The Merck corporation has pled guilty to a criminal charge over the marketing and sales of the painkiller Vioxx. In a negotiated settlement, they agreed to pay $950 million, which includes the resolution of civil cases and federal and state fraud cases. While doctors can prescribe drugs for any purpose they see fit, drug companies are prohibited from marketing them for uses not approved by the FDA.
Vioxx was pulled off the market in 2004 because evidence showed that it posed a substantial heart risk.
The New York Times reports:
“No person was held liable for Merck’s conduct. ’It’s just a cost of doing business until a pharmaceutical executive does a perp walk,’ said Erik Gordon, a pharmaceutical analyst”.
A controversial bill in India would create a new regulatory body to serve as the ultimate authority on the introduction of Genetically Modified (GM) crops in that country. The “Biotechnology Regulatory Authority Bill” would make a mockery of both consumer protection and farmers’ rights.
The bill stipulates that the regulatory body would be made up of five members based within the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) — the same agency that funds GM crop research in the country.
Policy Mic reports:
“In 2010, mass protests across the country stalled the introduction of GM Brinjal (aubergine). The Environment Minister was compelled to take public opinion into account and a moratorium on GM foods crops was installed. In a blatantly undemocratic move, failing to take into account public protests, this bill now allows biotechnology companies to bulldoze the Environment Ministry as well as state governments.”
Bees have been dying off around the world for more than a decade, a phenomenon known as “Colony Collapse Disorder,” or CCD. Each year commercial beekeepers have reported unprecedented losses. Most fruits, many vegetables, almonds, alfalfa and many other crops are dependent upon bees for pollination. Close to a third of the U.S. food supply requires the common honeybee in order to survive.
While much has been made over the “mystery” surrounding CCD, the problem began shortly after neurotoxic pesticides that are known to be particularly toxic to honey bees took over the global insecticide market — neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids such as imidacloprid and clothianidin are used as seed treatments in hundreds of crops. CCD began in the U.S. shortly after these insecticides were allowed for use by the EPA — and the EPA admits that “pesticide poisoning” is a likely cause of the problem.
According to the Pesticide Action Network:
“Governments in Italy, Germany, France and elsewhere have already taken action against neonicotinoids to protect their pollinators. And beekeepers there are reporting recovery. Yet regulators in the U.S. remain paralyzed, apparently captive to industry-funded science and a regulatory framework that finds chemicals innocent until proven guilty.”
When young, non-violent protestors were recently doused — directly in the eyes — with pepper spray, it was purportedly at least with a “non-lethal” chemical weapon. Pepper spray even sounds somewhat “natural”. But while pepper spray invariably contains an extract of hot peppers, it is in fact a mixture of petrochemicals that include anti-freeze, along with a variety of other chemicals with next to no toxicological data available regarding their safety.
A May 2000 study showed that 7 percent of those who are sprayed have “sustained corneal abrasions.” And as far back as 1995, the use of pepper spray has been linked to “in custody” deaths.
According to Green Med Info:
“Given that pepper spray is capable of being lethal … how can we continue to accept official descriptions of it as a form of ‘non-lethal’ force? If a potentially lethal chemical weapons — not to mention the tear gas and flash bang grenades that have already maimed protestors — are being used on non-violent citizens for exercising their constitutional rights, are not the law-makers, policy-makers and law enforcement officers, who let and/or make this happen, breaking the law and/or engaging in criminal activity?”
Bees have been dying off around the world for more than a decade, a phenomenon known as “Colony Collapse Disorder,” or CCD. Each year commercial beekeepers have reported unprecedented losses. Most fruits, many vegetables, almonds, alfalfa and many other crops are dependent upon bees for pollination. Close to a third of the U.S. food supply requires the common honeybee in order to survive.
While much has been made over the “mystery” surrounding CCD, the problem began shortly after neurotoxic pesticides that are known to be particularly toxic to honey bees took over the global insecticide market — neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids such as imidacloprid and clothianidin are used as seed treatments in hundreds of crops. CCD began in the U.S. shortly after these insecticides were allowed for use by the EPA — and the EPA admits that “pesticide poisoning” is a likely cause of the problem.
According to the Pesticide Action Network:
“Governments in Italy, Germany, France and elsewhere have already taken action against neonicotinoids to protect their pollinators. And beekeepers there are reporting recovery. Yet regulators in the U.S. remain paralyzed, apparently captive to industry-funded science and a regulatory framework that finds chemicals innocent until proven guilty.”
