Dirty Dairy Is in Panic Mode

ORIGINAL LINK

By Dr. Mercola

The industrial dairy industry is in crisis mode in the U.S. after Dannon Company announced in April 2016 that it would be committing to non-GMO (genetically modified organisms) agricultural practices over the next three years.

“Because consumer preferences are continuing to evolve and Dannon puts consumers at the center of every decision it makes … new yogurts with non-GMO ingredients are available for the first time from Dannon,” the company wrote in July 2016.¹

The company said this was only the beginning of a transformation of its Dannon, Danimals and Oikos brands of yogurt to all non-GMO ingredients.

In addition, by the end of 2018, Dannon pledged to ensure the cows that supply milk for its three flagship brands will be fed non-GMO feed — “a first for a leading non-organic yogurt maker.”²

The latter change alone will require the conversion of about 80,000 acres of farmland to produce non-GMO crops for the feed. In addition, the company stated that it would clearly label GMO ingredients in those products that contain them, “independent of actions taken (or not) by the federal government.”

Consumer Demand Is Challenging the Dairy Industry

It’s a major step forward that is indeed a sign of changing consumer attitudes and an attempt to protect itself from steep losses facing competitors, like General Mills, which sells yogurts under the Yoplait, GoGurt, Annie's and Liberté brands.

Total retail yogurt sales in the U.S. fell by 17 percent in the fiscal second quarter results reported in December 2016,³ but General Mills’ brands, in particular, have underperformed because they’ve failed to respond to consumer demands.

With no organic options until recently and a large offering of “light” and “low-calorie” yogurts that are quickly falling out of favor with Americans, president and chief operating officer Jeff Harmening acknowledged fundamental shifts would be necessary to “give customers what they want from their yogurt,”⁴ which is more natural, grass-fed and organic varieties.

Even with a switch to non-GMO ingredients, conventional yogurt leaves much to be desired. It’s far too high in sugar and/or artificial sweeteners to be healthy, and most of the milk comes from cows living in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) instead of on pasture, which negatively changes its nutritional value.

Not to mention, most of it is pasteurized. Truly healthy yogurt is organic, unsweetened and made from raw 100 percent grass-fed milk, which is difficult to find commercially (although yogurt made from organic, grass-fed milk is becoming more popular).

That being said, I applaud Dannon for its forward-thinking pledge to get GMOs out of its primary yogurt brands. Not surprisingly, however, Big Dairy does not.

Industrialized Dairy Takes Aim at Dannon’s GMO-Free Pledge

Industry groups including the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA), National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) and American Sugarbeet Growers lashed out at Dannon for their non-GMO pledge.

Genetically engineered (GE) feed dominates the industrial dairy industry, despite mounting concerns that it’s not safe for people or the environment.

In addition to risks from the genetic engineering itself, glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, is used in large quantities on GE glyphosate-tolerant crops (i.e., Roundup Ready varieties).

Glyphosate in animal feed has been found to sicken farm animals, with farmers noting correlations between glyphosate in animal feed and rates of miscarriage, deformities in piglets and infertility among the animals.

Meanwhile, plants treated with the chemical show severe damage to root growth, not to mention that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has determined glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen.

Dannon noted that a reduction in the usage of herbicides and pesticides is one goal they hope to achieve through their changes in sustainable agricultural practices (including the move toward non-GMO feed).⁵

Although Dannon said they believe currently approved GMOs are safe, they said the growing consumer preference for non-GMO ingredients prompted their decision.

None of this seemed to matter to the industry groups, who called Dannon’s intention to switch to a GMO-free feed for its dairy cows, giving the American public what they want, “a tipping point.” Randy Mooney, chair of the U.S. National Milk Producers Federation, said in a conference call with reporters:⁶

“When something is out there that is outrageously wrong, all of us are going to have to speak up and attack it … If this isn’t addressed, we’re going to see a radical change in how food and feed is produced in this country.”

But isn’t that precisely the point? The industry groups continued in a letter to Dannon:⁷

“In our view your pledge amounts to marketing flimflam, pure and simple … It appears to be an attempt to gain lost sales from your competitors by using fear-based marketing and trendy buzzwords, not through any actual improvement in your products.”

Dannon, in turn, fired back at the accusations in a news release, stating:⁸

“We were surprised to receive a divisive and misinformed letter about our efforts to continue to grow America’s enjoyment of dairy products, including yogurt …

We believe there is growing consumer preference for non-GMO ingredients and food in the U.S. and we want to use the strong relationships we have with our farmer partners to provide products that address this consumer demand.”

Drastic Changes in How Food Is Produced, Including Dairy, Are Desperately Needed

Part of Dannon’s pledge included a promise to provide a fixed profit margin to its farmer partners supplying milk, which is newsworthy in itself since the price of milk is now so low that an average-sized dairy farm in Vermont (about 125 cows) is operating at a loss of $100,000 a year.

It’s gotten so bad that farmers in Vermont only get about $14 for 11.6 gallons of milk, which cost about $22 to produce. So they’re essentially paying about $8 to sell 11.6 gallons of milk.⁹ It’s economic exploitation, VT Digger noted,¹⁰ and the direct result of industrialized dairy.

As CAFOs became the norm, farmers were forced to grow their herds and increase milk production using artificial (drug and hormone-based) methods, among others (like feeding cows an unnatural amount of GE grain-based food, 24-hour confinement and increased number of milkings per day).

In 2016, the industrial dairy industry dumped 43 million gallons of milk due to a massive milk glut. The glut was the result of a 2014 spike in milk prices, which encouraged many dairy farmers to add more milk cows to their farms — but with too much milk and nowhere to sell it, prices tanked.

And though it hasn’t been mentioned, mortality rates in U.S. dairy herds are more than 10 percent a year, up from 3.8 percent in 2002, according to a Cornell University study.¹¹

It’s the cost of producing milk in a system that values maximizing production above all else, even the health of its producers, the cows themselves. So, change is indeed desperately needed; it can’t come soon enough.

Ben & Jerry’s Releases Updated Dairy Statement

Dannon is not the first major dairy company to pledge non-GMO ingredients. In 2014, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, which is owned by Unilever, announced that more than 85 percent of its ice cream sold in the U.S. was made from non-GMO ingredients, with a goal of 100 percent in the near future.¹²

Ben & Jerry’s does some things right, like supporting GMO labeling, and their environmentally friendly image has propelled the ice-cream maker to a $600-million-a-year enterprise.¹³ However, Ben & Jerry’s is a non-organic dairy, and they source their milk largely from CAFOs.

In Vermont, more than 200 dairy farms have transitioned to organic and returned their cows to a grass-based diet. Regeneration Vermont, a non-profit educational and advocacy organization, is dedicated to bringing sustainable, regenerative agriculture back to Vermont and that includes bringing Ben & Jerry’s into the discussion.

Regeneration Vermont is urging the ice-cream maker to source milk from organic/regenerative farmers, which would signal to desperate dairy farmers that there’s another, viable option to the destructive GMO, CAFO method that’s currently considered the norm. In an updated dairy statement released January 2017, it appears Ben & Jerry’s may be committing to positive change:¹⁴

“The dairy industry in Vermont, and the U.S. as a whole, is a broken system … and we at Ben & Jerry’s share a desire, with many others, to make it better.

We want to make it work for the farmers who are continually finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. We want to make it work for the farm workers, the animals, the environment, our fans, and in the end, to match the values that we believe very deeply in.

So as we have been evaluating our current Dairy Supply chain, and while we have worked diligently over the past [seven] years to improve farm practices, we fully acknowledge that it is not where we would want it to be. There is greater opportunity to have a positive impact to change the current system.

We recognize that we are operating in the same broken system that is failing our dairy farmers, and we are actively exploring ways to change that — to create a more viable system … We are working now to define our path forward and plan to share our plans as soon as possible in 2017.”

Why Grass-Fed Dairy Is Better

Returning to grass-fed (and naturally GMO-free) dairy is a solution to the problems created by industrial dairy. As it stands, however, only about 22 percent of U.S. dairy cows have access to pasture, and even this tends to be limited.¹⁵

Tim Joseph, founding farmer and CEO of New-York-based grass-fed dairy farm Maple Hill Creamery, explained that while monocrops of GE soy and corn used for dairy feed and processed foods are often considered “healthy” for the environment, they require inputs in the form of fertilizers and pesticides.

