Lets Talk Health

(NaturalNews) While the Obama administration is attempting to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 in a hurry, NaturalNews readers have begun actually reading the bill, and they’re finding some worrying language that should raise concern among people interested in preserving health freedom and protecting the health of all Americans.

Specifically, one section of the economic stimulus bill designates nearly a billion dollars for new vaccinations of children. This was discovered by Elisha Celeste, a NaturalNews reader. As stated in the bill:

$954,000,000 shall be used as an additional amount to carry out the immunization program authorized by section 317(a), (j), and (k)(1) of the Public Health Service Act (“section 317 immunization program”)

The issue of whether vaccinations are actually helpful or harmful is hotly debated, of course. The pro-vaccine camp believes that the human immune system is a technological failure and that chemical intervention is the only way to protect children. The anti-vaccine camp believes that exposure to non-fatal infections actually strengthens the immune system, creating stronger protections against future infections. Thus, vaccines actually interfere with normal, healthy immune function while injecting children with dangerous chemicals and substances derived from sick, diseased animals.

NaturalNews is against childhood vaccines as explained in this article that completely debunks conventional beliefs about vaccinations: http://www.naturalnews.com/025596.html

Genomics programs?
The economic stimulus bill also requests more than half a billion dollars for “genomics programs”, saying:

$545,000,000 shall be used as an additional amount to carry out chronic disease, health promotion, and genomics programs

What’s interesting about this last quote is that it essentially says this half a billion dollars should be used to carry out three things:

1) Chronic disease programs
2) Health promotion
3) Genomics programs

I don’t have a problem with the second point. “Health promotion” sounds good (unless it’s nothing more than mammograms and mental health screening programs designed to sell more chemotherapy and psych drugs). But what, exactly, is meant by the phrase “…to carry out chronic disease”? And what is meant by “genomics programs”? Are we talking about government-funded genetic experimentation on human babies, perhaps? It wouldn’t be the first time. See: http://www.naturalnews.com/019189.html

You can find the text quoted here in an early version of the bill at: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/gpoxmlc111/h679_rh.xml

This text has survived in the recent versions of the bill and is about to be passed into law. A vote could take place as early as tomorrow.

The real question, of course, is this: What is sweeping health care reform doing hidden inside an economic stimulus bill?

And why is this bill being passed so quickly, without any chance for public debate on its merits or problems?

Democracy should not be carried out under the dark cover of fear-based urgency that bypasses public debate and cool-headed consideration. Health care reforms deserve more than a one-day debate. Virtually no one has actually read this bill. It’s 800 pages long, and more than a quarter of the bill is dedicated to these sweeping health care “reforms” that essentially represent sudden, significant changes in America’s health care system.

This isn’t about the right or the left. It’s about the process of Democracy. For Obama and members of Congress to hide this health care reform inside an urgent economic stimulus bill, then tell no one about it — and try to pass it quickly before anyone notices — is outright deception.

At the very least, they should remove the health care language from the bill and vote on the economic stimulus bill as purely a spending proposition (and that’s a whole different article). The health care changes should be carefully considered separate from this emergency stimulus bill.

Help stop the economic stimulus bill and / or request removal of the health care provisions
Key Phone Numbers:

Capital Switchboard , (202) 224-3121
Or go to www.senate.gov to get your Senator’s contact information.

The three key Senators to also contact:

Collins, Susan M. – (R – ME)
Direct: (202) 224-2523
Fax: (202) 224-2693

Specter, Arlen – (R – PA)
Direct: (202) 224-4254
Fax: 202-228-1229

Snowe, Olympia J. – (R – ME)
Direct: (202) 224-5344
Fax: (202) 224-1946

(NaturalNews) Under the cover of emergency economic legislation the front wave of an entire new system of health care is being pushed on Americans. The strategy for this ploy was once explained by Obama’s former appointee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, and now exposed tax cheat, Senator Tom Daschle. Daschle spells out the plan on pages 196-197 of his book, Critical , What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis, “The next president should act immediately to capitalize on the goodwill that greets any incoming administration. If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it. This issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.” In other words, public debate should be avoided, forget about democracy , so that Obama-care does not meet the same fate as Hillary-care.

In the last few days a debate on this issue has blown up on national TV, talk radio, and the internet. It began with an article published on Bloomberg titled, “Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan” by Betsy McCaughey. McCaughey says the plan could be used to ration care to the elderly, putting government, not doctors, in charge of what care will be delivered. She has been interviewed on Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck. Fox News, the Drudge Report, and even Rush Limbaugh have spread the news. Limbaugh warned his listening audience that their patient privacy was at stake and that “Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system.” The bottom line of their messages: quality of care and type of care will not be determined by the doctor, but rather by a new system of cost containment implemented by the federal government.

