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Why Schools Should Remove Gene-Altered Foods from Their Cafeterias

2008-09-29T13:43:55Z

Comanche County Chronicle, Elgin, OK, September, 2008
from Institute for Responsible Technology, Spilling the Beans newsletter on GM Foods
by Jeffrey M. Smith, author of Seeds of Deception

Before the Appleton Wisconsin high school replaced their cafeteria's processed foods with wholesome, nutritious food, the school was described as out-of-control. There were weapons violations, student disruptions, and a cop on duty full-time. After the change in school meals, the students were calm, focused, and orderly. There were no more weapons violations, and no suicides, expulsions, dropouts, or drug violations. The new diet and improved behavior has lasted for seven years, and now other schools are changing their meal programs with similar results.

Years ago, a science class at Appleton found support for their new diet by conducting a cruel and unusual experiment with three mice. They fed them the junk food that kids in other high schools eat everyday. The mice freaked out. Their behavior was totally different than the three mice in the neighboring cage. The neighboring mice had good karma; they were fed nutritious whole foods and behaved like mice. They slept during the day inside their cardboard tube, played with each other, and acted very mouse-like.

]]> The junk food mice, on the other hand, destroyed their cardboard tube, were no longer nocturnal, stopped playing with each other, fought often, and two mice eventually killed the third and ate it. After the three month experiment, the students rehabilitated the two surviving junk food mice with a diet of whole foods. After about three weeks, the mice came around.

Sister Luigi Frigo repeats this experiment every year in her second grade class in Cudahy, Wisconsin, but mercifully, for only four days. Even on the first day of junk food, the mice's behavior "changes drastically." They become lazy, antisocial, and nervous. And it still takes the mice about two to three weeks on unprocessed foods to return to normal. One year, the second graders tried to do the experiment again a few months later with the same mice, but this time the animals refused to eat the junk food.

Across the ocean in Holland, a student fed one group of mice genetically modified (GM) corn and soy, and another group the non-GM variety. The GM mice stopped playing with each other and withdrew into their own parts of the cage. When the student tried to pick them up, unlike their well-behaved neighbors, the GM mice scampered around in apparent fear and tried to climb the walls. One mouse in the GM group was found dead at the end of the experiment.

It's interesting to note that the junk food fed to the mice in the Wisconsin experiments also contained genetically modified ingredients. And although the Appleton school lunch program did not specifically attempt to remove GM foods, it happened anyway. That's because GM foods such as soy and corn and their derivatives are largely found in processed foods. So when the school switched to unprocessed alternatives, almost all ingredients derived from GM crops were taken out automatically.

Does this mean that GM foods negatively affect the behavior of humans or animals? It would certainly be irresponsible to say so on the basis of a single student mice experiment and the results at Appleton. On the other hand, it is equally irresponsible to say that it doesn't.

We are just beginning to understand the influence of food on behavior. A study in Science in December 2002 concluded that "food molecules act like hormones, regulating body functioning and triggering cell division. The molecules can cause mental imbalances ranging from attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder to serious mental illness." The problem is we do not know which food molecules have what effect.

The bigger problem is that the composition of GM foods can change radically without our knowledge. Genetically modified foods have genes inserted into their DNA. But genes are not Legos; they don't just snap into place. Gene insertion creates unpredicted, irreversible changes. In one study, for example, a gene chip monitored the DNA before and after a single foreign gene was inserted. As much as 5 percent of the DNA's genes changed the amount of protein they were producing. Not only is that huge in itself, but these changes can multiply through complex interactions down the line.

In spite of the potential for dramatic changes in the composition of GM foods, they are typically measured for only a small number of known nutrient levels. But even if we could identify all the changed compounds, at this point we wouldn't know which might be responsible for the antisocial nature of mice or humans. Likewise, we are only beginning to identify the medicinal compounds in food. We now know, for example, that the pigment in blueberries may revive the brain's neural communication system, and the antioxidant found in grape skins may fight cancer and reduce heart disease. But what about other valuable compounds we don't know about that might change or disappear in GM varieties?

Consider GM soy. In July 1999, years after it was on the market, independent researchers published a study showing that it contains 12-14 percent less cancer-fighting phytoestrogens. What else has changed that we don't know about? [Monsanto responded with its own study, which concluded that soy's phytoestrogen levels vary too much to even carry out a statistical analysis. They failed to disclose, however, that the laboratory that conducted Monsanto's experiment had been instructed to use an obsolete method to detect phytoestrogens results.]

In 1996, Monsanto published a paper in the Journal of Nutrition that concluded in the title, "The composition of glyphosate-tolerant soybean seeds is equivalent to that of conventional soybeans." The study only compared a small number of nutrients and a close look at their charts revealed significant differences in the fat, ash, and carbohydrate content. In addition, GM soy meal contained 27 percent more trypsin inhibitor, a well-known soy allergen. The study also used questionable methods. Nutrient comparisons are routinely conducted on plants grown in identical conditions so that variables such as weather and soil can be ruled out. Otherwise, differences in plant composition could be easily missed. In Monsanto's study, soybeans were planted in widely varying climates and geography.

Although one of their trials was a side-by-side comparison between GM and non-GM soy, for some reason the results were left out of the paper altogether. Years later, a medical writer found the missing data in the archives of the Journal of Nutrition and made them public. No wonder the scientists left them out. The GM soy showed significantly lower levels of protein, a fatty acid, and phenylalanine, an essential amino acid. Also, toasted GM soy meal contained nearly twice the amount of a lectin that may block the body's ability to assimilate other nutrients. Furthermore, the toasted GM soy contained as much as seven times the amount of trypsin inhibitor, indicating that the allergen may survive cooking more in the GM variety. (This might explain the 50 percent jump in soy allergies in the UK, just after GM soy was introduced.)

We don't know all the changes that occur with genetic engineering, but certainly GM crops are not the same. Ask the animals. Eyewitness reports from all over North America describe how several types of animals, when given a choice, avoided eating GM food. These included cows, pigs, elk, deer, raccoons, squirrels, rats, and mice. In fact, the Dutch student mentioned above first determined that his mice had a two-to-one preference for non-GM before forcing half of them to eat only the engineered variety.

Differences in GM food will likely have a much larger impact on children. They are three to four times more susceptible to allergies. Also, they convert more of the food into body-building material. Altered nutrients or added toxins can result in developmental problems. For this reason, animal nutrition studies are typically conducted on young, developing animals. After the feeding trial, organs are weighed and often studied under magnification. If scientists used mature animals instead of young ones, even severe nutritional problems might not be detected. The Monsanto study used mature animals instead of young ones.

They also diluted their GM soy with non-GM protein 10- or 12fold before feeding the animals. And they never weighed the organs or examined them under a microscope. The study, which is the only major animal feeding study on GM soy ever published, is dismissed by critics as rigged to avoid finding problems.

Unfortunately, there is a much bigger experiment going on one which we are all a part of. We're being fed GM foods daily, without knowing the impact of these foods on our health, our behavior, or our children. Thousands of schools around the world, particularly in Europe, have decided not to let their kids be used as guinea pigs. They have banned GM foods.

The impact of changes in the composition of GM foods is only one of several reasons why these foods may be dangerous. Other reasons may be far worse (see http://www.seedsofdeception.com).

With the epidemic of obesity and diabetes and with the results in Appleton, parents and schools are waking up to the critical role that diet plays. When making changes in what kids eat, removing GM foods should be a priority.

Diet Soda Drinks Are Poison: Uncensored Magazine, New Zealand, Autumn Edition

2008-09-26T09:57:34Z

UNCENSORED 8 PAGE SPECIAL EDITION.pdf

How 6,700 Tons of Radioactive Sand from Kuwait Ended Up in Idaho

2008-09-18T11:00:50Z

By Penny Coleman, AlterNet
September 18, 2008

On April 26, 2008, the BBC Alabama arrived in Longview, Wash., carrying 6,700 tons of Kuwaiti sand. The sand had become contaminated with depleted uranium when U.S. military vehicles and munitions caught fire at Doha Army base in Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War. The depleted uranium was being repatriated. The sand was a gift of the Kuwaiti government.

