Just when the (un)Affordable Care Act was supposed to create hordes of newly insured patients seeking medical care, the healthcare industry is laying off doctors, nurses, x-ray and lab technicians.

Despite all the needless care and contrived diseases and excessive vaccinations, stagnant incomes (actually eroding incomes when inflation is calculated) are putting the brakes to a sector of the economy that is being relied upon to create new jobs.  According to a report in USA TODAY, inpatient days fell 4% and revenues declined and more and more Baby Boomers switched from private insurance to Medicare that pays doctors and hospitals less. 

Should Your Kids Grow Up To Be Doctors Or Cowboys?

Question: would you advise your kids to grow up and become a doctor?  That’s not where the money is these days.  If high incomes are the goal, then we should have steered our kids in the direction of joining the cartel of greedy “fracking” oilmen or entering the ranks of thieving banksters. 

As an aside, I never ran into anybody who said their kids were planning on growing up to be bankers.  Not many colleges offer curriculums for banking.  Curriculums in finance are usually tailored towards corporate finance. 

I did find online one college curriculum for banking, but I bet it never educates students about fractional banking, debt-based money, counterfeit money printing, or any of the other complicated financial schemes like derivatives and loan rate swaps.

In reality, banking is the art of thievery. If your kids do actually think of becoming bankers, insist they read Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises before they make that career choice.  If they enter banking, they should do so to reform it, not further its present direction. 

(Maybe the lyrics of a popular Willie Nelson song should be changed.  Instead of: “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys
.  Don’t let ‘em pick guitars and drive them old trucks.  Make ‘em be doctors and lawyers and such,” should be turned around to say: “Don’t let your babies grow up to be banksters. Don’t let ‘em pick people’s pockets and drive your money away in trucks.”)

That Mayo Clinic Diploma Is Now A License To Steal

Back to healthcare — as for your kids earning the right to brandish a stethoscope around their neck, a Mayo Clinic diploma has become nothing more than a license to steal from insurance pools these days. 

In case you hadn’t noticed, all those cardiac stents, knee operations for arthritis, mammograms, colonoscopies, PSA tests, cholesterol pills and flu shots your son or daughter doctor will be ordering are all unnecessary.  Mom and dad may be proud their kids have grown up to become a doctor, but it is mendacious prestige.

Plundering Instead Of Preventing

A shocking article in The New York Times, published earlier this year, reveals that executives in the food industry were educated how the foods they produce have spawned the existing diabesity epidemic.  Once informed, these executives chose profits over health. 

So here is how the system works now.  The carbohydrate industry feeds the populace white bread, pasta, rice, refined sugars and soda pop, which sets off reward centers in the brain to continue eating, and the doctors do nothing to correct this and place their patients on all manner of problematic anti-diabetic drugs, blood pressure pills and cholesterol medications as if the diabesity epidemic is a drug deficiency.  That is what doctoring has become.

Forced-To-Buy Health Insurance

The healthcare industry is destined to fail because it is simply no longer affordable.  Its latest political tactic, the (un)Affordable Care Act (ACA), forces American workers to buy – not healthcare, but insurance (it ensures doctors, hospitals, drug companies and insurers get paid, nobody is any healthier). 

Low-income workers (not on welfare) are going to get clobbered as they have to come up with about a month’s pay for a high-deductible plan, and they are coerced to buy or face a penalty.   

Not to worry, most will opt for the penalty.  While a few million Americans are being herded to sign up online, the sign-up part is just to see if Americans qualify for government subsidies. 

Less than 2% of Americans who have gone to the ACA website have qualified and fewer will actually buy an insurance policy.   Let’s see how the politicians and news media try to cover up this calamitous failure.  

I just don’t know how any reigning political party is going to withdraw penalty money directly from a person’s bank account and expect to win the next election?  The citizenry has not caught on yet that the Federal government has been bought off by the insurance industry.  The public thought they were getting socialized medicine like what is offered in Canada, Britain and Sweden. 

The US government is incurring all the costs for advertising and even answering the phones in this newest version of so-called American free enterprise. 

America has gravitated from buying off Washington DC (crony capitalism) to mandating that consumers must buy health insurance policies (and vaccines too, or you can’t enter school or work)—which represents fascism. 

Pretend Savings

The ACA does not save Medicare from anticipated insolvency (Medicare is already being partially funded out of the general fund and its trust fund is half empty).

The ACA mandates all medical care must be scientifically substantiated. What is called Comparative Effectiveness Research is supposed to give doctors and patients more information to help them compare various treatments and diagnostic tests.  But in fact, it appears this effort is just being contorted into a list of what serves doctors and pharmaceutical companies best. 

Not a word is mentioned about the FDA’s continued practice of comparing new drugs against inactive placebo pills rather than existing therapy.

Does anyone really believe Comparative Effectiveness Research is going to scuttle $30 billion of statin cholesterol-lowering drugs that don’t reduce mortality rates, which would demolish pharmaceutical company stocks on Wall Street? 

Where the ACA does pretend to save money is that patients initially entering the system will have a decade of preventive measures prescribed (vaccinations, mammograms, colonoscopies, etc.), which drums up more needless treatment to deliver as more pre-disease is detected.  These are simply “detect and collect” missions to drum up more treatment.

Also, hospitals will be penalized if their rate of readmission is high.  That simply means patients are going to be forced into home care nursing instead of readmitted to the hospital.  Hospital readmission rates may be reduced and money saved, but what about lives saved?

Overseers Are Shills For The Medical Industry

Then, maybe a few years from now when private medical records have been completely breached by the National Security Administration, and any semblance to maintain privacy of medical records abandoned, data on what drugs are being prescribed will be shared in real time with pharmaceutical companies. 

Researchers, acting as shills for Big Pharma, along with co-conspirator medical journals, are publishing science and to make it falsely appear that the problem of drug ineffectiveness rests with patients’ failure to comply with pill-taking regimens.  They know their cherished drugs could get placed on the chopping block. 

Doctors will then be sanctioned if they don’t prescribe according to established guidelines (which were established by Big Pharma) and patients, who often don’t take their pills, will be remotely monitored and insurance will not pay if they don’t swallow their pills.   Such a plan is already underway. 

What a wonderful controlled world we have to look forward to.  George Orwell would even be surprised at all this. 

The more their contrived system fails, the more draconian it becomes. 

Then one day the pills or vaccines will suddenly be found to be tainted, said to have been imported illegally from overseas counterfeit drug sources, and hundreds of thousands of elderly Americans will fall out of the Medicare and Social Security rolls by death, and the system will be saved financially. 

Such an event occurred late in 1993, setting back the rising life expectancy in the U.S. for the first time in decades, and public health agencies and the news media failed to report it. 

The point here is, thousands of Americans can be rubbed out and if they want to create a false reality it didn’t happen or lay false blame on some overseas drug or vaccine maker by intentionally dropping guard against such occurrences, they can. 

Beware the flu vaccine jabs and the next miracle drug.  Your grandmother in the nursing home is at risk.  She is a long-term liability on the Medicare and Social Security ledgers.

Great Britain’s cash-strapped hospital system is already covertly culling its population of institutionalized retirees by withholding drinking water.  Britain has culled its hospital population by 42,000 a year this way.  Death by dehydration leaves no fingerprints.  Nursing home patients there are reported to have struggled to find water from flower vases in order to survive.  This horror movie may soon come to America.

Recognize, the U.S. has been conducting population control via abortion for a number of decades now.  In the mind of elitist population planners, the problem is not too many babies today, it is Americans are living too long.  The nation imports young workers in the form of illegal immigrants whose tax deductions for Medicare and Social Security pay for the old and infirm.  In the 1970s Time magazine editors said “we have birth control, but we don’t have age control.”  If government could get away with it, do you think they would go beyond the planning stage?

The FED has become an interest rate house, that is all, and once that interest rate plunged to bail the country out of paying a trillion dollars a year in interest on its national debt, it is now hooked on that low interest rate which is robbing savers of their money. In 5 years ~8 trillion in saved money will lose about half of its purchasing power and she makes no pledge to save American’s wealth.

Her pledge is like things are normal. The entire monetary and financial system needs an overhaul. We have debt-based money since 1970 when gold-backed currency was abandoned. She is a “print and spend” money manager. She needs to say the country, beyond currency and monetary reform, it needs to show the world it is responsible to its debtors by bringing spending under control.

It is John Mauldin who explained the US economy failed about 15 years ago when GDP growth flattened and government began to grow to make up the difference. The nation has gone about as far as it can go with taxation. (In fact, the (un)Affordable Care Act is just another tax mandate that many low-income Americans cannot afford.)

She pledges to address unemployment by printing more money to perk up consumer spending. But there is no conduit for unemployed Americans to get that new money if they don’t have a job! The jobs moved offshore, if you didn’t notice Janet. And the wealthy took their money offshore too, as well as the corporations, as insiders apparently know the US is a house of collapsing cards.

Imagine America is a sinking ship and the Captain is blaming the crew for its circumstance while nothing is being done to save the passengers. Janet is the purser on the ship and is saying she can print more money. How irrelevant.

She needs to cease being a mouthpiece for criminal bankers and say something like this: “I Janet Yellen, who assumes this position as head of The Federal Reserve banks, pledges to restore sound asset-based money to this country, to “save the savers” by restoring interest rates to a level of some normalcy, by demanding lenders have adequate reserves or cease distribution of money to reckless lenders, by ceasing to remove bad loans off the books of reckless lenders and thus becoming part of that recklessness, by reform that even includes abandonment of the central bank itself which has never achieved its mandate, to maintain a stable currency.

We must cease hiding behind false numbers — the unemployment rate is in excess of 20% and inflation in excess of 9%. We as a nation can no longer meet our obligations to our creditors by selling T-bills. We must pay down the national debt by beginning to use our assets rather than currency to pay off loans from foreign creditors.

We must cease attempts to grow the economy by growing government. We must encourage growth in the nation by investment in real technologies (not solar or wind energy schemes), but natural gas-powered automobiles, more efficient commercial transport systems, more efficient energy creation, and a healthier population that doesn’t require all of the expensive and often needless medical care it now consumes.

I have little power to achieve any of these objectives, but I have a voice. The country has reached a dead end that requires reform from top to bottom. It must cease glorying in its great past and re-invent itself. It must rise beyond politics and crony capitalism. It must promote competition, for example, between natural gas and petroleum fueled automobiles, between dietary supplements and prescription drugs, and even competition between currencies. Allow competing currencies so there is incentive to produce currency that consumers have confidence in. The currency that is backed by the soundest assets, even gold, will rise to the top.

Without timely reform, there is no reform. Those who stand in the way and want the status quo must step aside, even be pushed aside. We must look at our country in the mirror and see it is not what it once was. It needs more than a face lift. To these ends I pledge myself. ” Americans will never hear words like these. — Bill Sardi

It Sounded Like Janet Yellen Introduced A Third Mandate For The Fed

CULLEN ROCHE, PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM OCT. 10, 2013, 5:02 AM

Some people seem surprised by Janet Yellen’s comments that give the appearance that she adheres to a triple mandate:

“I pledge to do my utmost to keep that trust and meet the great responsibilities that Congress has entrusted to the Federal Reserve–to promote maximum employment, stable prices, and a strong and stable financial system.”

I don’t really see how this is surprising. The Fed claims to have a dual mandate – to maintain price stability and promote maximum employment.

But it can really only achieve these mandates if it FIRST maintains a stable financial system. Make no mistake here. Janet Yellen is an exceedingly intelligent woman. She understands the Fed and the Fed’s history like the back of her hand.

And I can assure you that she is uniquely familiar with the Fed’s history. She knows full well that the Fed wasn’t created to hit employment and inflation targets, but was actually created to support the payments system. As the Fed has explained:

“By creating the Federal Reserve System, Congress intended to eliminate the severe financial crises that had periodically swept the nation, especially the sort of financial panic that occurred in 1907. During that episode, payments were disrupted throughout the country because many banks and clearinghouses refused to clear checks drawn on certain other banks, a practice that contributed to the failure of otherwise solvent banks. To address these problems, Congress gave the Federal Reserve System the authority to establish a nationwide check-clearing system.”

The Fed system was created to support the private payments system controlled by the banking system at the time. In fact, the Fed system is modelled after the New York Clearing House model which was a privately managed clearing house for bank payment settlement that existed prior to the Fed.

After the crisis of 1907 the government got more involved in the process to help oversee and manage the process. The result of this was the Federal Reserve System which is really just one big payments system attached to the banking system. Which is another reason why it’s so bizarre that some economists want to “keep banks out of macro” while also focusing on nothing but central banking.

To understand central banking and monetary policy IS TO UNDERSTAND BANKING.

The Fed was created with one primary mandate – to help stabilize the payments system. And if it doesn’t achieve this goal then it can’t even begin to think about inflation and employment. Some economists seem to have missed this important fact about the history of the Fed and have instead constructed this mythical world where the Fed hits employment and inflation targets without working with the banking system. Thankfully, Janet Yellen isn’t in that camp.

This post originally appeared at Pragmatic Capitalism. Copyright 2013.

Read more: http://pragcap.com/about-the-feds-triple-mandate#ixzz2hJl0y0rL

“This is the United States of America, we’re not some banana republic. This is not a deadbeat nation. We don’t run out on our tab. We’re the world’s bedrock investment, the entire world looks to us to make sure the world economy is stable.  We can’t just not pay our bills.” (For verification purposes, you can hear him utter these words here.)

Maybe the President is just playing to the fears of his audience—fear that the U.S. may be close to financial ruin, or maybe he just doesn’t understand the crisis point facing America next month.

The U.S. IS a deadbeat nation. Its overseas lenders may decide to cease offering more credit if the U.S. shows it never intends to pay down the principle on what the U.S. owes them.  Since borrowed money has become a financial lifeline for America, any interruption in the stream of credit would force the U.S. into an abrupt default on its current and future financial obligations.

According to Reuters news agency:  “The President appealed to business leaders…. to urge Congress to approve an increase in the U.S. debt limit without any conditions attached and avoid a default that is possible as early as mid-October.”

Let’s hope the President isn’t trying to provoke a government shutdown just to pin that failure on the opposing political party.  We would hope he is beyond political maneuvering, though he hasn’t been so far.

The U.S. must currently borrow to meet its obligations to pay for its military, to issue pension checks and to fund Medicare.  If Congress doesn’t vote to raise its own credit (lending) limit, a default may occur.  That means the U.S. may not be able to even pay the interest on its $16.7 trillion of accumulated debt which is about $395 billion a year. (It is borrowing money to do that now).

The President describes the $16.7 trillion accumulated national debt this way:  “Now, this debt ceiling — I just want to remind people in case you haven’t been keeping up — raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt; it does not somehow promote profligacy.  All it does is it says you got to pay the bills that you’ve already racked up, Congress.  It’s a basic function of making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is preserved.”

Well, Mr. President, it does increase our debt.  What he is talking about is the official debt limit of ~$16.7 trillion has been frozen while the U.S. trivially cut its rate of spending and borrows from future tax revenues to stay afloat.  So he is saying we aren’t borrowing any more money than what we have already spent (if you can understand that logic).

Nor is the economy growing sufficiently to produce a recovery from the 2008 economic crash. In fact, inflation is out-pacing GDP growth.  (Isn’t inflation actually generating that little bit of that GDP growth?)

The U.S. Treasury has been running a thin cash account for some time now as it only has a day or two of government spending on hand ($17-40 billion).

Bloomberg News quotes U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew to say: “At that point, the United States will have reached the limit of its borrowing authority, and Treasury would be left to fund the government with only the cash we have on hand on any given day. The cash balance at that time is forecast to be about $50 billion, insufficient to cover net expenditures for an extended period of time.”

Few Americans realize the enormous size of the shortfall between annual tax revenues and federal government spending. The generally quoted figure is that the U.S. takes in ~2.4 trillion in taxes and spends something like $3.6-3.8 trillion for a shortfall of ~$1.2-1.4 trillion.  But that shortfall figure only considers the U.S. general fund, not Medicare and Social Security or off-budget military spending, which partially depend on money from the general fund to meet their full obligations.  When these obligations are considered, U.S. federal spending is more like $6.6 trillion, not $3.4-3.6 trillion says noted economist John Williams of Shadowstats.com.

Imagine Congress does vote to expand its own credit limit.  That would be like a derelict spender calling the bank to say he demands the credit limit on his credit cards be raised so he can make the interest payment on his credit card debts.  This is precisely what the U.S. would be doing.

In the interim period while the U.S. debt limit has been officially frozen at ~$16.7 trillion, the U.S. agreed to prioritize payments to foreign lenders even ahead of Social Security payments to pensioners, that is how dependent America has become on borrowed money.  Lenders must be taken care of first.

In reality, expanding the federal credit limit may force foreign lenders to raise interest rates or even cease lending altogether.

Either the U.S. elects to massively cut spending (cut military and Medicare spending in half and measured Social Security cuts) which would dramatically raise unemployment and further plunge tax revenues, or expand the debt limit, which would be a signal for creditors to stop lending, even sell off the existing IOUs (U.S. Treasury notes) at a discount.   There is way out of this box canyon.

Economist John Williams says he anticipates a “dollar sell-off” anytime now (go to the 11;30 minute-mark).  What Williams is saying is if lenders sell off their IOUs for 60-70-80% on the dollar, that would essentially represent a true assessment of the value of U.S. money in international trade — a forced external dollar devaluation that would result in Americans paying more for imported oil and other goods (hyperinflation).

To make matters worse, Congress just threw a monkey wrench into the whole budget mess.  The House of Representatives just voted for a resolution to avert a federal government shutdown but de-funded the President’s cherished Affordable Care Act.  The House passed a resolution to keep the government funded for the first 11 weeks of the fiscal year that ends October 1.  That resolution is not likely to pass in the Senate, but it has the President sparring with the opposing party out in the open.  It’s a rhetorical shoot out.

The President now says this about the opposing political party: “They’re focused on trying to mess with me, not focused on you (the American people)….  They’re actually willing to plunge America into default … we can’t de-fund the Affordable Care Act.”

The President can propose a spending plan, but Congress is in no way obligated to adopt it.  If the President were a king, his wishes would be Congress’ command.  But without pre-selling Congress and lining up votes and expecting Congress to bow to his decrees, the President has now created an unavoidable showdown.

CBS News quotes Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest to say: “there were no firm plans for Mr. Obama to meet with congressional leaders, but he told reporters to ‘expect that the President will have conversations with congressional leaders in the days ahead’.”

Recall President Ronald Reagan who, in order to sell his “Reaganomics” to Congress, “devoted most of his time in the spring and early summer of 1981 to building a consensus for his economic recovery program… having drinks with House Speaker Tip O’Neill and a meeting with Senator Edward Kennedy.”

The President appears to want theatre by provoking a government shutdown that he can blame on the opposing party, while Rome burns.

The very reason why the debt limit was frozen and some budget cuts implemented (sequestration) was to show our creditors that we intend to cease reckless borrowing and spending.  The President appears to be oblivious to creditors demands.

The current standoff over the debt limit must be seen in the wake of the President’s unanticipated setbacks in advancing his Affordable Care Act.  The President is still smarting over large employers who reacted to this piece of legislation by implementing employee lay offs and placing full-time workers on part-time status, a backfire reaction that may rob the President of a planned legacy he would leave behind in his 2^nd term.

The White House seems to revel in relying upon the TV cameras rather than the telephone to persuade Congress, in a misdirection that could result in financial ruin.  While decrying an impending a financial default he blames on the opposing party, anybody can demand their credit limit be raised and get everyone in their household to vote for it, but that doesn’t mean lenders are going to cooperate. The stakes are high.  Could the President win and America lose?  That appears to be the present course.

I’ve written about government propaganda events before at LewRockwell.com.  An example was my article entitled “Remember the Maine,” how the U.S. government triggered all of its modern wars by contrived or permitted attacks on British or US boats (battleship USS Maine, RMS Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin incident) in port or at sea.

Another example is the article I wrote about the complicity of the Hollywood film industry in producing timely films to advance war or other social agendas of government.

But here today I am writing about something far broader, something more pervasive, something more mind-controlling.

I am writing about a larger grand scheme to alter the American experience, the very everyday realities Americans use to interpret current events and to develop their world view, in essence, the totality of experiences that comprise the closely-held ideas that become the very internal fabric of each and every American.

What if most of our closely held beliefs, not only about our country, but about health, medicine, biology, money, finance, space and time, energy resources, even our expectations on how long we will live and our interpretations about past, present and future events, are built upon staged or fabricated events and information?

The unreality industry

In 1989 a couple of business school professors wrote a book (The Unreality Industry, 1993) explaining how humans tend to accept the false realities created by television as long as they fit their preconceived idea of what the world is about.  These professors described a giant morality play that America has doled out to its citizens via television.  They described a heroless and leaderless society where “great leaders” are created electronically and are considered great by their position rather than their accomplishments.

As an aside, they assailed the manufacturing of celebrity that has morphed into what we see today – Paris Hilton.  She is not a singer, nor actor, nor entertainer of any sort.  Just a celebrity.  Is this what American should kids aspire to be, now that there are no jobs?

Contrived realities with political objectives

Some modern-day events appear to be contrived and have obvious political purposes.  For example, the alleged gassing of women and children in Syria, the most recent example, is paraded in news report around the globe.

But visual inspection reveals photos of shrouded dead people with fully pink faces, which suggests blood circulation, not the absence of it.  Every dead person’s eyes are closed, yet the dead often have a fixed open-eyed stare.  A “fixed and dilated pupil” of an eye is shown as evidence of death, but the pupil is not fully dilated.  The hands of the dead are crossed over their chests and some actually have their fingers laced together.  This is not characteristic of dead bodies where rigor mortis has set in.  This event appears to be staged and the news media is complicit in airing it without a critical eye.

But modern unrealities extend beyond obvious political objectives.  More pervasively, these created realities reach into deeper portions of our minds and lives.  Every-day practiced unrealities, involving money and health, cement falsehoods into our lives and breed a mindset that accepts other unrealities.

What is reality?

According to the Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English, Oxford University Press (2005), reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined.

It is said that reality is the totality of all things, structures (actual and conceptual), events (past and present) and phenomena, whether observable or not. It is what a world view (whether it be based on individual or shared human experience) ultimately attempts to describe or map.

Not only events, but ideas also shape reality.  Certain ideas from physics, philosophy, sociology and religion shape various theories of reality.

Basically we create our own reality or world view.  God is or isn’t.  Darwinian evolution is or isn’t the best explanation of where life came from.

From that world view is how humans accept or reject information they are confronted with.  If that information does not fit a particular world view, it is initially rejected, even if it is obvious and observed.

When science doesn’t agree with the reigning world view, such as when scientists believed the Earth was flat, those who held to the idea it was a sphere were expelled, persecuted or executed in what became the infamous inquisitions of Europe beginning in the 1400s.

Today America is more fascist than democratic.  There is an evil allegiance between industry and government.  Government may issue mandates that subjugate the population to an unreality.  For example, the mandate that all school children must be vaccinated prior to admission to school in order to protect them from infection and death.   Yet season of the year (winter) and geography (northern latitude) rather than vaccination rates appear to be larger factors in regard to infectious disease.  Little is done to boost immunity (vitamin therapy) as there is total reliance upon vaccination to quell infectious disease.

Past versus present unrealities

I’ve conducted cursory investigation into questions that involve history, pre-history and cosmology, biology and geology.  Questions like:  Did the US fight the Civil War over the issue of slavery?  Did the universe begin with The Big Bang?  Did humans really emanate from a monkey-like common ancestor?  Is there only a limited supply of oil in the world? And, to drag another old contention out of the archives of skepticism, did America really land astronauts on the surface of the moon?

Each of the above topics I’ve addressed briefly in the addendum that accompanies this report.

It is one thing to argue over the Big Bang origin of the universe, or to question whether evolution is real or not, or wonder whether oil is in limited supply because there were only so many dead dinosaurs to provide organic material to produce oil, or to cast a critical eye at the claim America landed astronauts on the moon in 1969.  But it is quite another thing to deal with current everyday false realities.

Everyday unrealities

Whether the US fought The Civil War over slavery or whether the universe started with The Big Bang, those are past realities that don’t involve daily life. Issues of health and money are present-day realities that are habitually employed.

I won’t dwell on these above-mentioned historical and scientific questions as they only serve as distractions to my main point, that every-day practiced falsehoods about health and money lull Americans into acceptance of virtually everything the State presents.

Today, in a political sense, those Americans who don’t embrace complete blind faith in American government are potential terrorists.  The President of the United States stands in Congress and asked Americans to decide: ”Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”

That deciding-point had a political objective.  Today any American who is skeptical of government and outspoken may be placed on a watch list by the Department of Homeland Security, and listened to by the National Security Administration.

But what of the person who is skeptical of the idea that cholesterol is the primary cause of heart disease?  What of the parent who even dare to pause over the onerous regimen of vaccines their child has to submit to?  What of the person who inquires about the true value of money?

These two issues involving money and health, used here for example, aren’t addressed in school, as they are accepted unquestionably.  Most people probably figure someone else must have checked into these matters before them.  So cholesterol is the primary reason why heart disease is the leading cause of death and Americans need not even ask how the value of the US Dollar is determined as it is “backed by the full faith and credit of the (bankrupt) US government.”

New generations embrace even more preposterous unrealities because the prior generation never questioned them.

When a population accepts every notion that it has been taught, this sets the tone for passive acceptance of almost everything that is doled out on television or in school textbooks.  To object or even begin to question is to run the risk of a modern day inquisition.

Cholesterol phobia may never be undone

How do we even go about confronting our doctors over the falsehood of cholesterol?

Despite the many incontrovertible scientific studies that show cholesterol is not the primary cause of death from coronary artery disease it remains the central theme of modern medicine.  An estimated 30 million Americans take statin cholesterol-lowering drugs.  Statins are a $30 billion cash cow for doctors and pharmaceutical companies.

Type-in “refuse statin drugs” on any web browser and see the many reports which substantiate the uselessness of statin drugs.  Yet millions of cholesterol-phobic Americans continue to take them.  When confronted over science that contradicts the use of these statin drugs, patients often say “but my doctor said I would die if I don’t take them.”  In the decision making process, fear trumps any science.

How do parents even dare question the reigning (false) paradigm that vaccines are responsible for much of the decline of disease in the modern era? (Click here to view charts showing infectious disease rates began to fall prior to the era of vaccines.)

Pediatricians are ready to report uncooperative parents to authorities if they aren’t submitting their children for 49 different rounds of needle jabs of 16 vaccines by the age of 18.  It is a modern repeat of the inquisition, just in a different form.

Why not “vitaminize” children and allow them to be exposed to the various circulating viruses and bacteria to develop natural immunity (antibodies) while supplemental vitamins normalize the immune response and quell symptoms of fever, rash and discomfort instead of intentionally injecting viruses or bacteria into children?

Omission as a way to non-educate

One way to pull a hoax over on a population is to never address an issue.  Kids in schools never learn much about money beyond counting it and spending it.  Just become a happy spender and use credit cards to perpetually live beyond your means, and live a lifestyle you haven’t earned.  In reality, that is what is being taught to American children.

I’ve addressed the many falsehoods that determine the perceived value of money in a prior column.  It is the nation’s central bank that deceptively encourages children and adults to save money so as to capitalize American banks almost for free (actually, at a loss).

For example, The Federal Reserve bank displays an online chart showing a $50/month savings plan for 30 years would rise to about $35,000 to $75,000 in value @ 4% and 8% rate of interest.

Of course, their chart does not present the current situation.  Interest rates on banked money today are less than 1%.  Inflation is not the 2.2% issued by the Federal Reserve, but rather ~9.6% (according to the way inflation was calculated prior to 1980).

So Americans are losing nearly 10% on the value of their banked money annually by placing it in the bank.  After taxes and loss of purchasing power due to inflation, most Americans would have lost money putting it in a savings account.

Americans have an estimated $8-13 trillion banked in long-term savings accounts.  How much money and wealth have Americans lost since interest rates don’t even approach the rate of inflation?  One expert estimates Americans have lost a whopping $10.8 trillion in earned interest usage since 2001.  That is a very harsh reality!

When the grand illusion stops

My son, then 8-years old, asked if he could buy an island, create his own country, then print his own money.  I responded, probably yes.  I informed him banknote companies can be readily retained to print the money. But I informed him that banknotes only represent something of value and need to be backed by something tangible.

He asked if the tomatoes in the kitchen would do.  I responded they would not be practical as they decay.  What is needed is something durable, portable, exchangeable, divisible, and intrinsically deemed valuable, I said.

He wanted to know if gold and silver (at the very least treasured by females for adornment) would meet these criteria.  At this point the illusion that paper money represents true wealth was revealed to him.

Maybe he will develop a skeptical mindset as he encounters other such questions in life.  I don’t want him to be a victim of the many fabrications in our modern world.  The grand illusion has to stop somewhere.

