URGENT! SUPPORT HR 2218 TO PROTECT CHILDREN FROM COMPULSORY DRUGGING and PROTECT PARENTAL RIGHTS AT THE SAME TIME
ACTION ITEM: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27246
OPPOSE S 324 TO PROTECT PREGNANT MOTHERS AND THEIR BABIES FROM COMPULSORY SCREENING AND COERCIVE DRUGGING:
ACTION ITEM:http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=23065
Children are the latest victims in the Drug Crimes Against Humanity. Let me share my bias with you and then tell you why I believe that babies and children are being assaulted in increasing numbers with a deadly weapon: psychotropic drugs. These drugs kill and maim at the physical, neurological, psychological and emotional levels. They have lethal and sub-lethal side effects but are, astonishingly, handed out like candy as if they were properly tested, safe or effective. They are none of the above. Click here, http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27246, to tell State and Federal Legislators to protect parents’ right to make medical decisions for their children and stop the use of government money for unscientific and skewed screening tests to herd kids into the drug pusher’s offices where unnecessary and dangerous prescriptions await them.
Pregnant mothers are up for “protection” from postpartum depression by being “screened” with phony screening tools and then “offered” drugs which the PDR advises doctors to avoid or use with extreme caution in women of child-bearing age. Infants exposed to these toxic compounds can suffer a horrifying range of damage, including being born with their internal organs outside of their bodies and life long brain damage. “Never mind”, says Big Pharma, “pregnant and new moms are an untapped market. Let’s go for it! And just think! Babies with brain damage, diabetes, etc., all require meds for the rest of their lives. Yes, indeed! We will surely go for it.” And go for it they did by getting the bill passed in the House of Representatives whose companion bill, S 324, is now before the Senate. Click here http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=23065 to tell your Senators not to pass this dangerous and totally unnecessary bill.
I was graduated from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1970 and took my Postgraduate training in Child, Adolescent and Adult Psychiatry, finishing my training in 1975. I am trained in psychoanalysis, group therapy and a host of other modalities. I have run drug and other treatment facilities, worked in inpatient and out patient facilities for children, adults and adolescents and have been in the private practice of psychiatry and medicine for decades.
All without drugs, electroshock or other dangerous, primitive and harmful techniques. I believe that psychoactive drugs, like virtually all other drugs, are dangerous and, unless you are in a surgery suite or an emergency room, unnecessary.
This is a conviction born out of a very long and successful drug free medical and psychiatric practice (during which, unlike most of my medical colleagues, I have never been sued for malpractice).
When I saw the article in the most recent journal of the Schafer Autism Report which is reproduced below, I wrote to congratulate the Report for publishing this outstanding piece decrying the medication of millions and millions of children for little more than mythic disorders.
Representative Ron Paul MD (TX-R) introduced the Parental Consent Act, HR 2218, on April 30, 2009. The bill prevents Federal monies from being used to support mental health screenings which are nothing short of pharma marketing tools for kids. They have no scientific validity, are supported by, and developed by, the greedy folks at Big Pharma. Kids answer trick questions in normal ways and they are “diagnosed” with phony terms and lables. Parents who resist the requirement for medication which almost always follows face enormous pressure, including jail time for “medical neglect” or “child abuse”. This sells pills, all right, but it sure does not protect rights or kids brains and bodies.
As a psychiatrist and physician I can tell you that psychoactive drugs are dangerous. They can cause permanent physical damage, obesity, suicide, homicide, diabetes, neurological damage which is life-long, rob children of their moods and their developmental opportunities and much, much more. Every single school shooting in the US has involved kids either on drugs or coming off them. There is, in my opinion, absolutely no excuse for psychoactive medicines.
Furthermore, parents have the right, and must continue to have the right, to make the life and death decisions for their children with which they have been entrusted. Those rights are fundamentally as the rights we claim for ourselves to make our own decisions about what happens to our own bodies. Absent that, our bodies are owned by others who make decisions about what happens to them and we are, by definition, slaves. I have no wish to be a slave to the government of any country or to its corporations, including Big Pharma. So it is my duty to oppose these pieces of legislation.
This is an invitation to join me in that opposition and bring all of your contacts along.
By the way, the Natural Solutions Foundation is a privately supported not for profit, tax exempt organization and we depend on your donations. Please visit http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=189 to make your donation. Recurring donations are especially helpful. We appreciate your support, whether large of small.