So was the cost of repatriation. Neither government will discuss just how much the tab was.

The Longview Daily News reported that Mike Wilcox, vice president of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union Local 21, initially had been "concerned about the safety of longshoremen and the entire community when he heard a shipment of depleted uranium was coming into Longview."

But the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined that the sand contained "unimportant quantities" of radioactive material, and officials from the Department of Health would be available to test radiation levels -- just in case any of the sand spilled.

At the last minute, the Army notified port authorities that tests had revealed that the sand was also contaminated with lead -- in fact, four times more lead than the EPA's limit for hazardous materials. Transshipment was delayed for a few days awaiting a green light from the EPA.

]]> Wilcox told the Daily News that he hoped the delivery would be a one-time thing.

Over the next month, longshoremen loaded 160 containers onto railcars bound for an Idaho-based waste disposal site owned by a company called American Ecology. When the sand arrived at the Idaho site, the company did its own tests and, as Chad Hyslop, project director for American Ecology, told the Daily News, "found no hazardous levels of lead."

Doug Rokke, who quit his job directing the cleanup of radioactive battlefields for the Army, contacted American Ecology and discovered "that they had absolutely no knowledge of U.S. Army Regulation 700-48, U.S. Army PAM 700-48, U.S. Army Technical Bulletin 9-1300-278, and all of the medical orders dealing with depleted uranium contamination, environmental remediation procedures, safety and medical care."

Hazardous materials storage has become a lucrative and growing business, especially since Donald Rumsfeld began implementing his plans for a sleek new "global cavalry" capable of swift and lethal response from strategically placed "frontier stockades" to punish bad guys whenever and wherever they have been bad. According to the Pentagon's annual "Base Structure Report," which itemizes its foreign and domestic military real estate, the Department of Defense currently operates more than 800 such bases around the world; 5,311 if you count the ones in American territories and on the U.S. mainland; probably well over 6,000 if you count the ones, like Doha in Kuwait, that for some reason didn't make the list. (Similarly omitted are all U.S. bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar and Uzbekistan.)

Rumsfeld, coyly switching metaphors, referred to them as "lily pads," which is about as convincing a euphemism as "American Ecology." Lily pads may sound greener and friendlier than, say, "footprint," which makes one at least think of boot heels, but it is safe to assume -- because there has never been an exception -- that every one of those bases is an environmental disaster area. The U.S. military is the most profligate polluter on the planet.

The Thule base in Greenland, for example, was sort of a pioneer lily pad. In the '40s, it was a convenient hop, skip and a bomber run to Berlin, and later it was part of the Cold War surveillance network. In 1953, the U.S. Navy sailed into Thule Harbor and informed the local Inughuit community that they had 48 hours to leave. Sorry for the inconvenience, folks, but there are houses 100 miles north of here with your names on them. We promise.

"Everyone packed what they could on their dogsleds and set off north across the ice," remembers Aron Qaavigaq, who was 12 at the time. "After a while, my father stopped and looked back. He and my mother were crying. ... We were young and very excited to be going somewhere new. But they kept crying, so we knew there was something wrong."

There were no houses. Qaavigaq and his family spent the winter in tents 695 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The hunting and fishing was lousy, and now the ice is melting. After 55 years, Qaavigaq and the rest of the Inughuit still want to go home. But first they want the United States to clean up the mess they have made: thousands of barrels of toxic chemistry, rubbish heaps, electrical equipment contaminated with PCBs, and one whole hydrogen bomb -- serial number 78252 -- which was never recovered when a B-52 crashed upon landing in 1968.

Unfortunately, unlike the emir of Kuwait, the Inughuits are poor and not very many of them survived the transplant. In a deal struck with the Danish government in 2003, the Bush administration agreed to return the original Inughuit community land in return for continued use of the base.

But the administration insists it is not responsible for any cleanup. "They said if they were to clean up after themselves at Thule, then they would be met by similar demands in the Philippines, Japan and elsewhere in the world," Svend Auken, Denmark's former minister of the environment, told the Christian Science Monitor in August. "They didn't want to set that precedent." CSM also quotes Cheryl Irwin, a spokeswoman for the secretary of defense, opining that cleanup costs "reflected a shared burden with our host nation for our contribution for defense of the free world." The United States has, however, agreed to forgo "any claims for residual value of improvements made while there."

There is a growing resistance to the omnipresence of U.S. military installations around the world. The coalition, though practically invisible in the United States, is evident elsewhere. NOBASES seeks "an end to military domination and intimidation and an end to the social, environmental and economic consequences of these bases in the host countries." The coalition has recently organized massive demonstrations in Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic and elsewhere, and though few have ultimately been successful, they have made acquiescing to American military expansion an increasingly expensive political choice for foreign leaders.

Here at home in Idaho, however, raping the land is cheap. American Ecology supplies the lubricant, and Idaho's Republican officials bend over. Senators Mike Crapo and Larry Craig, Representatives Mike Simpson and Bill Sali, and Gov. Butch Otter and Lt. Gov. Jim Risch have all benefited from American Ecology's generosity.

In the first quarter of 2008, American Ecology reported a record disposal volume and a $13.4 million profit, a 17 percent increase over the same quarter last year.

Asked if the sand is dangerous, Hyslop said, "It's not something you want laying around in Kuwait." So, send it to Idaho instead!

If American Ecology were really thinking outside the litter box, it would be supporting the NOBASES effort to repatriate all our military's leavings.

Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after coming home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War, was released on Memorial Day, 2006. Her Web site is Flashback.

Scientists link chemical used in plastics to health problems

2008-09-18T10:01:39Z

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The Washington Post
Lyndsey Layton
September 17, 2008

The first large study in humans of a chemical widely used in everyday plastics has found that people with higher levels of bisphenol A had higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and liver abnormalities, a finding that immediately became the focus of the increasingly heated debate over the safety of the chemical.

The research, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association by a team of British and American scientists, compared the health status of 1,455 men and women with the levels of the chemical, known as BPA, in their urine.

The researchers divided the subjects into four statistical groupings according to their BPA levels and found that those in the quartile with the highest concentrations were nearly three times as likely to have cardiovascular disease than those with the lowest levels, and 2.4 times as likely to have diabetes. Higher BPA levels were also associated with abnormal concentrations of three liver enzymes.

]]> Although the researchers described them as preliminary, the findings were the buzz of a public hearing the Food and Drug Administration held Tuesday to discuss whether BPA is safe for continued use in food packaging and liquid containers.

"This is the nail in the coffin," Frederick vom Saal, a reproductive scientist at the University of Missouri at Columbia and one of the first to document evidence of health problems in rodents exposed to low doses of BPA, said outside the FDA meeting in Rockville, Md.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, cited the study as he opened an investigation of the way the FDA has regulated the chemical, joining several Democrats led, by Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., who have been looking into whether chemical manufacturers unduly influenced the agency's stance.

One of the authors of the new study, David Melzer of the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, England, briefed the FDA gathering about the research. He said that the study did not prove that BPA causes health problems and that additional studies are needed.

Data on the health status of the study subjects, ages 18 to 74, came from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The BPA levels in the study were below those the government deemed safe.

The FDA regulates the compound's use in plastic food containers, bottles, tableware and the plastic linings of food cans. In light of the controversy surrounding the chemical, the agency is reviewing its policy and asked an outside scientific panel for a second opinion. "Right now, our tentative conclusion is that it's safe, so we're not recommending any change in habits," said Laura Tarantino, head of the FDA's office of food additive safety.

What the Chemical Industry Doesn't Want You to Know about Everyday Products

2008-09-17T10:55:22Z

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By Elaine Shannon, AlterNet

September 15, 2008

The chemical industry has spent years trying to suppress information about a certain chemical. Will Congress help the public know the true dangers?