If controversial draft guidelines being considered by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council are accepted, Australian parents who don’t medicate children with ADHD could be referred to child protection authorities.
This could lead to a situation similar to that in the U.S., where some states have had to pass legislation to prevent schools and child protection authorities from telling parents they must put their children on drugs.
According to The Australian:
“Controversy has dogged the NHMRC’s ADHD guidelines since Daryl Effron, the original chairman of the committee, resigned because of his association with drug companies that produce ADHD medications.”
European Union officials have been ridiculed after stating that drink manufacturers should not claim that water can prevent dehydration. They concluded that, after a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the claim.
They ruling followed an application for the right to state on a label that “regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration”.
According to the Telegraph:
“However, last February, the European Food Standards Authority (EFSA) refused to approve the statement.”
The U.S. Congress is trying to keep pizza and French fries on school lunch menus, fighting Obama administration proposals to make school lunches healthier. Their final version of a spending bill would undo school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year.
The bill also would also continue to allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, a standard the USDA had sought to end.
MSNBC reports:
“Food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested the changes, and some conservatives in Congress say the federal government shouldn’t be telling children what to eat.”
The U.S. Congress is trying to keep pizza and French fries on school lunch menus, fighting Obama administration proposals to make school lunches healthier. Their final version of a spending bill would undo school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year.
The bill also would also continue to allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, a standard the USDA had sought to end.
MSNBC reports:
“Food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested the changes, and some conservatives in Congress say the federal government shouldn’t be telling children what to eat.”
The European Commission has adopted new rules regarding X-ray, or backscatter, body scanners at all European airports. European Union members have been asked to remove X-ray scanners from its airports in order to prevent risks to “citizens’ health and safety.”
The X-ray scanners are still being used by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, in spite of criticism from public-safety advocates. Studies have shown that scanning millions of passengers every year could cause cancer in some travelers.
According to Time Magazine:
“… [C]ritics of the scanners say that any small amount of cancer is too much to tolerate … [T]he TSA doesn’t show signs of budging on the use of X-ray scanners”.
Over the last year, the U.S. government has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug — although there is a good deal of uncertainty over whether it is necessary, and even whether it will work. Senior officials took unusual steps to secure the contract for Siga Technologies, whose controlling shareholder is billionaire and longtime Democratic Party donor Ronald O. Perelman.
When Siga complained that government contracting specialists were resisting the company’s financial demands, the lead negotiator for the deal on behalf of the administration was replaced.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
“The contract calls for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation’s biodefense stockpile. The price of approximately $255 per dose is well above what the government’s specialists had earlier said was reasonable … [S]mallpox was eradicated worldwide as of 1978 and is known to exist only in the locked freezers of a Russian scientific institute and the U.S. government. There is no credible evidence that any other country or a terrorist group possesses smallpox.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control have long claimed that between 1998 and 2008, there were two deaths from raw milk. This number is often used in media reporting about raw milk. But those illnesses actually appear to have come from a form of cheese that isn’t legal under current FDA regulations.
In December, Mark McAfee, the owner of Organic Pasture Dairy, challenged claims on the Centers for Disease Control web site stating that raw milk is dangerous. The agency actually agreed to make some slight changes to its language on the site, but did not change a reported death from Salmonella Typhimurium in California. But the state was not reporting that death. He did not receive a response from the CDC until he threatened to file a Freedom of Information Act request. At that time, he discovered the death was from that same form of cheese mentioned above, queso fresco.
According to Health Impact News Daily:
“Why is this important? Because statistics have become important weapons in the war over food rights. When the CDC says there have been two deaths from raw milk between 1998 and 2008, that statistic carries a powerful message: you can die from drinking raw milk … If it turns out that the two people it says died from drinking raw milk didn’t, in fact, die from drinking raw milk, then the CDC has lost an important weapon in the government’s campaign of fear around raw milk. If no one died in that eleven-year period, suddenly, raw milk isn’t quite the danger it has been made to appear. “
Parents attempting to find alternatives to vaccinations for their children are being warned by a federal prosecutor that mailing lollipops licked by children with chickenpox is against the law. Jerry Martin, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, said that it is a federal crime to send diseases or viruses across state lines.