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.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.HealthFreedomRadio.com
Here is the letter I wrote to the Editor of the Schafer Autism Review:
To the Editor:
I am writing to congratulate you on your publication of “The Wholesale Sedation of America’s Youth” By Andrew M. Weiss. As a Child, Adolescent and Adult Psychiatrist who has practiced drug free medicine for my entire career, I found myself reading my own thoughts and writings in this excellent article. Physicians, Nurse Practitioners and others who endorse and enforce medicating children because they have been entrained or constrained to do so win the approval, praise and appreciation of the forces that use them and of their peers, but are, in fact, worthy of scorn and, at best, loss of licenses or, at worst, criminal prosecution for their mindless, damaging and cowardly refusal to think clearly about the needs of the children they are charged to heal, not poison.
Every doctor is trained to think logically and systematically about diagnosis and treatment. If they refuse to use that training because they have allowed themselves to be brainwashed and browbeaten into down and dirty, quick and quality-less medicine, then shame upon each and every one of them. Drug ads, phony science and cheer leader “continuing medical education” seminars are nothing short of cynical organized deceptions designed to accomplish one goal and one goal only: the generation of massive profits.
Who stands between a child and pharmaceutical damage? A doctor. Who steps aside for 8 million American children every year? A doctor. If parents object or refuse to medicate their children, they run the very real risk of being charged with medical abuse or neglect, loosing their children and/or facing criminal charges for trying to protect the vulnerable youngsters in their care. Commonly drug-company-sponsored “screening tools” used by teachers or other school personnel are what got the kids in front of the doctor or nurse practitioner staring at the dangerous end of a prescription pad.
On April 30, 2009 Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) introduced the Parental Consent Act, HR 2218, “To prohibit the use of Federal funds for any universal or mandatory mental health screening program.” The ominously Orwellian-named “New Freedoms Initiative, passed in 2004 during the drug-friendly reign of President George W. Bush, provides for mandatory screening of every child from 0 to 18. In uterine screening is accomplished by “mental health screening” of pregnant women and the compulsory drugging of those women to “protect” the unborn child despite the former cautions urged on doctors to avoid the use of psychotropic medication in women of child bearing age because of the known and unknown dangers inherent in exposing unborn or nursing babies to those drugs.
The New Freedoms Initiative also mandates the screening for “mental problems” of everyone involved in any way with children – parents, grandparents, teachers, policemen and women, merchants who sell children things, clergy, doctors, nurses, etc. In short, everyone.
The madness must stop. Doctors must think about children and childhood as a developmental process, not a disease. Parents must be free to be what the law says they are, “GUARDians” and bureaucrats and administrators, teachers and others involved with children must ask why a child is showing signs of stress or distress and look for ways to solve that problem, not dissolve the child’s mind in a chemical soup of long and short term toxicity.
The Natural Solutions Foundation, www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org and www.HealthFreedomUSA.org, of which I am proud to be the Medical Director, supports the right of every person to make their own health decisions and, of course, of parents to make those decisions for their children. And we strongly support the rights of parents and others to say “NO!” to drugs, “No” to compulsory screenings to get kids onto subjective, and profitable diagnostic conveyor belts.
Our Health Freedom Action eAlerts offer action options to concerned parents and other persons to preserve these essential rights.
Medical fascism is facing us all. Soviet Russia was condemned world-wide because it condoned the atrocious use of psychoactive drugs to control its population and prevent behaviors it found disagreeable or unwelcome in vast numbers of people. Are our children our dissidents? Do their discontents require chemical straight jackets and personality-ectomies? Have we become mindless mind-assassins, robbing our children of their emotions and their neurological developmental opportunities because we do not dare to ask the penetrating question, “WHY?” to this drug mania we have been marketed into?
Since graduation from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1970 and completion of my Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship in 1975 I have practiced medicine and psychiatry without resorting to drugs. The results have been nothing short of astonishing for someone trained in the “Medical Model” – my patients got well because the underlying cause of their discomforts, disabilities, distortions and difficulties were uncovered and addressed. Using intensive nutritional strategies, herbology, homeopathy, detoxification, NeuroBioFeedback, frequency medicine and a host of other techniques, each patient was treated individually and their treatment tailored to their realities, including emotional ones. This type of medicine takes time – lots of it – and therefore the cottage industry, piecework compensation which doctors have allowed insurance carriers to impose upon them (insurance carriers which are often co-owned by Big Pharma so that forcing doctors to see more patients in a shorter time is a successful marketing ploy for their shareholders’ interests) make the economics unpalatable to insurance companies. Doctors have, in the main, behaved like good serfs and allowed themselves to be made wage slaves to the interests of the insurance companies, seeing more patients in shorter slots – and writing prescriptions quickly so they can see the next patient and the next and the next.
