Codex meetings are expensive to attend. They are expensive to reach and expensive to stay, eat and get to and from on the ground. The other countries we visit to further the Natural Solutions Foundation’s relationship building and assistance to the emerging Health Freedom Consortium Members are also expensive to get to and stay in. If you value the Natural Solutions Foundation’s efforts and successes at Codex, click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to make your donation to help defray the cost of this expensive, but utterly necessary, presence at Codex.
Thanks,
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
The expenses shown here are for modest accommodations, meals without alcohol and public transportation and taxis.
Lodging
Cape Town, where the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) will be held will be at the Southern Sun Cape Sun Hotel, Cape Town, South Africa. Average daily prices for a two person room (breakfast included) are about $95 per person. Total: $2010 plus taxes
Lodging in the other cities we will vist will cost $2191 per person plux taxes Total: $2191 plus
taxes
Lodging Total Before Tax: $4201 plus tax. Assuming tax @ 20%, Lodging total After Tax: $5041
Airfare
Airfare has been calculated on the basis of business class on long trips, economy on short ones. Since the transportation portion of the trip takes more than 120 hours in airplanes and airports if there are no delays, the type of travel accommodations is very important. General Bert is 78 years old and, while he is in outstanding health, 30 hours for a long legged person like the General is literally torture in economy class seats. General Bert broke his hip skiing in 2001 and cannot walk after being cramped for that many hours in a small space. Flying business class means that when we arrive, General Bert can walk during the next three days. Economy class means that he cannot. Therefore, long flights need to be business class while short ones of 4 hours or less can be economy class.
Airfare Per Person Including Taxes: $ 8816.88
Total Airfare Including Taxes: $17633.76
Foodd
Food cost estimates are based on research into the average cost of meals in each city on our itinerary. The cost per person is Food Costs Per Person $1185
Total Food Costs: $2370
Transportation and Miscellaneous
Transportation: $350
Miscellaneous: $150
Total Transportation and Miscellaneous: $500
Visa Expenses
Total Visa-Related Expenses per Person $225
Total Visa-Related Expenses: $550
Total
Total Per Person: $11337.38
Grand Total: $22,674.76
To repeat the obvious, if you value the Natural Solutions Foundation’s efforts and successes at Codex, click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to make your donation to help defray the cost of this expensive, but utterly necessary, presence at Codex.
Natural Solutions Foundation eAlert
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org www.Organics4U.org www.NaturalSolutionsMarketplace.org
September 30, 2008
http://drrimatruthreports.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=1080
IMPORTANT HEALTH FREEDOM INFORMATION PLEASE FORWARD VERY WIDELY
Important Action Alerts In This Issue
Can You Afford Not to Read This?
NOT SUBSCRIBED TO HEALTH FREEDOM eALERTS YET?
CLICK HERE TO BECOME A Health Freedom Warrior
http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=187
FOUR IMPORTANT ACTION ALERTS IN THIS ISSUE!
1. GMO Labeling and Safety http://tinyurl.com/5fpj4d
2. No Restrictions on Nutritional Free Speech http://tinyurl.com/53oarc
3. Permit Information Supported by Science about Health http://tinyurl.com/3pfyyc
4. Permit Truthful Health Claims for Dietary Supplements http://tinyurl.com/3xwmjm
Index for This eAlert:
1. REGULATIONS AND LICENSING RULES BEING USED AS A DEPOPULATION TOOL!
2. GMO LABELING AND SAFETY, FREE SPEECH AND TRUTHFUL HEALTH INFORMATION CAN ALL BE OURS IF WE ACT! SIX EXCELLENT CONGRESSIONAL BILLS NEED OUR SUPPORT
3. EAT LOCALLY, FIGHT GLOBALLY – VALLEY OF THE MOON COFFEE HELPING PANAMA COFFEE GO ORGANIC!
4. PAINLESS GIVING IN A DRASTICALLY ILL ECONOMY
5.NATURAL SOLUTIONS FOUNDATION GOES TO DC CODEX MEETING. SHALL WE GO TO AFRICA? IT’S UP TO YOU.
6. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE QUESTIONNAIRE
7. WEAPONIZED AVIAN FLU SMOKING GUN? PRESS RELEASE CENSORED – AGAIN!
NJ Dietitian Licensing Gags Others’ Free Speech, Stifles Nutrition Information – to Make You Sicker Longer, and Help You Die Sooner?
It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if you want people to be sick as long as possible, and as profitably as possible, you would want to make sure that they do not know how to stay well?
If you are Big Pharma, or work for them and do their bidding, you will want to criminalize, that’s right, criminalize, telling people about how they can use natural options, like nutrition, to get healthy and stay that way. So what do you do? You convince/buy/rent/bribe state regulators and legislators to do what New Jersey is trying to do right now by passing NJ Assembly Bill A2933 / Senate Bill S1941.
While 46 other states have some sort of Dietitian’s licensing law, New Jersey is trying (like Ohio and a few others) to make Registered Dietitians (RDs) the ONLY people, that’s right, the ONLY ones who can discuss food, food components, nutrition, health benefits and other food related concepts and practices with anyone at all under just about any circumstances (“with or without compensation…”). RDs are the people responsible for the diets served in hospitals, nursing homes and other similar institutions. The pitiful lack of nutritional support and sophistication, to say nothing of life sustaining nutrition, in those feeding situations should make the point all by itself: Whatever it is that RDs do, it is NOT about the advanced nutrition upon which so many of you rely.
If this bad bill passes the Legislature (it has already passed the Assembly committee), nutrition will belong to these untrained people who will be responsible for something called “Medical nutritional therapy” which, according to the statute, means “nutritional diagnostic, therapeutic and counseling services for the purpose of disease management.”
Now, I know that I am only a physician practicing drug free psychiatry and medicine, much of it nutritionally based, for nearly 40- years. I would however, very much appreciate it if someone would please enlighten me what qualifies RDs to practice disease management through nutritional diagnostic, therapeutic or counseling services? Say what? But no one else in a state with this type of law may use the word nutrition, nutritionist, nutrition counselor or similar terms without violating the licensing monopoly and provisions of this statue and this profession. Naturopaths, Biochemists, Nutritionists, Environmental and other Physicians, and all others, would be legally prohibited from discussing food or nutrition with people who need or seek this knowledge.
So give nutritional counseling, disease management, diagnostic evaluations and interpretations and therapy to a group of people whose professional activities make it clear that they are deeply ill-suited for this responsibility and you have a guarantee that people will get sicker sooner and stay sicker longer to the abundant profit of the professional illness care industry, created as a distribution system for the left-overs of the Rockefeller oil empire. Remember that when the allopathic medical system was created, most drugs were coal-tar derivatives, that is, chemicals made from the goo left over when petroleum processing was completed. Rockefeller did not believe that the internal combustion engine would consume his output and he wanted to find a productive use for the left-overs.
