I’m reminded of one parent’s comment during heightened tensions in the Cold War: What difference does it make what toothpaste our kids are using when we’re in danger of nuclear annihilation? Many Boomers who waited until their thirties to have children questioned the wisdom of bringing children into this world due to the Cold War between the US and Russia.

At the beginning of the 21st century, with random acts of terrorism occuring in many nations the Cold War seems almost simple. The adversaries were known, specific, and contained. Now any individual can and does wreck havoc and horror.

Economic stranglehold on Palestine
The front pages of my local newspaper this week have been large photos of the carnage in Gaza. Earlier in December I was working in the West Bank. Over breakfast I listened to development consultants from around the globe talk about their travels around Israel. The Israelis have set up so many checkpoints that the effect is an economic stranglehold on the Palestinian territories. “International intervention is needed to end this (excluding the US),” was the consensus.

This was two weeks before Israel effectively declared war on Gaza—with armaments supplied by the US. Always, in my many years living abroad, American ex-pats have been told in foreign locales, “We hate the American government—but not the American people.”

Hatred abroad extends to American people
In Ramallah in 2008, a colleague told me she’s now hearing people say they hate the American people. This is, indeed, a very sad state of affairs, but for how many decades can a population not be held accountable for the actions of its government? (Just as the Gazans are now being killed for the occasional rocket lobbed into Israel by their leaders—death toll this week: 400 Gazans, 4 Israelis.)

When visiting the US I’m always stunned by the slant of the news regarding Israel—it’s way off the mark from what I know from living and working in the Middle East. When I was a child I remember my dad making the comment, “Israel is our 49th state.” Dad, a Minnesota farmer and no politico, died in 1961. Two books by eminent scholars were published in 2006 on how the Jewish lobby influences and directs our foreign policy; still, nothing changes.

Support of Israel threatens US national security
The US reigning in Israel is a matter of US national security. The fury many Muslims feel over the injustices toward Palestine is directed towards the US. Will it take a dirty bomb in an American city to get the public’s attention? US support of Palestine would defuse Al Qaeda and most Muslim fury globally.

Here’s an alternative, more peaceful scenario:

US support of Israel is recognized as a threat to national security, and support is dramatically reduced.
The US develops its first national energy policy—and converts 18-wheelers and mass transit to natural gas, making the US fairly independent of Mideast oil.
Palestine is recognized as an independent state, and Israeli interference ends.
Palestine and Israel cooperate and live in peace.
The Arab nations do business with Israel as with everyone else. Iran is left alone, puzzled, that everyone else’s fury has dissipated and peace reigns in the Holy Land. The ayatollahs decide to focus on economic development, too.

Creating peace with collective consciousness
Last night celebrations of the New Year were canceled in Dubai. No extravaganzas in hotels, fireworks put away. More than 1,000 gathered on a beach in a peace vigil. This is how peace will be created in the Holy Land—by the prayers and intervention of those outside the conflict holding a consciousness of peace. The hatred and fury has gone on too long and runs too deep for those engaged in Israel and Palestine to create peace by themselves.

As individuals and collectively we experience whatever we prepare for. We have a Secretary of War, and so we find or start wars to engage in. What the US needs is a Secretary of Peace—let’s prepare for peace in 2009!

Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com

The sensationalized story may have boosted ratings during the “sweeps week” in November when network audiences are measured in order to set advertising rates. The latest antioxidant study involved some 14,000 men (male physicians) taking various combinations of vitamin C and/or E or placebo. After eight years there was no reported difference in heart attack or stroke incidence among the groups. Vola! The simpletons in the media, supported by the AMA of course, tell consumers they shouldn’t bother spending their money on these supplements.

If Memory serves me–over 8 years
Now in reviewing this study, we’ll cut to the chase and look at the methodology used in the study. And Vola! At the conclusion of the study 28% of the subjects admitted they hadn’t taken the supplements even two-thirds of the time. And the researchers were relying solely on the participants’ MEMORY of their compliance for the past eight years! Yet when the calculations for heart attack or stroke incidence were made, those who took as little as 66% of their low-dose vitamin C and or E supplements were counted as having taken the entire dose.

On editorial review boards on which I serve, the methodology alone would have drawn a “thumbs down” or rejection for publication. But even with poor methodology that shouldn’t have made it past the reviewers, the study was set up for the effectiveness of the supplements to fail by choices made in dosage, frequency, and type.

Vitamin C>700mg for Cardiovascular Effects
Several published studies documenting vascular benefits in response to Vitamin C use doses of 1000-6000mg DAILY. The authors alluded to this in their study, that Vit C intakes exceeding 700mg/day significantly reduce heart attack rate. Yet they limited their subjects to 500mg.

Vitamin E–Synthetic vs. Natural forms
In every single study involving Vitamin E, the first factor to examine is whether the form of E is natural or synethetic. With most vitamins natural or synthetic makes no significant difference; in fact, the synthetic is the only form available for most. Not so with Vitamin E, where the natural form has proven far superior. Natural Vit E is distributed through the body much better (2x-3x) than the synthetic form.