(http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_mccaughey&sid=aLzfDxfbwhzs)

Democrats have found themselves on the defense. While getting grilled on FOX news Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said, “There is nothing in this legislation that interferes with a doctor making a decision, with the patient, on what is appropriate care. What is in this legislation is an effort to make sure we share information , generically, appropriately , so doctors and medical providers can have the best information, but there’s nothing in this bill that compromises the decision-making between the doctor and the patient.”

Democratic websites have attacked McCaughey, saying she is reading more into the bill than is actually there. She has fired back, saying the health-care language in the bill has nothing whatsoever to do with new jobs and jump starting the economy. She says, “Americans deserve an open and honest debate about creating a federal healthcare infrastructure of this magnitude. These health provisions should be removed from the stimulus bill and offered to Congress in separate legislation.”

We even have Scott Gottlieb getting into the discussion, the former second in command at the FDA, who during his time at the FDA advocated the industry-friendly position that Americans should be exposed to dangerous and expensive drug experiments and have no right to recourse if they are injured. Now he says, “The bill will be used to create guidelines to direct doctors’ treatment of difficult, high-cost medical problems.” His statement means that Big Pharma and Big Biotech are really concerned that their future cash-cow experiments may not be covered by the new plan.

Indeed, Big Pharma was really upset about parts of the plan that called for spending government money to try and compare the effectiveness of drugs, one to another. This provision has now been changed based on intense lobbying over the past few days. Such a provision would have been really bad news for Big Pharma, as it would quickly be discovered that their drugs hardly work at all to produce positive health outcomes, especially in preventive medicine. For a more comprehensive understanding of Big Pharma in relation to the health care handouts in this bill, read my article “Is Obama Bailing Out Big Pharma’s Bursting Bubble.”

(http://www.wellnessresources.com/content/articles/is_obama_bailing_out_big_pharmas_bursting_bubble/)

The Hill website reported in early December that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) wanted health IT in the stimulus bill to help avoid a fight on healthcare early in 2009 when lawmakers were drafting broader healthcare legislation. “There are going to be certain costs of healthcare reform — upfront costs. If I can put some of those upfront costs in the so-called stimulus bill, I’d rather put them there….We’ve got to create a very significant upfront effort early on and keep the momentum going on healthcare,” said Baucus, who added he was in regular contact with the Obama team, Kennedy and other key lawmakers.

(http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/baucus-wants-schip-health-it-in-stimulus-2008-12-10.html)

Several things are certain. Health IT has nothing to do with meaningful stimulus for the economy. It is in the stimulus bill to get its own financial stimulus, helping to jump start Obama-care without any public debate.

The Scope of Obama’s Health IT
In the 680 page House version of the stimulus bill (H.R.1.E.H., pdf version), almost 200 pages are spent on Health IT (434-627). Right away you can understand that this is a comprehensive piece of legislation, taking up almost 1/3 of the bill. The legislation establishes within the Department of Health and Human Services an Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, which will be headed by a National Coordinator. This is like creating a new FDA, meaning the size of this new branch of government will end up quite large. It states various admirable purposes, such as ensuring electronic health information is secure and that it is used to better patient care. An overall goal is to have an electronic health record for every American by 2014 (page 445).

(http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.+1:)

This is not a passive IT system that is collecting data. It is intended to be used as a tool to deploy a type of care it deems appropriate based on government employees making policy-related health decisions, with a stated purpose so the IT system “provides appropriate information to help guide medical decisions at the time and place of care.” (page 442)

Anybody reading this legislation quickly realizes that it is much more than a health IT system. It is a new type of health care with a blank check on expanding its regulatory powers to accomplish anything it deems appropriate. For example, on page 447 it reads, “REPORT ON ADDITIONAL FUNDING OR AUTHORITY NEEDED. — Not later than 12 months after the date of the enactment of this title, the National Coordinator shall submit to the appropriate committees of jurisdiction of the House of Representatives and the Senate a report on any additional funding or authority the Coordinator or the HIT Policy Committee or HIT Standards Committee requires to evaluate and develop standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria, or to achieve full participation of stakeholders in the adoption of a nationwide health information technology infrastructure that allows for the electronic use and exchange of health information.”

A short version of this is “the National Coordinator shall report on any additional authority required to achieve full participation of stakeholders.” In other words, everyone will play ball and or else the National Coordinator must seek more power to be able to get everyone in line.