Grass-fed cows require only grazing and manure from grazing cows. It’s a closed-loop system that regenerates the soil, supports wildlife biodiversity, sequesters carbon and limits pollution of waterways, Joseph told FoodNavigator-USA.¹⁶ While critics claim that raising cows on pasture isn’t a practical way to meet the future food demands of a growing world population, research says otherwise.

In a study published in Global Change Biology, researchers found that managing grazing on grasslands more efficiently could significantly increase milk and meat production — more so than converting land from other uses.¹⁷

About 40 percent of the world’s natural grasslands could support increased livestock grazing, Science Daily reported, which could in turn increase milk production by 5 percent and meat production by 4 percent.¹⁸ Maple Hill Creamery shared even more reasons why grass-fed dairy is a viable solution to the problems of industrial dairy:¹⁹

• When a cow eats corn and grain, the pH of the rumen (the first chamber of the cow’s stomach) becomes acidic; this destroys some flora and increases systemic inflammation, shortening the cow’s lifespan and increasing her risk of infection
• Raising grass-fed cows requires fewer resources than growing grain crops to feed CAFO cows, along with fewer chemical fertilizers and pesticides
• On a 100-percent grass-fed farm, manure is spread over pastures naturally as the cows roam; there is no need for environmentally destructive manure lagoons
• Grass-fed dairy farming works best with small herds, which in turn helps support local economies and small farmers, who are able to claim a premium price for their premium dairy products

Choose 100-Percent Grass-Fed, Organic Dairy

If nothing else, the fact that Dannon is switching to GMO-free products shows the power that the public holds, even over giant corporations. They are responding to consumer demand, and so will other companies if the demand for grass-fed continues to grow. By choosing to support companies that, in turn, support natural and traditional farming practices like grazing cows on pasture and feeding 100-percent grass, you let your voice for positive change be heard loud and clear.

Unlike the rest of the yogurt industry, organic, grass-fed yogurt is experiencing 82 percent dollar growth, which is more than three times the growth of yogurt that does not contain the grass-fed label, according to Organic Valley dairy,²⁰ whose "Grassmilk" brand is the top-selling grass-fed dairy brand in the U.S.

There's still a lot of confusion about the term "grass-fed," and in many cases, it's an abused term like the word "natural." Organic Valley and other U.S. grass-fed dairy producers are teaming up to change this, but in the meantime, look for dairy that is 100-percent grass-fed, organic and, ideally, raw.

Sources:

• Global Change Biology December 14, 2016

• The Western Producer January 5, 2017

• Fortune December 20, 2016

• The Cornucopia Institute January 11, 2017

• Food Navigator January 11, 2017

Related Articles:

  The Dirty Underbelly of the US Dairy Industry

  Big Agriculture Pushes for Exemption From FOIA Requests

  New Label Soon for Grass-Fed Milk and Yogurt

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Trump Sets Off Media Firestorm With Creation of Vaccine Safety Review Panel

ORIGINAL LINK

By Dr. Mercola

Only nine days away from his swearing-in as president, Donald Trump held his first press conference since the election and announced that the pharmaceutical industry was "getting away with murder" and that during his presidency he would do something about high drug prices with more competitive bidding for federal contracts. His remarks sent drug stocks into a sudden nosedive.¹

As noted by Brad Loncar, manager of Loncar Cancer Immunotherapy ETF: "When somebody that high-profile says something that negative, people do not want to invest in it." According to Reuters:²

"Trump's campaign platform included allowing the Medicare healthcare program to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, which the law currently prohibits.

He has also discussed making it easier to import drugs at cheaper prices. 'We are going to start bidding. We are going to save billions of dollars over time,' Trump said."

Trump's comments came only one day after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told reporters that Trump had asked him to "chair a commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity."

Although the Trump transition team quickly denied that any decision had been made on such a commission, shockwaves reverberated throughout the drug industry in speculation as to what impact this commission, if formed, might have on vaccine uptake and sales.³

Robert Kennedy and Media Coverage of a Possible New Vaccine Safety Commission

Although Trump himself has not made a public statement, if you had any doubts whatsoever that conventional media is following an industry-created script, look no further than the incredibly biased coverage of Kennedy's reported appointment.

A vast majority of the articles written are so blatantly slanted and unbalanced, it is hard to understand why self-respecting professional journalists would ever want their names associated with them. Repeatedly, such articles claim the science on vaccines is settled and vaccines are safe.⁴ Period.

The New York Times — which recently promised to rededicate itself "to the fundamental mission of Times journalism … to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives"⁵ — wrote a remarkably biased article about Kennedy's appointment, saying:⁶

"Mr. Trump … asked a prominent anti-vaccine crusader to lead a new government commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity, ushering debunked conspiracy theories about the dangers of immunization into the White House …

Among his many political pursuits, Mr. Trump picked up the anti-vaccine cause a few years back. In 2012, he tweeted … 'A study says @autism is out of control — a 78 percent increase in 10 years. Stop giving monstrous combined vaccinations.' These views, to say the least, are not the scientific consensus …"

So, The New York Times, supposedly newly rededicated to impartial reflection on all sides of the issue, simply decides there's a consensus among all scientists and makes no attempt to address a single argument made by those who provide substantial evidence that there are big gaps in vaccine safety science.

That's hardly upholding journalistic integrity. Yet, this is what we're seeing everywhere in news reporting by conventional media dominated by corporate interests these days.

Is Vaccine Safety as Established a Fact as Gravity?

There are no long-term studies comparing differences in health outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.

The pharmaceutical and medical trade industries claim a vaccine's benefits always outweigh the potential harms, but no solid scientific evidence is provided to back up such claims. It's really little more than opinion.

The government and pharmaceutical industries say it would be unethical to study vaccinated versus unvaccinated children, as the unvaccinated children would be put at risk. Yet more and more parents are having first-hand experience with adverse reactions, and choosing to opt-out of the government vaccine schedule.

Ask a parent of a child who died or suffered permanent brain damage after vaccination and I'm sure you'll get a very different response. Curiously, anyone who dares to question the quality and quantity of vaccine studies is immediately branded anti-science and a medical heretic.

In response to Kennedy's announcement that Trump had asked him to head up a commission on vaccine safety, Dr. David Kimberlin, co-director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), said:⁷

"We don't have to keep asking if gravity is real. We don't have to keep asking if clean water is a good thing. Yes it is. Vaccines are good things. They save lives."

According to Kimberlin, "The science proving the safety of vaccination is settled and does not need to be investigated again." But if it's settled, where are the studies?

Where's the research showing that 50 doses of 14 vaccines administered to children in combination and repeatedly in the first six years of life equals long-term health and results in few, if any, problems? What are the multi-generational effects to the immune system with so many vaccine doses?

The sad fact is the often repeated mantra that vaccines are absolutely safe and that there is nothing to worry about is a case of thinking that if a falsehood is repeated over and over again, and long enough, people will believe it's true.

Why are vaccine proponents so terrified of an honest vaccine safety review? This in and of itself raises serious questions.

Another fact that should give everyone pause is the witch hunt unleashed on anyone who dares to question the never-proven-hypothesis that vaccines are so unequivocally safe and beneficial for everyone that everyone should be forced, by law, to get vaccinated with every government-recommended vaccine.

Cleveland Clinic Doctor Faces Disciplinary Action for Stating the Obvious

One of the latest victims of such a witch hunt is Cleveland Clinic physician Daniel Neides, director of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute. Neides writes a monthly column for cleveland.com, a publication that is part of the Sun News organization, which also publishes the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

In his January 6 column,⁸ Neides expressed his concerns about the ever-growing toxic burden humans face and his disappointing experience with the annual flu shot, which left him bedridden for two days. He also touched on the potential vaccine-autism link, saying:

"Why do I mention autism now twice in this article. Because we have to wake up out of our trance and stop following bad advice. Does the vaccine burden — as has been debated for years — cause autism? I don't know and will not debate that here.

What I will stand up and scream is that newborns without intact immune systems and detoxification systems are being over-burdened with PRESERVATIVES AND ADJUVANTS IN THE VACCINES.