Mailing such lollipops would be illegal under the same law that makes it illegal to mail anthrax, and a conviction could lead to up to 20 years in prison.
According to ABC News:
“Martin said the items are sought by parents who don’t want to give their children vaccines. He said he could neither confirm nor deny that his office is investigating or seeking charges against anyone.”
In the U.S., forty-eight states allow religious exemptions from vaccinations that in many cases are otherwise mandatory. Dr. Mercola and Barbara Loe Fisher, president and co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center, discuss the practical considerations and how they could apply to you — even if you think they might not.
In 1998, a panel of radiation safety experts gathered to evaluate a new airport security device called the Secure 1000, which was designed to beam X-rays at people to see underneath their clothing. One after another, the experts pointed out that the machine violated a basic principle of radiation safety: humans should not be X-rayed unless there is a medical benefit.
Nonetheless, today millions of airline passengers in the U.S. walk through such X-ray body scanners, even though many other countries have concluded that they pose an unacceptable health risk. Even though safer, effective alternatives are available, the U.S. government is relying on the X-ray scanners.
Scientific American reports:
“Research suggests that anywhere from six to 100 U.S. airline passengers each year could get cancer from the machines. Still, the TSA has repeatedly defined the scanners as ‘safe,’ glossing over the accepted scientific view that even low doses of ionizing radiation — the kind beamed directly at the body by the X-ray scanners — increase the risk of cancer.”
A federal advisory committee has recommended that boys and young men be vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV). The recommendation by the CDC panel will likely transform the use of the HPV vaccine, since most private insurers pay for vaccines once the committee recommends them.
HPV vaccine is expensive, costing pediatricians $300 for the three dose regimen; many pediatricians charge their patients much more for it.
According to the New York Times:
“The vaccine has been controversial … and that controversy is likely to intensify with the committee’s latest recommendation … Vaccinating the nation’s 11- and 12-year-old boys will cost almost $140 million annually, but the one-time catch-up among males 13 to 21 will cost hundreds of millions more.”
This CBS News report describes the astonishing ways the CDC is spending money. The agency has spent hundreds of millions of tax dollars on fitness clubs and parties. AIDS grants given to the CDC have allegedly been used to fund workshops on erotic writing.
Last fall, a small group of CEOs from companies like Whole Foods and Stonyfield pled their case to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack — genetically engineered crops and their capacity to contaminate organic crops, they said, were no longer a small-scale problem. But Vilsack soon became a champion of the concept of “coexistence”, trying to find common ground between organic and GMO growers. In late January of 2011, the administration greenlighted the unregulated planting of bioengineered alfalfa and two other bioengineered crops (sugar beets and a type of corn).
A study released last month by Food & Water Watch reports that in the decade between 1999 and 2009, some $547 million was spent on lobbying and campaign contributions to reduce regulation and prevent labeling of genetically engineered crops. The report also examines the potential risks of such foods, including increased allergies, superweeds, and unknown long-term health effects.
The Daily Beast reports:
“A Canadian study this year found that the blood of 93 percent of pregnant women sampled and 80 percent of their umbilical-cord blood contained a pesticide put into GMO corn by Monsanto … The Obama administration, says food author Michael Pollan, is ‘playing a complex game, trying to appeal to both camps.’ And, for now at least, leaving consumers guessing.”
A new study from the Netherlands has aroused a great deal of interest, especially as it comes immediately in the wake of an ill-conceived Danish tax that targets saturated fats. The study found that dietary intake of saturated fatty acids is associated with a modest increase in serum total cholesterol — but not with cardiovascular disease.
However, replacing dietary saturated fats with carbohydrates is associated with an increase in cardiovascular disease risk.
In addition, according to Conditioning Research:
“[Omega-3 fats] may be responsible for the protective association between total [polyunsaturated fatty acids] and [cardiovascular disease].”
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is criticizing California Governor Jerry Brown for signing a controversial bill that allows 12 year old children to be vaccinated without the knowledge or consent of their parents. Under the new law, minor children as young as 12 can be given vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases — such as Gardasil and the hepatitis B vaccine — without the informed consent of their parents.
According to NVIC, this law will put the lives of minor children too young to make medical decisions at risk — and their parents will be the ones left to deal with the consequences legally and financially if their children are injured by the vaccines.