Do the researchers actually not know the difference or choose to ignore it? I have yet to see a study bashing Vit E that used the natural form. When shopping, look for the “d” form of E (d-alpha tocopheryl acetate). The “dl” form (dl-alpha…) is the synthetic form. I remember it as the “damned-liar” form. I’ve inadvertently bought the dl-alpha form and experienced first-hand the inadequacy of synthetic E.

So the participants in this study were told to take one 400IU capsule of synthetic Vit E every other day. As the director of the Life Extension Foundation writes in his rebuttal, ”
First of all, we don’t take our vitamins every other day. Free radicals are constantly being generated in our bodies, and supplement users today seek to take their antioxidants with most meals, as oxidative damage is generally the greatest after eating.
It is rather ludicrous to think that these study subjects would reduce their vascular disease risk by taking modest dose, every other day, of a form of vitamin E with inferior anti-oxidant capacity.”

So this study that had such media fanfare used critically poor methodology to record compliance with the study, used dosages known to be insufficient, a synethic version of Vit E known to be inferior in absorption, and frequency known to be inadequate. Could it be more blatant that the study was designed to show the supplements fail to improve health?

We could ask, Why is there such a die-hard, hell-bent drive in the USA for poor health? The answer, of course, is Profits, Business, the profits of pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies (which are sick-care insurance, not health-care). The members of the AMA are in the pockets of Big Pharma, and these same MDs serve on government committees so the government ends up working on behalf of the trioka–Big Pharma, AMA, Insurance industry. But I’m ranting… (Have you read The China Project by Colin Campbell yet? The insider report from an eminent scientist which proves the validity of my–and your–ranting.)

You are the Experiment of One
With every pharma, herb, or supplement you (and I) take we are an experiment of one. I have a methodology that works for me: if a nutritionist or Phylis Balch’s Prescription for Nutritional Healing or my mother recommends a supplement (and she wisely reminded me of Omega 3-fish oil recently which quickly resolved skeletal pain), I try it and watch for improvements or reactions. If, after a 30-day supply is finished, I go without it a few days to test whether it’s still needed before getting a refill. When all is said and done, your own health is all that really matters, not the results of studies! Respond to this post and tell us what your method is or your results.

Salud!
Beverly A Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com
“You are an Experiment of One”

And wherever credit cards have been introduced, the new middle classes quickly drown themselves in debt. Think India and the United Arab Emirates. Americans are just 30 years ahead of the others so we hung ourselves first.

However, there are healthy lifestyle benefits by having (access to) less money. So, as we face possibly years of economic depression, consider the upside:

1. Mall culture will diminish. Teens will stay home and talk to Mom about her teen years. What did you do, Mom, without a mall to hang out in? “Your friends came to your house?! You baked cookies together?!” “Yes, missy, we learned to cook and bake before all foods were sold in boxes, something you should learn to do.”

2. Revive coffee klatches. That’s when women in the neighborhood had a midmorning “coffee break” at one’s home. Homemade coffeecake and brewed coffee and friendship served. Okay, you’ve got an espresso machine now. But the cost of meeting friends at your home instead of the favorite coffee spot will be far less than $8 each. And since those of you who are in the neighborhood are probably out of work, you save money on clothes expenditures, dry cleaning, gas, and lunches out.

3. Buy only fresh foods. Since you have rediscovered the joy of cooking and more food is prepared at home, it will be healthier. You no longer can afford the edible food-like substances in several grocery aisles. You’ll save time, money, and your health by skipping aisles of chips, snack foods, soda, and prepared meats (luncheon types loaded with nitrates). They were all toxic for you anyway. You discover that home-cooked meats and leftovers are great encore lunches for the office or school–no more pre-boxed lunches (read: expensive, processed food).

4. Learn natural ways to take care of your health. Already, people are cutting back on prescription drugs. Chceck with your doctor before doing that. Prescription drugs are dangerous, and sudden withdrawal from some drugs can be fatal. A mere 100 years ago, even 60 years ago, many Americans knew how to take care of their health using plants in the garden. A friend’s grandfather slipped with a knife and cut his hand badly. He went out to the garden and took leaves of one plant (calendula?) and applied them to the wound ad tightly bandage it. Within a few days the cut was healed. Today we typically race to the emergency room, get stitches and antibiotics, and pay $2,000-$3,000 for the simplest procedure. That won’t be an option for millions more who will lose their health coverage with their jobs. If you’re not into botany and gardens, at the very least checkout a medical savings program such as Care Entree. Such programs have negotiated rates that are substantial. Some medical coverage will reduce stress.

5. Back to gardening. And sewing. Now with more leisure time and less money to spend in retail therapy, take up old hobbies or learn a new skill. If you live in an apartment, investigate whether the city has “pea patches” for residents to garden. And there are new developments in raised-bed gardening that makes patio gardens very do-able. You’ll get more sunshine, exercise, greatly reduce stress, and have more nutritious food by gardening.

