Drisdol is the form of vitamin D prescribed by many doctors.  But it is vitamin D2, which is not the type produced by your body in response to sun exposure.  Vitamin D2 is made by irradiating fungus and plant matter.

A recent review and meta-analysis looked at mortality rates for people who supplemented their diets with D2 versus those who did so with D3, the form naturally produced by your body.  The analysis of 50 randomized controlled trials with 94,000 participants total showed that there was a 6% relative risk reduction among those who used vitamin D3, but an actual 2% relative risk increase among those who used D2.

In an article posted on Live in the Now, Dr. John J. Cannell writes:

“Amazingly, this study somehow slipped under the radar … You would think a paper that took a look at tens of thousands of subjects and analyzed the efficacy of prescription vitamin D (D2) and over-the-counter vitamin D (D3) would warrant a news story or two. To my knowledge, these papers are the first to paint such a clear picture about the efficacy between D3 and D2.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has been engaging in intimidation in attacking the National Vaccine Information Center and a flu prevention video they created for Delta Air Lines in-flight programming. The AAP has been attempting to censor and block public access to accurate information about influenza.

A letter signed by the AAP President Dr. Robert Block accused Delta of “putting children’s lives at risk” by showing travelers the video, which encourages practices such as washing your hands, covering your mouth when coughing, eating nutritious foods, getting enough sleep, exercising, and lowering stress, rather than resorting to flu vaccine.

According to NVIC:

“The AAP letter stated that ‘influenza vaccine continues to be the best way to protect against the disease,’ without acknowledging that a recently published scientific study found that the flu vaccine is less than 70 percent effective in preventing influenza”.

Doctors sometimes refuse to see specific patients any more for a number of reasons — such as missed appointments, rude or threatening behavior, and nonpayment of bills.  But an increasingly common reason is parents’ refusal to allow their children to be vaccinated.

A survey of 900 pediatricians in nine Midwestern states found that 21% have discharged families for refusing vaccination.  As the number of recommended vaccines for children has increased, vaccine safety has been the subject of escalating controversy.

USA Today reports:

“The sheer number of vaccines given to children — 25 shots in the first 15 months of life — has caused some parents to worry that so much stimulation could overwhelm young immune systems”.

Many doctors and public-health experts have recently been arguing that aggressive breast-cancer screening does more harm than good. Critics of this concept often bring up breast cancer survivors who say that a routine mammogram saved their lives.  But a recent analysis estimates that only about 1 in 8 women whose breast cancer was identified during a routine mammogram actually had their lives saved by the screening.

Many of these tumors would have grown very slowly, if at all, and never would threatened the woman’s life.  In fact, overtreatment could be a serious problem.

According to Time Magazine:

“Using the relevant data for a hypothetical 50-year-old woman who received a breast cancer diagnosis following a routine mammogram, the researchers estimate that the probability that the mammogram will be responsible for saving her life is about 13%. And even that estimate may be high, they say: mammograms prevent fewer deaths today than they did 20 or 30 years ago (thanks to better treatment that has made early detection less crucial), so the actual probability could be as low as 3%.”

UV light from sun and sunbeds is the main vitamin D source for humans, and many health benefits of vitamin D have been identified. But since UV exposure has been suspected of causing skin cancer, may conventional health authorities warn against it.

A recent review of studies sought to review the health effects of solar radiation, sunbeds and vitamin D.  The researchers looked at data from different time periods for populations at different latitudes, with the aim at looking at the relative risk for cutaneous malignant melanoma associated with sunbed use, vitamin D and UV effects.  They found that increased sunbed use was not associated with melanoma.

According to the research:

“The overall health benefit of an improved vitamin D status may be more important than the possibly increased [cutaneous malignant melanoma] risk resulting from carefully increasing UV exposure. “

In fact, Ivan Oransky, the editor of Reuters Health, has previously noted that the real risk of getting skin cancer from a tanning bed is somewhere less than three-tenths of one percent — and even then, this is likely only from those who habitually overexpose themselves

UV light from sun and sunbeds is the main vitamin D source for humans, and many health benefits of vitamin D have been identified. But since UV exposure has been suspected of causing skin cancer, may conventional health authorities warn against it.

A recent review of studies sought to review the health effects of solar radiation, sunbeds and vitamin D.  The researchers looked at data from different time periods for populations at different latitudes, with the aim at looking at the relative risk for cutaneous malignant melanoma associated with sunbed use, vitamin D and UV effects.  They found that increased sunbed use was not associated with melanoma.

