The gluten free household faces unique challenges. Even though gluten-free products have become more mainstream, they still cost between 2 to 10 times more than conventional alternatives. And even at those hefty prices, gluten free products like pancake mixes are rarely organic.

Until recently, cooking was all but a lost art. For those who wish to take back our health and save money on eating out, cooking from scratch is becoming more popular than ever.

A truly healthy diet consists of 80% or more fresh, raw, organic produce – more vegetables than fruits. (Check out the 80% Raw Food Diet for more information.) But for those of us who are foodies, this still leaves a little wiggle room for variety. Although anything made with sugar should not be a staple in our diet, no one should be forced to live life without pancakes. Even if gluten doesn’t bother you, this recipe should prove far superior to any other pancake recipe, and it even forms a complete protein!

Whenever possible, buy organic. In the case of cornstarch, always buy organic to avoid GMO corn products.

You Will Need

• Organic Rice Flour (brown or white)
• Organic Corn Starch
• Tapioca Flour
• Garbanzo Bean Flour (aka Chickpea Flour)
• Aluminum Free Baking Soda
• Aluminum Free Baking Powder
• Gelatin or Organic Xanthan Gum
• Sea Salt
• Organic Maple Sugar
• Fruit (optional)
• Eggs or Egg Replacer
• Butter or Spread (Cow, Goat, or Earth Balance)
• Buttermilk, Kefir or Yogurt (Cow, Goat, or Coconut)
• Honey or Maple Syrup
• Organic Vanilla Extract
• Optional toppings include up to 2 Cups Fresh Fruit (Blueberries, Strawberries, Bananas and Cherries are all popular choices, but any fruit you like will do) and Whipped Cream.

Dry Pancake Mix (Makes 3 Batches)

First mix up a batch of dry pancake mix. Feel free to double or triple this recipe. Keep what is left over in a closed jar in your pantry for later use. The mix tastes best when used within 3-6 months.

• 3 ½ Cups of Rice Flour
• ½ Cup of Corn Starch
• 1 Cup Garbanzo Bean Flour
• 1 Cup Tapioca Flour
• 1 ½ Teaspoons Baking Soda
• 3 Teaspoons Baking Powder
• 1 Tablespoon Salt
• 1 Teaspoon Xanthun Gum or Gelatin
• 3 Tablespoons Maple Sugar

Pancakes (Yields about 12 pancakes)

• 2 Cups of Dry Pancake Mix (see above)
• 2 Eggs or Egg Replacer
• 2 Cups Milk
• 4 Tablespoons Melted Butter (or Spread)
• 1Tablespoon Vanilla Extract

Combine all of the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and stir with a whisk, or you can put the dry ingredients in a closed container and shake a few times.

Preheat your pan or griddle (we prefer cast-iron, and we advise against Teflon).

Whisk the eggs, milk, melted butter, and vanilla extract. Add dry ingredients and mix until well combined. (It can still have some lumps).

Add a small amount of butter, or cooking oil to the pan. If it sizzles, it’s ready. We like avocado oil, rice bran oil, peanut oil, or coconut oil. (For this purpose olive oil is a poor choice due to its low smoke point; it burns too easily)

Using a ladle, pour the pancake batter onto the griddle or large pan. Within 2-3 minutes, bubbles will form around the edges of the pancake. Gently slide a spatula beneath the pancake and carefully flip. (The cooked side should be golden brown.) After another minute or two your pancakes will be ready. If not served immediately, pancakes can be kept warm for up to 30 minutes when covered and held in a 200-degree, preheated oven.

Recommended Reading:

• Powerfully Healing Raspberry Cream Smoothie Recipe
• No More Gluten – How I Found Health After MS
• Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

It turns out, that old adage is true – money does not buy everything. For some, money does not buy a clear conscience. Despite earning high incomes, these former pharmaceutical employees left their jobs and are now sharing the truth of what goes on behind the curtain.  Many of them have written books, participated in documentaries, and shared their stories through online videos. Here are a few.

Dr. Peter Rost, Former Vice President of Pfizer

Dr. Rost, a former anesthesiologist and pharmaceutical VP, is the author of The Whistleblower, Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman. Dr. Rost is an expert witness on Big Pharma in the areas of patent infringement, pharmaceutical marketing, drug product liability, drug marketing and promotion, and drug sales.

Universities, health organizations, everybody that I’ve encountered in my former career as a pharmaceutical executive, are out there with their hands out. You know everybody’s begging for money, nobody has any money. The government doesn’t have any money. The universities don’t have money. Nobody has money. The only ones that have money are these big multinational corporations, and they have lots of money. And they use that money to basically buy influence. And the way it’s done is – number one, you give these organizations and institutions grants, grants for various kinds of research. You develop research together with them. You establish friends. You make sure that they become beholden to you. And you also pay individual professors and doctors – researchers – directly. You may pay them as speakers to travel around the country, a thousand, two thousand dollars per day, sometimes more.  

You give them money for programs, the educational programs, where they can make a profit and then they put on these programs, as they’re supposed to be third-party independent from the company. Which is all fine, but as you and I can both imagine, if you have a promotional budget, at a corporation you’re probably going to give that money to the universities that do the programs that most support your drug, and the ones that don’t, or are critical in any shape, way, or form, they are not going to get anything. And everybody obviously knows that this is how things work.

And that means even if you can officially claim “… this is arms-length we didn’t have anything to do with it. We just gave them a grant. They can do whatever they want with it.” Reality is they’re not going to continue to get money unless they’re saying what you want them to say. They know it. You know it. It’s only maybe the public that doesn’t know it. And that’s how you influence the medical establishment – simply with money.

Dr. John Rengen Virapen

(The following has been edited for clarity)

Dr. John Virapen is plagued by a guilty conscience. After completing his medical training, Dr. Virapen started in the pharmaceutical industry as a salesman. Eventually, he rose to the top ranks and became the general manager of Eli Lilly and Company in Sweden. He admits he participated in bribery, giving false information and deception to launch and market several popular drugs. After becoming a father at age 62, he grew a conscience. He has vowed to dedicate his remaining years to speaking out against the very industry that made him a wealthy man. Here are some quotes from his videos.

I have spent 35 years of my life working in an industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and they do nothing but annihilate the population of this world. Why do they do that? Because they want to make money, money, money, money, money…They don’t care about your lives. They only care about their wallets.

Now, whatever I tell you here today, is not something that I dreamed about, or observed somewhere. It’s something that I have done myself. I have been just as criminal as they are. My hands are just as dirty as these people.

 Now all of you sitting here, answer me a question. When you go to the doctor, he looks at you, stethoscope, laboratory tests, machine tests. Those tests by the way, are to make money. Then he tells you you’re sick here is a prescription. “Go to the pharmacy and take this medicine, one tablet three times a day.” What do you do?…You go to the pharmacy and you get your medicine, and you take it like a good citizen.

But when you go to the car company to buy a car, you ask the salesman questions. If you don’t get what you want, you don’t buy the car. So tell me, why don’t you ask that doctor? What is it that he is giving you? The reason I’m telling you this is because only all of you have the power to stop these criminals with what they’re doing in the pharma industry. Because you are not sick people. You are consumers. You are consumers and the pharma industry makes money because they tell everybody that you are sick.

…The almighty power blessed me and my wife with a child. I was 62 years old. This child is now 4 ½. When this child was born he went to the pediatrician after six months for a checkup. That doctor checked the boy and said, yeah he’s healthy, he’s fine. Now we need to give him his mandatory vaccine cocktail. Now, I have told my wife, nobody, not a doctor, not a professor, nobody gives my child any kind of medication unless they discuss it with me and I approve it. Now this this doctor well apart from being lucky that I wasn’t there, she threw my wife and child out at the clinic and said, “We only treat vaccinated children.”

…How dare she refuse, to have my child come to this clinic, and she’s practicing as a doctor. What happened to Hippocrates, the oath of Hippocrates when you become a doctor you swear the oath! “Primum Non Nocere”-Above All Do no Harm. The patient comes first.

…So I researched this lady and I found that she was sitting in a committee, or on a committee with a politician and members of the pharmaceutical company that made the IMP, the vaccine. And they’re advocating to the government in Germany to introduce mandatory vaccination. So I started to do some research on what’s going on in Germany.

 …I found out also that general practitioners, just like this woman and other doctors, were prescribing psychotropic drugs to children. Shortly after that, I read in an article that was posted from the European Medical Association that they were going to approve the drug Prozac to give to children.

Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau, Pharmaceutical Sales Rep for 10 Years

Kathleen is the writer and director of the film Side Effects starring Katherine Heigl. She helps to explain the difference between cutting edge marketing, and scientific progress.

(The following has been edited for clarity)

The psychiatric market is huge and every company out there wants a little piece of that pie because it is so lucrative. We did a lot of lunches and dinners and we brought in speakers and those speakers were obviously paid by us and we would we wave, you know, renowned studies at them from renowned journals but of course we would never say that these studies were paid for by our company and that it was written by a ghost writer who is paid by our company or that our company tends to do a ton of advertising within that particular medical journal.

 We would never say that it’s the psychiatric meds that are so easy to expand into all of the problems of our life. So right now we see the industry… over the past several years we’ve seen the industry medicalizing, you know, so many different things throughout our life. If you’re shy, here, take a pill. If you’re a little anxious, you know, take a pill. If you have road rage, we’ve got a pill for that, too!

 … through direct to consumer advertising and the beautiful drug ads that are on television they have been able to play off of our deepest insecurities as human beings, and it’s so effective. It’s marketing. This is marketing. This is not science. This is incredibly effective marketing. It has nothing to do with science.

 We’re being bombarded left and right with these beautiful ads on the screen, painting this lovely Norman Rockwell life on the screen of beautiful, smiling, happy, sexy people and we all want a little piece of that.

 …to produce the ad would be somewhere probably in the million dollar range. And then to air these ads, to buy the air time slots, again depending on what time of day they’re airing or what type of show their airing on, can cost anywhere from tens of thousands per 30-second ad up to close to a million dollars. In the most recent campaigns, over last year or so, you’re hearing so much “Ask your doctor, or talk to your doctor about…” and when you hear that on the screen it sounds so nice.