It takes a lot of nerve to go up against the $3 trillion-a-year global chemical industry.

Ask University of Missouri-Columbia scientists Frederick Vom Saal and Wade Welshons. They've been in the industry's crosshairs for more than a decade, since their experiments turned up the first hard evidence that miniscule amounts of bisphenol A (BPA), an artificial sex hormone and integral component of a vast array of plastic products, caused irreversible changes in the prostates of fetal mice.

Their findings touched off a steady drumbeat that has led to a ban on BPA-laden baby bottles in Canada, mounting support for a similar ban in the U.S., major retailers pulling plastic products off their shelves, a consumer run on glass baby bottles and a blizzard of scientific reports raising increasingly disturbing questions about the chemical's dangers at the trace levels to which people are routinely exposed.

]]> But back in early 1997, when the Missouri team produced its pioneering research on low-dose BPA, challenging the chemical-industrial complex seemed quixotic, even risky. Soon after the report appeared, a scientist from Dow Chemical Company, a major BPA manufacturer, showed up at the Missouri lab, disputed the data and declared, as Vom Saal recalls, "We want you to know how distressed we are by your research."

"It was not a subtle threat," Vom Saal says. "It was really, really clear, and we ended up saying, threatening us is really not a good idea."

The Missouri scientists redoubled their investigations of BPA and churned out more evidence of low-dose BPA toxicity to the reproductive systems of test animals. Industry officials and scientist allies fired back, sometimes in nose-to-nose debates at scientific gatherings, sometimes more insidiously.

"I heard [chemical industry officials] were making blatantly false statements about our research," says Welshons. "They were skilled at creating doubt when none existed."

On at least one occasion, the industry tried to mute Vom Saal's increasingly insistent voice. In 2001, according to three knowledgeable sources, a representative of the American Chemistry Council, the industry trade group, called an official at the Washington-based Society for Women's Health Research (SWHR) to urge that Vom Saal be barred from the dais at an upcoming convocation at Stanford University. Society scientific director Sherry Martz says the industry spokesman objected to Vom Saal's appearance at the prestigious event on grounds that his work was "very controversial, and not everybody believes what he's saying."

"Our response," says Martz, "was no."

By that time, Vom Saal, Welshons and their Missouri colleagues realized that they had a tiger by the tail. The financial stakes were mind-boggling. The global chemical industry produces about 6 billion pounds of BPA annually, generating at least $6 billion in annual sales. The value of BPA-based manufactured goods, from cell phones and computers to epoxy coatings and dental bindings, is probably incalculable. Though scientists have known since the 1930s that BPA mimics estrogen in the body, for unrelated reasons, the chemical serves as an essential building block of hard, clear polycarbonate plastics and tough epoxy resins, ubiquitous materials in the modern world.

"It's probably the largest volume endocrine-disrupting chemical in commerce," says Vom Saal. "This stuff is in everything." Because plastics made with BPA break down easily when heated, microwaved, washed with strong detergents or wrapped around acidic foods like tomatoes, trace amounts of the potent hormone leach into food from epoxy lacquer can linings, polycarbonate bottles and other plastic food packaging.

Environmental Working Group studies have found BPA in more than half the canned foods and beverages sampled from supermarkets across the U.S., in baby bottles and in the linings of nearly all infant formula cans. "Can you imagine," says Vom Saal, "extracting estrogen out of a packet of birth control pills and making baby bottles out of it? It's an act of insanity."

But the industry's increasingly noisy denials backfired. Scientists surge toward burning questions the way news crews chase hurricanes. By the turn of the Millennium, dozens of scientists were launching their own investigations of the chemical. Among them was Washington State University reproductive scientist Patricia Hunt, who had become intrigued with BPA because of a laboratory accident. In 1998, she was studying eggs from normal and mutant mice when, she says, "all of a sudden, the control data went completely crazy and the eggs from perfectly normal females were showing us something really bizarre -- stronger abnormalities than we were seeing in the mutants."

Hunt's search for lab contaminants led to a temporary lab aide who had washed the plastic cages and bottles with a caustic floor detergent, unleashing enough BPA into the control animals' food and water to scramble the chromosome alignment in their eggs.

What Hunt saw under her microscope stunned her. "Like most Americans, I thought, my government protects me from this kind of stuff," she says. The incident convinced her that "we're up against big industry, and they're running pretty effective damage control." She locked down into BPA research for the better part of a decade, eventually concluding that "exposure to low levels of BPA -- levels that we think are in the realm of current human exposure -- can profoundly affect both developing eggs and sperm."

In 2006, Hunt joined Vom Saal, Welshons and 36 other international BPA experts at a conclave sponsored by the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), a Chapel Hill, N.C.-based arm of the National Institutes of Health. In August 2007, the so-called Chapel Hill panel issued a "consensus statement" asserting that, as Vom Saal puts it, "particularly for infants but also for adults, there is an extensive body of evidence from animals that should be taken as a very serious warning that human health is being placed at risk due to the current level of exposure of humans to BPA."

Earlier this month, the National Toxicology Program, an interagency body that assesses human toxins for the federal government, accepted much of the Chapel Hill panel's thinking and took the position that while more research is necessary, low doses of BPA may affect "development of the prostate gland and brain and [cause] behavioral effects in fetuses, infants and children." (Unlike the academic-dominated Chapel Hill panel, the NTP found the BPA threat to adults "negligible.")

The influential NTP assessment directly contradicted the federal Food and Drug Administration's stance that BPA-laden food packaging is safe, even for babies and children. Under pressure from a growing number of health and consumer advocates, lawmakers and scientists, an FDA advisory panel is scheduled to meet Sept.16 to take testimony about whether BPA should be reassessed in terms of food safety, a move that could lead to an end to BPA-laced food packaging.

The chemical industry can expected to fight aggressively against more regulation. Earlier this year, the industry spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat a California legislative proposal to ban BPA in food packaging. The Chemistry Council and allied companies and industry groups hired an army of lobbyists, including Navigators LLC,the Washington firm that ran Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2003 campaign and his 2004 budget reform drive. Tactics included an industry email to food banks charging that a BPA ban would mean the end of distributions of canned goods for the poor.

The industry's scorched-earth approach has caused many advocates for toxic law reform, frustrated with skirmishing state by state and toxin by toxin, to line up behind a comprehensive federal legislative proposal, the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act, that would require chemical manufacturers to prove substances like BPA are safe before they go on the market.

Meanwhile, a research team from a Yale University medical school research team has come up with some of the most troubling data yet: after injecting African green monkeys for 28 days with BPA at the level the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says is safe for people, the researchers found the chemical "causes the loss of connections between brain cells." "We observed a devastating effect on synapses in the monkey brain," says Yale scientist Tibor Hajszan. In humans, these losses could lead to memory and learning problems and depression.

Industry officials called the study flawed and lacked proof of BPA danger to the human brain. Yale team leader Csaba Leranth says the experiment, the first major neurological study using primates, was designed "to more closely mimic the slow and continuous conditions under which humans would normally be exposed to BPA." He said the study is "more indicative than past research of how BPA may actually affect humans," but his team hopes to conduct additional studies to advance understanding of BPA on primate brain functions.

But, says Leranth, "science is expensive," and grants for ambitious projects are scarcer than ever, due to the Bush administration's commitments overseas and spiraling federal debt.

"Considerable funding has been diverted away from basic and biomedical research since the Iraq war started," says University of Texas-Austin endocrinologist Andrea C. Gore. "It's a very sad time in science." By some estimates, the NIH now funds only 10 to 15 percent of grant applications for biomedical research. "More than 85 percent of grant applications are rejected," says Gore, "an unacceptably low level that is causing scientists to have to cut back or even abandon their research programs."

With no prospect in sight for definitive answers about BPA's dangers to people, federal regulators must confront a mass of incomplete but worrisome evidence and decide whether it's time to say that the chemical's risks to people, especially babies and children, outweigh its benefits. And if they don't, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, and Rep. Ed Markey, D-MA, have introduced legislation that would ban BPA in food packaging -- and make the decision for them.