The adjuvants, like aluminum — used to stimulate the immune system to create antibodies — can be incredibly harmful to the developing nervous system.

Some of the vaccines have helped reduce the incidence of childhood communicable diseases, like meningitis and pneumonia. That is great news. But not at the expense of neurologic diseases like autism and ADHD increasing at alarming rates."

His comments ignited a media fire storm and prompted the Cleveland Clinic to issue a statement saying Neides would face disciplinary action for his comments.⁹

The column was briefly removed from the cleveland.com site, but mysteriously reappeared and became accessible again after Neides retracted his statements and apologized for what his physician colleagues and the media are characterizing as an anti-vaccine "rant."

If a prominent, well-respected physician cannot state the obvious without facing potentially career-ending consequences, what hope do we have of ever getting at the truth? WHY is open dialogue about vaccination not permitted?

It's simply not reasonable to shut every discussion down with the old "the science is settled" claim, while the scientific literature is still littered with outstanding questions.

Coincidence Claims Falter as Vaccine Damage Becomes More Common

On January 11, a group of concerned parents rallied at the State Capitol in Mississippi in the hopes of having their voices heard in the vaccine debate.¹⁰ One of those parents was Dr. Scott Guidry, whose son developed autism spectrum symptoms following some of his childhood vaccinations. Guidry told WJTV:

"My son was vaccine-injured, and we reversed the vaccine injury, and now he's recovered from autism. I'm not against vaccines. I learned the same importance of vaccines like every other physician who went to med school did. I know. But it's never really been studied, the safety of vaccines. There's never been a long-term safety study on vaccines."

According to this news report, Mississippi has one of the highest vaccination rates in the U.S. It also has one of the highest autism rates, as well as the highest infant mortality rate in the country.¹¹ Coincidence? No one knows, but in the absence of firm proof either way, many parents are renewing their call for the legal right to make voluntary decisions about which vaccines their child should receive and if or when they should be given.

The same scenario is playing out in other states across the nation. The numbers of children suffering with chronic illness and disability, including autism spectrum disorders, are increasing. The numbers of children and adults who have experienced serious vaccine reactions are also increasing.

It has become so common that a majority of people now have a family member or know someone who has been adversely affected by one or more vaccines. Eventually, this first-hand experience with vaccine reactions will come to include most physicians and politicians, as well.

At a certain point, the coincidence-theory simply cannot hold water any longer, and that's what we're starting to see now. Very often, people don't care enough to get involved in the discussion until it's personal and, in recent years, we've seen a growing number of influential people speaking up and describing their personal experiences with vaccine reactions in the public forum.

Robert De Niro is the latest example of a well-known celebrity parent, who has gone on the public record questioning vaccine safety and the reported link between vaccines and autism. Not surprisingly, like everyone who raises questions about vaccine safety, he has been attacked by the media as being uninformed and promoting dangerous ideas.

Rick Rollens, former secretary of the California State Senate, and retired Representative Dan Burton (R-Ind.) are two examples of individuals who worked for government and publicly shared their personal experiences with vaccination and autism. They were strongly criticized for speaking out as they attempted to open up discussions about vaccine safety. Absolutely no one is above ridicule should they dare question the safety of vaccines.

Paul 'For Profit' Offit's at It Again

Wherever discussion about vaccine safety is covered by the media, Dr. Paul Offit is there in the middle of it. A vaccine developer for Merck and author of several books attempting to marginalize vaccine safety critics, Offit has become the "go-to" doctor whenever corporatized conventional media wants a spokesperson to deny vaccine risks and defend "vaccine safety."

Rarely, if ever, does media note his deep ties to the vaccine industry, and the fact that he stands to profit personally from maintaining the illusion that vaccines are absolutely safe for everyone all the time, which also protects the status quo for industry profitmaking.

The Daily Beast recently ran an article¹² penned by Offit, in which he says "Trump needs vaccine experts, not conspiracy theorists." How do you know a propagandist when you see one? For starters, they're extremely fond of throwing around derogatory and humiliating terms like "conspiracy theorists," "hacks" and "quacks," in lieu of making a solid argument.

Offit has earned tens of millions of dollars in royalties from the Rotateq vaccine, and has notoriously stated that infants can tolerate 10,000 vaccine doses at once without ill effect. He's also been caught making unsubstantiated and false statements about former CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, and lying to the OC Register about providing CBS News with the details of his financial relationship with the vaccine maker Merck.¹³

Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the non-profit charity, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), sued Offit for defamation in 2009, along with reporter Amy Wallace and publisher Conde Nast. "She lies," Offit was quoted as stating "flatly" about Fisher in Wired magazine. However, no evidence supporting his accusation was provided and Fisher was never asked by the reporter for a comment on Offit's baseless allegation.

Fisher sued in the Fourth Circuit federal court in Virginia for a jury trial and $1 million in damages, but Judge Claude Hilton dismissed the defamation lawsuit. Hilton's primary argument for dismissal was that both Fisher and Offit are public figures and that, in his opinion, Offit's allegation that "she lies" was made in a moment of emotional exasperation and the heat of spirited public debate, which is the hallmark of free speech protected by the First Amendment.

It is interesting how the free speech argument was used to dismiss a clear-cut case of defamation. The big question today is: Will the First Amendment protect Neides or anyone else in the U.S. who dares to publicly criticize the safety or effectiveness of vaccines?

In Absence of Reliable Injury Reporting, How Can Safety Be Ascertained?

In 2015, media reports noted that a "study" by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had confirmed that vaccines rarely ever cause serious reactions. The study in question used CDC Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) data, concluding there were only 33 "confirmed vaccine-triggered anaphylaxis cases" among the 25,173,965 vaccine doses administered between January 2009 and December 2011.¹⁴

However, there's a significant problem with using this study to "prove" safety, as there are dozens of serious reactions besides anaphylaxis. To say that vaccines rarely cause serious reactions based on the occurrence of anaphylaxis alone is misleading at best.

Moreover, it's reasonable to suspect that the findings rely on incomplete data. The assumption is that the VSD — which collects health data from nine health care partners — actually receives thorough and accurate information about what happens to a patient following vaccination. But the chances of that are actually slim, since studies have shown vaccine reactions are rarely if ever recorded or reported.

Providers of vaccines are by law required to report vaccine reactions to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), jointly operated by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Despite that, most vaccine providers are unaware of this requirement, are unfamiliar with the reporting process, are confused about who should be doing the reporting, and/or are unwilling to file a report. As noted by The Vaccine Reaction, an online journal newspaper published by NVIC:¹⁵

"Although the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act [NCVIA] of 1986 requires doctors and other health care providers who administer vaccines to make a report to VAERS for 'hospitalizations, injuries, deaths and serious health problems' following vaccination, it is estimated that this happens in only between 1 to 10 percent of the cases.

VAERS receives about 30,000 reports annually. Given the extreme under-reporting to the system, it is likely that the true number of vaccine adverse reactions in the United States is closer to at least 300,000 per year, and perhaps as high as 3 million. One can only guess how many of those would be serious reactions. Suddenly, the argument that vaccines are safe because adverse reactions are 'rare' becomes a bogus one."

If underreporting to VAERS is that common, chances are, the VSD is no better. Adding to the problem, the VSD data is not openly available to independent researchers, and without replication, the accuracy of the findings must forever remain suspect.

The Vaccine Reaction Cover-Up

Most pediatricians will tell you they've never seen a vaccine reaction, or that reactions are really rare. However, when a child suffers a vaccine reaction, they typically end up in the emergency room (ER), not the pediatrician's office. In a 2015 article, an ER nurse and former police officer shares his experiences with vaccine reactions, noting he's "seen the cover-up" first hand. He writes, in part:^16,17

"I cannot even begin to guess how many times over the years I have seen vaccine reactions come through my E.R. Without any exaggeration, it has to be counted in hundreds … The cases almost always presented similarly, and often no one else connected it. The child comes in with either a fever approaching 105, or seizures, or lethargy/can't wake up, or sudden overwhelming sickness, screaming that won't stop, spasms [or] GI inclusion …

And one of the first questions I would ask as triage nurse, was, are they current on their vaccinations? … Parents (and co-workers) usually just think I'm trying to rule out the vaccine preventable diseases, when in fact, I am looking to see how recently they were vaccinated to determine if this is a vaccine reaction.