 It sounds like they really care and want you to discuss this with your doctor. But what the studies have shown is that if you actually bring up a brand-name drug with your doctor by name, you’re significantly more likely to walk out the door with that drug. So they do that for a reason. The industry is responsible to Wall Street, and Wall Street first. They have to please Wall Street because they are private industry. And so when you have that scenario, you have to make profits your number one goal.

 We have billions of dollars being spent right now in terms of marketing, in terms of PR.

Gwen Olson, a 15-Year Sales Rep Who Worked For Johnson & Johnson, Syntex Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott Laboratories and Forest Laboratories

Over time, Gwen had what she describes as a spiritual awakening as she observed the harm that pharmaceuticals caused people. This led her to come forward and to speak out against the pharmaceutical companies. She explains what their priorities really are.

What the pharmaceutical industry is in the business of doing is disease maintenance and symptoms management. They are not in the business to cure cancer, to cure Alzheimer’s, to cure heart disease, because if they were, they would be in the business of putting themselves out of business. And that in fact doesn’t make sense.

 …It’s really important to understand the motivation behind all the current maintenance drugs that are on the market. Even, for example, drugs such as cholesterol-lowering drugs. And what we are in fact finding now is that cholesterol drugs are lowering cholesterol excessively and causing other disease states as a consequence.

 …what was found was the information that activists and other researchers have known for decades was that antidepressants are no more effective than a placebo. No more effective than sugar pills but yet, they’re over 44 million people that have been taking these anti-depressants.

 …Another recent study that was released showed that exercise was in fact more effective than either placebo or the anti-depressant drug.

 …The clinical data has been contrived or that their patient populations have been cherry-picked or that the side effects have been minimized and reported in such a manner that it doesn’t present the information correctly.

 …I’m here to tell you that the industry has run amok. That we are at a severe crossroads in this nation and that we have got to take our power back and we have got to start making the pharmaceutical industry accountable for their actions and for the defective products that they’re putting on the market. It won’t be long before every American is affected by this disaster.

 …You need to get yourself educated and understand that there are options, and those options are much more effective than drugs. You need to look into the nutritional aspects of your diet and your lifestyle.

Scott Cooper, Award Winning Salesman For Merck

Like so many other well-informed parents, Scott didn’t struggle with whether or not to vaccinate his child. His experience in the pharmaceutical industry convinced him not to vaccinate. His challenge was convincing his wife and doctor that vaccines are not safe or effective.

My child was born in ’91. He’s now going to be 24 this year. He was never vaccinated. He grew up very, very healthy. Rarely if ever sick and always much healthier than his peers. When they were all running around all the kids had runny noses, drank a lot of milk, were all vaccinated. My child was always healthy, runny nose free, always very, very healthy and smart.

If I can digress a little bit this was 1990 so the Internet wasn’t really available. I had read numerous books on vaccines, and like most people I grew up believing in vaccines from what I was told in school. And it became a real shock to me when I started reading and learning that vaccines were not only ineffective, but also there are major risks involved with vaccination.

When I found out my wife was pregnant, I had a discussion with her about not vaccinating and, of course, she was pro-vaccine, and so I made her a deal. At the time, I worked for a very large pharmaceutical company as a sales rep, and so I made her a promise. I said I’ll go to the library I’ll bring home everything I can find pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine. You can read for yourself, and then you can make a decision. That’s what I did. I went and scoured the periodicals in the libraries.

…I just gave them to her and let her make up her own mind. I would come home from work and she would be reading the stuff and crying from what she was reading. By the time our child was born we were both on the same page about vaccination.

And it was interesting because I had my OBGYN or my wife’s OBGYN sit me down in his office and say, “Look, you work for a large pharmaceutical company, what do you mean you’re not vaccinating?”

My company actually made a lot of the vaccines and we had a vaccine division and everything else, and I told them, I told them flat out, why we went, had a huge discussion about it. He didn’t agree. We still went to the course that I wanted.

… do your own research, all right? If you’re on the fence about vaccines or wondering at all, whether to vaccinate your child. Please, please do your own research. There are a ton of resources available out there. Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, she has a site that is full of resources.

Thousands of pages are published, medical studies showing the inherent risks that are involved with vaccines. There are a ton of books out there showing this over and over again – the vaccine damage that has been done by these vaccinations. If you believe what you’re told by the AMA and the CDC and your doctor, you’re not doing enough research.

Brandy Vaughan, Former Sales Rep for Merck & Co.

Now a mother, Brandy refuses to vaccinate her own child. She explains how the pharmaceutical companies prioritize profit over public health, in a big way.

My first involvement with the pharmaceutical industry was as a pharmaceutical sales rep for Merck back when Vioxx was on the market. I used to rep Vioxx for Merck. When it came out that Merck had falsified safety data and Vioxx actually had twice the increase in heart attacks and strokes… it really made me realize that that there was a lot of corruption behind the scenes and that just because something is on the market, a drug is on the market, doesn’t mean it’s safe.

 After working for Merck, I was pretty disillusioned over the whole scandal. I lived in Europe for 8 years and I had my son over there. I brought him back vaccine-free at 6 months to San Francisco. When I went to a well visit, they pushed for vaccines. At that point I hadn’t done a lot of research in it, but I knew enough not to trust pharmaceutical drugs.

I asked to see a vaccine insert and the doctor got very upset at me and claimed I didn’t trust him. He stormed out of the room and the nurse let me know that I wasn’t really welcome back in that clinic anymore. That was a huge red flag for me, knowing what I knew from being a pharmaceutical sales rep before. I started to do my research into vaccines and the ingredients, and the flawed safety data.

What came to light was many things, but one of them was that aluminum is the main adjuvant in vaccines, in childhood vaccines. I had experience with that, with researching that, and the toxicity of aluminum, because my grandmother had breast cancer.

The doctor biopsied her tissues and there were high levels of aluminum. He told us that she needed to get off traditional deodorant and that the aluminum in there was linked to breast cancer. It was carcinogenic. That was a big red flag for me when I realized those were in childhood vaccines. I couldn’t believe it, actually. Then I started to do more and more research and I realized that the U.S. gives twice as many vaccines on the childhood schedule than most developed countries, and the real health crisis is the fact that our kids are sicker than any other country in the developed world. This is despite spending more per capita on healthcare. We have highest rates of SIDS, asthma, food allergies, ADHD, childhood leukemia, diabetes type one. This to me was the true health crisis.

The more I dug into this, what I realized was vaccines are not for public health. It’s really about profit, pharmaceutical company profit.

 The thing about vaccines is that you don’t have to do the same rigorous safety studies as you do for other pharmaceutical drugs because they’re classified as a public health measure vs. a pharma drug. For vaccines, they have a totally different type of safety study. It’s very short in duration. It’s not double-blind placebo-based, which is the gold standard for pharmaceutical drugs, and vaccines aren’t held to the same rigorous safety studies.

If you look into them, it’s very easy to manipulate the data and present that as something that’s safe. If you really look into the studies and look into the toxicity of the adjuvants and the additives, you realize that the safety studies are not proving safety at all. In fact, there are a lot of studies on the other side showing that a lot of the additives in vaccines are very toxic, especially to children who have very immature immune systems.

As I dug more into the safety studies and saw how flawed they were, it really raised a red flag for me. My son is now four and a half and he’s vaccine-free. I really got motivated to get more into this fight when I realized the mandatory vaccination bills that were sweeping the country, over 100 in 38 states.

 …pharmaceutical companies don’t have any liability for vaccines, in fact [one of] the only products in the U.S. that has no liability so you cannot sue them if there’s injury or death. So you put those two things together and what you have is vaccines as a pharmaceutical drug with the highest profit margin available. If you make those mandatory and you keep increasing the schedule, it’s basically using our children to profit off of.

The pharmaceutical company is using vaccines as a new driver for profit. This is really what’s behind the mandatory vaccination bills. One of the things that I’m often asked is why do we not hear about this if this is true? One of the things that I’ve found out in my research is that the U.S. is one of only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers.

I’m sure we’ve all seen the media and advertisements for the pharmaceutical drugs. That happens there is that it allows pharmaceutical companies to basically dictate what is shown to the media. Because when you give the media 30 to 40% [Author’s note: presently the number is closer to 70%] of their advertising dollars, you basically control what they say.

There have been a lot of journalists and stories that have been censored, including the CDC whistleblower that came out in the end of 2014 basically saying that the CDC has covered up data showing that the MMR vaccine does in fact cause neurological damage, AKA autism.

Recently there have been a lot of stories of different countries suing vaccine makers for injury and death, and even pulling vaccines off of the schedule like Gardasil in Japan and Prevnar in China, rotovirus vaccine in France, and Spain has a lawsuit against Merck for Gardasil as well.

…We have a very broken system. Our vaccine system in the U.S. is broken. We cannot mandate something when there are so many unanswered questions and so many things that are going on behind the scenes that people aren’t aware of, including vaccines ingredients, like when the pediatrician didn’t want to show me the vaccine insert. There’s good reason for that.

There’s aluminum, formaldehyde, fetal cells, animal cells. There are a lot of things in there that other countries A, ban from being ingested and therefore have vaccines that don’t include these ingredients, and B, have unknown consequences that we have no data on right now. It’s basically playing Russian roulette with our children.

Pharma is saying it’s all about public help and public safety, and I’m saying why don’t we have more data on what this really will do, long-term studies on what this is doing inside of our bodies and to our children. Because right now we have the sickest children in the developed world. Something is going on here.

It’s probably not just vaccines. It’s a chemical cocktail of pesticides and pollutants in our water and air, but vaccines are often a trigger because genetically we need a trigger to express these kind of diseases and issues that we have. Vaccines are often what does that because the chemicals are injected into our bloodstream, so they don’t go through a lot of the bodies natural detox process. They go straight to the brain past the blood-brain barrier.