Elaine Shannon is an investigative editor with the Environmental Working Group.

Lunatic Drug Warriors Still Ignore Powerful Pot Science

2008-09-09T13:42:24Z

By Rob Kampia, AlterNet
September 8, 2008

Twenty years ago, on Sept. 6, 1988, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's chief administrative law judge issued a landmark ruling, but don't expect any celebrations or commemorations in Washington, D.C. Our government has ignored this historic decision since the day it was issued, inflicting needless misery on millions.

Indeed, most Americans don't know it ever happened.

In response to a petition asking that marijuana be moved from Schedule I of the federal Controlled Substances Act, which bars medical use, to a lower schedule that would permit physician prescriptions, Judge Francis Young held extensive hearings that began in the summer of 1986. He heard from an impressive array of expert witnesses, resulting in thousands of pages of documentation.

]]>

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Young laid out his findings in a detailed, 69-page ruling, walking readers through the scientific evidence. He concluded that the law didn't just permit moving marijuana to Schedule II, but required it.

"Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man," he wrote. "By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a supervised routine of medical care. ... The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record."

Remember, this was no pot-addled "legalizer" writing. It was the chief administrative law judge within the top federal agency responsible for enforcing our drug laws. Unfortunately, the ruling had no legal force. In legal terms, it was a recommendation, not an order that had to be followed.

And the DEA chose not to follow it. Six years after top DEA officials rejected Young's recommendation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit ruled that the agency did have the right to ignore its own administrative law judge.

Because the federal government chose to disregard the results of its own investigation, the medical marijuana controversy continues to rage today. Losing patience with the feds, 12 states have acted to permit medical use of marijuana under their state laws. If Michigan passes the medical marijuana initiative on its November ballot, that number will increase to 13, comprising roughly 1 in 4 Americans.

But while those state laws provide considerable protection for medical marijuana patients, states cannot provide an exemption from federal law. Even in the 12 states that have medical marijuana laws, patients and caregivers have been arrested, terrorized and even had their children taken away.

Meanwhile, the medical evidence continues to mount. Another federally commissioned study, this time by the Institute of Medicine, confirmed in 1999 that marijuana has legitimate medical uses.

More recently, newly published clinical trials have found that marijuana effectively relieves certain types of hard-to-treat pain, including the nerve pain that often accompanies multiple sclerosis, HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Other research suggests that by relieving the nausea and vomiting often caused by the harsh drugs used to treat hepatitis C and HIV, medical marijuana can help patients stick to these challenging drug regimens -- and live.

Because our government has ignored science, needless suffering has been inflicted on millions of Americans who have benefited or could benefit from medical marijuana. In 2009, we will have a new president and a new Congress, and they should move quickly to end this sorry record of federal stonewalling.

Rob Kampia is executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/97927/

Marijuana ingredients show promise in battling superbugs

2008-09-09T10:28:39Z

Physorg.com
Source: ACS
September 8, 2008

Substances in marijuana show promise for fighting deadly drug-resistant bacterial infections, including so-called "superbugs," without causing the drug's mood-altering effects, scientists in Italy and the United Kingdom are reporting.

Besides serving as infection-fighting drugs, the substances also could provide a more environmentally-friendly alternative to synthetic antibacterial substances now widely used in personal care items, including soaps and cosmetics, they say. Their study is scheduled for the Sept. 26 issue of ACS' monthly Journal of Natural Products.

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In the new study, Giovanni Appendino and colleagues point out that scientists have known for years that marijuana contains antibacterial substances. However, little research has been done on those ingredients, including studies on their ability to fight antibiotic resistant infections, the scientists say.

To close that gap, researchers tested five major marijuana ingredients termed cannabinoids on different strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a "superbug" increasingly resistant to antibiotics. All five substances showed potent germ-killing activity against these drug-resistant strains, as did some synthetic non-natural cannabinoids, they say.

The scientists also showed that these substances appear to kill bacteria by different mechanisms than conventional antibiotics, making them more likely to avoid bacterial resistance, the scientists note. At least two of the substances have no known mood-altering effects, suggesting that they could be developed into marijuana-based drugs without causing a "high."

Article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/np8002673

RFID: "Smart Cards" in a Surveillance Society

2008-09-09T09:34:03Z

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Sott.net
Antifascist Calling
September 6, 2008

If incorporating personal details into an RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip implanted into a passport or driver's license may sound like a "smart" alternative to endless lines at the airport and intrusive questioning by securocrats, think again.

Since the late 1990s, corporate grifters have touted the "benefits" of the devilish transmitters as a "convenient" and "cheap" way to tag individual commodities, one that would "revolutionize" inventory management and theft prevention. Indeed, everything from paper towels to shoes, pets to underwear have been "tagged" with the chips. "Savings" would be "passed on" to the consumer. Call it the Wal-Martization of everyday life.

]]> RFID tags are small computer chips connected to miniature antennae that can be fixed to or implanted within physical objects, including human beings. The RFID chip itself contains an Electronic Product Code that can be "read" when a RFID reader emits a radio signal. The chips are divided into two categories, passive or active. A "passive" tag doesn't contain a battery and its "read" range is variable, from less than an inch to twenty or thirty feet. An "active" tag on the other hand, is self-powered and has a much longer range. The data from an "active" tag can be sent directly to a computer system involved in inventory control--or surveillance.

But as Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) state in a joint position paper, "RFID has the potential to jeopardize consumer privacy, reduce or eliminate purchasing anonymity, and threaten civil liberties." As these organizations noted:

While there are beneficial uses of RFID, some attributes of the technology could be deployed in ways that threaten privacy and civil liberties:

* Hidden placement of tags. RFID tags can be embedded into/onto objects and documents without the knowledge of the individual who obtains those items. As radio waves travel easily and silently through fabric, plastic, and other materials, it is possible to read RFID tags sewn into clothing or affixed to objects contained in purses, shopping bags, suitcases, and more.

* Unique identifiers for all objects worldwide. The Electronic Product Code potentially enables every object on earth to have its own unique ID. The use of unique ID numbers could lead to the creation of a global item registration system in which every physical object is identified and linked to its purchaser or owner at the point of sale or transfer.

* Massive data aggregation. RFID deployment requires the creation of massive databases containing unique tag data. These records could be linked with personal identifying data, especially as computer memory and processing capacities expand.

* Hidden readers. Tags can be read from a distance, not restricted to line of sight, by readers that can be incorporated invisibly into nearly any environment where human beings or items congregate. RFID readers have already been experimentally embedded into floor tiles, woven into carpeting and floor mats, hidden in doorways, and seamlessly incorporated into retail shelving and counters, making it virtually impossible for a consumer to know when or if he or she was being "scanned."

* Individual tracking and profiling. If personal identity were linked with unique RFID tag numbers, individuals could be profiled and tracked without their knowledge or consent. For example, a tag embedded in a shoe could serve as a de facto identifier for the person wearing it. Even if item-level information remains generic, identifying items people wear or carry could associate them with, for example, particular events like political rallies. ("Position Statement on the Use of RFID on Consumer Products," Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, November 14, 2003)

As the corporatist police state unfurls its murderous tentacles here in the United States, it should come as no surprise that securocrats breathlessly tout the "benefits" of RFID in the area of "homeland security." When linked to massive commercial databases as well as those compiled by the 16 separate agencies of the "intelligence community," such as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) that feeds the federal government's surveillance Leviathan with the names of suspected "terrorists," it doesn't take a genius to conclude that the architecture for a vast totalitarian enterprise is off the drawing board and onto the streets.

As last week's mass repression of peaceful protest at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul amply demonstrated, the Bush regime's "preemptive war" strategy has been rolled out in the heimat. As the World Socialist Web Site reports,

On Wednesday eight members of the anarchist protest group the Republican National Convention Welcoming Committee (RNCWC) were charged under provisions of the Minnesota state version of the Patriot Act with "Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism."