Sudden realization

When cholesterol-phobic Americans die of sudden-death heart attack, they obviously aren’t in a position to address what they previously failed to question.  But what happens when Americans suddenly discover their paper money is backed by $17 trillion of accumulated debt, and $70 trillion of future obligations?  (In fact, it is debt-based rather than asset-based money.)

What happens when a foreign country sells off (or totally writes off) what the U.S. owes it (U.S. Treasury Bonds), and the value of the US Dollar plunges in value in the world economy?  That day has been predicted by a U.S. Senator and I’m sure he got his scenario right from the Central Intelligence Agency.

I wonder if Americans will then begin to question any of the other parts of the grand illusion that have been created?

In 1976 Austrian philosopher and Catholic priest Ivan Illich, in his book Medical Nemesis, launched what was then considered “the gravest health hazard we face today: our medical system.”

Illich was unforgiving.  The first sentence in his text reads: “The medical establishment has become a major threat to health.”  His second sentence:  “The disabling impact of professional control over medicine has reached the proportions of an epidemic.”  Readers needn’t have read another sentence but to obtain the details.

Illich went on to say: “The public has been alerted to the perplexity and uncertainty of the best among its hygienic caretakers…. the pioneers of yesterday’s so-called breakthroughs warn their patients against the dangers of the miracle cures they have only just invented.”

Illich didn’t suggest the public panic over this revelation but rather that public discussion ensue.  Illich thought “the layman and not the physician has the potential perspective and effective power to stop the current iatrogenic (physician-caused) epidemic.”

Illich concluded that the misdirection of modern medicine “can be reversed only through a recovery of the will to self-care among the laity, and through the legal, political and institutional recognition of the right to care, which imposes limited upon the professional monopoly of physicians.”

That self-care revolution never happened.  Ivan Illich’s urgent plea for the public to back away from “cut, burn and poison” medicine was not heeded.  The practice of medicine has become more complex and more beyond the reach of the laity to understand it.  Just run to the doctor for what ails you is the order of the day.

Confessions of a medical heretic

Then in 1979 came Dr. Robert S. Mendesohn’s memorable text: Confessions Of A Medical Heretic.”

It took a lot for Dr. Mendelsohn to become a medical heretic.  He says he failed to be suspicious of oxygen therapy for prematurely born infants even when 90% of all low birth-weight infants became partially or totally blind (in less advanced hospitals where oxygen therapy was not practiced, the incident of blindness among preemies was ~10%).

He dutifully prescribed Terramycin for respiratory infections which was said to produce no side effects until it was realized this antibiotic did little for this type of infection and left thousands of children with yellow-green teeth and tetracycline deposits in their bones.

Dr. Mendelsohn confessed to his belief in the irradiation of tonsils under the mistaken assumption doses of radiation used were harmless.  A decade later thyroid tumors were cropping up among those irradiated patients.

Over time Dr. Mendelsohn became a full-blown medical heretic.  He said: “Despite all the super technology and elite bedside manner that’s supposed to make you feel about as well cared for as an astronaut on the way to the moon, the greatest danger to your health is the doctor who practices modern medicine.”

Mendelsohn went on to boldly say “that more than ninety percent of modern medicine could disappear from the face of the earth – doctors, hospitals, drugs and equipment – and the effect on our health would be immediate and beneficial.”

How prophetic Dr. Mendelsohn was.  His words are so descriptive of the present predicament.

“If you make the mistake of going to the doctor with a cold or the flu, he’s liable to give you antibiotics, which are not only powerless against colds and flu but which leave you more likely to come down with worse problems.”

“If your child is a little too peppy for his teacher to handle, your doctor may go too far and turn him into a drug dependent.”

“”If you’re foolish enough to make that yearly visit for a routine examination… the doctor’s very presence could raise your blood pressure enough so that you won’t go home empty handed.  Another life ‘saved’ by antihypertensive drugs.  Another sex life down the drain, since more impotence is caused by drug therapy than by psychological problems.”

Dr. Mendelson launched a war against modern medicine and said “you can tell when you’re winning this war when you influence those closest to you.”

That war has been lost.  Most people who embrace natural medicine and shun doctors are outcasts in their own families.

Other books

Other books followed that cited the ongoing horrors of modern medicine:

1988: Medicine on Trial, by Charles B. Inlander

1988: Worse Than The Disease, by Diana B. Dutton

1992: Racketeering in Medicine, by James P. Carter MD

1993: Making Medicine, Making Money, by Donald Drake & Marian Uhlman

1994: Bitter Medicine, by Jane Kassler MD

1994: Why I Left Orthodox Medicine, by Derrick Lonsdale MD

2007: Overtreated, by Shannon Brownlee

2008: Overdosed America, John Abramson MD

2010: Overdiagnosed, H. Gilbert Welch MD

The result: only more caskets were being sold.

Does the written word make an impact any longer?

Does the written word change the course of humanity?  Certainly the Bible has.  Martin Luther’s 95 Theses did.  But none of the texts cited above made even a dent in the “progress” of modern medicine’s assault against humanity.

A few years back someone cited these facts about book reading:

• One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. …
• 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
• 42% of college graduates never read another book.
• 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

The pervasiveness of electronic methods of communication and the dissemination of propaganda and distorted reality of television has changed the course of history itself.

For example: “Television news” said the Gulf of Tonkin happened (no, there was never any North Vietnam boat that shot at a US Navy ship), but off to war America went against a tiny nation the size of the State of Georgia and a population of just 16 million against a country of 200 million with advanced military weapons.  Vietnam won.

The news media helped to fabricate the public’s perception of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  Investigators who dared to stray into what really went occurred on that November day in 1963 suddenly died.

And so too, American news media, whose boards of directors are often laced with executives of pharmaceutical and health insurance companies and hospital chains, continues to almost copy word-for-word press releases issued by the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, Food & Drug Administration that serve as a front for the racketeering going on in medicine today.

For example, the 2009 flu epidemic was never an epidemic.  It was all fabricated by the Centers for Disease Control to help sell flu vaccines.

Belittle the competition

A secondary agenda is to use the news media to demean and belittle any competition posed by healthy diets or dietary supplements.  Why promote a low-carbohydrate diet when the next prescription diet pill garners millions of advertising dollars for TV networks?

A spate of recent news reports are now scaring Americans away from vitamin and herbal supplements at a time when millions of Americans suffer from conditions that are simply nutrient deficiencies.  It is an orchestrated effort against self-care.

CODEX, a regulatory body assembled by the United Nations and the World Health Organization, has just voted to water down vitamin requirements in foods, thus ensuring a certain level of disease to treat.

We need diseases to create jobs

Government sees the medical industry as a source of jobs as the population ages.  Why cure or prevent any chronic age-related diseases when a certain level of disease is needed to maintain jobs?  Health care costs are not deemed to be an expense but rather an industry that contributes to the Gross Domestic Product.  In reality, it is a $3 trillion drag on the economy that has not produced greater life expectancy (US life expectancy ranks 27^th out of 34 countries deemed to be economic peers).  Life expectancy in some US counties is no better than some third-world countries.

The masses have little choice because they have no money.  An estimated 53% of American workers make no more than $30,000 a year and the growth in part-time jobs is soaring above full-time employment.  A $30,000 annual salary may have been adequate in 1980 but due to inflation one would have to make $85,000 to have the same purchasing power today.  The people have no money to make choices outside those served up by the health insurance/ physician/ Big Pharma/ hospital chain cabal.  Fascist (industry-controlled) medicine prevails.

For now, it’s every man for himself.

Oh mama, the Affordable Care Act is unfolding in all its ugly glory.

Americans are just now learning exactly how this piece of healthcare legislation is going to play out, and the realization of what it has morphed into is quite a disgusting chapter in current American history.

Now before I proceed in telling you what Obamacare has morphed into, I want to go off on a tangent for a moment.

On a momentary tangent: the unbanked

In another industry, banking, there is a large segment of the population that is unbanked just like there is a large portion of the American population that is uninsured healthcare-wise.

According to a federal government survey (there they go snooping again), more than one in four households (28.3 percent) are either unbanked or under-banked, conducting some or all of their financial transactions outside of the mainstream banking system.

An estimated 8.2 percent of US households are unbanked. This represents 1 in 12 households in the nation, or nearly 10 million in total. Approximately 17 million American adults live in unbanked households. The federal government knows precisely how many unbanked Americans there are by ethnicity, education, income level, age and even geography.

According to the federal government, 29.3% of American homes do not have a savings account. (Translation: they are not allowing banks to use their money as capitalization for lending schemes that have fallen into chaos as banks over-extended credit in recent times.)

The federal government knows how the unbanked operate financially, how often they obtain payday loans, use pawn shops, use rent-to-own offers, etc. The federal government says it has a “statutory mandate to estimate the proportion of households that do not fully participate in the banking system.” (Page 4 of FDIC National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households.) The data appears to have been tabulated for the good of bankers, not the citizenry.

There is good reason why the subject of unbanking is brought up in a report about the healthcare uninsured. The new federal health law, called the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which requires most Americans (except Congress) to carry health insurance starting in January 2014, presents a problem since insurance companies generally accept checks or credit cards as payment for premiums, but just how are the unbanked going to make payments?

The unbanked and the uninsured

Will insurance companies require new enrollees to produce a bank account number? This subject is being discussed.

Surely the IRS, which is the enforcement arm of the Affordable Care Act (you pay a fine if you don’t buy health insurance, and it will be taken out of your bank account), needs a bank account to raid.

By the way, also recognize that transaction fees for credit cards or pre-paid debit cards can run as high as 4%, which can be quite a bite out of the profits from private insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act. (Another bonanza for the bankers?)

I’m just wondering, if the IRS is not just limited to extraction of financial penalties from non-participants directly from their bank account and elects to take monthly insurance premiums directly out of a person’s bank account and forward them on to the insurance carrier, wouldn’t that serve to eliminate the 4% transfer fee? Is that why the IRS has been brought into this program?

Federal government stands in for bankers and insurance men

The federal government sees itself as an agency both to promote (coerce) banking among the unbanked on behalf of the banking industry and to strong-arm Americans into buying health insurance on behalf of the health insurance industry. The latter is what the Affordable Care Act is all about.

Now it has been said that America has turned into an example of crony capitalism– when industry pays off government to obtain a preferential business climate. But America has morphed into something worse than that. It has become a fascist state when it creates public mandates citizens must adhere to.

Forced or coerced vaccination as medical fascism

For example, federal and state governments coerce Americans to undergo vaccination via school and work programs. Vaccine makers don’t have to incur marketing costs, kids have to be vaccinated to get into school, young men and women to enter the military, etc.

This might be acceptable if vaccination were all that it is claimed to be. But it isn’t. The flu vaccination program is a sham. Flu vaccination doesn’t address the primary strain of the flu in circulation each flu season and doesn’t prevent deaths among high-risk groups – the elderly and the very young. Yet the Centers for Disease Control essentially serves as a free publicity agency for vaccine makers, spreading fear over imagined pandemics to promote sales of vaccines.

The same goes for the HPV (human papilloma virus) vaccine claimed to save young sexually active girls from acquiring a virus that may end up causing cervical cancer years in their future.

But HPV clears in 70% of infected individuals on its own. Vaccination only protects from 2-4 strains of HPV, not all 30 strains. Provision of folic acid and vitamin C appears to quell HPV infection better than vaccines. But state and federal governments are unceasingly pushing this vaccine on the public.

Affordable fascism

Congressman Ron Paul describes the Affordable Care Act as an example of fascism in healthcare, not just socialized medicine.

When the Supreme Court upheld that the federal government can force its citizens to buy something, in this instance health insurance, it stepped over the line from crony capitalism to fascism.

To be precise, the Supreme Court justices did in fact rule that the Affordable Care Act exceeds Congress’ authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, but “read the statute not to impose a strict mandate to purchase health insurance but instead to levy a Constitutionally valid tax for failure to do so.” This is an unfathomable trick – you pay a fine for not doing something.

Not socialized medicine, semi state-run enterprises

The U.S. government isn’t providing healthcare funded out of taxes like socialized medicine in Sweden or Canada. The U.S. is said to be recruiting 9000 “customer service representatives” to man telephone lines (call 800 318-2596 or visit www.healthcare.gov ) and answer questions about private health insurance packages being offered under the Affordable Care Act.

Say again? Yes, you heard it right, the federal government is incurring the marketing and recruitment costs for private insurance firms and even answering the phone for them! It’s everything but a state-owned business.

While it is said 56 million Americans are uninsured, actually only about 11 million (3.6%) were truly uninsured. The more broadly disseminated figure of 56 million uninsured Americans included 17 million who elected not to purchase health insurance even though they had sufficient income to buy it. That is the primary target group insurance companies are covertly employing government to coerce into buying their product.

Free advertising and promotion

In some instances the States are funding the promotion of their healthcare exchange. For example, California is putting up $43 million, Illinois about $28 million, Colorado $12 million. Colorado has 13 participating insurance companies getting the benefit of all this for free. Then the federal government is getting asked to kick in an additional $125 million for the Rocky Mountain state. Don’t you wish your business had a free telephone room and a government subsidized payment plan, and free advertising via federal and state agencies?

Will it live up to its mandate to save money?

Is the affordable care act going to save newly eligible Americans money on health insurance premiums?

In Colorado the bare-bones, plain vanilla insurance package for an individual 40-year old nonsmoker is reported to start at $177/month. That “bronze level” insurance package in Colorado is going to cost $2124 a year, or about 11% of income of a low-income wage earner ($23,550 is just above the poverty line).

Insurance subsidies may not be available to those individuals with an income just above the poverty level ($23,550 for an individual or up to four times that amount – $94,200 – for a family of four).

Let’s see how much money this low-income wage earner has left after the federal government takes its taxes out of his check.

If this insured person earns just above the poverty level of income ($23,550) and his employer kicks in half of FICA (deductions for Medicare and Social Security – 7.65%), then another $1801 is deducted from his paycheck (double this amount if self-employed).

Then there is 15% federal income tax, or about another $3000. So this 40-year old low-income worker is paying $3000 income tax, $1801 FICA and having to spend $2124 for health insurance, which leaves him ~$16,626 to live on.

Guesstimating just $800/month for housing and $200/month car payment — deduct another $12,000/year, leaving this worker with about $4626/year to pay for food, clothing, car insurance, gasoline, etc. Driving 12,000 miles a year in a vehicle that gets 20-MPG = 600 gallons X $4.00/gallon = $2400 for gasoline, leaving $2226 ($6 a day) for food, clothing, auto insurance, etc.

This is barely do-able, so it’s no wonder so many Americans decided to chance it and go without health insurance. Even with the Affordable Care Act, the uninsured may decide to take the penalty ($95 in 2014, $365 in 2015 and $695 in 2016).

Does the ACA prevent personal bankruptcy?

With the Affordable Care Act in place for this hypothetical American worker, insurance plans cannot raise his premium more than 10% without public justification (whatever that means), and he cannot be arbitrarily removed from coverage, and pre-existing conditions do not make him ineligible, and there are no lifetime spending limits on his care. His selected health plan must spend 80% of its revenues on delivery of care or rebate money back.

So it sounds like this fellow at least may avert personal bankruptcy if an unexpected and costly health crisis occurs. But that is not quite the case.

There are out-of-pocket costs for health care in ACA insurance packages being offered. For exchange-sold plans, the maximum annual out-of-pocket cost is $6350 per individual, or $12,700 per family. But that is not all.

The cost of medical care is covered but prescription drugs may not be covered entirely. This could still leave our beleaguered worker with a bill for $13,000 out-of-pocket, certainly enough to force him into bankruptcy.

Oh, mama, the little guy is still getting pounded.

The White House is bragging the Affordable Care Act has already saved Americans about $2.1 billion in rebates that have been paid by health plans that didn’t spend at least 80% of their revenues on provision of care. Americans are never going to see through this ruse – the token rebates are simply being publicized to make the federal government look good while it takes billions of dollars of administration and marketing costs off the table for the insurance companies.

Will it save money?

The problem is, to BE EFFECTIVE, the Affordable Care Act has to take a big bite out of healthcare – hundreds of billions of dollars. The Congressional Budget Office says up to 30% of health care in the U.S. is unnecessary. Medicare faces unfunded future liabilities totaling $34 trillion over the next 75 years.

While Title IV, Section 4202 of the Affordable Care Act spells out the components of a wellness program to include nutritional counseling, physical activity plan, alcohol and smoking cessation counseling, stress management, and dietary supplements that have health claims approved by the Secretary of Health Education & Welfare (that list doesn’t even include vitamin C cures scurvy), doctors simply aren’t trained to provide preventive services that they often consider beneath their training. Furthermore, the fee-for- service system that is now in place prioritizes services that produce the most insurance reimbursement.

The Affordable Care Act runs off in two divergent directions. One is to prescribe a regimen of preventive measures (vaccinations and health screenings like mammograms and colonoscopies) that will surely raise health care costs as more undetected and untreated pre-disease is detected, while at the same time the Affordable Care Act says it is going to ferret out waste fraud and abuse, invoke price controls and conduct comparative effective research to determine which treatments are the most cost effective.

Treatment effectiveness analysis

Evaluation of treatment effectiveness — let’s see if that ever happens.

For example, preventive health screenings may be of limited benefit. Colonoscopies offer only a remote chance of ever benefiting a patient. Mammography may actually increase the risk for cancer.

Ineffective and problematic drugs pose another difficulty. For example, there are an estimated $11 billion of statin cholesterol-lowering drugs sold in the U.S. annually, many for healthy patients whose doctor thinks they need prevention of mortal heart attacks. But statin drugs do not reduce the risk for mortal heart attacks, they meagerly reduce the risk for a non-mortal heart attack by 1 in 200 healthy users over a 5-year period. In healthy adults, statin drugs are more likely to induce side effects like diabetes, muscle degradation, liver toxicity or even mental decline than to prevent a heart attack. The risks outweigh the benefits. But is the federal health program going to reject Medicare payments for statin drugs? I wouldn’t bet on it, not with Big Pharma’s Congressional lobbyists in place.

What about cancer therapies? There are no cures for cancer. The cancer care industry makes specious claims survival times are being lengthened, but in fact all that is being done is tumors are being detected and treated at an earlier and smaller stage. Patients are still dying on the same calendar day.

Chemotherapy only contributes to the 5-year survival of cancer patients 2-3% of the time.

Another example is thyroid cancer. The 5-year survival of thyroid cancer patients is said to be 96%, but even with 37,000 cases being detected and treated annually, the number of deaths from thyroid cancer (1600 per year) has not budged in 30 years.

Is the Affordable Care Act going to disapprove payment for these ineffective therapies at the risk of being criticized of rationing care for dying patients?

Manpower problems

Another issue in delivering healthcare under the Affordable Care Act is manpower. With millions more previously uninsured Americans now gaining insurance coverage, will there be enough doctors to go around?

In Arizona there is speculation there aren’t enough doctors to provide the care for these newly insured patients. There is similar concern being expressed in Wisconsin and Missouri.

Here is another instance where the Affordable Care Act is talking out of two sides of its mouth. It wants price controls, it wants to cut physician’s fees, but for States that are expanding their Medicaid program to accommodate uninsured citizens, physician reimbursement may not be adequate to provide the promised care.

For example, Medi-Cal is said to be “such a broken system with really abysmal reimbursement rates” that providers are electing not to participate. Medi-Cal pays $18-24 for a basic office visit, which is scheduled to fall to $14-15 as State budget problems are addressed.

Summary

The Affordable Care Act could implode on its very first day. Its most disturbing reality is that it doesn’t serve the little guy very well. However, it does reduce recruitment costs and expands the list of customers for insurers. It may also be used as a covert way to coerce unbanked Americans to put their money in banks. Americans just above poverty-line income levels, who may be eagerly awaiting receipt of an insurance card for the first time, may not have enough money to pay for out-of-pocket costs, may not even be able to find a participating doctor to deliver care, may not avert personal bankruptcy in the event of an unexpected costly health emergency, and may not even be able to pay for insurance premiums themselves. Oh mama, the Affordable Care Act may be a failure right out of the starting gate.

Mama, say it isn’t so!

The Best of Bill Sardi

In May of 2008 this health writer published an almost unbelievable report of four published studies of 4-7 year remissions from colon and breast cancer facilitated by weekly injection of an abundant sugar-like protein in human blood serum called Gc macrophage activating factor (Gc-MAF). A year later I wrote a follow-up report showing lack of interest by the cancer care community in this remarkable development.

Cancer cells secrete an enzyme called nagalase that completely blocks the conversion of Gc-protein to Gc-MAF which is needed to kill cancer cells via activation of white-blood cells known as macrophages. Macrophages track down and engulf cancer cells.

The startling aspect of these published reports is that the cancer community is ignoring them when there are simply no published studies showing long-term cures for any adult cancers. For example, typical survival for lung and colon cancer is 2 years or less.

I was originally alerted to these reports by a researcher in Ohio, Tim Hubbell. Otherwise they may have remained in obscurity.

GcMAF treatment for cancer was first described in 1993. Two decades have past and this therapy has been agonizingly slow to reach the cancer clinic.

Now doctors at the Saisei Mirai Clinic in Kobe, Japan report they have successfully treated 345 patient from April of 2011 to March 2013 and they present three cases that responded to treatment in their most recent report published in Anticancer Research.

• Patient #1: a 71-year-old male with diagnosed cancer of his thymus gland that had spread to his lungs received 24 weeks of therapy. No progression of the cancer was found 12 months following completion of treatment.
• Patient #2: a 74-year-old male diagnosed with prostate cancer that had spread to multiple bone sites underwent 12 weeks of treatment. Bone scans were normal 9 months after initiation of therapy and the tumors had disappeared.
• Patient #3: a 72-year-old woman with spreading liver cancer underwent 24 weeks of therapy plus radiation. There was no evidence of recurrence or metastatic (spreading) disease on PET or CT scans 12 months after treatment.

The treatment team at the Saisei Mirai Clinic uses a combination of therapies that include (a) weekly Gc-MAF injections; (b) high-dose intravenous vitamin C therapy twice a week; (c) oral alpha lipoic antioxidant supplementation 600 mg/day; (d) oral vitamin D3, 5000-10,000 IU/day.

“All of these therapies aim to strengthen and activate the immune system and take a holistic approach to fighting cancer rather than a localized approach that is common with conventional therapies such as radiation and surgery,” their report says.

They indicate, when tumors are large, they may need to resort to surgery or radiation to de-bulk a tumor.

These investigators in Japan say: “We have used this multi-modality integrative immunotherapy-based approach in nearly 400 patients with cancer. The results of this integrative immunotherapy look hopeful.”

The world is watching. Conventional cancer treatment is so ineffective, and so arduous, and so anxiety ridden and so very expensive. Is cancer being cured before our eyes? Would oncologists give up their fat incomes billing for infusions of $25,000 anti-cancer drugs in their offices for this far-less expensive therapy now being used at a single center in Japan?

There should be worldwide acclaim over this promising development. News agencies should be flocking to Kobe, Japan for interviews with these researchers. Again, like before, all these developments are being ignored by the cancer care industry and the news media. This reporter has to break the news on the internet.

Three of the four regimens that comprise this combination therapy are generally available in the US and other developed nations. Dr. Andrew Saul has written how to obtain a prescription for intravenous vitamin C for hospitalized patients. Information onhow doctors should administer intravenous vitamin C therapy is available online.

This author has described a dietary supplement regimen where IP6 rice bran extract (2000-12,000 mg) can be used to activate white blood cells (neutrophils) to literally blow up tumor cells. IP6 has been demonstrated to “prime” white blood cells so they will track down bacteria or tumor cells in the blood circulation.

The Best of Bill Sardi

First, if you are going to accept some advice on where to place your money in a volatile world economy, you had better be listening to someone who has his finger on the pulse of the economy, a person who can see ahead so you don’t step on avoidable land mines down the road.

You may have what little wealth you have accumulated in real estate, savings accounts or maybe a few shares of stock. The value of these stores of wealth can be pummeled by what is going on in the bond market today. So you had better know what that is about.

A stand-up financial advisor who calls a spade a spade is Michael Pento, author of a new bookThe Coming Bond Market Collapse (Wiley 2013, 304 pages).

Well, you don’t own any government bonds so why should that matter to you? Right now, the whole world is sitting on a $17 trillion precipice – the amount of accumulated debt the United States has racked up.

The U.S. has borrowed trillions from Japan and China, and hundreds of billions from other overseas lenders. The question for lenders is – does the U.S. ever intend to pay us back?

Why financial Armageddon didn’t happen

There are a number of reasons why the gloom and doomers have had to sit on their hands. The first way to hide a collapse of the economy is paper-over the economy’s dismal numbers. The U.S. is running a shell game of sorts. It is hiding its real financial numbers – saying unemployment is ~8% when it is more like 22%, and saying inflation is ~2.3% when it is more like 9.3% (ShadowStats.com).

In a column I wrote at LewRockwell.com some time back, I explained that the U.S. avoided a predicted financial doomsday when it lowered interest rates on its borrowed money. Had it not done that, the U.S. would be paying more interest on its debts than any other federal outlay. That is something Mr. Pento says can no longer be avoided.

But a country pays a price for cheap money that can be borrowed at a low rate of interest. Right now banks offer loans at historically low lending rates, but in turn they have to offer low yields on saving accounts to do that. So interest on long-term savings is less than 1%.

Savers are watching the value of their money erode away as the cost of living is greater than the yield on their savings. Essentially, in 5-years savers will have about the same dollar amount in their long-term accounts but it will be able to buy about half as much as it once did.

Rubber money can’t be stretched forever

Getting back to the bond crisis Mr. Pento points to, when a country begins living off of expansion of credit, just like a household that keeps asking its creditors to expand the amount on its credit cards so it can continue on a spending spree, lenders are going to be remiss about lending more money and accepting U.S. IOU’s (U.S. Treasury Bonds).

It’s not like Mr. Pento stands alone here in his analysis that the bond market is going to trigger a collapse of the U.S. and the world economy.

Last year I wrote about Senator Tom Coburn who painted a more detailed scenario in his book Debt Bomb of a day in 2014 when Japanese creditors sell off their U.S. Treasury Bonds at a discount.

In other words, knowing they are not going to be paid back, Japanese lenders try to sell their debt paper (U.S. Treasury Bonds) to other parties at maybe 30% or 50% less than their stated value. That would result in a forced devaluation of the U.S dollar in the world currency markets.

Economist John Williams, who writes at ShadowStats.com, also echoes Mr. Pento’s concerns. Williams has been saying a “dollar sell off” is imminent now that the U.S. has signaled it isn’t really going to curb spending and the Federal Reserve Bank is going to continue propping the economy with its money-printing.

With a $17 trillion debt to pay back Mr. Williams wonders if any other party will buy marked-down U.S. Treasury Bonds at all. If so, Williams hints at a “total debasement” of the U.S. dollar in the markets. That means zero value folks.

In his book, Mr. Pento points to an unavoidable collapse in the US economy before 2016 as the nation heads toward a date when expenditures exceed revenues in Social Security by 2016 and around the years 2015-16 interest payments on $17 trillion of accumulated national debt will rise to 30-50% of all Federal Revenue collected.

If you think there is some remote chance the U.S. can dig its way out of this quagmire, figure in $54 trillion total public and private sector U.S. debt, both which are records, notes Mr. Pento. That $54 trillion represents 350% of U.S. GDP, which is the same level it was at the start of the Great Recession, he adds.

Which numbers are they using?

Recognize Mr. Pento is using less alarming numbers than Mr. Williams. While Mr. Pento quotes federal spending at $3.7 trillion and tax revenues at $2.5 trillion, Mr. Williams says the federal government is not employing Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and the $3.7 trillion figure only address spending from the general fund, not Medicare and Social Security. Those two welfare funds continue to collect money in the form of deductions from paychecks but taxpayers are kicking in for the shortfall, which Williams says now totals $6.6 trillion in overall spending!

So America is living a lifestyle it hasn’t earned. It’s military, pensioners and doctors are being paid on borrowed money.

Bond market red alert

A recent PBS news segment says the bond market alarm button may have just been pushed.

Paul Solman, writing for PBS, notes that the May 1 interest rate the U.S. had to pay to borrow money for 10 years was 1.64%. On May 29 it was 2.14%, about a one-third rise. That’s a dramatic increase.

Lenders who buy up U.S. Treasury bonds to fund the U.S. debt habit are likely to demand higher rates of interest on borrowed money.

When we reach this point, in Mr. Pento’s view, austerity will be forced on America, like it or not.

Go find a less gloomy psych-onomist

If this is all too unsettling for you, go find an economist who will calm your queasy stomach, like Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate who says: “We actually don’t have a problem with government debt, not yet.” (PBS interview)

Krugman continues to call for expansion of the money supply and says he will “turn into a deficit and debt hawk once we’re out of this depression.”

So PBS reporter Solman asks Mr. Krugman point blank: “What about the argument that too much debt will inevitably lead bond investors to demand much higher interest rates and make government debt increasingly expensive?”