We need to ask these difficult questions. Until that, until we have more information, we absolutely cannot mandate vaccines. There has to be a choice. If there’s a risk, there has to be a choice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUduiwgHMQs&sns=fb

Further Reading:

• How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children
• Doctors Against Vaccines – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research
• How to Detoxify From Chemotherapy and Repair the Body
• How to Detoxify From Antibiotics and Other Chemical Antimicrobials
• Scientists Against GMOs – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research

Sources:

• Peter Rost: Influencing The Medical Establishment – One More Girl Excerpts -You Tube
• Peter Rost – Blog
• John Rengen Virapen (1/4) Big Pharma Whistleblower Speaks Out at the AZK in Germany – You Tube
• Ex-Pharmaceutical Rep: Billions Spent on Drug Ads – You Tube
• Pharma Not in Business of Health, Healing, Cures, Wellness – You Tube
• Former Salesman For Vaccine Maker Merck & Co. Wouldn’t Vaccinate His Son –You Tube
• Former Merck Rep Says Mandatory Vaccination Is For Profit and Not Public Health – You Tube

All too often those of us opposed to vaccines hear a simple, yet tired counterargument, “Well I had my shots as a kid and I’m fine.” The adults who make this claim don’t seem to realize the number of shots they received was far fewer than the number of shots on today’s vaccine schedule. And few of them follow the adult vaccine schedule.

In reality, the very well vaccinated are not a healthy bunch. They get sick regularly. This is particularly evident for those who get regular flu shots.

American children receive far more vaccines now than at any other time in U.S. history, and they receive more vaccines than children living in any other country. If vaccines were in fact so effective, one would think that America would have the healthiest children. This is not the case at all. Aside from starving children in 3^rd world countries, American children are among the sickest children in the world.

Big Pharma purports to have all the answers, except of course, what is causing all of these childhood illnesses. Rising rates of autism and other chronic illnesses are said to be a complete mystery (if you wish to be demystified simply read a vaccine warning insert). Despite their supposed cluelessness about our sudden epidemics of chronic illness, both the pharmaceutical companies and the government claim to “know” that “vaccines are safe and effective”. SIDS, asthma, ADHD, ADD, and autism are all considered to be mysterious diseases with an unknown or a genetic cause. This may sound good, but genetic epidemics are not possible, and there are few environmental toxins that could have such a widespread impact on children of all 50 states, at the same time. The most likely environmental toxins that could have spread to all American children simultaneously are toxins from food and vaccines. We at OLM side with the growing number of scientists who think that vaccines, pesticides, and GMOs are the main causes of our childhood illnesses, with vaccines as the primary cause of our nation’s rapidly declining health.

Below is a look at earlier vaccine schedules compared to the current vaccine schedule “recommended” by the CDC. CDC vaccine recommendations are becoming mandatory across the U.S.

A Historical Look at the Vaccine Schedule

As the number of scheduled vaccines has risen, so have the rates of now common childhood diseases including ADD/ADHD, SIDS, and asthma. Before the 1970s, ADD and ADHD were not even prevalent enough for a diagnosis to exist in the DSM. The first related diagnosis came out in the DSM-II as “Hyperkinetic Reaction of Childhood”. This was later changed to “ADD with or without hyperactivity” in the DSM-III in the 1980s. It was further clarified in later editions. The number of children (and adults) that have been prescribed ADD/ADHD drugs has skyrocketed over the past few decades. And asthma rates have also experienced a sharp rise over the years.

According to Harris Coulter, a medical historian and scientist, SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) was not reported in the statistics before the rise of mass vaccinations because of its rarity. As vaccination rates have risen, so have SIDS rates. When Japan put a moratorium on all vaccinations before the age of two, their SIDS rate plummeted to almost nothing. Although they are every bit as scientifically adept as we are and highly technologically advanced, their schedule has less than half the recommended vaccinations as the United States schedule.

Just as not everyone can eat the same foods, not everyone can tolerate the same medications. It is incredibly naive to think that just because your child survived vaccines without severe injury, that no harm was done. As more and more vaccines are added to the schedule, the painful reality is becoming clear. Health does not need to be treated as a disease. How many more must die or become disabled by this practice before we wake up and realize what is happening? If you’ve been vaccinated, be sure to check out How to Detox From Vaccines (adults and children).

Further Reading:

• The MMR Vaccine – A Comprehensive Overview of the Potential Dangers and Effectiveness
• Doctors Against Vaccines – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research
• Scientists Against Vaccines – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research
• How Plumbing (Not Vaccines) Eradicated Disease

Sources:

• Facts About Autism – Autism Speaks
• Identified Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder – CDC
• Past Immunization Schedules – CDC
• Recommended Immunization Schedule for Persons Aged 0 Through 18 Years – CDC
• Scientists Against Vaccines – Organic Lifestyle Magazine
• The Year of Autism Epidemiology – Autism Speaks

When you shop for produce and see that higher price placed on the organic varieties, chances are you think there probably isn’t that much difference between the two. Surely conventional agriculture doesn’t waste chemicals. They only use them when they need to – when insects or fungus attacks the crops, right? Wrong.

Conventional produce has been through a storm of chemical treatments. The use of chemicals is so insidious, it often begins with treating the dirt and the seeds before planting. Then chemical fertilizers are used in addition to insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides during cultivation. Some fruits have been tested to find 13-15 different pesticides remain after harvesting. Now a new practice is being employed – pre-harvest desiccation. Crops are drenched with an herbicide prior to harvest to hasten and even out ripening and to control weeds for the next crop.

Unfortunately this process results in huge pesticide residues in our food, even in certified non-GMO food. That’s right, your food could be non-GMO Project verified and still have been drenched in glyphosate just prior to harvest. The foods that are approved for Roundup application and/or another pesticide just prior to harvest are as follows:

• Wheat
• Cotton (cottonseed oil)
• Alfalfa
• Oats
• Sugar cane
• Beans
• Mustard
• Oilseed rape
• Rye/Triticale
• Lentils
• Peas
• Flax
• Sunflower
• Pulses
• Soy Bean
• Sugar beet
• Potatoes
• Chick Peas
• Feed barley
• Canola
• Corn

Unfortunately, Roundup is not the only chemical approved for use just prior to harvest. Other approved pre-harvest chemical desiccants include:

• Reglone
• Diquat
• Glufosinate
• Carfentrazone-Ethyl
• Cyanamide
• Paraquat
• Diquat Dibromide
• Carfentrazone
• Cyclanilide
• Diquat
• Endothall
• Thidiazuron
• Tribufos

No one denies that these chemicals are toxic. The argument in favor of desiccation and other synthetic chemical treatments is that the dose of toxin is so low, it isn’t harmful to apply it.

Toxicology is based on the following 500-year-old idea that is fundamentally flawed.

All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison from a remedy. –Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim Paracelsus

While it is true that even water can kill you if you drink an excessive amount, the idea that small doses of poison can’t hurt you is illogical. In conventional agriculture, everything you eat includes poison. Why would you want to eat any poison with every meal, increasing your toxic load each day?

Recently, we are learning more and more about how toxic glyphosate truly is.

Unfortunately, the other chemical treatments are not any better. A drop of Reglone on your fingernail can cause your nail to shrivel up, fall off, and never grow back. Any exposure to the eyes can blind you, permanently. It doesn’t take very much Reglone to kill you, and in higher amounts it can even be fatal from contact on the skin.

The more we realize how pervasive the chemical treatments are in conventional agriculture, the more we realize the value of voting with our dollars for organic food.

Further Reading:

• Understanding and Detoxifying Genetically Modified Foods
• Scientists Against GMOs

Sources:

• Crops Are Drenched with Roundup Pesticide Right Before Harvest – Washingtons Blog
• Defoliants and Desiccants – University of Florida EDIS
• Desiccation Programmes – AHDB Potatoes
• Direct Harvest: Do you need a desiccant or a pre-harvest glyphosate? – Field Crop news
• Glyphosate Found in Human Urine – GM-Free Cymru
• Herbicide Options to Enhance Harvesting FAQ – Government of Saskatchewan
• Herbicides found in Human Urine – Journal for ecology, winegrowing and climate farming
• Novel desiccant targeted for stale seed-bed clean up – Farmers Weekly
• Pesticide Fact Sheet: Carfentrazone-ethyl – EPA
• Preharvest Staging Guide – Roundup
• The Dose Makes the Poison – Assessing Toxic RiskTips for Pre-Harvest Glyphosate and Desiccation – Real Agriculture

Biotechnology has long tried to paint the critics of genetic engineering as anti-science. A great effort has been made to convince the public that the majority of world’s scientists support genetic engineering. In reality, GMOs are heavily criticized in the scientific community. Here are the professional opinions of only a few of the thousands of scientists who are both critical and skeptical of GMOs.

There are three things that can’t be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.” – Buddha

Vandana Shiva, Ph.D

Vandana Shiva was educated as physicist at the University of Punjab. Afterwards she went on to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario Canada. Her field of study was known as “Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory”. Her work later evolved into inter-disciplinary research in science, technology, and environmental policy. Dr. Shiva is a courageous and tireless activist, author, scientific advisor, and mother. Forbes Magazine named Dr. Shiva as one of the Seven Most Powerful Women in the World.

Science is derived from the word scire — “to know”. Each of us should know what we are eating, how it was produced and what impact it will have on our health.

The knowledge we need for growing food is the knowledge of biodiversity and living seed, of living soil and the soil food web, of interaction between different species in the agro-ecosystem and of different seasons. Farmers have been the experts in these fields, as have ecological scientists who study the evolution of micro-organisms, plants and animals, the ecological web and the soil food web.

In industrial agriculture, the knowledge of living systems is totally missing, since industrial agriculture was externally driven by using war chemicals as inputs. Soil was defined as an empty container for holding synthetic fertilizers and plants were defined as machines running on external inputs. This meant substituting the ecological functions and services that nature and farmers can provide through renewal of soil fertility, pest and weed control, and seed improvement. But it also implied ignorance of the destruction of the functions by the toxic chemicals applied to agriculture.

