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!

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.

Bill C-51: Canadian Natural Health Coalition Policy Statement

INTRODUCTION

Bill C‐51 presents a direct threat to the rights of Canadians to access safe, effective and low‐cost natural health products (NHPs). This proposal would reverse the regulatory reforms that Canadians campaigned for and Parliament approved.

This legislation is just the latest assault by Health Canada (HC) intended to restrict the freedom Canadians have to choose NHPs for their health and well‐being. If passed, Bill C‐51 would give enormous powers to HC. It is certain that these will be used to strangle and marginalize NHPs.

Bill C‐51 does not directly impose sanctions on the availability to the public of natural health products. Instead, it would confer on Health Canada the power to impose sanctions later, at their discretion, one piece at a time, when the opportunity is ripe. Health Canada has always been hostile to natural health products. Bill C‐51 will provide them with the weaponry to complete the job.

Apologists for Bill C‐51 try to deflect public concerns about its grim provisions by claiming “it is not the intention” of the bill or its advocates that it will be used to suppress natural health products. Canadians are being asked to trust these soothing assurances about Bill C‐51’s “intentions”. We have heard this all before.

THE GOOD ‘INTENTIONS’ BEHIND BILL C-51

It was the “intention” of Parliament that Health Canada would implement its approval, in March 1999, of the Standing Committee on Health’s (SCOH) report, Natural Health Products: A New Vision which featured 53 specific Recommendations. This was the culmination of a large‐scale public campaign to ensure better access to NHPs through major regulatory reform. Despite Health Canada’s bitter resistance Parliament agreed with the public and approved a significant package of reforms.

These mandated reforms have not been carried out. Would someone in the government and Parliament account for this situation? Despite the combination of public support and Parliament’ “intentions”, Health Canada has insubordinately refused to implement them. Parliaments pass legislation and governments give orders but the record shows HC pursues its own agenda which is vindictively hostile to natural health. Who is running the show?

We don’t doubt the good‐faith of MPs professed intentions. We just see that they can’t deliver the goods. If the intentions of Parliament carried any weight we wouldn’t have to have this fight again.

Parliament and the government have lost control over the management at HC. We say: Health Canada is a rogue agency. Canadians are confronted with a breakdown of good governance and accountability over this department.

This is the public’s health care system. We own it. Parliament is our trustee. More Canadians than ever favour natural health. We say to our politicians: e are not going away. The current regime at Health Canada must go away. e will fight until we see the public interest on natural health respected in policy and practice. We re tired of the tail wagging the dog and we want this fixed – permanently.

The Canadian Natural Health Coalition (CNHC) calls on Parliament and the government to re‐assert roper management and oversight of Health Canada. We call for a thorough house‐cleaning and reform of that agency which we have lost confidence in and respect for. We call for a Regime Change at Health Canada. After which, the public may again have confidence in the intentions of its legislators.

HOW BILL C – 51 WILL HURT CANADIANS

Canadians won the right to have natural health products formally confirmed as a third independent category within the current legislation on a peer basis with the existing categories – Foods and Drugs. This has not happened. Health Canada has obstructed every legislative opportunity to carry our Parliament’s instructions.

Canadians won the right to have natural health products formally confirmed as a third category within the current legislation on a peer basis with the other legal categories ‐ Foods and Drugs. This has not happened. HC has obstructed every legislative opportunity to carry out its duty to have made this so. Instead, we have been fobbed off with a mere third directorate ‐ the Natural Health Products Directorate (NHPD). This directorate is a wholly‐owned subsidiary of the Therapeutics Product Programme (TPP) aka the Drugs Directorate ‐ re‐branded.

NHPs remain as drugs under the current system. Bill C‐51 proposes to re‐define the definition of ‘drug’ into the nebulous concept of “Therapeutic Products”. The entire reason for this is initiative is to construct a categorical umbrella wide enough to embrace the upstart NHPs so their rapid growth can be contained. Health Canada is wasting taxpayer’s money and abusing the public trust by pursuing this unauthorized vendetta against natural health products.

If Bill C‐51 is passed, Health Canada’s plans are transparent. Health Canada officials have been bruiting their intentions throughout the natural health products industry. With the NHPD under its thumb a new Natural Products Directorate (NPD) will be positioned jurisdictionally between the Drugs Directorate and the NHPD. This new NPD will regulate all ‘natural’ ingredients and products that are held to have ‘therapeutic potential’.

Since in HC dogma only drugs can deliver therapeutic benefits ipso facto any substance with therapeutic potential is automatically designated as a drug, even if the substance is demonstrably not a drug as in the case of an NHP.

Health Canada simply refuses to acknowledge that Natural Health Products are qualitatively distinct from pharmaceutical drugs. They refuse to evaluate NHPs according to their intrinsic properties.