According to an NVIC press release in Business Wire:
“NVIC Director of Advocacy, Dawn Richardson … worked with families in California to provide Governor Brown and the public with information about why the proposed legislation violated parents’ long held legal right to make medical decisions for their minor children … [The law] is [also] estimated to cost the state of California millions of dollars to implement because Merck currently sells Gardasil vaccine to the government for more than $100 per dose and sells hepatitis B vaccine for $27 per dose.”
In the state of California, minors will soon no longer be allowed to use tanning beds. Governor Jerry Brown recently signed a bill prohibiting anyone under the age of 18 from using ultraviolet tanning devices.
According to MSNBC:
“California is the first state in the nation to ban minors from using tanning beds, legislators said. Previously, California had banned minors under the age of 14 from using tanning beds, but allowed those between 14 and 18 years of age to use tanning beds with parental consent.”
The bill is intended to “improve the health and well-being of Californians” by preventing skin cancer. Of course, savvy readers will know that the notion that tanning beds lead to skin cancer is a gross oversimplification. It is the burning of the skin and chronic excessive exposures — not limited, sensible exposure to ultraviolet light — that increases your risk for skin cancer. Sensible UVB exposure is HEALTHY and stimulates the production of vitamin D, which can actually decrease your risk of skin cancer immensely.
“Fluzone High-Dose” is a new influenza vaccine manufactured by Sanofi Pasteur. The new vaccine is specifically designed for people 65 years and older.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wish to reassure you that Fluzone is just as safe as regular vaccines (for what little that is worth.) If you read the details on their website, however, you will quickly realize that they are saying it is just as safe … except insofar as it is more dangerous. It causes more side effects, including fevers.
According to the CDC:
“The safety profile of Fluzone High-Dose vaccine is similar to that of regular flu vaccines, although adverse events (which are also reported after regular flu vaccines) were reported more frequently after vaccination with Fluzone High-Dose. The most common adverse events experienced during clinical studies were mild and temporary and included pain, redness and swelling at the injection site and headache, muscle aches, fever and malaise.”
The 24 ports of entry in the L.A. area receive food shipments ranging from Cambodian rice, tea biscuits from China, and sugar cane and fish from around the world. In 2010, about 3,500 of those shipments were refused entry because they were contaminated, unsafe, mislabeled, or poisonous. Nationwide, that year the FDA rejected nearly 16,000 food-related shipments out of more than 10 million that arrived in more than 320 ports.
However, critics of import inspections, including the U.S. Government Accountability Office, say the FDA has not been up to the task of ensuring the safety of food imports. In 2010, FDA inspectors physically examined slightly over 2 percent of all food-related imports. The FDA expects only about 1.6 percent of all food imports to be examined this year, and even less next year.
According to MSNBC:
“The FDA has about 1,800 investigators who oversee more than 44,000 U.S. food manufacturers and more than 100,000 additional registered food facilities, such as warehouses and grain elevators. At the same time, the agency is responsible for nearly 200,000 foreign food facilities that have registered with the FDA in order to import the millions of food shipments that arrive in the U.S. each year … [T]he number of investigators assigned to examine imported food shipments nationally is 277 full-time equivalents.”
A year-long undercover sting investigation of an Amish farmer that included federal officials entering private consumers’ residences. A California food co-op raided by officials with guns drawn and at the ready. A Georgia man forced to destroy over 100 gallons of high-quality farm fresh milk.
What do all of these have in common?
They all involved small-scale farmers selling directly to consumers.
There was never any allegation that the food had caused even one person to get sick or was contaminated in any way.
They’re all part of FDA’s campaign to prevent consumers from getting raw milk, regardless of what consumers want.
While Cargill and other agribusiness giants get away with just a slap on the wrist when they sicken hundreds and even thousands of people, the FDA is spending your tax dollars to harass small farmers selling raw milk even when there hasn’t been a single illness.
The FDA claims authority in these cases under a pair of regulations — CFR 1240.61 and 131.110 — that make it illegal to transport raw milk for human consumption across state lines.
HR 1830 would help put a stop to this. This bill, sponsored by Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) and co-sponsored by Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-ME), would legalize the interstate sale of raw milk. States would still be free to impose whatever regulations they think appropriate, but the FDA would no longer be able to harass raw milk farmers based solely on the fact that they have customers in other states.
Please help us get this important bill passed!