6. Family tube time. Now that you’re doing more activities at home you’ll have less time to watch television. Bring the family together by having ONE TV in the house. Hey, with Tivo you can all record your favorites. Your budget (and theirs) no longer affords updating and replacing everyone’s PC, laptop, video games, blackberry, ipods, cell phones. Simplify your lives and live healthier. Remove TVs and all electronics from the kids’ bedrooms.The electrical fields in their sleeping space is unhealthy both physically and mentally. Only EU nations are recognizing (physical) health issues due to electrical fields. But for mental and spiritual well-being a child’s (and adult’s) bedroom should be a quiet sanctuary for rejuvenating the soul.

7. Reclaim childhood. When a 10-year-old has a limo pick up her friends for her birthday party, what do you do for an encore next year? It’s now necessary to stop the expenses of pamering young girls like adults. Girls as young as 5 or 6 in tiny high heels and lipstick are a sad commentary on parenting. Childhood, being free of cares and unconcerned with breaking a (finger) nail, is being lost. Without a budget for weekly manicures and hair styling for pre-teens (or mom), childhood can be reclaimed.

This financial meltdown provides a time to reflect on what’s important in our lives. And a whole lot of “stuff” we can live without–and live better.

Salud!
Beverly Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com

No Safety Testing Required
How often have you thought about the ingredients in these products? Unless we have an allergy to a product or its ineffective we assume that it’s safe to use. Right? Aren’t these products in the categories monitored by the Food & Drug Administration? The truth be told–they’re not. We consumers are on our own.
A non-profit organization, the Environment Working Group (EWG), reports on their website that major gaps in public health laws allow cosmetic companies to use almost any ingredient they choose–even lead, mercury and placenta. Ingredients in any kind of product–sunscreen, mascara, deodorant, baby shampoo–are sold to consumers with no restrictions and no requirements for safety testing, reports the Group.
EWG tests products and on the website report by brand name and product the toxicity levels they find. You (and your friends) should research what’s on your bathroom counter–85 million have already done.
The Group is also working to improve the regulatory environment–there are petitions to support–but without a whole lot of success.

FDA won’t enforce Warning Labels
In response to a cosmetic safety petition filed by the EWG, the FDA issued a final response in 2005 affirming its inability to enforce a requirement that a warning label be posted on products that have not been substantiated for safety. So not only are the ingredients not tested for safety, you’re not going to be notified of such.
Furthermore, the FDA declined to develop guidance for the cosmetic industry on what must be done to substantiate safety and what standards must be met to ensure safety. In other words, the industry will set all the rules for itself, and the FDA abdicates responsibility. Visit http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com/

Nano technology dramatically raises Risks
The regulatory environment has been dangerous already, but new technology gives a quantum boost to the dangers. Stacy Malkan, author of Not Just a Pretty Face: the Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, tells us in her book (New Society Publishers, 2007):
“As if there weren’t enough concerns about the toxicity of cosmetic chemicals, manufacturers are rushing to incorporate nanotechnology that uses particles 80,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Nanotechnology has been touted as the next revolution in cosmetics and packaging. However, nanoparticles, being so tiny, have the potential to penetrate unusually deeply into the skin and organs, causing exotic physical effects.

Animal studies show that some nanoparticles can penetrate cells and tissues, move through the body and brain and cause biochemical damage. As one example, carbon fullerenes–also called buckyballs, and currently being used in some moisturizers–can cause brain damage in fish, and even low levels of exposure can be toxic to human liver cells. The health impacts of nanomaterials in cosmetics and sunscreens remain largely unknown, pending completion of long-range studies that have only recently begun. But that’s not stopping the cosmetics industry from leading the charge to incorporate the inadequately tested technology into products we put on our faces and in our hair.

“In one of the most dramatic failures of regulation since the introduction of asbestos, corporations around the world are rapidly introducing thousands of tons of nanomaterials into the environment and onto the faces and hands of hundreds of millions of people, despite the growing body of evidence indicating that nanomaterials can be toxic for humans and the environment,” said a May 2006 report by Friends of the Earth. The group filed the first-ever legal challenge on the potential health impacts of nanotechnology in a 2006 petition to the FDA, demanding that the agency monitor and regulate nanoparticles in cosmetics.

“Hundreds of personal care products already contain nano-sized ingredients, and thousands more contain ingredients that are available in nano form but don’t include information about particle size on the labels, according to a Skin Deep analysis. Since nano-sized ingredients are absorbed differently into the body, they require separate safety studies. But as Iane Houlihan noted, “Manufacturers seem to be following the pattern they established with conventional chemical ingredients–put poorly tested chemicals into personal care products and do the science later, if at all.”

“With no safety framework and little government oversight, the cosmetics industry is operating in a virtual Wild West. And the West has gotten wilder still.

• Nanoemulsians in shampoo encapsulate active ingredients and carry them deeper into hair shafts.
• Nanosomes of Pro—Retinol A penetrate the skin’s surface to soften wrinkles and reduce the appearance of fine neck creases.
• Nanovectors transport and concentrate active ingredients in the skin.