Krugman offers Japan as an example of his money expansion idea. Krugman says “In Japan, people have been saying, ‘Oh, those interest rates are going to go soaring any day now.’ It’s been 20 years that people have been saying that they’re going to have inflation from all that money printing. In fact, they’re trying desperately to break out of deflation.”

This is where our stand-up guy, Michael Pento, reigns in. He says Krugman always uses Japan (a country that is an exception because it has a very high rate of savings over spending) as an example of how massive debt levels don’t cause interest rates to spike. “But he refuses to look at Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal or Spain, or other historical examples of runaway interest rates in Zimbabwe, Argentina, Hungary or Georgia,” says Mr. Pento.

David Stockman, former budget director in the Reagan administration, also is quoted to say in the PBS interview that the federal government has become addicted to debt and over two years ago he predicted interest rates were about to zoom when they declined. So where does that leave the gloom-and-doomers?

PBS’ Solman quotes Mr. Stockman to say: “I just didn’t realize how crazy the Fed was and that they would keep interest rates low for this long.”

So the savers keep getting robbed, and that is something Mr. Krugman ignores. Everything is fine by Mr. Krugman and Federal Reserve bank chairman Mr. Bernanke if the banks have been rescued at the expense of savers.

So much for esoteric arguments over bond rates and predictions of inflation or deflation (we’ll probably get a little bit of both initially, with hyper-inflation dominating in the long run), what should we do now?

What do we do now?

Mr. Pento says: “any one single investment strategy no longer works in this new age of investing.” Nor will a diversified portfolio (traditionally 70% stocks, 30% bonds) as all asset classes are anticipated to drop in value, says Pento. Nor will long-term investments out-ride what is happening today, he adds.

If your investment counselor is still spinning this type of advice he/she isn’t addressing the volatile world of finance today.

Mr. Pento expects swings in the economy and markets with eventual protracted and severe inflation (your money will purchase less).

Mr. Pento says the only exceptions will be precious metals, oil and energy investments. But you had better buy a copy of Mr. Pento’s book to get the whole reality picture he paints on how to side-step this volatile world economy.

When a meltdown in the economy occurs and money is devalued (seems certain, doesn’t it), don’t panic. Gary North, advisor to many, saysAmericans will repudiate their debt and not pass it on to their children. So far, he is right. Americans are not paying down their student loans. Some are not paying their home mortgages. Others are not paying off their credit card debt.

If there is no money, “old geezers” are going to have to stay healthy and practice self care instead of relying upon free doctoring provided by Medicare. Pension checks will become nearly worthless as the cost of goods and services rise faster than pension checks can be adjusted. In other words, the future Medicare and Social Security shortfall simply will dissolve as these welfare payments simply can’t be delivered, and the debt won’t be passed on to the next generation.

In a massive economic meltdown, few will be able to pay their property taxes, even their income taxes. Food on the table and a full gasoline tank to get to work will predominate over tax and mortgage payments. If you are in debt, let the lenders fret over it, not you.

Mr. North notes, in a recent May 28, 2013 posting at his website (GaryNorth.com) that three noted billionaires (Warren Buffett, John Paulson and George Soros) recently sold off their shares in consumer-related companies. They see a forthcoming collapse in consumer spending which represents about 70% of the U.S economy today.

Consumer spending has remained relatively high, facilitated by Mr. Bernanke’s cheap money flooding policy. While the average investor is driving the stock market higher, the billionaires are exiting. What do they know? Regarding the stock market, Mr. North says: “the safe position is to be out.”

For most readers of this column, they likely don’t have enough money to invest. They have no appreciable wealth. You can thank Mr. Bernanke for that as incomes haven’t kept up with inflation, particularly since the 2008 financial collapse.

A recent survey shows nearly two-thirds of Americans can’t even afford a $1000 emergency expense, let alone consider investing money in gold, silver or stocks. But for those who do have some measure of wealth, a quick read of Mr. Pento’s book may be in order. You wealth is going to be determined by what happens in the bond market. Keep your ear to the ground, or listen to someone who does, like Mr. Pento.

The Best of Bill Sardi

Economist John Williams says the Federal bank account at the US Treasury Department is down to just one-day’s estimated outlay, a dire situation that can only be papered over for a short time. Williams cites the May 28 Daily Treasury Statement showing the US Treasury has an operating cash balance of ~$16 billion which is roughly one day’s average cash outlay of about $17 billion.

Williams paints reality over the fantasies created by the federal government in his latest commentary (#527). At his website Williams shadows government-issued economic statistics, erasing the false illusions created to make it sound like the economy is in recovery mode.

Williams shows the annual rate of inflation (buying power of the dollar) is ~9.3% rather than 2.4%, unemployment is more like 22% rather than 8% and the Gross Domestic Product, the measure of the production of goods and services, is actually in decline.

By papering over the real numbers, government has bought some time, but it won’t last long according to Williams.

The US government can’t control foreign holders of US IOUs (US Treasury Bonds) who have a growing perception they will never be paid back on the trillions of dollars of debt owed them. Foreign holders of US Treasury bills can sell them off at a loss to others.

The amount those T-bonds are discounted is the amount the US dollar will be valued at in the world marketplace. At that point, the US faces a default on its obligations to pay back lenders.

Williams says he had expected the US dollar to come “heavy selling pressure in April and May, but manipulated market perceptions of a pending reversal of the Federal Reserve Bank’s “quantitative easing” program temporarily averted a looming US fiscal disaster.

Williams calls federal government efforts “false dollar props that are illusions.” When these perceptions shift sharply, which he says is soon, is when panic is possible and “full dollar debasement is inevitable” (means 100% devaluation of the US dollar)!

Williams says the scandals unfolding in the White House only create an environment where further lack of trust will hasten the collapse of the US government as we know it.

Brace yourselves. Williams says “The timing of this remains sooner, rather than later, still likely within calendar 2013″ and that the dollar sell-off probably “will be the proximal trigger for the onset of hyperinflation before the end of 2014.” It may be time to buy a ticket on a spaceship to another planet.

What are the chances all this will be averted? No better than 5-10% by his estimation.

Williams says “the government cannot raise taxes enough to cover the actual deficit in any given year. That shortfall also is so large that every penny of government spending (including defense) could be cut to zero, except for the social programs, and the fiscal circumstance still would be in deficit.”

Williams points to looming downgrades in the federal government’s credit rating as another bullet it will take.

Williams says: “When the dollar selling starts, safe-havens likely will be sought by investors among all the major Western currencies. A likely place investors will run to is Japan which “still has basic system stability.”

“The games being played here are vicious,” says Williams, “but the underlying fundamental value of gold as a store of wealth, and as an asset that preserves the purchasing power of the dollars invested in it, cannot be altered by the machinations of the people who created the crises threatening the collapse of the U.S. dollar.” He emphasizes gold remains the primary hedge against the US dollar debasement which lies ahead.

The Best of Bill Sardi

Every once in a while some brave investigator charts a new course for modern medicine. For various reasons this one is not likely to become the new paradigm and supplant the reigning cholesterol theory of heart disease. But a recently published landmark paper posits a long overlooked hypothesis which gleans evidence from statin cholesterol-lowering drugs themselves. It convincingly points those health practitioners who embrace science over commercial gain in a direction away from cholesterol as a measure of arterial health.

11Leo R Zacharski MD, a medical and scientific board member of The Iron Disorders Institute, writes a seminal paper entitled “THE STATIN-IRON NEXUS: ANTI-INFLAMMATORY INTERVENTION FOR ARTERIAL DISEASE PREVENTION in the April issue of The American Journal of Public Health.

Even with all of the resounding evidence presented by Dr. Zacharski and colleagues, the cholesterol theory of heart disease is so ingrained it will be next to impossible to get an estimated 25 million statin drug users to cease their lipid-lowering medications. Without their statin pills they would feel like they are a sitting duck for a sudden mortal heart attack.

All is not well in statin drug land, however. A leading cardiologist now points out that there is a 1 in 200 risk of getting diabetes on a statin, while only two in 200 heart attacks, heart surgeries, or other types of heart problems are prevented.

Don’t anticipate abandonment of statin drugs

However, even with recent revelations that statin drugs increase the risk for diabetes by up to 20%, and the risk for muscle damage by 10% and are liver toxins that may also bring on mental confusion, physicians and pharmaceutical companies hold sway over a naïve patient population that craves a number to chart their success in maintaining healthy coronary arteries and reduction of the most feared event – a sudden mortal heart attack.

Harvard physician John Abramson, author of OVERDOSED AMERICA, has noted that the ten largest clinical trials of statin drugs did not significantly lower mortality rates among healthy individuals using statin drugs for prevention. If the revelation that statin drugs don’t reduce death rates hasn’t shaken Americans from using statin drugs, nothing else will. Even a false assurance calms imagined fears.

Statin drugs were never efficacious

The cholesterol theory of heart disease gained traction in the 1970s with the introduction of the first cholesterol-lowering statin drug, Mevacor. And even though Mevacor did not significantly reduce cholesterol to lower coronary artery disease mortality rates, the FDA never flinched in allowing it to remain on the market.

More powerful statin drugs were introduced, but they had to make sure they weren’t too liver toxic as they are designed to inhibit a key liver enzyme that is required to produce cholesterol. Even today, stronger statin drugs do not appreciably reduce death rates from heart disease among healthy individuals. But there is no turning back.

Whether cholesterol reduction is an intentional misdirection to maintain a certain level of disease for physicians to treat, or it is part of a covert population control agenda as some have imagined, even patent expiration of every statin drug will not likely cause modern medicine to abandon its central mantra – to reduce circulating levels of cholesterol.

Iron over fat

That’s enough throwing tomatoes at cholesterol drugs. What Dr. Zacharski postulates is the “rust” theory of heart disease. The idea was first aired by the late Dr. Jerome L. Sullivan III in 1981. Dr. Sullivan observed that young women who have low iron levels because of monthly menstrual blood losses simply didn’t have heart attacks.

Instead of measuring circulating cholesterol levels, Dr. Zacharski would have Americans chart their iron storage number – their ferritin levels. A healthy range would fall between 20-50 nanograms per milliliter of blood.

Statin drugs point to iron, not cholesterol

The scientific rationale that Dr. Zacharski presents is that statin drugs promote health unrelated to their proposed ability to reduce lipids (cholesterol). Indeed, statin drugs modestly reduce stored iron levels as measured by ferritin in patients with advanced cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and diabetes. Reduction of stored iron (ferritin) via blood donation(phlebotomy) has been shown to reduce all-cause mortality among patients with peripheral artery (lower leg) disease.

Dr. Zacharski shows that statin drug users have lower ferritin levels. Strikingly, whereas reduction of ferritin levels correlated with reduced mortality, an improvement in the HDL (good cholesterol) to LDL (bad cholesterol) ratio had no effect.

While statin drugs do reduce cholesterol synthesis by the liver and ferritin levels, these mechanisms were independent of each other. Iron reduction produces better outcomes (fewer heart attacks), regardless of statin drug use, “which suggests iron reduction rather than altered lipid status is the more powerful – or possibly the sole – contributor to improved outcomes,” says the Statin-Iron Nexus report.

Underlying mechanisms

Statin drugs also work in part by their demonstrated ability to activate an endogenous (internal) antioxidant known as heme oxygenase, an iron controlling enzyme also demonstrated by red wine and the red wine molecule resveratrol. The wine-drinking French exhibit a very low mortality rate for coronary artery disease (~90 per 100,000) compared to North Americans (~200 per 100,000).

Statins also inhibit hepcidin, a hormonal regulator of iron distribution. Hepcidin is also inhibited by iron chelation (key-lay-shun).

The statin/iron nexus

Dr. Zacharski notes that statins intersect with iron controlling interventions (example: blood-letting) or dietary iron control (example: Mediterranean diet) to inhibit buildup of arterial plaque whereas the provision of supplemental iron increases plaque.

Males benefit from reduction of iron stores more so than females because they have no physiological mechanism to control iron as do females via monthly menstruation. Peak iron storage levels are exhibited in males between the ages of 30-70 years, the age span when males benefit most from iron reduction.

Putting it into practice

Whereas statin drugs are costly, Dr. Zacharski suggests prospective trials be launched to demonstrate the ability of iron reduction in high-risk populations (diabetics, those individuals with existing heart disease) to reduce arterial disease and mortality “without the need for universal drug treatment.” The Mediterranean diet is given as a population-wide model and bloodletting as an intervention.

Donation of a unit of blood reduces iron load by about 250 milligrams compared against a few thousand excess milligrams of stored iron in middle-aged males. Repeated blood donation over time may be a clinical way of addressing iron excess without the need for drugs and their accompanying side effects.

It is not anticipated the phlebotomists will prevail over the pharmacologists in this matter (the pharmaceutical sector of the stock market would plunge with news statin drugs were about to be unseated as the most profitable selling class of prescription drugs of all time), and doctors would not be expected to diminish their status to embrace a technology that the ancients practiced, albeit bloodletting was performed prior to Hippocrates in the 5^th century B.C.

It is worth noting that the first article in the inaugural issue of the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery, in January 1812, was a treatise on treatment of angina pectoris (chest pain) via bloodletting by John Warren.

Maybe the science has come full circle, but modern medicine is ruled by commercial gain, not science. The invasion of commercialism in the practice of medicine was bemoaned over a decade ago. Pharmaceutical marketing has now become a pervasive practice in medicine that even conflict of interest laws may not abate.

Still, with the landmark paper on the Statin-Iron Nexus, Dr. Leo Zacharsky may have removed the practice of bloodletting from the Museum of Quackery.

Can you imagine a day when 25 million Americans line up for scheduled bloodletting sessions rather than taking daily statin pills? Some enterprising fellow opening up a chain of bloodletting outlets called Heme Health. That would be phleboto-mania. Back to reality.

Phlebotomy in a doctor’s office is said to cost $200-400. Bi-annual phlebotomy for 25 million statin drug users would cost ~$10-20 billion a year, compared to $26 billion a year for statin drugs. Thousands of lives would be saved as it is believed phlebotomy would reduce cardiac mortality and over-all mortality. The overall cost of medical care would plunge as diabetesand obesity rates would also predictably fall.

Indeed, high ferritin levels are associated with nearly a six-fold increase in the risk for an acute heart attack. That is a 600% increase compared to cholesterol reduction via a statin drug that reduces the risk for a non-mortal heart attack by a mere ~30%.

To the point, Dr. Zacharski and colleagues report that higher mean ferritin levels (132 nanograms per milliliter) were found among subjects with peripheral artery disease who died than those who didn’t (86 nanograms per milliliter). Iron control is truly a life and death issue. Cholesterol is not.

As a final comparison, cholesterol reduction may modestly, in 1 in 200 healthy subjects, reduce the risk for a non-mortal heart attack over a 5-year period (zero healthy adults are helped by being saved from a mortal heart attack taking statin drugs, and zero avoid sudden cardiac death even among subjects with acute heart problems). Looking at it this way, it appears cholesterol control via statin drugs is an inappropriate practice fraught with potential side effects that poses medical ethical problems. But statin drugs bring patients to doctors’ offices, the phlebotomy needle may chase them away.

None the less, Dr. Zacharsky has planted his flag. The scientific territory has been conquered.

The Best of Bill Sardi

The Los Angeles Times breaks a scandalous story of a Pentagon advisor who lined his own pockets while creating an imagined scenario where currently available antibiotics would be ineffective due to germ resistance, requiring a back – up plan – a multi-million dollar drug that has cost $334 million so far. The developed drug, raxibacumab (for short, raxi) costs $5100 per dose, according to the LA Times report.

Called “a horrible conflict of interest,” the scaremonger served as advisor both to government and the developmental drug company, taking money from both sides by conducting seminars that government health authorities attended and gaining fees from the drug company as well. Pentagon authorities say they knew nothing about the consultant’s conflict of interest. The developmental drug company eventually sold to a Big Pharma company for $3.6 billion and the consultant, who had purchased 3000 shares, must have reaped a giant gain.

The consultant to government began to warn of antibiotic resistant strains of anthrax soon after the Sept. 11, 2001 mailings of anthrax-laced letters. The strain of anthrax powder in those letters was not found to be resistant to antibiotics. But the consultant kept sounding false alarms. He said an antibiotic-resistant strain could be cooked be “readily” cooked up by an amateur terrorist. The LA Times report noted that several biodefense scientists claim in interviews that production of resistant anthrax strains would not be easy.

According to the LA Times, the Department of Health & Human Services purchased 20,000 doses of raxi for $174 million and another 45,000 doses in 2009 for $160 million. This would not nearly be enough doses for a population of 300 million vulnerable Americans.

While there are stockpiles of antibiotics in case of public emergencies, they are not likely to be sufficient to protect a large population.

In 2007 it was reported the federal government had 40 million courses of antibiotics in the Strategic National Stockpile.

In the event of a massive public exposure to a toxin like anthrax in the public mail system where even anthrax dust could be spread far and wide and pose a threat to public health, it is obvious even if sufficient stocks of antibiotics were available, they would have to first be distributed to safety workers who would then distribute them, delaying delivery to an already-exposed population. Therefore, a third backup supply would be needed.

It has been clearly demonstrated that allicin from fresh-crushed garlic is superior to most antibiotics in killing anthrax, a fact that public health authorities are remiss in reporting. Garlic is obviously widely available and affordable.

The LA Times report didn’t overtly create suspicion that this consultant had financial motives to spread public fear over anthrax in the still unexplained crime involving the anthrax-laden letters that were sent to the news media and members of Congress. But the article did post photos of the letters released by the FBI. Whether this consultant was ever investigated by the FBI for involvement in that crime is unknown.

Instead, federal authorities mistakenly fingered former Army scientist Dr. Steven J. Hatfill and later paid out a $5.82 million settlement against his claim that the Justice Department and the FBI invaded his privacy and ruined his career.

Nearly a decade after mailing of the anthrax-laced letters, a panel of three scientists, writing in the Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense, say the man the FBI fingered (Bruce Ivins) was not the likely source of anthrax spores that had a unique and sophisticated chemical profile that Ivins could not possibly have produced.

The Best of Bill Sardi

When a public broadcasting agency posts an interview on its website with a so-called economist and investment advisor, first think this expert’s opinion is being planted.

The expert, Professor Zvi Bodie, a professor of management at Boston University who is panned as “the country’s foremost expert on pension finance,” advises readers to invest in US Treasury Series-I Savings Bonds. Mr. Bodie notes there is a limit of $10,000 per person per year that the public can purchase. His online article is entitled: “The One Safe Investment and Why You Never Hear About It.”

Before you jump online to purchase one of these Series I-bonds directly from the US Treasury Department, you might want to be enlightened a little further.

Says Mr. Bodie: “You can cash them in after one year. But if you cash them in before five years, you lose the last three months of interest. (If you cash in an I-Bond after 18 months, you get the first 15 months of interest).” Keep reading.

He goes on to say that I Bonds provide “the ultimate in long-run liquid financial security to residents of the U.S. An investor in these bonds cannot lose any money or any purchasing power for up to 30 years, despite either inflation or deflation. They provide a return at least equal to the rate of inflation and, often, have paid a ‘premium’ of interest above and beyond inflation.”

Ah, wait a minute Mr. Bodie. Investors “can’t lose?” You do admit in your article that the current premium (rate of return) on these Series I bond is zero, don’t you?

Ah, but he says the US Treasury Department resets these interest rates every six months and “IF” new I-bonds are issued that do offer a premium, you can sell your lame ones for new ones, he says. Hey, we have a great advisor here don’t we?

For all of you who are novice investors, if the rate of return on government issued securities rises, so will interest on all the trillions of dollars of debt that the US owes rise. (More about that below.) The only way the US side-stepped insolvency in its borrowing frenzy was to reduce the interest paid on the national debt. Raise the rate of return on government-issued bonds and the country commits financial hara kiri (a Japanese word for suicide). It ain’t gonna happen any time soon.

Mr. Bodie favorably compares the inflation-pegged Series-I savings bond to a six-month Treasury bill that currently pays less than 1/100^th of 1%. Hey that is still 1/100^th of 1% better than the existing Series I bond.

Says Mr. Bodie: “Since inflation is running at 1.8 percent right now and an I-Bond automatically pays you the inflation rate, the I-Bond would seem to be rather obviously the debt instrument of choice.” This sounds like Abbott & Costello in their “Who’s On First?” routine.

Mr. Bodie says investment firms don’t tell you about the Series-I Savings Bond because it cuts them out of the deal. They don’t get a cut in the form of a maintenance fee or other management fee. You buy these Series-I US Savings Bonds directly from the US Treasury Department online. (I’m not giving you the address of the online home page out of fear you will be duped into this offer.)

Could this wise investment sage simply be a shill for the US Government? If you listen to a bona fide economist, John Williams of Shadowstats.com, you will learn the real rate of inflation (calculated the way the US government used to come up with “consumer price index” in the 1980s) is 9.3%.

Does anybody dispute John Williams’ estimation of the real rate of inflation when Americans paid $1.35 per gallon for gasoline in 1980 and pay over $3.50 per gallon today? In 1980 a loaf of bread cost ~80cents. Today you can buy three slices of bread for that much money.

Even if one of these $10,000 investments were to yield 2-3% (the rate of inflation the government publishes), you would still be losing your shirt (~ minus 6-7% per year). In five years you would have lost more than a third of the purchasing power of your money. US savers have about $8-13 trillion in long-term savings accounts that are being eroded to the point of ruination of wealth via inflation.

Nor are other investments yielding the 6-10% that you need to maintain the purchasing power of your money. In fact, you need to go plead with your boss for a 6-10% raise every year just to tread water in this hidden inflationary economy.

Mr. Zvi Bodie refers “corporate pension sleight-of-hand and public pension mismanagement.” But I see his own hand moving quickly, hiding the peanut as he moves the shells every so swiftly in this shell game of government propaganda.

According to government sources, the US government spent ~$3.5 trillion and collected ~$2.5 trillion in tax revenues, for a shortfall of $1 trillion in fiscal year 2012. However, as economist John Williams points out, the government is not using “generally accepted accounting procedures” (GAAP accounting) and doesn’t include the amount it is contributing out of general revenues towards Social Security and Medicare.

According to Williams, when Medicare and Social Security are included on the expense side of the ledger, the Federal government spent $6.6 trillion and had a shortfall of $5.2 trillion in 2012!

That does not include off-budget military spending, nor does it include revenues the government brings in via illicit drug sales that it commandeers (the US military watches closely over the poppy fields in Afghanistan and then launders the money back to the US via US banks) and the stealth revenues it derives by having overseas oil nations overcharge for petroleum and then, in a quid quo pro arrangement, have these overseas oil-producing countries funnel some of their over-charges into buying US Treasury bills that make up for some of the shortfall in the US budget. This is a covert way of increasing federal revenues without appearing to raise taxes.

How long this charade is going to be maintained is unknown. But don’t take your family’s nest egg and put it into US Treasury-issued bonds, even if you are told these will be the “last to fail” or that they are backed “by the full faith and credit of the US government.”

Is Avandia (rosiglitazone) going to rise from the grave? Avandia is the one-time $3 billion blockbuster anti-diabetic drug that plunged into disuse in 2009 when a study published in 2007 showed, when used with other anti-diabetic agents, it increased fractures in women as well as the risk for heart failure.

Suddenly, the FDA says it is going to revisit the data on this drug. It wants to reassess safety risks. A Wall Street Journal report says: “it is too early to know what opinions the FDA will be seeking.” Is the FDA going to put Avandia back on the market without restrictions it placed earlier?

In July of 2010 FDA investigators realized the major trial, published in 2009, used to produce negative data regarding Avandia was flawed. That data forced European healthy agencies to ban Avandia while the US FDA decided to re-label it, restricting its use to patients for whom other anti-diabetic drugs didn’t work with the caveat that all prospective patients received information about its alleged risks.

Sales of Avandia declined in the aftermath of the new data to just $1.9 million in 2012. The maker of Avandia paid a $1 billion fine to the FDA regarding criminal charges that it withheld safety data from 2001-2007 for three drugs including Avandia.

Patients not warned, despite mandate

Despite the FDA mandate that patients who do receive prescription for Avandia receive information about its risks, and despite a mandate that sales representatives of drug companies inform doctors of both the risks and benefits involving their drugs, rarely do doctors ever hear about the potential harms caused by pharmaceuticals. A report in the Minnesota Post underscores the problem.

No truly safe anti-diabetic drugs

There are no truly safe and effective anti-diabetic drugs, save for metformin, and metformin depletes the body of vitamin B12which can induce neuropathy, one of the hallmark signs of diabetes. As an aside, it was recommended that vitamin B12 levels be tested among metformin users way back in the 1970s, but few doctors do that today.

The FDA first approved Avandia in 1999. But expanded safety data on FDA-approved drugs is not available till years after drugs are approved and come into wider use. Initial safety trials involve very small groups. So Avandia stayed on the market for over a decade before the FDA took action to limit its use, largely because its maker wasn’t forthcoming about adverse events associated with the drug.

Expanded safety data on many drugs still not available

Avandia is one of 90 medicines that underwent accelerated approval between 1992-2008. Only two-thirds of drugs approved by the accelerated process have followed through with expanded safety trials. So as many as 30 FDA-approved drugs are on the market with few statistically-proven benefits and unknown side effects with prolonged use. The FDA does nothing.

FDA knew prior to 2009

European reviewers, who are geographically distanced from the medical-political battles in the US, reveal that the FDA knew as early as 2001 that Avandia should not be used in combination with insulin because its combination use was associated with increased risk for heart failure. It wasn’t just the 2007 study that doomed Avandia.

A revealing report published in the Texas Heart Institute journal points out that Avandia works by increasing sensitization to insulin and therefore combined use with insulin would produce excessive fuel in heart muscle cells that can result in heart failure. The report points to metformin as the preferred drug for diabetes. It should have been a no-brainer for the FDA to limit combined use of Avandia with insulin. But the agency took no action. Mindless doctors also proceeded to over-treat.

Last year investigators in Italy, reporting in the journal Drug Safety, noted that the class of anti-diabetic drugs that Avandia belongs almost doubles the risk for bone fractures and quintuples the risk for heart attack.

But some reports claim the evidence against Avandia is equivocal. With mixed reports over its safety, some researchers suggest the FDA’s restrictions on Avandia may have been premature.

Expert reviewer weighs in

Noted pharmaceutical reviewer Bernard Cheung writes in Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology that Avandia modestly reduces the long-term measure of blood sugar (hemoglobin A1c) by just 1% (normal HbA1c ranges from 4.0% to 5.6%) and mildly reduces blood pressure and improves sensitivity of cells to insulin. (If cells are not sensitive to insulin, glucose [sugar] cannot enter cells and blood-sugar levels rise.)

He says this drug is supposed to be used as an adjunct to diet and exercise, not as front-line treatment for diabetes. But that is what it became.

Dr. Cheung says Avandia is “thought to be a poor value for the money in institutions where treatment is paid for by public money.”

Dr. Cheung notes that Avandia induces weight gain that in turn increases the risk for diabetes itself. Every anti-diabetic drug save for metformin induces weight gain.

Dr. Cheung says an updated meta-analysis (grouped studies) still shows an increased risk for heart attack with Avandia, though there was no increased risk for cardiac death. But FDA reviewer David Graham (infamous as a whistleblower in the Vioxx drug scandal where the FDA covered for this anti-inflammatory drug when it was killing thousands), using a review of Medicare records, has found that Avandia does not produce a significant increased risk for heart attack, though it does for stroke and heart failure.

As an aside, the most promising agent that addresses the problems posed by Avandia is resveratrol, known as a red wine molecule. Researchers in The Netherlands note that Avandia induces calcification of arteries whereas resveratrol abolishes this effect in a lab dish. For diabetic patients who remain on Avandia, resveratrol may be a good companion.

Modern medicine is out-pricing itself

It’s bad enough that thousands of Americans are dying prematurely due to the side effects posed by FDA-approved drugs, but to add insult to injury, why do they have to be so expensive?

Raiding pools of insurance money is the current game for hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.

Let’s first take a look at hospitals. A cherished friend recently died suddenly after a brain hemorrhage and a 12-day ordeal in the hospital intensive care ward. The cost – over $1 million (over $80,0000 a day)! Unfortunately he had cancelled his health insurance policy the year prior and was a year away from going on Medicare. His wife is left to pay the bill.

John Lawrence, writing in the San Diego Free Press, says hospitals are playing a game of “your money or your life.” He opens his invective against US hospitals this way:

“Hospital care in the US has morphed into a multi-headed monster in which every advance in medical technology ups the cost of medical care.” Like a recent article characterized a lecherous Wall Street investment firm, Lawrence says US hospitals are “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentless jamming their blood funnels into anything that smells like money.”

Mr. Lawrence refers to “the Chargemaster,” a master file of billable items hospitals can add to a patient’s bill from a lowly aspirin tablet to 5-way heart bypass surgery.

The Chargemaster for a hospital in San Diego lists over 54,000 billable items. All price for all items are far removed from their actual cost to hospitals, says Lawrence. Both hospitals and physicians participate in schemes to run up the bill and profiteer on the side with consulting agreements, stock options, royalty agreements, research grants, and an endless list of other side amenities such as pens and scratch pads for the office and airline tickets to medical conferences.