This is absolutely consistent with Codex and the FDA’s persistent attempts to prohibit the dissemination of any information which links food and food components (including supplements) with health. If you are old enough, you will recall that before the unanimous passage by the US Congress of the 1994 Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act (DSHEA), it was literally illegal to combine the words “Food” and “Health” in the same sentence or on a sign like “Health Food Store”. FDA Marshals would break down such signs and burned such books. Yes, here in the US.
Well, when special interests in Congress tried to make ALL dietary and food supplements illegal, the American public rose up and roared “NO!” with such force that the Congress did an about face and passed the legislation which treats supplements as foods and, as such, as not subject to close regulation. DSHEA is certainly not perfect legislation, but it did give us the right to have whatever dose of whatever supplements we want.
It also gave us the right, which we also have through the First Amendment of the Constitution of These United States, to truthful information about the impact of food and food components on health and the benefits to be derived from them.
The FDA, however, was not deterred in its determination to make sure that you do not have that information. Both domestically, through regulation of so called “health claims” and in Codex through regulation of “advertising” and “health claims”, the FDA still seeks to make it a crime, yes, a crime, for anyone to tell you about the health benefits, supported by science.
47 States (if New Jersey joins their ranks), will also limit speech telling you what helps and what heals. That way, your eating patterns will not reflect healthy choices based on scientific information and you will develop the chronic, preventable epidemic degenerative diseases of under nutrition, as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO): cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity.
The same five diseases are the major killers of those of us who live in the US, Europe and other developed parts of the world. The same diseases are becoming endemic wherever the American diet becomes prevalent. And, of course, it will come as no surprise to you that cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity are the five most productive disease conditions for the illness care industry, keeping hospitals and doctors and, most important, drug companies, afloat and very, very economically buoyant.
You will remember that in my lecture ” Nutricide”
(http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5266884912495233634 )
I defined that word as –
1. The death of the body of information about the relationship between health and food and
2. The death of large populations through the manipulation of the quality and availability of food.
You can view that lecture for free on our website, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org , our YouTube channel, http://Youtube.com/naturalsolutions or our special media page, www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.TV.
You can purchase this informative and important disc ( http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=156 ) which also includes a lecture on how to take action by General Stubblebine and a special discussion with two experienced attorney om how the Codex Two Step Process can be used to protect any country in the world against any of the disastrous and ill-advised standards and guidelines created by Codex. Of course, the Codex eBook (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=220 ) is an example of how that Two Step Process works and can be app and is the same document presented to Codex delegates, Ministers of Health and other government officials and heads of state all over the world by the Natural Solutions Foundation.
Congress to the Rescue, Three at a Time
Three members of Congress have taken brave and critically important steps to protect the rights that New Jersey, 46 other states and the FDA are all trying to take away from you. Denis Kucinich (D-OH), Ron Paul (R-TX) and Chris Cannon (R-UT) are on our side with 6 bills of great importance to you.
Your Congressmen and women need to know that these issues are hot buttons for you that you care enough about to write to them on and to mobilize your friends and contacts to do the same. These are deeply important issues.
You know that we spend a good deal of effort bringing your concerns to the US Congress and asking you to do the same through powerful and high-impact Action Alerts. Right now there are at least 6 good bills before Congress to protect your right to know and your right to speak/write/learn about the science of food and health! It is essential that you take a moment to send your Congressmen and women your urgent direction to support mandatory safety assessment and labeling of GM foods here in the US as other countries in the world, NOW INCLUDING SOUTH AFRICA!, require.
Here is a summary of Rep. Kucinich’s exceptionally important GMO safety and labeling bills:
• H.R. 6636, The Genetically Engineered Food Right To Know Act would require mandatory labeling of all foods that contain or are produced with GM material. No such labeling is permitted at this time in the US and the FDA even seeks to forbid truthful “GM Free” labeling!
• H.R. 6635, The Genetically Engineered Safety Act would require that GE foods follow a food safety review process to prevent contamination of food supplies by pharmaceutical and industrial crops. This Act would also require that the FDA screen all GE foods to ensure they are safe for human consumption. No such safety review is permitted at this time in the US.
• H.R. 6637, The Genetically Engineered Technology Farmer Protection Act, places liability from the impacts of GM crops on the biotechnology companies that created the GMOs, and protects farmers from lawsuits by biotechnology companies. No such liability exists at this time for pharmaceutical plants and animals once approval is granted by the acting agencies for the organism and the same is true for non drug modifications as well.
Click http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25920 to pressure your Congressional legislators to support and co-sponsor Denis Kucinich’s 3 excellent bills mandating safety studies and labeling for Genetically Modified foods. let your legislators know that you want their co-sponsorship now. It’s us against the Bio Tech industry, I am afraid. They have money. We have voices. Let’s use them!
If you would like to learn more about the dangers of GM foods (and there are many), go to www.HealthFreedomUSA.org , click on the Health Freedom Blog button (second button down on left), then click on GMOs on the right hand index and you will be in the Natural Solutions Foundation’s extensive Health Freedom Blog GM Files.
In addition, there are two other excellent bills (one sponsored by Ron Paul (R-TX) and one by Chris Cannon (R-UT)) before Congress which protect your right to know about the relationship between health and food! Sad that we need these protections, but how wonderful that some heroes in Congress is willing to go toe to toe with the powerful, but woefully dysfunctional and destructive FDA!
Both Ron Paul (R-TX) and Chris Cannon (R-UT) are deeply concerned about your constitutional and personal right to have accurate health information. Both of them have introduced bills to protect those rights and freedoms. They need your help.
Rep. Ron Paul introduced HR 2117, the Health Freedom Protection Ac. Click http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dvknc7z_183gtpwt5nh” to read Congressman Cannon’s Science Free Speech Act, HR 7120 and http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.00a10d0c-947d-43a0-ab30-ab9f7bc222ff ) to read his very important and articulate “Dear Colleague” letter and attachments which document how irrational and destructive the FDA’s lopsided war on supplements and truthful statements has become. Then click here (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26028) to urge your legislators to become co-sponsors and vote for this bill.
THIS IS NO TIME FOR THE FAINT OF HEART
Click http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25920 ) to pressure your Congressional legislators to support and co-sponsor Denis Kucinich’s 3 excellent bills mandating safety studies and labeling for Genetically Modified foods. If you would like to learn more about the dangers of GM foods (and there are many),
1. Go to www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
2. Click on the Health Freedom Blog button (second button down on left)
3. Click on GMOs on the right hand index and you will be in the Natural Solutions Foundation’s extensive Health Freedom Blog GM Files.
Mouse Warriors! The Time For Action is Here
Free speech, freedom, your health and the free flow of information are at stake.
Take action and tell everyone you know to do the same. It is our freedoms and our health which are at stake. Nothing less.
EAT LOCALLY, FIGHT GLOBALLY
VALLEY OF THE MOON TM COFFEE COULD HELP CENTRAL AMERICAN COFFEE GO ORGANIC!
