Information listed in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s preliminary report on the 1 Oct. massacre, reveals that the body autopsied by Dr. Lisa Gavin may not be Steven Paddock at all.
via IFTTT
Seeking Truth in a World of Propaganda. Links do not necessarily indicate agreement with stories or perspectives.
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.” - Plato
Saturday, January 20, 2018
Body autopsied by doctor likely not Steven Paddocks, official LVMPD report reveals
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
via IFTTT
NSA "Sincerely Regrets" Deleting All Bush-Era Surveillance Data It Was Ordered To Preserve
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
There is a growing consensus among many observers in Washington that the national security agencies have become completely politicized over the past seventeen years and are now pursuing selfish agendas that actually endanger what remains of American democracy.
As Philip Giraldi notes, up until recently it has been habitual to refer to such activity as the Deep State, which is perhaps equivalent to the Establishment in that it includes financial services, the media, major foundations and constituencies, as well as lobbying groups, but we are now witnessing an evolutionary process in which the national security regime is exercising power independently.
Nowhere is that "independence" of the 'state within a state' more evident than in the blatant and egregious news this week that The National Security Agency destroyed surveillance data it pledged to preserve in connection with pending lawsuits and apparently never took some of the steps it told a federal court it had taken to make sure the information wasn’t destroyed, according to recent court filings.
As Politico reports, the agency tells a federal judge that it is investigating and "sincerely regrets its failure."
Since 2007, the NSA has been under court orders to preserve data about certain of its surveillance efforts that came under legal attack following disclosures that President George W. Bush ordered warrantless wiretapping of international communications after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. In addition, the agency has made a series of representations in court over the years about how it is complying with its duties.
However, the NSA told U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White in a filing on Thursday night and another little-noticed submission last year that the agency did not preserve the content of internet communications intercepted between 2001 and 2007 under the program Bush ordered. To make matters worse, backup tapes that might have mitigated the failure were erased in 2009, 2011 and 2016, the NSA said.
“The NSA sincerely regrets its failure to prevent the deletion of this data,” NSA’s deputy director of capabilities, identified publicly as “Elizabeth B.,” wrote in a declaration filed in October.
“NSA senior management is fully aware of this failure, and the Agency is committed to taking swift action to respond to the loss of this data.”
Defiance of a court order can result in civil or criminal contempt charges, as well as sanctions against the party responsible. So far, no one involved appears to have asked White to impose any punishment or sanction on the NSA over the newly disclosed episodes, although the details of what happened are still emerging.
“It’s really disappointing,” said David Greene, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has been leading the prolonged litigation over the program in federal court in San Francisco.
“The obligation’s been in place for a really long time now. … We had a major dust-up about it just a few years ago. This is definitely something that should’ve been found sooner.”
Word of the NSA’s foul-up is emerging just as Congress has extended for six years the legal authority the agency uses for much of its surveillance work conducted through U.S. internet providers and tech firms.
Antiwar activist Justin Raimondo believes that something like a civil war is coming, with the war party Establishment fighting to defend its privileged global order while many other Americans seek a return to normal nationhood with all that implies.
If true, the next few years will see a major internal conflict that will determine what kind of country the United States will be.
via IFTTT
Monday, January 15, 2018
Massive flu outbreak? Here’s the real story the media won’t touch. The lies, the hoax, the scandal.
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
Massive flu outbreak? Here’s the real story the media won’t touch. The lies, the hoax, the scandal.
I covered part of the scandal the other day, but here I’ll give you much more.
By Jon Rappoport
In case you haven’t been following the uproar over the flu outbreak, you’ve missed the fact that…
Health authorities admit this year’s flu vaccine is only 10% effective.
But of course, they urge you to take the vaccine anyway.
Why is this year’s vaccine ineffective? Because it’s made using chicken eggs, and researchers have discovered that the flu virus—which is placed in the vaccine—mutates in chicken eggs.