The solution? If you are a parent, find a health care professional who does not take insurance and pay for treatment so you and the doctor can spend as much time as your child needs. If you are a doctor or nurse practitioner, rethink your slavish devotion to the medicine of convenience – yours – and start doing what you have been expensively trained to do: think about root causes, look for underlying factors and return to your roots as a healer. Yes, you will have to unlearn much and question more. But you were a bright student looking for ways to help people when you fought your way into medical school. You were, after all, the best and the brightest. You may still have the capacity to think and to discern real science from marketing. And, somewhere deep down inside you, perhaps you still have a deep commitment to service and truth.
You will quickly find, if you follow the intellectual path I am advocating, that many of your most cherished believes must be abandoned by the wayside. One of those believes is that you must continue to take insurance payment for your services or you will not make a living. In fact, those doctors who have dared to let go of the insurance teat report that they are making more money, spending less in overhead and serving patients better than they dreamed possible before they took the plunge into service, not serfdom.
Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
And here is the Special Edition article to which I was responding:
Special Edition
The Wholesale Sedation of America’s Youth
By Andrew M. Weiss, Skeptical Inquirer. is.gd/yXAW
In the winter of 2000, the Journal of the American Medical Association published the results of a study indicating that 200,000 two- to four-year-olds had been prescribed Ritalin for an “attention disorder” from 1991 to 1995. Judging by the response, the image of hundreds of thousands of mothers grinding up stimulants to put into the sippy cups of their preschoolers was apparently not a pretty one.
Most national magazines and newspapers covered the story; some even expressed dismay or outrage at this exacerbation of what already seemed like a juggernaut of hyper-medicalizing childhood. The public reaction, however, was tame; the medical community, after a moment’s pause, continued unfazed. Today, the total toddler count is well past one million, and influential psychiatrists have insisted that mental health prescriptions are appropriate for children as young as twelve months. For the pharmaceutical companies, this is progress.
In 1995, 2,357,833 children were diagnosed with ADHD (Woodwell 1997) — twice the number diagnosed in 1990. By 1999, 3.4 percent of all American children had received a stimulant prescription for an attention disorder. Today, that number is closer to ten percent. Stimulants aren’t the only drugs being given out like candy to our children. A variety of other psychotropics like antidepressants, antipsychotics, and sedatives are finding their way into babies’ medicine cabinets in large numbers. In fact, the worldwide market for these drugs is growing at a rate of ten percent a year, $20.7 billion in sales of antipsychotics alone (for 2007, IMSHealth 2008).
While the sheer volume of psychotropics being prescribed for children might, in and of itself, produce alarm, there has not been a substantial backlash against drug use in large part because of the widespread perception that “medically authorized” drugs must be safe. Yet, there is considerable evidence that psychoactive drugs do not take second place to other controlled pharmaceuticals in carrying grave and substantial risks. All classes of psychoactive drugs are associated with patient deaths, and each produces serious side effects, some of which are life-threatening.
In 2005, researchers analyzed data from 250,000 patients in the Netherlands and concluded that “we can be reasonably sure that antipsychotics are associated in something like a threefold increase in sudden cardiac death, and perhaps that older antipsychotics may be worse” (Straus et al. 2004). In 2007, the FDA chose to beef up its black box warning (reserved for substances that represent the most serious danger to the public) against antidepressants concluding, “the trend across age groups toward an association between antidepressants and suicidality . . . was convincing, particularly when superimposed on earlier analyses of data on adolescents from randomized, controlled trials” (Friedman and Leon 2007). Antidepressants have been banned for use with children in the UK since 2003. According to a confidential FDA report, prolonged administration of amphetamines (the standard treatment for ADD and ADHD) “may lead to drug dependence and must be avoided.” They further reported that “misuse of amphetamine may cause sudden death and serious cardiovascular adverse events” (Food and Drug Administration 2005). The risk of fatal toxicity from lithium carbonate, a not uncommon treatment for bipolar disorder, has been well documented since the 1950s. Incidents of fatal seizures from sedative-hypnotics, especially when mixed with alcohol, have been recorded since the 1920s.