We – the Canadian public and our members of Parliament – are being forced to fight over the same ground we already decided on. Health Canada’s insistence that Natural Health Products be forced through the Procrustean Bed of pharmaceutical criteria is scientifically and clinically without basis, is contrary to the public interest, and provides plain sight evidence of their disloyalty as a public agency.

Thanks to Bill C‐51, Health Canada will be able to strip the NHPD of jurisdiction over most of its ingredients and products vesting these products under the Natural Products Directorate, including the majority of NHPD applicants who are facing final disallowance. Therefore, the NHPD will be left with authority over wheat germ and alfalfa tablets.

Since Natural Products are deemed to be capable of ‘therapeutic potential’ (i.e. can do something useful) ex‐NHPD ingredients will now be subject to pharmaceutical‐type evaluation under the NPD. Since these substances are not drugs to begin with these products will not be approved. The current tsunami of unapproved NHPD applications will soon manifest as failed NHPs and be forced off the market.

Thanks to Bill C‐51, Health Canada will be able to move the goalposts anywhere it likes. The standards of evidence, the burden of proof, the review process, the reviewers, enforcement, investigation ‐ everything can be moved around and manipulated at Health Canada’s enhanced discretion. These powers have always been abused. Health Canada gets to make the rules, hires ‘ringers’ as reviewers and then uses selected enforcement to punish or reward. The whole system is stage managed to ‘appear’ as formally correct but in practice it is rotten and corrupt. Bill C‐51 will make sure that the regulation of natural ingredients by Health Canada will become just as debased as they have become for pharmaceutical medicaments what with the endemic payoffs, conflicts of interest, corruption, malpractice, bad ethics and outright lying that characterizes that field. And

thanks to Bill C‐51, Health Canada will have the means to subject Canadians to the additional restrictions against natural health products that derive from the Codex Alimentarius.

What few products are allowed by the NPD must perforce have their public access restricted as all ‘therapeutic’ products ‐‘drugs’ ‐ are deemed to have the potential to cause harm. Under this new regime, they simply cannot be sold openly like Natural Health Products.

Thanks to Bill C‐51, Health Canada will be able to require that ‘therapeutic’ Natural Products be accessible only on the prescription of a licensed practitioner as each province variably defines that.

What a nightmare of enforcement problems that will set off compounding this is the well established fact that physicians generally have no training or competence in the use of natural health products while other well trained practitioners are not licensed. Such products of course, must be ‘dispensed’ from controlled facilities known as pharmacies.

Health Canada aims to choke off product availability of NHPs to Canadians. These actions will force a person living in Quebec who now routinely buys an NHP locally to travel to Ontario and engage in the services of a licensed Naturopathic physician (ND) since the Province of Quebec does not recognize Naturopaths. That ND could write a prescription for the desired product ONLY if it remained available for sale on the Short List of the NPD. Also, the poor patient would have to find a drug store that even knew what the product was.

The whole point of what Health Canada is doing is place as many obstacles as possible in the way of consumers trying to access Natural Health Products just as they have rigged the system to frustrate suppliers who want to develop and market products.

This scenario is not speculative, it is pending. Health Canada personnel are already bragging about it. Our tax dollars at work. With Bill C‐51, Health Canada is working to restrain the rapid growth of the Natural Health Products sector. As far as Health Canada is concerned too many Canadians are using too many NHPs for therapeutic purposes. We are getting out of control and must be forced back into line “for our own good”.

HEALTH CANADA : ECONOMIC SABOTEUR

Health Canada’s campaign against NHPs directly harms the economic welfare of the large number of Canadians whose livelihood is invested in this growing business sector. There a lot of jobs at stake. Growers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, health professionals and researchers all will suffer if Health Canada’s repressive desires take force. The regulatory chill and hostility that Health Canada directs towards natural health – something which is widely known ‐ will confine Canada in the backwaters of a high‐growth international industry.

Of course, the well paid and tenured HC bureaucracy could not care less about other people’s jobs, businesses, practices or investments. Members of Parliament must take cognizance of this. They must be supporting the development of a healthy NHP industry which is rich in entrepreneurial vitality instead of allowing Health Canada to strangle it.

We say: Stop Health Canada from destroying a Healthy industry.

The greatest crisis facing Canadians in our health care system is the growing tension between constantly rising costs and declining outcomes. When Canadians use natural health products they ease the burden on the health care system. This deserves to be recognized by our Members of Parliament. NHPs have the best safety record of all classes of medicaments. If pharmaceutical drugs were held to the same safety standard as Natural Health Products, there would be very few of them left.