The legislation makes it clear that this is not just about your personal health. On page 455 it says, “the HIT Policy Committee may consider the following additional areas: The appropriate uses of a nation wide health information infrastructure, including for purposes of biosurveillance and public health.” This approves the use of your health information for military-related needs and other public health measures (meaning did you get all your vaccinations? etc.). It is not at all a stretch of the imagination to interpret this to mean that your electronic health record will be used to ensure you are in compliance with public health initiatives.

The legislation specifically mandates compliance by the private sector, page 470: “SEC. 4112. APPLICATION TO PRIVATE ENTITIES. Each agency (relating to promoting quality and efficient health care in Federal government administered or sponsored health care programs) shall require in contracts or agreements with health care providers, health plans, or health insurance issuers that as each provider, plan, or issuer implements, acquires, or upgrades health information technology systems, it shall utilize, where available, health information technology systems and products that meet standards and implementation specifications.”

In other words, all health professionals are required to abide by the standards of care that are determined in conjunction with the cost containment and “best practices” ideas of the federal government, whatever they may be. This means that the government is directly telling doctors how to practice medicine, and even what kind of medicine is allowed, contrary to what Senator Cardin told FOX news.

The theme and importance of conforming to the government’s idea of medical care is further spelled out in the section on the MEDICARE PROGRAM – INCENTIVES FOR ELIGIBLE PROFESSIONALS. This section introduces the term “meaningful user,” which is repeatedly used in the context of a health professional who is conforming to whatever the IT system tells them to do with their patients. It offers them bonuses up to $15,000 per year to comply with the IT health guidelines. (page 513) This means your doctor’s bonus could be more important than the right decision for your health.

The goal is to get doctors in the loop and then force them to comply with guidelines of care: “The Secretary shall seek to improve the use of electronic health records and health care quality over time by requiring more stringent measures of meaningful use.” (page 518) This is an open-ended and vaguely defined approach that could mean almost anything.

Freedom and Choice are Being Sacrificed
The price of this legislation cannot be measured in dollars. The price of this legislation should be measured in your loss of freedom, loss of privacy, and loss of choice relating to your own health. The government will want your DNA in its database next. It will want a chip in your arm to really keep track of you and your health. One thing will lead to another.

This legislation represents a broad and sweeping change in the type of care you will be able to receive. And that care will be set by the government, by unelected bureaucrats with who knows what agenda.

If this is what Americans really want then it should be debated and discussed openly on its merits. Freedom is not easily regained once it is lost. Once upon a time the people of Germany had a truly advanced health care system called the “freedom to cure.” It encouraged alternative health practitioners to practice side by side with medical doctors, offering true freedom of choice, all in the best interests of the patient. That was a long time ago.

In the name of public health, those freedoms were set aside for the rise of a socialist system. It was recognized that health freedom fostered mental health and free thinking citizens, and those rights were not compatible with socialism. Health freedom and general health choice were obliterated in the name of the greater good. The government had control. Even though Hitler was stopped, Germany has never regained its health freedom and today has one of the most repressive socialist health care systems on earth.

Certainly we want to do what we can to help Americans who are struggling with health problems, especially when those problems were not created by their own poor choices. It is simply not right to sacrifice our identity as a free people to accomplish that objective.

About the author: Byron J. Richards, Board-Certified Clinical Nutritionist, nationally-renowned nutrition expert, and founder of Wellness Resources is a leader in advocating the value of dietary supplements as a vital tool to maintain health. He is an outspoken critic of government and Big Pharma efforts to deny access to natural health products and has written extensively on the life-shortening and health-damaging failures of the sickness industry. www.wellnessresources.com [email protected]

(NaturalNews) The FDA has effectively banned a naturally-occurring form of vitamin B6 called pyridoxamine by declaring it to be a drug, reports the American Association for Health Freedom. Responding to a petition filed by a drug company, the FDA declared pyridoxamine to be “a new drug.”

Now, any nutritional supplements containing pyridoxamine will be considered adulterated and illegal by the FDA, which may raid vitamin companies and seize such products. See the history of FDA raids on vitamin companies here: http://www.naturalnews.com/021791.html

Pyridoxamine occurs naturally in fish, chicken and other foods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B6), putting the FDA in the strange position of banning a substance from dietary supplements even though it is already present in the food supply.

The FDA’s war on Mother Nature
It’s not the first time the FDA has declared a natural molecule to be a “drug” while attacking nutritional supplements that contain the same molecule. A similar story unfolded with red yeast rice and the lovastatin molecules it contains that lower high cholesterol. The drug companies engaged in biopiracy, ripping off the molecule from red yeast rice to make their now-famous “statin drugs.” Once the statin drugs were patented, Big Pharma and the FDA went after red yeast rice, claiming the supplement was “adulterated with pharmaceuticals.”