This complex knowledge of interacting, self-organizing, self-maintaining, self-renewing and self-evolving systems that farmers have had is now being confirmed through the latest in ecology. At the agricultural systems level, agro-ecology, not the mechanistic and blind paradigm of industrial agriculture is the truly scientific approach to food production.

…Because living systems are not machines, they are a self-organized complexity, knowledge of a small, fragmented part in isolation of its relationships with the rest of the system translates into not knowing.

This epistemic violence is now being combined with the violence of corporate interests to viciously attack all scientific traditions, including those that have evolved from within Western science and transcended the mechanistic worldview.

It is actually becoming anti-science.

…The rhetoric for taking over food systems and seed supply is always based on “improved seed”. But what is not mentioned is that industrial seeds are only “improved” in the context of higher dependence on chemicals, and more control by corporations.

The latest in the anti-scientific discourse of industrial agriculture is about reducing everything to genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

“Intelligence” is based on the Latin word inter legere which means “to choose”. From the slime mould and bacteria, to plants and animals, including humans, intelligence is the choice we make in order to respond to changing contexts. Life is a cognitive system with communication constantly taking place in a network on non-separable patterns of relationship. Living beings innovate all the time to deal with environmental challenges that face them.

…Humans as a species are falling behind slime mold and bacteria to make an intelligent response to the environmental threats we face. And our intelligence is being thwarted by the false construction of the living Earth as dead matter, to be exploited limitlessly for human control, domination and greed.

The US Centre for Disease Control data shows that on current trends one in two children in the US will be autistic in a few decades. It is not an intelligent species that destroys its own future because of a distorted and manipulated definition of science.

As Einstein had observed, “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity and I’m not sure about the universe.”

Thierry Vrain, Ph.D

Dr. Vrain was formerly the Head of Biotechnology at Agriculture Canada’s Summerland Research Station. It was his job to address concerns regarding the safety of GMOs. He did his job faithfully for many years, assuring the public and other scientists of the safety of GMOs. Now, years after his retirement, he has reversed his position.

In the last 10 years I have changed my position. I started paying attention to the flow of published studies coming from Europe, some from prestigious labs and published in prestigious scientific journals, that questioned the impact and safety of engineered food.

I refute the claims of the biotechnology companies that their engineered crops yield more, that they require less pesticide applications, that they have no impact on the environment and of course that they are safe to eat.

…The Bt corn and soya plants that are now everywhere in our environment are registered as insecticides. But are these insecticidal plants regulated and have their proteins been tested for safety? Not by the federal departments in charge of food safety, not in Canada and not in the U.S.

Genetic engineering is 40 years old. It is based on the naive understanding of the genome based on the One Gene – one protein hypothesis of 70 years ago, that each gene codes for a single protein. The Human Genome project completed in 2002 showed that this hypothesis is wrong.

Richard Strohman, Ph.D.

Dr. Richard Campbell Strohman, was a professor emeritus of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an avid critic of the idea that genes determine destiny. Dr. Strohman died July 4, 2009.

When you insert a single gene into a plant or an animal, the technology will work. You will be able to move that gene from organism A to organism B. You will be able to know that the transfer was successful. You will be able to know that the gene is being expressed, and even that the function of the gene is being expressed. So you’ll get the desired characteristic. But you will also get other effects that you couldn’t have predicted from your original assumptions. You will have also produced changes in the cell or the organism as a whole that are unpredictable. And that’s what the science is having to deal with.

…Genes exist in networks, interactive networks, which have a logic of their own. The technology point of view does not deal with these networks. It simply addresses genes in isolation. But genes do not exist in isolation.

…We’re in a crisis position where we know the weakness of the genetic concept, but we don’t know how to incorporate it into a new, more complete understanding. Monsanto knows this. DuPont knows this. Novartis knows this. They all know what I know. But they don’t want to look at it because it’s too complicated and it’s going to cost too much to figure out. The number of questions, the number of possibilities for what happens to a cell, to the whole organism when you insert a foreign gene, are almost incalculable. And the time it would take to assess the infinite possibilities that arise is beyond the capabilities of computers. But that’s what you get when you’re dealing with living systems.

Gilles-Eric Seralini, Ph.D.

Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini is a biologist at the University of Caen. He was the first scientist to do a long- term, GMO, chronic toxicity study. His study was originally published in Food and Chemical Toxicology. After the study was retracted, it was later republished in Environmental Sciences Europe.

Agricultural GMOs are loaded with pesticides. Three-quarters of all GMOs contain large amounts of Roundup, the main pesticide in the world, designed to kill weeds. These plants have been genetically modified for this, such as Roundup-tolerant soybean and corn. The GM provides in this case the possibility to apply Roundup, whenever and as much as you want, because the plant will tolerate it. If one gives such a large dose of pesticides to a normal plant, it dies. GMOs facilitate intensive farming methods.

Agricultural GMOs do not exist independently of pesticides. We do not know enough. Three-quarters of them absorb pesticides, and the last quarter, like Bt corn, produce their own insecticide. There is already a toxicity due to pesticides within these GMOs, which is new in our diet. Before GMOs, we have never eaten such high levels of Roundup residues. Same for insecticides. Yes, GMOs are especially dangerous because they contain pesticides, but not only because of that. Our team also found toxic effects of GMOs without pesticides.

Our team is the most-published in the world on the impact of GMOs and pesticides on health. We have done studies on human cells and on rats, both short- and long-term (two years). Regarding studies in rats, we were the first ones to study so many parameters (tens of thousands for blood and urine) and for so long. These rats consumed regularly GMOs with pesticides, and at the same doses, GMOs without pesticides. The aim was to find out where any toxicity came from. We were the only ones in the world to do this, as companies and health agencies had never ordered tests lasting longer than three months. But the study was retracted with great violence by the journal which published it after a former employee of Monsanto was introduced onto the editorial board of the journal. He is the former head of GMO toxicology dossiers at Monsanto.

…GMOs contain pesticides that go into the food chain and accumulate. On the other hand, they make animals seriously ill, and to eat sick animals is very harmful for health. They may be more susceptible to infections and diseases. Eating them should be banned. Pesticides accumulate in the food chain and in the animal’s fat, at higher levels than in the treated plants [themselves]. Before, the debate focused on the possible dangers of GMO DNA getting into the food chain. This is not the problem. Nobody had shown that these animals [that eat GMOs] were sick. We showed that. Due to the nature of industrial production and the short lifespan [of livestock animals], we do not see it. And they are not differentiated from others.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.; Nancy Swanson, Ph.D.; Shiv Chopra, Ph.D.; John Balatinecz, Ph.D.

Dr. Seneff is a senior research scientist, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT. Dr. Swanson is a business owner, consultant (Optics), and author. Dr. Chopra was formerly with Health Canada (Senior Scientific Advisor, Microbiology) and is also an author. Dr. Balatinecz is an emeritus professor (Forestry), at the University of Toronto. The following are quotes from the collective group and quoted material from an opinion paper they wrote.

We are experiencing an autism epidemic in the US and the mainstream media won’t touch it. There is much hand-wringing over the latest numbers, but any suggestion of environmental toxins is considered off-limits.

The following opinion piece, written by four scientists (myself included), was submitted to the Toronto Star on April 9, but they refused to publish it because it is “too controversial.” It was then submitted to the New York Times on April 11, but they have not responded at all. It seems there is a media blackout on this topic.

What sort of world are we living in where our children are at risk and we refuse to even look at all possible solutions because they are “too controversial”? How did the chemical and drug industries come to wield such totalitarian power that the press won’t dare to expose them? We are a nation in grave danger. The press and the government refuse to confront the issue for fear of antagonizing the corporations whose bottom line trumps all.

…the US Centers for Disease Control released a new report stating that the prevalence of autism is now one in 68, up 30% since the reported estimate of one in 88 two years ago. (Our current rate of autism in the U.S. is 1 in 50) The rate was one in 10,000 in 1970.

…The recent dramatic increase in the rates of autism cannot be explained on the basis of genetics alone, so there must also be significant environmental contributions.

One of us (Dr. Stephanie Seneff) has considerable direct research experience concerning autism and its probable environmental causes. About seven years ago she became very alarmed by the strong evidence of an increase in autism rates in the US and, in collaboration with Mr. Anthony Samsel and Dr. Nancy Swanson, she decided to systematically investigate possible links with environmental toxins. Dr. Swanson has shown extremely strong correlations between glyphosate usage on corn and soy crops in the US and the increasing incidence of autism, along with obesity, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, senile dementia and others. Correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but when statistically significant correlation coefficients of over 0.95 are calculated for a list of diseases that can be directly linked to glyphosate, via its known biological effects, it would be foolish not to consider causation as the most plausible explanation of the correlations.

It is noteworthy that the rapid increase in autism rates coincides with the introduction of industrial agricultural practices such as the widespread use of herbicides (like glyphosate-containing Roundup), and pesticides, as well as genetically modified (GMO) crops (initially corn, soy and canola). GMO crops are engineered to resist glyphosate so that the herbicide will only kill the weeds and not the crop species. As a consequence, GMO foods are laced with glyphosate residues, a contaminant for which they are not required to be tested as products in our food chain. Sadly, the general public does not know this. What makes this even worse is that GMO foods are not required to be labeled by law in our two countries. Furthermore, it has become common practice to spray grain, dried pea & bean and sugar cane crops with glyphosate as a pre-harvest desiccant. What makes glyphosate especially dangerous is that it is generally viewed as being nearly harmless to humans and is therefore handled carelessly. Its effects work cumulatively and insidiously over time to erode health.

…The original approval process of glyphosate as a “safe herbicide” was based on misdirected and inadequate science & safety testing by the FDA. Corporate political lobbying was also part of the mix. The voice of an independent and diligent media has been conspicuously absent. Now, 25 years later, we are all paying the price for those misdeeds. Likely victims are the millions of innocent autistic children.