TAKE ACTION
1. Use the online petition system to send a fax to your Congressman, asking him or her to co-sponsor HR 1830. Go to www.farmtoconsumer.org/hr1830 and just fill in your information to send a fax with a click of the button.
2. Forward this email to all of your friends and ask them to fax their Congressman
3. Follow up your fax with a phone call to your Congressman. Phone numbers can be found at www.house.gov
Background: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations require milk in final package form for human consumption to be pasteurized, and prohibit the delivery into interstate commerce of unpasteurized (or “raw”) milk for human consumption. The consumption of raw milk is legal in all 50 states, while the sale of raw milk for human consumption is legal in 28 states.
Consumers are increasingly seeking out raw milk as a natural, unprocessed food. Consumers in states where raw milk cannot legally be sold (although it can legally be consumed) are seeking sources of raw milk from neighboring states. For example, consumers in Georgia buy raw milk from farmers in South Carolina, while consumers in New Jersey and Virginia seek out Pennsylvania raw milk farmers.
FDA’s Actions to Date: FDA has threatened enforcement and taken action against both farmers and buyer’s co-ops across the country for allegedly violating CFR 1240.61 and 131.110(a). Below are a few recent examples. There was no allegation that the raw milk had caused any illnesses in any of these cases.
FDA spent a year in an undercover sting operation on an Amish farmer, Dan Allgyer of Rainbow Acres in Pennsylvania. Agency employees lied about their identity and joined local buying clubs. They picked up raw milk from private residences – again, concealing their identities – and sent the milk to be tested. Despite nearly a dozen tests, not one sample showed any contamination. Despite the fact that this clean milk had not made anyone sick, the agency ultimately raided Dan’s farm in May 2011.
FDA officials, together with officials from five other local, state, and federal agencies raided the Rawesome Food Club, a private buying club in Venice, California on June 30, 2010. Police accompanying the various agency officials entered the store with guns drawn. The officials confiscated 17 coolers of food including raw milk and raw milk products, even though the warrant stated that they could only take samples. This year, the government raided Rawesome a second time on August 3 with FDA officials again participating in the raid. Government agents seized almost the entire food inventory at the store, dumping out all the raw milk on the premises without any court order to do so. The store manager, a farmer supplying the store, and an administrator for the farmer who did nothing more than take orders and disseminate information for the farmer, were each charged with multiple felonies alleging violations of state food and dairy laws.
An FDA agent participated in the dumping of over one hundred gallons of impounded raw milk belonging to members of a Georgia food buying club, which had been legally purchased from a licensed South Carolina dairy in October 2009. The primary agency in that action was the Georgia Department of Agriculture, but the FDA official present at that time told the buying club’s agent that even an individual consumer cannot legally cross state lines to buy raw milk and bring it home under 1240.61 and 131.110.
In all of these cases, there was no allegation that the raw milk had caused any illnesses or was contaminated in any way.
The Lawsuit: In an effort to protect both farmers and consumers, the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund has sued the FDA on behalf of itself and eight individuals, asking the Court to declare that FDA’s ban on the interstate sale of raw milk is invalid and violates the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights. The individual plaintiffs include consumers who cross state lines to buy raw milk, the owner of a buying club or “virtual farmers’ market” who crosses state lines to buy milk to distribute to the club members, and a raw milk farmer.
The FDA has long opposed “freedom of food choice,” but its response to the FTCLDF complaint represents FDA’s strongest public statement yet on the freedom to obtain and consume the foods of one’s choice. Here are some of FDA’s views expressed in its response on ‘freedom of food choice’ in general and on the right to obtain and consume raw milk in particular:
“There is no absolute right to consume or feed children any particular food.”
“There is no ‘deeply rooted’ historical tradition of unfettered access to foods of all kinds.”
“Plaintiffs’ assertion of a ‘fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families’ is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish.”
“It is within [the federal government’s] authority … to institute an intrastate ban [on unpasteurized milk] as well.”
“There is no fundamental right to freedom of contract.”
The country of Denmark is attempt to battle the problem of obesity in a way that is entirely counterproductive — the country is instituting the first-ever “fat tax”. Since the 1st of October, Danes have seen a price increase in products that are high in saturated fats
Butter, oils, and high-fat dairy products have seen the biggest price increases.
According to Time Magazine:
“The results of this tax will no doubt be closely watched by Britain, as more than 20% of the British population is obese … The world will be watching Denmark to see whether monetary incentive will make for a healthier nation.”