“In the absence of federal regulations, some cities are trying to get a handle on the situation. Berkeley, Calif., became the first city to regulate nanotechnology in December 2006, and other cities may follow suit. Under the Berkeley law, companies and research labs that make or use nanoparticles must disclose that fact to the city government and provide information about known health or safety risks.”
My question: With no federal regulations, are city health inspectors going to enforce city laws to post warnings to consumers? Not likely to happen. For the foreseeable future, we consumers are on our own.
Salud!
Beverly A Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com

While every other presentation concerned providing the best possible medical care within US mainstream medicine, I was the sole messenger proposing that mainstream medicine encourage America’s minorities to re-consider their native or national health treatments first.

My proposal was (and is) to give foremost responsibility to the patient to take care of herself, a whole new paradigm instead of depending upon the AMA.

A keynote speaker from one of the nation’s foremost medical foundations told a story of one of his patients. The patient was retired, living on Social Security and a small pension and was very diligent about his financial affairs. A routine exam and stool test indicated suspicious cells, and the MD advised a colonoscopy be done to test for cancerous cells.

Get a 2nd Opinion—outside the AMA
However, Medicare wasn’t going to cover the full cost of the colonoscopy, and the patient tried unsuccessfully to get prices from various labs and clinics in the area in order to budget his out-of-pocket expenses. He had just learned the furnace in his home needed to be replaced, and he had limited funds.

The point of the keynote speaker was that there needs to be transparency in pricing of medical services and public accountability of medical outcomes (for patients to determine the best physician to buy services from). But his patient, not being able to get this information, instead paid for the furnace and died the following year of colon cancer.

Sitting in the auditorium of polite and quiet hundreds, I wanted to stand up and shout, ”You had no other ideas? It was get a colonoscopy and chemo or die?”

Now I’m not a licensed medical practitioner, but as long as I reside in this body I have the right and responsibility to take care of my body by all means possible. This was the thesis of my presentation at the conference: educate the patient to find answers to their health issues.

Any Naturopathic Doctor would have immediately had the above patient do a bowel detox regimen regardless of whether cancer cells had been confirmed. A change in diet was in order. And there are herbs that eliminate cancer cells. My family has personal experience in overcoming stomach cancer using herbs and prayer.

Whatever the outcome of this regimen, it could not have been worse than the AMA route—death.

A Quiet (Undercover) Response to my Presentation
In a session on “accounting for culture” in health care, the other three presenters reported statistics on specific minorities’ care. My presentation was a rogue, a bad-news-bear report on the fact that nearly one million Americans annually land in the nation’s hospital ERs or die from pharmaceutical drugs (see JAMA, Oct. 2006 and June 2000). And only 10 to 20 percent of MD’s treatment is evidence-based. Let’s take the cue from our minority patients and use homeopathic medicines, Ayurvedic, Traditional Chinese Medicine. That was my message.

In the front row on one side of the room, two nurses from Wyoming continually nodded and smiled. On the other side, in the front row, a young woman grimaced painfully during the 20 minutes—a pharma rep?

No one had any questions for me so I asked them, had they heard of homeopathy (the quickest, easiest route to self-care). About 75 percent of these medical professionals knew of homeopathy—and 40% were using it!!

Of course, they are not representative of the US medical profession. Since they are serving minorities, many are minorities themselves or through years of working with minority groups, they have learned non-AMA methods of health care.

In the group setting nobody had any comments on my new paradigm, but in the following two days, several who had been in the audience introduced themselves and told me their personal stories regarding health care: A request to have a Healing Touch practitioner in the operating room, which created such a buzz that the hospital nurses requested further education on this. A parents’ dispute with an MD that a five-year-old’s change in behavior wasn’t due to ADD (requiring another drug) but to her asthma inhaler—and the parents were correct.

I may have been the only one speaking publicly about alternatives to the mainstream, but I left Minneapolis feeling like there was an undercurrent of new ideas and approaches being quietly practiced by these mainstream professionals.

Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com

Not anymore. Now FIVE corporations own 90 percent of all US media; two of them are foreign organizations, and if the news organization is part of a conglomerate, journalists are always raising the hackles of one of those subsidiaries.

Never heard of CODEX? That’s exactly what they want!
If you have any interest in being able to buy organic foods, growing your own vegetable garden (yes, permits will be needed in cities), or buying nutritional supplements over 10mg, you must listen to the videos listed at the bottom of this blog AND PASS THIS ALONG TO EVERYONE WHO HAS ANY INTEREST IN THEIR HEALTH.

Briefly, CODEX Alimentarius is a trade commission launched by a German chemical conglomerate who supplied the Nazi gas chambers of WWII. After a brief stint in prison for war crimes against humanity, the president of the company convinced friends at the newly formed United Nations that through food the world could be “managed.”

It was a long-term plan that is right on schedule. Over 4,000 regulations regarding food production have been decided by CODEX committees all over the globe. In 1994, the WTO accepted CODEX as its standards-bearer. Now with enforcement power, the CODEX plan is right on schedule. Your freedom to manage your health in every dimension will be ended on Dec. 31, 2009.