Autism symptoms also include: disrupted gut bacteria and inflammatory bowel disorder; defective aromatase (CYP) enzyme; high serum nitrate and ammonia; impaired immune function; chronic low-grade inflammation in the brain and deficiencies in sulfate, methionine, seratonin, melatonin, zinc and iron. Compare these to some negative biological effects of glyphosate. Glyphosate kills beneficial gut bacteria, thereby depleting aromatic amino acids. This leads to reduced serotonin availability. Serotonin deficiency is linked not only to autism, but also to obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, and violent behavior, all of which are increasing in frequency today in step with increased glyphosate usage. Glyphosate chelates (traps) zinc, manganese, iron, cobalt, and molybdenum, which leads directly to a deficiency in these essential nutrients and widespread health consequences. Glyphosate also disrupts important enzymes in the liver leading to an inability to detoxify other toxins as well as an inability to activate vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency is now widespread in North America.

… we believe that the biggest environmental factors linked to autism are the following: glyphosate (by far #1), mercury (in vaccines and dental fillings) and aluminum (in vaccines, antacids, antiperspirants, drugs and sunscreen). Mercury and aluminum act synergistically with glyphosate; e.g., the number of adverse events reported for vaccines in the US CDC VAERS database has risen over the past decade in step with the increased use of glyphosate.

David Suzuki, Ph.D.

David Suzuki, is the co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, an environmentalist, scientist and broadcaster who is most well known for his radio and television programs that explain the complexities of the natural sciences in a compelling, easily understood way.

Dr. Suzuki is an award winning scientist – a geneticist and a recognized world leader in sustainable ecology. He is the recipient of UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for Science, the United Nations Environment Program Medal, UNEPs Global 500, and the 2009 Right Livelihood Award. He is now a professor emeritus at UBC.

By slipping it into our food without our knowledge, without any indication that there are genetically modified organisms in our food, we are now unwittingly part of a massive experiment.

The FDA has said that genetically modified organisms are not much different from regular food, so they’ll be treated in the same way. The problem is this, geneticists follow the inheritance of genes. What biotechnology allows us to do is to take this organism and move it horizontally into a totally unrelated species. Now, David Suzuki doesn’t normally mate with a carrot and exchange genes. What biotechnology allows us to do is to switch genes from one to the other without regard to the biological constraints. It’s very, very bad science. We assume that the principals governing the inheritance of genes vertically, applies when you move genes laterally or horizontally. There’s absolutely no reason to make that conclusion.

In a different interview he said:

I believe that until the science is mature—that is, until we can take a completely specified sequence of DNA, insert it at exactly a specified sequence in a recipient and predict completely its behavior—the science is not ready to be applied. When we can do that, we won’t be able to publish, because we publish papers when we get results that we didn’t expect. Last time I looked, the papers and journals in biotech were exploding. To me, it indicates we must not know a helluva lot. In any revolutionary area, most of our current ideas are wrong. That’s how science proceeds—by invalidating, altering and discarding our current ideas. What we believed in 1961 when I graduated with a Ph.D. in genetics seems ludicrous today, and so will today’s ideas in 20 years.

Jane Goodall, Ph.D.

Before Jane Goodall’s work, our definition of mankind was “man the toolmaker.” Dr. Goodall has made many important scientific discoveries. She proved that chimpanzees use tools, that they eat meat, and that they have a complex social system. She earned her Ph.D. in ethology from Oxford University.

I well remember how horrified I felt when I learned that scientists had succeeded in reconfiguring the genetics of plants and animals.

The first genetically engineered (GE) plants were created in the 1980s, but I did not hear about them until the 1990s when they were first commercialized.

It seemed a shocking corruption of the life forms of the planet, and it was not surprising that many people were as appalled as I was – and that these altered organisms became known as ‘Frankenfoods’.

In fact, there were good science-based reasons to mistrust the new foods; yet GE crops have spread throughout North America and several other parts of the world. How has this come about?

As part of the process, they portrayed the various concerns as merely the ignorant opinions of misinformed individuals – and derided them as not only unscientific, but anti-science.

Engineering ‘concensus’ – where none exists

They then set to work to convince the public and government officials, through the dissemination of false information, that there was an overwhelming expert consensus, based on solid evidence, that the new foods were safe.

…the advocates of genetic engineering have steadfastly maintained that the crops created by this radical technology are essentially similar to those from which they have been derived, that the process is splendidly exact, and that GE foods, therefore, are if anything safer than their traditionally bred ‘parents’

In fact, there’s significant dissimilarity, the process is far from exact, and the risks are greater, especially the risk of creating unexpected toxins that are difficult to detect.

And what of the role of the media? How have the American public been so largely kept in the dark about the realities of GE foods – to the extent that until quite recently, a vast majority of the populace did not even know they were regularly consuming them?

But it seems to me that it is not those who point to the problems of the venture who are anti-science: it is quite the other way around.

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, Ph.D.

Mae-Wan Ho earned her degree in Biology in and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in the 1960s from Hong Kong University. Early in her academic career she won a competitive fellowship of the U.S. National Genetics Foundation. Afterwards, she became a senior research fellow in Queen Elizabeth College in the United Kingdom.  Dr. Mae-Wan Ho then became a lecturer in Genetics in 1976 and then a reader in Biology in 1985 in the London Open University.  Dr. Ho retired in June 2000 and remains a Visiting Reader in Biology at the Open University and is a visiting biophysics professor in Catania University, Sicily.  Today, Dr. Ho’s work includes close to 300 publications and 47 experimental works.

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho is a highly-consulted scientist, one of the most influential figures in the scientific community. She has been ardently opposed to the use of genetically modified organisms. In 1999, she founded ISIS, which stands for the Institute of Science in Society in London.

If there is one thing that distinguishes the Third World from the industrialized countries, it is that they take science a lot more seriously than we do in the GM debate.

I was researcher and university lecturer of genetics throughout the mid-1970s to the early 1980s when new discoveries on the fluid genome made headlines every week. Researchers back then were building a new paradigm, dispelling once and for all the notion that a gene is constant and independent of context. The thought that a gene could be patented as an invention probably never crossed their mind. And if it did, they would have dismissed it as a joke.

…The paradigm change that should have occurred, did not. On the contrary, the scientific establishment remained strongly wedded to genetic determinism, which has misguided genetic engineering, making even the most unethical applications appear compelling, such as ‘therapeutic’ human cloning, for one [2]. Bioethics became a contradiction in terms as rampant commercialization of science took hold.

For the past seven years, I have had to follow developments in genetic engineering science much more carefully and extensively than many of the practitioners, only to find that all my fears concerning the problems and dangers of genetic engineering are being confirmed.

…The basic tools of genetic engineering are bacteria, viruses and other genetic parasites that cause diseases and spread drug and antibiotic resistance. All that fall into the hands of genetic engineers are exploited. Genes from dangerous agents, including antibiotic resistance genes, are profusely mixed and matched, or recombined. As every geneticist should know, recombination of genetic material is one of the main routes to creating new strains of bacteria and viruses, some of which may be pathogens. (The other route is mutation.) Moreover, the predominant orientation of genetic engineering in the past two decades has been to design artificial GM constructs and vectors that cross species barriers and invade genomes, both of which will enhance horizontal gene transfer and further increase the chance for recombination.

Instead of tightening the guidelines, our regulators have relaxed them.

My colleague, Prof. Joe Cummins has summarized more up-to-date literature showing that all GM crops may be unstable.

…The US Department of Agriculture has approved field release of GM pink bollworms this summer, made with a mobile genetic element, piggyBac, already known to jump many species. The element was first discovered in cell cultures of the cabbage looper, where it caused high mutations of the baculovirus infecting the cells, by jumping into the viral genome. In experiments in silkworms, researchers already found evidence that the inserts were unstable, and had a tendency to move again from one generation to the next.

These artificial transposons are already aggressive genome invaders, and putting them into insects is to give them wings, as well as sharp mouthparts for efficient delivery to all plants and animals… The predictable result is rampant horizontal gene transfer and recombination across species barriers. The unpredictable unknown is what kinds of new deadly viruses might be generated, and how many new cases of insertion mutagenesis and carcinogenesis they may bring.

…We must abandon GM crops and all other attempts to genetic engineer plants, animals and human beings with a technology that is widely acknowledged to be unreliable, uncontrollable and unpredictable.

Even the corporations are coming around to the view that “Food biotech is dead”. One by one, Aventis, Monsanto and Syngenta have announced they will concentrate on genomics and marker assisted conventional breeding. Though meanwhile, they are still forcing the world, especially the Third World, to accept GM crops.

But the whole world is in revolt.

…Organic and sustainable agricultural practices and technologies are succeeding, documented in study after study, despite the appalling lack of research funding compared to the hundreds millions that have gone into biotech. At least 3% of the arable land, some 28.9m hectares in Africa, Asia and Latin America are already farmed sustainably, with impressive gains in crop yield as well as social, economic and health benefits. Organic farming is also working well in the United States and Europe, with yields matching and even surpassing agrochemical agriculture. Organic farms are good for wildlife, supporting many more species of plants, songbirds butterflies spiders, earthworms. We need organic farming for the world to feed itself and for the planet to regenerate and thrive.

Sustainable agriculture is also important for alleviating, if not reversing global warming. A new report shows that sustainable agriculture can contribute significantly, not only to reducing consumption of fossil fuel, but increasing sequestration of carbon in the soil.

The new genetics is radically ecological, organic and holistic. That is why genetic engineering, at least in its current form, can never succeed. It is based on misconceptions that organisms are machines, and on a denial of the complexity and flexibility of the organic whole.

The challenge for western scientists is to develop a holistic science to help revitalize all kinds of non-corporate sustainable agriculture and holistic medicine that can truly bring food security and health to the world.

David Schubert, Ph.D.

Dr. Schubert, a biochemist, is a professor and the head of the Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute. Much of his research has been in studying hormones and other substances that affect the survival and function of brain cells.

Given the fact that genetically modified plants are going to make proteins in different amounts and perhaps totally new proteins than their parental species, what are the potential outcomes? A worst case scenario could be that an introduced bacterial toxin is modified to make it toxic to humans. Direct toxicity may be rapidly detected once the product enters the marketplace, but carcinogenic activity or toxicity caused by interaction with other foods would take decades to detect, if ever. The same outcomes would be predicted for the production of toxins or carcinogens via indirect changes in gene expression.

