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5/13/2006

Mobile Phones And Brain Cancer

.... You Deserve The Facts

mobile Phone Usage

You Don't Deserve Brain Cancer - You Deserve The Facts

Some people appear to have an almost pathological emotional attachment to their mobile phones and there is a fascinating suggestion that mobile radiation pulses might actually be addictive to the human brain.. We can't save those who would rather die than switch. But ethics compelled us to ensure that all reasonable people have access to the basic scientific facts.

Your mobile phone is a microwave transmitter and it should bear a cancer warning! Microwave energy oscillates at millions to billions of cycles per second. The Journal of mobile ular Biochemistry reports that these frequencies cause cancer and other diseases by interfering with mobile ular DNA and its repairmechanisms. Microwave promotes rapid mobile aging. Italian scientists have recently demonstrated that mobile phone radiation makes cancerous mobile s grow aggressively. Cordless phones marked 900 megahertz or 2.4 gigahertz emit the same dangerous microwave radiation as mobile phones.

The connection between microwave exposure and cancer has been documented for years. During the Cold War, the Soviets irradiated the U.S. Embassy in Moscow , Russia , with low level, twin-beam microwave radiation. Two successive ambassadors developed leukemia. Other staffers also developed cancer, or their blood showed DNA damage, which precedes cancer.

Research by University of Washington professor Dr. Henry Lai shows brain mobile s are clearly damaged by microwave levels far below the U.S. government's "safety" guidelines. Dr. Lai notes that even tiny doses of radio frequency can cumulate over time and lead to harmful effects. He warns that public exposure to radiation from wireless transmitters "should be limited to minimal.">

Motorola advises consumers to avoid pointing a mobile ular antenna toward exposed parts of the body. But independent tests show that mobile phones can also leak huge amounts of radiation from the keypad and mouthpiece. This radiation deeply penetrates brain, ear and eye tissues, which are especially susceptible to microwave damage. Belt clip cases allow mobile phones to deliver radiation to the liver or kidney areas when a wired, hands-free earpiece is used.

Recent studies confirm that mobile and cordless phone microwave can:

  • Damage nerves in the scalp

  • Cause blood mobile s to leak hemoglobin

  • Cause memory loss and mental confusion

  • Cause headaches and induce extreme fatigue

  • Create joint pain, muscle spasms and tremors

  • Create burning sensation and rash on the skin

  • Alter the brain's electrical activity during sleep

  • Induce ringing ! in the ears, impair sense of smell

  • Precipitate cataracts, retina damage and eye cancer

  • Open the blood-brain barrier to viruses and toxins

  • Reduce the number and efficiency of white blood mobile s

  • Stimulate asthma by producing histamine in mast mobile s

  • Cause digestive problems and raise bad cholesterol levels

  • Stress the endocrine system, especially pancreas, thyroid, ovaries, testes

In 1993, the telecom industry committed $25 million dollars for a series of research projects designed to prove that mobile phones are safe. The studies proved just the opposite! They proved that federal microwave exposure standards are dangerously inadequate. mobile damage and tumors can be easily induced in the lab at about one third of the FCC's exposure guidelines.

The telecom boys panicked. They and their lackey politicians and federal regulators decided the only lucrative thing to do was to LIE and DENY. Despite damning evidence, the FDA still prevaricates:>

"There is no reason to conclude that there are health risks posed by mobile phones to consumers."

Meantime, the telecom industry has been pressing to INCREASE BY MORE THAN 10 TIMES the allowable human exposure to mobile phone radiation!

Luckily, Dr. George Carlo headed up the industry's study project. He presents the shocking facts in his book, mobile Phones: Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age: An Insider's Alarming Discoveries About Cancer and Genetic Damage (Carroll and Graf, 2001). A summary of Dr. Carlo's book is this: mobile phones are hot, adequate protective regulations are naught, and Americans are being "fried" so that the deceitful telecom industry can rake it in! It's dirty business as usual, and the longer the industry can con the public, the more billions it collects.

On June 16, 2002 , CBS aired a Sixty Minutes segment which confirmed the telecom industry is about as grungy as it gets. CBS producers accused major phone service providers of cheating, scamming, forging signatures, switching phone service without permission and lying about charges. The attorney general of Connecticut stated that despite millions of dollars in fines each year, these companies remain incorrigible. Should we be trusting this industry with our brain tissues and our very lives?

Microwave to the head is extremely hazardous to children. Parents in some European nations are now warned to keep children away from mobile phones. A University of Utah researcher found the younger the child, the more radiation is absorbed by the brain. Spanish researchers have shown that mobile phones can alter electrical activity of a child's brain for hours, causing drastic mood changes and possible behavior and learning disabilities. Scientists fear that mobile phone radiation could damage human embryos. Pregnant women are advised to be wary.

A mobile phone must greatly increase its field strength to maintain communications within the metallic cage of an auto. Thus, the effect of microwave radiation inside a vehicle is especially intense. Volkswagen of Europe has warned that mobile phone usage inside a car can be "injurious to health due to the extremely high electromagnetic fields generated."

Insurance studies in England showed that an average driver talking on a mobile is actually more impaired in function and reaction time than a drunk. Finland's Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority reports that one hour of exposure to mobile phone radiation can cause human mobile s to shrink. Researchers believe this is due to increased protein activity, an indicator of mobile damage. What an unstable world needs now is a global population afflicted with incredible shrinking brains.

Brain cancer rates in USA have increased by 25% since 1975. In 2001, 185,000 Americans were diagnosed with some form of brain cancer. A grade four brain tumor can grow from the size of a grape to tennis ball size in just 4 months.

Brain tumors are almost always fatal and most people die within 6-12 months after diagnosis. On April 7, 2002 , Sixty Minutes aired a fascinating report on brain cancer, explaining that scientists are unsure why incidence of the disease is growing so exponentially.

Ironically, the segment was followed by a Sprint ad, which advised parents that the best way to keep track of teenagers is to connect them to a mobile phone. While researchers say that radical damage to the brain can occur within the first few minutes of conversation, telecom ads encourage customers to spend many hours on the phone each month. Those blazing, full-page mobile phone ads in newspapers and magazines must be the reason mobile phone dangers are almost never discussed in the mainstream media.

An exmobile ent resource tool is Robert Kane's book mobile ular Telephone Russian Roulette (Vantage Press, 2001). As a telecommunications expert, Kane presents an impressive collection of studies showing that both government agencies and mobile phone manufacturers KNEW YEARS AGO that mobile phone radiation at present exposure levels is dangerous to human health. He notes that mobile ! phones would be rendered useless if their RF emissions were reduced to safe levels.

Reports of illness from heavy mobile phone usage and from living or working close to powerful RF transmitters are synchronous with numerous cancer-related lawsuits now being filed against the mobile phone industry. The insurance industry sees big trouble ahead. Underwriters for Lloyd's of London refuse to insure phone manufacturers against damage to users' health. mobile phones are today what tobacco was 40 years ago.

UPDATE:

How dangerous are mobile phones? "The risk is extremely high," declares Dr. Cherry. "There are 66 epidemiological studies showing that electromagnetic radiation across the spectrum increase brain tumors in human populations. Two of those studies are for particular brain tumors from mobile phones."

Cherry says that because cancer takes decades to develop, it will be another 10 or 20 years before "mobiles" manifest a big bonanza in brain tumors. But he adds, we're already seeing "acute effects that are noticed within minutes of using a mobile phone."

After two minutes' conversation, a mobile phone's digitized impulses disable the safety barrier that isolates the brain from destructive proteins and poisons in the blood. Professor Leif Salford, the neurologist who carried out the research for this finding, informed the Daily Mail: "It seems that molecules such as proteins and toxins can pass out of the blood, while the phone is switched on, and enter the brain. We need to bear in mind diseases such as MS and Alzheimer's which are linked to proteins being found in the brain."

DANCING WITH THE TELECOMONSTER

If you must pack a mobile phone, treat it like a loaded pistol. Keep it turned off. Don't carry it near ovaries, testicles, or the heart. For partial protection, buy an antenna shield. Limit calls to one-minute, six to 10 minutes a month. Never fire off a mobile phone with children anywhere in sight.

A better bet is to facilitate the growth of organic telephone networks with lots of fibre. Instead of more microwave towers, "We should be wiring up our cities with fibre-optic cables to provide Internet, fax, telephone, radio and television at very high quality," Cherry urges, "rather than saturating our cities with the microwave, radiowave and low frequency signals all the time."

When it comes to mobile s, consciousness and mobile phones, every call is collect. How can convenience count more than cancer? What is gained by being in constant contact with disembodied voices, while being "out of touch" with the friends and neighbours around us? Are we comfortable having our location traced by monitoring authorities?

Unless we start voting with our wallets, consumer complacency could prove as species-limiting as corporate cynicism. "Microwave frequencies are the same as those used in radar and your microwave oven," says Florida mobile phone tower opponent Joe Chwick. "You wouldn't think of sticking your head in the oven, but there is no hesitation to putting the mobile phone to your ear."

Having somehow survived three-million years of evolution without them, many contemporary hominids claim they cannot live without them. But can exquisitely sensitive electromagnetic beings live with mobile phones - and the mobile phone towers their signals ride in on? Like polyethylene food and water containers, plastic cookers and coffeemakers, microwave ovens and petroleum-powered brilliantly beguiling inventions we have to let go. Would hanging up on such an intrusive and hazardous addiction be so terrible?

Exmobile ent web sites offering up-to-date scientific data on microwave and other radiation issues are:

  1. http://www.energyfields.org

  2. http://www.microwavenews.com

  3. http://www.emrnetwork.org

  4. http://www.wave-guide.org

Although the cell phone industry continues to claim that their products are safe, there is still no scientific data available to prove this. Evidence to the contrary, however, is mounting every day. EMFs which cell phones emit are similar to the ones that are emitted by a microwave oven.

A Tool to Reduce Your Brain's Exposure to Cell Phone Radiation

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5/12/2006

Cell Phones And Brain Cancer

Mobile phones tumour risk to young children

Children and Cell Phones

CHILDREN under the age of eight should not use mobile phones, parents were advised last night after an authoritative report linked heavy use to ear and brain tumors and concluded that the risks had been underestimated by most scientists.