Here’s some key points from the CODEX manual. This sounds like a black nightmare from a science fiction movie, and I wish it were fiction. However, European nations are already in this iron grip to varying degrees, but in Norway and Germany consumers already are covered:
Only low-potency supplements that will have no health benefits are available
All foods may be genetically-modified
Any beneficial supplements are available by prescription only
Standards for organic foods are to be eliminated; “organic” foods can be radiated and contain pesticides.

Want to grow your own vegetables and fruits? That will require a Permit in most sizeable cities of the world. There will be actual (commissioned) Food Police who will patrol neighborhoods to see that you’re not growing garlic and onions or herbs (they are medicinal, you know).

This isn’t Science Fiction. It’s the facts. Organic berries and herbs are being removed from produce shelves in Ireland. Oh, you say, this can’t happen in America? Last year CODEX tested the American response to their regulations by prohibiting shipments of raw almonds from California–there was no large protest and the ruling stood.

And rather than a direct on-slaught onto the Congress, which would probably wake up some advocacy organizations in the US, CODEX is coming to the US through the side door–through Canada. Then it will be applied to the US, fait accompli, through NAFTA.

I’ve been following CODEX since 1996, and the implications are terrifying. Recall the film Soylent Green? We’re about to move into a very dark world if the population doesn’t wake up. Read below what the Canadians are doing and support their efforts. Through NAFTA their fate is also ours and Mexico’s. Watch the videos and PASS THIS ON.

Salud!
Beverly Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.Womens Medicine Bowl.com

Dear natural health advocates across Canada and the United States,

Have you heard of CODEX ALIMENTARIUS?
Why is there such bureaucratic pressure to pass BILL C-51 and C-52?
Why must we stop CODEX and these BILLS?

This recent video is a presentation which highlights CODEX. It explains the reason why governments are pushing forward restrictions on natural health supplementation and organic foods. The featured speaker, Ian Crane, presents the future agenda of the United Nations, and he secures his 1 1/2 hour presentation byway of facts and clear images. (NOTE: Several shorter videos are also available)
The presentation took place this June, in the United Kingdom.

His research about CODEX explains that it is an international trade law which will ultimately control the global food and natural health supplementation network by January 2010. This explains the Parliamentary rush to pass BILL C-51 and BILL C-52 well before the 2010 deadline.

Any Member of Parliament’s indecision, lack of leadership and lack of passion to speak to Shawn Buckley of the Natural Health Products Protection Association (NHPPA) could possibly lead to Canada’s full implementation of CODEX on both Food and Natural Health Supplements within the next two to five years. Predictions state that over two billion people will face unnecessary deaths if the lowered health standards of CODEX be adopted worldwide.

Health Canada has already approved the CODEX Food Regulations without going through Parliament. This fact was stated at Health Canada’s Public Health Consultations in Winnipeg on June 13th/2008.

Without consulting Parliament, CODEX Natural Health Product Regulations will be have to be adopted in the future by Health Canada, in order that Canada become
CODEX compliant. If Canada is not completely CODEX compliant by 2010, then Canada will begin to face sanctions by the UN/World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization. This is the economic threat that all countries will have to face if they do not allow CODEX to be adopted as their food and natural health code.

If you would like to share the video with as many as possible, please send the link forward:

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=5800206429960925518&q=ian+crane&ei=xr2TSIPmMpKu_AHGmc2kBg

Sincerely,

WPG STOP BILL C-51

Did you know that the CODEX food code is the apex of Canada’s BILL C-51 and BILL C-52?
Did you know that regulations such as the above three, stand against the true health, sovereignty and prosperity of our nations?

When Lee Iacoca rants, “Where have all the Leaders Gone?” a part of the answer is that the channels for new voices to be heard have been turned off. And we all should be ranting for more press freedom. Born a contrarian who always questioned “authority”, I have always succeeded in publishing views beyond the “popular” public opinion–until the last decade.

Disappearing Media Voices
Here’s why: in 1983, 50 corporations owned most of the America media–newspapers, radio, TV. By 2004, five (5) corporations owned 90% of the US media. With 50 corporations there was considerable variety in voices and views. Now with five media owners there is virtually no new voices. The American media are part of conglomerates, and any viewpoint outside the mainstream will be in conflict with some division of the conglomerate.

In journalism school 30 years ago we talked about the danger of business interests over the public’s interest with media owned by conglomerates. The public is now at risk of not recognizing the danger of restricted views in the media!

One veteran of newspapers now teaching at Arizona State says the future of journalism will be the public attending to a single journalist on the Net. Even the Internet is now at risk, which is why thousands will be attending the media conference in Minneapolis. Hearings and petitions before the FCC concern whether those who control communication infrastructures should be allowed to control access to content, applications, or technologies.

Effects on Health Reporting
A study of US media coverage (television and newspaper reports) from 1994 to 1998 on three common medications found that media reports mislead the public. Ray Moynihan, an Australian reporter on the business of medicine, randomly selected 207 news reports and found that media stories often exaggerate the benefits, ignore the risks (of drugs), and fail to disclose both the true costs of new medications and the industry ties of the experts they cite. His study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and, to the media’s credit, the study received wide coverage in the mainstream media.