Health Canada’s reckless actions will directly result in the development of an underground market for Natural Health Products. We can look forward to grandmothers being busted by HC brownshirts for possession of carnitine. Popular U.S., Japanese or European products that Health Canada refuses to approve will nevertheless find their way to market on a large scale. This is very bad public policy in the making.

To our Members of Parliament: with costs of adverse effects from prescription drug use going through the roof, how do you justify sanctioning the expense of Health Canada’s large‐scale campaign against ultra‐safe NHPs?

NHPs are clinically effective; their preventative properties benefit consumers and this reduces the demand on high priced taxpayer‐funded conventional medicine. They are largely used by people who have actively taken control of their health. Why is it not public policy to support such tendencies? Dollar against dollar, measure against measure – benefits, adverse effects, compliance ‐ NHPs deliver a better return on investment than drugs. It should be the case that the widest possible use of NHPs is formally promoted.

HEALTH CANADA’S PHONY ‘CONTAMINATION’ CAMPAIGN

Health Canada claims they need the stern enforcement powers of Bill C‐51 because the public needs to be protected from “contaminated” NHPs. A clearer example of the culture of lying and deceit within HC towards NHPs could not be hoped for.

There is a large business being carried on in Canada selling fake drugs. They are largely sold through the anonymity of spam email solicitations or through the unwitting agency of pharmacies or by street trafficking like illegal drugs. A very small part of fake drug sales are made through the retail channel. Since they cannot be sold openly in a store just as they are, fake drugs have to be disguised. Sometimes they are represented as ‘herbal’ products. The fake drug masquerades as a fake NHP. The peddlers of these goods are not part of the legal NHP business. They are outlaws of the drug business.

We are not in the drug business. This is your dirty laundry Health Canada. The issue is not that REAL Natural Health Products are a problem. It is that HC allows drug carpetbaggers to graze into our territory. We say to Health Canada: Keep your drugs out of our Natural Health Products.

Besides, is there anyone so naive as to imagine that HC cares about the welfare of someone who got an unexpected Viagra response from a bottle of ‘herbal’ sexual aides they bought at the local convenience store? These bureaucrats are comfortably indifferent to the tens of thousands of Canadians annually who die or suffer adverse effects from the legal drugs they so blithely permit.

Almost every day Canadians are informed of studies or reports that find some approved prescription drug or another doesn’t work or causes serious adverse effects. About these things Health Canada does nothing. The hypocrisy of Health Canada on product safety is obscene.

While fake drugs are being sold, does HC attack the legal pharmaceutical industry? When fake watches or DVDs are sold does the government attack the manufacturers of legal watches or DVDs? On what policy basis then does HC attack the NHP industry alone?

Health Canada is attempting to smear the legal NHP industry by false association. We say loud and clear: There are NO examples of compliant NHPs being found ‘contaminated’ with fake drugs. HCs’ malicious allegations have no factual basis.

The government should order HC to stop this anti‐NHP smear campaign at once. The Minister of Health should conduct a thorough investigation and discipline the responsible officials. Canadian Natural Health Coalition calls on the Members of Parliament to see the following into law:

1. That Natural Health Products are consecrated as a ‘category’ on a peer basis with Foods and Drugs throughout all legislation;

2. That the legislation fixes the definition of NHPs to be that as currently applies for the NHPD;

3. That the legislation specify that NHPs will be remain available to Canadians in the public domain with specific prohibition of prescription status;

4. That all products containing only natural health ingredients and otherwise complying with Good Manufacturing Practices and labelling requirements be available for sale to consumers on a default basis.

WE CONCLUDE, PLAINLY

The Canadian Natural Health Coalition and the public will no longer tolerate the abuse of power from Health Canada. We will mobilize, organize and focus the power of the majority of Canadians who rightfully demand access to safe, effective and low‐cost NHPs. We will wage a ceaseless campaign to bring an end to the tyranny of the current regime at Health Canada.

To our Members of Parliament who at present retain our confidence, if you betray our trust we will confront you in the impending federal election. If you want this issue to go away and for the public to applaud you then fix this NOW. Permanently.

Drafted by Robert McMaster

Canadian Natural Health Coalition

Toronto, Ontario

www.cnhc.ca

policy@cnhc.ca

© Canadian Natural Health Coalition 2008

Permission is granted to photocopy or distribute this material, unedited.

This policy statement was approved by the CNHC Executive/Steering committee on June 11, 2008.

New Drug-Resistant Superbug Seriously Aggressive

Editors Comment: We’ve finally come to the point where the creation of these new superbugs is hitting even healthy people with a wallop. I state “created” because these are not natural bugs, but come about because of the way we treat patients – too many anti-biotics; drugs; germ killing elements. Nature is merely hitting back hard.