As you may know, General Bert and I are based in Panama right now in order to bring the Natural Solutions Foundation’s Valley of the Moon TM Eco Community Demonstration Project, complete with its BeyondOrganicâ„¢, BioDynamic, Zero Emissions Farm and Farm School, natural health treatment and spa, homes and hotel facilities, community center, to birth and reality. If you are interested in this profound development of the Foundation’s International Decade of Nutrition, visit www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org. Or better yet, come visit us here in beautiful, bountiful, temperate Volcan!
We are literally reclaiming food production for people and for farmers who feed them. That is, after all, a large part of the Mission of the Foundation’s International Decade of Nutrition.
We selected Panama for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the extraordinary fertility of the land in the beautiful, bountiful, temperate Chiriqui Highlands and the stability of the government and economic system here. But Panama is not paradise and there are laws which are not very forward looking, like the official definition of electromagnetic safety: if you are more than 6 meters – 18 feet! – from the base of a cell tower, you are “safe,” by definition. The fact that Sweden says that the first level of danger exists in a circle with a diameter of 3 km around a cell tower means nothing here: 18 feet and that’s that.
So imagine our horror when a neighbor came by to ask us if we would come to a meeting about a huge cell tower being built literally down the street from us. Of course we would. Although most of the meeting was conducted in Spanish, we made out enough to understand that this tower was one of 400 being built across Panama for a new cell system. We gave our advice on how to organize this community against the cell tower, including using Youtube.com to get the word out.
Well, I am proud to tell you that through our joint efforts, the cell tower will not be finished! The 10 children under 5 within about 200 feet of the tower’s base do not have to worry that their immune systems will be crushed under the continuous toxic energy output of the tower! And neither do we! Our tactics and collaboration stopped the construction!
Local action with clever tactics, joined hands, raised voices and determination can work near miracles.
Eat/Act/Organize Locally: Consider the Big Picture and Be Part Of It!
That’s what the Natural Solutions Foundation does. And we are proud that you are doing it with us.
There’s another side to this community development. Coffee. Now I love coffee and so does General Bert. In fact, we travel with a supply of organic coffee and a coffee press so that we can have some clean, bracing brew every single morning. Given where we go on Codex business, it is a small comfort that means a lot to us. But that is not why we are talking coffee here.
We came to Panama to accomplish the development of a seed community and one of the first things we learned was that coffee, the “black gold of Central America”, is regularly poisoned by synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and, most of all, fungicides. Fertilizers can be replaced by more effective, fish meal and compost plus nutrient minerals. The farmers know how to eliminate the herbicides like glyphosate (Roundup TM) – use a machete to trim the grass under the coffee trees.
They know how to avoid pesticides: use pepper spray and other natural pest control. What they do not know how to avoid is fungicides since the devastating fungus ‘Ojo de Gallo,’ (Mycena citricolor) “eye of the rooster”, destroys their crops at a disastrous level. In fact, in Costa Rica, 50% of the crop is destroyed each year by this coffee plant plague.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/188/427124756_cf202d7944.jpg?v=0
Healthy Coffee on the branch
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/175/430889935_af23bc77fa.jpg?v=0
Leaves infected with Ojo de Gallo
Well, I am a natural physician and have treated mold in people for a long time. I think I know how to do that pretty well so I set a goal for us of finding a natural, wholesome and organic way of curing this problem for ever and sharing our solution to their problem with the farmers in the coffee trade. We personally, General Bert and I, bought a small coffee finca so that we could experiment without threatening the livelihood of subsistence farmers until we had perfected our method. After all, if a farmer’s kids will go hungry because we don’t have our formula quite right this year and his crop is destroyed in spite of our experiment, that would not be acceptable to any of us. We are here to help, not harm. So we decided to experiment on our own farm. The experiment is going really, really well!
Coffee Trees Bearing Fruit for Sustainable Organic Pleasure and Elimination of Chemicals!
Imagine our delight and joy when we learned that there is a “campesino”, a farmer, here who is already doing the very thing that we thought would take us several years to perfect: he is using totally natural means which he has developed to control, to kill, to eliminate ojo de gallo! We went to see him as soon as we could arrange a visit. We found a very smart, very poor farmer who had figured it out and was making the stuff to spray on the plants AND the fertilizer to feed them. That’s the good news. We said, “Why aren’t you the richest man in Panama?” Then he told us the bad news: he makes the fungus control spray in a plastic 55 gallon drum, one 55 gallon drum at a time. He’s hand crafting this magic, natural elixir because he is too poor to make any more at one time!
We agreed with each other that we could bring exposure and dissemination to his wonderful innovation and he could bring experience and the secret formula to our foundation’s determination to find natural solutions like this one to the problems that keep food contaminated and keep farmers poor.
He agreed to make enough to treat our coffee farm (we are paying him for the material, of course) and we went to see how it was working last week. It is working beautifully. We have to see what happens through the harvest, which is starting now, but what a beginning! In fact, I just learned a few minutes ago that we have harvested 3 latas (@ 32 lbs each) of our own Valley of the MoonTM Coffee harvest! We’ll be roasting and grinding and bagging it for you soon. Every bean is chemical free, treated with love and nature’s own tools for health. AND in spite of the fact that there is a labor shortage, we now have 4 workers ready to pick. Our first task is to improve the camp and hygienic facilities and we have begun that today!
If you are a coffee drinker (or use it for detox purposes – or both!) you will want some of our wonderful, chemical free, high altitude specialty Panamanian coffee, produced with the help of the world-renowned Hartmann family, you can have some! If you are a coffee drinker, you’ll love it. If you are giving it as a gift to coffee lovers, they will love it and thank you. You can do your Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanza/etc. shopping early this year. By November we will have our extraordinary coffee, from our own Valley of the MoonTM Coffee Finca available for you and your holiday gift giving! You’ll be able to drink your support for health freedom!
Click http://drrimatruthreports.com /index.php?page_id=189 to order as many ½ pound (500 g) bags of this wonderful gift to yourself and every coffee lover on your gift list. Every bag comes with a certificate to let you know what you are buying and what we are doing with the donation that goes with every bag of high altitude, chemical free coffee. Right now, while our web master is away on vacation, we don’t have a special page to order your coffee through set up yet so every donation in multiples of $25 will be considered a coffee donation unless you tell us differently.
We’ll send you a confirming email to let you tell us whether you meant to give us a straight donation or a donation WITH coffee attached. We’ll also be asking for your shipping addresses. But just as soon as Julian, our webmaster, is back from vacation we’ll have a separate page up for coffee orders. Bear with us, please, but do get your order in early: Valley of the MoonTM chemical free coffee production is limited to our one small finca [farm]!