But the media’s self-censorship is more insidious. When JAMA published a study last October that over 700,000 visits to the nation’s hospitals ERs is due to reactions to pharmaceutical drugs, the NY Times printed a small inside article with NO NUMBERS in the headline. The authors of the meta-study figure the number exceeds 700,000 because most emergency room visits go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. We already know that drugs kill 100,000 per year. So we have nearly one million Americans killed or critically injured by drugs each year, and that’s not front page news? What happened to journalism “in the public’s interest”?

Jim Steele, co-author of Critical Condition: How Health Care in America Became Big Business–and Bad Medicine, told the Columbia Journalism Review in December 2004, that there is a reporting failure. “We say ‘reporting,’ but the real failture may well be with timid editors who don’t want to offend or challenge…the press is filled with tales of the latest wonder drug or a procedure that will dramatically improve our well-being. They read like PR handouts and play to the public’s anxieties about health. There is seldom a hint of skepticism.”

With pharmaceutical advertising billings making up to 40 percent of broadcaster’s revenues, can we expect the media to be working for the public’s good? No hope. The best news I’ve read recently was that pharmaceutical profits are expected to decline by 2011.

Drugs Don’t Equate to Health
Pharmaceuticals are more accurately associated with disease-care. When a nation with four (4) percent of the world’s population consumes 50 percent of the world’s drugs, something is desperately wrong. When any group of a dozen teens knows several friends on anti-depressants something is desperately wrong. When 25 percent of American children attending summer camps start the morning in “med lines”… When any group of 30-somethings has all but one on some drug… When young men take ED drugs “just in case”, something is desperately wrong. It’s no wonder the US healthcare system now ranks 37th in the world by WHO standards.

The American mass media won’t be contributing to any change. The only varying viewpoints will be on the Net–and we had better defend that freedom or we’ll be losing health freedom as well as press freedom.

Salud!
Beverly A Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com

In the strongest studies (19 double-blind trials with good randomization and follow-up), supplements in doses considerably larger than those in the drug-store variety of multivitamins appeared to increase the risk of death, the authors report. Researchers always select what they’re going to review, and Health Sciences Institute reports more than 400 studies of antioxidant supplements with no such dire conclusions and certainly no deaths. These studies were ignored–what sampling for “objective” science!

Suspicions re Supplement Studies
Never forgetting that the pharmaceutical companies are driving to have all supplements available only by prescription from MDs (CODEX), I am ever suspicious of studies that “confirm” that supplements are useless, if not dangerous. If we accept these conclusions, then there will be little or no protest when we find that pharma drugs are the only meds available to try to heal us–which drugs rarely do.

The Cochrane Collaboration and its Library is a medical database that has been online since its inception in 1986; it’s now part of Wiley Interscience and is usually available only by subscription. The objective of the collaboration, which is based in London, is to have medical research online (with all the data available) to enable such meta-studies.

Based in London, it doesn’t have a whiff of the AMA (maybe) and named after an epidemiologist, a medical field inclined towards wellness, lifestyle choices, and nutrition, rather than pharmaceuticals, the Cochrane Library seems to be clear of malevolent motives. (This study was published in February 2007 in JAMA.) The Collaboration, however, is a loosely identified group. It’s reported on the website that in their gathering of studies to be included the authors wrote to pharmaceutical companies for additional trials to include in the meta-study.

Nutritionally clueless?
You can bet the bank that no study sponsored by a pharmaceutical company has ever discovered any value in nutritional supplements. And with U.S. MDs having had, at most, one class in nutrition in their medical education, the physicians studying supplements are clueless (or careless) to the differences between synethetic and natural-sourced vitamins and the varied forms.

Many minerals on the market are pulverized rocks, which the body cannot absorb. Studies of vitamin E (using the synthetic form dl-alpha t) concluded that it was ineffective. I totally agree! In my own unintended experiment I had bought the dl (damned liar) form of Vit. E and wondered after two weeks why I still had the symptoms I was taking it for.

Often the researchers are unaware or uninterested in the various forms of supplements and use forms other research has already found to be less than helpful. Glucosamine-sulfate is an example of a form that works, but glucosamine hydrochloride isn’t nearly as helpful. Then researchers using the hydrochloride version found–vola! glucosamine doesn’t work!

We’re each an Experiment!
Reports such as this meta-study remind me of WMB’s mantra: “I’m an experiment of one with everything I take, and I am the only one that matters.” Over 70 percent of the diseases causing death in America are diseases of deficiencies. Even the AMA is now recommending vitamin supplementation. The fact is that death is usually brought on by the organs wearing out, and they wear out because our aging bodies don’t produce the hormones and numerous nutrients we generated when much younger. And the nutrients in the US food supply are considerably reduced from what they were 50 years ago.