Psychotropics carry nonfatal risks as well. Physical dependence and severe withdrawal symptoms are associated with virtually all psychoactive drugs. Psychological addiction is axiomatic. Concomitant side effects range from unpleasant to devastating, including: insulin resistance, narcolepsy, tardive dyskenisia (a movement disorder affecting 15–20 percent of antipsychotic patients where there are uncontrolled facial movements and sometimes jerking or twisting movements of other body parts), agranulocytosis (a reduction in white blood cells, which is life threatening), accelerated appetite, vomiting, allergic reactions, uncontrolled blinking, slurred speech, diabetes, balance irregularities, irregular heartbeat, chest pain, sleep disorders, fever, and severe headaches. The attempt to control these side effects has resulted in many children taking as many as eight additional drugs every day, but in many cases, this has only compounded the problem. Each “helper” drug produces unwanted side effects of its own.
The child drug market has also spawned a vigorous black market in high schools and colleges, particularly for stimulants. Students have learned to fake the symptoms of ADD in order to obtain amphetamine prescriptions that are subsequently sold to fellow students. Such “shopping” for prescription drugs has even spawned a new verb. The practice is commonly called “pharming.” A 2005 report from the Partnership for a Drug Free America, based on a survey of more than 7,300 teenagers, found one in ten teenagers, or 2.3 million young people, had tried prescription stimulants without a doctor’s order, and 29 percent of those surveyed said they had close friends who have abused prescription stimulants.
In a larger sense, the whole undertaking has had the disturbing effect of making drug use an accepted part of childhood. Few cultures anywhere on earth and anytime in the past have been so willing to provide stimulants and sedative-hypnotics to their offspring, especially at such tender ages. An entire generation of young people has been brought up to believe that drug-seeking behavior is both rational and respectable and that most psychological problems have a pharmacological solution. With the ubiquity of psychotropics, children now have the means, opportunity, example, and encouragement to develop a lifelong habit of self-medicating.
Common population estimates include at least eight million children, ages two to eighteen, receiving prescriptions for ADD, ADHD, bipolar disorder, autism, simple depression, schizophrenia, and the dozens of other disorders now included in psychiatric classification manuals. Yet sixty years ago, it was virtually impossible for a child to be considered mentally ill. The first diagnostic manual published by American psychiatrists in 1952, DSM-I, included among its 106 diagnoses only one for a child: Adjustment Reaction of Childhood/Adolescence. The other 105 diagnoses were specifically for adults. The number of children actually diagnosed with a mental disorder in the early 1950s would hardly move today’s needle. There were, at most, 7,500 children in various settings who were believed to be mentally ill at that time, and most of these had explicit neurological symptoms.
Of course, if there really are one thousand times as many kids with authentic mental disorders now as there were fifty years ago, then the explosion in drug prescriptions in the years since only indicates an appropriate medical response to a newly recognized pandemic, but there are other possible explanations for this meteoric rise. The last fifty years has seen significant social changes, many with a profound effect on children. Burgeoning birth rates, the decline of the extended family, widespread divorce, changing sexual and social mores, households with two working parents — it is fair to say that the whole fabric of life took on new dimensions in the last half century. The legal drug culture, too, became an omnipresent adjunct to daily existence. Stimulants, analgesics, sedatives, decongestants, penicillins, statins, diuretics, antibiotics, and a host of others soon found their way into every bathroom cabinet, while children became frequent visitors to the family physician for drugs and vaccines that we now believe are vital to our health and happiness. There is also the looming motive of money. The New York Times reported in 2005 that physicians who had received substantial payments from pharmaceutical companies were five times more likely to prescribe a drug regimen to a child than those who had refused such payments.
So other factors may well have contributed to the upsurge in psychiatric diagnoses over the past fifty years. But even if the increase reflects an authentic epidemic of mental health problems in our children, it is not certain that medication has ever been the right way to handle it. The medical “disease” model is one approach to understanding these behaviors, but there are others, including a hastily discarded psychodynamic model that had a good record of effective symptom relief. Alternative, less invasive treatments, too, like nutritional treatments, early intervention, and teacher and parent training programs were found to be at least as effective as medication in long-term reduction of a variety of symptoms (of ADHD, The MTA Cooperative Group 1999).