According to the research:

“The overall health benefit of an improved vitamin D status may be more important than the possibly increased [cutaneous malignant melanoma] risk resulting from carefully increasing UV exposure. “

In fact, Ivan Oransky, the editor of Reuters Health, has previously noted that the real risk of getting skin cancer from a tanning bed is somewhere less than three-tenths of one percent — and even then, this is likely only from those who habitually overexpose themselves

Science has long depended upon mathematics. Rigorous mathematical methods have secured science’s fidelity to fact.  But during the past century, science has become especially dependent on statistics, the same set of principles that guarantee profits for Las Vegas casinos — and widespread misuse of statistical methods may be making scientific results unreliable.

Statistical tests are the guides scientists use to judge whether a result is a real effect or is simply a random fluke.  However, the standard methods offer no meaningful basis for making such decisions, and are both widely misunderstood and frequently misinterpreted. Because of this, countless conclusions in the scientific literature are erroneous, and tests of medical dangers or treatments are often contradictory and confusing.

Science News reports:

“Experts in the math of probability and statistics are well aware of these problems and have for decades expressed concern about them in major journals. Over the years, hundreds of published papers have warned that science’s love affair with statistics has spawned countless illegitimate findings. In fact, if you believe what you read in the scientific literature, you shouldn’t believe what you read in the scientific literature … [A]ny single scientific study alone is quite likely to be incorrect, thanks largely to the fact that the standard statistical system for drawing conclusions is, in essence, illogical.”

A pair of steel spikes, attached to wooden handles, once represented the leading edge of psychiatric science. They were the operative tools in lobotomy, which was seen as a miracle cure for mental illnesses.  The idea behind lobotomy started with Portuguese neurologist, Egas Moniz, who believed that patients with obsessive behavior were suffered from fixed circuits in the brain.  So he decided to sever the connecting fibers of the neurons in activity, cutting the connections between the frontal lobes and the rest of the brain.

Moniz reported dramatic improvements. The operation was taken up by the American neurologist Walter Freeman, who became an evangelist for the procedure.  Soon, it was being commonly used to illnesses ranging from schizophrenia to depression to compulsive disorders.   Despite generally poor results, it did not fall out of favor until the mid-1950’s.

BBC News reports:

“There were centres for lobotomy across the UK, in Dundee, North Wales and Bristol. But by far the most prolific lobotomist in the country, and indeed the world, was the neurosurgeon Sir Wylie McKissock, based at the Atkinson Morley hospital in Wimbledon … [who] performed around 3,000 lobotomies, as part of his famously speedy approach to surgery.”

You might not know that the blockbuster Alzheimer’s drug Aricept
(donepezil) has a lot in common with insecticides, chemical weapons and venom.  It is a member of the chemical class known as
acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, which prevent the neurotransmitter acetylcholine
from breaking down.  There’s no proof
that this slows the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, and it comes with a
host of dangerous side effects.

Aricept is a reversible or non-competitive cholinesterase
inhibitor, which means it is not as toxic as reversible competitive or
noncompetitive inhibitors of cholinesterase, which kill insects and humans
through neurotoxic effects. But Aricept’s side effects still include seizures
and bradycardia (arrhythmia) — a well-known side effect of organophosphate
insecticide poisoning.

Green Med Info reports:

“What
is so outrageous about the present situation is that non-patentable,
inexpensive and relatively safe alternatives to intrinsically neurotoxic drugs
like donepezil not only exist, but have been confirmed through clinical
research … The
reality is that there is a vast array
of natural approaches available in the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s
disease, some of which have been demonstrated to regress the disease process by
clearing pathological beta-amyloid brain plaque. A 2006 study in the Journal of Alzheimer’s disease reported on this
phenomena with the use of curcuminoids (an extract of Turmeric)”.

A recent, groundbreaking study has shown for the first time that many invasive breast tumors spontaneously regress when left undiagnosed and untreated.  Before the study, there had been little or no research regarding what happens when such tumors go untreated, as they are usually quickly and aggressively removed.

The study found that women who received the most breast screenings had a higher 6-year cumulative incidence of invasive breast cancer than those who received far less. The researchers concluded that the natural course of many of the screen-detected invasive breast cancers is to spontaneously regress.