It wasn’t really adulterated, of course. It just contained a natural statin-drug-like molecule that the drug companies copied and patented.

It would be like Big Pharma patenting vitamin C, then the FDA claiming that all oranges and lemons were adulterated with drugs because they naturally contain their own vitamin C.

This is the insanity of the FDA as it operates today. You can read more about the FDA on our channel webiste www.FDAreform.org which is updated every few days.

So will this ruling on pyridoxamine affect nutritional supplements? Yes, any supplements containing this form of vitamin B6 can now be declared “adulterated” by the FDA. Manufacturers of such supplements can be arrested and shut down for engaging in “illegal drug trafficking.” Such is the nature of the FDA’s agenda to criminalize nutritional supplement companies and limit consumers’ access to Mother Nature’s remedies.

The pyridoxamine “drug,” by the way (which is just pyridoxamine), is designed to prevent the progression of diabetic nephrothapy (kidney disease). Most likely, the FDA will eventually approve the “drug” for that condition, even while claiming vitamin B6 supplements containing the very same chemical are useless and insert.

This is another classic oppression tactic of the FDA: Ban the herb, but promote the drug using the same chemicals. The same thing happened with ephedra, a Traditional Chinese Medicine herb known as ma huang. The FDA banned the herb, saying it was “dangerous at any dose,” but pharmaceuticals containing the very same molecules (ephedrine) are still being sold over-the-counter as cold medicines, meaning they’re available to any child without a prescription.

The bottom line is this: FDA approvals and bans have nothing to do with science and everything to do with protecting drug companies profits. If a drug company can make money selling a vitamin as a drug, the FDA will gladly ban the vitamin and protect the drug. If a drug company can rip off molecules from Mother Nature and patent them, the FDA will ban those same molecules found in nature.

All of this points to the urgent need to reform the FDA. A new petition demanding real FDA reform will be announced here on NaturalNews in the coming days.

Sources for this story include:

AAHF: http://aahf.nonprofitsoapbox.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=677&Itemid=

NewsFood.com: http://www.newsfood.com/?location=English&item=55070

NaturalProductsInsider.com: http://www.naturalproductsinsider.com/hotnews/fda-nixes-pyridoxamine-in-supplements.html

(NaturalNews) High levels of dietary vitamin C intake may reduce the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Institute of Metabolic Science at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, England, and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

At the study’s start, the researchers measured the vitamin C levels in blood samples taken from 21,831 healthy women and men between the ages of 40 and 75. Twelve years later, 312 of the women and 423 of the men had developed Type 2 diabetes, totaling 3.2 percent of the study population.

Comparing vitamin C blood levels with diabetes risk, the researchers found that participants with the highest vitamin C levels had a 62 percent lower risk of developing Type 2 diabetes than participants who had the lowest blood levels of the vitamin.

Using survey information provided by participants at the beginning of the study, the researchers adjusted their findings for the influence of other diabetes risk factors such as age, sex, alcohol or tobacco intake, physical activity level, body mass index and a family history of the disease. The association between vitamin C status and lower diabetes risk did not change.

The researchers noted that vitamin C levels are a very reliable marker of fruit and vegetable consumption. The data “re-endorse the public health message of the beneficial effect of increasing total fruit and vegetable intake,” they wrote, and provide “persuasive evidence of a beneficial effect of vitamin C and fruit and vegetable intake on diabetes risk.”

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 171 million people around the world currently suffer from diabetes, a number that is expected to increase to 350 million by 2030. In the United States, the American Diabetes Association estimates that 20 million people, or 7 percent of the population, have been diagnosed with the disease. Another 6.2 million are diabetic but undiagnosed, with 41 million more considered prediabetic.

Sources for this story include: www.reuters.com.

(NaturalNews) A physician I knew (he died at a ripe old age) once quipped, “Medicine is America`s fastest growing failing business.” And unless we refocus our entire approach to health care, it`s going to grow and fail even faster.

Most proposals for health-care reform have focused on either expanding the availability of insurance or reducing the costs of prescription drugs. While needed, these approaches are essentially extensions of a dysfunctional health-care system, and they fail to correct the system`s fundamental flaws.

Health care (of which medicine is part) is an oxymoron. It`s really a disease-care system that continues to exist only because of the rationing of treatment. Millions of people are excluded from health-care coverage, and others must deal with huge out-of-pocket expenses or simply do without.