Each bag allows you to make a substantial tax exempt donation to the Natural Solutions Foundation – $20 donation for your purchase price of $25. As I am fond of saying, Valley of the MoonTM is the only coffee in the world that Uncle Sam pays you to drink! Buy 4 bags or more and we’ll throw in the shipping free.
What a gift! Valley of the MoonTM – A little taste of heaven in a cup! Your mornings are going to be a lot better from now on!
Click http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189 ) to order your Valley of the Moon Coffee TM and support the most effective health freedom organization in the world! Your donation to support health freedom can put clean, chemical free premium Panamanian coffee in your cut! Now that’s a deal! Order yours now and get the health freedom coffee, Valley of the Moon TM
And while you are at it, why not make your recurring donation here: http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189 ) to the Natural Solutions Foundation? It’s completely tax deductible and your health freedoms are worth it, even when the economy is shaky! When you go to our Donations Page, you will find several ways to help. We’ve even joined a new system that lets you donate the little left-over amounts from gift cards.
Click http://www.donatemycard.com/index-2.php?cid=12″> http://www.donatemycard.com/index-2.php?cid=12 ) to learn more. Those small amounts on Starbucks, TJ Max, Sears and other gift cards sure can add up – painlessly. Why not use them to help your favorite humanitarian charity along? Us!
Oh, by the way, there is an impenetrable wall between donations/contributions for the Panama project and the donations/contributions for our other health freedom work in the US and abroad. If you want to donate or contribute for the Panama project or become a participant, please contact Ralph Fucetola, ralph.fucetola@usa.net, to discuss how to do that using money, assets, securities, precious metals or IRA / 401k accounts.
In addition to being able to visit or live on the site of our wonderful, clean Eco Community, you will also be able, through the Beneficial Interest Certificates generated by donations, to reap the financial rewards of our success.
Please visit our website, www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org , to learn more or contact Ralph Fucetola for more information and answers to specific questions.
Going to Codex (or Maybe Not!) — It’s Up To You
Speaking of our Co-Trustee Ralph, you can read his Vitamin Lawyer Health Freedom Blog entry about his trip last week to Washington to attend the US Codex Delegation meeting, with links to a copy of our White Paper comments he submitted to the Delegates on behalf of the Foundation, telling them in no uncertain terms that we expect the US Delegation to Codex to conform to US law — we do not want our freedoms “HARMonized” to international restrictions!
It’s easy to find the Health Freedom Blogs. Just Google “Health Freedom Blog” and you will find my Health Freedom Blog and Ralph’s Blog in the #1 and #2 position… we’re there because of your support!
The blog entry: http://vitaminlawyerhealthfreedom.blogspot.com/2008/09/us-codex-delegation-upbraded-for.html
Our comments to the Codex Delegation: http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?p=1059
With your support we sent Ralph to Washington last week. But right now, because of the combination of economic chaos and the election cycle, our donations are painfully low. So low, in fact, that unless we get an infusion of money, we will not be able to attend the next Codex meeting. It’s a very important one in a very important location: late October – early November the Codex Committee on Nutritional Foods for Speacial Dietary Uses (CCNFSDU) meets in South Africa.
Since the Foundation was formed in 2004 we have attended about 4 Codex meetings abroad and several in the US per year, offering the only real voice for health and freedom in the Codex context. Due to the state of the economy, our donations this quarter are less than 1/3 what they were last year at this time. Without your generous emergency help we will not be able to go to the Codex meeting this time, leaving no one to represent your views and leaving your voices unheard.
PLEASE, PLEASE, make any donation you can afford to help us NOW. We attended the Codex meeting in Ottawa, Canada last May because of the generous support of a family who donated $20,000 to cover our expenses. Without large or small donations to add up to what we need, we simply cannot attend this vitally important Codex meeting in Africa, where so much of our work is bearing fruit.
Donate ( http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189 ) IF you care about what happens at Codex. We are ready to go. But you need to send us.
Presidential Candidates’ Health Freedom Questionnaire
Hey, Senators Obama, Biden and McCain and Gov. Palin, Where Do YOU Stand on Health Freedom? The Public Wants to Know!
Back when there were 16 Presidential hopefuls, the Natural Solutions Foundation sent a detailed, 19 item to all 16 candidates asking for the candidate’s stands on mandatory vaccination, medical privacy, “HARMonization” of US laws and regulations with Codex and other critically important health freedom issues. Only one candidate, Ron Paul, responded in full to our questions. Others, including Obama, promised to respond but never did despite more than 93,000 people faxing them with our questions — or never responded at all.
This time around, there are only 4 major party candidates [for President and Vice President], plus the candidates of what Dr. Ron Paul has called the “four principled third parties.” So instead of faxing, we are sending each candidate, plus Ron Paul, who has very clear thoughts on health freedom, our updated questionnaire and will report their response, or lack thereof, to you.
Read the Natural Solutions Foundation’s Presidential/Vice Presidential Health Freedom Questionnaire here: http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?p=1068″ ( http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?p=1068 ). After all, we reason, the man or woman occupying the White House will have massive influence on legislation and regulation through appointments, veto power, arm twisting and deal making which go with the office. And the ripple effect to other countries will be significant as well. We want to know the Candidates’ positions and we are sure you do, too. Stay tuned!
Weaponized Avian Flu “Smoking Gun” Surfaces Months After the Events.
Our Press Release is Censored!
Every time the Natural Solutions Foundation makes a connection that the Powers that Be (PTB) do not want made, we either find our website shut down, the system it is housed on knocked off line or our information censored.
This time a press release we wrote was censored to keep it off the web , as others have been, by a news service. That tells us that the smoking gun we think we may have found concerning the weaponisation of BOTH the Avian Flu virus AND the vaccines supposedly designed to combat or prevent it may very well have been tinkered with at the genetic level to render BOTH capable of killing people in great numbers when the much touted, but still invisible, Avian Flu Pandemic finally rears its death head.
Here’s what the PTB apparently do not want you to know: The brutal torture murder last June of two leading virology researchers, both described as students, in London may hold the key to the Weaponization of Avian Flu AND the vaccines designed around it. The two were stabbed hundreds of times after being tortured by a British-Mossad assassination team now in custody because of the joint efforts of a US-French special security team allegedly headed by General Colin Powell.
The virological team has supposedly discovered the double weaponization of both the Avian flu H5N1 virus and a vaccine designed to prevent it had ties to laboratories in Israel, the US, the World Health Organization system and elsewhere. Their laptop had been stolen the week before and it may have been there that the information of what they had learned came into the hands of the assassination team.
This story was overlooked/suppressed by the American press despite its usual willingness to dwell fondly on gore and mystery. However, the story was prevalent in the European press. Only when the conservative American Free Press brought the story to light in the US did we learn of it.
The Natural Solutions Foundation realized that, if true, this story was of earth-shattering importance and wrote a press release asking for corroboration or refutation by the sources who had brought it forward, including the American Free Press which included details not available in the European versions of the story. Extraordinary claims demand at least ordinary proof.