Of course, the effort is doomed to fail. The idea that saturated fats are responsible for obesity is simply a myth that has been harming your health for the last 30 or 40 years. The truth is, saturated fats from provide the building blocks for cell membranes and a variety of hormones and hormone like substances. When you eat saturated fats as part of your meal, they slow down absorption so that you can go longer without feeling hungry. In addition, they act as carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K.
An independent lab tested vials of the Gardasil HPV vaccine for contamination, and found HPV recombinant DNA. All of the samples tested positive for the presence of the genetically modified HPV DNA.
The tests were initiated in response to an adolescent girl developing acute onset Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis within 24 hours of her last injection of the Gardasil vaccine. A toxicity test found HPV DNA in the girl’s blood. HPV or its DNA does not generally survive for any great length of time in the bloodstream.
Sane Vax reports:
“Natural HPV DNA does not remain in the bloodstream for very long. However, the HPV DNA in Gardasil is not ‘natural’ DNA. It is a recombinant HPV DNA (rDNA) – genetically engineered – to be inserted into yeast cells for VLP (virus-like-particle) protein production. rDNA is known to behave differently from natural DNA. It may enter a human cell, especially in an inflammatory lesion caused by the effects of the aluminum adjuvant, via poorly understood mechanisms.”
In related news, during a debate, presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) alleged that campaign contirubtions from drug company Merck played a pivotal role in Rick Perry’s executive order that mandated teenaged girls in Texas be inoculated against HPV. Perry responded that the company contributed only $5,000 to his campaign. However, Merck has given $28,500 to Perry’s gubernatorial campaigns since January 2001, and an additional $377,500 to the Republican Governors Association, one of the largest backers of Perry’s campaigns.
Key California legislators whos helped to pass an anti-parent vaccine bill received campaign financing from the gigantic Merck drugmaking conglomerate. The bill “authorizes a minor, who is 12 years of age or older, to consent to medical care related to the prevention of a sexually transmitted disease.” The bill is commonly is called the “Gardasil Bill” because the major drug to be administered to 12-year-old girls — without their parents’ consent — would be Gardasil, manufactured by Merck.
Current law allows such treatment only with a parent’s permission. The bill passed both houses of the California Legislature and awaits a decision by the governor.
According to the website Cal Watchdog:
“[T]he drug is not without risk … Because there will be no parental notification in California, girls could start dropping dead and their grieving parents won’t even know why.”
To see a list of the legislators who received funding from Merck, you can click on the link below.
In the absence of any real federal regulation, the U.S. meat industry uses hundreds of feed additives, including antibiotics, tranquilizers, pesticides, drugs, industrial waste, and growth-promoting hormones. More than 95 percent of American beef cattle was implanted with carcinogenic growth promoting hormones as of 1990.
But the FDA has simply warned dairy producers that letting their costumers know if their products are “hormone free” could be considered “false or misleading” labeling under federal law, as they believe there is no significant difference between milk from treated and untreated cows.
Of course, to make such statements is to ignore the available evidence completely. According to the book The Politics of Cancer Revisited, by Dr. Samuel S. Epstein:
“The biotech hormone induces a marked and sustained increase in levels of insulin-like growth factor-1, or IGF-1, in cow’s milk … It is highly likely that IGF-1 promotes transformation of normal breast epithelium to breast cancer. IGF-1 maintains the malignancy of human breast cancer cells, including their invasiveness and ability to spread to distant organs.”
The debate about vaccination is not just about the science — it is also part of a historic power struggle between parents and doctors. Should doctors — or anyone else in society — have the legal right to give children a pharmaceutical product or medical treatment that carries a risk of injury or death without the parent’s voluntary, informed consent?
Right now, there is a bill on the desk of California Governor Jerry Brown, Assembly Bill 499, that would, if signed into law, required children as young as 12 to be vaccinated with Gardasil, hepatitis B and future vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases without the knowledge or consent of their parents.
According to the National Vaccine Information Center:
“In America, there is no legal liability or responsibility for drug companies selling or doctors giving government recommended vaccines when those vaccines injure or kill children or adults. How can the state of California — or any state — give anyone in society the power to secretly take a child away from a parent and subject that child to a medical risk without the parent’s consent? There is no doctor, no government employee and no politician, who has the moral right to do that to a parent or their child.”