Too often I heard a parent say something akin to 'Yes they are current, the pediatrician caught up their vaccines this morning during their check up, and the pediatrician said they were in perfect health!' …

But here's the more disturbing part. [Of] all the cases I've seen, I have never seen any medical provider report them to VAERS. I have filed VAERS reports. But I am the only nurse I have EVER met that files VAERS reports. I have also never met a doctor that filed a VAERS report. Mind you, I have served in multiple hospitals across multiple states, alongside probably well over a hundred doctors and probably 300 [to] 400+ nurses … What does that say about reported numbers? …

And the final part of that, is that I have, first hand, seen blatant cover ups from doctors. I have seen falsification of medical records and documentation via intentional omission …

I remind them that VAERS is a reporting body for ANY symptoms that are contemporaneous to vaccination, whether causation is believed to be associated or not, and I get the dismissal that they are not filing it because it [the vaccine] has nothing to do with it [the symptom] … This is a systemic suppression of information and statistics."

How Vaccine Mandates Are Imposed on Health Care Workers in Absence of Legal Requirements

In related news, GoErie.com recently reported¹⁸ that six health care workers fired from a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania, for refusing the annual flu vaccine have been reinstated with back pay.

In related commentary, according to Dr. Meryl Nass, a vaccine blogger with special interests in vaccine-induced illnesses, it appears American hospitals do not actually have a legal leg to stand on when firing health care workers over vaccine refusals, because the federal government claims it does not impose vaccine mandates for adults.

So why are hospitals firing workers for refusing influenza vaccinations? In large part, it appears to be a strategy designed to receive higher Medicare reimbursements. Organizations co-created by the federal government have created guidelines for improving "quality of care" in hospitals, and Medicare reimbursements are used to forcibly impose certain quality measures over others, such as vaccination.

In a nutshell, hospitals that have higher vaccination rates for patients and health care workers get higher Medicare reimbursement rates. But this has little to do with actual federal mandates. In fact, according to the CDC, "there are no legally mandated vaccinations for adults, except for persons entering military service. CDC does recommend certain immunizations for adults, depending on age, occupation and other circumstances, but these immunizations are not required by law."

Flu Vaccine Mandate for Hospital Workers Is Financially Driven

Employee coverage rates of flu vaccination is a quality measure that is reported to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). As noted by Nass:

"The bottom line is that the federal government squeezed hospitals by requiring hospitals to report the rates of yearly influenza vaccinations of both hospital staff and hospital patients, including these two measures in a global calculation of hospital 'quality.' A hospital's 'quality' number determines approximately 3.75 percent of its overall Medicare reimbursements rate in 2017 …

In the health care industry, 3.75 percent is enough to make a hospital sink or swim. The hospitals, predictably, acquiesced by demanding their employees be vaccinated or fired. But the federal government insists it imposes no mandates. Yet its actions created a de facto mandate. Where are the lawyers who will litigate this in federal court?

I don't understand why cases are going through EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission], where employees may win, when their wins do not impact the de facto health care worker flu shot mandates that continue to be imposed in most U.S. health care institutions today."

Vaccinating Hospital Workers Has No Impact on Patient Safety

Interestingly, hospitals began mandating annual flu shots for their workers AFTER meta-analyses by Cochrane (considered the gold standard of meta reviews), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the CDC concluded that health care worker vaccinations do not protect patients from influenza — a finding that raises questions about its validity as a "quality of care" measure in the first place.

The first one, published in July 2013, by the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, found "laboratory-proven influenza or its complications (lower respiratory tract infection, or hospitalization or death due to lower respiratory tract illness) did not identify a benefit of health care worker vaccination on these key outcomes … This review does not provide reasonable evidence to support the vaccination of health care workers to prevent influenza in those aged 60 years or older resident in long-term care institutions."

The Cochrane Database Systematic Review published an update to this analysis in June, 2016, noting that 5 percent of health care workers who had received the influenza vaccine and 8 percent of workers who were unvaccinated had laboratory-proven influenza each season, and that health care workers may transmit influenza to patients.

Still, the conclusions remained the same. "Offering influenza vaccination to health care workers based in long-term care homes may have little or no effect on the number of residents who develop laboratory-proven influenza compared with those living in care homes where no vaccination is offered," the authors write. They did note one study of moderate quality evidence suggests health care vaccinations may reduce lower respiratory tract infections in residents by 2 percent, from 6 to 4 percent.

Another 2013 meta-analysis — this one by the CDC — found, "The evidence quality that health care personnel vaccination reduces patient mortality and influenza cases is moderate and low, respectively."¹⁹ A third analysis of 20 different studies,²⁰ also published in 2013, found that while influenza vaccination of health care workers is likely to offer some indirect protection to vulnerable patients, the evidence is limited.

Science Be Damned

As noted by Nass:²¹

"Each of these three groups examined the world literature on the effects of health care worker vaccinations in 2012 [to 20]13, and each determined that there was no statistically significant evidence that health care worker influenza vaccinations prevented either influenza cases or influenza deaths in their patients. You cannot get better evidence than this.

Health care worker flu vaccinations, despite what the public has been told, do not improve patient care. Furthermore, there is no good evidence that flu shots benefit the over-65 Medicare patients who are also being vaccinated to comply with a second 'quality' measure.

To my knowledge, no one has looked to see if hospital inpatients have poorer outcomes because of these shots, but they certainly might. The shots cause a generalized inflammatory reaction that might adversely affect patients with, for example, autoimmune diseases, pneumonia or heart attacks."

If you ask me, I think it's about time we get a vaccine safety review commission started, and if Kennedy is the one who heads it, I wish him the best in this endeavor and hope he seeks advice from Barbara Loe Fischer, co-founder of NVIC. We must bring back some objective sanity to the discussion about vaccine safety and scientific integrity.

It's going to be an uphill battle all the way, but it is encouraging to see the topic being discussed by the new administration and, hopefully, it will result in better science and holding drug companies more accountable for the safety of their products.

Related Articles:

  The Forgotten History of Vaccinations You Need to Be Aware Of

  Vaccines — Are They Still Contributing to the Greater Good?

  Groundbreaking Study: Vaccines Cause Children More Adverse Reactions Than Any Other Drug

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Soaring Lease Returns Set To Wreak Havoc Used Car Pricing and Auto Industry Profits

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For months we've warned that declining used car prices could spell disaster for subprime auto securitizations (see "Slumping Used Car Prices Spell Disaster For Subprime Auto Securitizations").  While it's always difficult to predict the exact timing of when bubbles will burst, a combination of record-high lease returns in 2017 and 2018, combined with rising interest rates could imply that the auto bubble is on the precipice.

As Bloomberg recently pointed out, strong used car pricing is a critical component required to prop up the overall auto market.  While American's love their brand new cars, if used car prices become too soft then substitution can hurt new car sales.  Add to that the impact of falling residual values on the finance arms of the auto OEMs and you have all the ingredients required for an auto market meltdown.

A glut of used vehicles has started to depress prices. That trend will intensify as Americans will return 3.36 million leased cars and trucks this year, another jump after a 33 percent surge in 2016, according to J.D. Power. The fallout has already begun, with Ford Motor Co. shaving $300 million from its financial-services arm’s profit forecast for this year.

 

“Ford is the canary in the coal mine,” said Maryann Keller, a former Wall Street analyst who’s now an auto industry consultant in Stamford, Connecticut.

 

This drag may be hitting the rest of the industry, too. A National Automobile Dealers Association index of used-vehicle prices declined each of the last six months of last year. If used values weaken more than anticipated, it can lead to losses across the industry, hitting carmakers, auto lenders and rental companies.

 

 

Unfortunately, the volume of lease returns is only expected to grow even more in 2018 with returns expected to approach 4mm units.

 

As J.D. Power points out in it's most recent "NADA Used Car Guide Industry Update," the flood of lease returns is driving used car prices lower.

 

Of course, how we got here is fairly obvious.  The majority of Americans buy cars based on one factor: monthly payment.  And when it comes to managing your monthly payment to the lowest level possible, leasing is the way to go.  Per the Bank Rate calculator below, buying a $30,000 car comes with a monthly payment of around $600 while leasing the same vehicle might only cost $420 per month. 