Our press release is here: http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=1055 ) was censored and prevented from release despite the fact that the Natural Solutions Foundation paid for the distribution service and that the service does not hold itself out as a service for censorship or news “quality” maintenance. When this happens, we note, the pattern is clear: important information is being suppressed by those PTB to further their own ends.
We expect that this website may also go down and if it does, we will take that as confirmation that the allegations and suppositions presented by the American Free Press are, indeed, true. Read the censored Press Release HERE: http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=1055) and make sure you forward this widely so it cannot disappear again.
Despite the fact that untold billions of dollars are being invested in a pandemic which supposedly does not exist, and vaccines for it are being created for organisms that have allegedly not evolved yet, there is no pandemic to date caused by Avian Flu. In fact, despite the fervent efforts of many, the pandemic virus may be another dud like SARS. Researchers are actually seeking to understand why the H5N1 virus has failed to recombine into a deadly strain so far. And despite the fact that all H5N1 viruses tested against it appear to be resistant to Donald Rumsfeld’s profitable, but failed anti-viral drug, Tamifluâ„¢, huge amounts of money are being dumped into stockpiling that worthless drug as a “treatment” for a disease which does not exist and may well, according to the Julie Gerberding, PhD, head of the CDC, not even be the disease to worry about.
But not for trying. The normally benign Avian Flu has been “bio-messed with” to make it deadly. The vaccines, which are being so expensively developed, are, we suspect, also being engineered to create disease, rather than prevent it (assuming, as we do not, that any vaccine can prevent any disease).
The Natural Solutions Foundation was the first to point the finger to the possible Weaponization of the Avian Flu to alter its natural characteristics to make it more contagious and to integrate genetic material from the world’s most successful bio-weapon, the 1918 flu.
This may give you another level of understanding about why the widest possible dissemination of information through the internet, while we still have it, is of utmost importance in maintaining our freedom and our understanding of what is happening in the world to threaten, or support, our health and our freedom.
—
Notices: Stem Enhanceâ„¢ is a remarkable product, as is its sister product Stem Flowâ„¢ . Scientific studies show that they elicit the body’s own stem cells to come out of their hidey-holes in the bone marrow and elsewhere and enter the circulation to fix whatever is broken.
I have seen remarkable personal and clinical results. For example, I have patients who have used these products during early stages of dementia and whose mental status has improved dramatically. Skin disorders, diabetics, chronic pain, the list is endless for people who have been willing to clean up their diets, detox and use this remarkable product.
StemFlow â„¢ and StemEnhanceâ„¢ are sold through network marketing organizations and a large meeting is being held in Vancouver, British Columbia, to open that area to these excellent products.
If you are going to be in that area or know of anyone who will be able to attend, please check it out yourself and make sure to let others know about the meeting. The products are high impact, totally natural compounds derived from blue green algae, herbs and other natural substances. I take them myself as does General Bert. They are a part of our daily health program. If you do go to the meeting, or sign up for either the product or the distribution side of the opportunity, please use the Natural Solutions Foundation ID number, 4128401 so that you are supporting health freedom while you are supporting your health. http://www.NaturalSolutionsMarketplace.org
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Natural Solutions Foundation Trustee
I am close to speechless with this one. Here is a post from a member of a New Jersey No Forced Vaccines group relayed to me today:
“…The state of NJ is charging $500 per day, per child, for every child in preschool that does not receive the flu vaccine. As this is the first year that this will be happening, the director of my school said she wasn’t sure how it would happen. However the threat of the charge is enough pressure to feel forced to turn children away if they don’t comply. Obviously this wouldn’t apply for religious exemptions. The director lamented the fact that around Oct, the county nurse comes in and pours over the records of every child. The director then has to send letters to those parents of children that don’t have all their vaccines. Also, she mentioned that the law only applies to children up to age 5, not to older children….”
How real is this? Very real. Here is the exchange from a nurse in a NJ private school and the mother of a vaccine injured child (one of two in the family, by the way):
Nurse writes,
“Hi,
I noticed your letter of exemption and I think we will be in trouble
come inspection time. I recently learned at a teleconference that the
state has an “all or nothing” policy concerning immunizations. Since
Christopher has had all of his shots up to this point, the state
requires him to continue having the required immunizations.
Let me know how you want to proceed.
Nurse’s name withheld by request
PS. Vaccine injured child’s name withheld by request needed a nebulizing treatment this afternoon. Please provide me the doctors order ASAP. I know you forgot it at the
doctor’s office, but perhaps the doctor’s office can fax me an order.”
The child’s mother writes back,
“Dear Nurse,
The last time Child’s name was immunized was when he was 5 years old. Our religious beliefs changed when child’s name was 6 (2003) when we changed and converted to the Christian Scientist, Natural and Organic food only from God way of living our life.
The state is using scare tactics to get school nurses to get all students immunized which is illegal. If the State of New Jersey, or the town of xx (town name deleted by request) does not accept our religious beliefs, I will 1) send them attorney letter telling them of our rights to exercise our religious beliefs 2) would take the state to court if need be for violating their own law of allowing religious exemptions. It is our right not to immunize our children based on our religion and convictions of our religious tenants. People are known to change their religions as they go through life and experience other beliefs and the yy (name withheld by request) family is a family who changed religious beliefs.
As you will note, an attorney also received a copy of our religious exemption letter. Stand your ground for our family for we are doing nothing wrong. Do not let the state intimidate you. I have thoroughly done my research on this matter. My letter is exactly what is required for the state to waive the vaccinations and we have every right to exercise our religious exemption based on our current religious beliefs.”
Yours,
Child’s Mother, Name withheld by request
But wait! There’s more!
This post was received from the mother of a toddler who is autistic but sees the jackboots coming toward her son with syringes in hand
“My son is 3 1/2, pdd-nos, in a public school autism preschool program.
The other day one of my long time customers walked into my business.
In the past she had worked in a local public school as an aide in the
disabled programs. She came in the other day, and we got to chatting.
She said that she got a promotion. She is now a “compliance”
officer, for verifying that people live in the district, and for
vaccine compliance. She basically said that parents who don’t
vaccinate are “reckless” and that the religious exemption will no
longer be easy to get in NJ. She is charged with reviewing and
investigating the exemption requests she claims. She said in the past
that you could just file a letter, but no longer. Schools are going
after parents who invoke the religious exemption from now on, who she
said are just using it as an “excuse” not to vaccinate, and thereby
endangering public health. She asked numerous questions, when we told
her our son was allergic, “does he have an epi pen, eczema..” etc, it
was as if she had a laundry list of things she had been trained to ask.
I was and am horrified. She said the districts will investigate the
nature of the religious commitment. They will interview your pastor,
the length of your commitment etc, prior history of vaccination. And
if they don’t “buy” it, they will then turn it over to the “township
attorney” she said, and they will deny it. She said starting Sept.