Therefore, by the time a person takes the flu shot, he’s not being protected against this year’s seasonal flu virus. He’s being protected against a mutated virus that isn’t causing the flu this year.
This is the conventional explanation. If you think it’s the whole story, I have condos for sale on the moon.
You see, vaccines have been made using chicken eggs—not just this year—but for the past 70 years.
Oops.
That would mean the flu vaccine has been ineffective for decades.
Healthline.com: “The majority of flu vaccines are grown in chicken eggs, a method of vaccine development that’s been used for 70 years.”
But wait. There’s more. Much more. I’ll break it down into several scandals.
SCANDAL ONE (I covered this the other day): Dr. Peter Doshi, writing in the online BMJ (British Medical Journal), reveals a monstrosity.
As Doshi states, every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory samples are taken from flu patients in the US and tested in labs. Here is the kicker: only a small percentage of these samples show the presence of a flu virus.
This means: most of the people in America who are diagnosed by doctors with the flu have no flu virus in their bodies.
So they don’t have the flu.
Therefore, even if you assume the flu vaccine is useful and safe, it couldn’t possibly prevent all those “flu cases” that aren’t flu cases.
The vaccine couldn’t possibly work.
The vaccine isn’t designed to prevent fake flu, unless pigs can fly.
Here’s the exact quote from Peter Doshi’s BMJ review, “Influenza: marketing vaccines by marketing disease” (BMJ 2013; 346:f3037):
“…even the ideal influenza vaccine, matched perfectly to circulating strains of wild influenza and capable of stopping all influenza viruses, can only deal with a small part of the ‘flu’ problem because most ‘flu’ appears to have nothing to do with influenza. Every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory specimens are tested across the US. Of those tested, on average 16% are found to be influenza positive.”
“…It’s no wonder so many people feel that ‘flu shots’ don’t work: for most flus, they can’t.”
Because most diagnosed cases of the flu aren’t the flu.
So even if you’re a true believer in mainstream vaccine theory, you’re on the short end of the stick here. They’re conning your socks off.
The basic flu symptoms—cough, fever, chills, sore throat, muscle aches, weakness—can be caused by a variety of factors that have nothing to do with a flu virus.
SCANDAL TWO: In December of 2005, the British Medical Journal (online) published another shocking Peter Doshi report, which created tremors through the halls of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), where “the experts” used to tell the press that 36,000 people in the US die every year from the flu.
Here is a quote from Doshi’s report, “Are US flu death figures more PR than science?” (BMJ 2005; 331:1412):
“[According to CDC statistics], ‘influenza and pneumonia’ took 62,034 lives in 2001—61,777 of which were attributable to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was the flu virus positively identified.”
Boom.
You see, the CDC has created one overall category that combines both flu and pneumonia deaths. Why do they do this? Because they disingenuously assume that the pneumonia deaths are complications stemming from the flu.
This is an absurd assumption. Pneumonia has a number of causes.
But even worse, in all the flu and pneumonia deaths, only 18 revealed the presence of an influenza virus.
Therefore, the CDC could not say, with assurance, that more than 18 people died of influenza in 2001. Not 36,000 deaths. 18 deaths.
Doshi continued his assessment of published CDC flu-death statistics: “Between 1979 and 2001, [CDC] data show an average of 1348 [flu] deaths per year (range 257 to 3006).” These figures refer to flu separated out from pneumonia.
This death toll is obviously far lower than the old parroted 36,000 figure.
However, when you add the sensible condition that lab tests have to actually find the flu virus in patients, the numbers of flu deaths plummet even further.
In other words, it’s all promotion and hype.
“Well, uh, we used to say that 36,000 people die from the flu every year in the US. But actually, all we can prove is about 20 deaths. However, we can’t admit that, because if we did, we’d be exposing our gigantic psyop. The whole campaign to scare people into getting a flu shot would have about the same effect as warning people to carry iron umbrellas, in case toasters fall out of upper-story windows…and, by the way, we’d be put in prison for fraud.”
