New Low with Statin Drug (Cholesterol) Push For 8-Year-Olds

NaturalNews.com, July 8, 2008

http://www.naturalnews.com/023583.html

In the latest example of absurd disease mongering to receive widespread media attention, the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee has announced that infants as young as two years old need to be screened for high cholesterol, and children as young as eight years old should be put on prescription statin drugs. This absurd advice is being offered even though statin drugs have never been tested on young children. But the FDA, in its ongoing drug-pushing campaign, has granted approval for the use of such drugs on children as young as eight. (Will they now expand that approval to children as young as two?)

The point of all this? To sell more high-profit prescription drugs, of course, to yet another group of victims being targeted for medication by Big Pharma. This is called “market expansion,” and it’s the only way drug companies can continue to grow their profits and keep shareholders happy.

As drug companies continue to expand their profits and influence over the now-utterly-corrupt medical industry, they are also expanding their customer base by continuing to push medications for increasingly younger demographic groups. Not content to drug more than half the adults in western nations, Big Pharma now sees children as its next area of market growth, in much the same way that soda companies once sought to persuade parents to feed their babies soda pop as a way to instill the desire for sugary beverages at a very young age.

The conventional medical profession — which has long since sold its soul to the drug companies and now functions as little more than an elaborate pharmaceutical vending machine — is likely to follow this absurd advice and place children as young as eight years old on statin drugs, even without a single safety test having ever been conducted with children taking these powerful chemicals. NaturalNews readers need no reminders that statin drug side effects include:

• Severe disruption of hormone production, including sex hormones
• Extreme loss of cellular energy
• Devastating loss of muscle function (rhabdomyolysis)
• Kidney failure
• Erectile dysfunction
• Mental confusion
• Homicidal impulses
• Amnesia

… and many others you can read about at: http://www.naturalnews.com/001353.html

Are these the kinds of results our medical community wishes to see in eight-year-old boys and girls? Do we really want to send adolescent boys off to school, doped up on drugs that cause homicidal impulses, erectile dysfunction and mental confusion?

The medical community apparently thinks so. After all, they’re already drugging up the children with psych drugs that cause suicidal thoughts and violent outbursts (school shootings, anyone?). The thought of adding yet another mind-altering, body-damaging drug to a child apparently doesn’t earn a second thought from modern medical doctors, most of which are too busy cashing “speaking fee” checks from drug companies to invest any real time actually protecting the health of their patients.

But what if these children really have high cholesterol?

I can already hear the drug pushers chanting in unison: “But what if these children really have high cholesterol? Don’t they deserve treatment?”

“Treatment,” of course, is a clever euphemism for “drug ‘em!” It’s the call-to-arms of the medication industry, and it really only means pushing more drugs onto more people who don’t need them.

I’m all for real treatment — that is, treatment that reverses the underlying health condition. But the medical community won’t stand for that. It is currently illegal in the United States to offer a patient any treatment whatsoever that claims to reverse cancer, for example. Doctors are only allowed to offer prescription drugs and surgery, and that’s it. Neither option, of course, will resolve the underlying health problem.

And what, exactly, is the underlying health problem in this case? Any child diagnosed with high cholesterol at the age of eight has been a victim of dietary abuse and physical neglect. To imbalance a child’s cholesterol at such an early age requires the consumption of large quantities of:

• Milk and dairy products (like cheese)
• Fried foods and trans fatty acids
• Processed meats and animal products

Such a condition also indicates a dangerous lack of plant-based nutrients in the child’s diet, since a plant-based diet focused on unprocessed, fresh foods and living foods reverses heart disease and normalizes cholesterol!

I submit that any child can be cured of high cholesterol in a matter of weeks by being fed a 100% plant-based diet, comprised entirely of non-processed foods, and including fresh, raw vegetable and fruit juices along with numerous superfoods. (The junk food companies, of course, will never stand for this. They earn no profits when children eat fresh produce…)

That’s how you solve the cholesterol problems in America’s youth. Change their diets, and you change the health results you get. It’s so simple that you’d have to be an idiot not to get it.

Why are the nutritionally illiterate in charge of health care?