2008, things will be totally different in NJ.
I sincerely hope she is not right. It definitely smacks of big
Pharma, who owns this state. But what is the real state of the law
and the regs in Sept. 2008? What is going on with the conscientious
belief exemption? Is it just languishing in committee or in the
assembly? Can you all enlighten me? My son is allergic to eggs, so I
guess for now as to the flu shot, I can get a doctor’s letter and
that’s that. But come the spring, when his next round of shots are
due, I will have to confront this. The irony is, I was the only one
to vaccinate my child for the flu at 6 and 18 months, when no one I
know did, and now when I know better and am living with the damage
done, it becomes the state’s new agenda. What are the other new
shots? I seem to recall that my son had had most of them, we had a
very pro vaccine pediatrician, who gave him everything and then some,
anything “approved”, however new.
My husband and I believe in God, and believe that the vaccinations and
most interventions from the medical community just are there to enrich
big Pharma and doctors, and in fact are evil and pose a direct threat
to our health and lives. We do not belong to an organized church, but
guess will be forced to find a church to join that reflects our
beliefs, so as to satisfy big brother in NJ it seems. Perhaps it
would help to alleviate the stress that autism has brought to our
lives, and give us some comfort as well. ”
This medical fascism is coming to a town, city, state and school near you. Even if you have no children, adults are on the list, too, for compulsory vaccinations.
The time to take action is now, before you are faced, like the children and parents of Prince George’s County, MD, last November, with syringes in the hands of “health” personnel backed up by armed police with dogs terrorizing the children. Meanwhile, in the Courthouse where the Judge looked on and observed that the crying children looked like they were being dragged to church and said that it was “kind of cute” as 2300 children were forcibly vaccinated with injections. Referring to those same injections, State’s Attorney, Glen Ivey, said he would not give his kids because of the dangers inherent in them.
What to do? Visit www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and
1. Sign up for the Health Freedom eAlerts (upper right hand corner of page)
2. Take the various action steps down the right hand side of the page including telling your elected representatives that you will not tolerate forced vaccination
3. Get the Vaccine Exemption eBook to learn your rights and find out how to protect yourself and your loved ones
4. Join the No Forced Vaccination Forum on Yahoo
5. Make a generous recurring tax free donation to the Natural Solutions Foundation, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
6. Spread the word. Tell other people and get them involved. This is a battle that is facing us all.
Thanks!
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
The Natural Solutions Foundation has been ringing the alarm bell linking compulsory vaccinations and health freedom’s death knell. After all, if you don’t own your body, and can’t make your own decisions about what goes into it, are you free? We think not.
So much is happening around vaccination to strip our freedoms away from us that we think a special Health Freedom Blog series is in order.
We will be publishing, with full attribution, of course, the progressive attempts at the erosion of your control over your own body.
Here’s the first entry: The US Immigration and Naturalization Service now owns, it believes, the right to make decisions for women entering the country as legal immigrants: they, unlike other women in the United States will be compelled to receive 3 shots, at $162 per shot, to “protect” against a highly questionable “public health hazard” with a dangerous injection for HPV.
The FDA has admitted in its own documentation that the 4 strains of HPV which the Merck vaccine supposedly protect against are NOT involved with cervical cancer, and that the administration of the vaccine actually INCREASES the chance of cervical cancer by a factor of 4 fold.
“FDA Documents Reveal HPV “Not Associated with Cervical Cancerâ€, http://deathbypaxil.com/?p=296
None the less, this risky shot series has been added to the list of vaccines required for immigrant women despite the contrary recommendation of CDC experts who felt that it was not necessary.
A children’s song about inappropriate touching said, “My body’s nobody’s body but mine. You run your own body. Let me run mine!”
The Natural Solutions Foundation could not agree more!
To stop compulsory drugging and vaccination, click here,http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?p=460, to sign the Tiburon Declaration. And to get your copy of the highly informative Vaccine Exemption eBook, click here,http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=699. A third action step you can take is to let your elected representatives know that you do not favor compulsory drugging or vaccination and add your voice to the hundreds of thousands of people already telling them. Click here, http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=21833 , to say “No!” to state required vaccination.
Please click here, http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189, to make your generous regular donation to make sure that this type of information keeps coming your way. Health Freedom is far from free.
And click here, http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=187, sign up for the free and secure Health Freedom eAlerts so we can keep providing you with the information and action options you need. And then please forward this information to everyone you know telling them that this is important to you and you know it will be important to them, too!
Thanks!
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
Bush Administration Forcing HPV Vaccine On Immigrants
September 15, 2008
In July, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services quietly amended its list of required vaccinations for immigrants applying to become citizens. One of the newest requirements? Gardasil, which vaccinates against the human papillomavirus (HPV). From the agency’s press release:
CDC’s revised Technical Instructions to Civil Surgeons for Vaccination Requirements require the following age-appropriate additional vaccinations to adjust status to legal permanent resident:
* Rotavirus
* Hepatitis A
* Meningococcal
* Human papillomavirus
* Zoster
This regulation goes directly against the advice of Dr. Jon Abramson, chairman of the CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices. In Feb. 2007, Abramson said that he and other committee members advised that Gardasil should not be mandatory because HPV is not a communicable disease like chicken pox.
The problem with this regulation is that the HPV vaccine is not mandatory for U.S. citizens. Therefore, U.S. citizens are allowed to weight the costs and risks associated with Gardasil, but immigrants are forced to pay-out-of-pocket for a vaccine they might not want to take. Some of the problems with this scenario:
Cost: Without health insurance, the three-shot vaccine can cost $162 per dose, making it the most expensive vaccine on the market. Gardasil manufacturer Merck, which lobbied heavily for state mandates for school girls, would profit greatly from the new regulations
Testing on underserved populations: WOC PhD writes how immigrants and women of color have historically been used as human test subjects: “[Although] Gardasil has already been approved by the FDA recent complications in patients using the drug, 3500 major complaints in a single year and 8000 since the approval, as well as multiple deaths, could indicate that more testing is needed. Why pull the drug off the market when you can study the results through a mandated population?â€
Immigration barrier: Jessica Arons, Director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress, expressed concerns to ThinkProgress that this mandate will block women from immigrating: “Given Gardasil’s high cost, and the fact that there does not seem to be a public health justification for this particular mandate, I’m concerned that its real purpose is to create a financial barrier for immigrant women who seek to lawfully enter this country.â€
HPV is the most common sexually transmitted viral infection in the United States. The two most deadly strains are “responsible for most of the cervical cancer in the U.S., affecting over 10,000 women each year and killing more than 3,700 of them.â€
Gardasil has so far proven to be extremely effective in preventing women from contracting HPV and should remain a widely available option for women. But as Jill at Feministe notes, “[E]very woman deserves the right to decide for herself if the benefits of Gardasil outweigh the risks. And we all need to be vigilant when we see the history of reproductive exploitation of bodies of color repeating itself.â€
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/15/immigrant-gardasil/
There has been a good deal of hoopla recently about the absurdity of drinking filtered, bottled, or other wise special water. It is more expensive (true), it has plasticizers in the water from the most commonly used type of bottles and these confer dangers (true) and it is unnecessary since municipal water in the US is safe and wholesome (manifestly untrue). The article posted below makes it very clear that the water you drink from municipal supplies can kill you, or at least change your biology significantly, whether you want it to or not.