According to Green Med Info:

“This study adds to a growing body of clinical evidence showing that breast cancer is best treated by removing the cause, e.g. carcinogens, chronic stress, chemical and radiation exposures, food intolerances, etc., and utilizing immune-enhancing and nutritional/herbal therapies with a relatively low risk of toxicity vis-à-vis conventional oncology treatments. Once this strategy is employed bodily self-healing can be activated and many so-called ‘cancers’ will remain benign or regress ‘spontaneously’ without medical intervention.”

A new study finds that more than 20% of articles published in six leading medical journals likely used ghost writers.  For medical journals, ghostwriting usually refers to writers sponsored by a drug or medical device company, who make major but uncredited research or writing contributions.  The articles are instead published under the names of academic authors.

Inappropriate authorship leads to a lack of transparency and accountability.  It has become an important concern for the academic community.

According to the article in the British Medical Journal:

“Evidence of honorary and ghost authorship in 21% of articles published in major medical journals in 2008 suggests that increased efforts by scientific journals, individual authors, and academic institutions are essential to promote responsibility, accountability, and transparency in authorship, and to maintain integrity in scientific publication.”

New research shows that women who only have a screening mammogram every other year are substantially less likely to experience false-positive results and unnecessary biopsies than those who opt for annual screenings.

The study estimated that over the course of 10 years of screening, 61% of women who have annual mammograms and 42% of women who have biennial mammograms will be called back at least once for an unneeded follow-up test.  Over the same period, 7% to 9% of women who have annual mammograms and only 5% to 6% of those who have biennial mammograms will have unnecessary biopsies.

According to CNN:

“Annual mammograms were not conclusively more effective than biennial screening at identifying dangerous late-stage cancers”.

New data shows that prescriptions for antidepressants have risen nearly 400% since 1988. More than one in ten Americans over the age of twelve now takes an antidepressant.

In fact, the study found that antidepressant prescriptions are more common than depression itself.

According to Time Magazine:

“Perhaps the most concerning finding in the CDC report is that people who take antidepressants are taking them long term. About 60% of people had taken the medications for two years or longer, and 14% had taken antidepressants for more than a decade.”

Breast Cancer Awareness campaigns have touted early detection through x-ray mammography for a quarter of a century. But almost no progress has been made in making the public aware about the crucial differences between non-malignant lesions or tumors and invasive or non-invasive cancers detected through this technology.

Many women have never been informed that they have a choice when they are first diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) — the abnormal growth of cells within the milk ducts.  Rather than immediately succumb to aggressive treatment, women can choose watchful waiting — or better yet, can adopt a radical lifestyle that includes improved exercise and nutrition.

According to Green Med Info:

“Because DCIS is almost invariably asymptomatic and has no palpable lesions, it would not be known as a clinically relevant entity were it not for the use of x-ray diagnostic technology. Indeed, it was not until the development and widespread application of mammography in the early 1980s … that rates of DCIS diagnosis began to expand to their present day epidemic proportions … A solid argument can be made that watchful waiting is the most appropriate response to the diagnosis of DCIS, and that in many cases DCIS would be better left overdiagnosed and under-treated.”

Although aluminum has been experimentally demonstrated to be a neurotoxin, it is nonetheless the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant. But even after nearly a century of widespread use of aluminum adjuvants, medical science’s understanding of them is still remarkably poor.  There is a scarcity of data on the toxicology of aluminum adjuvants, but in spite of this, the notion that aluminum in vaccines is safe seems to be widely accepted.

But experimental research has shown that aluminum adjuvants have a potential to induce serious immunological disorders in humans. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation, and associated neurological complications.

According to a study on the subject in Current Medical Chemistry:

“In our opinion, the possibility that vaccine benefits may have been overrated and the risk of potential adverse effects underestimated, has not been rigorously evaluated in the medical and scientific community.”

Studies show that thermography, a form of infrared imaging, identifies precancerous or cancerous cells earlier than mammography, and produces unambiguous results that cut down on additional testing.  Heat indicates that inflammation exists; inflammation is typically present in precancerous and cancerous cells — as well as torn muscles, ligaments, and arthritic joints, which can also be detected through thermography.

If you use thermography as your regular breast cancer screening tool, it’s likely that you would have more opportunity to make adjustments to your diet, beliefs and lifestyle in order to transform your cells before they became cancerous.

According to Dr. Christiane Northrup, writing in the Huffington Post:

“Thermography is a particularly good choice for younger breasts, which tend to be denser. It doesn’t identify fibrocystic tissue, breast implants or scars as needing further investigation. It’s also good at detecting changes in the cells in the armpit area, an area that mammography isn’t always good at screening.”