SCANDAL THREE: The so-called Swine Flu pandemic of 2009. This one is a real eye-opener. The CDC was caught with its pants down.
Swine Flu was hyped to the sky by the CDC. The Agency was calling for all Americans to take the Swine Flu vaccine. Remember?
The problem was, the CDC was concealing a very dirty secret.
At the time, star CBS investigative reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, was working on the Swine Flu story. She discovered that the CDC had secretly stopped counting cases of the illness—while, of course, continuing to warn Americans about its unchecked spread.
Understand that the CDC’s main job is counting cases and reporting the numbers.
What was the Agency up to?
Here is an excerpt from my 2014 interview with Sharyl Attkisson:
Rappoport: In 2009, you spearheaded coverage of the so-called Swine Flu pandemic. You discovered that, in the summer of 2009, the Centers for Disease Control, ignoring their federal mandate, [secretly] stopped counting Swine Flu cases in America. Yet they continued to stir up fear about the “pandemic,” without having any real measure of its impact. Wasn’t that another investigation of yours that was shut down? Wasn’t there more to find out?
Attkisson: The implications of the story were even worse than that. We discovered through our FOI efforts that before the CDC mysteriously stopped counting Swine Flu cases, they had learned that almost none of the cases they had counted as Swine Flu was, in fact, Swine Flu or any sort of flu at all! The interest in the story from one [CBS] executive was very enthusiastic. He said it was “the most original story” he’d seen on the whole Swine Flu epidemic. But others pushed to stop it [after it was published on the CBS News website] and, in the end, no [CBS television news] broadcast wanted to touch it. We aired numerous stories pumping up the idea of an epidemic, but not the one that would shed original, new light on all the hype. It was fair, accurate, legally approved and a heck of a story. With the CDC keeping the true Swine Flu stats secret, it meant that many in the public took and gave their children an experimental vaccine that may not have been necessary.
—end of interview excerpt—
I’ll add a few details. It was routine for doctors all over America to send blood samples from patients they’d diagnosed with Swine Flu, or the “most likely” Swine Flu patients, to labs for testing. And overwhelmingly, those samples were coming back with the result: not Swine Flu, not any kind of flu.
That was the big secret. That’s what the CDC was hiding. That’s why they stopped reporting Swine Flu case numbers. That’s what Attkisson had discovered. That’s why she was shut down.
But it gets even worse.
Because about three weeks after Attkisson’s findings were published on the CBS News website, the CDC, obviously in a panic, decided to double down. If one lie is exposed, tell an even bigger one. A much bigger one.
Here, from a November 12, 2009, WebMD article is the CDC’s response: “Shockingly, 14 million to 34 million U.S. residents — the CDC’s best guess is 22 million — came down with H1N1 swine flu by Oct. 17 [2009].” (“22 million cases of Swine Flu in US,” by Daniel J. DeNoon).
Are your eyeballs popping? They should be.
In the summer of 2009, the CDC secretly stops counting Swine Flu cases in America, because the overwhelming percentage of lab tests from likely Swine Flu patients shows no sign of Swine Flu or any other kind of flu.
There is no Swine Flu epidemic.
Then, the CDC estimates there are 22 MILLION cases of Swine Flu in the US.
So now…when health officials begin waving red flags and raising alarms about a current viral flu outbreak, it would be more than reasonable to demand they answer questions about their past lies and deceptions.
Unless you just want to take them at their word.
If so, good luck.
via IFTTT
His passion for vintage pornography led him to become a Bitcoin millionaire
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
Over the weekend, the New York Times published a satirical article entitled “Everyone is Getting Hilariously Rich and You’re Not.”
That headline perfectly encapsulates the ‘Fear of Missing Out’, or FOMO, that’s so pervasive in cryptocurrency right now.
Just about everyone either knows, or has heard of someone, who’s made an absolute fortune in crypto.
And this plays perfectly to one of the darkest and most basic of human emotions: envy.
The article humorously showcases several Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrency) millionaires, poking fun at the subculture dominated by free-spending millennial 20-somethings who act as if they’re the second coming of capitalism.