The eight charged are all young, and could face up to seven-and-a-half years in prison under a provision that allows the enhancement of charges related to terrorism by 50 percent. ...

Among other things, the youth, who were arrested last weekend even prior to the start of the convention, are charged with plotting to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers and attack airports. Almost all of the charges listed are based upon the testimony of police infiltrators, one an officer, the other a paid informant. (Tom Eley, "RNC in Twin Cities: Eight protesters charged with terrorism under Patriot Act," World Socialist Web Site, 6 September 2008)

As the ACLU pointed out, "These charges are an effort to equate publicly stated plans to blockade traffic and disrupt the RNC as being the same as acts of terrorism. This both trivializes real violence and attempts to place the stated political views of the defendants on trial," said Bruce Nestor, president of the Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. "The charges represent an abuse of the criminal justice system and seek to intimidate any person organizing large scale public demonstrations potentially involving civil disobedience," he said.

An affidavit filed by the cops in order to allow the preemptive police raid and subsequent arrests declared that the RNCWC is a "criminal enterprise" strongly implying that the group of anarchist youth were members of a "terrorist organization."

Which, as we have learned over these last seven and a half years of darkness, is precisely the point: keep 'em scared and passive. And when they're neither scared nor passive, resort to police state tactics of mass repression. While the cops beat and arrested demonstrators and journalists outside the Xcel Energy Center, neanderthal-like Republican mobs chanted "USA! USA!" while the execrable theocratic fascist, Sarah Palin, basked in the limelight. But I digress...

Likened to barcodes that scan items at the grocery store check-out line, what industry flacks such as the Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility (AIM) fail to mention in their propaganda about RFID is that the information stored on a passport or driver's license is readily stolen by anyone with a reader device--marketers, security agents, criminals or stalkers--without the card holder even being remotely aware that they are being tracked and their allegedly "secure" information plundered. According to a blurb on the AIM website,

Automatic Identification and Mobility (AIM) technologies are a diverse family of technologies that share the common purpose of identifying, tracking, recording, storing and communicating essential business, personal, or product data. In most cases, AIM technologies serve as the front end of enterprise software systems, providing fast and accurate collection and entry of data. ("Technologies," Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility, no date)

Among the "diverse family of technologies" touted by AIM, many are rife with "dual-use" potential, that is, the same technology that can keep track of a pallet of soft drinks can also keep track of human beings.

Indeed, the Association touts biometric identification as "an automated method of recognizing a person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic." This is especially important since "the need" for biometrics "can be found in federal, state and local governments, in the military, and in commercial applications." When used as a stand-alone or in conjunction with RFID-chipped "smart cards" biometrics, according to the industry "are set to pervade nearly all aspects of the economy and our daily lives."

Some "revolution."

The industry received a powerful incentive from the state when the Government Services Administration (GSA), a Bushist satrapy, issued a 2004 memo that urged the heads of all federal agencies "to consider action that can be taken to advance the [RFID] industry."

An example of capitalist "ingenuity" or another insidious invasion of our right to privacy? In 2006, IBM obtained a patent that will be used for tracking and profiling consumers as they move around a store, even if access to commercial databases are strictly limited.

And when it comes tracking and profiling human beings, say for mass extermination at the behest of crazed Nazi ideologues, IBM stands alone. In his groundbreaking 2001 exploration of the enabling technologies for the mass murder of Jews, communists, Roma and gays and lesbians, investigative journalist Edwin Black described in IBM and the Holocaust how, beginning in 1933, IBM and their subsidiaries created technological "solutions" that streamlined the identification of "undesirables" for quick and efficient asset confiscation, deportation, slave labor and eventual annihilation.

In an eerie echo of polices being enacted today against Muslims and left-wing "extremists" by the corrupt Bush regime in their quixotic quest to "keep America safe" in furtherance of capitalist and imperialist goals of global domination, Black writes:

In the upside-down world of the Holocaust, dignified professionals were Hitler's advance troops. Police officials disregarded their duty in favor of protecting villains and persecuting victims. Lawyers perverted concepts of justice to create anti-Jewish laws. Doctors defiled the art of medicine to perpetrate ghastly experiments and even choose who was healthy enough to be worked to death--and who could be cost-effectively sent to the gas chamber. Scientists and engineers debased their higher calling to devise the instruments and rationales of destruction. And statisticians used their little known but powerful discipline to identify the victims, project and rationalize the benefits of their destruction, organize their persecution, and even audit the efficiency of genocide. Enter IBM and its overseas subsidiaries. (IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation, New York: Crown Publishers, 2001, pp. 7-8)

As security and privacy analyst Katherine Albrecht writes describing IBM's patented "Identification and Tracking of Persons Using RFID-Tagged Items in Store Environments,"

...chillingly details RFID's potential for surveillance in a world where networked RFID readers called "person tracking units" would be incorporated virtually everywhere people go--in "shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, restrooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, [and] museums"--to closely monitor people's movements. ("How RFID Tags Could Be Used to Track Unsuspecting People," Scientific American, August 21, 2008)

According to the patent cited by Albrecht, as an individual moves around a store, or a city center, an "RFID tag scanner located [in the desired tracking location]... scans the RFID tags on [a] person.... As that person moves around the store, different RFID tag scanners located throughout the store can pick up radio signals from the RFID tags carried on that person and the movement of that person is tracked based on these detections.... The person tracking unit may keep records of different locations where the person has visited, as well as the visitation times."

Even if no personal data are stored in the RFID tag, this doesn't present a problem IBM explains, because "the personal information will be obtained when the person uses his or her credit card, bank card, shopper card or the like." As Albrecht avers, the link between the unique RFID number and a person's identity "needs to be made only once for the card to serve as a proxy for the person thereafter." With the wholesale introduction of RFID chipped passports and driver's licenses, the capitalist panoptic state is quickly--and quietly--falling into place.

If America's main trading partner and sometime geopolitical rival in the looting of world resources, China, is any indication of the direction near future surveillance technologies are being driven by the "miracle of the market," the curtain on privacy and individual rights is rapidly drawing to a close. Albrecht writes,

China's national ID cards, for instance, are encoded with what most people would consider a shocking amount of personal information, including health and reproductive history, employment status, religion, ethnicity and even the name and phone number of each cardholder's landlord. More ominous still, the cards are part of a larger project to blanket Chinese cities with state-of-the-art surveillance technologies. Michael Lin, a vice president for China Public Security Technology, a private company providing the RFID cards for the program, unflinchingly described them to the New York Times as "a way for the government to control the population in the future." And even if other governments do not take advantage of the surveillance potential inherent in the new ID cards, ample evidence suggests that data-hungry corporations will.

I would disagree with Albrecht on one salient point: governments, particularly the crazed, corporate-controlled grifters holding down the fort in Washington, most certainly will take advantage of RFID's surveillance potential.

In 2005 for example, the Senate Republican High Tech Task force praised RFID applications as "exciting new technologies" with "tremendous promise for our economy." In this spirit, they vowed to "protect" RFID from regulation and legislation. Needless to say, the track record of timid Democrats is hardly any better when it comes to defending privacy rights or something as "quaint" as the Constitution.

Under conditions of a looming economic meltdown, rising unemployment, staggering debt, the collapse of financial markets and continuing wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. imperialism, in order to shore up its crumbling empire, will continue to import totalitarian methods of rule employed in its "global war on terror" onto the home front.

The introduction of RFID-chipped passports and driver's licenses for the mass surveillance and political repression of the American people arises within this context.