Researchers recently attempted to determine all cause mortality and deaths from cardiovascular events related to intensive glucose lowering treatment in people with type 2 diabetes.  They analyzed 13 studies which together included more than 34,500 patients, which initially seemed to show that the treatment was associated with reductions in the risk of non-fatal myocardial infarction and microalbuminuria, although this came with a more than twofold increase in the risk of severe hypoglycemia.

However, when the analysis was restricted only to high quality studies, intensive treatment was not associated with any significant risk reductions, and in fact was shown to result in a 47% increase in risk of congestive heart failure.

According to the study, as reprinted on the website Green Med Info:

“The overall results of this meta-analysis show limited benefits of intensive glucose lowering treatment … The harm associated with severe hypoglycemia might counterbalance the potential benefit of intensive glucose lowering treatment.”

A study has revealed that infants who undergo multiple surgical procedures prior to two years of age may show developmental problems.  The researchers determined that this was associated with anesthesia.  Babies who had multiple exposures to anesthesia had more than twice the rate of learning disabilities by the age of 19.

Several different evaluations of the children’s cognitive abilities were tested as they grew older, including tests of reading, writing, language and math.

According to Time Magazine:

“How did the researchers know that the heightened risk was attributable to the anesthesia, and not the condition for which the children needed surgery in the first place? Many of the infants in the study were anesthetized in order to have tubes put into their ears to drain excess fluid, a common problem for young babies that is not associated with learning disorders. Other surgical procedures included hernia repairs and eye surgeries, which are also not associated with learning disabilities”.

More than ten percent of parents are currently using an “alternative” vaccination schedule for their young children, according to a survey.  A significant number are refusing certain vaccines altogether.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccination schedule for children aged six and younger includes vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, chicken pox, hepatitis, seasonal flu, and others.

According to Reuters:

“The Internet survey included 748 parents of kids between the ages of six months and six years. Of those, 13 percent said they used some type of vaccination schedule that differed from the CDC recommendations.  That included refusing some vaccines or delaying vaccines until kids were older — mostly because parents thought that ‘seemed safer.’”

A new report from a panel of 37 experts states that the cost of cancer is rapidly becoming unsustainable in many developed countries.  The report questioned the worth of expensive new therapies that prolong patients’ lives by only months.

Currently, 12 million people worldwide are diagnosed with cancer each year, costing $286 billion annually in medical costs and lost productivity. By 2030, that number could increase to 22 million people each year, with a similar rise in costs.

According to Time Magazine:

“The overall increase [in cost] is being fueled by rising cancer rates … along with increasingly advanced and expensive new cancer drugs and high-tech diagnosis methods, the expert panel found … Other factors that increase costs in wealthy countries include overuse of unnecessary tests and the use of expensive diagnostic equipment.”

A woman lost both her legs after a weight-loss surgery went awry. She had the surgery in early November, and in later November went back in to repair a perforation. Thanksgiving morning, she began to complain about aches and tingles in her legs.  After she went back into the hospital, it took a day and half to get a surgeon in to attempt to save her legs, but by then it was too late — her legs were amputated.

Family doctors now write three times more prescriptions for antidepressants than they did a few decades ago.  However, this mainly reflects the success of drug companies in redefining psychological and other conditions as ailments that should be treated with pills.

In a 2003 article called, “The Art of Branding a Condition”, New York advertising executive Vince Parry described how he collaborated with several companies to foster “the creation of medical disorders”.

According to the Telegraph, the following techniques were used:

“First, elevate the importance of symptoms, then redefine an existing condition, before developing ‘a new condition for an unmet market need’.  The several instances of this brand conditioning include ‘medicalizing’ normal physical events, redefining psychological traits as quasi-psychiatric illnesses … and, most important, redefining the limits of what is considered normal of some physiological variable such as blood pressure or cholesterol.”

A reports assessed whether extra immunization can serve as a clinical indicator for fragmentation of care.  Researchers examined the files of the 1999-2003 National Immunization Survey, and checked the relationship between extra immunizations and multiple vaccine providers.

They found that extra immunization was lowest for the children with only one vaccination provider, and higher for children who had more than one vaccination provider.

According to the study, as reprinted on the website Green Med Info:

“Extra-immunization is associated with receiving immunizations from multiple providers and multiple facility types.”