America certainly has the most inventive doctors. Physician consultants are paid millions for their medical device inventions.

Meanwhile, the public suffers. Mr. Lawrence points to the fact 69% of those who have experience medically-related bankruptcy were insured at the time of their filing. The irony is that Obamacare is headed towards feeding this over-priced system and does nothing to reduce healthcare costs in its first decade. Lawrence points fingers at politicians who want to reduce Medicare entitlements but maintain outrageous reimbursement policies for over-priced drugs.

Blame the man at the top

Tom Freeman of Pinon Hills, California, posts a blog that blames the executive branch of government for th perilous situation in American healthcare today. Mr. Freeman says physicians are not solely to blame, though they may be cited for piling on. The blame goes much higher says Freeman. Here is how he explains it:

“When George W. Bush took office in 2001 one of the first things he did was politicize the agencies that came under his cabinet. The Food and Drug Administration was one of the first to be converted from a regulatory function to an agency assuring profits for an industry it was supposed to be regulating. This is when dangerous, even deadly drugs began appearing on the market.

The conservatives in the Bush administration said it was not fair to require a ‘box car full of paper,’ and take years to prove the safety and efficacy of newly made drugs. They went to a system using laws of probability and random evaluation.”

The results were horrible. Deadly drugs such as Vioxx killed 80,000 people worldwide, yet were approved by the FDA. Resulin, a pill to control diabetes, killed the first patient who used it, says Freeman.

25-cent drug costs $55,000 a year

As if all this weren’t enough insult to the average American, we now read of a breakthrough drug called Tecfidera, newly approved by the FDA for multiple sclerosis. It’s cost: $55,000 a year ($150 a day) for 480 milligrams of this wonder drug.

Of course, it must have taken years to develop and test this novel molecule. And exactly what is Tecfidera? Why it is dimethyl fumarate, a molecule that was first introduced in the 1950s in Germany as a remedy for psoriasis.

A 480 milligram dose of pharmaceutical-grade dimethyl fumarate, the recommended amount for daily treatment, can be purchased from a chemical company for 24.4-cents.

Tecfidera slightly decreases the relapse rate of MS over other drugs (by 49%, less than the 55% and 61% by competing drugs).

What Tecfidera’s maker obtained was a patent claim on a 50-year old molecule by claiming its dosing regimen was novel and worthy of patent protection. The drug company’s chief executive officer said in a press release that: “The patent for this dosing regimen is recognition of the remarkable innovation Tecfidera represents for the MS community.”

What is Tecfidera’s unique biological action? Why it activates something called the Nrf2 transcription factor that triggers the activity of internal antioxidants in the body.

Uninsured multiple sclerosis patients, recognizing Tecfidera is obviously over-priced, have started to search for a more economical alternative. One- patient says he has located a source of fumarate that costs $5 for two hundred 480-milligram doses. One MS patient says he refuses to accept the idea Tecfidera’s maker can charge over $50,000 for a year’s supply of the drug when it is a common food additive!

If searching for an economical alternative, MS patients might venture to a health food store. In the animal laboratory the red wine molecule resveratrol prevented nerve loss in an animal model of MS and resveratrol works without suppressing the immune system as other MS drugs do. A year’s worth of low-dose near research-grade resveratrol can be purchased for less than $400. Resveratrol activates the same Nrf2 pathway as Tecfidera.

A physician speaks out

A prominent doctor, Peter Lind, DC, who practices in Salem, Oregon, has recently spoken out against modern medicine’s current practice of regarding every malady as a drug deficiency.

Dr. Lind notes drugs cause disease, such as drug-induced Parkinson’s disease, liver poisoning by the pain reliever acetaminophen (Tylenol) which is the leading cause of liver transplants, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs that induce gastric ulcers that result in over 100,000 hospitalizations and 17,000 deaths annually.

The outspoken Dr. Lind, writing in The Washington Times, says adverse drugs events “result in an estimated 2.5 million hospitalizations and 1 million urgent care visits resulting in an additional indirect cost of $65 billion each year to the health care system and result in about 100,000 deaths. However, there are current estimates that these adverse drug events are being underreported by a factor of 10 times.”

Dr. Lind gristles at the fact drugs companies settle lawsuits for millions of dollars stemming from release of unfavorable study results while they make billions in profits. The fines and lawsuits don’t amount to much more than a slap on the wrist.

Dr. Lind boldly says: “It is time to require non-drug practices as first-line approach to health care.”

Recently by Bill Sardi: How To Stay Out of Trouble When Taking Dietary Supplements

Is Avandia (rosiglitazone) going to rise from the grave? Avandia is the one-time $3 billion blockbuster anti-diabetic drug that plunged into disuse in 2009 when a study published in 2007 showed, when used with other anti-diabetic agents, it increased fractures in women as well as the risk for heart failure.

Suddenly, the FDA says it is going to revisit the data on this drug. It wants to reassess safety risks. A Wall Street Journal report says: "it is too early to know what opinions the FDA will be seeking." Is the FDA going to put Avandia back on the market without restrictions it placed earlier?

In July of 2010 FDA investigators realized the major trial, published in 2009, used to produce negative data regarding Avandia was flawed. That data forced European healthy agencies to ban Avandia while the US FDA decided to re-label it, restricting its use to patients for whom other anti-diabetic drugs didn't work with the caveat that all prospective patients received information about its alleged risks.

Sales of Avandia declined in the aftermath of the new data to just $1.9 million in 2012. The maker of Avandia paid a $1 billion fine to the FDA regarding criminal charges that it withheld safety data from 2001-2007 for three drugs including Avandia.

Patients not warned, despite mandate

Despite the FDA mandate that patients who do receive prescription for Avandia receive information about its risks, and despite a mandate that sales representatives of drug companies inform doctors of both the risks and benefits involving their drugs, rarely do doctors ever hear about the potential harms caused by pharmaceuticals. A report in the Minnesota Post underscores the problem.

No truly safe anti-diabetic drugs

There are no truly safe and effective anti-diabetic drugs, save for metformin, and metformin depletes the body of vitamin B12 which can induce neuropathy, one of the hallmark signs of diabetes. As an aside, it was recommended that vitamin B12 levels be tested among metformin users way back in the 1970s, but few doctors do that today.

The FDA first approved Avandia in 1999. But expanded safety data on FDA-approved drugs is not available till years after drugs are approved and come into wider use. Initial safety trials involve very small groups. So Avandia stayed on the market for over a decade before the FDA took action to limit its use, largely because its maker wasn't forthcoming about adverse events associated with the drug.

Expanded safety data on many drugs still not available

Avandia is one of 90 medicines that underwent accelerated approval between 1992-2008. Only two-thirds of drugs approved by the accelerated process have followed through with expanded safety trials. So as many as 30 FDA-approved drugs are on the market with few statistically-proven benefits and unknown side effects with prolonged use. The FDA does nothing.

FDA knew prior to 2009

European reviewers, who are geographically distanced from the medical-political battles in the US, reveal that the FDA knew as early as 2001 that Avandia should not be used in combination with insulin because its combination use was associated with increased risk for heart failure. It wasn't just the 2007 study that doomed Avandia.

A revealing report published in the Texas Heart Institute journal points out that Avandia works by increasing sensitization to insulin and therefore combined use with insulin would produce excessive fuel in heart muscle cells that can result in heart failure. The report points to metformin as the preferred drug for diabetes. It should have been a no-brainer for the FDA to limit combined use of Avandia with insulin. But the agency took no action. Mindless doctors also proceeded to over-treat.

Last year investigators in Italy, reporting in the journal Drug Safety, noted that the class of anti-diabetic drugs that Avandia belongs almost doubles the risk for bone fractures and quintuples the risk for heart attack.

But some reports claim the evidence against Avandia is equivocal. With mixed reports over its safety, some researchers suggest the FDA's restrictions on Avandia may have been premature.

Expert reviewer weighs in

Noted pharmaceutical reviewer Bernard Cheung writes in Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology that Avandia modestly reduces the long-term measure of blood sugar (hemoglobin A1c) by just 1% (normal HbA1c ranges from 4.0% to 5.6%) and mildly reduces blood pressure and improves sensitivity of cells to insulin. (If cells are not sensitive to insulin, glucose [sugar] cannot enter cells and blood-sugar levels rise.)

He says this drug is supposed to be used as an adjunct to diet and exercise, not as front-line treatment for diabetes. But that is what it became.

Dr. Cheung says Avandia is "thought to be a poor value for the money in institutions where treatment is paid for by public money."

Dr. Cheung notes that Avandia induces weight gain that in turn increases the risk for diabetes itself. Every anti-diabetic drug save for metformin induces weight gain.

Dr. Cheung says an updated meta-analysis (grouped studies) still shows an increased risk for heart attack with Avandia, though there was no increased risk for cardiac death. But FDA reviewer David Graham (infamous as a whistleblower in the Vioxx drug scandal where the FDA covered for this anti-inflammatory drug when it was killing thousands), using a review of Medicare records, has found that Avandia does not produce a significant increased risk for heart attack, though it does for stroke and heart failure.

As an aside, the most promising agent that addresses the problems posed by Avandia is resveratrol, known as a red wine molecule. Researchers in The Netherlands note that Avandia induces calcification of arteries whereas resveratrol abolishes this effect in a lab dish. For diabetic patients who remain on Avandia, resveratrol may be a good companion.

Modern medicine is out-pricing itself

It's bad enough that thousands of Americans are dying prematurely due to the side effects posed by FDA-approved drugs, but to add insult to injury, why do they have to be so expensive?

Raiding pools of insurance money is the current game for hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.

Let's first take a look at hospitals. A cherished friend recently died suddenly after a brain hemorrhage and a 12-day ordeal in the hospital intensive care ward. The cost — over $1 million (over $80,0000 a day)! Unfortunately he had cancelled his health insurance policy the year prior and was a year away from going on Medicare. His wife is left to pay the bill.

John Lawrence, writing in the San Diego Free Press, says hospitals are playing a game of "your money or your life." He opens his invective against US hospitals this way:

"Hospital care in the US has morphed into a multi-headed monster in which every advance in medical technology ups the cost of medical care." Like a recent article characterized a lecherous Wall Street investment firm, Lawrence says US hospitals are "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentless jamming their blood funnels into anything that smells like money."

The hospital Chargemaster

Mr. Lawrence refers to "the Chargemaster," a master file of billable items hospitals can add to a patient's bill from a lowly aspirin tablet to 5-way heart bypass surgery.

The Chargemaster for a hospital in San Diego lists over 54,000 billable items. All price for all items are far removed from their actual cost to hospitals, says Lawrence. Both hospitals and physicians participate in schemes to run up the bill and profiteer on the side with consulting agreements, stock options, royalty agreements, research grants, and an endless list of other side amenities such as pens and scratch pads for the office and airline tickets to medical conferences.

America certainly has the most inventive doctors. Physician consultants are paid millions for their medical device inventions.

Meanwhile, the public suffers. Mr. Lawrence points to the fact 69% of those who have experience medically-related bankruptcy were insured at the time of their filing. The irony is that Obamacare is headed towards feeding this over-priced system and does nothing to reduce healthcare costs in its first decade. Lawrence points fingers at politicians who want to reduce Medicare entitlements but maintain outrageous reimbursement policies for over-priced drugs.

Blame the man at the top

Tom Freeman of Pinon Hills, California, posts a blog that blames the executive branch of government for th perilous situation in American healthcare today. Mr. Freeman says physicians are not solely to blame, though they may be cited for piling on. The blame goes much higher says Freeman. Here is how he explains it:

"When George W. Bush took office in 2001 one of the first things he did was politicize the agencies that came under his cabinet. The Food and Drug Administration was one of the first to be converted from a regulatory function to an agency assuring profits for an industry it was supposed to be regulating. This is when dangerous, even deadly drugs began appearing on the market.

The conservatives in the Bush administration said it was not fair to require a u2018box car full of paper,' and take years to prove the safety and efficacy of newly made drugs. They went to a system using laws of probability and random evaluation."

The results were horrible. Deadly drugs such as Vioxx killed 80,000 people worldwide, yet were approved by the FDA. Resulin, a pill to control diabetes, killed the first patient who used it, says Freeman.

25-cent drug costs $55,000 a year

As if all this weren't enough insult to the average American, we now read of a breakthrough drug called Tecfidera, newly approved by the FDA for multiple sclerosis. It's cost: $55,000 a year ($150 a day) for 480 milligrams of this wonder drug.

Of course, it must have taken years to develop and test this novel molecule. And exactly what is Tecfidera? Why it is dimethyl fumarate, a molecule that was first introduced in the 1950s in Germany as a remedy for psoriasis.

A 480 milligram dose of pharmaceutical-grade dimethyl fumarate, the recommended amount for daily treatment, can be purchased from a chemical company for 24.4-cents.

Tecfidera slightly decreases the relapse rate of MS over other drugs (by 49%, less than the 55% and 61% by competing drugs).

What Tecfidera's maker obtained was a patent claim on a 50-year old molecule by claiming its dosing regimen was novel and worthy of patent protection. The drug company's chief executive officer said in a press release that: "The patent for this dosing regimen is recognition of the remarkable innovation Tecfidera represents for the MS community."

What is Tecfidera's unique biological action? Why it activates something called the Nrf2 transcription factor that triggers the activity of internal antioxidants in the body.

Uninsured multiple sclerosis patients, recognizing Tecfidera is obviously over-priced, have started to search for a more economical alternative. One- patient says he has located a source of fumarate that costs $5 for two hundred 480-milligram doses. One MS patient says he refuses to accept the idea Tecfidera's maker can charge over $50,000 for a year's supply of the drug when it is a common food additive!

If searching for an economical alternative, MS patients might venture to a health food store. In the animal laboratory the red wine molecule resveratrol prevented nerve loss in an animal model of MS and resveratrol works without suppressing the immune system as other MS drugs do. A year's worth of low-dose near research-grade resveratrol can be purchased for less than $400. Resveratrol activates the same Nrf2 pathway as Tecfidera.

A physician speaks out

A prominent doctor, Peter Lind, DC, who practices in Salem, Oregon, has recently spoken out against modern medicine's current practice of regarding every malady as a drug deficiency.

Dr. Lind notes drugs cause disease, such as drug-induced Parkinson's disease, liver poisoning by the pain reliever acetaminophen (Tylenol) which is the leading cause of liver transplants, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs that induce gastric ulcers that result in over 100,000 hospitalizations and 17,000 deaths annually.

The outspoken Dr. Lind, writing in The Washington Times, says adverse drugs events "result in an estimated 2.5 million hospitalizations and 1 million urgent care visits resulting in an additional indirect cost of $65 billion each year to the health care system and result in about 100,000 deaths. However, there are current estimates that these adverse drug events are being underreported by a factor of 10 times."

Dr. Lind gristles at the fact drugs companies settle lawsuits for millions of dollars stemming from release of unfavorable study results while they make billions in profits. The fines and lawsuits don't amount to much more than a slap on the wrist.

Dr. Lind boldly says: "It is time to require non-drug practices as first-line approach to health care."

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.

The Best of Bill Sardi

In this modern era when the usage of dietary supplements is popular and growing (U.S. supplement sales rose 7 percent to $11.5 billion in 2012, and are forecasted to reach $15.5 billion by 2017), and there is a strong upsurge in the use of vitamin D (up from $40 million in 2001 to $425 million in 2009), calcium ($177 million sales in 2012) and polyphenols (green tea catechins, grape seed proanthycyanidins, red wine resveratrol, curcumin from turmeric spice, silymarin from milk thistle, many others), unguided use is resulting in many avoidable side effects. (Herbal supplement sales were $5.3 billion in 2011.)

Don’t get me wrong. Dietary supplements antagonists unwaveringly pitched against dietary supplements are sure to misquote what I am saying and launch their “I told you so” reports.

Dietary supplements are safer than tap water, aspirin, vaccines and even table salt. Poison control center data confirms dietary supplements are safe.

The side effects I’m talking about usually cause supplement users to back away from their use. But there are also some long-term threats posed by improper supplement use that are not so apparent in the short term and need to be addressed.

The above-mentioned supplements, when used skillfully, are at the center of a self-help health revolution that surely will reduce mortality rates and hold promise to prolong the healthspan of many millions of Americans. However, their improper use often emanates from over-enthusiast use and the mistaken notion that more is better.

A key problem is that even supplement-savvy physicians are not well trained in the use of dietary supplements. Many supplement users don’t disclose what they are doing to their family physician for fear of being subjected to ridicule. One survey revealed about a third of supplement users don’t inform their doctors of the dietary supplements they use, but the real figure is probably much higher.

Unfortunately medical school usually leaves physicians with common biases against dietary supplements. Some of these misconceptions are: vitamin A can be toxic to the liver – yes, but mostly among alcoholics and patients with pre-existing liver disease; vitamin C causes kidney stones – based on contrived science; vitamin D can induce hyper-calcification – yes, but at doses in excess of 1 million units in the animal lab; vitamin E can over-thin the blood – disproven by modern studies; magnesium induces diarrhea – yes but it is an effective laxative, and it induces loose stool, not expulsive diarrhea.

When it comes to nutritional supplements, doctors can be generally categorized as dumbbells, (even though supplements have a high rate of use among health professionals) whose entire scope of nutritional expertise often doesn’t extend beyond the recommendation of an aspirin tablet, a Centrum multivitamin and a calcium pill.

I may be a relentless advocate of dietary supplements, but they aren’t totally without side effect and safe at any dose. It is unconscionable to think that the supplement industry is in some cases mistakenly circling its wagons to blindly defend dietary supplements largely because of the income stream they now generate. Calcium supplements are the biggest example.

Calcium pills: yea or nay?

My argument against supplemental calcium for post-menopausal women first appeals to common sense.

I ask women who no longer have monthly cycles, as they began to approach menopause they developed a nutrient shortage of ________? They usually answer “calcium.”

I say no, let’s do this again. As menopause sets in you develop a deficiency of _______ ? They have no clue. They look at me dumbfounded.

So I answer it for them: “estrogen.”

“Oh, ya, the ovaries stopped producing hormones,” they say. Seems obvious, doesn’t it?

And estrogen sends a signal to hold calcium in bone. Lose that signal and it doesn’t matter how much calcium you pour into your body it will leach out and be deposited in your arteries, stiffening them like a statue.

The more bone that is lost, the more that arteries are progressively diseased. That is why a growing number of published studies now say supplemental calcium increases the risk for mortal heart attacks! High dietary consumption of calcium (1400 mg) coupled with calcium supplements has been found to increase the risk for death from all causes by 257%. Supplemental calcium below 500 mg didn’t pose a risk.

Supplement industry in denial

The supplement industry is in denial over this. The Council For Responsible Nutrition, which represents supplement makers, refers to the Institute of Medicine recommendation for women over age 50 to consume 1200 mg of calcium. But that number is the amount of calcium from the diet plus supplements. The typical American diet provides 800-1200 mg of calcium. So only small amounts of supplemental calcium are needed, if at all. The problem is the inability to retain calcium in bone, not a lack of intake.

Furthermore, since the loss of calcium from bone is not being addressed, this is why supplemental calcium is like pouring calcium into a barrel with a hole in its bottom.

So what modern medicine has done since frightening women away from hormone replacement therapy is to increase the risk of hip fracture by 55%.

What happened in the aftermath of advice to avoid hormone replacement therapy was that alternative therapies (bone hardening drugs) were recommended which pose some of the same health risks as estrogen. Some investigators think modern medicine took one step forward and two steps back when it backed away from estrogen replacement. Bottom line, estrogen replacement therapy is as safe as what has been recommended as an alternative.

Health authorities now concede that restrictions on hormone replacement therapy are not supported by the original data used to make that recommendation.

Estrogen replacement not only helps retain bone integrity but also inhibits deposition of calcium that stiffens arteries.

In lieu of estrogen replacement, fearful women who don’t want hormone therapy, may opt for use of weak plant estrogens like resveratrol (rez-vair-ah-trol), known as a red wine molecule, that is 1/7000^th the strength of natural estrogen but acts like estrogen to retain calcium in bone.

Women can supplement their diet with all of the calcium, magnesium, vitamin D, strontium, and other bone enhancing nutrients they want, but unless the estrogen signal is replaced to hold calcium in bone, bones will continue to wither.

Vitamin D and vitamin K are effective anti-calcifying agents that may be helpful, but they do not replace estrogen.

Use of supplemental vitamin D and K help to reduce bone fractures. Vitamin D in higher doses than have been recommended may be needed. Both vitamin D and K not only aid in retaining bone strength, but also help maintain elastic (un-calcified) arteries.

Bottom line: Don’t fall for all the sales pitches to drink more calcium-rich milk or take calcium pills, even if given by your doctor.

Another tip for women facing bone loss and accompanying loss of physical stature – without sleep, bone is lost. Women with low estrogen levels report many sleepless nights. This points to the importance of another hormone, melatonin. When animals had their pineal glands removed, which secrete melatonin, their bones rapidly withered. Sleep is of great importance for bone health. Nighttime is when the bones repair and rebuild. The idealtime to take bone supplements is at bedtime and a melatonin tablet may be a beneficial addition to your bone-building regimen. Some bone-enhancing dietary supplements now provide low-dose calcium with vitamin D and melatonin with the recommendation they be taken at bedtime.

Vitamin D: balance it with vitamins A and K and calcium/ magnesium

Millions of Americans have begun to take vitamin D pills given an upsurge of published reports that low vitamin D levels are linked to a number of maladies.

I was recently interviewed on a nationwide radio program and received many inquiries about leg spasms, toe curling and foot cramping. I wondered what could be causing these muscle cramps.

I can remember, as a teenager, returning from a day at the beach and experiencing the worst charley-horse cramps in my leg muscles. A day in the bright sun had produced high vitamin D levels that increase the utilization of muscle-constricting and relaxing minerals such as calcium and magnesium. An imbalance of these minerals can produce excruciating leg and foot cramps.

Having adopted vitamin D3 pills into my daily supplement regimen I began to experience leg cramps and my toes began to tighten and curl in bed. I found a low-dose calcium/magnesium supplement helped relieve this problem. Maybe a reduction in the dose of supplemental vitamin D will also eradicate these muscle cramps.

Another lesson I learned about vitamin D is that it is stored in the liver as a fat-soluble vitamin along with vitamin A and vitamin K. Too much vitamin D can impair liver storage of vitamin A. I don’t consume butter or other vitamin A-rich foods on a regular basis, mostly relying on my diet and supplements to provide vitamin A converted from beta carotene in carrots, squash, etc.

As time passed I experienced two eye infections within a short period of time. I had never had an eye infection in my lifetime. My eyelids were also sticky when I awoke in the morning. I gave this some thought and wondered if I was getting enough vitamin A to produce mucin that coats the surface of my eyes. Mucin serves as a barrier against infection.

So I laid my vitamin D pills aside and began to take cod liver oil as a natural source of vitamin A and my sticky eyelid problem disappeared and I have not had another eye infection. I now supplement my diet with vitamin A-rich cod liver oil two days a week and vitamin D 5 days a week.

By the way, cod liver oil provides such a miniscule amount of vitamin D that it cannot be relied upon as a source of this vitamin.

It’s also important to know that all of the alleged side effects of high-dose vitamin D appear to emanate from a shortage of vitamin K. So vitamin K2 supplements are suggested as a way to balance these fat-soluble nutrients. Some vitamin D formulas now include vitamin K.

Bottom line, balance out your vitamin D with vitamins A and K.

Here come the polyphenols (pall-ee-fee-nols)

A class of molecules called polyphenols (also known as bioflavonoids), derived from citrus rind, berries, tea leaves, grapes, pomegranate, spices, coffee beans pose the greatest threat to modern pharmacology. There is no biological challenge too great for them to conquer, ranging from cancer, brain disease, mood problems, infection, inflammation, heart disease and evenobesity.

Polyphenols activate a wide array of genes, more than man-made drugs, as they are small molecules that can get into the genetic machinery within cells.

Polyphenols exert a broad range of biological effects as antioxidants, metal chelators, antidepressants (MAO inhibitors), anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral agents, anti-inflammatory factors, etc. In fact, they are many drugs in one. They work synergistically when combined.

As dietary supplements they are popularly consumed as curcumin from turmeric spice, quercetin from red apple peel, catechin from green tea, caffeic and chlorogenic acid from coffee beans, silymarin from milk thistle, and resveratrol from grapes and wine.

These molecules from citrus, berries, herbs and spices work best in modest doses, as they are actually biological stressing agents. As such, they are detected by the body as a biological threat and in response, activate internal antioxidant defenses.

The dose is the poison

This protective effect is only achieved when modest doses are consumed. This phenomenon is known as hormesis. It works by activation of a gene transcription factor called Nrf2 that increases the activity level of antioxidants produced internally in the body (glutathione, catalase, superoxide dismutase). Pharmaceutical companies are now attempting to develop synthetic drugs that rely on a hormesis effect.

However, as consumers learn about these promising polyphenolic medicines and incorporate them into their dietary supplement regimens, they aren’t hearing any precautions about dosage. Excessive dose negates the proposed beneficial effects and may even worsen existing conditions.

High herbal anxiety

Investigator Ken Eagle notes that polyphenols in the diet and supplements inhibit an enzyme that keeps a lid on stress hormones released by the adrenal glands. Sulfotransferase-1 is the enzyme that degrades adrenaline (aka epinephrine and norepinephrine). Without this enzyme, stress hormones can run wild and induce headaches, insomnia, over-eating, elevate blood pressure, provoke heart palpitations, anxiety and even panic attacks.

Polyphenols don’t cause stress hormones to be produced, but they may, if taken in large doses, inhibit the activity of a key enzyme that limits them.

This is a striking discovery that says maybe polyphenols have reached their upper limits. This is sure to catch the dietary supplement industry off guard. But just how to put a limit on these molecules found in coffee, tea, wine, citrus juices and dietary supplements?

In over a decade spent counseling dietary supplement users on the telephone, many times I have heard callers say they couldn’t continue taking a newly added dietary supplement because it caused heart palpitations. Another common report is insomnia when taking herbal supplements.

It has become clear that polyphenols go from promoting mental focus and alertness at low dose to anxiety and even panic attacks at high dose as stress hormone levels rise.

Even more troubling is research conducted by Paul J. Fitzgerald who links a wide range of diseases, including macular degeneration, lupus, heart flutters (atrial fibrillation) and metabolic syndrome to elevated levels of adrenal hormones. Ken Eagles links elevated levels of stress hormones to sudden cardiac death. Yikes!

Few would argue that stress plays a strong role in disease. Maybe the precise pathway in which stress operates to worsen disease is just now being uncovered. Stress hormones are elevated by life’s challenges to survival, not by dietary supplements. But strikingly, overuse of promising natural remedies from herbs and spices may inhibit the enzyme that keeps a lid on stress hormones associated with these very diseases.

The right dose

The question arises, just what would be the optimal dose of polyphenols to produce beneficial health effects without over-inhibition of a stress-limiting enzyme?

One study shows the intake of polyphenols in beverages alone (wine, tea, coffee, juice) amount to about 180 milligrams per person per day (in Spain).  Yet another report says the intake of polyphenolic molecules from the diet could be as much as 1 gram (1000 milligrams) per day.  So the typical diet is fairly rich in polyphenols already. Concentrated polyphenolic dietary supplements may elevate intake levels into an undesirable range.

Studies involving wine demonstrate that consumption of 3-to-5 (5-oz) glasses of dark, aged red wine produced the lowest heart disease mortality rate.  Beyond 5 glasses a day increased coronary artery disease mortality rates. Given that dark, aged red wine provides about 60 milligrams of wine solids known as polyphenols (resveratrol, quercetin, catechin, kaempferol, malvidin, gallic acid, ferulic acid) per glass, that amount of red wine would provide ~180-to-300 milligrams of these antioxidant molecules.

An animal study where a combination of polyphenols was used showed that the human equivalent of 100-350 milligrams of polyphenols (quercetin, resveratrol, ferulic acid) reduced damage to the rodent heart while ten-times that dose (1750 mg) increased damage in an experimental heart attack model.

These studies suggest the optimal intake range for polyphenol supplements may be in the range of 100-350 milligrams.

The precise polyphenol content of foods and beverages can be accessed online at Polyphenol-Explorer.  A briefer online tool can be accessed here.

Herbal stress relievers to the rescue

Modern medicine’s answer to out of control stress hormones is to prescribe adrenal hormone blockers (known as beta blockers). Paul Fitzgerald notes that users of beta-blockers have lower rates of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

Of course nature has its own anti-stress agents in a class of herbals known as adaptogens (bacopa, ginseng, rhodiola and ashwaganda), as all inhibit stress hormones. Generally, adaptogens require large doses to work, in excess of 1000 milligrams.

Nature’s “beta blocker” is L-theanine, an extract from green tea. In doses ranging from 100-400 milligrams it has been found to produce noticeable reduction in stress hormone levels. Near-pure L-theanine is available in dietary supplements.