Finally, if the above problems are real, what can be done to address these concerns? The issue of secondary modification could be addressed by continual monitoring of the introduced gene product by mass spectroscopy. The problem is that some secondary modifications, like phosphorylation or sulfation can be lost during purification. However, the best, and to me the only reasonable solution, is to require all genetically engineered plant products for human consumption be tested for toxicity and carcinogenicity before they are marketed. These safety criteria are required for many chemicals and all drugs, and the magnitude of harm caused by a widely consumed toxic food would be much greater than that of any single drug.

Patrick Brown, Ph.D.

Dr. Brown is a professor in The Department of Plant Sciences, College of Agriculture and Environmental Science at the University of California. Dr. Brown is an agronomist who earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University.

This issue requires immediate and thoughtful attention from plant scientists. We must recognize that our knowledge of the processes that regulate gene incorporation and expression are in their infancy and that our capacity to manipulate the plant genome is crude. Given this current lack of understanding it is certainly possible that the current regulatory safeguards are inadequate and may not be offering sufficient protection against inadvertent creation of health and ecological problems.

Since the public education and research system is based upon a foundation of public trust, it is essential that we recognize and admit the unknowns associated with molecular biology and act with caution and integrity.

Recommended Reading:

• Understanding and Detoxifying Genetically Modified Foods
• Doctors Against GMOs – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research
• Doctors Against Vaccines – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research
• Scientists Against Vaccines – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research
• Celebrities Who Have Spoken Out Against Vaccines

Sources:

• About Dr. Vandana Shiva – Vandana Shiva.com
• Soil, papered over – The Asian Age
• Environmental toxins and autism: off limits to the press? – Examiner.com
• Former Pro-GMO Scientist Speaks Out About GMO Dangers – Natural Society
• GMOs make animals seriously ill – GM Watch
• Altered Genes, Twisted Truth – Ecologist
• Geneticist David Suzuki Says Humans “Are Part Of A Massive Experiment” – Collective Evolution
• Cell Biologist Richard Strohman has died at 82 – UC Berkeley News
• Scientists Speak – Say No To GMOs
• An interview with David Suzuki – American Scientist
• Dr. Mae Wan-Ho – Biography
• Biography – David Suzuki Foundation
• David R. Schubert – Salk Institute for Biological Studies
• Patrick Brown – UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences

The evidence is mounting – GMOs are a danger to health. Long-term studies have revealed organ damage, cancer, and reproductive damage in second and third generation animal studies. There are doctors who are willing to publicly take a stand against genetic engineering. Here are a few of them.

Dr. Mehmet Oz

Dr. Mehmet Oz is a renowned heart surgeon and the host of the popular television show, The Dr. OZ Show.

Whether you support genetically engineered crops or not, the freedom to make an informed choice should belong to consumers. The bill in Congress this month proposing to block states from independently requiring labeling offers a coup to pro-GMO groups.

As a scientist, I am not that concerned about GMOs themselves, but I am worried about why they were created. Highly toxic herbicides would kill crops unless they were genetically modified, but with the genetic upgrade, these plants can be doused with much higher doses, with potential complications to the environment. The WHO believes that glyphosate is “probably a human carcinogen.” Perhaps we are all showing “disdain for science and evidence-based medicine,” but I would argue that unleashing these products creates a real-time experiment on the human species. Sure, we will eventually know if these pesticides are a problem, but at the expense of the pain and suffering and disease in real people. I owe my kids more. And so do you.

Dr. John H. Boyles

Board certified in the American Environmental Medicine and the American board of Otolaryngology, Dr. Boyles currently practices medicine in Centerville Ohio at the Dayton Ear Nose & Throat Surgeons, Inc.

This exchange of DNA between the species is totally against nature.  We simply don’t know what it will produce.  We don’t know if it is safe, and it has not yet been proven to be safe.

We do not fully understand how gene splicing works within a single species.  We certainly can’t predict how it will work when attempting to combine more than one species.

Yes, the means by which to prove safety was developed around the year 2000. No companies performing the gene splicing will use the procedures, because if their product were to be proven unsafe, then they cannot sell that product. 

Patients at Dayton Ear, Nose, & Throat Surgeons, Inc. were tested for allergies with organic and genetically modified varieties of foods. Some of the patients tested reacted both to the organic soy and the altered soy. Other patients reacted to the GMO soy, but had no reaction to organic soy.  Another group tested positively to the organic, but had no allergic reaction to the GMO soy.  And some patients had no allergic reaction to either the GMO soy or the organic soy.

It has come to our attention that by altering genes, scientists are creating a separate allergy to foods that did not exist in patients before. By changing or altering the structure of the plant, GMOs can cause separate reactions from the same food.

 You owe it to yourself and your family to make healthier food choices. Any allergic person can benefit from a diet with increased organic foods. Control what you can, and steer clear of GMO foods.

Dr. Emily Lindner

Dr. Emily Lindner is an internist with a dual practice of Internal Medicine and Complementary/Integrative Medicine. She is certified in Functional and Nutritional Medicine.

I tell my patients to avoid genetically modified foods because in my experience, with those foods there is more allergies and asthma. … And what emanates from that is everything. Lots of arthritis problems, autoimmune diseases, anxiety… neurological problems; anything that comes from an inspired immune system response.

When I change people from a GMO diet to a GMO-free diet I see results instantaneously in people who have foggy thinking and people who have gut symptoms like bloating, gas, irritation. In terms of allergies, it might take two to five days. In terms of depression, it starts to lift almost instantaneously. It takes from a day, to certainly within two weeks.

Dr. Robin Bernhoft

Dr. Robin Bernhoft is a surgeon who retrained in environmental medicine after suffering from an environmental illness caused by the toxic skin scrubs used before surgery. He has since regained his health.

“…all physicians should prescribe non-genetically modified food for all patients, and that we should educate all of our patients on the potential health dangers, and known health dangers of GMO food.”

Dr. Mercola

Dr. Mercola is an osteopathic physician and an entrepreneur. He is known for being a strong proponent of alternative medicine.

Monsanto and other biotech companies claim genetically modified (GM) crops have no impact on the environment and are perfectly safe to eat.

Federal departments in charge of food safety in the US and Canada have not conducted tests to affirm this alleged “safety,” but rather have taken the industry-conducted research at face value, allowing millions of acres of GM crops to overtake farmland.

These foods, largely in the form of GM corn and soy (although there are other GM crops, too, like sugar beets, papaya and crookneck squash), can now be found in the majority of processed foods in the US.

In other words, if you eat processed foods, you’re already eating them… and these crops are already being freely planted in the environment. But what if it turns out that Monsanto was wrong, and the GM crops aren’t actually safe?

Monsanto is the world leader in GM crops, and their Web site would have you believe that they are the answer to world hunger. Thanks to their heavy PR campaign, if you’ve been primarily a reader of the mainstream press, you’ve probably been misled into thinking GM crops are, in fact, the greatest thing since sliced bread, that they provide better yields of equal or better quality food, pest and weed resistance, reduced reliance on pesticides, and more… But thankfully, the truth is unfolding and the tide is finally beginning to turn.

Dr. Russell Blaylock

Dr. Blaylock is a board certified neurosurgeon. He practiced medicine for 25 years before pursuing his nutritional studies and research full time. He now owns a nutritional practice, and is a health practitioner, lecturer, and author. He is known for confronting controversial issues in medicine and backing up his arguments with impeccable research. He warns that most of the studies on GMOs are terminated within or at ninety days and test animals are destroyed – with good reason. The following comments are in response to a long-term GMO study published in the journal, “Food and Chemical Toxicology.”

Virtually all of these studies use rats and are terminated at 90 days.This study clearly shows that most of the harmful effects of GMO foods occur after 90 days.

In this study, animals were fed the GMO corn for two years in concentrations commensurate to what people would eat. What they found is beyond shocking.

The animals fed GMO food died two to three times more often than the animals eating a normal diet. Male rats demonstrated liver damage 2.5 to 5.5 times more often than control rats.

Of extreme concern was the finding that the females developed massive breast tumors at a high rate in the GMO-fed animals.

Even more frightening is that almost half of all babies are now being fed soy-based formula. This is not the only study to find problems with GMO foods, but it is the most damning.

In my estimation, all GMO foods should be removed from stores, and GMO crops should be destroyed. The implications of this disaster is almost beyond belief and GMO crops are being heavily promoted all over the world by the IMF, Council on Foreign Relations, and other international organizations.

Dr. Richard Lacey M.D., Ph.D

Dr. Lacey is an expert in food safety issues who served for four years on a U.K. government advisory panel on food as it relates to human and animal health. In 1989-1990, he warned against the practice of feeding cattle rendered meat from sheep and other animals, predicting the “mad cow” epidemic before it occurred. He has written five books on food safety, including one published by Cambridge University Press in 1994 containing a detailed discussion of genetically engineered food. He does not believe GMOs are safe and clearly reminds us that their safety has never been established.

It is my considered judgment that employing the process of recombinant DNA technology (genetic engineering) in producing new plant varieties entails a set of risks to the health of the consumer that are not ordinarily presented by traditional breeding techniques. It is also my considered judgment that food products derived from such genetically engineered organisms are not generally recognized as safe on the basis of scientific procedures within the community of experts qualified to assess their safety.

Recombinant DNA technology is an inherently risky method for producing new foods. Its risks are in large part due to the complexity and interdependency of the parts of a living system, including its DNA. Wedging foreign genetic material in an essentially random manner into an organism’s genome necessarily causes some degree of disruption, and the disruption could be multi-faceted. Further, whether singular or multi-faceted, the disruptive influence could well result in the presence of unexpected toxins or allergens or in the degradation of nutritional value. Further, because of the complexity and interactivity of living systems — and because of the extent to which our understanding of them is still quite deficient — it is impossible to predict what specific problems could result in the case of any particular genetically engineered organism.