Conventional medical strategies for the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis frequently include calcium supplementation. But this has been undermined by studies which show disappointing effects on fracture prevention.  Nonetheless, its use has continued to be encouraged on the grounds that it is physiologically appealing, and is unlikely to cause harm.

However, the assumption that it has no ill effects is now in question.  There is accumulating evidence that calcium supplement use is associated with an increased risk of myocardial infarction, and possibly stroke. The latest data shows that the number of cardiovascular events caused is likely to be greater than the number of fractures prevented.

According to a study in the journal Maturitas:

“These findings indicate that calcium supplementation probably does not have a role as a routine preventative agent and that dietary advice is the appropriate way to attain an adequate calcium intake in most situations. Patients at high risk of fracture need to take interventions of proven anti-fracture efficacy. Available evidence suggests that this efficacy is not dependent on the co-administration of calcium supplements.”

A new study brings disturbing facts to light on the quality of medication studies cited in top medical journals. According to an independent review of six prestigious journals, reviewers from UCLA and Harvard found that many of the studies were commercially sponsored by the manufacturers, and that these sponsors “may promote the use of outcomes that are most likely to indicate favorable results for their products.” They also said the way in which the outcome data was presented could often be misleading:

“It’s one thing to say a medication lowers your risk of heart attacks from two-in-a-million to one-in-a-million, and something completely different to say a medication lowers your risk of heart attacks by 50 percent. Both ways of presenting the data are technically correct, but the second way, using relative numbers, could be misleading.”

Everyone knows that drugs come with a variety of side effects. But sometimes those side effects can be quite surprising. For example, did you know that some medications can cause kooky hallucinations comparable to what you’d get if you were on LSD? Other drugs can affect the color of your urine, or make your dreams super strange and vivid.

Most people believe that hospitals are the best place to be when you’re sick and you want to get better. And just about everyone believes that, of all the hospitals in the world, U.S. hospitals are the best there are. But a new report that summarizes data on hospital-acquired infections, errors and deaths may turn everything you ever believed about U.S. hospitals upside-down. For example, in Europe, 1 in 22 hospital-acquired infections lead to death; but in the U.S., 1 in 7 does. And, in America, 1 in 5 of all hospitalized patients suffer harm from medical errors.

A recent opinion piece in the Scientist calls attention to the need for better global monitoring of drugs in countries with few financial resources. Using the U.S. FDA as a model of how to regulate “real world” drug safety and efficacy, The Scientist chose the FDA’s handling of Vioxx – which was recalled because thousands of people who took it died – as an example of successful monitoring, The Scientist said:

“Post-marketing drug withdrawals such as Vioxx® demonstrate post-marketing drug safety monitoring success in saving lives and preventing morbidity.”

When it comes to vaccine safety, much of the talk about adjuvants – agents that stimulate the immune system to increase immunologic response – has centered around thimerosal (mercury). But a different adjuvant, aluminum – which is a demonstrated neurotoxin commonly given to children through multiple vaccines – has been largely ignored, even though it can induce serious disorders in humans. According to a new study published in Current Medical Chemistry, children up to 6 months of age receive 14.7 to 49 times more aluminum from vaccines than the FDA safety limits allow. It’s time for more rigorous scrutiny of the possible damage this may be causing vaccinated children, the researchers said:

In our opinion, the possibility that vaccine benefits may have been overrated and the risk of potential adverse effects underestimated, has not been rigorously evaluated in the medical and scientific community. We hope that the present paper will provide a framework for a much needed and long overdue assessment of this highly contentious medical issue.

At least four of the risk factors for cardiovascular disease are actually protective reactions rather than causes.  Dialysis patients exhibit LOW measures for the following four risk factors:

• Obesity
• Blood pressure
• Serum cholesterol
• Homocysteine 

They have substantial amounts of inflammation in the blood vessels, and a substantial risk to cardiovascular disease.  Impaired kidney function is symptomatic of a much larger impairment, which has to do with insufficient ionic buffering in the blood.  They have clearly switched over from sulfur to nitrogen based oxygen transport, as they experience muscle wasting due to an  inability to repair muscle damage brought on by inflammation.  

Nitrogen is desperately needed to replace the missing sulfate (as nitrate) in the blood stream, and the profuse synthesis of nitric oxide (which then quickly becomes nitrate by capturing oxygen) is a major source of the inflammation.  But nitrogen is then unavailable as a resource for muscle.

The solution to this dilemma is to make sure that adequate sources of sulfur are available as they do not have to use nitrogen.