A few quotes from the article will give you a sense of it:
“Sometimes I think about what would happen to the future if a bomb went off at one of our meetings. . . [That] bomb would set back civilization for years.”
“[H]is main hobbies were reading 4chan and buying vintage pornography, passions that exposed him to cryptocurrency.”
“He said his holdings are into double-digit millions but wouldn’t give specifics other than to say he’d quit his job and is starting a hedge fund.”
“They talk about buying Lamborghinis, the single acceptable way to spend money in the Ethereum cryptocurrency community.”
“The [ethereum cryptocurrency’s] founder frequently appears in fan art as Jesus with a Lamborghini.”
“And he wears a solid gold Bitcoin “B” necklace encrusted with diamonds that he had made.”
“When I meet people in the normal world now, I get bored.”
“He pointed to his outfit — a long white fake mink coat, gold-heeled shoes — and said, “It’s gold, right? It’s gold.”
Anyhow, you get the idea.
Clearly the author went out of her way to cherry-pick some of the wealthiest crypto millionaires and make her subjects appear juvenile and narcissistic…
This is a gross generalization.
But the perception is still there– it seems like everyone ELSE is spending like drunken sailors from all the money they’ve made in crypto… money that you’re NOT making.
Which brings us back to FOMO– fear of missing out. Or more importantly, what I call “Fear of Missing Out… AGAIN.”
Everybody knows that Bitcoin and Ether went to the moon. And by God they’re not going to miss out on the next one.
So perhaps the most troubling story from the article was of a 56-year old janitor who cleans the seats at the local Cinemark movie theater.
She’s now basically dumped her life’s savings into crypto, rationalizing her decision by saying “something is telling me I can trust this generation.”
Clearly that ‘something’ is her fear of missing out… again. She’s spending time with all of these people who are younger than her kids but have more money than she can dream of.
Between her envy and FOMO, she’s made a monumental financial decision driven by two extremely powerful emotions.
Even some of the wealthy crypto speculators show signs of extreme FOMO.
As a community there seems to be intense peer pressure to NOT sell… to hold one’s crypto holdings until the price reaches some mythical height.
As one young man who allegedly made hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto told the reporter, “All I know is the price of Ether is going to go up.”
Eh… according to your crystal ball?
With such prodigious gains, the rational thing to do would be to take a LOT of money off the table and lock in those profits.
But, hey… FOMO. If the price goes up 10x from here, they’ll miss out on those gains.
So, driven by some irrational belief that they can predict the future, they’re not selling.
That decision-making is as emotional as ‘something is telling me I can trust this generation.’
The lesson I want to highlight again is that emotional decisions tend to be bad decisions.
And these bad decisions often lead to painful outcomes that could have been easily avoided.
Again, I’m not suggesting to NOT buy crypto. Or to sell it.
[In full disclosure, I was a very early adopter of Bitcoin and recently sold roughly $100,000 worth primarily because I found a more productive investment for that capital in the sector. But I still own plenty of crypto and plan on holding the rest until another opportunity arises.]
The main idea is to establish and follow simple rules for yourself: don’t gamble with your savings. You worked long and hard to earn it.
Always make efforts to fully understand anything that you’re investing in… especially the risks.
Be able to make multiple arguments simultaneous, i.e. make the case FOR and AGAINST the investment. Understand both sides.
And most importantly, once you make a decision, only invest whatever amount of money you can literally afford to set on fire.
via IFTTT
Saturday, January 13, 2018
A small Norwegian city might hold the answer to beating the winter blues
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
(Credit: AP)
Many dread the approaching winter — the darkness, frigid weather and lower energy levels that blow in along with cold fronts and snowstorms.
As headlines warn of “bomb cyclones” and cold snaps, most will begrudgingly grit out the winter months, grinding through dreary doldrums of January and February and counting down the days until spring. Some even succumb to seasonal affective disorder, a form of depression that tends to occur at higher rates in colder regions and is hypothesized to be related to the lack of daylight in those regions.