Interestingly, the health authorities in power today are, indeed, idiots when it comes to nutrition. Having never been taught the absurdly simple relationships between food intake and health outcomes, they continue to operate in a fantasy realm of false ideas where food has no relationship to health and children who exhibit symptoms of disease merely suffer from pharmaceutical deficiencies requiring rectification with medication.

That’s right: The mainstream medical profession now thinks of pharmaceuticals as essential nutrients, believing that children who are not given numerous medications are somehow lacking treatment or missing out on the benefits of those drugs.

And yet, at the same time, the real essential nutrients — vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals — are scoffed at by conventional medical practitioners who claim that VITAMINS exhibit no health benefits whatsoever in the human body!

You got that? Vitamins are useless, they say, but pharmaceuticals are essential!

Why no drug company will face my $10,000 health challenge

Which brings me to my $10,000 health and fitness challenge. Two weeks ago, I challenged the drug companies to produce a single person who could beat me in a physical fitness contest, pledging that I would personally pay $10,000 to anyone who could beat me. The catch? They have to provide a contestant who is experiencing the “benefits” of multiple pharmaceuticals that the drug companies claim enhance consumers’ health. You can read the full details on that challenge here: http://www.naturalnews.com/023476.html

To date, not a single drug company has dared to meet this challenge. Can you guess why? Because pharmaceuticals make you sick, not healthy. The more medications a person takes, the worse their health gets! It’s true with adults, it’s true with senior citizens, and it’s true with children as well.

Big Pharma is an industry based on fraud. It is, in fact, a criminal operation that preys on the bodies of innocent children who will only be harmed by these patented, high-profit synthetic chemicals that have no place in the human body to begin with. What children need today is:

1: Regular access to honest, fresh, unprocessed foods.

2: An honest education in health that isn’t influenced by the junk food companies.

3: Protection from all the chemicals, additives and refined ingredients in processed foods and popular beverages.

They aren’t getting that in the public schools, and they sure aren’t getting that from the USDA’s laughable Food Guide Pyramid. (See www.HonestFoodGuide.org for a better guide.) And sadly, they’re not even getting that in the homes, since most parents know as little about health and nutrition as conventional doctors!

Stop Killing Yourself!

Editors Comment: Found this little write-up at andrayvoronov.wordpress.com and thought I would share it with you, since it lists some of the common dangers we all face daily. It makes for interesting and informative reading.

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Stop Killing Yourself!

We all know that in the modern world, finding food that is free from additives is a chore. You actually have to make an effort to look for logos marking a product as “no added sugar” “preservative free” “no added salt” “no added flavourings” and “no added colours”. What happened to food just being food? MSN health and fitness have recently released a report naming the 10 top culprits which are added to common consumer items, which may be killing with each bite.

1.Sodium Nitrate (also Sodium Nitrite)
Sodium Nitrate is added to meat products such as bacon, ham, hot dogs, luncheon meats, smoked fish, and corned beef to keep them looking lusciously juicy and red, and also enhancing the flavour of the meat. It has been linked to numerous cases of cancer, and Christine Gerbstadt, MD, MPH, RD, LDN, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association has noted that “This would be at the top of my list of additives to cut from my diet…. Under certain high-temperature cooking conditions such as grilling, it transforms into a reactive compound that has been shown to promote cancer.”

2. BHA and BHT
Butylated Hydroxyanisole (BHA) and Butylated Hydrozyttoluene (BHT) are instable chemical substances found in cereals, chewing gum, potato chips, and vegetable oils. The are antioxidants which prevent fats and oils from oxidizing and in turn going rancid. At this stage in time they arn’t definitely going to cause the mutation of cancer cells, however the risk is there.

3.Sodium Cloride
Salt may taste good, but too much refined salt with low mineral content, has some dire effects on your body. The minerals in rock salt are essential for the body and salt also help reserve food, however excessive salt can lead to cardiovascular dysfunction, leading to high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, and kidney failure.

4. Monosodium Glutamate(MSG)
MSG is often associated with Asian foods, however it is most commonly found in soups, salad dressings, chips, frozen entrees, and restaurant food. It is an amino acid which has been linked to the damaging of nerve cell tissue in infant mice. This is bad bad stuff.