Pesticide or genocide? Human experimentation on U.S. citizens

2008-09-04T12:24:02Z

Image via Wikipedia

Keith Howe
OpEdNews
September 2, 2008

"Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge, chief medical officer at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, told a congressional subcommittee on July 22 that the risk of a large-scale biological attack on the nation is significant. Runge used the terrifying example of a terrorist flying over Providence with an aerosolized sprayer releasing air-borne anthrax over the metropolitan area." (1)

I don't recall any terrorist's flying over America with an aerosolized sprayer releasing airborne weapons of mass destruction on her citizens. I am aware, however, of the U.S. government spraying weapons of mass destruction on us, in the form of toxic nerve agents (malathion, pyrenone 5,25, Checkmate OLR-F, Checkmate LBAM-F) with the excuse of protecting us from non-threatening fruit flies, light brown apple moths, and mosquitoes allegedly carrying the West Nile Virus (which is almost no threat to humans).

]]> What about MTBE in your gasoline, chemtrails, open air dirty bombs, 1,000 pounds per year (application was filed for a permit to raise that to 8,000 pounds per year) being detonated by Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, exposing the San Francisco Bay Area to deadly radiation? How about trucks driving through our neighborhoods in the middle of the night spraying us with deadly pesticides for a mosquito possibly carrying the relatively harmless West Nile Virus. Or open air testing on human subjects with biological and biochemical agents by the Pentagon and Department of Defense, as authorized by the United States Congress in HR1119, Section 1078.

AMERICA, you, your families, and your children have been declared lab rats by Congress! As was approved by 105th Congress, 1st Session, 1998:

H.R. 1119, NATIONAL DEFENSE AND AUTHORIZATION ACT, SEC. 1078. RESTRICTIONS ON THE USE OF HUMAN SUBJECTS FOR TESTING OF CHEMICAL OR BIOLOGICAL AGENTS. (a) PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES- The Secretary of Defense may not conduct (directly or by contract)-- (1) any test or experiment involving the use of a chemical agent or biological agent on a civilian population; or (2) any other testing of a chemical agent or biological agent on human subjects. (b)EXCEPTIONS- Subject to subsections (c), (d), and (e), the prohibition in subsection (a) does not apply to a test or experiment carried out for any of the following purposes:

(1) Any peaceful purpose that is related to a medical, therapeutic, pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial, or research activity.

(e) BIOLOGICAL AGENT DEFINED- In this section, the term 'biological agent' means any micro-organism (including bacteria, viruses, fungi, rickettsiac, or protozoa), pathogen, or infectious substance, and any naturally occurring, bioengineered, or synthesized component of any such micro-organism, pathogen, or infectious substance, whatever its origin or method of production, that is capable of causing-- (1) death, disease, or other biological malfunction in a human, an animal, a plant, or another living organism; (2) deterioration of food, water, equipment, supplies, or materials of any kind; or (3) deleterious alteration of the environment.

The full text of this bill (1,099 pages) may be viewed at: commdocs.house.gov/reports/105/h1119.pdf (go to pages 703 through 706 of document for section 1078, Human Experimentation).

This is exactly what has been and is being perpetrated upon the people of the United States. Not by foreign terrorists, but by your own government, with your own tax dollars!

These are federal programs spraying populations with deadly nerve agents (pesticides) and pheromones which can affect human reproductive hormones (forced sterilization?). Americans are being sprayed against their will and without their consent, in violation of state, federal, and International laws, including the Nuremberg Code. (2) It is a federal crime to make fraudulent claims about pesticides and their use.

The spraying of residential areas must be stopped immediately. West Nile Virus is an insignificant threat to humans (most people infected experience little more than mild flu-like symptoms). Vector Control Agencies find a couple of dead birds and mosquitoes that allegedly have this benign virus in them, and then propose that as justification for the massive poisoning of residential areas with deadly contact nerve agents to under the guise of protecting us.

One of the pesticide used for ground applications is Pyrenone 25-5, which consists of:

5% pyrethrins

25% piperonyl butoxide (PBO)

70% unknown.

Pyrethrins are a leading cause of insecticide poisonings. PBO is classified as a possible human carcinogen. Both of these dangerous chemicals interfere with hormonal functions.

This pesticide is manufactured by Bayer Corporation, a subsidiary of I.G. Farben, the corporation that manufactured malathion and zyklon-B for the nazi's (to be used to exterminate human beings, not insects). (3) Isn't it interesting to know that many of the same companies manufacturing these "pesticides" also manufacture the pharmaceutical drugs to treat you when you become sick (from these pesticides?). (4)

The excuse for the spraying is that it is to prevent a dangerous outbreak of West Nile Virus. The following website provides a fact sheet on West Nile Virus, showing it is virtually no danger to humans, while the spraying is dangerous and contraindicated in every way! See www.stopwestnilesprayingnow.org/DavisMyths.pdf

Government laboratories breed hundreds of millions of mosquitoes, then infect them and release them into communities to see how infectious they are. They just don't care about humans! In fact, these psychopaths want to eliminate as much as 90% of the global population! First they breed the mosquitoes. Then they infect the mosquitoes. Then they release the infected mosquitoes and monitor the "experiment" at the hospitals as people get infected, become ill, and die! Next they spray us with pesticides to protect us from a virus, which they created in the first place.

Covert Testing of Other Disease Agents- Mad Cow Disease/Kuru/CJD

After WW1 and WW2, eugenics scientists from Japan and Germany were brought to the United States to share their wonderful discoveries of plague generation and genocide with lunatic psychopaths in the DOD (Department of Death and Destruction). AIDS was developed by the DOD for the purpose of population control. After the scientists had perfected it, the government sent medical teams from the Centers for Disease Control--under the direction of Dr Donald A. Henderson to Africa. From 1969-1971 they gave free vaccinations against smallpox; but five years after receiving this vaccination, 60% of those inoculated were suffering from AIDS. (5)

It is clear that the U.S. government is engaged in biological and biochemical experimentation upon it's own citizens. (6) This is damaging to the health of average citizens, especially the most vulnerable populations, such as babies, children, pregnant women, the elderly, the chronically ill, and those with compromised immune systems. American citizens, therefore, need to protest these sprayings and other activities in no uncertain terms to legislators on local, state, and federal levels.

1) click here

2) http://www.gulfwarvets.com/nuremberg.htm

3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben

4) http://www.naturalnews.com/023679.html

5) http://www.rense.com/general18/mcc.htm

6) click here

Also see: click here

Codex Alimentarius: Globalizing Food

2008-08-13T17:45:58Z

"There is a huge shift taking place in the global awareness in the last 5 years with strong views about globalization and the power structures of major corporations."
David Korten

Codex Alimentarius, according to its website, was created in 1963 by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to develop food standards, guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Program. The stated purposes of this Program are protecting the health of consumers, ensuring fair trade practices and promoting coordination of food standards.

At first sight, that seems a worthwhile goal. Unfortunately, the nice words hide a more sinister reality.

Codex Alimentarius is an industry-sponsored international legislative forum that promotes corporate interests in a globalized market, rather than consumer health and fair trade.

Until a decade ago, few had ever heard of Codex Alimentarius, unless they were directly involved in working out its standards or in making sure their country changed laws and procedures to comply with Codex rules - but that changed...

]]> - - -

In 1994, the German delegation of an obscure committee - the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses - proposed draft guidelines to regulate a new type of foods that had appeared in Germany during the 1980s but didn't look like foods at all. They were tablets and capsules with what to the Germans seemed crazy doses of vitamins and minerals. So for all intents and purposes these vitamin pills - they were called food supplements - seemed more like medicines to the German mind than the Sauerkraut and Apfelstrudel which were the healthy foods of the time.

The proposed guidelines promoted dosage restrictions in line with the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for each substance. Ironically, the idea of RDAs as a minimum (not an optimum) amount everyone should get of certain vital nutrients had been introduced in post-war Germany by the American occupation force but now it was used by the Germans to resist the push of new generation nutritional supplements into a very regulated and very pharma-friendly market. After all, medicines were big business. German pharmaceutical companies had been a mainstay of the export economy and were major actors in the so-called Wirtschaftswunder, the miraculous post-war economic recovery of German industry and commerce.

Globalization

Although much of the industrial clout shifted from post-war Germany to the victorious Allies, especially the United States, when we consider globalizing markets, countries are not the major players. Industry, by merger and by taking over competitors, has become a force unto itself, no longer part of any one country and often outstripping countries in size.