But what about people who live in the coldest parts of the world, where the winters are longest and the summers fleeting? Do they similarly dread the winter? Or could they offer clues about how to avoid the wintertime blues?
In August 2014 I moved to Tromsø, Norway, an island of 70,000 people located over 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Tromsø’s location is so extreme that they experience two months of “polar night” each year — when the sun does not rise above the horizon.
Yet despite the extreme winter conditions, studies have shown that residents of Tromsø do not experience as much seasonal depression and wintertime mental distress as you might expect.
To try to figure out why, I spent 10 months studying how people in Tromsø cope with — and even thrive during — the long, dark winters.
My research led me to a surprising conclusion: perhaps the psychological concept of mindset is the reason for their winter well-being.
After arriving in Tromsø, I was terrified at the thought of the impending winter. Months of friends and family telling me how they could “never move some place so cold and dark” because the winter makes them “so depressed” or “so tired” had me bracing for the worst-case scenario.
But it didn’t take long for me to realize that most residents of Tromsø weren’t viewing the upcoming winter with a sense of doom. In fact, to many locals, the original question I’d planned to ask — “Why aren’t people in Tromsø more depressed during the winter?” — didn’t make sense. Most people I spoke to in Tromsø were actually looking forward to the winter. They spoke enthusiastically about the ski season. They loved the opportunities for coziness provided by the winter months.
As I experienced firsthand Tromsø residents’ unique relationship to winter, a serendipitous conversation with Alia Crum, assistant professor of psychology at Stanford University, inspired me to consider mindset as a factor that might influence Tromsø residents’ sunny perspective of the sunless winter. Crum defines mindsets as the “lenses through which information is perceived, organized and interpreted.” Mindsets serve as an overarching framework for our everyday experiences — and they can profoundly influence how we react in a variety of situations.
Crum’s work has shown that mindsets significantly influence both our physical and mental health in areas as diverse as exercise, stress and diet. For example, according to Crum’s research, individuals can hold the mindset that stress is either debilitating (bad for your health and performance) or enhancing (motivating and performance-boosting). The truth is that stress is both; it can cause athletes to crumble under pressure and lead CEOs to have heart attacks, but it can also sharpen focus and critical thinking, giving athletes, CEOs and the rest of us the attention and adrenaline to succeed in high-pressure situations. According to Crum’s work, instead of the mere presence of stress, it is our mindset about stress — whether or not we perceive it as a help or a hindrance — that contributes most to health, performance and psychological outcomes.
After speaking with Professor Crum, I began to wonder: could it be that residents of Tromsø possess a positive wintertime mindset, which allows them to not only persevere but also thrive during the polar night?
Along with my advisor at the University of Tromsø, Joar Vittersø, I developed a preliminary “Wintertime Mindset Scale” to measure how residents of Tromsø view the winter. The Wintertime Mindset Scale asked our survey participants to agree or disagree with items such as “There are many things to enjoy about the winter,” and “I find the winter months dark and depressing.”
The results of our study in Norway found that having a positive wintertime mindset was associated with greater life satisfaction, willingness to pursue the challenges that lead to personal growth, and positive emotions.
This preliminary study has raised many new questions about the role mindset might play in seasonal wellness. Research indicates that 6% of the US population suffers from seasonal affective disorder, a form of major depression with a recurring seasonal pattern, which most often occurs during the winter months. Another 14% suffer from a lesser pattern of seasonal mood changes known as the “winter blues.”
These statistics are certainly troubling and raise questions about preventing and curing winter depression. But what about the other 80% of the US population? Even excluding residents of sunny regions like Florida and California, the vast majority of Americans who live through the winter every year don’t get seasonal depression.
Our pilot data suggest that the concept of wintertime mindset could add a positive component to the discussion of seasonal well-being, and that mindset may be an important addition to the theoretical and practical discussion of seasonal wellness. However, more research is needed to both refine the Wintertime Mindset Scale and further validate these initial findings.