 

Of course, why buy a $30,000 Ford for a $600 monthly payment when you could lease a $40,000 BMW for $560?  You can afford it so long as you can cover the monthly payment, right?

 

Not surprisingly, these dynamics have caused lease share of U.S. vehicles to skyrocket in the wake of the "great recession" as people seek to maintain their excessive lifestyles on smaller budgets.

 

Of course, the problem is that leased vehicles get returned to their originating lenders every 3 years for brand new leases...we wouldn't want anyone driving around in a 5-year-old clunker now would we?  But, as we all know, vehicles have useful lives of 15-20 years.  Therefore, it doesn't take too many excessive lease cycles to flood the market with used supply and bring the whole ponzi crashing down. 

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Annual intelligence publication is a living nightmare of groupthink

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They call themselves the U.S. “intelligence community,” or the IC. If you include the office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which in 2005 began as a crew of 12 people, including its director, and by 2008 had already grown to a staff of 1,750, there are 17 members (adding up to an alphabet soup of acronyms including the CIA, the NSA, and the DIA). The IC spends something like $70 billion of your taxpayer dollars annually, mostly in secret, hires staggering numbers of private contractors from various warrior corporations to lend a hand, sucks up communications of every sort across the planet, runs a drone air force, monitors satellites galore, builds its agencies multi-billion-dollar headquarters and storage facilities, and does all of this, ostensibly, to provide the president and the rest of the government with the best information imaginable on what’s happening in the world and what dangers the United States faces.

Since 9/11, expansion has been the name of its game, as the leading intelligence agencies gained ever more power, prestige, and the big bucks, while wrapping themselves in an unprecedented blanket of secrecy. Typically, in the final days of the Obama administration, the National Security Agency was given yet more leeway to share the warrantless data it scoops up worldwide (including from American citizens) with ever more members of the IC.

And oh yes, in the weeks leading up to the inauguration of Donald Trump, several of those intelligence outfits found themselves in a knock-down, drag-out barroom brawl with our new tweeter-in-chief (who has begun threatening to downsize parts of the IC) over the possible Russian hacking of an American election and his relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  In the process, they have received regular media plaudits for their crucial importance to all of us, our security and safety, along with tweeted curses from the then-president-elect.

Let me lay my own cards on the table here. Based on the relatively little we can know about the information the Intelligence Community has been delivering to the president and his people in these years, I’ve never been particularly impressed with its work. Again, given what’s available to judge from, it seems as if, despite its size, reach, money, and power, the IC has been caught “off-guard” by developments in our world with startling regularity and might be thought of as something closer to an “un-intelligence machine.” It’s always been my suspicion that, if a group of smart, out-of-the-box thinkers were let loose on purely open-source material, the U.S. government might actually end up with a far more accurate view of our world and how it works, not to speak of what dangers lie in store for us.

There’s just one problem in saying such things. In an era when the secrecy around the Intelligence Community has only grown and those leaking information from it have beenprosecuted with a fierceness unprecedented in our history, we out here in what passes for the world don’t have much of a way to judge the value of the “product” it produces.

There is, however, one modest exception to this rule. Every four years, before a newly elected president enters the Oval Office, the National Intelligence Council, or NIC, which bills itself as “the IC’s center for long-term strategic analysis,” produces just such a document. The NIC is largely staffed from the IC (evidently in significant measure from the CIA), presents “senior policymakers with coordinated views of the entire Intelligence Community, including National Intelligence Estimates,” and does other classified work of various sorts.

Still, proudly and with some fanfare, it makes public one lengthy document quadrennially for any of us to read. Until now, that report has gone by the name of “Global Trends“ with a futuristic year attached. The previous one, its fifth, made public just before Barack Obama’s second term in office, was “Global Trends 2030.” This one would have been the 2035 edition, had the NIC not decided to drop that futuristic year for what it calls fear of “false precision” (though projections of developments to 2035 are still part of the text). Instead, the sixth edition arrives as “Global Trends: The Paradox of Progress,” an anodyne phrase whose meaning is summarized this way: “The achievements of the industrial and information ages are shaping a world to come that is both more dangerous and richer with opportunity than ever before. Whether promise or peril prevails will turn on the choices of humankind.” According to the NIC, in producing such documents its role is to identify “key drivers and developments likely to shape world events a couple of decades into the future” for the incoming president and his people.

Think of “Global Trends“ as another example of how the American world of intelligence has expanded in these years. Starting relatively modestly in 1997, the IC decided to go where no intelligence outfit had previously gone and plant its flag in the future. Chalk that up as a bold decision, since the future might be thought of as the most democratic as well as least penetrable of time frames. After all, any one of us is free to venture there any time we choose without either financing or staff. It’s also a place where you can’t embed spies, you can’t gather communications from across the planet, you can’t bug the phones or hack into the emails of world leaders, no drones can fly, and there are no satellite images to study or interpret. Historically, until the NIC decided to make the future its property, it had largely been left to visionaries and kooks, dreamers and sci-fi writers — people, in short, with a penchant for thinking outside the box.

In these years, however, in the heartland of the world’s “sole superpower,” the urge to control and surveil everything grew to monumental proportions leading the IC directly into the future in the only way it knew how to do anything: monumentally. As a result, the new “Global Trends“ boasts about the size and reach of the operation that produced it. Its team “visited more than 35 countries and one territory, soliciting ideas and feedback from over 2,500 people around the world from all walks of life.”

As its massive acknowledgements section makes clear, along with all the unnamed officials and staff who did the basic work and many people who were consulted but could not be identified, the staff talked to everyone from a former prime minister and two foreign ministers to an ambassador and a sci-fi writer, not to mention “senior officials and strategists worldwide… hundreds of natural and social scientists, thought leaders, religious figures, business and industry representatives, diplomats, development experts, and women, youth, and civil society organizations around the world.”

The NIC’s two-year intelligence voyage into a universe that, by definition, must remain unknown to us all, even made “extensive use of analytic simulations — employing teams of experts to represent key international actors — to explore the future trajectories for regions of the world, the international order, the security environment, and the global economy.”  In other words, to produce this unclassified report on how, according to NIC Chairman Gregory Treverton, “the NIC is thinking about the future,” it mounted a major intelligence operation that — though no figures are offered — must have cost millions of dollars.  In the hands of the IC, the future like the present is, it seems, an endlessly expensive proposition.

A Grim Future Offset By Cheer 

If you’re now thinking about tossing your Ray Bradbury, Ursula Le Guin, Philip K. Dick, and Octavia Butler novels into the trash bin of history and diving into the newest “Global Trends,“ then I’ve done you an enormous favor.  I’ve already read it for you.  And let me assure you that, unlike William Gibson’s “discovery” of cyberspace in his futuristic novel Neuromancer, the NIC’s document uncovers nothing in the future that hasn’t already been clearly identified in the present and isn’t obvious to you and just about everyone else on the planet. Perhaps Global Trends’ greatest achievement is to transform that future into a reading experience so mind-numbing that it was my own vale of tears.  A completely typical sentence: “The most powerful actors of the future will be states, groups, and individuals who can leverage material capabilities, relationships, and information in a more rapid, integrated, and adaptive mode than in generations past.”

Admittedly, every now and then you stumble across a genuinely interesting stat or fact that catches your attention (“one in every 112 persons in the world is a refugee, an internally displaced person, or an asylum seeker”) and, on rare occasions, the odd thought stops you momentarily. Generally, though, the future as imagined by the wordsmiths of the IC is a slog, a kind of living nightmare of groupthink.

Whatever quirky and original brains may be hidden in the depths of the IC, on the basis of “Global Trends“ you would have to conclude that its collective brain, the one it assumedly offers to presidents and other officials, couldn’t be more mundane. Start with this: published on the eve of the Trumpian accession, it can’t seem to imagine anything truly new under the sun, including Donald J. Trump (who goes unmentioned in this glimpse of our future). Even as we watch our present world being upended daily, the authors of” Global Trends“ can’t conceive of the genuine upending of much on this planet.

Perhaps that helps explain why its leadership felt so caught off-guard and discombobulated by our new president.  In him, after all, the American future is already becoming the unimaginable American present, tweet by tweet.  (And let me here express a bit of sympathy for President Trump. If “Global Trends” is typical of the kind of thinking and presentation that goes into the President’s Daily Brief from the Intelligence Community, then I’m not surprised that he chose to start skipping those sessions for almost anything else, including Fox and Friends and spitball fights with Meryl Streep and John Lewis.)