A global club of producers resisting control by national legislators and governments is seeking to be left to the pursuit of profits, with as little interference and as little competition as possible. A well financed lobby addressing both lawmakers and government agencies works tirelessly to bring about what the multinationals like to call "a level playing field".

The global food and pharma industry just love Codex. Since its guidelines are often used as a template for national laws, once a guideline is passed, much work is saved in convincing countries to change their laws. They will normally adjust national rules to be in line with Codex.

Nominally, compliance with Codex guidelines is voluntary. Since the establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995 however, any country that does not comply and finds itself in a trade dispute with another country, runs the risk of being subjected to trade sanctions. This is because the international court that decides in matters of trade disputes is bound to use international guidelines, where they exist, as their basis of law. So in real world terms, Codex Alimentarius guidelines are international law.

Additives, pesticides and GMOs

Codex Alimentarius has more than twenty active committees and task forces deciding on anything from animal feed to fishery products, from biotechnology to pesticide residues. While I cannot do more than briefly mention some of the other areas of Codex work, it may be useful to point out that we are essentially looking at industry making its own laws.

Codex is a great promoter of foods derived from biotechnology, better known as genetically modified organisms or frankenfoods. Since GMOs are Codex approved, it is very difficult for any country wishing to protect its citizens' health to refuse import of such foods. To justify a ban, a country has to go up against the scientific might of the world's best industry experts and prove, scientifically, that there is a danger. Europe is standing up to Codex on genetic modification to some degree, but only with great difficulty.

When we find pesticides and chemical additives in our foods we can thank Codex for that. Industry experts have figured out the levels that should be allowed in foods and Codex has institutionalized these levels. Any national attempt to reduce pesticides below the levels allowed by Codex or to eliminate some chemicals puts the country at risk of trade sanctions.

Although Codex has a task force on antimicrobial resistance, it has not banned the use of antibiotics in raising farm animals. There is an emergency coming our way - antibiotics are becoming ineffective. More and more resistant strains of bacteria are developing. The cause is known: huge quantities of antibiotics used in commercial animal feeding operations find their way into our food supply. Codex deplores the fact but does not prohibit the practice.

Industry lobby and national Codex delegations

Although Codex, as we have seen, is really an international law making body, it is by no means democratic. Codex delegations are typically formed by medium level ministerial officials advised by industry experts. The industry decides how to vote or what proposals to make on a given topic. The official head of a delegation is rarely knowledgeable enough, nor sufficiently determined on any course of action to set aside the advice and wishes of the industry lobbyists.

Decisions in the Codex Committees are reached by consensus. Seldom if ever are there any votes. Consensus is said to be an absence of sustained opposition to a proposal or text. The chair of any Committee has the power to give delegations time to talk or to deny any further discussion. That same person also declares when a consensus has been reached, passing to the next point of discussion. The result is - more often than not - a guideline text that leaves many delegations unsatisfied because their amendments were not accepted or their opposition not taken into account.

In this sense, Codex itself is profoundly undemocratic. It is able to bypass national parliaments completely and it can choose to ignore or override even direct input from national delegations. An apparency of democratic process is maintained by allowing non governmental organisations (NGOs) to attend meetings and at times to speak, but their voice is powerless. NGOs don't vote and their views are not taken into account when deciding on consensus.

Food supplements

It took the Codex Nutrition Committee a full decade - from 1994 to 2004 - to hammer out a text on food supplements. The final confirmation came the following year at a meeting of the full Codex Commission - the guideline was officially passed on the fourth of July 2005. Irony of ironies, some said, to finalize a guideline with the potential to greatly limit supplement availability on a day that for Americans signifies freedom and independence.

So the winner in the first round was Germany, or rather its pharmaceutical industry, but not without a lot of work and some intrigue. Although the Codex guideline proposal was made in 1994, it was not until the European Union had made its own law, a directive on food supplements, that enough of a force could be mustered to push the Codex guideline through against US resistance. The European directive meant all the European member states' delegates had to vote in unison, and in accordance with the text of the newly passed European law. With the combined strength of the then 15 EU member countries, supported by Rolf Grossklaus, the German chairman of the Nutrition Committee and Basil Mathioudakis, a senior official in the EU's Health and Consumer Directorate, the Codex guideline on supplements was eventually passed. The text remained very similar to the original German proposal and is practically an identical twin of the European directive on supplements.

Round two

The victory gained on independence day 2005 was sweet for the Germans, but it wasn't a knockout defeat for the US pharmaceutical and supplement industries. The text as passed has no teeth: it still lacks the figures to limit nutrient dosages in supplements. No actual limits were set, but it was agreed that work should proceed to scientifically evaluate the levels of intake at which nutrients show certain undesired effects.

While there may be some concern for a few nutrients at exaggerated dosages, supplements as they are sold today are extremely safe. They are much safer than food and aren't even visible on any statistics for causes of death. Yet the risk evaluation process that is to result in hard numbers for limiting nutrient doses is patterned after the way toxic chemicals are evaluated.

There are no positive health effects of chemical poisons, so any adverse effect is of importance. Nutrients instead are required for life. So any evaluation of risk should of course consider both sides of the equation - weighing the seriousness and number of adverse events against the potential good nutrients do when present in abundance. This is what discussions in this present round of nutrient risk assessment are about. Finding a cut-off dosage for each nutrient, will technically make higher dosages illegal, unavailable for anyone to buy.

Honest science and transparency

Supplements have become a political bone of contention. There are the restrictive countries - Germany backed by France, Greece, Denmark, Norway and some others, and we have more liberally inclined ones like the United States, South Africa, the UK, Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands. The contest seems to center around "my industry is better than yours", when it should really be "how can human health be improved".

I believe we must find a way to bring transparency and scientific honesty to this process. As long as science is subordinate to industry and research can be skewed to fit industry's desires, as long as industry's wishes determine international rules and regulations where a self-interested group of multinational corporations can tell us what we should or should not eat, we will be in trouble.

We need independent scientists and a more balanced procedure of making these international regulations.

How about reforming Codex!

Note:

Most of the information in this article is based on my personal experience. Data has been collected and opinions matured during more than a decade, attending numerous meetings of industry groups, NGOs and Codex Committees. The article was finished on 8 August 2008, with some revisions on 10 August. It was originally written for Truth magazine. It is in the public domain and you may re-publish the entire article or use any part or all of it in a new article of your own composition.

Websites to check out about Codex:

Codex Alimentarius official site: www.codexalimentarius.net
National Health Federation: www.thenhf.com/codex.html
American Holistic Health Association: http://ahha.org/codex.htm
La Leva di Archimede: www.laleva.org/eng/legislation/codex.html
Dr Rath: www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/

Sepp Hasslberger
www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp

New Zealand's Phoenix Organics Launches Anti-Aspartame "Think Before You Drink" Campaign

2008-08-01T10:49:24Z

opednews.com
July 31, 2008
by David Gutierrez (Posted by Stephen Fox)

(NaturalNews) New Zealand beverage manufacturer Phoenix Organics has launched an anti-aspartame campaign called "Think Before You Drink," to inform people about what it says are serious health risks from the artificial sweetener.

Aspartame is a common zero-calorie sweetener, marketed under brand names including Equal, NutraSweet, Canderel and Tropicana Slim and used in more than 6,000 products worldwide.

]]> As part of the new campaign, Phoenix Organics has labeled 20,000 bottles of Phoenix Organic Cola with information about the potential health risks of aspartame, and plans to give out those bottles for free over the next few months. The company has also created a section on its Web site linking to information about the chemical and "the 92 different symptoms noted in over 10,000 complaints received by the FDA."

"Having read the Bressler Report of the FDA and other reports on the effects of aspartame, we had the living daylights scared out of all of us," said company directors Stefan Lepionka and Marc Ellis. "We cannot believe that the New Zealand government has declared this safe in the face of such evidence."