Of course, over-dosing on polyphenol dietary supplements and then trying to counter any adverse effects with adaptogens or theanine would be akin to playing with fire and continually relying on fire extinguishers.

It is not uncommon these days to find elite supplement users have a bottle of curcumin, resveratrol, milk thistle, green tea, cinnamon and grape seed extracts on their kitchen table. Polyphenol enthusiasts may be wise to limit dosage.

Recently by Bill Sardi: Whatever the US Government Is Planning, It Is Already Practicing

In this modern era when the usage of dietary supplements is popular and growing (U.S. supplement sales rose 7 percent to $11.5 billion in 2012, and are forecasted to reach $15.5 billion by 2017), and there is a strong upsurge in the use of vitamin D (up from $40 million in 2001 to $425 million in 2009), calcium ($177 million sales in 2012) and polyphenols (green tea catechins, grape seed proanthycyanidins, red wine resveratrol, curcumin from turmeric spice, silymarin from milk thistle, many others), unguided use is resulting in many avoidable side effects. (Herbal supplement sales were $5.3 billion in 2011.)

Don't get me wrong. Dietary supplements antagonists unwaveringly pitched against dietary supplements are sure to misquote what I am saying and launch their "I told you so" reports.

Dietary supplements are safer than tap water, aspirin, vaccines and even table salt. Poison control center data confirms dietary supplements are safe.

The side effects I'm talking about usually cause supplement users to back away from their use. But there are also some long-term threats posed by improper supplement use that are not so apparent in the short term and need to be addressed.

The above-mentioned supplements, when used skillfully, are at the center of a self-help health revolution that surely will reduce mortality rates and hold promise to prolong the healthspan of many millions of Americans. However, their improper use often emanates from over-enthusiast use and the mistaken notion that more is better.

A key problem is that even supplement-savvy physicians are not well trained in the use of dietary supplements. Many supplement users don't disclose what they are doing to their family physician for fear of being subjected to ridicule. One survey revealed about a third of supplement users don't inform their doctors of the dietary supplements they use, but the real figure is probably much higher.

Unfortunately medical school usually leaves physicians with common biases against dietary supplements. Some of these misconceptions are: vitamin A can be toxic to the liver — yes, but mostly among alcoholics and patients with pre-existing liver disease; vitamin C causes kidney stones — based on contrived science; vitamin D can induce hyper-calcification — yes, but at doses in excess of 1 million units in the animal lab; vitamin E can over-thin the blood — disproven by modern studies; magnesium induces diarrhea — yes but it is an effective laxative, and it induces loose stool, not expulsive diarrhea.

When it comes to nutritional supplements, doctors can be generally categorized as dumbbells, (even though supplements have a high rate of use among health professionals) whose entire scope of nutritional expertise often doesn't extend beyond the recommendation of an aspirin tablet, a Centrum multivitamin and a calcium pill.

I may be a relentless advocate of dietary supplements, but they aren't totally without side effect and safe at any dose. It is unconscionable to think that the supplement industry is in some cases mistakenly circling its wagons to blindly defend dietary supplements largely because of the income stream they now generate. Calcium supplements are the biggest example.

Calcium pills: yea or nay?

My argument against supplemental calcium for post-menopausal women first appeals to common sense.

I ask women who no longer have monthly cycles, as they began to approach menopause they developed a nutrient shortage of ________? They usually answer "calcium."

I say no, let's do this again. As menopause sets in you develop a deficiency of _______ ? They have no clue. They look at me dumbfounded.

So I answer it for them: "estrogen."

"Oh, ya, the ovaries stopped producing hormones," they say. Seems obvious, doesn't it?

And estrogen sends a signal to hold calcium in bone. Lose that signal and it doesn't matter how much calcium you pour into your body it will leach out and be deposited in your arteries, stiffening them like a statue.

The more bone that is lost, the more that arteries are progressively diseased. That is why a growing number of published studies now say supplemental calcium increases the risk for mortal heart attacks! High dietary consumption of calcium (1400 mg) coupled with calcium supplements has been found to increase the risk for death from all causes by 257%. Supplemental calcium below 500 mg didn't pose a risk.

Supplement industry in denial

The supplement industry is in denial over this. The Council For Responsible Nutrition, which represents supplement makers, refers to the Institute of Medicine recommendation for women over age 50 to consume 1200 mg of calcium. But that number is the amount of calcium from the diet plus supplements. The typical American diet provides 800-1200 mg of calcium. So only small amounts of supplemental calcium are needed, if at all. The problem is the inability to retain calcium in bone, not a lack of intake.

Furthermore, since the loss of calcium from bone is not being addressed, this is why supplemental calcium is like pouring calcium into a barrel with a hole in its bottom.

So what modern medicine has done since frightening women away from hormone replacement therapy is to increase the risk of hip fracture by 55%.

What happened in the aftermath of advice to avoid hormone replacement therapy was that alternative therapies (bone hardening drugs) were recommended which pose some of the same health risks as estrogen. Some investigators think modern medicine took one step forward and two steps back when it backed away from estrogen replacement. Bottom line, estrogen replacement therapy is as safe as what has been recommended as an alternative.

Health authorities now concede that restrictions on hormone replacement therapy are not supported by the original data used to make that recommendation.

Estrogen replacement not only helps retain bone integrity but also inhibits deposition of calcium that stiffens arteries.

In lieu of estrogen replacement, fearful women who don't want hormone therapy, may opt for use of weak plant estrogens like resveratrol (rez-vair-ah-trol), known as a red wine molecule, that is 1/7000th the strength of natural estrogen but acts like estrogen to retain calcium in bone.

Women can supplement their diet with all of the calcium, magnesium, vitamin D, strontium, and other bone enhancing nutrients they want, but unless the estrogen signal is replaced to hold calcium in bone, bones will continue to wither.

Vitamin D and vitamin K are effective anti-calcifying agents that may be helpful, but they do not replace estrogen.

Use of supplemental vitamin D and K help to reduce bone fractures. Vitamin D in higher doses than have been recommended may be needed. Both vitamin D and K not only aid in retaining bone strength, but also help maintain elastic (un-calcified) arteries.

Bottom line: Don't fall for all the sales pitches to drink more calcium-rich milk or take calcium pills, even if given by your doctor.

Another tip for women facing bone loss and accompanying loss of physical stature — without sleep, bone is lost. Women with low estrogen levels report many sleepless nights. This points to the importance of another hormone, melatonin. When animals had their pineal glands removed, which secrete melatonin, their bones rapidly withered. Sleep is of great importance for bone health. Nighttime is when the bones repair and rebuild. The ideal time to take bone supplements is at bedtime and a melatonin tablet may be a beneficial addition to your bone-building regimen. Some bone-enhancing dietary supplements now provide low-dose calcium with vitamin D and melatonin with the recommendation they be taken at bedtime.

Vitamin D: balance it with vitamins A and K and calcium/ magnesium

Millions of Americans have begun to take vitamin D pills given an upsurge of published reports that low vitamin D levels are linked to a number of maladies.

I was recently interviewed on a nationwide radio program and received many inquiries about leg spasms, toe curling and foot cramping. I wondered what could be causing these muscle cramps.

I can remember, as a teenager, returning from a day at the beach and experiencing the worst charley-horse cramps in my leg muscles. A day in the bright sun had produced high vitamin D levels that increase the utilization of muscle-constricting and relaxing minerals such as calcium and magnesium. An imbalance of these minerals can produce excruciating leg and foot cramps.

Having adopted vitamin D3 pills into my daily supplement regimen I began to experience leg cramps and my toes began to tighten and curl in bed. I found a low-dose calcium/magnesium supplement helped relieve this problem. Maybe a reduction in the dose of supplemental vitamin D will also eradicate these muscle cramps.

Another lesson I learned about vitamin D is that it is stored in the liver as a fat-soluble vitamin along with vitamin A and vitamin K. Too much vitamin D can impair liver storage of vitamin A. I don't consume butter or other vitamin A-rich foods on a regular basis, mostly relying on my diet and supplements to provide vitamin A converted from beta carotene in carrots, squash, etc.

As time passed I experienced two eye infections within a short period of time. I had never had an eye infection in my lifetime. My eyelids were also sticky when I awoke in the morning. I gave this some thought and wondered if I was getting enough vitamin A to produce mucin that coats the surface of my eyes. Mucin serves as a barrier against infection.

So I laid my vitamin D pills aside and began to take cod liver oil as a natural source of vitamin A and my sticky eyelid problem disappeared and I have not had another eye infection. I now supplement my diet with vitamin A-rich cod liver oil two days a week and vitamin D 5 days a week.

By the way, cod liver oil provides such a miniscule amount of vitamin D that it cannot be relied upon as a source of this vitamin.

It's also important to know that all of the alleged side effects of high-dose vitamin D appear to emanate from a shortage of vitamin K. So vitamin K2 supplements are suggested as a way to balance these fat-soluble nutrients. Some vitamin D formulas now include vitamin K.

Bottom line, balance out your vitamin D with vitamins A and K.

Here come the polyphenols (pall-ee-fee-nols)

A class of molecules called polyphenols (also known as bioflavonoids), derived from citrus rind, berries, tea leaves, grapes, pomegranate, spices, coffee beans pose the greatest threat to modern pharmacology. There is no biological challenge too great for them to conquer, ranging from cancer, brain disease, mood problems, infection, inflammation, heart disease and even obesity.

Polyphenols activate a wide array of genes, more than man-made drugs, as they are small molecules that can get into the genetic machinery within cells.

Polyphenols exert a broad range of biological effects as antioxidants, metal chelators, antidepressants (MAO inhibitors), anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral agents, anti-inflammatory factors, etc. In fact, they are many drugs in one. They work synergistically when combined.

As dietary supplements they are popularly consumed as curcumin from turmeric spice, quercetin from red apple peel, catechin from green tea, caffeic and chlorogenic acid from coffee beans, silymarin from milk thistle, and resveratrol from grapes and wine.

These molecules from citrus, berries, herbs and spices work best in modest doses, as they are actually biological stressing agents. As such, they are detected by the body as a biological threat and in response, activate internal antioxidant defenses.

The dose is the poison

This protective effect is only achieved when modest doses are consumed. This phenomenon is known as hormesis. It works by activation of a gene transcription factor called Nrf2 that increases the activity level of antioxidants produced internally in the body (glutathione, catalase, superoxide dismutase). Pharmaceutical companies are now attempting to develop synthetic drugs that rely on a hormesis effect.

However, as consumers learn about these promising polyphenolic medicines and incorporate them into their dietary supplement regimens, they aren't hearing any precautions about dosage. Excessive dose negates the proposed beneficial effects and may even worsen existing conditions.

High herbal anxiety

Investigator Ken Eagle notes that polyphenols in the diet and supplements inhibit an enzyme that keeps a lid on stress hormones released by the adrenal glands. Sulfotransferase-1 is the enzyme that degrades adrenaline (aka epinephrine and norepinephrine). Without this enzyme, stress hormones can run wild and induce headaches, insomnia, over-eating, elevate blood pressure, provoke heart palpitations, anxiety and even panic attacks.

Polyphenols don't cause stress hormones to be produced, but they may, if taken in large doses, inhibit the activity of a key enzyme that limits them.

This is a striking discovery that says maybe polyphenols have reached their upper limits. This is sure to catch the dietary supplement industry off guard. But just how to put a limit on these molecules found in coffee, tea, wine, citrus juices and dietary supplements?

In over a decade spent counseling dietary supplement users on the telephone, many times I have heard callers say they couldn't continue taking a newly added dietary supplement because it caused heart palpitations. Another common report is insomnia when taking herbal supplements.

It has become clear that polyphenols go from promoting mental focus and alertness at low dose to anxiety and even panic attacks at high dose as stress hormone levels rise.

Even more troubling is research conducted by Paul J. Fitzgerald who links a wide range of diseases, including macular degeneration, lupus, heart flutters (atrial fibrillation) and metabolic syndrome to elevated levels of adrenal hormones. Ken Eagles links elevated levels of stress hormones to sudden cardiac death. Yikes!

Few would argue that stress plays a strong role in disease. Maybe the precise pathway in which stress operates to worsen disease is just now being uncovered. Stress hormones are elevated by life's challenges to survival, not by dietary supplements. But strikingly, overuse of promising natural remedies from herbs and spices may inhibit the enzyme that keeps a lid on stress hormones associated with these very diseases.

The right dose

The question arises, just what would be the optimal dose of polyphenols to produce beneficial health effects without over-inhibition of a stress-limiting enzyme?

One study shows the intake of polyphenols in beverages alone (wine, tea, coffee, juice) amount to about 180 milligrams per person per day (in Spain).  Yet another report says the intake of polyphenolic molecules from the diet could be as much as 1 gram (1000 milligrams) per day.  So the typical diet is fairly rich in polyphenols already. Concentrated polyphenolic dietary supplements may elevate intake levels into an undesirable range.

Studies involving wine demonstrate that consumption of 3-to-5 (5-oz) glasses of dark, aged red wine produced the lowest heart disease mortality rate.  Beyond 5 glasses a day increased coronary artery disease mortality rates. Given that dark, aged red wine provides about 60 milligrams of wine solids known as polyphenols (resveratrol, quercetin, catechin, kaempferol, malvidin, gallic acid, ferulic acid) per glass, that amount of red wine would provide ~180-to-300 milligrams of these antioxidant molecules.

An animal study where a combination of polyphenols was used showed that the human equivalent of 100-350 milligrams of polyphenols (quercetin, resveratrol, ferulic acid) reduced damage to the rodent heart while ten-times that dose (1750 mg) increased damage in an experimental heart attack model.

These studies suggest the optimal intake range for polyphenol supplements may be in the range of 100-350 milligrams.

The precise polyphenol content of foods and beverages can be accessed online at Polyphenol-Explorer.  A briefer online tool can be accessed here.

Herbal stress relievers to the rescue

Modern medicine's answer to out of control stress hormones is to prescribe adrenal hormone blockers (known as beta blockers). Paul Fitzgerald notes that users of beta-blockers have lower rates of cancer and Alzheimer's disease.

Of course nature has its own anti-stress agents in a class of herbals known as adaptogens (bacopa, ginseng, rhodiola and ashwaganda), as all inhibit stress hormones. Generally, adaptogens require large doses to work, in excess of 1000 milligrams.

Nature's "beta blocker" is L-theanine, an extract from green tea. In doses ranging from 100-400 milligrams it has been found to produce noticeable reduction in stress hormone levels. Near-pure L-theanine is available in dietary supplements.

Of course, over-dosing on polyphenol dietary supplements and then trying to counter any adverse effects with adaptogens or theanine would be akin to playing with fire and continually relying on fire extinguishers.

It is not uncommon these days to find elite supplement users have a bottle of curcumin, resveratrol, milk thistle, green tea, cinnamon and grape seed extracts on their kitchen table. Polyphenol enthusiasts may be wise to limit dosage.

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.

The Best of Bill Sardi

The US Marines already had a biological response team named “America’s 911 Response Force,” a name for this military unit that was coined a year prior to the events that unfolded on 9-11-2001. This same unit of 350 US Marines practiced handling a crisis on the streets of New York City on September 11, 1998. The drill even included handling the unexpected collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Believe it or not, this US Marine force even had a patch on their uniforms showing the World Trade Center twin towers!

So skip forward to the present time with me. I read a disturbing report in the Daily Mail, a UK publication. Dated March 8, 2013, the Daily Mailarticle describes a US Army Special Forces unit that had cancelled plans to conduct an exercise in Utah where infiltrators would be employed to “tame an indigenous population.”

The Daily Mail article said: “The town of Manti, Utah was targeted and deemed an ideal location because of the desert landscape and the strong religious conviction on its residents. The exercise, named Robin Sage, is a component of Phase Four training for Army Special Forces soldiers, also known as the Green Berets.”

The idea of the planned exercise was to use three teams of 12 soldiers who were trained to mobilize “foreign guerrilla fighters” similar to the way Allied Forces recruited French resistance fighters during WW II. Plain-clothed soldiers would depend upon civilian allies for food, lodging, transportation and supplies. Civilians would be coaxed into turning against any insurgents. These teams of US soldiers would be armed, but carry no live ammunition. But another news report said: “Residents may hear blank gunfire and see occasional flares.” The exercise may be re-scheduled next year.

An Army colonel explained that: “Utah is unique because it was founded with a religious background that can present some ‘cultural norms’ unfamiliar or unique so as to cause the soldiers to adjust their points of view in order to complete the mission; similar to what the forces might encounter in other countries.”

This is not the only such US Army Special Forces exercise of its kind. A similar exercise is now underway in North Carolina using troops from Fort Bragg.

The exercise would target the fictional country of Pineland which encompasses 15 counties in North Carolina. During this exercise, these future Special Forces Soldiers “will infiltrate areas in small groups and train guerilla forces to independently and effectively use tactical force to liberate Pineland,” says a published report.

If what you have already read isn’t troubling enough, an online news report says in January the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point released a studyTuesday warning against American “far right” groups including the “anti-federalist” movement and strong limited government activists.

I thought the US Constitution was all about “limited government?”

Public unrest predicted

There is no hiding the fact there is prediction of considerable public unrest when the day comes the US cannot meet its promised obligations to its citizens. According to economist John Williams atShadowStats.com the US is running a $6.8 trillion annual budget deficit, over and above what it collects in taxes, largely to meet its financial obligations for Social Security and Medicare.

Williams and others predict the charade of recovery and normalcy in the American economy, foisted off on the public by keeping the stock market artificially propped, cannot go on much longer.

What will happen if and when Food Stamp cards cannot be honored and pension checks not dispensed? Instead of heading off such a crisis by sending crooks to jail and invoking real reform in banking and currency, which might include backing the currency with gold and abolition of fractional banking, it appears the US is intentionally steering the country towards civil unrest.

Instead of enacting tax reform, the federal government points fingers at US corporations that have $20 trillion stashed in offshore accounts. These US corporations aren’t evading taxes, they are legally avoiding taxes. Reduction of corporate taxes would free-up much of this money, make US corporations more competitive in world markets, and return needed capital to US soil. So why isn’t thing being done?

What is left is an economy that currently depends on consumer spending for 70% of its GDP, a consumer economy that largely relies upon borrowed or electronically printed money (food stamps, pension checks, Medicare payments, military spending). Take that out of the economy and it will be gutted. America has a false economy and is living a lifestyle it hasn’t earned. It long ago reached a point where it can’t pay back what it has borrowed.

The US government is letting the American people know it has black hawk helicopters and drones that can fly over the US. The US Military has already conducted drills in Boston, Los Angeles and Miami under the guies of preparation against terrorist attacks. Intimidation and fear are already being programmed into the population.

Collecting evidence before there is a charge

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) located in an unmarked building in McLean, Virginia, was established by Presidential Executive Order 13354 in August of 2004, under the pretense of protecting the public from potential terrorist attacks. The NCTC has been granted sweeping authority to monitor and store data on innocent Americans. It is keeping information about Americans for up to five years, using “predictive pattern-matching” to analyze for potential patterns of behavior.

Also license plate information is being gathered in a massive effort to monitor the movement of Americans.

However, the NCTC couldn’t even use its intel to intercept the so-called underwear bomber before he got on a plane a few years ago.

If you would like to see inside the creepy “war room” at the NCTC, you can get a look online here.

Just where does the 4^th Amendment to the Constitution come into play here? (“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”)

Government will create an incident

There is discussion from many quarters that the US will not wait for unrest but actually dispatch agent saboteurs and conduct a false flag operation to cover for the collapse of the US economy. Historically leaders of nations that are in financial trouble have learned to launch wars to cover for their ineptness and fraud. But the American masses appear to be oblivious to all this.

Senator Tom Coburn predicts a day in the near future, if the US has not already launched its own false flag operation to usher in martial law, when one of our creditor nations like Japan, that is holding over $1 trillion of US IOUs (US Treasury Bills), decides to sell them off at a discount, recognizing they will never be repaid in full by the US. Then the value of the US dollar plunges regardless of all the money printing, accounting irregularities, money laundering and release of false unemployment and inflation numbers going on in the US today.

Recently by Bill Sardi: Weaning Away From Psychiatric Drugs — Finally a WayOut

One thing we have learned since 9-11 is that government agencies practice whatever schemes they have in mind before they occur. Take for instance the events that took place prior to the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on 9-11-2001.

The US Marines already had a biological response team named "America's 911 Response Force," a name for this military unit that was coined a year prior to the events that unfolded on 9-11-2001. This same unit of 350 US Marines practiced handling a crisis on the streets of New York City on September 11, 1998. The drill even included handling the unexpected collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Believe it or not, this US Marine force even had a patch on their uniforms showing the World Trade Center twin towers!

So skip forward to the present time with me. I read a disturbing report in the Daily Mail, a UK publication. Dated March 8, 2013, the Daily Mail article describes a US Army Special Forces unit that had cancelled plans to conduct an exercise in Utah where infiltrators would be employed to "tame an indigenous population."

The Daily Mail article said: "The town of Manti, Utah was targeted and deemed an ideal location because of the desert landscape and the strong religious conviction on its residents. The exercise, named Robin Sage, is a component of Phase Four training for Army Special Forces soldiers, also known as the Green Berets."

The idea of the planned exercise was to use three teams of 12 soldiers who were trained to mobilize "foreign guerrilla fighters" similar to the way Allied Forces recruited French resistance fighters during WW II. Plain-clothed soldiers would depend upon civilian allies for food, lodging, transportation and supplies. Civilians would be coaxed into turning against any insurgents. These teams of US soldiers would be armed, but carry no live ammunition. But another news report said: "Residents may hear blank gunfire and see occasional flares." The exercise may be re-scheduled next year.

An Army colonel explained that: "Utah is unique because it was founded with a religious background that can present some ‘cultural norms’ unfamiliar or unique so as to cause the soldiers to adjust their points of view in order to complete the mission; similar to what the forces might encounter in other countries."

This is not the only such US Army Special Forces exercise of its kind. A similar exercise is now underway in North Carolina using troops from Fort Bragg.

The exercise would target the fictional country of Pineland which encompasses 15 counties in North Carolina. During this exercise, these future Special Forces Soldiers "will infiltrate areas in small groups and train guerilla forces to independently and effectively use tactical force to liberate Pineland," says a published report.

If what you have already read isn't troubling enough, an online news report says in January the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point released a study Tuesday warning against American "far right" groups including the "anti-federalist" movement and strong limited government activists.

I thought the US Constitution was all about "limited government?"

Public unrest predicted

There is no hiding the fact there is prediction of considerable public unrest when the day comes the US cannot meet its promised obligations to its citizens. According to economist John Williams at ShadowStats.com the US is running a $6.8 trillion annual budget deficit, over and above what it collects in taxes, largely to meet its financial obligations for Social Security and Medicare.

Williams and others predict the charade of recovery and normalcy in the American economy, foisted off on the public by keeping the stock market artificially propped, cannot go on much longer.

What will happen if and when Food Stamp cards cannot be honored and pension checks not dispensed? Instead of heading off such a crisis by sending crooks to jail and invoking real reform in banking and currency, which might include backing the currency with gold and abolition of fractional banking, it appears the US is intentionally steering the country towards civil unrest.

Instead of enacting tax reform, the federal government points fingers at US corporations that have $20 trillion stashed in offshore accounts. These US corporations aren't evading taxes, they are legally avoiding taxes. Reduction of corporate taxes would free-up much of this money, make US corporations more competitive in world markets, and return needed capital to US soil. So why isn't anything being done?

What is left is an economy that currently depends on consumer spending for 70% of its GDP, a consumer economy that largely relies upon borrowed or electronically printed money (food stamps, pension checks, Medicare payments, military spending). Take that out of the economy and it will be gutted. America has a false economy and is living a lifestyle it hasn't earned. It long ago reached a point where it can't pay back what it has borrowed.

The US government is letting the American people know it has black hawk helicopters and drones that can fly over the US. The US Military has already conducted drills in Boston, Los Angeles and Miami under the guies of preparation against terrorist attacks. Intimidation and fear are already being programmed into the population.

Collecting evidence before there is a charge

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) located in an unmarked building in McLean, Virginia, was established by Presidential Executive Order 13354 in August of 2004, under the pretense of protecting the public from potential terrorist attacks. The NCTC has been granted sweeping authority to monitor and store data on innocent Americans. It is keeping information about Americans for up to five years, using "predictive pattern-matching" to analyze for potential patterns of behavior.

Also license plate information is being gathered in a massive effort to monitor the movement of Americans.

However, the NCTC couldn't even use its intel to intercept the so-called underwear bomber before he got on a plane a few years ago.

If you would like to see inside the creepy "war room" at the NCTC, you can get a look online here.

Just where does the 4th Amendment to the Constitution come into play here? ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.")

Government will create an incident

There is discussion from many quarters that the US will not wait for unrest but actually dispatch agent saboteurs and conduct a false flag operation to cover for the collapse of the US economy. Historically leaders of nations that are in financial trouble have learned to launch wars to cover for their ineptness and fraud. But the American masses appear to be oblivious to all this.

Senator Tom Coburn predicts a day in the near future, if the US has not already launched its own false flag operation to usher in martial law, when one of our creditor nations like Japan, that is holding over $1 trillion of US IOUs (US Treasury Bills), decides to sell them off at a discount, recognizing they will never be repaid in full by the US. Then the value of the US dollar plunges regardless of all the money printing, accounting irregularities, money laundering and release of false unemployment and inflation numbers going on in the US today.

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.

The Best of Bill Sardi

Do you or a family member suffer from attention deficit disorder (ADHD), autism, mental depression, post-natal depression, autism, schizophrenia, anorexia, bipolar disorder or any behavior disorder?

It’s a fact that most people with chronic mental problems would like to wean themselves off of psychiatric drugs commonly prescribed for these conditions, but just precisely how to do that is the question.

Before you learn more about this topic, ask yourself an important question: who would you listen to for advice about weaning away from psychiatric drugs?

Would you listen to a well-qualified PhD who has studied more than 25,000 patients with mental disorders and who has obtained over 3 million chemistries from blood, urine and tissue samples from over 25,000 patients over a 35-year period?

Would you listen to a man who has studied every behavioral disorder ranging from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, all the way to severe cases of violent behavior exhibited by toughened criminals (including chemical analyses obtained from more than 25 serial killers and mass murderers)?

My bet is you would certainly listen to what a man like this has to say. And that man is William J. Walsh PhD, a recognized expert in the field of nutritional medicine and founder of the non-profit Walsh Research Institute in Naperville, Illinois. Medical examiners, coroners, Scotland Yard and the FBI have also listened to him.

Ground-breaking book

With behavioral disorders affecting nearly every extended family in America, it is a good time to get acquainted with Dr. Walsh as he has recently published a new book entitled Nutrient Power (Skyhorse Publishing, 203-pages, 2012) that presents the idea of individualized nutrient protocols to normalize body and brain chemistry.

You can also go to the Walsh Research Institute website and watch Dr. Walsh talk about various behavioral disorders or skim through slide showpresentations on various topics he has lectured on, to gain confidence in his non-drug approach.

He is no pony-tailed self-proclaimed guru who has just returned from Nepal with the latest herbal remedy for the brain. He conducted biochemical investigations with the late Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, a noted pioneer in the field. He has presented his research at the American Psychiatric Association, the U.S. Senate, the National Institutes of Mental Health, and has been a speaker at 30 international conferences.

The age of epigenetics

Dr. Walsh says we live in exciting times because researchers are beginning to learn how to favorably influence genes via the study of epigenetics, something Dr. Pfeiffer would have only dreamed of.

Dr. Walsh concludes, after years of investigation, that a gene-altering process called methylation (explained below) is involved in 70% of serious psychiatric conditions. That means it will soon be possible to molecularly reverse chronic mental problems. As brain science advances, the use of psychiatric drugs will gradually become obsolete since most mental disorders involve disturbances or imbalances of essential nutrients that alter brain function.

Dr. Walsh says, until recently, all heritable mental illnesses were presumed to have an unavoidable genetic component. That is, people have been misled to believe their biological and psychological fate has already been predetermined and is locked in by gene mutations.

Dr. Walsh asks, if these mental disturbances are inevitable, why don’t identical twins follow a Mendelian pattern of inheritance?

Walsh notes that spontaneous gene mutations in humans occur only once in every 500,000 cell divisions and few are transferred to the next generation and therefore could not possibly explain a sudden upswing in cases of autism, for example.

Dr. Walsh says so many mental disorders now appear to be epigenetic, rather than genetic.

He asks: why do many autism regressions result in radical changes in speech, socialization, food sensitivities, etc., in just a few days after an environmental insult? It is obvious gene structure is not being changed, gene function is.

Gene protein making can be switched on (called gene expression) or off (called gene silencing). Environmental factors such as radiation, temperature, food or lack of food, can switch genes on or off. Certain molecules within foods (vitamins, minerals, amino acids, essential oils) can do this reliably. To the dismay of the pharmaceutical industry, Walsh says the future of behavior therapy with nutrition lies in epigenetics – the nutritionally modifiable aspect of our genes.