Professor Sir William Stewart, chairman of the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB), said that evidence of potentially harmful effects had become more persuasive over the past five years.

The news prompted calls for phones to carry health warnings and panic in parts of the industry. One British manufacturer immediately suspended a model aimed at four to eight-year-olds.

The number of mobiles in Britain has doubled to 50 million since the first government-sponsored report in 2000. The number of children aged between five and nine using mobiles has increased fivefold in the same period.

In his report, Mobile Phones and Health, Sir William said that four studies have caused concern. One ten-year study in Sweden suggests that heavy mobile users are more prone to non-malignant tumors in the ear and brain while a Dutch study had suggested changes in cognitive function. A German study has hinted at an increase in cancer around base stations, while a project supported by the EU had shown evidence of cell damage from fields typical of those of mobile phones.

“All of these studies have yet to be replicated and are of varying quality but we can’t dismiss them out of hand,” Sir William said. If there was a health risk — which remained unproven — it would have a greater effect on the young than on older people, he added.

For children aged between 8 and 14, parents had to make their own judgments about the risks and benefits. “I can’t believe that for three to eight year-olds they can be readily justified,” he said.

David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, called last night for a ban on mobiles in schools.

Mobile phone companies reacted furiously, saying that the report fanned public concern without presenting new research. The youth market is highly lucrative because teenagers are more likely to use video downloads and other services.

The World Health Organization is preparing to publish an international report, drawing on hundreds of studies conducted over a decade, which many hope will give a definitive judgment on mobile phone safety.

The board’s report says that while there is a lack of hard information of damage to health, the approach should be precautionary. Sir William said: “Just because there are 50 million of them out there doesn’t mean they are absolutely safe.”

One school in the North East has begun using mobile scanners to prevent pupils using mobiles in class. “Outside college hours it is up to parents, but in our care if mobiles are found on children, they are confiscated and returned to the parents,” David Riden, vice principal of Tollbar Business and Enterprise College in New Waltham, said.

One group that appears to target young users is Richard Branson’s Virgin Mobile, which derives much of its revenue from the 16s-35s market. It denies targeting under 16s but has cornered a large slice of the youth market with cheap voice and text messages.

HEALTH RISK

  • Acoustic neuromas are benign tumors of the acoustic nerve
  • A study in Sweden has shown that they are twice as common in mobile phone users
  • They were also four times as common on the side of the head where the phone was held
  • Acoustic neuromas occur in 100,000 people a year and can cause deafness
  • They can be treated by surgery. In most cases the patient’s hearing is saved
  • Brain tumors affect about 4,700 new patients a year in Britain
  • They are becoming more common — the UK Brain Tumor Society says that incidence has increased by 45 per cent in 30 years
  • The causes of primary brain tumors are unknown, so it is hard to identify specific risk factors

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5/11/2006

Is Your Health Club Unhealthy?

Health Clubs

Dr. Phillip Tierno says the gym is an unusually effective place for the transmission of germs. (ABC News)

It's the New Year's rush at health clubs all over the country. Every January, in some gyms, there are twice as many people working out as usual.

There are a lot of people looking to get fit. But they could also get something they don't want — germs. "Primetime" conducted an undercover investigation of a number of gyms, swabbing everything in sight — from the free weights to the locker rooms — and found germs practically everywhere.

Microbiologist Dr. Phillip Tierno says the gym is an unusually effective place for the transmission of germs. There are millions and millions of germs on human skin. So when anyone sweats, they come pouring off.

All those people, all that exposed skin and all that sweat, can create a perfect storm for spreading infections.

"You are not using that one machine exclusively for yourself. You're leaving that machine and someone else follows you and the germs that you leave behind," he said. "Eighty percent of all infectious disease is transmitted by contact."

It can be as simple as a sick person uses the machine, someone else uses it next, that person touches the same handrest and then touches his eyes … and he, too, can get sick.

"By the time the 50th person uses that machine, there may be potential pathogens there," Tierno said.

Generally Self-Policed

Germs in gyms are not exactly a priority for health authorities. For example, in New York or Los Angeles, the health department usually inspects gyms on a yearly basis.

Even then, they are generally inspecting pools for proper chlorine and filtration levels. Unless there is a specific complaint, no one comes out to inspect health clubs for germs.

But health club owners are aware that cleanliness is a priority. At the New York Health and Racquet club — which was not one of the gyms tested by "Primetime" — members are given clean towels, and there are antiseptic spray bottles and paper towel dispensers on the exercise floors.

Cleanliness is "first and foremost" in the mind of new members, said Jeff Bodar of the New York Health and Racquet Club.

"Primetime's" samples were tested by Tierno's lab at New York University Hospital. The swabs were put into petri dishes after leaving the gym — and soon bacteria was growing, sometimes in heavy concentrations.

On a set of dumbbells, "Primetime" found staphylococcus, streptococcus viridans, diptheroids and e-coli — the most common bacteria in human feces. On one exercise bike, "Primetime" found candida — the germ that causes yeast infections.

"Any article that is used by multiple people in quick sequence such as the dumbbells" is a high risk for germs, Tierno said. Other areas are seats where people may bike or sit down to lift weights.

But Tierno said the bacteria found in human feces, e-coli, was worst on the shower floor. "Germs do survive in the shower … on the walls and on the floor," he said. "I found them in hoards. Unbelievable quantity."

Still, Tierno was quick to note that most of these germs won't necessarily make someone sick. And there are precautions anyone can take. Don't touch your face while you are exercising. Shower after a workout. And most importantly, wash your hands before eating or drinking anything.

As to the germs in the shower, "You wear little slippers, you're OK," he said.

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5/10/2006

Eat Your Vegetables

Proud To Be A Vagan

EATING vegetables like broccoli and spinach may help older women retain some memory abilities later on, while avoiding obesity in middle age lowers the risk of later Alzheimer's disease in both sexes, new studies suggest.

The work mirrors prior evidence that people may help keep their brains healthy by following standard health advice, including things like staying active and keeping cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure under control.

In fact, one of the new studies found evidence that obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure in middle age each added substantially to the risk of developing Alzheimer's or other dementia later on.

Each problem roughly doubled the risk, and study participants with all three traits ran six times the risk of somebody without any of those problems, said researcher Dr. Miia Kivipelto of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Kivipelto said the findings are encouraging because they suggest that lifestyle changes can help many people reduce their risk of dementia. She spoke in a telephone interview before presenting the work Monday in Philadelphia at the Ninth International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders.

Her study included 1,449 Finns whose body-mass index, which signals obesity, was calculated when they were around 50 years old. When examined an average of 21 years later, 61 had developed dementia, mostly Alzheimer's. Results showed the risk of any dementia or Alzheimer's in particular roughly doubled with a BMI of more than 30 (considered obese), cholesterol of more than 250 or a blood pressure reading in which one of the numbers exceeded 140.

The effect appeared in both sexes, though the obesity factor was slightly stronger in women, Kivipelto said.

The findings make sense, commented Deborah Gustafson of the Medical College of Wisconsin. Gustafson had reported evidence that women who are overweight in their 70s had an increased risk of getting Alzheimer's, while the new work extends the finding back into middle age, she noted.

The other new study found that women in their 60s who habitually ate more cruciferous and green leafy vegetables than other women went on to show less overall decline on a bundle of tests measuring memory, verbal ability and attention when they were in their 70s. Such foods include broccoli, cauliflower, romaine lettuce and spinach.

The federally funded study didn't include men, but the effect would probably appear in them too, said Jae Hee Kang, an instructor at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who presented the work. She stressed that the findings need to be confirmed by further studies.

Researchers focused on drop-offs in abilities like remembering word lists after 15 minutes, naming as many animals as possible in one minute, and reciting a list of numbers backward. A pronounced decline may foreshadow Alzheimer's.

Kang and colleagues studied 13,388 nurses participating in a long-running health study. They compared the participants' questionnaires on long-term eating habits over a span of 10 years, when they were in their 60s, to their performance in two test sessions when they were in their 70s. Researchers noted how much the scores declined in the two years between sessions.

While most women in the study showed some decline, those who had habitually eaten the most cruciferous and green leafy vegetables showed less decline than those who ate the least, Kang said.

"It was almost like they were younger by one or two years in terms of their cognitive declining," Kang said in a telephone interview.

The contrasts appeared between those who ate about eight servings versus three servings of green leafy vegetables a week, and those who ate about five servings versus two servings of cruciferous vegetables a week.

The effect of the vegetables probably comes from the antioxidants and B vitamins they contain, Kang said.

Organic and vegan eating spawn good health, sustainable environment

Carrie Packwood Freeman
April 19, 2005

At the April 20 Earth Day festival, you will likely be overwhelmed by the major environmental issues confronting us: preserving wilderness, stopping species extinction, and maintaining clean air and water. Yet, there is one thing little ol' you can do every day to help each of these environmental problems. Drumroll please: Eating plant-based foods, especially organic and those locally grown, and choosing vegan proteins instead of meat, eggs, and dairy, is even more powerful than our current healthy habits of recycling, biking and turning off the water when we brush our teeth. So why not do all these responsible things?

Following the eco-mantra, "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle," eating vegan proteins like nuts, soy, whole grains, peas and beans is all about Reduction. Veganism reduces the waste of land, forests, plant crops, water, fuel and wildlife, as well as the pollution of water, soil and air. The simplest way to explain it is that animal agribusiness uses the majority of our nation's farmland to raise crops for feeding farm animals. These pesticide-ridden crops use many resources, like fertile soil, water and energy and leave deforestation and desertification in their wake. For the resources we put into raising these crops and the additional water and energy invested in raising, killing and processing animals, we don't get nearly as much in calories or protein out of the resulting animal products. It's an irresponsibly poor return on an investment.

Thousands of people worldwide die daily of hunger-related causes, while we feed over 60 percent of our grains and plants to farm animals. It makes more sense to instead feed people directly with those grains and vegetables.