Nevertheless, the medical-pharmaceutical alliance has largely shrugged off other approaches and scoffed at the potential for conflicts of interest and continues to medicate children in ever-increasing numbers. With the proportion of diagnosed kids growing every month, it may be time to take another look at the practice and soberly reflect on whether we want to continue down this path. In that spirit, it is not unreasonable to ask whether this exponential expansion in medicating children has another explanation altogether. What if children are the same as they always were? After all, virtually every symptom now thought of as diagnostic was once an aspect of temperament or character. We may not have liked it when a child was sluggish, hyperactive, moody, fragile, or pestering, but we didn’t ask his parents to medicate him with powerful chemicals either. What if there is no such thing as mental illness in children (except the small, chronic, often neurological minority we once recognized)? What if it is only our perception of childhood that has changed? To answer this, we must look at our history and at our nature.
The human inclination to use psychoactive substances predates civilization. Alcohol has been found in late Stone Age jugs; beer may have been fermented before the invention of bread. Nicotine metabolites have been found in ancient human remains and in pipes in the Near East and Africa. Knowledge of Hul Gil, the “joy plant,” was passed from the Sumerians, in the fifth millennium b.c.e., to the Assyrians, then in serial order to the Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, Indians, then to the Portuguese who would introduce it to the Chinese, who grew it and traded it back to the Europeans. Hul Gil was the Sumerian name for the opium poppy. Before the Middle Ages, economies were established around opium, and wars were fought to protect avenues of supply.
With the modern science of chemistry in the nineteenth century, new synthetic substances were developed that shared many of the same desirable qualities as the more traditional sedatives and stimulants. The first modern drugs were barbiturates — a class of 2,500 sedative/hypnotics that were first synthesized in 1864. Barbiturates became very popular in the U.S. for depression and insomnia, especially after the temperance movement resulted in draconian anti-drug legislation (most notoriously Prohibition) just after World War I. But variety was limited and fears of death by convulsion and the Winthrop drug-scare kept barbiturates from more general distribution.
Stimulants, typically caffeine and nicotine, were already ubiquitous in the first half of the twentieth century, but more potent varieties would have to wait until amphetamines came into widespread use in the 1930s. Amphetamines were not widely known until the 1920s and 1930s when they were first used to treat asthma, hay fever, and the common cold. In 1932, the Benzedrine Inhaler was introduced to the market and was a huge over-the-counter success. With the introduction of Dexedrine in the form of small, cheap pills, amphetamines were prescribed for depression, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, motion sickness, night-blindness, obesity, narcolepsy, impotence, apathy, and, of course, hyperactivity in children.
Amphetamines came into still wider use during World War II, when they were given out freely to GIs for fatigue. When the GIs returned home, they brought their appetite for stimulants to their family physicians. By 1962, Americans were ingesting the equivalent of forty-three ten-milligram doses of amphetamine per person annually (according to FDA manufacturer surveys).
Still, in the 1950s, the family physician’s involvement in furnishing psychoactive medications for the treatment of primarily psychological complaints was largely sub rosa. It became far more widespread and notorious in the 1960s. There were two reasons for this. First, a new, safer class of sedative hypnotics, the benzodiazepines, including Librium and Valium, were an instant sensation, especially among housewives who called them “mothers’ helpers.” Second, amphetamines had finally been approved for use with children (their use up to that point had been “off-label,” meaning that they were prescribed despite the lack of FDA authorization).
Pharmaceutical companies, coincidentally, became more aggressive in marketing their products with the tremendous success of amphetamines. Valium was marketed directly to physicians and indirectly through a public relations campaign that implied that benzodiazepines offered sedative/hypnotic benefits without the risk of addiction or death from drug interactions or suicide. Within fifteen years of its introduction, 2.3 billion Valium pills were being sold annually in the U.S. (Sample 2005).
So, family physicians became society’s instruments: the suppliers of choice for legal mood-altering drugs. But medical practitioners required scientific authority to protect their reputations, and the public required a justification for its drug-seeking behavior. The pharmaceutical companies were quick to offer a pseudo scientific conjecture that satisfied both. They argued that neurochemical transmitters, only recently identified, were in fact the long sought after mediators of mood and activity. Psychological complaints, consequently, were a function of an imbalance of these neural chemicals that could be corrected with stimulants and sedatives (and later antidepressants and antipsychotics). While the assertion was pure fantasy without a shred of evidence, so little was known about the brain’s true actions that the artifice was tamely accepted. This would later prove devastating when children became the targets of pharmaceutical expansion.
