:03 AM
"Nearly two and a half centuries on it is possible to see that powerful interests can buy their way into every aspect of a nation’s life defying almost every measure that was ever laid out against oppressive government"
Our Founding Fathers gave us a "Republic" unlike any other before it .. and .. Ben Franklin warned at that time .. it would be left to "we the people" to defend it by faithfully exercising our right to vote.
At 76 years of age .. I find myself living in a country that bares slight resemblance to the country I inherited in 1939. Indeed .. I am proud to have witnessed first hand the unstoppable "power of the people" .. who .. when treated unfairly and unjustly by THEIR government .. through peaceful demonstrations .. led by Dr. King .. caused reluctant .. well-entrenched .. powerful politicians .. to enact Civil Right's legislation that was far too long delayed.
Unfortunately .. in our Republic .. it ought never be required of oppressed or disenfranchised people to feel so powerless .. their only hope is to engage in mass "civil disobedience" protests .. threatened with arrest and prison .. as was Dr. King. Instead .. our Founding Fathers tried their level best to provide peaceful "regime change" by guaranteeing "we the people" .. free exercise of our informed right to vote.
As I write today .. this year's Presidential election will provide opportunity for "we the people" .. to peacefully change direction of our country .. should a majority of us believe CHANGE is our best HOPE going forward.
And so .. today .. in the spirit as John put it .. "Happy American Revolution Day" .. I respectfully suggest there is only ONE candidate seeking election that gives hope .. in my opinion .. to a much needed peaceful revolution in our great country .. and .. that candidate would be Donald Trump.
Admittedly .. Donald Trump is far from the "perfect candidate" .. whose words and thoughts do not always agree with my own, who says things inappropriately causing unnecessary offense where I believe no offense was his intention .. I do believe Trump's election would be tantamount to an American Revolution .. based solely upon those who so LOUDLY VOICE OPPOSITION to him .. such as:
THOSE OPPOSED TO TRUMP: .. the media, the well-entrenched political "establishments" .. especially those within the Republican "NEVER TRUMP" establishment, the UN, EU, China, Mexico, Black Lives Matter, Move-on.org, Soros, Koch Brothers, Bush Family, Planned Parenthood, Hillary and Bernie, Illegal immigrants, K Street lobbyists and their favored Wash DC politicians .. on and on.
For what it is worth .. Trump is not a lawyer, not a life-time politician, not doing it for the MONEY .. indeed .. he is surely not one of THEM .. who desperately want to maintain the Status Quo .. under which they have grown rich and lead very comfortable lives.
As Ronald Regan said of the Status Quo .. "it's Latin for .. THE MESS WE ARE IN"
Hopefully .. this being INDEPENDENCE DAY .. it will be the absolute LAST time I will mention Trump's name on AoA. After all .. you guys don't need me to tell you who you should vote for ..
Posted by: Bob Moffit | July 04, 2016 at 07:50 AM
John Stone,
"Meanwhile, the industry can buy or isolate virtually every politician out of the petty cash."
How does differ from the telecommunications industry, the agrichemical industry, the weapons industry, and other similar industries too numerous to mention?
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | July 04, 2016 at 07:36 AM
De Bigtree in Santa Monica
https://www.facebook.com/LarryCook333/videos/10153748329093589/
A colossal speech which particularly focusses on our bought out media, and the news black-out on the William Thompson affair.
Posted by: John Stone | July 04, 2016 at 06:43 AM