The solution I envision would transform this disease-care system into a genuine health-care system. The only way to accomplish this, at a price this nation can afford, is to emphasize prevention.

I don`t mean inoculations or well-baby checkups, although they certainly should be part of any health-care system. Nor do I mean near-compulsive cholesterol and blood pressure checks, although they too have a place.

Rather, I recommend that the incoming Obama administration fund a large federal and state campaign that tackles prevention in a way similar to how government discouraged the use of tobacco products. The anti-tobacco campaign has largely worked, and one focusing on prevention can work as well.

Focusing on prevention is imperative. Unless we reduce the demands placed on disease care, the current or extended disease-care system will eventually collapse financially.

Nearly all experts agree that most chronic health problems result from poor eating habits, a lack of physical activity, and other lifestyle issues, such as smoking and alcohol consumption. These are behaviors that can be modified to reduce the risk of disease, and less disease means lower health-care costs.

It`s important that this campaign convey the message that each and every one of us is a partner in our own health. We can`t abuse our bodies and then expect doctors or magic pills to reverse the damage, regardless of who pays. We must acknowledge our personal responsibility for staying healthy and do a much better job of eating more nutritious foods and staying reasonably fit.

I would make nutrition the foundation of any health-care campaign, for a couple of reasons. First, it`s the basis of our biology and biochemistry. Second, two of every three Americans are now overweight or obese. More than 23 million have type 2 diabetes, and somewhere between 40 and 100 million have some form of prediabetes. These are signs that our eating habits and lifestyles are truly warped. Ominously, these health problems increase the risk of heart disease and most other chronic degeneration diseases.

There`s no need to get distracted by arguments over which diet is best. Everything I`ve learned about healthy habits boils down to emphasizing fresh foods over almost anything that comes in a box, can, jar, bottle, or bag. It`s as simple as that. Opt for a piece of fish or chicken and some vegetables instead of a burger and fries in the drive-thru. And yes, eat smaller portions.

Physical fitness is important as well. While we don`t have to build Schwarzenegger-type bodies, we do need to realize that all the time we spend in front of televisions and computers helps make us fat. Just going for a daily walk improves blood sugar and weight, and obviously the more we do, the better off we`ll be.

Food companies could certainly be given incentives to help spread the word about eating better and becoming more physically active. They could also retool some of their food products to wean people off junk foods. After all, the health of their profits will at some point depend on the health of the nation.

A consortium of medical societies, food-industry lobbying groups, and vitamin supplement associations could also help underwrite consumer-education campaigns geared to preventing disease.

Even the Food and Drug Administration could play a role by clearly discouraging the use of hydrogenated oils and caloric sweeteners, maybe by requiring warning labels on some packages. The FDA could also streamline the now complicated processes of making health claims for foods and supplements.

Doctors may dismiss my proposal by saying that patients want a quick fix (code word for prescription drug) and aren`t compliant with dietary changes. But the studies show that one-on-one nutrition coaching and follow-ups do result in compliance and consistency.

Will there be resistance to what I propose? Of course they will be. Every billion dollars saved in disease care will translate to a billion lost in drug company and hospital profits.

But something has got to give. As a nation, we`ve got to get off our duff and make some changes. It`s far easier, better, and less costly in the long run to prevent (or lower the risk of) disease than to struggle to treat it. Furthermore, as people get healthier, they will also have more energy, use fewer sick days, and be more productive. That can only be good for our economy.

We need more than a Band-Aid when it comes to reforming health care and controlling costs. I hate to say it, but for a permanent cure, health care needs major surgery followed, of course, by a lean diet and time to heal. This process will certainly take more than a couple of years to yield clear benefits, but so did the campaign to reduce tobacco use.


About the author
Jack Challem, The Nutrition Reporter ™, is a personal nutrition coach and one of America’s most trusted nutrition and health writers. Based in Tucson, Arizona, he is the bestselling author of more than 20 books, including Stop Prediabetes Now, The Food-Mood Solution, Feed Your Genes Right, and The Inflammation Syndrome. Jack is a columnist for Alternative and Complementary Therapies and his scientific articles have also appeared in Free Radical Biology and Medicine, Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Medical Hypotheses, and other journals. Free, downloadable excerpts from his books, and sample issues of his print newsletters are available at http://www.nutritionreporter.com.

(NaturalNews) Conventional medical doctors around the world (and the drug companies that support them) want all children to be vaccinated against measles, mumps, HPV, chicken pox and literally over a hundred other diseases. Bill Gates even supports the effort to “eradicate” disease from our planet by vaccinating people in developing nations. It all sounds like a noble goal, but like any such effort, it is based on an assumption. Upon closer inspection, that assumption turns out to be nothing more than blatant quacksterism hidden behind the technical jargon of modern medicine.