Compassion in World Farming reports that the world now consumes five times as much meat as it did in the first half of the 20th century. Our current excesses of meat and dairy aren't normal and certainly cannot be sustained. To keep America eating all this excess meat and dairy, factory farms are required. By intensively farming over 10 billion animals annually and consolidating their urine and feces, we are fouling our air and water and ruining our potential for a healthy future. In fact, animal agribusiness is the largest polluter of America's rivers and streams. What's more, big money agribusiness lobbyists are ensuring that the government thinks of its short-term interests and not what's best for the public. Since we live in a market-based economy, that means we as individual consumers need to pick up the slack and financially support more sustainable, plant-based organic foods instead of animal agribusiness. It's up to us.

So next time you're wondering what to get for lunch on campus, bypass Subway and go organic at Holy Cow. Most campuses aren't lucky enough to have such a place. When waiting for the bus, skip the hot dog stand and hit the falafel pita stand instead. Your fork is your most powerful tool for change. How will you wield it?

Eat Your Veggies To Fight Cancer

By Daniel J. DeNoon
Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MD
© 2005, WebMD Inc. All rights reserved.
Nov. 1, 2005

Quote:
"The idea of having more fruits and vegetables in the diet has more and more evidence to support it." William G. Nelson, MD, PhD, Johns Hopkins University

(WebMD) Simple foods carry the most scientifically advanced anticancer compounds, scientists say.

The reports come from the fourth annual Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research meeting, held by the American Association for Cancer Research.

At the cutting edge of these new frontiers is the finding that, well, that your mother was right. You really should eat your vegetables. They're full of newly discovered cancer-fighting compounds, says conference program chairman William G. Nelson, MD, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University.

"Basic research is discovering more and more about the cancer-preventing properties of things we are eating," Nelson said at a news conference. "The idea of having more fruits and vegetables in the diet has more and more evidence to support it."

This year a Nobel Prize went to the scientists who in 1982 discovered H. pylori, the bacterium that causes most stomach ulcers. But stomach ulcers aren't all this nasty bug does to us.

H. pylori causes a condition called gastritis, in which the walls of the stomach become red and swollen. Gastritis enormously increases a person's risk of stomach cancer. A compound called sulforaphane protects cells from injury. It also happens to kill H. pylori. As it turns out, there is a natural source bursting with sulforaphane: broccoli sprouts. Yes, the compound can be found in small amounts in regular, mature broccoli. But broccoli sprouts are by far the best source, says Akinori Yanaka, MD, PhD, of the University of Tsukuba, Japan.

Broccoli Sprouts: Eat Them

Yanaka's team first fed the sprouts to H. pylori-infected mice. As long as the mice kept eating the sprouts, they kept the ulcer bug at bay. Then they studied 50 people with H. pylori infection. Half ate about 3.5 ounces of broccoli sprouts every day for two months. The other half ate alfalfa sprouts, which have almost exactly the same nutrients but totally lack sulforaphane.

"Only the broccoli-sprout group had significantly decreased H. pylori activity," Yanaka said at the news conference. "Only those who ate broccoli sprouts showed decreased gastritis. We concluded that eating broccoli sprouts offers a rich source of sulforaphane, which may be useful as a chemoprotection against gastric cancer."

The broccoli sprouts did not cure H. pylori infection, however. The bug roared back two months after patients stopped eating the sprouts.

Broccoli Sprouts: Rub Them On Your Skin

Broccoli sprouts aren't just good for your insides. They're good for your outside, too, reports Johns Hopkins researcher Albena T. Dinkova-Kostova, PhD.

Dinkova-Kostova and colleagues found that an extract made from broccoli sprouts protects the skin of hairless mice exposed to cancer-causing ultraviolet light.

The skin rub isn't a sunscreen. Treated mice got just as much UV light as untreated mice. But while all the untreated mice got cancer from the simulated sun exposure, half the mice rubbed with broccoli-sprout extract remained cancer free. Those that did get cancer had half as many tumors as untreated mice.

"Broccoli-sprout extract could possibly be used as a preventive treatment for skin cancer after exposure to UV light," Dinkova-Kostova said at the news conference.

Cabbage: Eat It Raw

Polish women are more likely to get breast cancer if they emigrate to the U.S. Why, wondered Dorothy Rybaczyk-Pathak, PhD, of the University of New Mexico. She guessed it must have something to do with changing dietary habits.

A likely suspect: cabbage. Polish women traditionally consume 30 pounds of cabbage a year -- much of it in the form of raw sauerkraut, in salads, or in short-cooked side dishes. When they emigrate to America, they eat only 10 pounds of cabbage a year.

Cabbage -- like broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, and cauliflower -- is a cruciferous vegetable. When broken down by chewing, cabbage releases several biologically active products including compounds called glucosinolates and an enzyme called myrosinase. These products have anticancer properties.

For the greatest benefit, timing seems to be crucial. Rybaczyk-Pathak found that women who as teenagers ate the most raw cabbage were least likely to get breast cancer. But even women who didn't eat much cabbage as teens had a lower breast cancer risk if they ate a lot of raw cabbage as adults.

How much cabbage need a woman eat? Three or more servings a week of raw or short-cooked cabbage puts a woman in the lowest risk category.

Unfortunately, traditional long-cooked Polish dishes such as hunter's stew, pierogi, and cabbage rolls did not lower cancer risk.

Garlic Wards Off Cancer

Vegetables fight cancer. But meats cooked at high temperatures -- as in grilling or frying -- contain a cancer-causing chemical called PhIP.

A compound called diallyl sulfide or DAS is one of the things that gives garlic its pungent flavor. Now researchers led by Ronald D. Thomas, PhD, of Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, report that DAS counteracts the cancer-causing actions of PhIP.

In the lab, Thomas and colleagues added PhIP, DAS, or both to human breast cells. Sure enough, PhIP made the cells secrete high amounts of cancer-causing enzymes. But PhIP completely protected cells from this effect.

It's a long way from the test tube to the human diet. But if garlic protected humans at the same dose at which it protected cell cultures, Thomas says garlic would have to make up one one-thousandth of your diet.

Sources:

Meeting of Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, American Association for Cancer Research, Baltimore, Oct. 30-Nov. 2, 2005. ACR news conference: William G. Nelson, MD, PhD, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; Akinori Yanaka, MD, PhD, University of Tsukuba, Japan; Albena T. Dinkova-Kostova, PhD, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; Dorothy Rybaczyk-Pathak, PhD, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque; and Ronald D. Thomas, PhD, Florida A&M University, Tallahassee.

Vegan lifestyle lessens effects of factory farms

By Megan McGowan
2005 04 06

As soon as people find out that I’m vegan the first thing out of their mouths is always, “Really; why?” This seems like such a simple question, but I’m always overwhelmed by it. How do I explain the reasons for my decision in a succinct one or two sentence rationalization when there are so many complex justifications for it? I usually end up giving some lame explanation like, “The animals are treated so horribly,” which doesn't even begin to convey my reasons.

More than 25 billion animals are killed by the meat industry each year. Chickens, highly social creatures who form very important social relationships in natural conditions, are kept with at least four or five other chickens in a wire cage roughly the size of folded newspaper. The chickens are so stressed by these artificial environments that they take to pecking each other, sometimes to death. Since dead chickens are not profitable to the factory farming business, the situation is remedied not by placing the chickens in more humane conditions, but by cutting their beaks off to prevent injuries from the pecking. This extremely painful operation is done to young chicks without any anesthesia. This is only the beginning of what chickens in the factory farming industry go through. I could go on, but chickens are not the only animals undergoing such torture.

Cows are victims of similar conditions. To begin with, young cows are taken from their mothers very soon after they’re born, which is extremely traumatic for both the mother and calf because of the maternal bond they share. Male calves are then taken to veal crates, which are so small they cannot even turn around. These calves are kept immobile so they don't form muscles because muscles make tougher meat. On top of that, they're fed an iron-deficient diet so that they will become anemic. Why? So the meat will be a lighter color. It seems barbaric to even suggest making an animal sick for such a reason.

Although the way animals are mistreated is the main reason I first became a vegetarian and then a vegan, there are several other reasons that support such dietary choices. Producing meat is extremely detrimental to the environment. It takes just 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, and 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat. McDonald’s destroys 55 square feet of rainforest to produce just one "quarter-pounder." In addition to the water and land wasted to produce meat, animals raised for food are a huge source of waste. They produce 86,000 pounds of excrement every second. This is excrement laced with antibiotics and growth hormones and this waste drains off of the land and pollutes our waterways. The meat industry causes more water pollution in the United States than all other industries combined.

But maybe some people don't care. After all, it’s just the earth and animals. But what about the effect people’s meat-eating diet has on other humans? Forty percent of the world’s grain production is used to feed animals to support meat-eating diets. At the same time, someone in the world is dying of starvation every 3.6 seconds. In the time it takes you to watch “The O.C.” 1,000 people have died and millions of animals are being fattened up to go to slaughter. People always claim that animal rights groups are trying to put the interest of animals before those of people, but in reality adopting a plant-based diet would save countless numbers of lives. If Americans reduced their meat consumption by just 10 percent, which would mean less than one meatless day per week, 60 million people could be fed on the saved grain and over 1.5 trillion gallons of water could be saved.

Maybe you're saying to yourself, "these are great reasons but they don’t affect me." But they do. A vegetarian or vegan diet is one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself. Studies of societies that consume high-fat, meat-based diets consistently have the highest rates of every type of cancer. Not only have lung, stomach, breast, colon, prostate and pancreas cancer been linked to an animal-based diet but so have high cholesterol, heart disease and obesity. I don’t mean to say that adopting a plant-based diet is a cure-all for everything, but how many other simple choices can have such a beneficial effect on your life and the lives of others?

After going through all these reasons, the question to ask yourself isn’t "Why should I be vegan?" but instead, "Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I adopt a diet that saves animals' lives, the environment, other people and my health?" To learn more about this topic and factory farms please come and see Erica Meier from Compassion over Killing speak tonight at 7 p.m. in Squires Student Center in room 150.

Vegetables Without Vitamins

Imagine the surprise of going online and discovering that the vitamin and mineral content of vegetables has drastically dropped.