Back on the US East Coast for the holidays, the chill in the air and the early nightfall already had some of my friends and family grumbling. But I was able to convince at least some of them to find what they love about winter and lean into it; looking at winter as an opportunity rather than a burden can help people enjoy all that the season has to offer.
I pointed out that Norwegians embrace the idea of koselig, or “coziness” — that making the conscious effort to light candles and fires, drink warm beverages and snuggle under blankets can be enjoyable and relaxing.
And taking the time to bundle up and get outside even in the worst weather can help you feel like winter isn’t limiting your opportunities for recreation. Norwegians have a saying that “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing,” which typifies their ingrained belief that being active is part of a happy life — and, especially, a happy winter.
Kari Leibowitz, Ph.D. candidate in Psychology, Stanford University
via IFTTT
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
Australia Must Rescue Assange From The Establishment Which Tortured Manning
ORIGINAL LINK
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
via IFTTT
Private Manning was tortured. As sure as if they’d strapped her down and set upon her flesh with fire and steel, she was tortured.
United Nations special rapporteur on torture Juan E. Mendez stated unequivocally that Manning’s treatment at the hands of the US government during her imprisonment was “cruel, inhuman and degrading,” and 295 legal scholars signed a letter declaring that she was being “detained under degrading and inhumane conditions that are illegal and immoral.”
Humans, like all primates, are evolutionarily programmed to be social animals, which is why solitary confinement causes our systems to become saturated in distress signals as real as pain or fear. Studies have shown that fifteen days of this draconian practice causes permanent psychological damage. Manning was in solitary confinement for nearly a year.
Manning attempted suicide in July of 2016. To punish her for her attempt to end her misery, they tortured her some more. She attempted suicide again three months later.
Julian Assange's stay in London embassy untenable, says Ecuador https://t.co/MwuXC9o2ni
The same sadistic regime which inflicted these horrors upon Manning has during the current administration prioritized the arrest of WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange, and the international arms of the US power establishment have been working to facilitate that aim. The Guardian reports that Ecuador’s foreign minister is now saying Assange’s continued stay in the nation’s London embassy has become “untenable” and is seeking international mediation, to which a spokesman for the UK government has responded that “The government of Ecuador knows that the way to resolve this issue is for Julian Assange to leave the embassy to face justice.”
Justice. A government whose international operations are uniformly indistinct from America’s wants Assange to leave political asylum and trust his life to an international power establishment that tortures whistleblowers in order to face “justice”.
Julian Assange isn’t hiding from justice, he’s hiding from injustice. What sane human being wouldn’t? Time after time after time we are shown that whistleblowers, leakers, and those who facilitate them are not shown anything remotely resembling justice by this depraved Orwellian establishment. Which is why Australia must intervene and protect him.
UK refuses Ecuadorian offer of mediation "The Government of Ecuador knows that the way to resolve this issue is for Julian Assange to leave the embassy to face justice." Background: https://t.co/hGuxp0Jos4 https://t.co/nHjp0JCQgT
Julian Assange is an Australian citizen. He is being arbitrarily detained. He has committed no crimes. His arrest is being openly pursued by a government that tortures whistleblowers. The government of the embassy that he has stayed at for the last five and a half years is seeking international mediation. What more reason do you need?
At some point, my fellow Australians, we are going to sorely regret not insisting on our own national sovereignty. Being Washington’s basement gimp will only imperil us. Today it’s Assange, but tomorrow it will be you or someone you know. The next senseless war the Americans start (and you know it’s coming) will kill our sons and daughters, our nieces and nephews, our husbands and wives, and fill our country with another generation of darkened souls and broken minds unless we cease participating in the global domination scheme of the US-centralized oligarchs.
We have everything we need here and our borders couldn’t be easier to defend. We don’t need to put up with Canberra’s endless sycophancy to Washington anymore. If we can’t protect our own citizen from injustice and torture after all he did was tell the truth, we are not a real country. Might as well ask America for statehood so at least we can get representation in their fake congress and votes in their fake elections.