Though I’m confident (and hopeful) there are millions like her, but I have met one woman in her late 60s, who looked and claimed to be in peak health, who took no supplements. “I know I’m suppose to take CoQ10, but I never remember to take it,” she told me. “If you’re feeling so great that you don’t remember to take something, you couldn’t need it!” was my response. We hear that every woman over 30? 40? 50? is suppose to take calcium supplements. Two days of calcium supplements and I have spurs on my spine (calcium deposits) –quit the calcium and in two days they’re gone. I’m one over 50 who certainly doesn’t need calcium. Everyone of us is unique with unique nutritional needs.

See a Nutritionist
A visit to a nutritionist is the best way to learn how to nutritionally heal yourself. You can tell all your aches and complaints to an MD (if you talk real fast in a 7-minute meeting), but the usual recommendation is a pharmaceutical prescription for pain, nothing that’s going to heal the cause of the discomfort. Nutritional healing cures the ailment, not blocking the pain but eliminating the cause of the pain. And taking supplements your body doesn’t need is harmful. An annual blood chemistry test recommended by many health practitioners is very useful. A kinesic strong-arm test is another test a household-member can do for you daily (see WMB for details).

News such as this report makes one question–but only for a moment. Listen to your body–you are an experiment of one, and only you experience the results or consequences of what you do or don’t do for optimal health.

Salud!
Beverly Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com

If the Supreme Court rules on a case next term as it’s expected to, the weekly lists of lawsuits against the drug companies will virtually end. We’ll have only reports of their profits, and perhaps some government agency will continue to report on the deaths and injuries due to their products. But the court ruling will exempt the drug makers from legal liability for their products.

FDA Approved
Instead, the court is leaning toward laying all the responsibility for the dire consequences of pharmaceuticals (100,000 deaths annually in the US at last count) on the doorstep of the FDA for having approved the use of the drug.

Whoa! Is anybody at the FDA considering going on strike? For the enormity of its responsibility, the FDA is undoubtedly the most understaffed and underfunded agency of the federal government. This agency, which is responsible for monitoring the safety of food and drug products for the nation, had a staff of a mere 800 or so in the late ’90s and was so far behind in processing drug applications that in 2002 it was decided to have drug companies pay a fee for review of their applications. This ruling doubled the size of the FDA, and put the regulatory agency in bed with the companies they were suppose to be regulating. Remember–”He who pays the piper calls the tune”?

Now their bedmate is putting all the blame on the FDA for the consequences of their joint action! The FDA approved the drug, therefore, the pharmaceuticals are blameless for the consequences to nearly one million each year–the 700,000+ who visit hospital ER due to drug interactions or reaction and the 100,000 that drugs are known to kill. Or so argue the lawyers for the drug companies, and the Bush-loaded courts are poised to hand legal immunity (the legal term is pre-emption) to the drug companies.

The doctrine of legal pre-emption goes like this: the FDA is the only agency with the expertise to regulate drug makers, and its decisions should not be second-guessed by the courts. On the surface, this might appear logical until you consider how the FDA makes its decisions: the FDA doesn’t conduct the clinical experiments on the drugs, nor does the agency actually test that the drug contains what the manufacturers claim. The FDA doesn’t do science–the agency relies entirely upon reports from the industry–and the industry lies.

And like a reluctant lover, the FDA is slow to speak up against its bedmates, and then it speaks very quietly. A case is now before the Federal District Court in northern Ohio in which Judge David A. Katz will decide whether lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson for its birth control patch Ortho Evra will be heard in the courts. The patch delivers far more estrogen (76 micrograms) into the body than the maximum allowed (50 micrograms) due to the delivery method–directly into the blood stream instead of through the digestive track where much of the potency of pills is lost.

Fudged numbers fed to FDA
High doses of estrogen are known to raise the risk of blod clots that can cause heart attacks and stroke. More than 3,000 women and their families have sued Johnson & Johnson claiming the Ortho Evra patch caused heart attacks, strokes, and (40) deaths.
Internal company documents made public during the lawsuits show that even before the FDA approved the product in 2001, the company’s researchers knew that the patch delivered far more estrogen than the maximum allowed.

But when the results of the clinical trial were issued to the FDA for approval a J&J scientist applied a “correction factor” to the numbers–this “correction factor” (similar to accountants “massaging” the numbers) was mentioned once in a 435-page report to the FDA and then only in a complex mathematical formula.

Between 2002-2006, reports of at least 50 deaths associated with the drug were received by the food and drug agency. Depending upon honest and full reports from the drug company, the reluctant lover didn’t warn the public of the potential risks until November 2005. When the warning was added to the product label, prescriptions plummeted by 80 percent, to 187,000 in February 2007 from 900,000 in March 2004.

Lawsuits serve as safety gauges of drugs
According to the NY Times, “A series of independent assessments have concluded that the agency is poorly organized, scientifically deficient and short of money.” FDA commissioner, Andrew C. von Eschenbach, acknowledged in February that the agency faces a crisis and may not be “adequate to regulate the food and drugs of the 21st century.”