That’s what happened to nutritionist, Alex Jack, when he went to check out the latest US Department of Agriculture food tables. The stunning revelation came after Jack compared recently published nutrient values with an old USDA handbook he had lying around. Some of the differences in vitamin and mineral content were enormous-a 50% drop in the amount of calcium in broccoli, for example. Watercress down 88% in iron content; cauliflower down 40% in vitamin C content-all since 1975.

Jack took his findings to the USDA, hoping for a reasonable explanation. That was two years ago. He’s still waiting. So is Organic Gardening magazine, which published an open letter, seeking an explanation from Dan Glickman, Secretary of Agriculture. Glickman didn’t respond, but USDA employee, Phyllis E. Johnson did. Johnson (who is head of the Beltsville area office), suggested to Organic Gardeningthat the nutrient drain should be put in context. According to her, the 78% decrease in calcium content of corn is not significant because no one eats corn for
calcium. She further explains that the problem may not even exist at all; that the apparent nutrient dips could be due to the testing procedures. For example, “changes in the public’s perception of what the edible portion is may determine what parts have been analyzed over time.” In other words, back when the old food tables were made up, people may have been eating the cobb too, so they got more nutrients.

The vitamin drain

We decided to look into this further. Jack had used a 1975 version of the food tables for his research. We dredged up a 1963 version. After comparing the nutrient values for over a dozen fruits and vegetables, it was clear that the nutrient value of many foods has dropped, in some cases drastically. For example, the amount of vitamin C in sweet peppers has plummeted from 128 mg to 89 mg.= The vitamin A in apples has dropped from 90 mg to 53 mg. The fall-offs seem to be limited mostly to vegetables, and some fruits.

Some vegetables appear to be gaining vitamins-at least vitamin A. Carrots, for example, have more of the vitamin now than they did in 1963. Why is a mystery. But the phenomenon has apparently occurred just in the nick of time. The National Academy of Sciences has issued an alert that it takes twice as many vegetables to get the daily requirement of vitamin A as previously thought. Carrots and pumpkin are exempt from the caveat.

Despite the apparent increase of vitamin A in carrots, most vegetables are losing their vitamins and minerals. Nearly half the calcium and vitamin A in broccoli, for example, have disappeared. Collards are not the greens they used to be. If you're eating them for minerals and vitamin A, be aware that the vitamin A content has fallen from 6500 IUs to 3800 IUs. Their potassium has dropped from from 400 mg to 170 mg. Magnesium has fallen sharply-57 mg to 9. Cauliflower has lost almost half its vitamin C, along with its thiamin and riboflavin. Most of the calcium in pineapple is gone-from 17 mg (per 100 grams raw) to 7. And the list goes on and on.

The USDA refuses to act

What’s the deal on this nutrient drain? We decided to ask USDA ourselves, so we contacted the head of the USDA Agricultural Research Service, whose job it is to track the vitamins in food, among other things. Mr. Edward B. Knipling responded to our inquiry with a restatement of Ms. Johnson’s letter to Organic Gardeningmagazine. So we pressed for a better answer. Isn’t the agency concerned that Americans may not be
getting the vitamins they think they are? What about the food pyramid? Won’t a nutrient drain upset the pyramid? Already the National Academy of Sciences is telling us our vegetables don't have as many vitamins as they're supposed to. Will the USDA double the required servings of vegetables to make up for the vitamin loss? So far, no answer from the agency.

The question is, what is the nature and extent of the problem? Vegetables are a major source of nutrition. Without them, humans miss out on important vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients. Many nutrients (such as folate) weren’t measured in the past. If they are also disappearing, the extent is unknown. What about more exotic nutrients such as flavonoids, or compounds like I3C? These aren’t tracked by the USDA. Are they disappearing also?

What’s for dinner

The USDA advises that we should be eating 3 to 5 servings of vegetables plus 2 to 4 servings of fruit a day to maintain health. (A serving is one cup of something raw and leafy or one-half a cup of something either not leafy or cooked-or 3/4 cup of vegetable juice). That is potentially 9 cups of vegetables and fruit a day. That’s a lot of lettuce. Are people doing this?

Harry Balzer is vice president of NPD Group, a firm that gathers information on the eating habits of Americans. His data says no way. According to him, the preferred American meal is one-dish, already prepared. Unless a vegetable can be squirted out of a bottle, it’s a nonentity. Why? We’re in a hurry. Vegetables are considered side dishes, and Americans don’t have time for such frivolity. The decline is relentless. Within the last 15 years, the percentage of all dinners including a vegetable (other than salad or potatoes) dropped 10%. It’s now 41%.

This raises a big question. If people are not eating their vegetables, how are they getting their vitamins? The answer is they’re not. Study-after-study show that Americans don’t meet the RDAs for many nutrients. That’s not good considering that RDAs are probably too low to keep most people in optimal health to begin with.

Americans know what they should be eating. They’re just not doing it. And they’re not likely to. According to Balzer, for example, pizza is one of America’s favorite meals. It fulfills, he says, the American ideal of being easy and fast, liked by old and young, and easy to clean up. If you blot it with a paper towel, throw on some pineapple, and use your imagination, it even seems to fit with the food pyramid. What else are people eating? Bread, doughnuts, pasta, cheese, beef and milk. Without fortified cereal, Americans would not come close to meeting RDAs.

Yes, but what about the produce section? Isn’t it filled with resealable bags full of wholesome, scrubbed little carrots, prewashed salad greens and spinach? Somebody must be buying them, or they wouldn’t be there, right? According to Balzer, those puppies are highly successful, raking in a billion dollars in sales ($100M is considered successful for a new food product). But the fact that people are buying them doesn’t mean they’re eating them. The reality is that onions are most-often served vegetable in America. Tomatoes (including ketchup) are second.

According to one study, less than one-third of Americans get the minimum five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, let alone the recommended nine. According to Balzer’s data, the percentage of Americans who buy healthy groceries is about 10%. The other 90% relies on ketchup, onions, fat-free snacks, ice cream, cheese and Sweet Tarts™ as their source of nutrition. Now we find out that even if a person accidentally eats a vegetable, it may not contain the nutrients it’s supposed to. What can a person do?

Vitamin supplements work

"...the nutritional content of produce is not as important as things like appearance and big yield. In other words, the view of commercial growers is that food is a product in the same way that running shoes are a product. Looks are more important than substance."

Supplements have proven their worth in scientific studies. Cancer, heart attacks, bone loss, stroke and macular degeneration-most any degenerative disease you can think of can either be prevented by, or ameliorated by, the right nutrients given in supplement form. Over the long term, the benefits can really add up. For example, nurses who took multi-vitamins containing folic acid for fifteen years slashed their risk of colon cancer by 75%. Folate from food didn’t work as well. No one knows why, although bioavailability problems may be to blame. It’s estimated that about 90% of the population gets less folate per day than necessary for health (400 micrograms).

In the same study, nurses who took multi-vitamins containing vitamin B6 reduced their risk of heart disease by 30%. The more B6 they took, the lower the risk. Could a high potency, high quality supplement reduce risk even more? We don’t know, but a study from Norway shows that a combination of vitamin B6 and folate reduces homocysteine 32% within five weeks in healthy individuals. This has the potential to significantly lower the risk of heart attack and stroke. Other studies show that for every decade of life, plasma concentrations of B6 decrease, and that people who take supplements have a much greater chance of meeting RDAs than those who don’t.

There are good reasons to take supplements. The bioavailability of the nutrients in supplements (assuming you buy high-quality) is 100% compared to food which is very unpredictible when it comes to bioavailability. Nutrient content also appears unpredictible. If the vitamin drain is confirmed, it will mean that people cannot count on vegetables and fruit to be the packages of concentrated nutrients they’re supposed to be. In a time when most people aren’t coming close to getting five, let alone nine, servings of fruits and vegetables, it seems pointless to ask them to eat more to get the same nutrients.

The USDA is apparently unconcerned and not interested in the vitamin drain, despite its mandate to ensure high quality safe foods. In her letter to Organic Gardening, Ms. Johnson said that the nutritional content of produce is not as important as things like appearance and big yield. In other words, Ms. Johnson espouses the view of commercial growers that food is a product in the same way that running shoes are a product. Looks are more important than substance. That view of vegetables and fruits reduces your spinach salad to pretty roughage, and your chances of meeting RDAs to slim.

References

“90% of women and 71% of men get less than the RDA for vitamin B6.” Dietary vitamin B-6 intake and food sources in the US population: NHANES II, 1976-1980. Kant AK, et al. 1990.

“Men with the lowest amount of vitamin C have a 62% increased risk of cancer and a 57% increased risk of dying from any cause.“ Vitamin C status and mortality in US adults.Loria CM, et al. Am J Clin Nutr 72:139-45, 2000.

“Lutein and zeaxanthin reduce the incidence of cataract by 22%.” A prospective study of carotenoid and vitamin A intakes and risk of cataract extraction in US women. Chasan-Taber L, et al. Am J Clin Nutr 70:509-16, 1999.

“People with low levels of retinol, beta-carotene, vitamin E and selenium are more likely to get cancer.” Serum retinol, beta-carotene, vitamin E and selenium as related to subsequent cancer of specific sites. Comstock GW, et al. Am J Epidemiol 135:115-21, 1992.

“Supplemental vitamin D reduces the risk of colon cancer by half compared to dietary vitamin D which reduces it 12%.” Calcium, vitamin D, and dairy foods and the occurrence of colon cancer in men. Kearney J, et al. Am J Epidemiol 143:907-17, 1996.

“The area of China with the lowest micronutrient intake has the highest rate of cancer. Supplementation with vitamin E, selenium and beta-carotene lowers the rate.” Vitamin/mineral supplementation and cancer risk: internationaal chemoprevention trials.Blot WJ. Proc Soc Exp Biol Med 216:291-6, 1997.

“American children have inadequate levels of vitamin E.“ Vitamin E status of US children. Bendich A. J Am Coll Nutr 11:441-4, 1992.