As the IC imagines it, the near-future offers a relatively grim set of prospects, all transposed from obvious developments in our present moment, but each of them almost mechanistically offset by a hopeful conclusion: terrorism will undoubtedly spread and worsen (before it gets better); inequality will increase in a distinctly 1 percent world as anti-globalist sentiments sweep the planet and “populism,” along with more authoritarian ways of thinking, will continue to spread along with isolationist sentiments in the West (before other trends take hold); the risk of interstate conflict will increase thanks to China and Russia (even if the world will not be devastated by it); governing will grow harder globally and technology more potentially disruptive (though hope lurks close at hand); and the pressures of climate change are likely to create a more tenuous planet, short on food and especially water, and filled with the desperate and migrationally inclined (but is also likely to foster “a twenty-first-century set of common principles”).  In essence, in the view of the National Intelligence Council, for every potentially lousy news trend of the present moment projected into the future, there’s invariably a saving grace, a sense that, as the report puts it, “the same trends generating near-term risks also can create opportunities for better outcomes over the long term.” In fact, by 2028 according to one of its scenarios, we could be “entering a new era of economic growth and prosperity.”

In truth, even the grimmest version of the IC’s future seems eerily mild, given the onrushing present — from a Trumpian presidency to the recently reported reality that eight billionaires now control the same amount of wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the planet’s population. (Only a year ago, it took 62 billionaires to hit that mark.) According to the Engelhardt Intelligence Council, the likelihood is that we’re already entering a future far more extreme than anything the NIC and its 2,500-plus outside experts can imagine.

The”Global Trends” crew seems incapable of imagining futures in which some version of the present doesn’t rule all.  Despite the global wars of the last century that leveled significant parts of the planet, the arrival of climate change as history’s possible deal-breaker, and the 9/11 attacks, disjunctures are simply not in their playbook.  As a result, their idea of futuristic extremes couldn’t be milder.  In one of the report’s three scenarios, even the surprise use of a nuclear weapon for the first time since August 9, 1945 — in a 2028 confrontation between India and Pakistan — is relieved of most of its potential punch.  The bomb goes off not over a major city, killing hundreds of thousands, but in a desert area.  And at what seems to be remarkably little cost, the shock of that single explosion miraculously brings a world of hostile powers, including the United States, China, and Russia, together in a strikingly upbeat fashion.  (By 2028, it seems that Mr. Smith has indeed gone to Washington and so, in “Global Trends,“ “President Smith” heartwarmingly shares a Nobel Peace Prize with China’s president for the “series of confidence-building measures and arms control agreements” that followed the nuclear incident.)

I, of course, don’t have thousands of experts to consult in thinking about the future, but based on scientific work already on the record, I could still create a very different South Asian scenario, which wouldn’t exactly be a formula for uniting the planet behind a better security future.  Just imagine that one of the “tactical” nuclear weapons the Pakistani military is already evidently beginning to store at its forward military bases was put to use in response to an Indian military challenge.  Imagine, then, that it triggered not world peace, but an ongoing nuclear exchange between the two powers, each with significant arsenals of such weaponry.  The results in South Asia could be mindboggling — up to 21 million direct deaths by one estimate.  Scientists speculate, however, that the effects of such a nuclear war would not be restricted to the region, but would spark a nuclear-winter scenario globally, destroying crops across the planet and possibly leading to up to a billion deaths.

Living in an All-American World

Such grim futures are, however, not for the NIC.  Think of them as American imperial optimists and dreamers only masquerading as realists.  If you want proof of this, it’s easy enough to find in”Global Trends“. Here, in fact, is the most curious aspect of that document: the members of the U.S. Intelligence Community evidently can’t bear to look at the last 15 years of their own imperial history.  Instead, in taking possession of the future, they simply leave the post-9/11 American past in a roadside ditch and move on. In the future they imagine, much of that past is missing in action, including, of course, Donald J. Trump.  (As a group, they must be Clintonistas.  At least I can imagine Hillary wonkishly making her way through their document, but The Donald?  Don’t make me laugh.)

Give them credit at least for accepting the obvious: that we will no longer be on a “unipolar planet” dominated by a single superpower, but in a world of “spheres of influence.” (“For better and worse, the emerging global landscape is drawing to a close an era of American dominance following the Cold War…”) But you can search their document in vain for the word “decline.” Forget that they were putting together their report at the very moment that the first openly declinist candidate for president was wowing crowds — who sensed that their country and their own lives were on the downhill slope — with the slogan “Make America Great Again.”

Nor were they about to take striking aspects of present-day America and project them into a truly grim future.  Take, for example, something that amused me greatly: you can search”Global Trends“ in vain for all but the most passing reference to the U.S. military.  You know, the outfit that our recent presidents keep praising as the “finest fighting force” in world history.  Search their document top to bottom and you still won’t have the faintest idea that the U.S. military has been fighting ceaselessly in victory-less conflicts for the past 15 years, and that its “war on terror” efforts have somehow only fueled the spread of terrorist movements, while leaving behind a series of failed or failing states across the Greater Middle East and northern Africa.  None of that is projected into the future, nor is the militarization of this country (or its police), even though the retired generals now populating the new Trump administration speak directly to this very point.

Or to pick another example, how about the fact that, in a world in which a single country — the very one to which the IC belongs — garrisons the planet with hundreds of military bases from Europe to Japan, Bahrain to Afghanistan, there is but a single futuristic mention of a military base, and it’s a Chinese one to be built on a Fijian Island deep in the Pacific. (A running gag of “Global Trends“ involves future newspaper headlines like this one from 2019: “China Buys Uninhabited Fijian Island To Build Military Base.”) What will happen to the present U.S. military framework for dominating the planet? You certainly won’t find out here.

But don’t think that the United States itself isn’t on the mind of those who produced this document. After all, among all the stresses of the decades to come, as the IC’s futurologists imagine them, there’s one key to positive national survival in 2035 and that’s what they call “resilience.” (“[T]he very same trends heightening risks in the near term can enable better outcomes over the longer term if the proliferation of power and players builds resilience to manage greater disruptions and uncertainty.”)

And which country is the most obviously resilient on Planet Earth? That’s the $100 (but not the 100 ruble or 100 yuan) question. So go ahead, guess — and if you don’t get the answer right, you’re not the reader I think you are.

Still, just in case you’re not sure, here’s how”Global Trends“ sums the matter up:

“For example, by traditional measures of power, such as GDP, military spending, and population size, China’s share of global power is increasing. China, however, also exhibits several characteristics, such as a centralized government, political corruption, and an economy overly reliant on investment and net exports for growth — which suggest vulnerability to future shocks.

“Alternatively, the United States exhibits many of the factors associated with resilience, including decentralized governance, a diversified economy, inclusive society, large land mass, biodiversity, secure energy supplies, and global military power projection capabilities and alliances.”

So if there’s one conclusion to be drawn from the NIC’s mighty two-year dive into possible futures on a planet we still garrison and that’s wracked by wars we’re still fighting, it might be summed up this way: don’t be China, be us.

Of course, no one should be surprised by such a conclusion, since you don’t rise in the government by contrarian thinking but by going with the herd. This isn’t the sort of document you read expecting to be surprised, not when the nightmare of every bureaucracy is just that: the unexpected and unpredicted. The Washington bubble is evidently too comfortable and the world far too frightening a place to imagine a fuller range of what might be coming at us. The spooks of the NIC may be living off the money our fear sends their way, but don’t kid yourself for a second, they’re afraid too, or they could never produce a document like “Global Trends: The Paradox of Progress.”

As a portrait not of the future but of the anxieties of American power in a world it can’t control, this document provides the rest of us with a vivid portrait of the group of people least likely to offer us long-term security.

The last laugh here belongs to Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin, and other authors of their ilk. If you want to be freed to think about the many possible futures that face us, futures that we will help create, then skip”Global Trends“ and head for the kinds of books that might free your mind to think afresh, not bind it to a world growing more dismal by the day.

<em>To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com <a href=”http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=1e41682ade“>here</a></em>.