What assumption am I referring to? The assumption that immune system intervention (vaccines) produces a better long-term result than immune system adaptation (allowing the person to conquer such infections on their own).

At first, it may seem like a no-brainer: Of course it’s better to not get infected! Or, at least, that’s the conclusion most doctors jump to without any real thought on the subject. In their minds, immune system intervention is obviously superior to immune system adaptation. And in fact they dismiss anyone who dares question this wisdom of modern vaccines. But is this assumption really true?

In other words, is it true from a scientific perspective? Do mass vaccinations for non-fatal diseases actually improve the health and lives of those who receive them?

Vaccines don’t stand up to scientific scrutiny
I realize it may seem odd to invoke the laws of scientific reasoning on this issue. Vaccinations are supposed to be accepted without reason, without question by both medical professional and the public, right? Even daring to question vaccines is akin to questioning Darwinism in the minds of many.

But this, of course, reveals the fatal flaw of the pro-vaccine gang: They are afraid of being questioned. They fear scientific scrutiny so much that they have to reframe the entire debate as one made up of “doctors vs. quacks” rather than one of scientific evidence (which they don’t have) vs. quackery (which they have lots of).

This is the strategy of the intellectually desperate. Truth does not fear investigation, and if vaccines are so provably useful for enhancing the health of children, then doctors shouldn’t mind people asking questions or even openly debating the merits of vaccination programs. And yet what you see with vaccines today is a cult-like worship of vaccines that despises scrutiny or even solid science. Vaccines are good because they tell us so, and that should be sufficient reason, we’re told.

Is it their authority that makes vaccines “scientific,” not actually any real science.

So much for the scientific method when it comes to medicine, huh?

Mild infections actually IMPROVE health
Meanwhile, new research is showing that human health improves when it is EXPOSED to full-strength pathogens and infections that force the body to activate an adaptive response.

For example, new research conducted at Nottingham University (in the UK) is studying whether infecting patients with microscopic parasites (hookworms) actually improves their body’s ability to deal with multiple sclerosis. A pioneering study in Argentina showed positive results for asthma patients, demonstrating that hookworm infections invoke a healthy adaptive response in the body that tends to tame asthma.

In fact, as this Telegraph story explains (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/4375170/Infecting-patients-with-worms-could-hold-key-to-treating-asthma.html), one of the primary reasons why so many first-world citizens are getting sick with degenerative disease these days may be that people aren’t exposed to enough infections in their lives.

This “hygiene hypothesis” challenges the conventional wisdom of vaccinations, which instead believes that the human body should be denied the experience of a full-strength infection (and the adaptive response that follows).

It is the odd belief of vaccine promoters, in other words, that the human body is inherently incapable of dealing with infections and must be protected through chemical intervention. This deeply-rooted lack of faith in the technology of the human body is a bedrock belief of western medicine, which prefers intervention over self care (and external solutions instead of internal ones). By sheer coincidence, this core belief also happens to maximize the profits of the drug companies and conventional medical practitioners who thrive on the revenues created through medical intervention.

The upshot of all this is the sobering realization that children need to play in the dirt. Eating a piece of food you drop on the floor won’t kill you (the five-second rule!), and there IS such as thing as being “too clean.”

Are people trying to live like the Bubble Boy?
The public’s strange fascination with anti-bacterial soaps (which have been widely shown to actually promote superbug populations) (http://www.naturalnews.com/022178.html), antibiotics and vaccines shows a remarkable fear of the real world, as if people are seeking to hide inside sterilized plastic bubbles, free from the scary germs of the world.

Doctors prey upon this fear by scaring parents into thinking their child might die if they don’t get them vaccinated. The germs of the world are to be feared, doctors say, not embraced. Modern medicine’s “War on Germs” is a lot like George Bush’s “War on Terror.” It’s a never-ending war against an imaginary opponent, used primarily to control people into doing what you want.

But I say this theory is fundamentally flawed. It is based on what seems to be obvious, but in truth is far more complex. It SEEMS that protecting children from chicken pox, for example, is good for them, but in reality that intervention deprives their immune systems of the adaptive response necessary to protect against future, more serious infections.

An immune system, much like a musculoskeletal system, needs exercise to stay strong. When denied exposure to real pathogens, it becomes weak and lazy, depriving the person of the immune system experience needed to mature and adapt. A child deprived of chicken pox today is far more likely to be stricken by other infectious diseases in the future — diseases for which effective vaccines will never exist.