“Flavonoids protect against stroke.” Dietary flavnoids, antioxidant vitamins, and incidence of stroke: the Zutphen study. Keli SO, et al. Arch Intern Med 156:637-42, 1996.

Cleveland LE, et al. 2000. Dietary intake of whole grains. J Am Coll Nutr19 (3 Suppl):331S-38S.

Composition of Foods (Raw, Processed, Prepared): Agriculture Handbook No. 8. USDA Agricultural Research Service. 1963.

Cuskelly GJ, et al. 1996. Effect of increasing dietary folate on red-cell folate: implications for prevention of neural tube defects. Lancet 347:657-9.

Giovannucci E, et al. 1998. Multivitamin use, folate and colon cancer in women in the nurses’ health study. Ann Intern Med129:517-24.

Manore MM, et al. 1989. Plasma pyridoxal 5’-phosphate concentration and dietary vitamin B-6 intake in free-living, low-income elderly people. Am J Clin Nutr50:339-45.

Mansoor MA, et al. 1999. Plasma total homocysteine response to oral doses of folic acid and pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6) in healthy individuals. Oral doses of vitamin B6 reduce concentrations of serum folate. Scand J Clin Lab Invest59:139-46.

NPD Group, Inc. has a website at www.npd.com. Highlights from the 15th Annual Report on Eating Patterns in America are available online.

Organic Gardening’s letter to Dan Glickman, and the response of Phyllis E. Johnson of the USDA - see www.organicgardening.com.

Rimm EB, et al. 1998. Folate and Vitamin B6 from diet and supplements in relation to risk of coronary heart disease among women. JAMA 279:359-64.

Rose CS, et al. 1976. Age differences in vitamin B6 status of 617 men. Am J Clin Nutr 29:847-53.

Subar AF, et al. 1998. Dietary sources of nutrients among US adults, 1989 to 1991. J Am Diet Assoc98:537-47.

Subar AF, et al. 1989. Folate intake and food sources in the US population. Am J Clin Nutr50:508-16.

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5/09/2006

Vaccines

Why You Should Avoid Taking Vaccines.

Dr. James R. Shannon

Dr. James R. Shannon, former director of the National institute of health declared, "the only safe vaccine is one that is never used."

Cowpox vaccine was believed able to immunize people against smallpox. At the time this vaccine was introduced, there was already a decline in the number of cases of smallpox. Japan introduced compulsory vaccination in 1872. In 1892 there were 165,774 cases of smallpox with 29,979 deaths despite the vaccination program. A stringent compulsory smallpox vaccine program, which prosecuted those refusing the vaccine, was instituted in England in 1867. Within 4 years 97.5 % of persons between 2 and 50 had been vaccinated. The following year England experienced the worst smallpox epidemic [1] in its history with 44,840 deaths. Between 1871 and 1880 the incidence of smallpox escalated from 28 to 46 per 100,000. The smallpox vaccine does not work.

Much of the success attributed to vaccination programs may actually have been due to improvement in public health related to water quality and sanitation, less crowded living conditions, better nutrition, and higher standards of living. Typically the incidence of a disease was clearly declining before the vaccine for that disease was introduced. In England the incidence of polio had decreased by 82 % before the polio vaccine was introduced in 1956.

In the early 1900s an astute Indiana physician, Dr. W.B. Clarke, stated "Cancer was practically unknown until compulsory vaccination with cowpox vaccine began to be introduced. I have had to deal with two hundred cases of cancer, and I never saw a case of cancer in an unvaccinated [2] person."

There is a widely held belief that vaccines should not be criticized because the public might refuse to take them. This is valid only if the benefits exceed the known risks of the vaccines.

Do Vaccines Actually Prevent Disease?

This important question does not appear to have ever been adequately studied. Vaccines are enormously profitable for drug companies and recent legislation in the U.S. has exempted lawsuits against pharmaceutical firms in the event of adverse reactions to vaccines which are very common. In 1975 Germany stopped requiring pertussis (whooping cough) vaccination. Today less than 10 % of German children are vaccinated against pertussis. The number of cases of pertussis has steadily decreased [3] even though far fewer children are receiving pertussis vaccine .

Measles outbreaks have occurred in schools with vaccination rates over 98 % in all parts of the U.S. including areas that had reported no cases of measles for years . As measles immunization rates rise to high levels measles becomes a disease seen only in vaccinated persons. An outbreak of measles occurred in a school where 100 % of the children had been vaccinated. Measles mortality rates had declined by 97 % in England before measles vaccination was instituted .

In 1986 there were 1300 cases of pertussis in Kansas and 90 % of these cases occurred in children who had been adequately vaccinated . Similar vaccine failures have been reported from Nova Scotia where pertussis continues to be occurring despite universal vaccination. Pertussis remains endemic[4] in the Netherlands where for more than 20 years 96 % of children have received 3 pertussis shots by age 12 months.

After institution of diptheria vaccination in England and Wales in 1894 the number of deaths from diptheria rose by 20 % in the subsequent 15 years . Germany had compulsory vaccination in 1939. The rate of diptheria spiraled to 150,000 cases that year whereas, Norway which did not have compulsory vaccination, had only 50 cases of diptheria the same year.

The continued presence of these infectious diseases in children who have received vaccines proves that life long immunity which follows natural infection does not occur in persons receiving vaccines . The injection process places the viral particles into the blood without providing any clear way to eliminate these foreign substances.

Why Do Vaccines Fail To Protect Against Diseases?

Walene James, author of Immunization: the Reality Behind The Myth , states that the full[5] inflammatory response is necessary to create real immunity. Prior to the introduction of measles and mumps vaccines children got measles and mumps and in the great majority of cases these diseases were benign. Vaccines "trick" the body so it does not mount a complete inflammatory response to the injected virus.

Vaccines and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome SIDS

The incidence of Sudden Infant Death syndrome SIDS has grown from .55 per 1000 live births in 1953 to 12.8 per 1000 in 1992 in Olmstead County, Minnesota. The peak incidence for SIDS is age 2 to 4 months the exact time most vaccines are being given to children. 85 % of cases of SIDS occur in the first 6 months of infancy. The increase in SIDS as a percentage of total infant deaths has risen from 2.5 per 1000 in 1953 to 17.9 per 1000 in 1992. This rise in SIDS deaths has occurred during a period when nearly every childhood disease was declining due to improved sanitation and medical progress except SIDS. These deaths from SIDS did increase during a period when the number of vaccines given a child was steadily rising to 36 per child .

Dr. W. Torch was able to document 12 deaths in infants which appeared within 3½ and 19 hours of a DPT immunization. He later reported 11 new cases of SIDS death and one near miss which had occurred within 24 hours of a DPT injection. When he studied 70 cases of SIDS two thirds of these victims[6] had been vaccinated from one half day to 3 weeks prior to their deaths. None of these deaths was attributed to vaccines. Vaccines are a sacred cow and nothing against them appears in the mass media because they are so profitable to pharmaceutical firms.

There is valid reason to think that not only are vaccines worthless in preventing disease they are counterproductive because they injure the immune system permitting cancer, auto-immune diseases and SIDS to cause much disability and death.

Are Vaccines Sterile?

Dr. Robert Strecker claimed that the department of defense DOD was given $10,000,000 in 1969 to create the AIDS virus to be used as a population-reducing[7] weapon against blacks. By use of the Freedom of Information Act Dr. Strecker was able to learn that the DOD secured funds from Congress to perform studies on immune destroying agents for germ warfare .

Once produced, the vaccine was given in two locations. Smallpox vaccine containing HIV was given to 100,000,000 Africans in 1977. Over 2000 young white homosexual males in New York City were given Hepatitis B vaccine that contained HIV virus in 1978. This vaccine was given at New York City Blood Center. The Hepatitis B vaccine containing the HIV virus was also administered to homosexual males in San Francisco, Los Angeles, St.Louis, Houston and Chicago in 1978 and 1979. U.S. Public Health epidemiology studies have disclosed that these same 6 cities had the highest incidence of AIDS, Aids related Complex (ARC) and deaths rates from HIV, when compared to other U.S. cities.

When a new virus is introduced into a community. It takes 20 years for the number of cases to double. If the fabricated story that green monkey bites of pygmies led to the HIV epidemic, the alleged monkey bites in the 1940s should have produced a peak in the incidence of HIV in the 1960s at which time HIV was non existent in Africa . The World Health Organization (WHO) began a African smallpox vaccination campaign in 1977 that targeted urban population centers and avoided pygmies. If the green monkey bites of pygmies truly caused the HIV epidemic the incidence of HIV in pygmies should have been higher than in urban citizens. However, the opposite was true .

In 1954 Dr. Bernice Eddy (bacteriologist) discovered live monkey viruses in supposedly sterile inactivated polio vaccine[8] developed by Dr. Jonas Salk. This discovery was not well received at the NIH and Dr. Eddy was demoted. Later Dr. Eddy, working with Sarah Stewart, discovered SE polyoma virus. This virus was quite important because it caused cancer in every animal receiving it. Yellow fever vaccine had previously been found to contain avian (bird) leukemia virus. Later Dr. Hilleman isolated SV 40 virus from both the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines. There were 40 different viruses [9] in these polio vaccines they were trying to eradicate. They were never able to get rid of these viruses ontaminating the polio vaccines. The SV 40 virus causes malignancies. It has now been identified in 43 % of cases of non-Hodgekin lymphoma [10] , 36 % of brain tumors [11] , 18 % of healthy blood samples, and 22 % of healthy semen samples, mesothiolomas and other malignancies. By the time of this discovery SV 40 had already been injected into 10,000,000 people in Salk vaccine. Gastric digestion inactivtes some of SV 40 in Sabin vaccine. However, the isolation of strains of Sabin polio vaccine from all 38 cases of Guillan Barre Syndrome [12] GBS in Brazil suggests that significant numbers of persons are able to be infected from this vaccine . All 38 of these patients had received Sabin polio vaccine months to years before the onset of GBS. The incidence of non-Hodgekin lymphoma has"mysteriouly" doubled since the 1970s .