5. Trans Fats
“Trans fats are proven to cause heart disease, and make conditions perfect for stroke, heart attack, kidney failure, and limb loss due to vascular disease,” says Gerbstadt. In recent news we’ve heard a lot on trans fats and we all know that it should be avoided and research has shown that we shouldn’t consume more than 2g of tans fats per day. Even though the warning sirens are out there fast food chains and restaurants still serve many foods chock full of trans fatty acids.

6. Aspartame (Artificial Sweeteners)
OK, so where do I begin on this one? Have you ever caught yourself going for an ordinary soft drink, hesitating, then instead reaching for the “diet” alternative? Well, Aspartame, also known as “nutrisweet” or “equal” is a food additive found in low-calorie desserts, gelatins, drink mixes, and soft drinks, which when exposed to too regularly may cause cancer as shown in research in 1970 and 2007, by the the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Now I’m not saying go for the sugary drink, go for the water instead

7. Acesulfame-K
Acesulfame-K is a relatively new additive to the game. It is an artificial sweetener found in chewing gums, baked gods and soft drinks. “K” stands for the chemical symbol for potassium, 200 times sweeter than sugar, and although alternate research institutes have found it to be “harmless” in moderation, research on the new substance is thought to be biased. further reasearch is needed so for the mean time. STAY CLEAR!

8. Food Colorings: Blue 1, 2; Red 3; Green 3; Yellow 6
The FDA had previously already banned many harmful food colouring substances, however the five listed above are still used widely in foods nowadays. they have been linked to thyroid cancer, tumour formation and also bladder cancer.

9. Olestra
Olestra, otherwise known as Olean is found in most potato chips. It is a substance which prevents the absoption of fats and oils. The reason why this is harmful to your body is because this causes diarrhea, abdominal cramps and gas. The fact that Olestra prevents the absorption of fats and oils means that it also prevents functional nutritional absorption. This means that vitamins and minerals will simply pass through without being used.

10. White Sugar
Simple sugars are found everywhere nowadays. It is an effective sweetener and works as a preservative. Yet the average diet should not take up more than 10% of your daily diet, however many Australian diets now consist of 20%, 30% or even 40% simple sugars. Sugar has adverse effects on your health by leading to problems with weight control, tooth decay and blood sugar levels in diabetics; it also replaces good nutrition. To process the sugar your body needs to use vitamins and nutrients, which means that vital stores will be robbed.

Early Death Comes From Drinking Distilled Water

Early Death Comes from Drinking Distilled Water
by Zoltan P. Rona, MD, MSc
http://chetday.com/waterarticles.htm

During nearly 19 years of clinical practice I have had the opportunity to observe the health effects of drinking different types of water. Most of you would agree that drinking unfiltered tap water could be hazardous to your health because of things like parasites, chlorine, fluoride and dioxins.

Many health fanatics, however, are often surprised to hear me say that drinking distilled water on a regular, daily basis is potentially dangerous.

Paavo Airola wrote about the dangers of distilled water in the 1970’s when it first became a fad with the health food crowd.

Distillation is the process in which water is boiled, evaporated and the vapour condensed. Distilled water is free of dissolved minerals and, because of this, has the special property of being able to actively absorb toxic substances from the body and eliminate them. Studies validate the benefits of drinking distilled water when one is seeking to cleanse or detoxify the system for short periods of time (a few weeks at a time). Fasting using distilled water can be dangerous because of the rapid loss of electrolytes (sodium, potassium, chloride) and trace minerals like magnesium, deficiencies of which can cause heart beat irregularities and high blood pressure. Cooking foods in distilled water pulls the minerals out of them and lowers their nutrient value.

Distilled water is an active absorber and when it comes into contact with air, it absorbs carbon dioxide, making it acidic. The more distilled water a person drinks, the higher the body acidity becomes. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Distilled water, being essentially mineral-free, is very aggressive, in that it tends to dissolve substances with which it is in contact. Notably, carbon dioxide from the air is rapidly absorbed, making the water acidic and even more aggressive. Many metals are dissolved by distilled water.”

The most toxic commercial beverages that people consume (i.e. cola beverages and other soft drinks) are made from distilled water. Studies have consistently shown that heavy consumers of soft drinks (with or without sugar) spill huge amounts of calcium, magnesium and other trace minerals into the urine. The more mineral loss, the greater the risk for osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, hypothyroidism, coronary artery disease, high blood pressure and a long list of degenerative diseases generally associated with premature aging.