 

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More Reasons Why You Need to Eat Organic

ORIGINAL LINK

By Dr. Mercola

While the controversy over whether organically grown food is healthier lingers, scientific research continues to demonstrate the health benefits to both humans and the environment of growing and consuming organic foods. 

Food grown in healthier soil, with natural fertilizers and no harmful chemicals, is quite simply more nutritious and less dangerous to your health.

Detractors of organic farming rest on a meta-analysis published in 2012 by Stanford University, which found similar nutrients in both organically growth produce and those laden with pesticides and insecticides.¹

That same study did admit organic foods were not burdened with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and pesticide residue, but stated these were the only benefits.

More recent analyses of organic foods also found similar levels of nutrients between organic and pesticide-treated crops,² with lower pesticide residue on organic foods.³ However, the more recent studies also found lower levels of cadmium,⁴ a known carcinogen, and higher levels of antioxidants.⁵

Organic fruits and vegetables may contain as much as 18 percent to 69 percent more antioxidants than pesticide-treated produce. As antioxidants play a critical role in the prevention of diseases and illnesses, these higher levels of nutrients, in combination with a lower toxicity level, make organically grown foods a superior choice.

Eating Organic Has Long-Term Benefits

One of the strongest selling points for eating organic foods had been to reduce your exposure to pesticides and insecticides. Now, a recent study demonstrates that organic foods hold more benefits to your future health and the health of your children.

The study conducted by the European Parliamentary Research Service reviewed existing research and made several determinations.⁶

From their analysis they concluded that eating organic foods reduces pesticide exposure, improves the nutritional value of the food, lessens disease risk and improves early childhood development.⁷

They also found those who ate organic foods tended to have healthier dietary patterns than those who ate foods treated with chemicals.

In other studies, researchers found epidemiological data demonstrating the negative effects of pesticide exposure on the cognitive development of children and determined these effects would be minimized eating organic foods, especially during pregnancy and during early infancy.

Another important finding, also supported by previous studies,⁸ was organic foods had lower cadmium content than conventional crops.⁹ There is no safe level of cadmium, as it is a known carcinogen and produces a number of negative effects on human health.

Your highest rate of exposure is from plant-based foods grown in contaminated soil or using certain fertilizers. Other sources include smoking and exposure to nickel-cadmium batteries.¹⁰

Once absorbed, your body efficiently retains cadmium, which can build up over your lifetime unless you take steps to remove it.^11,12 Being deficient in calcium, iron, protein and/or zinc may worsen cadmium uptake and toxicity.

Antagonists that can help detoxify cadmium include calcium, zinc, copper, vitamin D and C, iron, manganese and protein.¹³

Cadmium is very toxic to your kidneys, may trigger bone demineralization and increases your risk of dying from lung cancer. It can also affect your blood pressure, prostate health and testosterone levels.¹⁴

Organically raised animals also reduce your exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria as the organic practice of preventing animal disease restricts the use of antibiotics in production. Minimizing your exposure to these bacteria may minimize your risk of illness and may have significant public health benefits.

Higher Antioxidant Levels in Organic Foods May Mitigate Disease Risk

Researchers have determined the levels of polyphenols in organically grown crops is significantly higher than those sprayed with pesticides.¹⁵ These higher concentrations of phenolic acids, flavones, stilbenes, flavonols and anthocyanins were estimated to be between 19 percent and 51 percent higher in one study.

These plant-based antioxidant compounds have been linked to the reduction in a number of different diseases, including cardiovascular disease,^16,17 neurodegenerative conditions,¹⁸ cancers^19,20 and slowing the aging process.²¹

Antioxidants are a class of molecule that are capable of inhibiting the oxidation of free radicals that cause damage in your body.

Some antioxidants can be produced by your body, but some are not and, as you age, your ability to produce those antioxidants declines. Antioxidants are crucial to your health and can be acquired through eating real foods. They are nature's way of defending your body against an attack by reactive oxygen species (ROS).

Your body naturally circulates a variety of nutrients, such as vitamin C, vitamin E, carotenes and lipoic acid, to control the destructive chain reactions associated with ROS. Antioxidants are micronutrients that help your body resist the damage of pollutants and free radicals produced during metabolism.

Oxidative stress occurs when there are more free radicals and ROS in your body than antioxidant defenses, and leads to accelerated tissue and organ damage. Oxidative stress may also shorten the length of your telomeres, which researchers believe can be used as a measure of biological aging.

Antioxidants are present in higher quantities in fruits and vegetables that are organically grown and those eaten closer to the time they were harvested. This is why eating the majority of your fruits and vegetables raw, organically grown and locally harvested increases the number of nutrients from which you benefit.

Studies Indicate Other Advantages to Organic Foods

Researchers have also linked eating foods organically grown to even more health benefits, including a reduction in obesity and type 2 diabetes, two of the more common health concerns facing people today.²²

More than two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese,²³ one of the risk factors for type 2 diabetes that affects over 9 percent of the American population.²⁴

Research has also linked an increase in allergic reactions to foods coated with pesticides in people who have not otherwise experienced food allergies.²⁵ Exposure to specific weed-killing chemicals are associated with higher sensitivity to foods.²⁶

Dichlorophenols, chemicals used for pesticides and to chlorinate tap water, may also be to blame for the rising number of children suffering from allergies.²⁷

Demand for organic foods is rapidly expanding. This demand is not limited to real foods, but also prepackaged and processed foods. In 2014, people around the world spent $72 billion on organic products.²⁸

The largest organic market located in the U.S. recorded an 11.5 percent increase in 2015. Some make the decision to buy organic based on a concern for the environment, while others are focused on their personal long-term health benefits.

Even Record Growth Not Meeting Consumer Demand for Organic Food

This continued growth provides incentive for U.S. farmers to enter the market. Organic foods are sold through direct-to-consumer sales, conventional groceries and natural health food stores.

Produce accounted for 43 percent of organic food sales in 2012²⁹ with 93 percent of all sales taking place through conventional and natural food stores.

Although organic foods are more accessible, there continues to be challenges in the supply chain. Organic food sales may have enjoyed greater growth had the supply been available.³⁰

Securing a supply chain that supports demand includes ensuring more organic acreage and helping farmers transition from conventional produce farming to organic.

As more consumers become interested in eating a healthier diet and more willing to pay for higher-quality foods, smaller markets are carving out a niche in the marketplace.

It is anticipated that the growth of the organic food market will reach $1 trillion in 2017.³¹ This increase in sales is helping successfully launch small companies providing products to meet consumer demand.

Angel investors and venture capitalists are also taking advantage, investing more than $2 billion in 2015.³² Despite the growth in organic sales, the number of certified organic farms in the U.S. are finding it challenging to keep pace with the demand. As fewer than 1 percent of American farms were certified organic in 2012, the availability for growth in this field is wide open.³³

Foreign suppliers provided $134 million in organic soybeans in 2014, prompting U.S. Congress to expand their support for organic farming and double their funds for the Organic Certification Cost Share Program.³⁴

A recent report found 17 of the top 20 grocer retailers are not meeting the increased consumer demand for organic, pesticide-free foods.³⁵ The same report also revealed food retailers don't publish a publicly available policy to reduce or eliminate pesticides that impact the growth of pollinators, the largest group of which are bees.

What Does an Organic Label Mean?

For food to carry the certified "organic" label, it must meet several federal guidelines.³⁶ The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Organic Program (NOP) defines organic as:³⁷

" … [P]roduced by farmers who emphasize the use of renewable resources and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations. Organic meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones.

Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides; fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge; bioengineering; or ionizing radiation.

Before a product can be labeled 'organic,' a Government-approved certifier inspects the farm where the food is grown to make sure the farmer is following all the rules necessary to meet USDA organic standards. Companies that handle or process organic food before it gets to your local supermarket or restaurant must be certified, too."

Without certification, products are not allowed to display the USDA organic seal.³⁸ However, a certified organic product may contain a mix of conventionally grown and organic ingredients depending upon the labeling.³⁹ This mix of pesticide-laden ingredients with organically grown ones may negate many of the benefits of eating organic foods. The easiest answer is to avoid processed fare, and cook from scratch, so you know exactly what you're eating.