Dr. Walsh says even the most severe heritable mental disturbances will be reversible once we understand how to tap into epigenetics. Moreover, present nutrient therapies have already resulted in thousands of reports of recovery in persons diagnosed with violent behavior, ADHD, autism, anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia.

Examples

For example, Dr. Walsh presents a case in his book of a 21-year-old male diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, the same condition that had affected his mother. This patient arrived for his first evaluation wearing a metal helmet and had chains wrapped around his neck, which he said were necessary to keep him from floating up into outer space. He believed his parents were aliens from outer space.

His biochemical imbalances were treated with a regimen of vitamins and minerals. He wasn’t always compliant in take the vitamin and mineral supplements. But after six months significant improvement was reported. After several years of wellness, a hiatus from his nutritional regimen resulted in a return of his delusions. He resumed his nutritional regimen and returned to wellness.

Another case presented by Dr. Walsh involved a 22-year-old student with schizophrenia. He told friends Russian agents were trying to kill him and would sit for hours with a blank expression. Once diagnosed, he was medicated with mind-altering drugs (Zyprexa, Depakote and Zoloft) which resulted in improvement but he couldn’t hold a job or resume studies. A nutritional regimen did not produce any change for six weeks, followed by gradual improvement. After a year of nutrient therapy a near-complete recovery was reported and he was weaned away from the drugs.

Dr. Walsh says just because a mental disorder runs along family lines does not mean it is inevitable and irreversible. Advanced nutrient therapy can be effective by (a) normalizing the synthesis of our brain chemicals, (b) adjusting activity at brain cell receptors by alteration of gene expression, and (c) defending against oxidative stress.

The idea of throwing people with severe aberrant behavior into a prison or mental institution, locking the door and throwing away the keys can now be discarded for many.

Telling experiment

One of the telling experiments that Walsh and his colleagues conducted consisted of 24 pairs of brothers who lived in the same household with one brother having a history of delinquency and violence and the other ideal behavior and good academics. Dr. Walsh found that the violent brothers had abnormal biochemistry while their well-behaved siblings exhibited normal levels in blood and urine.

For example, Dr. Walsh found that the violent brothers exhibited higher lead and cadmium levels than their well-behaved siblings although they shared the same diet and general environment. Brothers exhibiting oppositional, defiant, assaultive behavior as well as cruelty to animals and fascination with fire were found to have a low copper/zinc ratio. Violent brothers with alternating good behavior and explosions exhibited a very elevated ratio of copper to zinc.

Methylation and the brain

Dr. Walsh’s most striking discovery was that more than 70% of people with behavioral and mental disorders have a methylation imbalance…. either too much or too little of this chemical that dominates gene expression. For example about 42% of schizophrenics are overmethylated while 28% are undermethylated. More than 95% of persons diagnosed with autism, OCD, and antisocial personality disorder (e.g., convicted felons) exhibit undermethylation.

The body’s methyl groups arise from methionine, one of the amino acids present in meat and other proteins. Walsh has developed nutrient therapies that can normalize methylation and correct many brain chemistry imbalances without resorting to drugs.

The zinc/copper ratio

On page 18 of his book he makes a startling claim. Copper overload is a primary offender in many mental disturbances, including autism, paranoid schizophrenia, clinical depression, hyperactivity, learning disability, and postpartum depression. Excessive copper reduces the brain chemical dopamine and increases norepinephrine.

Walsh cites two studies showing diet and nutritional supplements can eliminate excess copper and restore normal brain function in these persons. An outcome study of hundreds of women with post-partum depression brought reports of significant improvement in 85% of them, after blood copper levels were normalized.

Walsh goes on to explain the relationship between postpartum depression and copper overload. During pregnancy, blood copper levels more than double so as to stimulate the development of new blood vessels as the baby grows rapidly. If copper levels do not return to normal after birth, then postpartum depression may result. All this will likely come as a surprise to physicians who have been trained to treat post-partum depression with antidepressant drugs that usually do not help these women.

Dr. Walsh identifies vitamin B6 is another nutrient that is associated with many mental health issues, producing symptoms of irritability, depression, poor short-term memory, insomnia, muscle weakness, difficulty walking and even psychosis. B6 is needed to produce important brain chemicals such as serotonin, dopamine and GABA (a relaxing brain chemical).

Walsh says zinc deficiency is “by far the most frequently observed chemical imbalance in mental health populations.” Walsh estimates more than 90% of persons diagnosed with mental abnormalities are either low-normal or deficient in zinc. Zinc deficiency is associated with temper control problems, weak immunity, depression, poor wound healing, epilepsy, anxiety, learning problems and hormone imbalances, says Walsh.

Zinc is in balance with copper in healthy persons. A lack of zinc can lead to copper overload. Walsh says it usually takes about two months to correct a zinc or copper disorder. Walsh says a blood plasma blood test for zinc should be mandatory for all patients diagnosed with a behavioral disorder.

Pyrrole disorder

A largely unknown fact that Walsh shares is that there is a chemical produced in the body called pyrrole that binds to zinc and vitamin B6 and increases their excretion in the urine. Nearly one-third of persons diagnosed with depression, behavioral disorders, autism, and psychosis have elevated pyrroles. An $80 urine test can reveal whether a pyrrole disorder is present. This important chemical imbalance can be corrected within weeks using supplements of zinc, B-6, and augmenting nutrients.

White spots on fingernails and acne are a sign indicating low zinc levels associated with pyrrole disorder. Pyrroles can also produce dominance of omega-6 oil over omega-3 oils, which can lead to symptoms of dry skin, dry eyes and brittle nails. Pyrrole patients with these symptoms often benefit from supplementation of GLA omega-6 oils (evening primrose, borage or black currant seed oil).

Pyrrole disorder often materializes as a wide range of symptoms that generally include extreme mood swings (could be mistakenly thought to be bipolar disorder), sensitivity to light and noise, poor stress control, severe anxiety, little or no dream recall, preference for spicy foods and abnormal body fat distribution.

A recent published report suggests pyrrole disorder is not only involved in human behavior, later in life it is associated with cancer and an eye disorder called macular degeneration.

Nutrient malabsorption

Walsh notes that while only 10% of mental illness cases involve severe malabsorption of nutrients, more than 90% of autistic children have this problem. A major cause of distress in autism-spectrum patients appears to be severe oxidative stress in their G.I. tract.

How rapidly does nutrition therapy work?

In Walsh’s vast experience, he says more than 80% of ADHD and depression patients report significant improvement within three months, and that more than 70% can wean away from psychiatric drugs without a return of symptoms. Walsh says the pyrrole disorder is the fastest chemical imbalance to be rectified by nutritional therapy, with significant improvement often reported in the first week. Treatment of undermethylation requires great patience since 4-6 months often required. Treatment of copper overload and zinc deficiency usually requires 60 days.

Differing responses

An interesting aspect of what Dr. Walsh presents is that many people with mental problems react to nutrients in opposite ways even though they have the same diagnosis.

For example, among people who suffer from chronic mental depression, about 38% in Walsh’s cases are under-methylated and are highly intolerant to folic acid but thrive on SAMe (S-adenosylmethionine) or methionine, whereas about 20% of depressed persons in his database are deficient in folic acid which is their primary nutrient imbalance. Most of these folic-acid responsive depressed subjects also report anxiety disorder and even panic attacks.

Another phenomenon revealed in the case histories presented in his book is that individuals may experience brief adverse effects in the first few days of nutrient therapy as toxics and excess copper are driven out of the body. However, in most cases they begin to improve within a week or two, sometimes all the way to full recoveries or prolonged remissions.

The future of advanced nutrient therapy in behavioral disorders

The Walsh Research Institute does not see patients but refers to capable doctors and clinics. He says the treatment protocols roughly outlined in his book should be supervised by a trained medical practitioner and should not be used for self-treatment. He warns that improper nutrient therapy could cause harm (worsening depression, anxiety, behavior, etc.).

The Walsh Research Institute has trained about 125 physicians with a goal to train an additional 1000 doctors within the next 5 years. Dr. Walsh also wants to motivate other researchers in the mental health field to seek natural therapies that normalize the brain without side effects and to conduct research towards that end. Dr. Walsh wants to put an end to research projects whose primary goal is to development of another billion-dollar blockbuster drug.

Dr. Walsh knows his efforts will be speeded by expanding public awareness of nutrient therapy for mental disorders. Most doctors now providing these protocols report they now can help many patients that previously failed to respond.

The singular efforts of this one man, William J. Walsh, could lift the dark cloud posed of psychiatric drugs that hovers over America. Mind altering drugs are now pervasive in America, from youth (Ritalin in grade schools for attention deficit disorder) to old age (anti-depressants among over-medicated nursing home patients).

How many more times will Americans hear of mass killers who were taking mind-altering drugs before these foreign molecules are abandoned in favor of a more-scientific and more natural therapy?

Recently by Bill Sardi: Reduce Health Care Costs. AreWe Chasing theWind?

Do you or a family member suffer from attention deficit disorder (ADHD), autism, mental depression, post-natal depression, autism, schizophrenia, anorexia, bipolar disorder or any behavior disorder?

It's a fact that most people with chronic mental problems would like to wean themselves off of psychiatric drugs commonly prescribed for these conditions, but just precisely how to do that is the question.

Before you learn more about this topic, ask yourself an important question: who would you listen to for advice about weaning away from psychiatric drugs?

Would you listen to a well-qualified PhD who has studied more than 25,000 patients with mental disorders and who has obtained over 3 million chemistries from blood, urine and tissue samples from over 25,000 patients over a 35-year period?

Would you listen to a man who has studied every behavioral disorder ranging from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, all the way to severe cases of violent behavior exhibited by toughened criminals (including chemical analyses obtained from more than 25 serial killers and mass murderers)?

My bet is you would certainly listen to what a man like this has to say. And that man is William J. Walsh PhD, a recognized expert in the field of nutritional medicine and founder of the non-profit Walsh Research Institute in Naperville, Illinois. Medical examiners, coroners, Scotland Yard and the FBI have also listened to him.

Ground-breaking book

With behavioral disorders affecting nearly every extended family in America, it is a good time to get acquainted with Dr. Walsh as he has recently published a new book entitled Nutrient Power (Skyhorse Publishing, 203-pages, 2012) that presents the idea of individualized nutrient protocols to normalize body and brain chemistry.

You can also go to the Walsh Research Institute website and watch Dr. Walsh talk about various behavioral disorders or skim through slide show presentations on various topics he has lectured on, to gain confidence in his non-drug approach.

He is no pony-tailed self-proclaimed guru who has just returned from Nepal with the latest herbal remedy for the brain. He conducted biochemical investigations with the late Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, a noted pioneer in the field. He has presented his research at the American Psychiatric Association, the U.S. Senate, the National Institutes of Mental Health, and has been a speaker at 30 international conferences.

The age of epigenetics

Dr. Walsh says we live in exciting times because researchers are beginning to learn how to favorably influence genes via the study of epigenetics, something Dr. Pfeiffer would have only dreamed of.

Dr. Walsh concludes, after years of investigation, that a gene-altering process called methylation (explained below) is involved in 70% of serious psychiatric conditions. That means it will soon be possible to molecularly reverse chronic mental problems. As brain science advances, the use of psychiatric drugs will gradually become obsolete since most mental disorders involve disturbances or imbalances of essential nutrients that alter brain function.

Dr. Walsh says, until recently, all heritable mental illnesses were presumed to have an unavoidable genetic component. That is, people have been misled to believe their biological and psychological fate has already been predetermined and is locked in by gene mutations.

Dr. Walsh asks, if these mental disturbances are inevitable, why don't identical twins follow a Mendelian pattern of inheritance?

Walsh notes that spontaneous gene mutations in humans occur only once in every 500,000 cell divisions and few are transferred to the next generation and therefore could not possibly explain a sudden upswing in cases of autism, for example.

Dr. Walsh says so many mental disorders now appear to be epigenetic, rather than genetic.

He asks: why do many autism regressions result in radical changes in speech, socialization, food sensitivities, etc., in just a few days after an environmental insult? It is obvious gene structure is not being changed, gene function is.

Gene protein making can be switched on (called gene expression) or off (called gene silencing). Environmental factors such as radiation, temperature, food or lack of food, can switch genes on or off. Certain molecules within foods (vitamins, minerals, amino acids, essential oils) can do this reliably. To the dismay of the pharmaceutical industry, Walsh says the future of behavior therapy with nutrition lies in epigenetics — the nutritionally modifiable aspect of our genes.

Dr. Walsh says even the most severe heritable mental disturbances will be reversible once we understand how to tap into epigenetics. Moreover, present nutrient therapies have already resulted in thousands of reports of recovery in persons diagnosed with violent behavior, ADHD, autism, anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia.

Examples

For example, Dr. Walsh presents a case in his book of a 21-year-old male diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, the same condition that had affected his mother. This patient arrived for his first evaluation wearing a metal helmet and had chains wrapped around his neck, which he said were necessary to keep him from floating up into outer space. He believed his parents were aliens from outer space.

His biochemical imbalances were treated with a regimen of vitamins and minerals. He wasn't always compliant in take the vitamin and mineral supplements. But after six months significant improvement was reported. After several years of wellness, a hiatus from his nutritional regimen resulted in a return of his delusions. He resumed his nutritional regimen and returned to wellness.

Another case presented by Dr. Walsh involved a 22-year-old student with schizophrenia. He told friends Russian agents were trying to kill him and would sit for hours with a blank expression. Once diagnosed, he was medicated with mind-altering drugs (Zyprexa, Depakote and Zoloft) which resulted in improvement but he couldn't hold a job or resume studies. A nutritional regimen did not produce any change for six weeks, followed by gradual improvement. After a year of nutrient therapy a near-complete recovery was reported and he was weaned away from the drugs.

Dr. Walsh says just because a mental disorder runs along family lines does not mean it is inevitable and irreversible. Advanced nutrient therapy can be effective by (a) normalizing the synthesis of our brain chemicals, (b) adjusting activity at brain cell receptors by alteration of gene expression, and (c) defending against oxidative stress.

The idea of throwing people with severe aberrant behavior into a prison or mental institution, locking the door and throwing away the keys can now be discarded for many.

Telling experiment

One of the telling experiments that Walsh and his colleagues conducted consisted of 24 pairs of brothers who lived in the same household with one brother having a history of delinquency and violence and the other ideal behavior and good academics. Dr. Walsh found that the violent brothers had abnormal biochemistry while their well-behaved siblings exhibited normal levels in blood and urine.

For example, Dr. Walsh found that the violent brothers exhibited higher lead and cadmium levels than their well-behaved siblings although they shared the same diet and general environment. Brothers exhibiting oppositional, defiant, assaultive behavior as well as cruelty to animals and fascination with fire were found to have a low copper/zinc ratio. Violent brothers with alternating good behavior and explosions exhibited a very elevated ratio of copper to zinc.

Methylation and the brain

Dr. Walsh's most striking discovery was that more than 70% of people with behavioral and mental disorders have a methylation imbalance…. either too much or too little of this chemical that dominates gene expression. For example about 42% of schizophrenics are overmethylated while 28% are undermethylated. More than 95% of persons diagnosed with autism, OCD, and antisocial personality disorder (e.g., convicted felons) exhibit undermethylation.

The body's methyl groups arise from methionine, one of the amino acids present in meat and other proteins. Walsh has developed nutrient therapies that can normalize methylation and correct many brain chemistry imbalances without resorting to drugs.

The zinc/copper ratio

On page 18 of his book he makes a startling claim. Copper overload is a primary offender in many mental disturbances, including autism, paranoid schizophrenia, clinical depression, hyperactivity, learning disability, and postpartum depression. Excessive copper reduces the brain chemical dopamine and increases norepinephrine.

Walsh cites two studies showing diet and nutritional supplements can eliminate excess copper and restore normal brain function in these persons. An outcome study of hundreds of women with post-partum depression brought reports of significant improvement in 85% of them, after blood copper levels were normalized.

Walsh goes on to explain the relationship between postpartum depression and copper overload. During pregnancy, blood copper levels more than double so as to stimulate the development of new blood vessels as the baby grows rapidly. If copper levels do not return to normal after birth, then postpartum depression may result. All this will likely come as a surprise to physicians who have been trained to treat post-partum depression with antidepressant drugs that usually do not help these women.

Dr. Walsh identifies vitamin B6 is another nutrient that is associated with many mental health issues, producing symptoms of irritability, depression, poor short-term memory, insomnia, muscle weakness, difficulty walking and even psychosis. B6 is needed to produce important brain chemicals such as serotonin, dopamine and GABA (a relaxing brain chemical).

Walsh says zinc deficiency is "by far the most frequently observed chemical imbalance in mental health populations." Walsh estimates more than 90% of persons diagnosed with mental abnormalities are either low-normal or deficient in zinc. Zinc deficiency is associated with temper control problems, weak immunity, depression, poor wound healing, epilepsy, anxiety, learning problems and hormone imbalances, says Walsh.

Zinc is in balance with copper in healthy persons. A lack of zinc can lead to copper overload. Walsh says it usually takes about two months to correct a zinc or copper disorder. Walsh says a blood plasma blood test for zinc should be mandatory for all patients diagnosed with a behavioral disorder.

Pyrrole disorder

A largely unknown fact that Walsh shares is that there is a chemical produced in the body called pyrrole that binds to zinc and vitamin B6 and increases their excretion in the urine. Nearly one-third of persons diagnosed with depression, behavioral disorders, autism, and psychosis have elevated pyrroles. An $80 urine test can reveal whether a pyrrole disorder is present. This important chemical imbalance can be corrected within weeks using supplements of zinc, B-6, and augmenting nutrients.

White spots on fingernails and acne are a sign indicating low zinc levels associated with pyrrole disorder. Pyrroles can also produce dominance of omega-6 oil over omega-3 oils, which can lead to symptoms of dry skin, dry eyes and brittle nails. Pyrrole patients with these symptoms often benefit from supplementation of GLA omega-6 oils (evening primrose, borage or black currant seed oil).

Pyrrole disorder often materializes as a wide range of symptoms that generally include extreme mood swings (could be mistakenly thought to be bipolar disorder), sensitivity to light and noise, poor stress control, severe anxiety, little or no dream recall, preference for spicy foods and abnormal body fat distribution.

A recent published report suggests pyrrole disorder is not only involved in human behavior, later in life it is associated with cancer and an eye disorder called macular degeneration.

Nutrient malabsorption

Walsh notes that while only 10% of mental illness cases involve severe malabsorption of nutrients, more than 90% of autistic children have this problem. A major cause of distress in autism-spectrum patients appears to be severe oxidative stress in their G.I. tract.

How rapidly does nutrition therapy work?

In Walsh's vast experience, he says more than 80% of ADHD and depression patients report significant improvement within three months, and that more than 70% can wean away from psychiatric drugs without a return of symptoms. Walsh says the pyrrole disorder is the fastest chemical imbalance to be rectified by nutritional therapy, with significant improvement often reported in the first week. Treatment of undermethylation requires great patience since 4-6 months often required. Treatment of copper overload and zinc deficiency usually requires 60 days.

Differing responses

An interesting aspect of what Dr. Walsh presents is that many people with mental problems react to nutrients in opposite ways even though they have the same diagnosis.

For example, among people who suffer from chronic mental depression, about 38% in Walsh's cases are under-methylated and are highly intolerant to folic acid but thrive on SAMe (S-adenosylmethionine) or methionine, whereas about 20% of depressed persons in his database are deficient in folic acid which is their primary nutrient imbalance. Most of these folic-acid responsive depressed subjects also report anxiety disorder and even panic attacks.

Another phenomenon revealed in the case histories presented in his book is that individuals may experience brief adverse effects in the first few days of nutrient therapy as toxics and excess copper are driven out of the body. However, in most cases they begin to improve within a week or two, sometimes all the way to full recoveries or prolonged remissions.

The future of advanced nutrient therapy in behavioral disorders

The Walsh Research Institute does not see patients but refers to capable doctors and clinics. He says the treatment protocols roughly outlined in his book should be supervised by a trained medical practitioner and should not be used for self-treatment. He warns that improper nutrient therapy could cause harm (worsening depression, anxiety, behavior, etc.).

The Walsh Research Institute has trained about 125 physicians with a goal to train an additional 1000 doctors within the next 5 years. Dr. Walsh also wants to motivate other researchers in the mental health field to seek natural therapies that normalize the brain without side effects and to conduct research towards that end. Dr. Walsh wants to put an end to research projects whose primary goal is to development of another billion-dollar blockbuster drug.

Dr. Walsh knows his efforts will be speeded by expanding public awareness of nutrient therapy for mental disorders. Most doctors now providing these protocols report they now can help many patients that previously failed to respond.

The singular efforts of this one man, William J. Walsh, could lift the dark cloud posed of psychiatric drugs that hovers over America. Mind altering drugs are now pervasive in America, from youth (Ritalin in grade schools for attention deficit disorder) to old age (anti-depressants among over-medicated nursing home patients).

How many more times will Americans hear of mass killers who were taking mind-altering drugs before these foreign molecules are abandoned in favor of a more-scientific and more natural therapy?

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.

The Best of Bill Sardi

Recently by Bill Sardi: Will Technological Breakthroughs Save the American Economy? Maybe, If Politicians Would Just Get Out of the Way

Take a gander at the following survey published nearly a decade ago (abstract presented at the end of this report). It reveals the multiple physical effects (elevated blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, incidence of arthritis and infection) of the diabesity epidemic now sweeping the globe. While the doctors have their scopes placed on all over their patients' bodies the elephant in the room is the processed American diet.

The survey was conducted in France where people tend to be leaner, maybe because of the red wine they drink. Consider how modern medicine has capitalized on this situation. Instead of condemning processed food diets, intentionally designed by food purveyors to disarm satiation in order to sell more food, modern medicine piled on and sold more inappropriate drugs and performed more needless surgical procedures.

The whole situation is akin to a frayed wire that continually produces sparks that then triggers repeated fires that have to be put out with a fire extinguisher. In this metaphor, you have to keep taking drugs or even dietary supplements to put out the fires. Such an approach is a giant (intentional?) misdirection. Stop the pyromania and the sales of fire extinguishers will decline.

Modern medicine is pushing anti-cholesterol drugs, blood pressure-lowering pills, pain relievers, antibiotics, anti-diabetic pills, and even performing surgery for a condition known as hyperhidrosis (sweaty palms) that all appear to be diet related, not to mention lap-band and gastric bypass surgery to reduce girth and implantation of artificial hips and knees and a myriad of surgical procedures on vertebral discs to relieve pain.

Is it ethical to implant an artificial knee on a 300-pound man who is 5 foot 7 inches tall? Modern medicine has no hesitation in doing so. Artificial knees in obese patients often require a second surgical procedure.

A few ethical physicians in Australia suggest "unloading" the weight on the knee to reduce obesity-related strain that destroys joints. They say there has been "an overemphasis on drugs and direct surgical repair." Their voice is like a whisper in the opportunistic hurricane that surrounds them.

Orthopedists may attempt to justify the implantation of artificial joints in order to give obese patients greater mobility. But the idea that a knee or hip implant should produce a more mobile patient who can better control their weight through exercise is not substantiated by published studies.

Many joint implant patients are diabetic and are more likely to incur post-surgical infections. This has not deterred orthopedists from performing these operations. After all, they have antibiotics, don't they (another drug to sell)?

A patient who received a hip implant that was allegedly defective is suing its manufacturer because of metal particles that flaked off of the implant. The patient is described as a diabetic with nerve problems, and while his weight is not mentioned, you can bet he is obese. An outfit now recruits patients on the internet who have been harmed by surgical implants. The legal profession is piling on too. It's all good for business.

While America is grappling with how to reduce health care costs, over 1 million Americans now undergo joint replacement operations and that number is expected to grow to 4 million over the next decade or two. Better than 4 in 10 adults over age 60 now report lower body functional impairment. What a market for the opportunist doctors and joint implant companies! And the patients say they were promised their Medicare benefits and oppose any efforts to deprive them of this modern technology. So much for giving up potato chips.

The answer to this problem is dietary, but precisely which one — the Atkins high-fat diet, a vegetarian diet, which one?

Studies show the best results are obtained with low-carbohydrate diets. But does that mean less sugar and so-called high glycemic foods? Not exactly. As long as a person is feeding the sugar-craving yeast in their digestive tract, they will crave sweets and the weight will pile on.

A few years ago modern medicine set out to determine if what I just said is true. So a study was conducted where so-called healthy adults were given a high-carbohydrate (sugar) diet to see if this would raise the concentration of yeast (Candida albicans count) in samples taken from patients.

Well, the study was bogus. Researchers couldn't find an increased yeast count with increased sugar (carbohydrate) consumption. But 78.6% of these so-called healthy subjects in this study already had detectable amounts of Candida albicans in mouthwash samples! Yeast had overgrown all the way up to their mouth and this was considered normal!

These researchers even admitted the flaw in their study when they suggested "follow-up studies should address the question of whether restriction of refined carbohydrates might decrease the number of Candida albicans organisms colonizing the human gastrointestinal tract."

Well, just how severely should refined carbohydrates be restricted? Kat James, who overcame her own eating disorder and wrote a book about it, maintains that not only carbohydrates like bread, pasta, rice and refined sugars, but for the metabolically-compromised even so-called “health foods” like whole grains, some beans and most fruit sugars must be avoided – and more good fats eaten – if one wants to biochemically transform into a fat-burning state. James was invited to present her program in my home and proved her point.

Of note, in her book The Truth About Beauty, James includes two studies where as much as double the calories were consumed with greater weight loss in the higher calorie groups, as long as the calories were low-glycemic. Her advice would be worth a few trillion dollars to a bankrupt disease care system.

Well, so much for Jenny Craig-like limited-calorie diets that only work as long as you can deny your own hunger pangs. Do you think various commercially popularized diet plans really want you to conquer your weight problem once and for all? No, they want you to come back and buy more, just like the doctors and pharmaceutical companies.

Presse Med. 2003 Apr 26; 32(15):689-95.

[Evaluation of discomfort and complications in a population of 18,102 patients overweight or obese patients].

[Article in French]

Source

Service de nutrition, Institut Pasteur de Lille, Lille (59).

Abstract

AIMS:

The burden of disorders associated with overweight and obesity is a major public health problem. It is therefore important to better identify these concomitant disorders and how their frequencies vary with sex and age.

METHODS:

A survey was carried out during a 5 month-period from September 2001 to January 2002) among 4 727 general practitioners distributed throughout France in 18 102 patients with a body mass index (BMI)>25 kg/m2. The practitioners evaluated the presence of concomitant disorders using a closed questionnaire. The patients assessed global discomfort linked to overweight using an analog visual scale. Univariate and multivariate analyses of the concomitant disorders and self-reported discomfort depending on age, gender and BMI were performed.

RESULTS:

The survey population comprised 66.8% of women (W) and 33.2% of men (M). Mean age was 48.0 +/- 13.2 years and mean BMI was 34.6 +/- 6.1, with no differences between the two sexes. The most frequent concomitant disorders were back pain (44.6%), hypertension (high blood pressure) (44.2%), dyslipidemia (elevated blood fats-cholesterol) (39.9%), knee osteoarthritis (30.8%), lower limb edema (ankle swelling) (24.3%), hypersudation (hyperhidrosis; sweaty palms) (23.8%), skin fold mycosis (fungal infection) (22.8%) and type 2 diabetes (21.6%). In multivariate analyses, the distribution of these disorders varied with sex: hypertension, type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, and hypersudation/hyperhidrosis were more frequent in men, whereas knee osteoarthritis, back pain, and skin fold mycosis (fungus) were more frequent in women. The prevalence (odd ratio, OR) of back pain and dyslipidemia did not increase with higher BMI and the prevalence of back pain did not increase with age. Overall discomfort related to overweight was rated as 61.3 +/- 19.9 mm on a 0 to 100-mm scale. Discomfort was less marked in men, decreased with age and increased with BMI (and with the consultations in the Paris area).

CONCLUSIONS:

This study shows the complexity of relationships between concomitant diseases, overall discomfort, BMI, age and sex (in the population of overweight and obese patients) and should improve the management of such patients and their complications.

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.

The Best of Bill Sardi

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Well, this is the headline naive investors are reading at Bloomberg News. 

According to sources cited by Bloomberg News, the $200 billion in missed stock gains occurred over the past 4 years as nearly $1 trillion has been re-directed toward safer investments — corporate bonds and US Treasury notes since 2009.

Individual investors in stocks only represent 15% of the trades, but they are the pawns in the Wall Street casino, and many of them know this.  Comments over this Bloomberg News piece were largely negative (more on this in a moment.)  So Bloomberg is not pulling wool over too many investors' eyes.

The Bloomberg News report says “Ben S. Bernanke’s zero percent interest-rate policy and the lowest inflation in almost 50 years have helped spur a 29% rally in debt securities since Obama’s first term began," citing Bank of America Merrill Lynch US Corporate & Government Index as a source.  