Dr. John Martin, Professor of Pathology at the Univ. of Southern California, was employed by the Viral Oncology Branch of the Bureau of Biologics (FDA) from 1976 to 1980. While employed there he identified foreign DNA in the live polio vaccine Orimune Lederle that suggested serious vaccine contamination. He warned his supervisors about this problem and was told to discontinue his work as it was outside the scope of testing required for polio vaccine .

Later Dr. Martin learned that all eleven of the African green monkeys used to grow the Lederle polio virus Orimune had grown simian cytomegalovirus from kidney cell cultures. Lederle was aware of this viral contamination as their Cytomegaloviral Contamination Plan [13] clearly showed in 1972. The Bureau of Biologics decided not to pursue the matter so production of infected polio vaccine continued .

In 1955 Dr. Martin identified unique cell destroying viruses termed stealth viruses in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. These viruses lacked genes that would enable the immune system to recognize them. Thus they were protected by the body's failure to develop antiviral antibodies. In March of 1995, Dr. Martin learned that some of these stealth viruses had originated from African green monkey simian cytomegalovirus of a type known to infect man .

The Lederle vaccine experience suggests that the higher-ups are not concerned about sloppy and dangerous preparation of vaccines. Animal cross infection is a huge unsolved current problem for all vaccine manufacturing. If this vaccine production sounds like an unbelievable mess to you, you are right .

The influential Club of Rome has a position paper in which they state that the world population is too large and needs to be reduced by 90 %. This means that 6 billion people must be reduced to 500 to 600 million. Obviously, creating famines and genocidal wars such as wrecked havoc in Africa, and loosing new laboratory-created diseases (HIV, Ebola, Marburg[14] , and probably West Nile virus and SARS) can help reduce the population. Other elitist groups (Trilaterals, Bildenbergers) have expressed similar concerns about excess people on planet Earth.

The company that was projected to produce the new smallpox vaccine in the U.S. was in serious trouble in England because of unsatisfactory quality of operations before setting up their facility in the U.S. Why would their performance here be any better than it was in England?

If there are important powerful groups of people that are determined to reduce the world population, what could be a more diabolically clever way to eliminate people than to inject them with a cancer-causing vaccine? The person receiving the injection would never suspect that the vaccine taken 10 to 15 years earlier had caused the cancer to appear .

Other Dangers From Vaccines

In the March 4, 1977 issue of Science Jonas and Darrell Salk warn, "Live virus vaccines against influenza or poliomyelitis may in each instance produce the disease it intended to prevent. The live virus against measles and mumps may produce such side effects as encephalitis (brain damage) .

The swine flu vaccine was administered to the American public even though there had never been a case of swine flu identified in a human. Farmers refused to use the vaccine because it killed too many animals. Within a few months of use in humans this vaccine caused many cases of serious nerve injury (Guillan Barre syndrome).

An article in the Washington Post on Jan. 26, 1988 mentioned that all cases of polio since 1979 had been caused by the polio vaccine with no known cases of polio from a wild strain since 1979. This might have created a perfect situation to discontinue the vaccine, but the vaccine is still given. Vaccines are a wonderful source of profits with no risks to the drug companies since vaccine injuries are now recompensed by the government.

The steady escalation in the number of vaccines administered has been followed by an identical rise in the incidence of auto-immune diseases (rheumatoid arthritis, subacute lupus erythematosus, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, asthma) seen in children. While there is a genetic transmission of some of these diseases many are probably due to the injury from foreign protein particles, mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde and other toxic agents injected in vaccines.

In 1999, the rotavirus vaccine was recommended by the Center for Disease Control for all infants. When this vaccine program was instituted several infants died and many had life endangering bowel obstructions. Prelicensure trials[15] of the rotavirus vaccine had demonstrated an increased incidence of intussusception 30 times greater than normal but the vaccine was released anyway without special warnings to practitioners to be on the lookout for bowel problems. Children's vaccines are often not studied for toxicity possibly because such study might eliminate them from being used .

A large study from Australia showed that the risk of developing encephalitis from the pertussis vaccine was 5 times greater than the risk of developing encephalitis by contacting pertussis by natural methods .

Naturally acquired immunity by illness evolves by spread of a virus from the respiratory tract to the liver, thymus, spleen, and bone marrow. When symptoms begin, the entire immune response has been mobilized to repel the invading virus. This complex immune system response creates antibodies that confer life long immunity against that invading virus and prepares the child to respond promptly to an infection by the same virus in the future.

Vaccination, in contrast, results in the persisting of live virus or other foreign antigens within the cells of the body, a situation that may provoke auto-immune reactions as the body attempts to destroy its own infected cells. There is no surprise that the incidence of auto-immune diseases (rheumatoid arthritis, subacute lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, asthma, psoriasis) has risen sharply in this era of multiple vaccine immunization.

Vaccine Induced Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus

Dr. John Classen has published 29 articles on vaccine-induced[16] diabetes. At least 8 of 10 children with Type 1 (insulin needing) diabetes have this disease as a result of vaccination. These children may have avoided measles, mumps, and whooping cough but they have received something far worse: an illness that shortens life expectancy by 10 to 15 years and results in a life requiring constant medical care .

Dr. Classen has shown in Finland, the introduction of hemophilus type b vaccine caused three times as many cases of type 1 diabetes as the number of deaths and brain damage from hemophilus influenza type b it might have prevented .

In New Zealand, the incidence of Type 1 diabetes in children rose by 61 % after an aggressive vaccine program against hepatitis B .. This same program has been started in the U.S.A. so we can now look forward to many cases of Type 1 diabetes in children. Similar rises in Type 1 diabetes have been seen in England, Italy, Sweden, and Denmark after immunization programs against Hepatitis B.

Toxic Substances Are Needed To Make Vaccines.

Vaccines contain many toxic substances that are needed to prevent the vaccines from becoming infected or to improve the performance of the vaccine. Among these substances are mercury, formaldehyde and aluminum.[17]

In the past 10 years, the number of autistic children has risen from between 200 and 500 percent in every state in the U.S. This sharp rise in autism followed the introduction of measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in 1975.

Representative Dan Burton's healthy grandson was given injections for 9 diseases in one day. These injections were instantly followed by autism . These injections contain a preservative of mercury called thimerosal. The boy received 41 times the amount of mercury which is capable of harm to the body. Mercury is a neurotoxin that can injure the brain and nervous system. And tragically, it did.

In the United States the number of compulsory vaccine injections has increased from 10 to 36 in the last 25 years. During this period, there has been a simultaneous increase in the number of children suffering learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder. Some of these childhood disabilities are related to intrauterine cerebral damage from maternal cocaine use, but probably vaccines cause many of the others.

Many vaccines contain aluminum. A new disease called macrophagic myofasciitis causes pain in muscles, bones and joints. All persons with this disease have received aluminum containing vaccines. Deposits of aluminum are able to remain as an irritant in tissues and disturb the immune and nervous system for a lifetime .

Nearly all vaccines contain aluminum and mercury. These metals appear to play an important role in the etiology of Alzheimer's Disease. An expert at the 1997 International Vaccine Conference related that a person who takes 5 or more annual flu vaccine shots has increased the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's Disease by a factor of 10 over the person who has had 2 or fewer flu shots .

When we take vaccines we are playing a modern version of Russian Roulette. We not only get exposed to aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde and foreign cell proteins but we may get simian virus 40 and other dangerous viruses which can cause cancer, leukemia and other severe health problems because the vaccine pool is contaminated due to careless animal isolation techniques. Congress has protected the manufacturers from lawsuits, so dangerous vaccines simply increase profits at no risk to the drug companies .

U.S. children aged 2 months began receiving hepatitis B vaccine in December 2000.No peer-reviewed studies of the safety of hepatitis B in this age bracket had been done. Over 36,000 adverse reactions with 440 deaths were soon reported but the true incidence is much higher as reporting is voluntary so only approximately 10 % of adverse reactions get reported . This means that about 5000 infants are dying annually from the hepatitis B vaccine. The CDC's Chief of Epidemiology admits that the frequency of serious reactions to hepatitis B vaccine is 10 times higher than other vaccines . Hepatitis B is transmitted sexually and by contaminated blood, so the incidence of this disease must be near zero in this age bracket. A vaccine expert, Dr. Philip Incao, states that "the conclusion is obvious that the risks [18] of hepatitis B vaccination far outweigh the benefits. Once a vaccine is mandated the vaccine manufacturer is no longer liable for adverse reactions .

Dr. W.B. Clarke's important observation that cancer was not found in unvaccinated individuals demands an explanation and one now appears forthcoming. All vaccines given over a short period of time to an immature immune system deplete the thymus gland (the primary gland involved in immune reactions) of irreplaceable immature immune cells . Each of these cells could have multiplied and developed into an army of valuable cells to combat infection and growth of abnormal cells. When these immune cells have been used up, permanent immunity may not appear. The Arthur Research Foundation in Tucson, Arizona estimates that up to 60 % of our immune system may be exhausted [19] by multiple mass vaccines (36 are now required for children). Only 10 % of immune cells are permanently lost when a child is permitted to develop natural immunity from disease . There needs to be grave concern about these immune system injuring vaccinations! Could the persons who approve these mass vaccinations know that they are impairing the health of these children, many of whom are being doomed to requiring much medical care in the future?

Compelling evidence is available that the development of the immune system after contracting the usual childhood diseases matures and renders it capable to fight infection and malignant cells in the future.

The use of multiple vaccines, which prevents natural immunity, promotes the development of allergies and asthma. A New Zealand study disclosed that 23 % of vaccinated children develop asthma , as compared to zero in unvaccinated children .

Cancer was a very rare illness in the 1890's. This evidence about immune system injury from vaccinating affords a plausible explanation for Dr. Clarke's finding that only vaccinated individuals got cancer. Some radical adverse change in health occurred in the early 1900s to permit cancer to explode and vaccinating appears to be the reason.

Vaccines are an unnatural phenomena.

My guess is that if enough persons said no to immunizations there would be a striking improvement in general health with nature back in the immunizing business instead of man. Having a child vaccinated should be a choice not a requirement. Medical and religious exemptions are permitted by most states.