One of the benefits to the environment from organic farming and the reduction in pesticide use is the impact on the bee population, pollinators necessary to the growth of crops and plants. Tiffany Finck-Haynes, from Friends of the Earth, and lead author of the paper studying top retailers and organic foods, commented:⁴⁰

"Without bees and other pollinators, our supermarket shelves would be pretty bare and empty. And they're an indicator species, so they're really telling us that their decline is most likely resulting in a larger decline that we're seeing for the rest of the species in our ecosystem."

Organic Farming Improves Soil Biodiversity

This video demonstrates sustainable agriculture techniques used on the Allison Farm in Illinois. Another benefit to the environment is soil biodiversity, or the species, genes and entire communities of life that exists within the soil. If you think these tiny creatures aren't important to your health, the nutrient value of the food grown in the soil and to your children's future health, think again. Here are a few fun facts about soil:⁴¹

• Scientists have identified approximately 1 percent of the microorganism species living in the soil and the soil is home to over 25 percent of all species living on earth.
• Over the area of a football field, microorganisms in the soil produce organic matter equivalent to the weight of 25 cars every year.
• These organisms aerate the soil, allow water to permeate, provide nutrients to plants and store carbon, which affects the global climate system.
• Rich soil biodiversity is better able to withstand and control pests as it contains a range of predator species and nutrients; the greater the diversity the better the capacity to obstruct pest development.

A meta-analysis of over 250 studies found that organic farming increased species richness in the soil by 30 percent, and this number has been consistent over the past 30 years of study.⁴² In fields that were intensely farmed, organic farming had a greater effect on the biodiversity of the land. This analysis of research confirmed that organic farming has a positive effect on biodiversity compared to conventional farming.

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"Billion-Year" Gambian President Was Installed By The CIA

ORIGINAL LINK

Submitted by Wayne Madsen via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Gambian President and dictator Yahya Jammeh, facing a combined military force composed of Senegalese army troops, the Nigerian air force, and troops from Mali, Ghana, and Togo, has agreed to relinquish the presidency of Gambia. On December 1, 2016, Jammeh was defeated for re-election in a surprise upset by his little-known rival Adama Barrow. Jammeh received only 45 percent of the vote.

During the election campaign Jammeh vowed in an interview with the BBC to «rule for one billion years». After initially conceding defeat to Barrow, Jammeh reneged on his promise to step down and announced he would remain as president.

The Economic Community of West African Countries (ECOWAS) decided that Jammeh had to go, a stance ironically supported by the United States, which had assisted Jammeh in overthrowing Gambia’s democratically-elected president, Sir Dauda K. Jawara, in 1994.

After Jammeh refused ECOWAS’s, the African Union’s, and the United Nations Security Council’s demands to leave office and permit Barrow to assume the presidency, ECOWAS mobilized its military forces. On January 19, 2017, Barrow was sworn in as president in the Gambian embassy in Dakar, the Senegalese capital. Hours later, Senegalese troops began to enter Gambia and Nigerian air force jets buzzed the Gambian capital of Banjul. The presidents of Mauritania and Guinea flew to Banjul to urge Jammeh to leave office peacefully. Jammeh’s fate was sealed when Major General Ousman Badjie, the commander of the Gambian armed forces, recognized Barrow as Gambia’s commander-in-chief.

The demand from the United States for Jammeh to relinquish power was a display of absolute hypocrisy since Washington had not only installed Jammeh into power but two successive U.S. presidents warmly welcomed the military ruler to the White House. Jammeh, who owns a $3.5 million mansion in Potomac, Maryland, was warmly greeted by President Barack Obama at the 2014 and 2015 U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summits in Washington. President George W. Bush greeted Jammeh at the U.S.-Africa Business Summit in Washington in 2003. With the protection of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, Jammeh’s Moroccan-born wife, Zineb Jammeh, ran up huge totals at the Washington area’s fashionable shopping malls. She also settled on Sam’s Club, a wholesale discount store, to buy massive amounts of household goods. Jammeh is a textbook case of CIA-sponsored kleptocracy on a grand scale.

Under Jammeh, Gambia continued to be a strategic ally of the United States. The kleptocratic Gambian leader permitted the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to maintain an emergency landing site for NASA’s space shuttle in the country and Gambia participated with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the post-9/11 rendition program.

Before being installed as Gambia’s dictator, Jammeh had received training from the Pentagon. Merely a lieutenant in the Gambian National Army. In 1993, Jammeh attended the notorious «School of the Americas» in Fort Benning, Georgia. The school has trained some of Latin America’s most notorious military dictators and death squad commanders. While in Fort Benning, Jammeh was made an honorary citizen of the state of Georgia. The following year, and before he launched his coup, Jammeh attended the Military Police Officers Basic Course (MPOBC) at Fort McClellan, Alabama. He was also made an honorary Lieutenant Colonel in the Alabama State Militia. Jammeh continued to collect American honorifics, including being made an admiral in the non-existent Navy of the State of Nebraska. The corny title is bestowed by the governor of Nebraska to prominent citizens, who have not only included African dictators like Jammeh and his fellow CIA-supported kleptocrat, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, but to the likes of George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Queen Elizabeth II. 

It was during the administration of President Bill Clinton that the green light was given for Jammeh to be installed in a CIA-led coup in Gambia.

On July 24, 1994, President Jawara was at his palace in Banjul entertaining the commanding officer of the visiting U.S. Navy tank landing ship, the USS La Moure County. Also present was U.S. ambassador to Gambia, Andrew Winter, a career foreign service officer who represented a new breed of U.S. ambassador – one that routinely and publicly involved himself in the domestic political affairs of the nation to which they were posted. While Jawara and the ship’s commander exchanged diplomatic niceties, junior army officers, led by Jammeh, staged a coup against the democratically elected government.

Following the announcement of the coup, La Moure County’s skipper could only offer Jawara; Lady Chilele Jawara, one of his two wives; 14 of his 19 children; and his finance minister and police inspector-general a ride to his ship and American protection. Once on board, Jawara was permitted to use the vessel’s communications equipment to contact his military leaders. To Jawara’s dismay, the coup leader, Jammeh, had arrested Colonel Boubakar Dada, the head of Gambia’s 800-strong army, along with ten Nigerian military advisers.

Instead of stepping in to help the Gambian leader, who had known every American president since John F. Kennedy, the Clinton administration merely offered to mediate between Jawara and the rebels. State Department spokeswoman Sondra McCarty suggested the United States was «trying to facilitate dialogue between the two side,» as if the Jammeh and his coup partners possessed legitimacy.

The U.S. Navy ship took Jawara to neighboring Senegal where he was granted political asylum by its government. Jawara’s relationship with Senegal had become testy in recent years. In 1982, Jawara and President Abdou Diouf had agreed to establish the Senegambian Confederation. Many Gambians criticized the agreement as a de facto annexation of Gambia by Senegal as its 11^th region. Sensing the opposition of his people, Jawara scrapped the confederation in 1989. However, this decision did not meet with the favor of the U.S. State Department’s incoming breed of African specialists, who were enthusiastic about African integration. In their view, Jawara seemed to be swimming against the tide and an anachronism that should be dealt with appropriately. After being «dealt with» by the CIA, Jawara eventually took up residence in England.

Ambassador Winter never made a demand that the junta step down and allow Jawara to return to his office in The Quadrangle in Banjul to resume his presidency. The CIA and the Pentagon has already invested heavily in Jammeh as «their man». Jammeh’s pre-coup military training in the United States is similar to that of Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame, who was trained at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas before he left in 1994 to lead an invasion of Rwanda from Uganda, after which, he took over the government.

Witnessing the extreme measures the United States was taking to restore ousted Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide to power, Jawara said: «We have an even stronger case than Haiti». He added: «I will feel very let down if military rule is allowed to take root [in Gambia]». However, Bill Clinton would not only deal harshly with Gambia but, in the end, Bill and Hillary Clinton eschewed Aristide after they turned Haiti into their personal cash cow. Thanks to the double dealing and corruption of the Clintons, Gambia and Haiti both fell under kleptocratic regimes. Jawara remained exiled in England and Aristide was, for a time, exiled to South Africa after being ousted in a CIA-initiated coup in 2004.

The United States is fond of calling for democracy in countries like Gambia, Haiti, and Rwanda, but those calls come after the CIA destabilized the countries with military coups. Uncle Sam shamelessly wears the hat of a supreme hypocrite.

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