A growing number of health care practitioners and scientists from around the world have been advocating the theory that aging and disease is the direct result of the accumulation of acid waste products in the body.

There is a great deal of scientific documentation that supports such a theory. A poor diet may be partially to blame for the waste accumulation. Meats, sugar, white flour products, fried foods, soft drinks, processed foods, alcohol, dairy products and other junk foods cause the body to become more acidic. Stress, whether mental or physical can lead to acid deposits in the body.

There is a correlation between the consumption of soft water (distilled water is extremely soft) and the incidence of cardiovascular disease. Cells, tissues and organs do not like to be dipped in acid and will do anything to buffer this acidity including the removal of minerals from the skeleton and the manufacture of bicarbonate in the blood.

The longer one drinks distilled water, the more likely the development of mineral deficiencies and an acid state. I have done well over 3000 mineral evaluations using a combination of blood, urine and hair tests in my practice. Almost without exception, people who consume distilled water exclusively, eventually develop multiple mineral deficiencies.

Those who supplement their distilled water intake with trace minerals are not as deficient but still not as adequately nourished in minerals as their non-distilled water drinking counterparts even after several years of mineral supplementation.

The ideal water for the human body should be slightly alkaline and this requires the presence of minerals like calcium and magnesium.

Distilled water tends to be acidic and can only be recommended as a way of drawing poisons out of the body. Once this is accomplished, the continued drinking of distilled water is a bad idea.

Water filtered through reverse osmosis tends to be neutral and is acceptable for regular use provided minerals are supplemented.

Water filtered through a solid charcoal filter is slightly alkaline. Ozonation of this charcoal filtered water is ideal for daily drinking. Longevity is associated with the regular consumption of hard water (high in minerals). Disease and early death is more likely to be seen with the long term drinking of distilled water. Avoid it except in special circumstances.

About the Author

Dr. Rona is a leading proponent of natural, harmless, health-building alternatives to conventional medical care. He has a general practice where he has provided preventive medical counselling for seventeen years and is a past president of the Canadian Holistic Medical Association.

Scientific Fraud: Not New And Not Rare

Is scientific fraud is on the rise, or is the extend of ongoing cheating just being realized? The implications are staggering, especially in the field of health.

“One of the most spectacular cases of academic fraud occurred in 2005, when the prestigious US journal Science was forced to retract an article it had published in which South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk claimed a major breakthrough involving human stem cells. A probe by Seoul National University found that the experiments had been faked” (AFP, June 19, 2008).

The fraud staggered the worldwide scientific community because it occurred in the high-profile discipline of stem-cell research and involved Hwang, who carried the title of Supreme Scientist in Korea and was head of the world’s leading stem cell research center.

“The shock of the Hwang deception, along with other recent fraud cases, jolted journals into a new reality. Five scientists and a top editor of Nature examined Science’s handling of the Hwang papers, at the journal’s request. Their report, published on Science’s Web site concluded that operating in an atmosphere of trust is no longer sufficient.

As it turned out, the Hwang debacle marked the beginning of a bad year for science. Incidents of publication fraud started garnering more attention, and the review process came under scrutiny. In June (2006), European investigators reported that the bulk of papers by Jon Sudbø, formerly a cancer researcher at the Norwegian Radium Hospital in Oslo, contained bogus data. Those included two articles in The New England Journal of Medicine that described a new way of identifying people at high risk of oral cancer, a strategy that many clinicians were keen to apply to patients.

Eric Poehlman, formerly a menopause and obesity researcher at the University of Vermont in Burlington, garnered perhaps the most dubious distinction of all: He became the first researcher in the United States to go to jail for scientific misconduct unrelated to patient deaths (www.sciencemag.org, December 22, 2006).

Now it is found that sci­en­tif­ic mis­con­duct, no­tably fal­sifica­t­ion of da­ta, may be far more com­mon than sus­pected, ac­cord­ing to the au­thors of a new sur­vey of more than 2,000 sci­en­tists. “San­dra L. Ti­tus and col­leagues at the Of­fice of Re­search In­tegr­ity of the U.S. De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vic­es in Rock­ville, Md., sur­veyed 2,212 sci­en­tists at 605 in­sti­tu­tions. They found that nearly 9 per­cent be­lieved they had seen po­ten­tial re­search mis­con­duct in the pre­vious three years. The find­ings are pub­lished in a com­men­tary in June 19 is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Na­ture.