The Bressler Report was a 1977 FDA report on the inadequacies of aspartame maker GD Searle's trials into the safety of the chemical. In 1981, Searle Chief Operating Officer Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense for Gerald Ford and later serving the same position for George W. Bush, reapplied for FDA authorization. Aspartame was approved for dry goods in 1981 and for beverages in 1983.

Numerous studies have linked aspartame to brain damage and cancer, while others have shown that it breaks down in the body into toxic byproducts such as formaldehyde.

Lepionka and Ellis expressed concern that in the face of increasing efforts to remove sugary soft drinks from school grounds, beverage companies have suggested aspartame-containing diet soda as a good alternative.

"Phoenix Organics has contacted a number of groups that have been fighting to raise awareness of the health concerns surrounding aspartame and said the company will do whatever it can to support the overall aim to have the government restrict and ban aspartame," they said.

Frankincense provides relief to arthritis sufferers

2008-07-31T08:40:24Z

Image via Wikipedia

Physorg.com
July 30, 2008

An enriched extract of the 'Indian Frankincense' herb Boswellia serrata has been proven to reduce the symptoms of osteoarthritis. Research published today in BioMed Central's open access journal Arthritis Research & Therapy has shown that patients taking the herbal remedy showed significant improvement in as little as seven days.

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis; it commonly affects weight-bearing joints such as the knees and hips, along with the hands, wrists, feet and spine. The symptoms include pain, stiffness and limited movement. This randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial of 70 patients will be of great interest to sufferers, especially those who don't get adequate relief from existing treatments.

]]> The study was led by Siba Raychaudhuri, a faculty member of the University of California, Davis, in the United States. According to Raychaudhuri, "The high incidence of adverse affects associated with currently available medications has created great interest in the search for an effective and safe alternative treatment". The extract the authors used was enriched with 30% AKBA (3-O-acetyl-11-keto-beta-boswellic acid), which is thought to be the most active ingredient in the plant. Raychaudhuri said, "AKBA has anti-inflammatory properties, and we have shown that B. serrata enriched with AKBA can be an effective treatment for osteoarthritis of the knee". This is a proprietary product developed by Laila Nutraceuticals.

B. serrata has been used for thousands of years in the Indian system of traditional medicine known as 'Ayurveda'. This study is the first to prove that an enriched extract of the plant can be used as a successful treatment.

The same authors have previously tested the safety of their remedy in animal experiments. They say that, "In this study, the compound was shown to have no major adverse effects in our osteoarthritis patients. It is safe for human consumption and even for long-term use".

Source: BioMed Central

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Flashback: Another view on fluoridation

2008-07-29T09:53:37Z

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Sott.net
By Thomas Tharp
Lovely Country Citizen
July 2, 2008

I can't even believe that this is an issue again. Our gub-mint "protectors" are yet again trying to get our water supply fluoridated?

I hold in my hand a tube of Crest toothpaste and I quote from the warning on it: "KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN UNDER 6 YEARS OF AGE. If more than used for brushing is ACCIDENTALLY SWALLOWED, get medical help or contact a POISON CONTROL CENTER right away. DO NOT SWALLOW."

Sheeple, that should be enough said right there.

]]> Unfortunately, it's not.

Do you know where fluoride comes from?

It is recovered from the scrubbing solution that scours toxins from smokestacks at phosphate fertilizer plants. Water fluoridation has turned a tremendous hazardous-waste disposal expense into a multimillion-dollar profit for fertilizer manufacturers.

Fluorosilicic acid (fluoride) is so toxic that they can't dump it into the ocean or bury it underground in landfills.

The amount that reaches tap water is relatively small, about 1 part per million (ppm), yet the EPA's limit for lead in the water is only 0.015 ppm -- and lead is less toxic than fluorosilicic acid. Arsenic is only a few times more toxic, yet its EPA water limit is about 400 times smaller than fluorosilicic acid's.

I have spoken off the record with people who work at the Carroll-Boone water treatment facilities and they are afraid to handle the stuff, afraid for their health, even their lives, and it's easy to see why.

Lethal dosage

Sodium fluoride is an extremely toxic substance -- just 200 mg of fluoride is enough to kill a young child, and just 3 to 5 grams (a teaspoon) is enough to kill an adult. The fatal period ranges from 5 minutes to 12 hours.

What it does is rob the body of all calcium, in a condition known as hypocalcemia.

Those of you wanting to learn more can simply Google fluoride or go to www.fluoridealert.org for a comprehensive listing of the pros and cons of this toxic chemical.

WebMD.com won't even touch it other than to say "Tell your doctor/dentist immediately if your teeth become stained or pitted. This is often a result of too much fluoride."

Prevention or curse?

Over-exposure to fluoride can cause crumbling of the enamel, permanent damage to teeth and chronic skeletal fluorosis, which can weaken bones and cause arthritis. Isn't this what fluoride is supposed to prevent?

In the scale of toxicity, fluorides fall between arsenic and lead. Nice company huh?

Despite being prescribed by doctors for more than 50 years, the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has never approved any fluoride product designed for ingestion as safe or effective.

The level of fluoride put into water (1 ppm) is up to 200 times higher than normally found in mothers' milk (0.005 to 0.01 ppm). There are no benefits, only risks, for infants ingesting this heightened level of fluoride at such an early age. You will be using fluoridated water to mix your baby formula if the state gets its way.

Rats fed for one year with 1 ppm fluoride in their water, using either sodium fluoride or aluminum fluoride, had morphological changes to their kidneys and brains, an increased uptake and absorption of aluminum in the brain and the formation of beta amyloid deposits which are characteristic of Alzheimer's disease.

In the first half of the 20th century, fluoride was prescribed by a number of European doctors to reduce the activity of the thyroid gland for those suffering from hyperthyroidism (over-active thyroid).

Hypothyroidism risk

With water fluoridation, we would be forcing people to drink a thyroid-depressing medication which could serve to promote higher levels of hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid) in the population, and all the subsequent problems related to this disorder including depression, fatigue, weight gain, muscle and joint pains, increased cholesterol levels and heart disease.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, fluoride exposure in fluoridated communities is estimated to range from 1.6 to 6.6 mg/day, which is a range that actually overlaps the dose (2.3 to 4.5 mg/day) shown to decrease the functioning of the human thyroid.

Once fluoride is put in the water it is impossible to control the dose each individual receives. This is because some people drink more water than others, and we also receive fluoride from sources other than the water supply. Other sources of fluoride include food and beverages, like bottled water, soda, tea, beer, etc., processed with fluoridated water if the water gets fluoridated. Guess who uses a lot of water? Restaurants, Tysons and McBride Distributing.

Want some fluoride with that?

Here, have some fluoride with your chicken and beer.

Don't think your bottled water has fluoride in it? Think again.

Here is a partial list of companies that add it without most of us knowing it: Artesian Wells, Inc., Plymouth, Wisc.; Eureka Water Co., Oklahoma City, Okla.; CCDA Waters, LLC (that would be Coca Cola Bottling); Culligan Bottled Water Co. U.S.A.; Mount Olympus Waters, Inc.; Natural Springs Water Group; Nestle Waters North America, Inc.; Premium Waters, Inc.; Puritan Springs Water; DS Waters of America, Inc.; and Crystal Mountain Spring Water and Sierra Springs Water.

An irrational practice

Fluoridation is unethical because individuals are not being asked for their informed consent prior to medication. No doctor in his right mind would write a 'script for a person he has never met, whose medical history he does not know, for a toxic substance which is intended to create bodily change, and tell them: "Take as much as you want, and take it for the rest of your life because some small percentage of children suffer from tooth decay."

That's just asinine, and I have lost a lot of faith and trust in the local physicians who spoke in favor of fluoridation in the last issue of our local newspaper. I am very glad that my family is on well water!

-- Thomas Tharp

P.S.

If you would like to buy non-fluoridated tooth paste, www.tomsofmaine.com is the only source I have found.