I agree, as an environmentally aware physician, that plastic bottles are dangerous. Bis-Phalates are bad for you. I also agree that water which is merely put into jugs and bottles from common municiple taps are absurd, deceptive and should be clearly labled, “Nothing but tap water at a premium – no charge for the plasticizers”.
But the notion that water supplies in the US are anything close to safe is patently absurd. Water is frequently poisoned, yes, poisoned, with fluoride compounds (often derived from uranium mining but too expensive to dispose of according to EPA standards, so it is more profitably sold), chlorine, aluminum (to “polish” the water and give it sparkle) and a host of other unwise and dangerous compounds.
So yes, the bacteria that are tested for, including E. coli, a component of human and animal feces which is uses as an index organism (that is, if it is present, so are other dangerous components of feces), which were those of concern when water purification became a public responsibility in the late 18, early 19th century, are not present, mostly, in the water supply of most municipalities.
But benzine and other industrail wastes, pesticides, herbicides, waste-water emissions from nuclear stations which can legally (!) be discharged into water ways, land fill leachates, acid rain-dissolved chemicals and compounds legally and illegallly dumped, etc., etc., etc., plus the lead from the solder used on the water pipes in places like New York City (!) make unfiltered municipal water a highly dangerous bet for drinking, cooking or sterilizing.
You see, bacteria were of major concern. But the standards for metals, industrial compounds (which did not even exist when purification was being standardized, and a host of recent problems makes the quality of water, aside from its bacteria-free status, highly problematic, indeed.
Plastic is a serious concern, it is true. Use glass. Buy bottles of stuff in heavy glass, dump it out, wash the bottles out and use them instead of plastic to hold the water you filter with heavy duty, NOT pitcher-type filters. I prefer reverse osmosis filters with the capacity to add minerals back in. But clean water in glass bottles is essential for life, health and well-being.
And then there are the pharmaceuticals. See below!
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
bottlesTons of Drugs Dumped Into Wastewater
https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=afbdc5dc14&attid=0.0.1.2&disp=emb&view=att&th=11c6a797e3776720
Bryant Sears, working in a Teflon suit and wearing goggles and rubber gloves, sorts leftover medicines and contaminated packing one-by-one at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, May 13, 2008 in Minneapolis. Items are put into separate barrels and bins, depending on their differing disposal standards and methods. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)
by Jeff Donn Martha Mendoza and Justin Pritchard
U.S. hospitals and long-term care facilities annually flush millions of pounds of unused pharmaceuticals down the drain, pumping contaminants into America’s drinking water, according to an ongoing Associated Press investigation.
[Bryant Sears, working in a Teflon suit and wearing goggles and rubber gloves, sorts leftover medicines and contaminated packing one-by-one at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, May 13, 2008 in Minneapolis. Items are put into separate barrels and bins, depending on their differing disposal standards and methods. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)]Bryant Sears, working in a Teflon suit and wearing goggles and rubber gloves, sorts leftover medicines and contaminated packing one-by-one at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, May 13, 2008 in Minneapolis. Items are put into separate barrels and bins, depending on their differing disposal standards and methods. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)
These discarded medications are expired, spoiled, over-prescribed or unneeded. Some are simply unused because patients refuse to take them, can’t tolerate them or die with nearly full 90-day supplies of multiple prescriptions on their nightstands.
Few of the country’s 5,700 hospitals and 45,000 long-term care homes keep data on the pharmaceutical waste they generate. Based on a small sample, though, the AP was able to project an annual national estimate of at least 250 million pounds of pharmaceuticals and contaminated packaging, with no way to separate out the drug volume.
One thing is clear: The massive amount of pharmaceuticals being flushed by the health services industry is aggravating an emerging problem documented by a series of AP investigative stories – the commonplace presence of minute concentrations of pharmaceuticals in the nation’s drinking water supplies, affecting at least 46 million Americans.
Researchers are finding evidence that even extremely diluted concentrations of pharmaceutical residues harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species in the wild. Also, researchers report that human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory when exposed to trace concentrations of certain drugs.
The original AP series in March prompted federal and local legislative hearings, brought about calls for mandatory testing and disclosure, and led officials in more than two dozen additional metropolitan areas to analyze their drinking water.
And while most pharmaceutical waste is unmetabolized medicine that is flushed into sewers and waterways through human excretion, the AP examined institutional drug disposal and its dangers because unused drugs add another substantial dimension to the problem.
“Obviously, we’re flushing them – which is not ideal,” acknowledges Mary Ludlow at White Oak Pharmacy, a Spartanburg, S.C., firm that serves 15 nursing homes and assisted-living residences in the Carolinas.
Such facilities, along with hospitals and hospices, pose distinct challenges because they handle large quantities of powerful and toxic drugs – often more powerful and more toxic than the medications people use at home. Tests of sewage from several hospitals in Paris and Oslo uncovered hormones, antibiotics, heart and skin medicines and pain relievers.
Hospital waste is particularly laden with both germs and antibiotics, says microbiologist Thomas Schwartz at Karlsruhe Research Center in Germany.
The mix is a scary one.
In tests of wastewater retrieved near other European hospitals and one in Davis County, Utah, scientists were able to link drug dumping to virulent antibiotic-resistant germs and genetic mutations that may promote cancers, according to scientific studies reviewed by the AP.
Researchers have focused on cell-poisoning anticancer drugs and fluoroquinolone class antibiotics, like anthrax fighter ciprofloxacin.
At the University of Rouen Medical Center in France, 31 of 38 wastewater samples showed the ability to mutate genes. A Swiss study of hospital wastewater suggested that fluoroquinolone antibiotics also can disfigure bacterial DNA, raising the question of whether such drug concoctions can heighten the risk of cancer in humans.
Pharmacist Boris Jolibois, one of the French researchers at Compiegne Medical Center, believes hospitals should act quickly, even before the effects are well understood. “Something should be done now,” he said. “It’s just common sense.”
___
Some contaminated packaging and drug waste are incinerated; more is sent to landfills. But it is believed that most unused pharmaceuticals from health care facilities are dumped down sinks or toilets, usually without violating state or federal regulations.
The Environmental Protection Agency told assembled water experts last year that it believes nursing homes and other long-term care facilities use sewer systems to dispose of most of their unused drugs. A water utility surveyed 45 long-term care facilities in 2006 and calculated that two-thirds of their unused drugs were scrapped this way, according to the National Association of Clean Water Agencies.