Being a defense/intelligence asset to a foreign government which has never had our interests at heart isn’t serving us. We haven’t even pretended to be our own country since Whitlam, and it needs to change. It’s either follow the Americans off the cliff this trajectory inevitably leads over, or restore our national sovereignty to the point where at the very least we can protect our own citizens from arbitrary detention and torture.
Come on, Aussie.
______________
Thanks for reading! My work here is entirely reader-funded so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, bookmarking my website, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying my new book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2via IFTTT
Decades Later, One of the Biggest Environmental Disasters In US History Continues Harm Generations
ORIGINAL LINK
via IFTTT
In 1973, one of the biggest environmental disasters in US history occurred in St. Louis, Michigan. It continues to haunt many today, and ill-effects are being felt not only by those directly affected, but also by their children and grandchildren. Yet, most people haven’t heard of this environmental disaster, and many of the people who are affected by it—through ill-health of various types of cancer, birth defects, autoimmune diseases, etc.—don’t realize that their ill-health is due to this environmental disaster that happened more than 40 years ago.
The environmental disaster, which resulted in a human health disaster, that I’m referring to is the contamination of tons of animal feed with a fire-retardant chemical called PBB (polybrominated biphenyl). PBB is a highly toxic endocrine disrupting chemical, which dissolves in fat and persists in human and animal bodies for decades. It also persists in the environment, and continues to cause harm long after direct exposure has ceased.
In 1973, the Michigan Chemical Corporation (MCC) produced both Firemaster, a PBB flame-retardant, and Nutrimaster, a magnesium-based agricultural feed additive. Human error led to the two being mixed-up:
“MCC had a system where each product was safely packaged in color-coded sacks, so there were no chances of mistakes being made. The system worked well until early 1973, when an inventory supply problem led to a temporary shortage of color-coded sacks, and plain sacks had to be used instead. By coincidence, a new formulation of Firemaster was being trialed at the same time, and this new formulation was almost identical to Nutrimaster in appearance. Murphy’s law came into full effect, and a truckload of the reformulated Firemaster was inadvertently delivered to Michigan’s largest cattle and poultry feed manufacturer. By the time the mistake was discovered, poisoned animal feed had already been distributed to farmers statewide and had been fed to their livestock.” (source)
1.5 million chickens, 30,000 cattle, 5,900 pigs, and 1,470 sheep then consumed this feed, became contaminated with PBBs. Thousands of cattle, pigs, sheep, and chickens died horrible, painful deaths, and many more were euthanized. This excerpt from the film, Cattlegate, shows the toll that the PBB mix-up had on animals and their human keepers:
Before the mix-up was discovered, hundreds of contaminated cattle and chickens were slaughtered, and their meat was used for human consumption. Milk from contaminated dairy-cows was also consumed by humans. When the PBBs got into the human food-chain, more than 8 million people, mainly in Michigan, consumed PBB-contaminated meat and dairy, and the mix-up transformed from an environmental disaster to a human-health disaster.