The problem is, the inflation numbers are phony.  Inflation is quoted at 2-3% when in fact it is 9-10% according to the way the US government used to measure inflation in 1980 and 1990 says John Williams of ShadowStats.com.  

So a 29% rally over 4 years weighed against 9-10% inflation year-over-year suggests a book gain but an actual loss in purchasing power.  Even Pimco, the world’s largest private bond fund, as well as CALPERS, the California pension fund, say investments must reach a 7%-10% target gain to produce a positive yield.  But the Wall Street houses can conjure up any numbers they please to induce investors to pour money down the rat hole that the US stock market has become.  

Certainly Bloomberg News knows about fast electronic trades, after-hour trades, and trades made by market makers to manipulate the market.  And stock investors always pull out and do some profit-taking before a stock reaches its peak.  So there are always profits that investors “missed out on.”

"Our biggest liability in the stock market has been the total destruction to confidence," James Paulsen, the chief investment strategist at Minneapolis-based Wells Capital Management.  

But, but, Mr. Paulsen, you certainly know the market is propped.  One commentator said: “the dollar and the equity markets are so ‘bubbled out,’ it’s a wonder they haven’t collapsed already.”  

Maybe Wall Street is trying to pump and dump before the crash.  ”Another tactic by the scummy shills at Bloomberg to suck in the rest of the sheeples again. The professionals have to unload as this 4-year bull is aging. The sheep have to be fattened before the slaughter,” said an online posting.

“People will never trust Wall Street again,” said another commenter.  Another said: “It’s better to have cash in your possessions with no interest than losing it all through the Wall St. thieves…. Goldman Sachs has a super computer in their basement to monitor and manipulate all trades…. to hell with Wall Street.”  

After all, $11 trillion in U.S. equity value was wiped out in the 2008 financial collapse.   How would reporters at Bloomberg News think anything else?

And those gains, as imaginary as they are, “are among institutional investors only,” said another blogger.

Said another: "So what if I missed out on my share of $200b.  That is like saying I missed out on $500m in the Power Ball."

Another added:  ”The market yearns for muppets, sacrificial lambs.  There’s never been a better time to buy, my real estate agent told me in 2007.”

Another blogger said: "Who can have confidence in public markets when people like Corzine can just take a billion and get away with it."

So one savvy investor called Bloomberg’s numbers into question and quoted the S&P stock index for the following years:

MAR 2000 S&P 1527 JUL 2002 S&P 797 OCT 2007 S&P 1565 MAR 2009 S&P 696 DEC 2012 S&P 1440

“Buy and hold…… hahaha,” he said.  ”Most people are just sick of the roller coaster ride.”

Of course, one commenter said the market IS rigged, but in favor of the investor. Well, kinda.

For the novice reader, recall now that the U.S. economy, the U.S. dollar and the entire stock market are walking a tight rope with Japan and China, who combined hold a tad less than $2 trillion of U.S. Treasury notes.  These are IOUs to Japan and China plus interest.  There is no foreseeable way the U.S. is going to pay back on these IOUs unless it sells off a large asset like Alaska.

So Senator Tom Coburn, in his book entitled Debt Bomb, predicts a day in 2014 (or sooner) when Japan decides to sell off some of its U.S. Treasury bills at a discount, followed by Singapore and other countries, which results in the value of the U.S. dollar crashing. The stock market would crash on that day in Senator Coburn's scenario, and I assume he has inside information from scenarios drafted by the CIA.

Japanese pension funds have already decided to direct some of their money into gold, meaning Japan is directing less money into U.S. Treasury notes. So a large move on the grand chessboard has already been made. The Japanese are getting queasy over the value of paper (IOUs) they are holding.

Keep your eye on the right ball. Not the S&P 500 but world events and the threat of a potential sell off of our IOUs at a discount by Japan or China. That is a financial doomsday that is out of our control. The U.S. can coerce, threaten trade tariffs, but that would all be after the fact. The U.S. economy is teetering towards a collapse that would drag the whole world into an irretrievable morass.

There are no fundamental changes that address the causes of this collapse — fiat money (unrelenting printing of money), debt-based money, fractional banking, lack of a gold standard, miniscule reserves, and phony financial, employment and inflation reports. All that has been done is to paper-over the collapse of modern financial institutions and the sovereign nations that validate them.

The financial elites are just buying time. They know this. That is why drones are beginning to fly over America, why the possession of guns is being demonized, why government is eavesdropping on all e-mails in what it now calls "pre-crime" prevention, and why local police forces are being militarized.

I don't blame Federal Reserve Bank chairman Ben Bernanke for putting a smug face on the crisis and for propping the stock market, which is a bellwether for the economy. That is his job. But we don't have to believe him. And shame on the news media for its complicity in creating a false financial reality and not calling the Federal Reserve on its destructive policies. With near-zero interest rates on savings accounts, savers will see trillions lost as inflation eats away their nest eggs.

The stock market is a sideshow. You are likely late in preparing for the largest financial collapse in the history of the world. Cash in hand, acquisition of U.S. gold and silver coins, knowledge of how to grow food, bake bread, self-treat illness, is what you need to be directing your mind on today.

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.

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Recently by Bill Sardi: If Debt Limit Is Abolished, What Will Happen to the Price of Gold?

A report in the New York Times accuses Big Pharma of rigging the ineffectiveness of cheaper blood thinners like aspirin to covertly coerce doctors into prescribing more expensive pills like Plavix and Warfarin (coumadin).

The New York Times report emanates from a study published in Circulation, a journal of The American Heart Association, which found the problem of aspirin resistance, estimated to affect 5-40% of aspirin users, is not physiological resistance at all but rather ineffectiveness caused by the enteric coating of the aspirin pills.

The researchers who made this discovery covered for the drug company by calling the problem "An Unintended Consequence of Enteric Coating Aspirin." But the New York Times article said "some prominent doctors say that the prevalence of the condition has been exaggerated by companies and drug makers with a commercial interest in proving that aspirin — a relatively iinexpensive, over-the-counter drug whose heart benefits have been known since the 1950s — does not always work."

In the first phase of the study researchers gave plain aspirin to 40 subjects and found no aspirin resistance. Then in a second phase of the study 360 subjects received coated aspirin tablets, said to be "safer" because the coating protects against bleeding gastric ulcers which can have mortal consequences for elderly patients, and 108 of them were resistant up to 8 hours after taking aspirin. A third phase of the study found no cases of aspirin resistance among 400 subjects.

Cardiologists dismissed the findings of the report saying eventually the aspirin worked to prevent blood clots over time. But patients at risk for a heart attack weren’t protected from clots that can form in coronary arteries in the first hours after taking aspirin.

A check on the history of this problem reveals enteric coating as a possible cause of aspirin resistance was first posed in the medical literature in 2008. Two years earlier researchers reported enteric coating appeared to reduce the effectiveness of aspirin, but didn’t relate this to aspirin resistance.

A cursory investigation shows that two widely touted prescription blood thinners, Plavix and Warfarin (coumadin), sell for around 96-cents and 59-cents per tablet while enteric-coated aspirin tablets run around 4-cents apiece. © 2012 Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc. Not for posting on other websites.

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.

The Best of Bill Sardi

Recently by Bill Sardi: The Coming Economic Dictatorship

What happens to the price of gold if the US elects to abolish a debt limit?

An article in The Atlantic says the debt limit is a dead weight on the reigning political party. The Atlantic article cites a proposal by Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, to give the President power to raise the debt ceiling arbitrarily unless over-ridden by a 2/3rds vote by Congress.

Good God, the government credit card would be in the hands of a monarch and Congress would cower at opposing him at the risk of losing votes. If anyone thought fiscal irresponsibility is rampant today, try tomorrow when the President can call his own spending (un)limit. This disturbingly alters the balance of powers outlined in The Constitution.

Even Republicans go along with the idea. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) suggested in July 2011 to permit the president to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling unless Congress affirmatively voted to stop him. And even if Congress did vote to stop him, the president could veto, and then Congress could overturn his veto.

But hey, Moody's, the credit rating giant, has warned "If negotiations fail to produce policies that lead to debt stabilization and ultimately reduction, then we expect to lower the US credit rating, from Aaa probably to Aa1." That would move the US credit rating from "prime" to "high grade." That means interest rates on debt would have to rise, and America is carrying $16 trillion of accumulated debt. Moody's recently stripped France of its Aaa rating to a Aa1 downgrade.

A recent article cites The Gold Council to say, that since 2000 increases in the U.S. debt have been accompanied by increases in the price of gold.

The spot price for gold is ~$1715/oz. at this current moment. Given the current political hijinks, a veteran metals analyst says his target price for gold in 2012 in $1920. Reuters speculates gold will rise above $2000/oz. in 2013. Other sources say gold could rise above $2700/oz. by 2014. Given that second-term Presidents have a penchant for going overboard on spending, another source predicts gold could soar above $3500/oz. by the end of 2013.

Gold would have predictably risen to unprecedented heights if documented manipulation had not occurred.

Don't think that untethering the Federal budget from a debt limit wouldn't have consequences internationally. What foreign country would have any confidence that the IOUs (US Treasury Notes) they now hold will ever be paid back?

Japan and China hold over $2 trillion of these IOUs. In Senator Tom Coburn's book DEBT BOMB he predicts a day in 2014 when Japan recognizes it is holding worthless IOUs and sells off US Treasury Notes, causing the US dollar to plummet in value. It sounds like politicians are hastening that day along.

If you decide to run for the hills when all this occurs, don't forget your gold mining kit and maybe a sluice box.

Another survival tip: placing a lighted match to your paper money is a good way to start a campfire. Just think, paper money could be used as kindling and a renewable source of "green" energy .

Of course, if you use dollars as kindling you are subject to a $100 fine. Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code says "whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined not more than $100 or imprisoned not more than six months, or both." Of course it's OK for the government to destroy its purchasing power.

But just imagine, print money endlessly and you could now afford to use US dollars to play the Monopoly board game in place of the play money . And hey, get this, a nickel currently costs the US Mint 11-cents to make, whereas the value of the US dollar has shrunk in purchasing power from $1.00 in 1913 to less than a nickel today!

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.

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Recently by Bill Sardi: Free Markets and Blindness

Ho, ho, Janet Daly, writing in the UK's Telegraph, predicts the acceleration of what is already underway — the plunge towards an economic dictatorship. And her biting article provoked over 250 British readers to respond.

Daly gets right to the point. She says: "No government in what used to be called u2018the free world' seems prepared to take the steps that can stop this inexorable decline. They are all busily telling their electorates that austerity is for other people (France), or that the piddling attempts they have made at it will solve the problem (Britain), or that taxing "the rich" will make it unnecessary for government to cut back its own spending (America).

Then Daly takes a bite out of the leg of liberals by saying: "Many on the Left will finally have got the economy of their dreams — or, rather, the one they have always believed in. At last, we will be living with that fixed, unchanging pie which must be divided up u2018fairly' if social justice is to be achieved."

Daly goes on to say: "Judgments will, of course, have to be made by the state since there will be no dynamic economic force outside of government to enter the equation. Wealth distribution will be the principal — virtually the only — significant function of political life. Is this Left-wing heaven," she asks?

Daly answers her own question, saying: "Well, not quite. The total absence of economic growth would mean that the limitations on that distribution would be so severe as to require draconian legal enforcement: rationing, limits on the amount of currency that can be taken abroad, import restrictions and the kinds of penalties for economic crimes (undercutting, or u2018black market' selling practices) which have been unknown in the West since the end of the Second World War."

Daly proceeds to say that austerity programs will not just be confined to limits on government spending but "genuine falls in the standard of living of most working people, caused not just by frozen wages and the collapse in the value of savings (due to repeated bouts of money-printing), but also by the shortages of goods that will result from lack of investment and business expansion, not to mention the absence of cheaper goods from abroad due to import controls." If true, Americans had better start stocking up on wine, coffee, bullets, vitamins, etc.

Daly bites again, saying: "It is just the logical conclusion of what will seem like enlightened social policy in a zero-growth society where hardship will need to be minimized by rigorously enforced equality. Then what? …. Uniform levels of poverty that are made necessary by dead economies — will spread throughout the West, and have to be contained by hard-fisted governments with or without democratic mandates."

Recall it was Winston Churchill who said: "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."

Daly says there is one last hope. "But reduced government spending accompanied by tax cuts (particularly on employment — what the Americans call "payroll taxes") could stimulate the growth of new wealth and begin a recovery. Most politicians on the Right understand this. They have about five minutes left to make the argument for it."

What is both enlightening and alarming are the responses to Daly's article by British readers of her column. Some are avowed socialists who are all too ready to belittle her message. Here are a couple of those comments, pointed at Daly:

Economics never was your strong point as this hopelessly inadequate piece suggests. Greece has spent the last five years proving austerity does not work. So what does Janet call for? Errrr, austerity everywhere.

Janet, as ever, offers us two choices both of which are barking mad. We are supposed to plump for the slightly less mad idea. Cutting government spending in a perma-slump is stupidity beyond belief. It is time the neo liberal dinosaurs got out of the way to let the new ideas in. Modern Money Theory leads the way. Austerity is not necessary and more and more people know this.

I've never quite understood those who oppose efforts to bring government spending under control. The only alternative to a balanced budget (spending limited by tax revenues) is the raising of taxes which represents wealth transfer not wealth creation, or the printing of money, which does not create wealth – it dilutes the value of money for all. It creates debt that can never be repaid.

While top-tier tax rates in the US have varied from ~35% to 91% in the past few decades, government revenue as a portion of the economy has remained relatively constant — about 7% to 9%. Tax increases do not lead to higher total income tax receipts.

Another camp that responded to Daly's article was against free-market capitalism. Here is a typical comment:

Janet, you have identified the crime, but not the culprit. It is free market capitalism that has led us to where we are, specifically the economic policies of Friedman and Hayek gradually introduced following the upheaval caused by the oil crisis in the 1970s….. The free market has failed.

But does one call free market capitalism banks and businesses that are mismanaged and not allowed to fail? Is free-market capitalism exemplified by government-guaranteed loans to ventures like Solyndra? Is free market capitalism represented by Congress, which shuns cheaper alternative energy sources like natural gas, in favor of petroleum? All the US need do is pass proposed legislation that would offer tax breaks for those who would create natural gas filling stations and this would represent a trillion-dollar fix to the American economy. No, America is not a free market country. It is dominated by special interests that have bought off Congress in what has morphed into crony capitalism to outright fascism.

Another blogger rails against capitalism, but correctly fingers corrupt capitalism:

How can the west thrive, when its corrupt political elite (and their friends in big business), across these past 30 years, have handed all our manufacturing jobs to Asia. Western companies make far more profit, by making their plasma and LED televisions in Korea, for peanuts, and then selling them for big bucks in the west. It’s totally immoral, on every level….. and to make matters worse, our big businesses will often avoid paying British taxes, by basing their headquarters in some tax haven. Janet Daley needs to address corrupt capitalism, and stop pretending that socialism is to blame.

Again, I've never quite understood the criticism of globalization, as if it could have been avoided. Some economy in the world was going to outsource its labor to Asia and it might as well have been America and Great Britain before it was some other country. Buying cheaper goods has spawned the US consumer economy. Buying an item for $1 from China and selling it at $10 retail in the US is $9 value added.

While Ralph Nader is urging the President to put a stop to "corporate welfare," if the US raises tax on corporate profits it will simply doom American business to failure. Countries that tax less corporate profits less than the US will prevail. Why do you think Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon were all spawned in America? (Answer: because of a more favorable business environment.) If the US doesn't provide ta breaks for its farms and industries, other countries will. America has to remain competitive.

Some bloggers got it right, like this one:

This
state capitalist system that we’ve been laboring under for the past 80 to 90
years has caused nothing but misery for many. It has destroyed our economy and
monetary system; it has destroyed the real entrepreneurial small business that
provided real jobs, and as a consequence has led to a collapse in social
mobility and jeopardized the chance of the individual improving their situation.

Of course, there would be those who advocate more taxes, like a value-added tax (VAT) that this blogger proposes.

Of course all tax raised by VAT IS the way to go… we the consumers pay all the tax income, corporation, value added, it would solve the problem of companies paying tax abroad.

The VAT would be like what Japan unofficially had for decades. All retail products were distributed through layers of vendors who marked up goods at each level. You couldn't afford to buy clothing, kitchen utensils, everyday things. Japan had full employment under this system but a very poor consumer economy. When they allowed consumer goods to be sold without having to go through layers of distributor markups, consumer spending rose but with it came a modicum of unemployment.

Another Daly critic chimes in:

De-regulated capitalism implodes because of the greed of bankers and suddenly it’s all the fault of socialism (where, let me see)?

There is some truth spoken here, but "de-regulated" simply means allowed to break laws. There are existing laws that could have jailed every banker at the too-big-to-fail banks, and money-laundering and imprudent lending practices would be examples.

That the masses have been lured by welfare to gain votes, at the cost of freedom and liberty, is the wealth re-distribution game that is currently being practiced. There is little incentive to work when unemployment benefits are extended for 2 years and welfare in the form of rent subsidy, food stamps and Medicaid is handed out willy-nilly.

According to Judicial Watch, the government spent enough on welfare last year to cut a check for nearly $60,000 for each impoverished household it provided with benefits. The problem is that this welfare money is not coming from the rich. One blogger correctly explained where the welfare money is coming from:

Janet, someone told the masses that they could get rich people’s money. That someone lied. They are TAKING the money from the MIDDLE class. Always.

Or as another blogger said it:

Left and right politics has supported the two pillars of state capitalism; big business and big government. They’re not going to change (at least not without a fight). The system they have created has stripped us of our liberty, our wealth, and our right to determine our own lives. It’s time the system was put out of our misery!

Yep, we have the elites who can buy off government to protect their wealth, and the poor who receive what amounts to government bribes for votes, leaving middle-class working family in between. After the results of the last election, I think middle-class Americans are beginning to realize they have been left holding the empty bag. We have a President who protects those at the top and the bottom. God help you if you are in between.

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.

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Recently by Bill Sardi: Researchers Discover the Lean Body Hormone

Five years ago digital images of the human retina were sent to my office computer. I opened the file and saw something that had not been seen previously in modern medicine.

There were two images. The first image showed fluid accumulation at the back of the eye that had distorted vision as well as invasion by new abnormal blood vessels that threatened to permanently and irreversibly rob a patient of their vision. Lack of oxygen delivery to the back of the eye is what triggers the development of these invasive new blood vessels.

The second digital image was of the same eye taken only a few days later. The fluid leakage and swelling was gone. The retinal architecture was restored. The abnormal blood vessels had receded. More importantly, the patient's vision, which was near legal blindness in the first image, had improved to the point where the patient could almost pass a driver's license vision test.

This kind of remarkable turn-around in an elderly patient's vision is now made possible via injection of medicine that inhibits the development of abnormal blood vessels at the back of the eyes. But what made history is that these images on my computer were the result of an oral nutriceutical, Longevinex®, which I formulated. I now manage the company that makes that pill.

I had occasion to visit the eye center that sent me the images. The eye doctors there spoke of expanding a study to include more patients. Then suddenly, mum was the word. Eye doctors said they would not proceed nor inform the world that there was an option to needles having to be jabbed into the eyes.

Since that time the medical literature reveals the current drug used to treat this eye condition, called wet macular degeneration, doesn't work all the time. An estimated 1 in 6 treated-patients progress to registered blindness. In the past 5 years an estimated 150,000 patients have progressed to permanent and irreversible legal blindness that may have been spared this fate if they had known about Longevinex®.

Later doctors at the Veterans Health Center in North Chicago, Illinois picked up the ball and decided to see if Longevinex® could rescue the sight of patients who failed medical therapy and had no other options available. Most of these are patients in their eighth decade of life. In all instances, a non-FDA approved drug would be prohibited from being used. But Dr. Stuart Richer OD, PhD, and colleagues, were able to suggest patients acquire this nutriceutical on their own and use Longevinex® under existing "compassionate care protocols."

Earlier this year Dr. Richer reported on the first 17 Longevinex®-treated cases at a major eye research meeting. Sixteen of the first 17 Longevinex®-treated patients experienced measurable visual improvement, some experiencing rapid and dramatic restoration of functional vision (vision good enough to drive a car, thread a needle, etc.). Strikingly, not one ophthalmologist expressed interest in Longevinex®. One optometrist did call the manufacturer. There was no excitement over this scientific achievement because it would take money out of eye physicians' hands. Ophthalmologists are rewarded handsomely by Medicare to inject medicine into the eyes of these patients, making hundreds of dollars to inject medicine every 4 to 6 weeks.

The injectable drug currently used to treat wet macular degeneration costs $2000 and Medicare pays about $1624 of that. For comparison, Longevinex® costs ~$27/month. The FDA-approved drug is not much different than a prior version that costs just $50 per dose and that, according to a recent study, works equally well. The same manufacturer makes both drugs and only applied to the FDA for approval of the most expensive version for use among patients with wet macular degeneration. This represents a gouging of Medicare funds of unprecedented proportions.

Prior to approval of the $2000 version of this drug, the $50-version of this drug was being used on an off-label claim that it effectively treated this eye condition. Suddenly after many thousands of successful injections of the $50 drug, with the approval of the $2000 version, eye infections began to be reported among patients receiving the more economical drug. That is because 1-milligram doses of the $50 drug have to be withdrawn by syringe from a 300-milligram vial. There is a chance for contamination. So eye physicians have almost been forced to use the more expensive drug for fear of infection. Some eye physicians still inject the more economical drug for patients who have no insurance coverage.

Then recently a news reporter here in Las Vegas, where Longevinex® has its shipping headquarters, got wind of the story. Emmy-Award winning KLAS (CBS affiliate) reporter George Knapp began to investigate. His gripping two-part TV report can be viewed here. The report alleges modern medicine hid this scientific development out of its own greed.

Simultaneously my company, Longevinex,® has submitted a petition to the Food & Drug Administration to allow it to proceed with a human clinical trial without having to file an Investigational New Drug application. The petition claims it would take 2-years to determine if Longevinex® is safe and effective and cost $4.5 million to conduct that study. During that time an estimated 60,000 more senior Americans will progress to registered blindness.

The petition also pleads for the FDA to drop its customary requirement that Longevinex® be compared against an inactive placebo pill. That would be like having to prove parachutes work by having half of the jumpers wear no chute at all. Surely the placebo users would progress to blindness. Such a study would be unethical. Longevinex® should be compared against existing therapy, the failed injectable drug, which is a higher bar to jump over.

The question now is – how will the FDA respond? If it reacts the way it has in the past, it will issue a bulletin warning patients away from unproven dietary supplements. But Longevinex® is the only hope for thousands of patients. If it does not pose a risk for side effect, what harm could come from using it? Longevinex® has been used in relatively safety by thousands of consumers over a period of 8 years, making it safer than many FDA-approved drugs on their first day of use. Longevinex® has even conducted animal and human toxicity testing, something rare for a dietary supplement.

And recall, the $50-injectable drug was used and still is used as an unapproved drug. So, in the face of so many patients losing their sight, why wouldn't the FDA grant provisional approval for a non-FDA approved nutriceutical given so many senior Americans will drift into permanent and irreversible blindness otherwise?

Longevinex® is not applying for general use for patients with wet macular degeneration. It is petitioning for use among the estimated 30,000 patients who have failed the current standard of care — injectable drugs.

For far too long modern medicine has dictated what patients will receive. In this case, it's possible a less problematic and more economical alternative exists, at least for those who have failed injectable drug treatment or who don't want a needle jabbed into their eyes. Thanks to the news media, patients are learning of an alternative. As a manufacturer, we cannot make any claim that a dietary supplement prevents, treats or cures any disease. But under the 1st amendment to the Constitution, truth becomes known. Stay tuned for further developments. Already, in the first day after the news report, pretender products are sprouting up online to misleadingly portray their product as the one shown on a TV news report without any conscience over whether their product is effective. That will surely provoke a response from the FDA.

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.

The Best of Bill Sardi

Recently by Bill Sardi: 2012 Presidential Election: IsAmerica Boxing Itself Into aCorner?

Since its initial discovery in 2000 by researchers in Japan, the hormone known as fibroblast growth factor-21 (FGF21) has intrigued biologists and endocrinologists. Mouse FGF21 is highly identical to human FGF21, making it useful for laboratory comparison.

It didn't take long for investigators to realize FGF21 is a "novel therapeutic agent for human metabolism" in the regulation of sugar utilization, particularly in fat cells (adipocytes) in the liver. Therapeutic provision of FGF21 to laboratory mice reduces blood sugar levels and these animals are resistant to obesity. And FGF21 does not induce hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), cancer or weight gain at any tested dose in diabetic or healthy animals. Biologists were beginning to think of it as an ideal hormone/drug to treat diabetes.

The biological activity exhibited by FGF21 was found to be dependent upon a gene called Klotho that makes beta-klotho protein that in turn increases the ability of cell receptors for FGF21 to direct its beneficial effects upon fat cells in particular.

Researchers also discovered that FGF21 interplays with a metabolic pathway called PPAR (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor) that aids in the transport of sugar to fat cells and the burning of fat. Since an energy supply is essential for life to be maintained, researchers were elated to find that FGF21 helps to maintain energy in living cells during starvation or fasting. This makes FGF21 a necessary hormone to facilitate hibernation in animals since they obviously don't consume food during that time.

How it works

During periods of fasting, starvation or hibernation, cells must still produce energy or die. When food is withheld from animals for 12 hours or longer, liver cells produce FGF21. Researchers found that FGF21 switches the body to a fat-burning mode and allows the body to fuel itself with stored fat during times of food deprivation. FGF21 mobilizes lipids from fat cells and directs the liver to transform those energy-rich molecules to circulate throughout the body. Just the provision of FGF21 by itself produces the same biological responses as fasting without having to deprive calories.

One researcher says FGF21 has "almost magical properties" as it improves insulin efficiency, lowers circulating levels of cholesterol and trigylcerides and averts age-related weight gain.

Biologists were not only beginning to think FGF21 is a remedy for diabetes, but it could also prevent obesity after it was found that administration of FGF21 to laboratory mice resulted in a 20% reduction in weight.

A human population study finds that elevated blood serum levels of FGF21 are associated with abnormal blood sugar metabolism and insulin resistance seen among patients with metabolic disease (diabesity). However, it should not be misconstrued that increased amounts of FGF21 induce metabolic disease. It just means this defensive hormone is increased as metabolism goes haywire.

Interest in FGF21 by drug companies ensued as pharmacologists began to make FGF21 look-alike molecules (analogs) in hopes of producing "superior metabolic" action. FGF21 could become the most advanced weapon against diet-induced diseases ever imagined.

Is FGF21 an anti-aging agent?

But then investigators gleefully found that FGF21 also inhibits growth hormone. That would also place FGF21 in a class of potential anti-aging molecules. Of interest, vitamin D increases Klotho protein to regulate calcium and phosphate in the body and thus also serves as an anti-aging agent. FGF21 requires klotho protein to function. Two known anti-aging agents were found to work in tandem.

These discoveries were very tantalizing for researchers. They didn't want to jump to conclusions. They needed a lifespan study. Laboratory mice live about 12-18 months.

So researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas launched a study to determine if in fact FGF21 will prolong the life of laboratory mice. Their efforts exceeded expectation. But their investigation also wiped the biological drawing board clean and forced biologists to re-think everything they have learned in the past decade.

Remarkably, genetically altering laboratory mice so they produce about 5-10 times more FGF2 during fasting resulted in a striking increase in lifespan without reducing food intake. These super-mice lived about 36% longer than normal mice and astoundingly better than 30% of the female mice in the study were still alive at 44 months of age when the study was finalized. The risk of death was reduced by 65% in male animals, 88% in females.

These animals apparently burned away their fat much more efficiently. The revved-up FGF21 mice were leaner than normal mice even though they ate about the same amount of food.

Surprising pathway

But all this was accomplished without activating other well-known longevity pathways (sirtuin genes, AMP kinase, mTOR and NAD+). Unexpectedly, calorie restriction, known to double the lifespan of laboratory animals by cutting caloric intake in half, did not trigger FGF21 hormone production.

These genetically altered mice are smaller than normal mice as they produce less growth factor (insulin-like growth factor 1 or IGF1). While life-prolonging long-term calorie restriction significantly alters 831 genes in laboratory mice, FGF21-producing mice achieved super-longevity by altering only a small number of genes (33).

Wow, it first appeared humanity was on the cusp of a giant breakthrough that could promote health and prolong life beyond any prior imagined mechanism. But there was one drawback. These FGF21 super-mice developed weak bones. Bone loss in these animals "may limit its utility as a therapeutic agent" the researchers disappointingly disclose.

Take-home message

So what is the take-home message of this discovery? What can modern longevity-seeking humans do to activate FGF21?