When governmental policies require vaccinations before children enter schools coercion has overruled the lack of evidence of vaccine efficacy and safety. There is no proof that vaccines work and they are never studied for safety before release . My opinion is that there is overwhelming evidence that vaccines are dangerous and the only reason for their existence is to increase profits of pharmaceutical firms.

If you are forced to immunize your children so they can enter school, obtain a notarized statement from the director of the facility that they will accept full financial responsibility for any adverse reaction from the vaccine. Since there is at least a 2 percent risk of a serious adverse reaction they may be smart enough to permit your child to escape a dangerous procedure. Recent legislation passed by Congress gives the government the power to imprison persons refusing to take vaccines (smallpox, anthrax, etc). This would be troublesome to enforce if large numbers of citizens declined to be vaccinated at the same time.

Footnotes:



1 Null Gary Vaccination: An Analysis of the Health Risks- Part Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients Dec. 2003 pg 78    Back to Top
2 Mullins Eustace Murder by Injection pg 132 The National Council for Medical Research, P. O. Box 1105, Staunton, Virginia 24401    Back to Top
3 Gary Null Interview with Dr. Dean Black April 7, 1995    Back to Top
4 de Melker HE, et al Pertussis in the Netherlands: an outbreak despite high levels of immunization with whole-cell vaccine Emerging Infectious Diseases 1997; 3(2): 175-8 Centers for Disease Control    Back to Top
5 Gary Null Interview with Walene James, April 6, 1995    Back to Top
6 Torch WS Diptheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) immunizations: a potential cause of the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) Neurology 1982; 32-4 A169 abstract.    Back to Top
7 Collin Jonathan The Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients 1988 abstracted in Horowitz L. Emerging Viruses Aids & Ebola pg 1-5    Back to Top
8 Harris RJ et al Contaminant viruses in two live vaccines produced in chick cells.J Hyg (London) 1966 Mar:64(1) : 1-7    Back to Top
9 Horowitz Leonard G. Emerging Viruses AIDS & Ebola pg 484    Back to Top
10 Vilchez RA et al Association between simian virus 40 and non-Hodgekin lymphoma Lancet 2002 Mar 9;359(9309):817-823    Back to Top
11 Bu X A study of simian virus 40 infection and its origin in human brain tumors Zhonghu Liu Xing Bing Xue Zhi 2000 Feb;21 (1):19-21    Back to Top
12 Friedrich F. et al temporal association between the isolation of Sabin-related poliovirus vaccine strains and the Guillan-Barre syndrome Rev Inst Med Trop Sao Paulo 1996 Jan-Feb; 38(1):55-8    Back to Top
13 Horowitz Leonard Emerging Viruses: Aids and Ebola pg 492    Back to Top
14 Horowitz Leonard G Emerging Viruses: Aids & Ebola pg 378-88 Tetrahedron Inc. Suite 147, 206 North 4th Ave. Sandpoint, Idaho 83864 1-888-508-4787 tetra@tetrahedron.org    Back to Top
15 Null, Gary Vaccination: An Anatysis of the health risks-Part 3 Townsend letter for doctors & patients Dec. 2003 pg 78    Back to Top
16 Classen, JB et al. Association between type 1 diabetes and Hib vaccine BMJ 1999; 319:1133    Back to Top
17 Brain 9/01    Back to Top
18 Incao, philip M.D. Letter to representative Dale Van Vyven, Ohio House of Representatives March 1, 1999 provided to www.garynull.com by The Natural Immunity Information Network    Back to Top
19 Rowen Robert Your first consultation with Dr. Rowen pg 20

HISTORICAL FACTS EXPOSING THE DANGERS AND INEFFECTIVENESS OF VACCINES

In 1871-2, England, with 98% of the population aged between 2 and 50 vaccinated against smallpox, it experienced its worst ever smallpox outbreak with 45,000 deaths. During the same period in Germany, with a vaccination rate of 96%, there were over 125,000 deaths from smallpox. ( The Hadwen Documents)

In Germany, compulsory mass vaccination against diphtheria commenced in 1940 and by 1945 diphtheria cases were up from 40,000 to 250,000. (Don't Get Stuck, Hannah Allen)

In the USA in 1960, two virologists discovered that both polio vaccines were contaminated with the SV 40 virus which causes cancer in animals as well as changes in human cell tissue cultures. Millions of children had been injected with these vaccines. (Med Jnl of Australia 17/3/1973 p555)

In 1967, Ghana was declared measles free by the World Health Organisation after 96% of its population was vaccinated. In 1972, Ghana experienced one of its worst measles outbreaks with its highest ever mortality rate. (Dr H Albonico, MMR Vaccine Campaign in Switzerland, March 1990)

In the UK between 1970 and 1990, over 200,000 cases of whooping cough occurred in fully vaccinated children. (Community Disease Surveillance Centre, UK)

In the 1970's a tuberculosis vaccine trial in India involving 260,000 people revealed that more cases of TB occurred in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. (The Lancet 12/1/80 p73)

In 1977, Dr Jonas Salk who developed the first polio vaccine, testified along with other scientists, that mass inoculation against polio was the cause of most polio cases throughout the USA since 1961. (Science 4/4/77 "Abstracts" )

In 1978, a survey of 30 States in the US revealed that more than half of the children who contracted measles had been adequately vaccinated. (The People's Doctor, Dr R Mendelsohn)

In 1979, Sweden abandoned the whooping cough vaccine due to its ineffectiveness. Out of 5,140 cases in 1978, it was found that 84% had been vaccinated three times! (BMJ 283:696-697, 1981)

The February 1981 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 90% of obstetricians and 66% of pediatricians refused to take the rubella vaccine.

In the USA, the cost of a single DPT shot had risen from 11 cents in 1982 to $11.40 in 1987. The manufacturers of the vaccine were putting aside $8 per shot to cover legal costs and damages they were paying out to parents of brain damaged children and children who died after vaccination. (The Vine, Issue 7, January 1994, Nambour, Qld)

In Oman between 1988 and 1989, a polio outbreak occurred amongst thousands of fully vaccinated children. The region with the highest attack rate had the highest vaccine coverage. The region with the lowest attack rate had the lowest vaccine coverage. (The Lancet, 21/9/91)

In 1990, a UK survey involving 598 doctors revealed that over 50% of them refused to have the Hepatitis B vaccine despite belonging to the high risk group urged to be vaccinated. (British Med Jnl, 27/1/1990)

In 1990, the Journal of the American Medical Association had an article on measles which stated " Although more than 95% of school-aged children in the US are vaccinated against measles, large measles outbreaks continue to occur in schools and most cases in this setting occur among previously vaccinated children." (JAMA, 21/11/90)

In the USA, from July 1990 to November 1993, the US Food and Drug Administration counted a total of 54,072 adverse reactions following vaccination. The FDA admitted that this number represented only 10% of the real total, because most doctors were refusing to report vaccine injuries. In other words, adverse reactions for this period exceeded half a million! (National Vaccine Information Centre, March 2, 1994)

In the New England Journal of Medicine July 1994 issue a study found that over 80% of children under 5 years of age who had contracted whooping cough had been fully vaccinated.

On November 2nd, 2000, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) announced that its members voted at their 57th annual meeting in St Louis to pass a resolution calling for an end to mandatory childhood vaccines. The resolution passed without a single "no" vote. (Report by Michael Devitt)

GRAPHICAL EVIDENCE SHOWS VACCINES DIDN'T SAVE US

HISTORICAL FACTS EXPOSING THE DANGERS AND INEFFECTIVENESS OF VACCINES

DOCTORS AND SCIENTISTS CONDEMN VACCINATION

WHY VACCINES ARE INEFFECTIVE

WHY VACCINES ARE HARMFUL

WHY VACCINATION CONTINUES

THE BENEFICIAL NATURE OF CHILDHOOD INFECTION

HEALTH - THE ONLY IMMUNITY

THE HOPEWOOD CHILDREN - AUSTRALIA'S HEALTHIEST KIDS



Deadly Immunity

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government cover-up of a mercury/autism scandal
2005 11 18

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | rollingstone.com

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.

The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you want," Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment -- I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on."

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line. "We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits," said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. "This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country." Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that "given the sensitivity of the information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands of, let's say, less responsible hands." Dr. John Clements, vaccines adviser at the World Health Organization, declared flatly that the study "should not have been done at all" and warned that the results "will be taken by others and will be used in ways beyond the control of this group. The research results have to be handled."

In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the damage than at protecting children's health. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.

Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal out of injections given to American infants -- but they continued to sell off their mercury-based supplies of vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the preservative in some American vaccines -- including several pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters routinely given to eleven-year-olds.

The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government's vaccine-related documents -- including the Simpsonwood transcripts -- and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a rider known as the "Eli Lilly Protection Act" into a homeland security bill, the company contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book on bioterrorism. The measure was repealed by Congress in 2003 -- but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders. "The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists," says Andy Olsen, a legislative assistant to Frist.

Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a three-year investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was diagnosed with autism. "Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic," his House Government Reform Committee concluded in its final report. "This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin." The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to act, the committee added, out of "institutional malfeasance for self protection" and "misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry."

The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the controversy only reluctantly. As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years working on issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers of autistic children who were absolutely convinced that their kids had been injured by vaccines. Privately, I was skeptical.

I doubted that autism could be blamed on a single source, and I certainly understood the government's need to reassure parents that vaccinations are safe; the eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on it. I tended to agree with skeptics like Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, who criticized his colleagues on the House Government Reform Committee for leaping to conclusions about autism and vaccinations. "Why should we scare people about immunization," Waxman pointed out at one hearing, "until we know the facts?"

It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, studying the leading scientific research and talking with many of the nation's pre-eminent authorities on mercury that I became convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real. Five of my own children are members of the Thimerosal Generation -- those born between 1989 and 2003 -- who received heavy doses of mercury from vaccines. "The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage," Patti White, a school nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. "Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier; however, in twenty-five years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very wrong is happening to our children."

More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among eleven children born in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.

Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of better diagnosis -- a theory that seems questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single generation of children. "If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis," scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world's authorities on mercury toxicity, "then where are all the twenty-year-old autistics?" Other researchers point out that Americans are exposed to a greater cumulative "load" of mercury than ever before, from contaminated fish to dental fillings, and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of a much larger problem. It's a concern that certainly deserves far more attention than it has received -- but it overlooks the fact that the mercury concentrations in vaccines dwarf other sources of exposure to our children.

What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the leading detectives have gone to ignore -- and cover up -- the evidence against thimerosal. From the very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive has been overwhelming. The preservative, which is used to stem fungi and bacterial growth in vaccines, contains ethylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Truckloads of studies have shown that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with vaccines -- and that the developing brains of infants are particularly susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American children still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned thimerosal from children's vaccines twenty years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit.

"You couldn't even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe," says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. "It's just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage."

Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage -- and even death -- in both animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by administering it to twenty-two patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of being injected -- a fact Lilly didn't bother to report in its study declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer, Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal's safety "did not check with ours." Half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal-based vaccines became sick, leading researchers there to declare the preservative "unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs."

In the decades that followed, the evidence against thimerosal continued to mount. During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it "poison." In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that thimerosal was "toxic to tissue cells" in concentrations as low as one part per million -- 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as "nontoxic" and also incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, ten babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical cords.

In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines. But tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within twenty-four hours of birth, and two-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.

The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a danger. The same year that the CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccine programs, warned the company that six-month-olds who were administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury. He recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, "especially when used on infants and children," noting that the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives. "The best way to go," he added, "is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without adding preservatives."

For Merck and other drug companies, however, the obstacle was money. Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that contain multiple doses, which require additional protection because they are more easily contaminated by multiple needle entries. The larger vials cost half as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, making it cheaper for international agencies to distribute them to impoverished regions at risk of epidemics. Faced with this "cost consideration," Merck ignored Hilleman's warnings, and government officials continued to push more and more thimerosal-based vaccines for children. Before 1989, American preschoolers received eleven vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of twenty-two immunizations by the time they reached first grade. Under the expanded schedule of vaccinations, multiple shots were often administered on a single day: At two months, when the infant brain is still at a critical stage of development, children routinely received three innoculations that delivered 99 times the approved limit of mercury.

As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with thimerosal-based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period critical for brain development. Despite the well-documented dangers of thimerosal, it appears that no one bothered to add up the cumulative dose of mercury that children would receive from the mandated vaccines. "What took the FDA so long to do the calculations?" Peter Patriarca, director of viral products for the agency, asked in an e-mail to the CDC in 1999. "Why didn't CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood immunization schedule?"

But by that time, the damage was done. Infants who received all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of six months were being injected with a total of 187 micrograms of ethylmercury - a level forty percent greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies -- including one published in April by the National Institutes of Health -- suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.

Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist that the additional vaccines were necessary to protect infants from disease and that thimerosal is still essential in developing nations, which, they often claim, cannot afford the single-dose vials that don't require a preservative. Dr. Paul Offit, one of CDC's top vaccine advisers, told me, "I think if we really have an influenza pandemic -- and certainly we will in the next twenty years, because we always do -- there's no way on God's earth that we immunize 280 million people with single-dose vials. There has to be multidose vials."

But while public-health officials may have been well-intentioned, many of those on the CDC advisory committee who backed the additional vaccines had close ties to the industry. Dr. Sam Katz, the committee's chair, was a paid consultant for most of the major vaccine makers and shares a patent on a measles vaccine with Merck, which also manufactures the hepatitis B vaccine. Dr. Neal Halsey, another committee member, worked as a researcher for the vaccine companies and received honoraria from Abbott Labs for his research on the hepatitis B vaccine.

Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on vaccines, such conflicts of interest are common. Rep. Burton says that the CDC "routinely allows scientists with blatant conflicts of interest to serve on intellectual advisory committees that make recommendations on new vaccines," even though they have "interests in the products and companies for which they are supposed to be providing unbiased oversight." The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisers who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine "had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine."

Offit, who shares a patent on one of the vaccines, acknowledged to me that he "would make money" if his vote eventually leads to a marketable product. But he dismissed my suggestion that a scientist's direct financial stake in CDC approval might bias his judgment. "It provides no conflict for me," he insists. "I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it. When I sat around that table, my sole intent was trying to make recommendations that best benefited the children in this country. It's offensive to say that physicians and public-health people are in the pocket of industry and thus are making decisions that they know are unsafe for children. It's just not the way it works."

Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me similar assurances. Like Offit, they view themselves as enlightened guardians of children's health, proud of their "partnerships" with pharmaceutical companies, immune to the seductions of personal profit, besieged by irrational activists whose anti-vaccine campaigns are endangering children's health. They are often resentful of questioning. "Science," says Offit, "is best left to scientists."

Still, some government officials were alarmed by the apparent conflicts of interest. In his e-mail to CDC administrators in 1999, Paul Patriarca of the FDA blasted federal regulators for failing to adequately scrutinize the danger posed by the added baby vaccines. "I'm not sure there will be an easy way out of the potential perception that the FDA, CDC and immunization-policy bodies may have been asleep at the switch re: thimerosal until now," Patriarca wrote. The close ties between regulatory officials and the pharmaceutical industry, he added, "will also raise questions about various advisory bodies regarding aggressive recommendations for use" of thimerosal in child vaccines.

If federal regulators and government scientists failed to grasp the potential risks of thimerosal over the years, no one could claim ignorance after the secret meeting at Simpsonwood. But rather than conduct more studies to test the link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over science. The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines -- which had been developed largely at taxpayer expense -- over to a private agency, America's Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional research. It also instructed the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization that is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce a study debunking the link between thimerosal and brain disorders. The CDC "wants us to declare, well, that these things are pretty safe," Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the IOM's Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow researchers when they first met in January 2001. "We are not ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect" of thimerosal exposure. According to transcripts of the meeting, the committee's chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was "inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation" between thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result "Walt wants" -- a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.

For those who had devoted their lives to promoting vaccination, the revelations about thimerosal threatened to undermine everything they had worked for. "We've got a dragon by the tail here," said Dr. Michael Kaback, another committee member. "The more negative that [our] presentation is, the less likely people are to use vaccination, immunization -- and we know what the results of that will be. We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of the trap, I think is the charge."

Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their primary goal in studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts about vaccines. "Four current studies are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal," Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research at the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton University gathering in May 2001. "In order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we need to conduct and publicize additional studies to assure parents of safety." Douglas formerly served as president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about thimerosal's risks.

In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final report. Its conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing the toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed epidemiological studies examining European countries, where children received much smaller doses of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. The new study included children too young to have been diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed signs of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and -- in a startling position for a scientific body -- recommended that no further research be conducted.

The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no one. Rep. David Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida who serves on the House Government Reform Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying it relied on a handful of studies that were "fatally flawed" by "poor design" and failed to represent "all the available scientific and medical research." CDC officials are not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because "an association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who would want to make that conclusion about themselves?"

Under pressure from congress, parents and a few of its own panel members, the Institute of Medicine reluctantly convened a second panel to review the findings of the first. In February, the new panel, composed of different scientists, criticized the earlier panel for its lack of transparency and urged the CDC to make its vaccine database available to the public.

So far, though, only two scientists have managed to gain access. Dr. Mark Geier, president of the Genetics Center of America, and his son, David, spent a year battling to obtain the medical records from the CDC. Since August 2002, when members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the data, the Geiers have completed six studies that demonstrate a powerful correlation between thimerosal and neurological damage in children. One study, which compares the cumulative dose of mercury received by children born between 1981 and 1985 with those born between 1990 and 1996, found a "very significant relationship" between autism and vaccines. Another study of educational performance found that kids who received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with autism and more than three times as likely to suffer from speech disorders and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be published study shows that autism rates are in decline following the recent elimination of thimerosal from most vaccines.

As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from studying vaccines, others have stepped in to study the link to autism. In April, reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies himself. Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines -- the kind of population that scientists typically use as a "control" in experiments -- Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who refuse to immunize their infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three -- including one child adopted from outside the Amish community -- had received their vaccines.

At the state level, many officials have also conducted in-depth reviews of thimerosal. While the Institute of Medicine was busy whitewashing the risks, the Iowa legislature was carefully combing through all of the available scientific and biological data. "After three years of review, I became convinced there was sufficient credible research to show a link between mercury and the increased incidences in autism," says state Sen. Ken Veenstra, a Republican who oversaw the investigation. "The fact that Iowa's 700 percent increase in autism began in the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines were added to the children's vaccine schedules, is solid evidence alone." Last year, Iowa became the first state to ban mercury in vaccines, followed by California. Similar bans are now under consideration in thirty-two other states.

But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to allow manufacturers to include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as steroids and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries -- some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic disorders also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World Health Organization continues to insist thimerosal is safe, but it promises to keep the possibility that it is linked to neurological disorders "under review."

I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that this is a moral crisis that must be addressed. If, as the evidence suggests, our public-health authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children, their actions arguably constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine. "The CDC is guilty of incompetence and gross negligence," says Mark Blaxill, vice president of Safe Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned about the role of mercury in medicines. "The damage caused by vaccine exposure is massive. It's bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you've ever seen."

It's hard to calculate the damage to our country -- and to the international efforts to eradicate epidemic diseases -- if Third World nations come to believe that America's most heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children. It's not difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by America's enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers -- many of them sincere, even idealistic -- who are participating in efforts to hide the science on thimerosal claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting children in developing nations from disease pandemics. They are badly misguided. Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will come back horribly to haunt our country and the world's poorest populations.

NOTE: This story has been updated to correct several inaccuracies in the original, published version. As originally reported, American preschoolers received only three vaccinations before 1989, but the article failed to note that they were innoculated a total of eleven times with those vaccines, including boosters. The article also misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms - an amount forty percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury. Finally, because of an editing error, the article misstated the contents of the rotavirus vaccine approved by the CDC. It did not contain thimerosal. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the errors.

Article from: http://www.whale.to/vaccine/kennedy.html

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