“Initial data gathered from the PBB cohort study revealed other health problems among the hundreds of families and thousands of individuals recruited. Like other infamous toxicants such as bisphenol A and dioxin, PBB is classified as an endocrine disruptor, meaning that it interferes with the body’s array of natural hormones. Growing concern about endocrine disruptors since the 1990s has spurred an avalanche of research linking these chemicals to thyroid problems, diabetes, obesity, fertility problems, changes in pubertal development, and hormone-sensitive cancers such as breast and prostate cancer.” (source)
Many of the health problems caused by PBB exposure didn’t emerge immediately. The health issues listed in the quote above—thyroid problems, diabetes, obesity, fertility problems, changes in pubertal development, and hormone-sensitive cancers such as breast and prostate cancer—take time to develop. Just as worrisome as the time-bomb of diseases caused by direct PBB exposure, are the epigenetic consequences of PBB exposure. The children, and maybe future grandchildren, of people exposed to PBB appear to have worse health outcomes than the children of people who haven’t been exposed to PBB. (The extent of the health differences between the offspring of people exposed to PBB and people not exposed to PBB is still being studied.) There are harrowing stories from people who were exposed to PBB, and who had children who were exposed to PBB in-utero, including this comment:
“My first wife was pregnant with our second child at the time of the cover up. My wife, following doctor’s instructions, was on a fairly high fat diet including lots of milk, cheese and other dairy foods. Our child was a full term stillborn with massive deformities including spina bifida, sexual ambiguity, and a unformed skull bone that was open.” (source)
The people who lived in Northern Michigan in 1973, especially those in the agricultural communities near the MCC Plant, likely know whether or not they were directly exposed to PBB at the time, and many, like the commenter above, tell harrowing stories of the effects of PBBs on the health of their children. They should be believed, no matter how difficult it is to quantify the epigenetic effects of an environmental disaster that occurred more than 40 years ago. Additionally, anyone who suffers from the diseases associated with exposure to PBBs and other endocrine disrupting persistent organic pollutants, including but not limited to, thyroid problems, diabetes, obesity, fertility problems, changes in pubertal development, and hormone-sensitive cancers such as breast and prostate cancer, should question whether they, their parents, or even their grandparents, were exposed to PBB. PBBs got into the food-supply, and many people ate PBB-contaminated meat and dairy products without realizing that they had been exposed.
Another reason that people today should be concerned about the PBB disaster of 1973 is that PBBs are PERSISTENT organic pollutants, “a large class of compounds that includes chemicals like DDT, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and dioxins that resist being broken down in the body and the environment” (source). Persistent organic pollutants resist natural processes of decay and essentially never biodegrade. They move around the environment, in air and in water, and they move up and down the food-chain as they are consumed, the consuming animal dies, and they are consumed again. They tend to accumulate in the bodies of carnivores, and in the polar regions of the world, causing the most damage in the top predators, especially the top predators in the polar regions. Persistent organic pollutants can be contained, but inadequate measures to contain PBBs have been taken. Many of the euthanized animals that were directly harmed by PBBs were incinerated—sending PBB molecules into the air, and it is unknown where they landed. Other euthanized animals were buried, and though burial is one of the better ways of containing persistent organic pollutants, it is imperfect, as the animals’ bodies disintegrated and the PBBs seeped into the water table.
The harmful effects of persistent endocrine disrupting pollutants is described in the wonderful book, Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story, where it is noted that:
“Much of the concern about hormonally active synthetic chemicals arises from the persistence that many of them have in the environment. Many don’t readily degrade into benign components. A generation after industrial countries stopped the production of the most notorious of these persistent chemicals, their legacy endures in food and in human and animal bodies. Some will be in the environment for decades, and in a few cases even centuries.”
Shortly after the uncovering of the disastrous mix-up at the MCC Plant, the use of PBBs was discontinued in America. However, their harmful legacy continues, and the children and grandchildren of those affected by the PBB disaster continue to experience ill-health related to their exposure. Because of the persistence of PBBs, the ill-effects they caused didn’t end when they stopped being manufactured. The release of tons of PBBs directly into the human food-supply in 1973 is still causing health problems for those exposed, and likely for many people who don’t realize that they have been exposed. The legacy of the PBB disaster is ongoing, and will likely continue for many decades, if not centuries. It is one of the most significant environmental and human health disasters of modern times, yet too few people know about it. When it comes to endocrine disrupting persistent organic pollutants, ignorance isn’t bliss, and though there’s not a lot that people can do to mitigate exposure, knowledge is empowering. The PBB disaster had far-reaching consequences—consequences that continue to haunt us today.
Sources
https://undark.org/article/pbb-michigan-epigenetics/
http://michiganradio.org/post/researchers-find-serious-health-effects-toxic-pbb-mix-michigan
http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/05/velsicol_superfund_st_louis_pb.html
via IFTTT
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)