Our vaunted scientific field is hapless in the face of such an assault. Even if they manage to get a hold of this new one, another more virulent strain will develop. I wonder when we will learn that we are on the wrong track and that the medical model is inherently wrong!

Please read the article posted below to get an idea of how bad this superbug really is.

————————————————————

Superbug’s March Shocking

Source: The Gazette (Montreal) 2008

The number of cases of a superbug that spreads through the body, causing everything from painful boils to bleeding in the lungs, is increasing in Canada and while most are acquired in a hospital, one in six is now coming from the wider community – infecting otherwise healthy people, even children.

This represents a new means of infection for a disease that has been in hospitals for years, but has been largely unknown beyond their walls.

What’s more, the new community strain of drug-resistant staphylococcus aureus (known as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) is a different kind of animal, doctors say – a “fully-loaded,” more virulent, more aggressive pathogen than the “old-style” hospital germ and one that’s capable of causing more severe infections.

“This really worries me. This is very serious stuff,” said Dick Zoutman, director of infectious diseases at Kingston General Hospital in Ontario. “It tends to be resistant to some drugs, but not all. It attacks very aggressively and makes very healthy people in the community very sick.”

The superbug can cause aggressive infections of the bone and spine as well as severe pneumonia. Zoutman said he’s hearing “shocking stories” from colleagues in the U.S. – where community-acquired MRSA is spreading rapidly – of what the bug is capable of doing to otherwise healthy children, including severe soft-tissue infections and infections in multiple joints.

Deaths have been reported in Texas involving teens who developed a rare form of pneumonia because of MRSA, including a healthy 14-year-old Dallas boy who died last year, four days after he went home from school with a mild fever.

Now, the latest results from the national surveillance for MRSA to be made public today – based on data from 48 large adult and pediatric hospitals in all provinces except Prince Edward Island – show that for every 1,000 people admitted to hospital in Canada, eight are either infected with or carrying MRSA.

The survey included five Quebec hospitals.

The Public Health Agency of Canada has not identified which hospitals were included in the survey, to encourage them to continue reporting their infection rates.

Overall, there were 5,787 “newly identified” MRSA cases during the 2006 surveillance period, of which 3,561, or 62 per cent, were acquired in the hospital, seven per cent in other acute care hospitals and eight per cent in long-term care facilities.

Community-acquired MRSA accounted for 893, or 15 per cent, of the reported cases, meaning the patients arrived at the hospital already infected. The remaining seven per cent of cases were of unknown origin, according to the report being issued by Public Health Agency of Canada.

“Whichever way you cut it, whether you look at it per 1,000 admissions, per 10,000 patient days, the overall rates of MRSA that we’re seeing in our Canadian hospitals from coast to coast is increasing. There’s no two ways about it,” said John Conly, professor of medicine, microbiology and infectious diseases at the University of Calgary and Calgary Health Region.

“We’re seeing more cases of infection and more cases of people who are carrying or colonized.”

The infection begins with what looks like a spider bite, a red, very tender area that rises up and comes to a head just like a small boil. If not treated promptly, the lesions can develop into large, spreading abscesses in the soft tissues that can grow to the size of a baseball, or even a grapefruit.

People develop fever, malaise and flu-like symptoms. In some cases, MRSA can cause hemorrhagic pneumonia, or bleeding in the lungs.

The strain contracted in hospital, which causes wound infections and pneumonia, tends to be resistant to a number of antibiotics and it colonizes more patients than it infects, Conly said.

The new community strain, on the other hand, appears more nimble and seems to spread more readily. It’s also moving out of traditional risk groups, such as intravenous drug users, the homeless, prisoners, people infected with HIV and members of the military. It has infected college and high-school athletes, and schools in Chicago and Boston have reported students infected with MRSA.

The bug is spread through physical contact, through open cuts and scrapes, poor hygiene and sharing soap, towels, creams, razors and other personal items. About one-third of the population carries the staph germ, whether it’s drug-sensitive or drug-resistant. It’s the most common cause of boils and infected cuts, scrapes and surgical wounds.

The community bug is starting to creep into hospitals, Conly said. He said doctors will report, at an coming meeting in Montreal of infectious disease specialists, that a small cluster of cases occurred in an intensive care unit in Calgary within the past year.

Some hospitals have starting swabbing all patients to check for MRSA.

But new studies suggest the community strain tends not to be found in the nose, but rather in the groin or rectal areas, “so if they’re relying on nose cultures, they may be missing a large number of them,” Conly said.

Zoutman said Canada urgently needs more systematic surveillance of infection rates. Surveillance for MRSA, which started in 1995, is based only on a sampling of Canadian hospitals.

“This needs to become a big-budget item,” Zoutman said. “This needs to happen nationally so that people who are trying to control these diseases have the information.”