You think? To the agency’s credit, the FDA admits (however bashfully) its limitations and faults. Top officials have said that lawsuits aid the agency’s oversight of safety issues. It’s unfortunate but true that clinical trials of drugs are often very small numbers and the side-effects of these drastic chemicals are so individually specific that after they’re released, the larger population becomes the safety (not to mention effectiveness) study. So, Americans take the drugs (half the world’s consumption though we’re six percent of the global population) and then line up with lawsuits.

Lawsuits reveal Pharmas lies to the FDA
“In the last decade,” the NY Times reports, “suits over Zyprex, the withdrawn pain pill Vioxx, the withdrawn diabetes medicine Rezulin, the withdrawn heartburn medicine Propulside and several antidepressants have shown that companies played down the risks of their medicines and failed to disclose clinical trials to the public even as they have aggressively marketed their drugs.”

Given the condition and limitations of the FDA, the record of behavior of the pharmaceutical companies, and–above and beyond all these facts–the dire consequences of the public’s use of drugs, how could the courts absolve the drug companies from responsibility for their products? They can’t if the focus is on public health. They will if the courts’ focus is protection of big business. Watch for the outcome of Wyeth v Levine before the Supreme Court this October. Better yet, send your opinion to the Court’s nine justices.

The best and safest solution to this public health quagmire, is to NOT USE DRUGS, to make pharmaceuticals and OTC meds (prescriptions that were tested on enough of the population) the medicines of last resort–after homeopathy, herbs, etc.

Salud!
Beverly A Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com

In Sydney, 2.2 milion residents and 21,000 businesses switched off unnecessary lighting, and the savings was a 10.2 percent reduction in electrical output according to the Earth Hour organization’s website. In Dubai, electricity usage dropped by 100,000 kilowatt hours when lights were turned off the Burg Al Arab Hotel and the city’s other architectural landmarks.

The significance of turning off unnecessary lighting and reducing electrical usage is that about half of the carbon emissions put into the atmosphere and causing global warming is due to coal-fired electrical generation. In Dubai alone the reduction in carbon emissions for the one-hour voluntary brown-out was estimated by the electricity agency to be 60,000kg.

Government Must Take Lead
While individuals can–and must–keep off unneeded lights and appliances, it is government agencies that must reduce use of lighting in public places where it’s decorative but unnecessary for safety. And businesses must turn off the lighting in buildings when it’s unoccupied.

In the early 1970s, when I was writing on environmental issues, it took more electricity to turn flourescent lights back on than to leave them on continuously. The technology has improved in 30 some years, and the real estate managers must turn off the lights, even use less during the day (it’s bad for our health anyway, but that’s another blog).

Raise Prices of Electricity
It’s unlikely the price of oil or a tank of gas is going to go back down substantially due to increasing demand from the giant economies of China and India. And the cost of food is rising and unlikely to return to earlier lower prices. One sure way to reduce electrical usage is to increase the cost of electricity for all of us–now when it might still make a difference in the planet’s condition.

Old-Fashioned Conservation
Maybe it was living in rural America, maybe it was having parents who had been children during the 1930s economic depression, maybe it was the semi-arid land the family was farming, maybe it was their frugal, conservation values applied (in child rearing) through the 1950s and 60s. Whatever the reason, the generation of Boomers was raised to turn off the light when you left the room and not to waste water under any circumstances. When did we forget to teach our children to turn off the lights?

Now there are energy-saving bulbs that give 75 watts of light for the energy usage of 25 watts. Don’t leave computers running (another health hazard, too). Appliances (TVs, etc) don’t have to left on standby. Sit on the porch and visit with neighbors (or gather at the neighborhood park or lake in the evening) instead of using air conditioning. Be inventive on alternative activities that free us of electrical appliances.

From Earth Day to Earth Hour
The launching of Earth Day on April 22, 1970, made a huge impact on bringing together groups, organizations, and individuals who were concerned about the polluted environment industry was causing. Twenty million Americans rallied that first Earth Day. Earth Day 2007 saw an estimated one billion people in 184 countries participate in save-the-earth activities.

That we have moved from Earth Day to an Earth Hour activity is symbolic of the urgency of the planet’s condition. Earth Day activities became year-round, continuous endeavors to take care of the planet. The voluntary brown-out of Earth Hour needs to be adapted as a way of life before it’s no longer voluntary.

Sobering Images
The photographs of the cityscape of Sydney and of the Sydney Harbor Bridge before the Earth Hour at 8pm and during the hour were sobering. The nighttime cityscapes we’re used to are brightly lit buildings and bridges. Sydney was much darker, and the Burg Al Arab lost much of its glamour without the colored spotlights.

But if we don’t keep the lights off, here are more sobering visuals:
A chunk of Greenland the size of Rhode Island, it was reported this week, is breaking away from the mainland.
If the planet heats up 6-degrees, we’ll experience another ice age (with changes in ocean currents due to melting polar ice caps).
The shocking image of Manhattan half submerged in water and ice in the final scene of Artificial Intelligence.

Tell your children (and practice it yourself)–When you leave the room, turn off the lights (and all electronics)!

Salud!
Beverly Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com