…To the best of my judgment, neither genetically engineered foods as a general class nor any genetically engineered food in particular is generally recognized as safe among those experts qualified by training and experience to evaluate their safety…

…In my opinion, the number of scientists who are not convinced about the safety of genetically engineered foods is substantial enough to prevent the existence of a general recognition of safety. Second, there is insufficient evidence to support a belief that genetically engineered foods are safe. I am not aware of any study in the peer-reviewed scientific literature that establishes the safety of even one specific genetically engineered food let alone the safety of these foods as a general class. Few properly designed toxicological feeding studies have even been attempted, and I know of none that was satisfactorily completed. Those who claim that genetically engineered foods are as safe as naturally produced ones are clearly not basing their claims on scientific procedures that demonstrate safety to a reasonable degree of certainty. Rather, they are primarily basing their claims on a set of assumptions that, besides being empirically unsubstantiated, are in several respects at odds with the bulk of the evidence.

The main assumptions are: (a) that producing food through recombinant DNA technology in itself entails no greater risks than producing it through sexual reproduction between members of the same species and (b) that the same safeguards commonly employed by breeders using conventional techniques will suffice for genetically engineered foods.

As far as I can ascertain, the current policy of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is primarily based on these two assumptions. Therefore, although it claims to be “science-based,” this claim has no solid basis in fact. The only way to base the claims about the safety of genetically engineered food in science is to establish each one to be safe through standard scientific procedures, not through assumptions that reflect more wishful thinking than hard fact.

American Academy of Environmental Medicine

This is an official statement from the American Academy of Environmental Medicine.

Genetically Modified Foods

According to the World Health Organization, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are “organisms in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in such a way that does not occur naturally.” This technology is also referred to as “genetic engineering”, “biotechnology” or “recombinant DNA technology” and consists of randomly inserting genetic fragments of DNA from one organism to another, usually from a different species. For example, an artificial combination of genes that includes a gene to produce the pesticide Cry1Ab protein (commonly known as Bt toxin), originally found in Bacillus thuringiensis, is inserted in to the DNA of corn randomly. Both the location of the transferred gene sequence in the corn DNA and the consequences of the insertion differ with each insertion. The plant cells that have taken up the inserted gene are then grown in a lab using tissue culture and/or nutrient medium that allows them to develop into plants that are used to grow GM food crops.

Natural breeding processes have been safely utilized for the past several thousand years. In contrast, “GE crop technology abrogates natural reproductive processes, selection occurs at the single cell level, the procedure is highly mutagenic and routinely breeches genera barriers, and the technique has only been used commercially for 10 years.” 

Despite these differences, safety assessment of GM foods has been based on the idea of “substantial equivalence” such that “if a new food is found to be substantially equivalent in composition and nutritional characteristics to an existing food, it can be regarded as safe as the conventional food.” However, several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food consumption including infertility, immune dysregulation, accelerated aging, dysregulation of genes associated with cholesterol synthesis, insulin regulation, cell signaling, and protein formation, and changes in the liver, kidney, spleen and gastrointestinal system.

There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation as defined by Hill’s Criteria in the areas of strength of association, consistency, specificity, biological gradient, and biological plausibility.  The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies. 

…Also, because of the mounting data, it is biologically plausible for Genetically Modified Foods to cause adverse health effects in humans. 

In spite of this risk, the biotechnology industry claims that GM foods can feed the world through production of higher crop yields. However, a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists reviewed 12 academic studies and indicates otherwise: “The several thousand field trials over the last 20 years for genes aimed at increasing operational or intrinsic yield (of crops) indicate a significant undertaking. Yet none of these field trials have resulted in increased yield in commercialized major food/feed crops, with the exception of Bt corn.”  However, it was further stated that this increase is largely due to traditional breeding improvements. 

Therefore, because GM foods pose a serious health risk in the areas of toxicology, allergy and immune function, reproductive health, and metabolic, physiologic and genetic health and are without benefit, the AAEM believes that it is imperative to adopt the precautionary principle, which is one of the main regulatory tools of the European Union environmental and health policy and serves as a foundation for several international agreements. 

…With the precautionary principle in mind, because GM foods have not been properly tested for human consumption, and because there is ample evidence of probable harm, the AAEM asks:

• Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community, and the public to avoid GM foods when possible and provide educational materials concerning GM foods and health risks.
• Physicians to consider the possible role of GM foods in the disease processes of the patients they treat and to document any changes in patient health when changing from GM food to non-GM food.
• Our members, the medical community, and the independent scientific community to gather case studies potentially related to GM food consumption and health effects, begin epidemiological research to investigate the role of GM foods on human health, and conduct safe methods of determining the effect of GM foods on human health.
• For a moratorium on GM food, implementation of immediate long term independent safety testing, and labeling of GM foods, which is necessary for the health and safety of consumers.

(This statement was reviewed and approved by the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine on May 8, 2009.)

Conclusion

In America, there is a fascination and an appreciation of most new technologies. Before GMOs were widely adopted more medical professionals and scientists marveled at the technological advancements making genetic engineering possible; this awe and wonder was widespread long before the downsides of GMOs became well known. It turns out they are worse than almost anyone thought.

Now that GMOs have been widely adopted in the American diet, more and more doctors are discovering that GMOs are devastating to our health. It is becoming more common for doctors to advise their patients to avoid GMOs. Recently, members of Sermo, an online community of physicians, were surveyed as to whether or not they support GMO labeling. The majority, 68% of them are in favor of requiring food manufacturers to label products containing GMOs.

For years, there has been a tired argument that if you’re against GMOs then you’re against science, but just because we have the technology to do something, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we should. The majority of new technologies are abandoned due to flaws that become painfully apparent after they have become widespread. At present we are feeling that pain.

Be sure to check out Doctors Against Vaccines and Understanding and Detoxifying from GMOs.

Further Reading:

• Understanding and Detoxifying Genetically Modified Foods
• Doctors Against Vaccines – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research
• Foods That Are GMO
• Celebrities Who Have Spoken Out Against Vaccines
• GMO Science – Understanding How GMOs Are Created, and What Prominent Scientists Are Saying

Sources:

• A Majority of Doctors Favor GMO Labeling – Robyn O’Brien
• Doctors prescribe – No Genetically Modified Foods – Natural Health 365
• Doctors Warn: Avoid Genetically Modified Foods – Institute for Responsible Technology
• Genetically Modified Foods – American Academy of Environmental Medicine
• Genetically Modified Foods and Health Risks – Disabled World
• GMOs – What you know, what you don’t know, Intro – Dayton Ear, Nose & Throat, Inc.
• Scientists Speak – SAY NO TO GMOS
• Why GMOs Can Never Be Safe – Mercola

Imagine if you had a product to sell that didn’t require advertising or marketing, but the majority of people thought they had to have it. Better still, millions of children and adults are forced to obtain your product in order to keep their jobs or go to school.

The government is one of your guaranteed buyers. Your product doesn’t need to be 100% effective or 100% safe. If your product hurts your consumers, you won’t be held liable for damages. Instead, your product is taxed and the money goes to consumers or family members of those who were harmed or killed by the product. You don’t even need to be involved in the court cases, to determine who gets the money. The government will do that for you.

Vaccines operate under a different business model than anything else that is bought and sold in America. And don’t fool yourself into believing pharmaceutical companies don’t make a profit off vaccines. Each vaccine is worth billions of dollars.

The Market Economy, Better Known as the Free Market

In a free market, the public is never coerced into buying anything  by government. There are multiple manufacturers, buyers, and sellers of every product. In order for companies to stay in business, their products must stand on their own. Companies compete with each other and are free to enter and leave the marketplace. No industries or companies receive special protection from the government, so safety becomes a financial responsibility as well as a moral one.

A free market is competitive, with companies competing with one another for customers and employees. In order for this system to work, the marketplace must be decentralized, with market power spread out over many businesses and households, not concentrated in the hands of a few politically powerful businesses and government agencies.

Free Markets Produce Favorable Efficient Outcomes, as if Guided by an Invisible Hand

The free market system is far from perfect, but it is the most efficient means of allocating resources. The father of economics, Adam Smith, explained how this system leads to desirable outcomes for society.

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.”

“Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it … He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end, which was no part of his intention.”

The same year Adam Smith published his seminal work on economics, An Inquiry Into The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, American rebels signed the Declaration of Independence. More than 200 hundred years later, many of Smith’s insights still ring true, and his initial research remains fundamental to modern economics.

We could call it a coincidence, but both documents shared the view that individuals are usually better off when left to their own devices, without heavy-handed government interference. This philosophical approach, which places a high value on freedom, provided the intellectual foundation for the market economy and for a free society. ^[i]

Less Than Free Markets

This is, of course, not the only way to buy and sell goods. Communist economies were built on the notion that the government knew best, and they should be the ones to decide what is bought and sold, and how it is done. This idea has been shown to be a colossal failure, and most centrally planned economies have abandoned this system in order to develop market economies. (China and Russia are good examples of failed centrally planned economies).

Healthcare makes up a substantial portion of the American economy. In 2013, U.S. health care spending reached $2.9 trillion or $9,255 per person. This accounts for 17.4% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). ^[ii] Increasingly, government has been taking more and more control over our healthcare decisions, mandating insurance and vaccines. This is being done under the guise that they know best.

This level of coercion is not the endgame for government regulators and vaccine manufacturers. As of 2012, there were nearly 300 vaccines in development^[iii], and pharmaceutical companies lobby endlessly to make all vaccines, even the flu vaccine, mandatory for everyone. Obviously, this would make pharmaceutical companies more money. Some people believe it would increase our so-called herd immunity, but many feel our freedom is worth more than that. Patrick Henry once boldly proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death!”

Mandated Vaccines Do Not Belong in a Free Country

So far we have seen mandatory vaccines for hospital workers, childcare workers, government employees, public school children, and college students.

Australia has instituted a no jab no pay policy, making government benefits dependent upon vaccine compliance. Many child protective services have begun medical kidnappings, forcing vaccines on the children of uncooperative parents. This is not how a free market, or a free society functions. Our freedoms, especially our medical freedoms, have been eroding for some time now, sold off to the highest corporate bidders.