“The results suggest as many as 2,300 ob­serva­t­ions of mis­con­duct, 1,000 of them un­re­ported, oc­cur each year in the larg­er re­search com­mun­ity funded by the U.S. Na­tional In­sti­tutes of Health, Ti­tus and col­leagues wrote. They added that it’s un­likely such be­hav­ior is con­fined to the Un­ited States. Sur­vey par­ti­ci­pants de­scribed misbe­hav­ior rang­ing from sci­en­tists’ chang­ing num­bers to make re­sults look more def­i­nite than they really were, to more cre­a­tive fab­rica­t­ions.

One par­ti­ci­pant told of a col­league us­ing Pho­to­shop to tweak re­sults of chem­i­cal tests that ap­pear as blots on sheets of pa­pe­r. Sus­pected mis­con­duct was seen “at all sci­en­tif­ic ranks in­clud­ing post­docs, stu­dents, and tenured fac­ul­ty mem­bers,” the au­thors wrote. Six­ty per­­cent of the cases in­volved fab­rica­t­ion or fal­sifica­t­ion, and 36 per­­cent pla­gia­rism “on­ly,” Ti­tus and col­leagues added” (World Science, June 19, 2008).

“Extrapolating the survey results — even conservatively — projects an alarming picture of under-reporting,” says a report on the survey, which points to the “failure” of the research community to foster a culture of integrity” (National Post, June 19, 2008).

Considering the massive scientific output of NIH-funded scientists, including grant proposals, dissertations and journal articles, 2,300 isn’t a terribly large number, says co-author Jim Wells, now director of the Office of Research Policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “On the other hand, it’s a lot higher than anyone expected,” he says. “And it’s discomforting to think that so much potential misconduct never gets reported and thus we can’t bring to bear our policies for investigating these cases, protecting whistle blowers and so on, to make sure things are handled properly”  (University of Wisconsin-Madison News).

Misconduct jeopardizes the good name of any institution. Inevitably, the way in which research misconduct is policed and corrected reflects the integrity of the whole enterprise of science. The US National Academy of Sciences has asserted that scientists share an ‘obligation to act’ when suspected research misconduct is observed. This is not, however, always the case.

“A post doc changed the numbers in assays in order to ‘improve’ the data.

“A colleague duplicated results between three different papers but differently labelled data in each paper.”

“A co-investigator on a large, interdisciplinary grant application reported that a postdoctoral fellow in his laboratory falsified data submitted as preliminary data in the grant. As principal investigator of the grant, I submitted supplementary data to correct the application.”

“A colleague used Photoshop to eliminate background bands on a western blot to make the data look more specific than they were.” (Journal: Nature, June 19, 2008)

“Cheating, of course, occurs in all fields. But scientists and researchers? ‘The temptations are huge,’ said Paul D. Tate, senior scholar in residence at the Council of Graduate Schools and director of its Responsible Conduct of Research initiative.

At a research lab where no one is looking over shoulders, a scientist who ignores anomalous results can produce career-boosting work. ‘At the cutting edge of science, the rewards are huge and the temptation is greater.’” (Post Gazette, March 26, 2006).

Of course, no regulatory office can hope to catch all research misconduct and the primary deterrent must be at the institutional level. These must establish a culture that promotes safeguards for whistleblowers and establishes zero tolerance both for those who commit misconduct or those who turn a blind eye to it.

“However, nearly one generation after the effort to reduce misconduct in science began, the responses by NIH scientists suggests that falsified and fabricated research records, publications, dissertations and grant applications are much more prevalent than has been suspected to date. Our study calls into question the effectiveness of self-regulation. We hope it will lead individuals and institutions to evaluate their commitment to research integrity” (Journal: Nature, June 19, 2008)

These findings also suggest that scientific research (especially in the area of pharmaceuticals), needs to be held to a higher standard. And it definitely means we need to listen to the latest scientific findings with a more critical ear, doing some homework before blindly accepting data.