And thus the entire belief system upon which vaccinations are based appears to be fundamentally flawed when considering non-fatal infections. I’m not arguing that a person working in a biohazard facility shouldn’t be vaccinated against Ebola or Marburg or other extremely deadly virulent strains. There is no healthy adaptive response to such aggressive, dangerous pathogens. But neither are such deadly strains any real risk to the public: They kill their victims too quickly to successfully spread throughout the population. As any CDC official will tell you, the most widespread strains of infectious disease are the weakest strains because they can live in hosts and incubate for long enough to be transmitted to others.

Children should not be vaccinated against these largely non-fatal pathogens that actually serve an important function in the maturation of that child’s immune system technology.

One child, one thousand vaccines
Today, we are over-vaccinating our children to the point of utterly ridiculousness, and some doctors are claiming the effort should be boosted to include even as many as “one thousand vaccines.” The more, the merrier!

And yet this vaccination agenda, upon closer inspection, appears to be based entirely on an irrational belief in vaccines rather than a scientifically-proven benefit derived from the intervention. Science, in fact, isn’t even allowed in this debate. Opponents of vaccines are screamed right out of the room before they can even raise a single point of objection.

The only science they can really quote concerns whether or not the child’s body develops antibodies following the vaccine injection. This is an incredibly short-sighted view that completely disregards the long-term consequences of this immune system intervention. Then again, such short-sighted views characterize modern medicine, which essentially ignores the long-term effects of practically everything it promotes: Vaccines, pharmaceuticals, chemotherapy, radiation treatments and so on.

When science becomes gospel, it is no longer science, but just another religion framed in a different jargon. There’s nothing wrong with religion, of course, but when vaccine-pushing scientists dismiss religion as being “unscientific” and then resort to precisely the same strategy of faith-based pronouncements of truth in their own work, they only demonstrate the irrational double standard upon which their agenda is based.

Vaccines are not to be questioned, period. And anyone who questions them shall be interrogated by the Church of Modern Medicine. I wonder if the ghosts of Copernicus and Galileo might have a few words to say about that? Modern medicine has become to real science what the Church of the year 1633 was to Galileo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei).

The Scientific Revolution unleashed by those great minds of human history has now been all but abandoned by pushers of pharmaceutical profits at the expense of human health. Vaccines fail every scientific test of long-term safety or even efficacy, and yet they continue to be pushed as gospel by believers in the chemical interventions of modern medicine.

To call them quacks as actually missing the point. They are not actually knowingly committing fraud. Most of these doctors and health authorities actually believe what they’re doing is right. And therein lies the greater danger — they are cult-like believers in a system of treatment that defies scientific questioning. In their minds, the vaccine theory is beyond questioning. It is gospel. It is truth. And those who dare question it are, in their minds, lunatics from the start.

These are the obvious signs of modern medicine’s dangerous descent into medical fanaticism. Vaccine promoters are, in every way, fanatically dedicated to their irrational beliefs that intervening in the immune system in better than allowing the immune system to do its job.

And if you break this down to the essential underlying concepts, here’s what it all really means:

Doctors believe that THEIR technology is superior to the technology of the human immune system.

Arrogance, in other words. Man is smarter than Mother Nature. Chemicals are superior to the body’s own immune system nanotechnology. These beliefs characterize the gospel of modern medicine, and they simultaneously reveal a highly pessimistic view of Mother Nature.

Darwinism, Natural Selection and the fatal contradiction in western medical philosophy
One reason this is all so fascinating is because virtually all vaccine pushers also believe in Darwinism and the laws of natural selection. Those very laws dictate that, over hundreds of thousands of years of mutation and natural selection, nature would have chosen the most fit and most biologically advanced members of the human race to survive and pass on their genes.

Thus, the human beings that survived to today are, by their own definition of natural selection, the most advanced forms of life possible within the species. We are the cream of the crop, the super-fit humans who survived while our lesser-qualified peers died and disappeared from the gene pool.

And yet, all of a sudden, by pushing vaccines, these same doctors are admitting they have NO faith in the technology of the very human beings they claim are genetically superior thanks to natural selection!

This simple example exposes the flawed philosophy of western medical scientists and doctors. Their ideas simply don’t add up. Are humans genetically superior survivors possessing top-class immune system technology derived from millennia of natural selection? Or are they chemically-deficient, immune-suppressed failures of immune system technology that warrant aggressive pharmaceutical intervention?