Fasting (breakfast skipping)

1. One life-prolonging practice might be to periodically fast. A 12-hour fast activates FGF21 which then begins to increase fat burning. There are some people who never eat breakfast, to prolong their daily fasting period. While most dieticians say skipping breakfast leads to overeating and obesity, almost all of the studies on this topic have been performed among growing children. Children are growing, not aging, and certainly don't fit into the category of middle-agers who are experiencing mid-body weight gain.

A study of over 5800 men reveals that breakfast skipping modestly contributes to weight gain. A small study shows two-day a week fasting among adult males reduces weight.

Limitation of phosphorus

2. Another approach might be to limit phosphorus in the diet. That is because the aforementioned klotho protein limits excessive over-calcification and phosphorus in the human body.

To understand the relevance of phosphorus limitation to aging an understanding of the klotho gene is required.

There is evidence that adults who have lower levels of klotho protein in their blood circulation have an increased risk of death. Since FGF21 requires klotho protein to work, investigation into mechanisms of klotho formation may be advantageous. Mice that are bred to produce more klotho protein live about 17.4% longer, not quite as striking as FGF21 itself, but still would add more than a decade to humans if animal research has application in humans.

In explaining how klotho works, researchers reveal that dietary phosphate restriction reverses aging in laboratory mice bred to not produce klotho protein. There is genetic and dietary evidence that phosphate toxicity accelerates aging. When mice are bred so as not to produce klotho protein and fed a high phosphate diet, signs of premature aging appear.

Researchers in Japan are concerned about increasing amounts of dietary phosphorus which may accelerate aging. Restriction of phosphorus and calcium is advised. House flies (Drosophila melanogaster), used in longevity experiments, age prematurely when provided with a high phosphorus diet.

Examine the bar charts provided below. They provide convincing evidence that diets high in phosphorus have deleterious effects upon human health.

Graphics from: Tonelli M, et al: Relation between serum phosphate level and cardiovascular event rate in people with coronary disease.  Circulation 2005; 112: 2627-33. Reproduced with the permission of Wolters Kluwer Health

Many fast foods have phosphate additives. Excessive phosphorus should be considered a health risk. Researchers suggest no more than 1000 milligrams of phosphorus per day.

One of the confusing aspects of understanding phosphorus in the diet is that plant foods provide a natural calcium and phosphorus balancing agent called phytate (inositol hexaphosphate or IP6) provided in plant foods which inhibits the digestion of these minerals significantly (from ~80% to ~20%0. It is the inorganic phosphorus in food additives, prevalent in fast foods, that is the culprit here. Supplemental IP6 is available as an extract from rice bran and should be considered a powerful anti-aging substance via its ability to calcifications and phosphorus overload.

Researchers in Japan report on a novel way to increase FGF21 hormone via inhalation of hydrogen gas or consumption of hydrogen-fortified drinking water. Mice given hydrogen water lost excessive weight experienced a decline in blood sugar, insulin and triglycerides, all which was correlated with an increase in FGF21. For the really serious pursuers of longevity, on the commercial side there is even a hydrogen drinking water produced in Malaysia that is touted for its health benefits (though no evidence is provided this beverage has any health benefits).

Other ways to increase FGF21 would be to take the anti-diabetic drug metformin which stimulates FGF21 in human liver cells (requires a doctor's prescription). Physical exercise has also been shown to increase FGF21 in young women.

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.

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Recently by Bill Sardi: Nah, The Bureau of Labor Statistics Wouldn't Fudge Unemployment Numbers Right Before a Presidential Election, WouldThey?

On paper, how can anyone say Mr. Obama's Presidency is a failure? Come on, here is the heroic President who gave orders to shoot-to-kill the towel-headed terrorist Osama bin Laden, who passed "Obamacare," who brought us (via bailout money) "the Obama-car," who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Four years ago rhetoric of "change" resonated so fully in the American population that all it took was a teleprompter-reading candidate to win. But in 2012 he has failed to create the same fervor as he did in the 2008 election.

Then Mr. Obama had a voodoo doll in GW Bush to stick needles in. He ran a successful campaign by appealing to an American population that was running away from its former President. But can he, or any subsequent President for that matter, ever run a successful campaign based upon his own record?

Which future President is going to say he has raised the American economy totally out of its $16 trillion of accumulated debt or its more than $200 trillion of future unfunded obligations for Medicare and Social Security?

Maybe some autocratic President can issue an Executive Order that all US companies cease manufacturing overseas and bring jobs back home, but then the President would have to deal with massive unrest and starvation in China and rising prices on goods at home (U.S. Gross Domestic Product is driven largely by household purchases. Bloomberg News reports consumer spending is now 70% of the nation's GDP). Fixing one problem creates another.

Raise interest rates on borrowed money so that interest on saved money rises and encourages more Americans to save and you end up having to pay higher interest rates on home purchases and the real estate market (what's left of it) crashes again.

Rigging numbers to get re-elected

The only way the incumbent President has held office today and hasn't been forced to resign or face impeachment is the news media is covering for a failed economy. When the nation's central bank, The Federal Reserve that issues money to banks, says the target rate of inflation is 2.2%, somehow that becomes the real rate of inflation. Economist John Williams shows the real rate of inflation is more like 9.3% (ShadowStats.com).

Pitting the masses against the classes redux

In 1980 President Jimmy Carter faced 21% interest rates on borrowed money, 13% inflation and zero economic growth. His strategy for re-election was to characterize Ronald Reagan as a tool of the rich (sound familiar?). Ronald Reagan won in a landslide with 489 electoral votes that year. Political commentator Pat Buchanan has said: "Looking back, what else could Carter do? Looking forward, what else can Barack Obama do?"

Polarized political reporting

The problem with election reporting today is that news services have polarized as much as voters have. You can fully anticipate The Huffington Post, Slate (issued the video of Romney saying 47% of the vote is already bought and paid for by welfare payments), Mother Jones, National Public Radio, and other liberal news sources to slant electoral vote projections towards the incumbent. These news sources and others defended the false unemployment numbers issued recently by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, figures that would have surely doomed Mr. Obama's re-election. Again, John Williams at ShadowStats.com shows real unemployment at ~22%.

Likewise, anticipate conservative news sources like Newsmax, FoxNews, Forbes.com, to say Obama's 4 years have been a "failed Presidency."

Undecided voters might get a more accurate picture of Mr. Obama's failings from overseas news sources. For example, the UK's Guardian says "Barack Obama's presidency u2018has not helped cause of black people in US'." But the African American vote is likely to stick with Mr. Obama as their only hope.

Bob Woodward, whose reports at The Washington Post brought down a Presidency (Richard Nixon and Watergate), has written a whole book on Mr. Obama's failings. Entitled The Price of Politics, Woodward's book is biting. He calls Mr. Obama "arrogant, aloof and hyper-partisan."

President predicted 1-term

In 2009 Barack Obama predicted his own one-term Presidency. USA Today quotes President Obama as saying he would be looking at a “one-term proposition” if the economy didn’t turn around during his first term.

Electoral vote projections tell all

In an attempt to get away from the slanted news reports, one might analyze the various electoral vote predictions. Regardless of the political slant of their sources, they are telling.

Projected Electoral Votes: Presidency 270 electoral votes needed to win

Electoral Projection

Mr. Obama

Mr. Romney

RealClearPolitics (Oct. 14)

201

191

RealClearPolitics (Sept. 27)

265

191

Huffington Post (Oct. 14)

253

206

CNN (Oct. 14)

237

191

Election Projection (Oct. 13)

294

244

Unskewed Politics (Sept. 21)

221

301

Now let's look at how many electoral votes Mr. Obama garnered in the 2008 election.

Electoral votes 2008 Final

365

173 McCain

Do any of the electoral vote projections in 2012 approach Mr. Obama's 365 in 2008?

If electoral votes are an indicator of whether a newly-elected President has a public mandate to lead, Mr. Obama is in a world of hurt. He cannot lead a nation so divided this way. The answer to the question of whether Mr. Obama's first term is a failed Presidency is "yes" based upon any electoral vote projection you can find.

The end result: masses against classes?

This election is becoming memorable for pitting the masses (the so-called 47%) against the classes (the so-called 1%). A question arises. If Mr. Obama fails to win re-election, how will the masses take the loss? There is chatter that election results could cause massive civil unrest all over America. So who wins then?

America may be boxing itself into a corner.

Would the American public have rallied around a candidate who would have advocated an audit of The Federal Reserve and Ft. Knox's gold vaults? A candidate who would have cut military spending and pulled American troops out of Afghanistan and drones out of Pakistan and the torture chambers out of Guantanamo? Would Americans on both sides of the political spectrum have backed a candidate who would have pushed for currency reform and gold-backed money, and because of gold-backed money would have put a leash on bankers who have stretched credit and reserve ratios beyond a prudent point? And with a true mandate from the public would cancel every prior executive order issued by the White House, most which limit freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution. And this candidate would have likely demanded timely tax reform so that even the Secretary of the Treasury would know how to fill out his tax forms. I believe this candidate could have united the country.

That candidate was not given an opportunity to even present his platform of real change at the Republican Party national convention. And now America may pay a bitter price for that mistake.

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.

The Best of Bill Sardi

Recently by Bill Sardi: What May Become the World's First Proven Cancer Preventive (and Something Bigger) Ignored by BigPharma

It's a fact, you're not going to get re-elected if unemployment rates are high. So just fudge the numbers and re-correct them at a later date (Jan. 2013) which the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) typically does on a regular basis.

The latest new jobs numbers, this time for September '12, reflects what America is becoming — a country that is fooling itself with phony numbers that go unchallenged by the nation's news press. For example, 2.2% is the target rate of inflation published by the nation's central bank — The Federal Reserve. But the actual rate of inflation is more like 9.3% (ShadowStats.com).

With President Obama reeling backwards from the fresh thrashing in the first televised Presidential debate of the campaign, the Bureau of Labor Statistics stepped up to the plate and released a made-to-order report that says the unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly from 8.1 to 7.8%.

David Leonhart and Mark Lander, writing at a New York Times blog, said without questioning: "Jobs Report Brings Unexpected Good News for Obama." CNN also punted and republished the government numbers without question, saying "Unemployment rate tumbles" in their headline story.  The Washington Post also sang the same wrong song.

PBS, which depends upon federal government funding, said: "A rare banner day on the jobs front, at least at first glance. The official unemployment rate dropped below 8 percent to 7.8…"

Call the nay-sayers "conspiracy theorists"

Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, former General Electric CEO, took the brunt of the left-wing critics for questioning the BLS new jobs numbers. After the BLS announced that the unemployment rate fell in September to 7.8 percent, the lowest level since January 2009, Welch tweeted: “Unbelievable jobs numbers… these Chicago guys will do anything… can’t debate so change numbers.”

Dan Eggen writing for the Washington Post said: "Welch is getting a lot of attention for an unfounded accusation that the Obama administration somehow cooked the positive jobs numbers issued Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics." Eggen then went on to point a finger at the last President who attempted to fudge employment numbers — a Republican (Richard M. Nixon). Talk about partisan political reporting.

No phony numbers here

The Christian Science Monitor reported that Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis "appeared on CNBC to refute allegations that any massaging of the data had occurred." She said: "You know I am insulted when I hear that because we have a very professional civil service organization where you have top economists working” at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), she said. "It is really ludicrous to hear that kind of statement."

Steve Haugen, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "flatly dismissed the idea that there was any way the White House or Obama campaign could have had a hand in how the numbers turned out," said a CBS News report. "The data are not manipulated for political reasons. I’ve been involved in the process myself for almost three decades. There’s never been any political manipulation of the data, period,” Haugen told CBSNews.com.

Of course, the liberal Huffington Post went all out in its defense of the Obama Administration jobs numbers in its headline report entitled: "Here’s Why The Jobs Report Conspiracy Theory Is Baseless."

The HuffPost report said:

"Some conservatives have accused the Bureau of Labor Statistics of cooking the September jobs report numbers to help Obama. But given how the government collects and reports the monthly data, those claims are probably baseless.

But it just isn’t so. The monthly jobs numbers are put together by career government analysts, using long-established statistical methods that are shielded from political influence. Until recently, the BLS was run by an appointee from the Bush administration, and it currently has no political appointees.

"…..The short story is that the job truthers’ claims are baseless. No conspiracy here."

What is the target number for new jobs?

In January of 2012 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported that 20 million new jobs will be needed over next decade. That amounts to 166,666 per month, assuming more job losses don't raise that figure.

Marc Chandler, writing at BusinessInsider.com says: "The US needs to create around 170-200k net new jobs a month to drive the unemployment rate toward 7%.

Ezra Klein, citing the Hamilton Project (Brookings Institute), wrote in January 2012 at the Washington Post, said adding 200,000 jobs per month it would take till 2024 for the labor market to recover.

Doublespeak

The news media as well as the President himself are guilty of doublespeak here.

Nate Silver, writing a headline report entitled "Obama's Magic Number? 150,000 Jobs Per Month" at a New York Times blog in Feb of 2012, said: "Here's a spoiler: reports that say more than 150,000 jobs have been created can generally be interpreted as good news for Mr. Obama. Reports that come in at under 150,000 jobs could put him on a trajectory toward defeat."

Republican Senator John Thune said: "today’s job figures are well below the 250,000 to 500,000 jobs per month that Vice President Biden forecast (in April of 2010)."

Here is a video clip of President Obama taking credit for 290,000 new jobs in April of 2010 (go to 0:46 minute point). He went on to say in that taped speech that: "While (those numbers are) welcome, we have a lot of work to do." The September u201812 gain in new jobs was miserable 114,000. How do you take credit for 290,000 new jobs and then think 114,000 new jobs over two years later will buoy you to re-election?

Peter Morici, writing at TheStreet.com, says: "In the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, nearly the entire reduction in unemployment from its 10% peak in October 2009 has been accomplished through a significant drop in the percentage of adults participating in the labor force – either working or looking for work. Were the adult participation the same today, the unemployment rate would be 9.8%. The most effective jobs program appears to be to convince working-aged adults they don’t need a job."

Matthew Yglesias, writing at Slate.com, says the "BLS reports today that the economy added 114,000 new jobs (with, I remind you, a +/- 100,000 confidence interval) in September." What was that margin of error again?

Authoritative explanation of how the jobs numbers were contrived

Economist John Williams of ShadowStats.com in his most recent October 5, 2012 commentary #473 surmises how the BLS produced "deliberately-inconsistent numbers" regarding new jobs.

Williams has consistently reported the Federal Government fudges numbers that measure the economy and jobs. While the BLS says the unemployment number is 7.8% for Sept. '12, ShadowStats says it is really 22.8%. I'll let Mr. John Williams do the rest of the talking here:

"The August-to-September change in the headline unemployment rate almost certainly was not a 0.3% decline.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) knows the reported change in unemployment was wrong — other than by extreme coincidence — and it knows what consistent reporting actually showed.  Only politics prevents the BLS from releasing the correct number, whether the unemployment rate actually declined, held even, or rose as predicted by consensus forecasters.  The lack of transparency here in the data preparation allows for direct political manipulation.

The problem is that the BLS knowingly has been preparing the seasonally-adjusted headline unemployment numbers on an inconsistent and non-comparable basis for some time.  The September number was prepared using a different set of seasonal factors than was used in coming up with the August number.  The reporting difference can be large, when proper consistent month-to-month changes are used.

The BLS has the correct number and could publish it…. Now would be a particularly good time for the BLS to come clean on its unemployment estimates, even if the numbers "confuse" data users." 

Williams goes on to say:

"As has been discussed frequently, reporting of month-to-month changes in both payroll employment and the unemployment rate is of such poor quality that the headline labor data have become worthless as indicators of current economic activity.  Problems with seasonal-factor distortions — created by the economic collapse and exacerbated by the use of concurrent seasonal factors — have widened the likely margins of reporting error in the payroll survey to something beyond the usual +/- 129,000 jobs at the 95% confidence level (see Hyperinflation 2012), and the monthly headline unemployment numbers simply no longer are comparable on a month-to-month basis.

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.

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Recently by Bill Sardi: Your Money: Slip Sliding Away

It is not surprising to learn that Big Pharma has shown no interest in what may become the world's first proven cancer prevention pill. If big profits aren't promised, pharmaceutical companies predictably pass on such a development.

The pill is a relatively safe FDA-approved generic drug, prescribed millions of times to help control diabetes, and it costs maybe 10-cents a day. But what is surprising is that public health authorities appear to be remiss in announcing this breakthrough. They are the agency in society commissioned to address important public health issues such as this.

Data has been accumulating for 5 years now showing metformin (Glucophage), an anti-diabetic drug, dramatically reduces the risk for cancer and prolongs life among patients who are battling cancer.

Graphic: courtesy Oncotarget

The data does not solely involve experiments with laboratory mice that often don't translate to humans. The data involves human studies.

Remember the big to-do that the New York Times created in 1998 over a cancer drug that a Nobel Prize winner said would "cure cancer in two years?" (That quotation was later denied.) On the day that news story was released the stock price soared for the company making the developmental drug then said to cure cancer. But for metformin, a drug first approved by the FDA in 1958, there is little fanfare. Its patent expired years ago and it is a generic drug with low profitability. A quick check on Google shows just six news outlets online are distributing the story. Of the 7 billion people on the planet, how many will learn of this?

If this were some potential new blockbuster drug, the National Institutes of Health would be grandstanding it in a press release and even a press conference. Instead it is a news agency – in this instance Bloomberg News – who is independently breaking the story (let's hear it for a free press). Bloomberg reporters quote a researcher who says drug companies passed up sponsorship of studies involving metformin and cancer when they realized their patents would expire before the research study was completed.

Slow progress

Frustratingly, science is moving too slowly towards adoption of such a pill. It wants to conduct another decade of research before drawing any conclusions. A number of large long-term studies are underway but not scheduled to report any data till 2016-2017.

Cancer patients haven't ten years to wait. Whether oncologists begin to prescribe it is another question. It isn't being heralded in oncology journals. The American Cancer Society website is ignoring this breakthrough as well.

How convincing is the evidence? Very.

Just how convincing is the currently available evidence? First, diabetics have a much higher incidence of cancer. So it should not be surprising that an anti-diabetic drug quells cancer.

Second, the risk of subsequent cancer diagnosis was significantly reduced among patients with adult-onset diabetes who took metformin. The most compliant patients were more protected against cancer than those who failed to follow their pill regimen. Another study shows an impressive 56% relative reduction in the risk for breast cancer among diabetics taking metformin compared to other anti-diabetic drugs.

Researchers recently explored a database of thousands of diabetic subjects in Tayside, Scotland. Cancer was diagnosed among 7.3% of 4.085 metformin users and 11.6% of 4,085 non-metformin users. Metformin users tended to develop cancer almost a year later than non-users.

The study that has gained much attention involves metformin among patients with pancreatic cancer, a dire form of cancer where survival following diagnosis is usually no greater than 1-2 years. Metformin produced a significant 60% relative reduction in ongoing risk for pancreatic cancer among patients already diagnosed with the disease.

Another compelling report published in 2009 showed that among 2,529 patients who underwent chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer, 24% of the patients who were taking metformin experienced a "complete response" (cure) compared to just 8% in the non-metformin group.

As encouraging as these studies are, not all show metformin is beneficial in preventing cancer.

Metformin is a molecule found in the French lilac (botanical name: Galega officinalis), and is now synthetically produced. Metformin is in a class by itself when it comes to anti-diabetic drugs. It is the only anti-diabetic medication that does not induce weight gain.

The missed opportunity: more than a cancer pill

While it is clear that a renaissance is underway in the use of metformin, this time for cancer, it is sad to realize modern medicine could have leaped at a decades- earlier opportunity to discover metformin's anti-cancer potential.

In the early 1970s Professor Vladimir Dilman pioneered the idea of molecules called "biguanides' as an anti-cancer drug as well as anti-aging pill. Using phenformin, a close cousin to metformin, Dilman achieved positive results, halting a metabolic decline in immunity among post-operative (mastectomy) breast cancer patients.

In animals Professor Dilman was able to extend the lifespan of mice by 23% and reduced tumor incidence by 80% employing a relatively low dose of phenformin. This is better than current life extension studies achieved with laboratory mice using resveratrol, a widely heralded anti-aging molecule. It is clear what Dilman was discovering was greater than a cancer cure – it was a true anti-aging pill! Phenformin was called a "geroprotector" just over a decade ago.

At about the same time these studies by Vladimir Dilman and colleagues were being conducted at the N.N. Petrov Research Institute of Oncology, St. Petersburg, Russia, The Society of Actuaries (insurance underwriters) was being privately briefed on the development of an anti-aging pill. A report of this meeting shows the topic of discussion was the scientific possibility of extending life up to 250 years.

That report went on to proclaim that that such a discovery was "not ready for widespread application in the field of medicine." It is clear that the insurance industry squelched the idea of an anti-aging pill because it would put them out of business. How do you sell life insurance to a guy at age 30 when he's going to live 250 years?

Professor Vladimir Dilman (1925-1994) Did This Researcher Cure Cancer and Develop The First True Anti-Aging Pill in the 1970s?

Dilman's discoveries at the Petrov Research Institute would go ignored, not to be implemented. Even now, while the promise of a true cancer cure is tantalizing, the prospect of an even greater discovery is not being mentioned — that of man's impossible dream – anti-aging pill.

Other anti-aging, cancer preventing molecules

Surprisingly, metformin may not be the only molecule that can perform like this.

Metformin is often mentioned along with two other molecules, rapamycin, a soil organism used as an immunosuppressive drug to treat rejection of transplanted organs, and resveratrol, a red wine molecule, as the most promising anti-aging agents. These three molecules are known to mimic some of the biological effects of a calorie-restricted diet.

While investigators uncover the key biological mechanisms that produce the anti-cancer effects of metformin, they fail to recognize that even these mechanisms are a result of something that goes unrecognized. These biological mechanisms are not the driver behind the drug, they are the way the effectiveness of the drug is measured. What IS the biological driver is the ability of metformin to chelate (key-late) or bind to unbound iron. It is accumulated iron that drives up blood sugar levels. Blood letting, which removes excess iron from the blood circulation, unequivocally resolves insulin resistance among diabetics and is even used in the treatment of cancer.

The very wide array of side effects produced by metformin and rapamycin may be due to their iron chelating properties.

Metformin has actually been used experimentally to counter the harsh effects of a toxic cancer drug (doxorubicin) that releases iron and can be damaging to the heart during treatment. In the animal lab, metformin prevents damage to the heart during chemotherapy due to iron-induced oxidation.

Induce cellular senescence, block cancer

Researchers have said that metformin's primary action against cancer is its ability to halt the immortalization of cancer cells. Cancer cells don't replicate and then die off, they resist all efforts to kill them, what is called treatment resistance.

One of the recognized mechanisms of metformin is its ability to induce cellular senescence. Cellular senescence is the phenomenon by which normal cells lose their ability to divide, normally after about 50 cell divisions in a lab dish. Therefore, senescent cells cannot replicate and produce tumors. Like metformin, resveratrol also induces cellular senescence.

Another desirable gene target for both metformin and resveratrol is known as Target of Rapamycin or mTOR. High concentrations of resveratrol are required to significantly inhibit mTOR at doses that approach toxic levels. Rapamycin, the other oft-mentioned anti-aging molecule, actually suppresses cell senescence. Though this should not be considered a negative property as rapamycin is attempting to return the cell to a youthful state.

A chart has been created at the end of this report to help compare these three molecules, metformin, rapamycin and resveratrol. The main point here is that there may be more available alternatives to metformin, which requires a doctor's prescription. Doctors are not likely to begin prescribing metformin to prevent cancer, let alone slow aging. Meanwhile, resveratrol is widely available as a dietary supplement. The medical profession will be quick to label resveratrol as an unproven remedy, but actually all existing cancer treatments have already been disproven, leaving cancer patients to search for available alternatives.

Distinguishing metformin from resveratrol

It is well established that blood serum and tissue concentrations of copper are greatly increased in various malignancies. Resveratrol works by selectively cleaving to or releasing copper based upon dose.

Resveratrol as a fat-soluble molecule is able to be transported across cell membranes and enter the internal workings of cells. In high dose concentration, resveratrol will cleave to DNA in the cell nucleus and induce DNA breakage, killing the cancer cell.

Resveratrol as a copper chelator appears to be superior to zinc or iron chelators in regard to their cancer cell-killing properties. Because cancer cells rely upon copper for growth and resveratrol targets copper, this explains why resveratrol destroys cancer cells but not healthy cells.

The problem with resveratrol's pro-oxidant cancer-killing action, even though resveratrol targets cancer cells and not healthy cells, is that given in high doses this molecule is concentrated in the kidneys where it is excreted and becomes so toxic it can induce kidney failure. This was shown in a controlled study conducted among terminal multiple myeloma (bone-marrow) cancer patients who were given 5000 mg of resveratrol and rapidly experienced kidney failure. Modest doses may be the best approach for cancer patients who are self-treating with resveratrol.

In regard to inducement of cellular senescence and inhibition of the mTOR gene, resveratrol does this, but at dose concentrations that are toxic. At low-dose concentration, resveratrol is an antioxidant and at high-dose concentration it promotes oxidation (pro-oxidant).

However, a proprietary resveratrol-based formula (Longevinex®) has been shown to totally abolish any toxicity at even the highest dose tested (2800 mg human equivalent). While this would negate any direct cancer-killing effect, this resveratrol-based formula exhibits strong ability to inhibit new blood vessel formation required for tumors to receive nutrients and grow (a six-times greater effect than plain resveratrol). It has undergone toxicity testing and exhibits no kidney toxicity in humans or animals (unpublished). It also inhibits cancer via its ability to thin the blood (clots promote the spread of cancer), inhibit inflammation, and favorably control the immune response. This resveratrol formula was also found to be the closest thing to a calorie restricted diet as evidenced by its ability to alter 677 of 831 known genes that are altered by a long-term calorie-restricted diet in laboratory mice.

Will metformin, rapamycin and resveratrol incur the same fate as phenformin? Will the public wait for their doctors to give them the go-ahead signal, or bolt for these remarkable molecules on their own? It would not be surprising to see cancer patients buy metformin online from offshore sources that ship without a prescription. Any natural medicine that even poses a threat to the $75 billion cancer drug market will likely be ignored. It is the best way scuttle any threat to the $124 billion cancer industry. If the major TV news networks, Harvard Medical School and your doctor say a promising anti-cancer agent is unproven, that is the final word on that matter. Pity the unsuspecting cancer patients.

As for an anti-aging pill, the overpopulation alarmists continue to beat their drum despite the fact the count of humans in Western Europe, Russia, Japan and North America, Brazil, China and Australia is in decline. The problem is not over-population, it is the cost of caring for a growing elderly population. In developed countries, the size of the elderly population has already surpassed that of the 12-24 age group. By dismissal of natural medicines, over-availability of cheap nutrient-poor foods, and control of health choices via insurance plans and medical school curriculums, modern medicine has protected its market and ensured there is enough disease to treat.

Comparison Of Three Cancer Preventive Medicines

Metformin

Rapamycin

Resveratrol

Drug classification

Anti-diabetic Requires doctor's Rx

Immune suppressant (inhibits organ transplant rejection)

Requires doctor's Rx

Nutriceutical

No Rx required

Drug name

Glucophage

Sirolimus, Rapamune

–

Natural origin

French lilac

Easter Island soil organism

Grape skin, Knotweed

Molecule

Molecular weight

165 Daltons

914 Daltons

228 Daltons

Induces cell senescence (no longer capable of growing and dividing)

Yes

No

Yes

Reduces cancer in humans by

20-50%

Unknown

Unknown

Known anti-aging agent

Yes

Yes

Yes

Mechanisms

Targets AMPK enzyme

Yes

Yes

Yes

Anti-folic acid agent

Yes

Unreported

No

Inhibits mTOR

Yes

Yes

Yes

Mineral chelator

Iron

Iron

Copper

Known effective dose

250 mg

0.5 to 1.0 mg

Less than 350 mg

Cost per day

$0.10 edrugsearch.com

$3.74 edrugsearch.com

$0.24 200mg /Amazon

Common side effects

Diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, flatulence, asthenia, indigestion, headache, vitamin B12 deficiency (6 in 100 patients)

Metformin package insert

Many (low dose safer)

Peripheral edema, elevated blood pressure, diarrhea, abdominal pain, headache, fever, anemia, nausea, elevated cholesterol/triglycerides

Rapammune package insert

Anemia Achilles heel soreness Headache (anemia) Fatigue (anemia) <! – [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] – > <! – [endif] – >

Serious side effects

Metabolic acidosis (3 in 100,00)

Viral infections, elevated cholesterol/triglycerides, thrombocytopenia

None reported

Precaution with

Alcohol, diuretics

Grapefruit juice, many other drugs, herbs

Other medications

<! – [if !supportLists] – > <! – [endif] – >AMPK (AMP activated protein kinase), which induces muscles to take up glucose from the blood.

mTOR = target of rapamycin

Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a frequent writer on health and political topics. His health writings can be found at www.naturalhealthlibrarian.com. His latest book is Downsizing Your Body.

The Best of Bill Sardi