Years ago, a leading economist wrote a book warning us about what happens when government becomes too heavily involved in our affairs. Milton Friedman’s book, Capitalism & Freedom, won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976.

In the conclusion of his book he writes:

The importance of government as a buyer of so much of our output, and the sole buyer of the output of many firms and industries, already concentrates a dangerous amount of economic power in the hands of the political authorities, changes the environment in which business operates and the criteria relevant for business success, and in these and other ways endangers a free market.”

The Revolving Doors of the CDC, FDA, and the Pharmaceutical Industries

No one can be an expert in everything. We live in complicated times. Since the majority of us don’t have time to research everything, most of us turn to our government regulators to tell us, in their expert opinion, if a product, service, or practice is safe. After all, the CDC and other government agencies are paid salaries provided by taxpayer revenue to know these things and to give us objective advice. Theoretically, they work for us, the American people. In practice, however, government regulators like the CDC actually work for the pharmaceutical industries.

There are several independent studies showing conflicts of interest among vaccine regulators. Several government studies going years back have shown extensive CDC corruption. Consider the results of the following report from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform. This report reveals how the members of influential advisory committees such as the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) and the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunizations Practices (ACIP) have been completely corrupted by industry. This report notes that members of these advisory committees have extensive financial ties to the pharmaceutical industries. A few examples of this include:

• “The CDC routinely grants waivers from conflict of interest rules to every member of its advisory committee.
• CDC Advisory Committee members who are not allowed to vote on certain recommendations due to financial conflicts of interest are allowed to participate in committee deliberations and advocate specific positions.
• The Chairman of the CDC’s advisory committee until very recently owned 600 shares of stock in Merck, a pharmaceutical company with an active vaccine division.
• Members of the CDC’s advisory Committee often fill out incomplete financial disclosure statements, and are not required to provide the missing information by CDC ethics officials.
• Four out of eight CDC advisory committee members who voted to approve guidelines for the rotavirus vaccine in June 1998 had financial ties to pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine.
• Three out of five FDA advisory committee members who voted to approve the rotavirus vaccine in December 1997 had financial ties to pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine.”^[iv]

There are several studies following this report that back up these findings. In June 2007, Senate minority leader Tom Coburn released an oversight report of the CDC. The findings bring many questions to mind concerning the CDC’s effectiveness and how they spend our money. The study was named CDC Off Center: A Review of How an Agency Tasked With Fighting and Preventing Disease has Spent Hundreds of Millions of Tax Dollars for Failed Prevention Efforts, International Junkets, and Lavish Facilities, but Cannot Demonstrate it is Controlling Disease.

Here are a few highlights of this study:

Yet while CDC has been given millions, and in some cases billions, of dollars to help prevent certain diseases among Americans, for many of these diseases the rates have not decreased, but have stayed the same or even increased under CDC’s watch. In the case of HIV, despite spending billions of dollars, CDC cannot even report how many Americans have the communicable disease.

Perhaps there is a budgetary reason why CDC does not “count” over a $1.8 billion dollars it has received and spent over the last few years on HIV/AIDS, but doing so makes it complicated for researchers to compare actual CDC expenditures from year to year.

Since 1996 the CDC had a visitor center which drew 15,000 visitors a year. The agency itself is located in Atlanta, Georgia, home to one of the largest 24-hour cable news networks. Yet when faced with static HIV transmission rates, e-coli outbreaks, and the threat of bioterrorism, CDC spent $106 million of taxpayers’ dollars to build a lavish new visitor center, which includes a 70-foot-wide by 25-foot-tall video wall of rear-projection and plasma television screens inside its new communications center, which houses a $20 million new studio for communicating CDC information.”

Other questionable expenditures include 10 million dollars on furniture, and 3 million dollars a year leasing a private jet.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the CDC has spent more than $1 billion on building construction and repairs of its buildings and facilities from fiscal years 2000 to 2005.”

The report includes many other examples of questionable spending. In December of 2009, The Office of the Inspector General set out to ascertain the extent to which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its special Government employees (SGE) on Federal advisory committees complied with ethics requirements. Nine years following the U.S. House of Representatives Majority Report the conflicts of interest at the CDC have not gotten any better. Consider the following highlights of the report:

• “For almost all special Government employees, CDC did not ensure that financial disclosure forms were complete in 2007. CDC certified OGE Forms 450 with at least one omission in 2007 for 97 percent of SGEs. Most of the forms had more than one type of omission. CDC did not identify or resolve potential conflicts of interest for 64 percent of special Government employees in 2007. “
• “CDC did not ensure that 41 percent of special Government employees received required ethics training in 2007. CDC did not ensure that 41 percent of SGEs had ethics training certificates on file to document that SGEs received initial or annual ethics training within required timeframes in 2007.”
• “Fifteen percent of special Government employees did not comply with ethics requirements during committee meetings in 2007.”
• “ In addition, 3 percent of SGEs voted on particular matters when their waivers prohibited such participation. Four SGEs both participated in committee meetings without current, certified OGE Forms 450 on file and voted on particular matters when their waivers prohibited such participation.”

To their credit, The Office of The Inspector General had some specific recommendations on how things can be improved at the CDC.

• “We found that CDC had a systemic lack of oversight of the ethics program for SGEs. That is, CDC and its SGEs did not comply with ethics requirements in 2007.
• To address our findings, we recommend that CDC:

Ensure that special Government employees’ Confidential Financial

Disclosure Reports are complete before certifying them.

• Require special Government employees to disclose their involvement in grants and other relevant interests that could pose conflicts but that are not disclosed on the Confidential Financial Disclosure Report. 
• Identify and resolve all conflicts of interest for special Government employees before permitting them to participate in committee meetings.
• Increase collaboration among CDC officials and with the HHS Office of the General Counsel.
• Ensure that special Government employees and CDC employees receive ethics training.
• Monitor special Government employee compliance with ethics requirements during committee meetings.
• Track special Government employee compliance with ethics requirements.”^[v]

One might be tempted to think that what’s needed is a hard-working public servant to come in and reform the system. That is what many observers hoped would happen when David Wright took the job as the director of the Office of Research Integrity. Reforming the system is beyond the influence of one director. Two years into his job as director, Wright wrote a scathing letter of resignation, which included the following:

…working with the research community and the remarkable scientist-investigators at ORI has been the best job I’ve ever had.  As for the rest, I’m offended as an American taxpayer that the federal bureaucracy—at least the part I’ve labored in—is so profoundly dysfunctional.  I’m hardly the first person to have made that discovery, but I’m saddened by the fact that there is so little discussion, much less outrage, regarding the problem.” ^[vi]

From these findings, I think it is clear that we have problems at the systemic level, not just with a few bad regulators. We have a clear problem when regulators from the CDC and FDA profit from the decisions they make on advisory committees. These conflicts of interest are the norm and not the exception. The CDC is certainly well funded, but how they spend their tax generated revenue is questionable, and there is little evidence that their efforts are actually controlling disease. Finally, there is the bureaucratic atmosphere that encourages a wasteful kind of work – the look busy but do nothing kind of mentality that is pervasive in our bureaucracies. Agencies like the CDC and the FDA are given billions of tax dollars to serve the American public, to protect us. If they cannot or will not do their jobs, they need to be defunded. Bureaucrats who work for the pharmaceutical industry must be stripped of their authority and put on industry payroll, not the government payroll.

Conclusion

There is a tremendous amount of money in vaccines, especially due to mandatory vaccinations. Billions of dollars is on the line, and while Big Pharma tries to convince the nation that vaccines are a dire necessity and that pharmaceutical companies are just altruistically trying to help us, there are a few arguments that we can make, not only in defense of our rights, but in defense of the free market.

Mandatory vaccinations infringe on our rights, not only as consumers, but as individuals. The most basic right is control over one’s body. Years after slavery and the Tuskegee experiments, the government is overstepping its bounds again. Whether pro vaccine or anti-vaccine, the right to refuse a medical procedure is a right that affects us all.

If vaccines are as safe and effective as many in the medical community claim, why do vaccines receive special protection from liability from the U.S. Government? Because they aren’t safe and effective. Vaccines are so dangerous they are not profitable when subject to the same standards as other medical products under U.S. courts. As a result, vaccines get their own court – the Vaccine Court.

Economics teach us that government run markets have been shown to be horribly inefficient. Healthcare amounts to a large and growing sector of the U.S. economy. Mandated health insurance and forced vaccines are communist methods of running an economy, and they have no place in a free society. We are not, in fact, living in a free society. We have not been for some time. Instead we live in a plutocratic oligarchy, a society run by a wealthy elite. The economics of vaccines are the economics of many different corporate interests run amok. In a free market, the only things that can’t be for sale are the integrity of the market and the freedom of the market. These things are priceless.

Recommended Supplements:

• Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse
• Shillington’s Intestinal Detox (Bentonite clay, flax, pectin, charcoal, and more)
• Total Nutrition Formula
• HM Complex – Pure Encapsulations
• Basic B Complex – Thorne Research
• Oil of oregano – Gaia Herbs
• Shillington’s Echinacea+
• Chinese goldthread – Wise Woman Herbals (if out, try Berbercap)

Further Reading:

• How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children
• Vaccine Side Effects and Why You Shouldn’t Vaccinate
• Inexpensive, Easy Detox – The One Gallon Challenge
• 80% Raw Food Diet
• Garlic – The Most Amazing Herb On The Planet
• Hot & Cold Hydrotherapy
• Autism and Vaccines: CDC Whistleblower Exposes Vaccine Dangers, Lies, and Cover-ups

Sources:

• [i] The Principles of Economics by Gregory Mankiw
• [ii] National Health Accounts Historical – CMS.org
• [iii] Medicines in Development for Vaccines – PhRMA
• [iv] Conflicts of Interest – Natiral Vaccine Information Center
• [v] CDC’s Ethics Program For Special Government Employees On Federal Advisory Committees – Department of Health and Human Services
• [vi] Top U.S. Scientific Misconduct Official Quits in Frustration With Bureaucracy – Science Magazine