Vaccine pushers want to have it both ways. They want you to believe your immune system is the technical equivalent of a biological supercomputer, created by countless mutations that selected for superior beings. But if you walk into a doctor’s office and tell them you’re a superior being with a highly advanced immune system based on hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, they’ll jab you with a vaccine anyway, because they actually don’t believe human beings possess any advanced immune system technology at all.

You cannot believe in Natural Selection and vaccines at the same time. Not without holding a bizarre contradiction in your own head.

Then again, modern medicine is a comedy of contradiction. And why should we expect anything different from these geniuses when it comes to the vaccine question?

Whether doctors, or students or priests, those who do not question their own beliefs are doomed to fanaticism in all its various forms. The vaccine-pushing agenda of modern times is, in every way, a form of runaway medical fanaticism full of contradiction.

My own beliefs on this issue make a lot more sense: Mother Nature produces amazing technology, and the human immune system is one of the most advanced biological supercomputers that has ever existed on our planet. That immune system, when properly supported, can easily overcome common infections. Vaccines are not merely unnecessary; they are a chemical assault that damages the immune system and interferes with the immune technology that should be embraced, not hijacked.

I trust Mother Nature’s technology over the interventions of profit-minded doctors and drug companies, and I dismiss modern medicine’s view of the human body as being ridiculously pessimistic. Modern doctors are, in a very real sense, biological “doom and gloomers” who want you to believe that, without their expensive interventions, you’re doomed to die of disease.

And that’s just plain bunk.

Research and sources
To support the statements in this story, I have collected over 50 quotes from health experts, authors and researchers on the subject of vaccines and the immune system. You can read that full list here: http://www.naturalnews.com/025595.html

Read those quotes to learn more about the harm of vaccines.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, have provided ground-breaking proof that a natural protein called BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) can prevent and treat Alzheimer’s. The study was carried out in a variety of animal models including mice, rats, and monkeys.

‘The effects of BDNF were potent,’ said Mark Tuszynski, MD, PhD, lead researcher. ‘When we administered BDNF to memory circuits in the brain, we directly stimulated their activity and prevented cell death from the underlying disease.’

The researchers reported that ‘In each case, when compared with control groups not treated with BDNF, the treated animals demonstrated significant improvement in the performance of a variety of learning and memory tests. Notably, the brains of the treated animals also exhibited restored BDNF gene expression, enhanced cell size, improved cell signaling, and activation of function in neurons that would otherwise have degenerated, compared to untreated animals. These benefits extended to the degenerating hippocampus where short-term memory is processed, one of the first regions of the brain to suffer damage in Alzheimer’s disease.’

As I recently reported in my article, Top 10 Health Breakthroughs of 2008, BDNF may well be the molecule of the year, as BDNF is key to keeping your nerve cells alive and stimulating the growth of new nerve cells. Since your nerve cells are important for regulating everything else, keeping them in top working condition not only means that your mind will stay sharp it means you are likely to live longer and healthier. This new study adds significantly to the power of BDNF because it was able to prevent and reverse Alzheimer’s independent of the amyloid plaque tangles.

The great news is that BDNF levels can be naturally boosted. Aerobic exercise boosts BDNF. The most important nutrient that helps is pantethine, providing the needed basic compound (cysteamine) that nerve cells need in order to make BDNF. Nutrients that also help make BDNF or protect it from declining are acetyl-l-carnitine, fish oil, blueberries, and curcumin.

This gives a solid two-pronged natural approach to preserving your nerves. On the one hand, you can boost BDNF. On the other hand, other new research has shown that grape seed extracts will prevent amyloid plaque tangles from forming in the first place.

It is very important to understand that adverse changes within the brain that eventually result in disease are progressively happening during the aging process. Older adults with sharp memory and cognitive function have far less brain wear and tear than ‘normal’ aging adults who are loosing function and heading in the direction of more serious cognitive decline and potential Alzheimer’s. And now it is rather sad to report that Alzheimer’s is beginning to happen to adults in their 40s, as individuals burn out their nerves at ever younger ages.

BDNF is the closet thing to the fountain of youth yet discovered.

For a fully referenced version of this article:

http://www.wellnessresources.com/health/articles/bdnf_prevents_and_reverses_alzheimers_disease/

About the author: Byron J. Richards, Board-Certified Clinical Nutritionist, nationally-renowned nutrition expert, and founder of Wellness Resources is a leader in advocating the value of dietary supplements as a vital tool to maintain health. He is an outspoken critic of government and Big Pharma efforts to deny access to natural health products and has written extensively on the life-shortening and health-damaging failures of the sickness industry. www.wellnessresources.com [email protected]