An internal EPA memo last year included pharmaceuticals on a list of “major pollutants of concern” at health care businesses. Still, few medical centers keep comprehensive records of drugs they cast down toilets or into landfills. When data are kept, drugs and tainted packaging are combined in the same totals.
In an attempt to quantify the problem, the AP examined records in Minnesota, where state regulators have pushed hospital administrators to keep closer track than elsewhere. Fourteen facilities were surveyed, in a range of settings from rural to urban. The AP projected those annual totals onto the national patient population for hospitals and adjusted for the relatively lower pharmaceutical use of Minnesotans. Since long-term care facilities generate more drug waste than hospitals, the AP conservatively doubled the number.
That calculation produced an estimate of at least 250 million pounds of annual drug waste from hospitals and long-term care centers, further complicated by the fact experts say drugs might account for only up to half of pharmaceutical waste, while the rest is packaging.
The AP estimate excludes many other sources of health industry drug waste, from doctors’ to veterinary offices. Smaller medical offices typically dispose of expired samples and unwanted drugs like ordinary consumers – with little forethought.
Alan Davidner, president of Vestara of Irvine, Calif., which sells systems to manage drug waste, says his limited sampling suggests the health care industry’s contribution could even be higher.
Plus, untold amounts of pills and tablets are being thrown away each year at federal and state correctional institutions.
At a state prison in Oak Park Heights, Minn., nurse Linda Peterson says the hospital unit serving inmates statewide has been throwing away up to 12,000 pills a year. She says some heart medicines and antibiotics are simply chucked into the trash. Tightly regulated narcotics susceptible to abuse go down the toilet.
“We flush it and flush it and flush it – until we can’t see any more pills,” she says.
She notes the presence of nursing homes, a hospital and another prison in the same area. “So what are all these facilities doing, if we’re throwing away about 700 to 1,000 pills a month?”
___
The EPA is considering whether to impose the first national standard for how much drug waste may be released into waterways by the medical services industry, but Ben Grumbles, the EPA’s top water administrator, says a decision won’t be made until next year, at the earliest.
So far, regulators have done little more than politely ask the medical care industry to stop pouring drugs into the wastewater system. “Treating the toilet as a trash can isn’t a good option,” says Grumbles.
Some think it’s time to do more than ask. “It’s strange that we have rules about the oil from your car; you’re not allowed to simply flush it down the sewer,” says U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa. “So why do we let these drugs, without any kind of regulation, continue to be flushed away in the water supply?”
Landfills are one alternative. At least they don’t empty directly, and immediately, into waterways like some sewage.
Marjorie E. Powell, a lawyer for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, says landfills are “more environmentally friendly,” while EPA spokeswoman Roxanne Smith contends that landfilling of hazardous pharmaceutical waste “poses little threat to the public.”
Still, Grumbles acknowledges that landfills, while safer, are not a permanent solution. That’s because pharmaceuticals can eventually reach waterways from landfills through leaks or intentional releases of treated seepage known as leachate.
An agency staffer wrote in a memo last year: “EPA recognizes that residuals in the leachate could contaminate groundwater supplies and ultimately reach water treatment plants, but disposal into the trash is currently considered a BMP” – or best management practice.
Already, researchers have detected trace concentrations of drugs – including the pain reliever ibuprofen and seizure medicine carbamazepine – in seepage or groundwater near landfills.
Environmental professionals outside government are reaching a consensus that incinerators are the best disposal method.
“That’s the best practice for today because we don’t really know what the hell to do with the stuff,” says industrial engineer Laura Brannen, an executive at Waste Management Healthcare Solutions, of Houston. She says burning destroys more drug waste than all other methods, though some contaminants may escape in smoke and ash.
On a recent day at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, Mary Kuch was getting ready to squirt leftovers from a syringe of hydromorphone, a powerful morphine derivative, into a sink. When she started out in nursing 18 years ago, “I took it for granted, because I was a young nurse, and that’s what other nurses did,” she says. “But I did find it strange.”
These days, only four gallons – drugs with high potential for abuse – go down the hospital’s drains each year. Nearly all leftover medicine and contaminated packaging are instead tossed into black bins and rolled to a hospital storage room crammed with scores of 55-gallon drums.
There, waste-company employee Bryant Sears – dressed in a Teflon suit, rubber gloves and goggles – conducts a sorting operation. Pills, blister packs and liquid medicines collected in vials, along with syringes and IV bags, are separated out according to differing disposal standards and methods. Occasionally, he glances at a wall-sized placard with details on which drug goes where – hazardous waste in one barrel, nonhazardous in another. A roll of “hazardous waste” stickers hangs from a pole on the wall.
Sears points to some epinephrine, a heart drug, saying, “Now that it’s past its expiration date, it’s waste.”
These leftovers and discards ultimately will be incinerated.
EPA’s Smith says even municipal burners unapproved for hazardous waste “will destroy all but a minute fraction” of organic compounds – the kind found in pharmaceuticals.
But Stephen DiZio, a manager with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, says not so fast. “I don’t think we’re encouraging incineration of anything. The public outcry would be so great.”
The push for incineration hides an irony. Several decades ago, drug waste was routinely chucked into the trash and burned in hospital or city incinerators.
Then came a national campaign against air pollution. Most hospitals shut down their burners, and city incinerator managers became pickier about what they’d accept. With options restricted, hospitals began shipping more drug waste to landfills – and dumping more into toilets and sinks.
___
A few choices are expanding. Some states have passed laws to make it easier to contribute unused drugs to charity pharmacies that supply low-income patients.
Also, a small share of unused drugs is shipped back to manufacturers for credit – and incineration, waste consultants say. But the drugs are supposed to be sent back in original packaging – sometimes impractical because the packaging is discarded or damaged.
Several long-term care residences want to deploy automatic drug-dispensing machines that suppliers would refill often to reduce waste.
While not yet practical, there are several experimental technologies, such as destroying trace drugs with an electrical arc, microwaves, or caustic chemicals.
Increasingly, some bureaucrats and health professionals are suggesting that drug makers help pay costs of managing drug waste. But the pharmaceutical industry says there’s insufficient evidence of environmental harm to warrant the expense!
But impatience is mounting. Even the EPA has begun to take such suggestions seriously. Grumbles says drug makers “should do more for product stewardship and meds retrieval now.” He says it would be unwise to wait for all the proof.
For now, many health facilities, especially small ones, are put off by the cost of proper handling. Drugs deemed hazardous by the EPA – about 5 percent of the market – might cost up to $2 a pound to incinerate in a certified hazardous waste incinerator, says Vestara’s Davidner. A pound might cost 35 cents to burn in a regular trash incinerator.
Tom Clark, an executive at the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, wonders: “When you can flush it down the toilet for free, why would you want to pay – unless there’s some significant penalties?”
© 2008 Associated Press
© Copyrighted 1997-2008
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