With Ritalin’s FDA approval for the treatment of hyperactivity in children, the same marketing techniques that had been so successful with other drugs were applied to the new amphetamine. Pharmaceutical companies had a vested interest in the increase in sales; they spared no expense in convincing physicians to prescribe them. Cash payments, stock options, paid junkets, no-work consultancies, and other inducements encouraged physicians to relax their natural caution about medicating children. Parents also were targeted. For example, CIBA, the maker of Ritalin, made large direct payments to parents’ support groups like CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) (The Merrow Report 1995). To increase the acceptance of stimulants, drug companies paid researchers to publish favorable articles on the effectiveness of stimulant treatments. They also endowed chairs and paid for the establishment of clinics in influential medical schools, particularly ones associated with universities of international reputation. By the mid 1970s, more than half a million children had already been medicated primarily for hyperactivity.
The brand of psychiatry that became increasingly popular in the 1980s and 1990s did not have its roots in notions of normal behavior or personality theory; it grew out of the concrete, atheoretical treatment style used in clinics and institutions for the profoundly disturbed. German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, not Freud, was the God of mental hospitals, and pharmaceuticals were the panacea. So the whole underlying notion of psychiatric treatment, diagnosis, and disease changed. Psychiatry, which had straddled psychology and medicine for a hundred years, abruptly abandoned psychology for a comfortable sinecure within its traditional parent discipline. The change was profound.
People seeking treatment were no longer clients, they were patients. Their complaints were no longer suggestive of a complex mental organization, they were symptoms of a disease. Patients were not active participants in a collaborative treatment, they were passive recipients of symptom-reducing substances. Mental disturbances were no longer caused by unique combinations of personality, character, disposition, and upbringing, they were attributed to pre-birth anomalies that caused vague chemical imbalances. Cures were no longer anticipated or sought; mental disorders were inherited illnesses, like birth defects, that could not be cured except by some future magic, genetic bullet. All that could be done was to treat symptoms chemically, and this was being done with astonishing ease and regularity.
In many ways, children are the ideal patients for drugs. By nature, they are often passive and compliant when told by a parent to take a pill. Children are also generally optimistic and less likely to balk at treatment than adults. Even if they are inclined to complain, the parent is a ready intermediary between the physician and the patient. Parents are willing to participate in the enforcement of treatments once they have justified them in their own minds and, unlike adults, many kids do not have the luxury of discontinuing an unpleasant medication. Children are additionally not aware of how they ought to feel. They adjust to the drugs’ effects as if they are natural and are more tolerant of side effects than adults. Pharmaceutical companies recognized these assets and soon were targeting new drugs specifically at children.
But third-party insurance providers balked at the surge in costs for treatment of previously unknown, psychological syndromes, especially since unwanted drug effects were making some cases complicated and expensive. Medicine’s growing prosperity as the purveyor of treatments for mental disorders was threatened, and the industry’s response was predictable. Psychiatry found that it could meet insurance company requirements by simplifying diagnoses, reducing identification to the mere appearance of certain symptoms. By 1980, they had published all new standards.
Lost in the process was the fact that the redefined diagnoses (and a host of new additions) failed to meet minimal standards of falsifiability and differentiability. This meant that the diagnoses could never be disproved and that they could not be indisputably distinguished from one another. The new disorders were also defined as lists of symptoms from which a physician could check off a certain number of hits like a Chinese menu, which led to reification, an egregious scientific impropriety. Insurers, however, with their exceptions undermined and under pressure from parents and physicians, eventually withdrew their objections. From that moment on, the treatment of children with powerful psychotropic medications grew unchecked.
As new psychotropics became available, their uses were quickly extended to children despite, in many cases, indications that the drugs were intended for use with adults only. New antipsychotics, the atypicals, were synthesized and marketed beginning in the 1970s. Subsequently, a new class of antidepressants like Prozac and Zoloft was introduced. These drugs were added to the catalogue of childhood drug treatments with an astonishing casualness even as stimulant treatment for hyperactivity continued to burgeon.
In 1980, hyperactivity, which had been imprudently named “minimal brain dysfunction” in the 1960s, was renamed Attention Deficit Disorder in order to be more politic, but there was an unintended consequence of the move. Parents and teachers, familiar with the name but not always with the symptoms, frequently misidentified children who were shy, slow, or sad (introverted rather than inattentive) as suffering from ADD. Rather than correct the mistake, though, some enterprising physicians responded by prescribing the same drug for the opposite symptoms. This was justified on the grounds that stimulants, which were being offered because they slowed down hyperactive children, might very well have the predicted effect of speeding up under-active kids. In this way, a whole new population of children became eligible for medication. Later, the authors of DSM-III memorialized this practice by renaming ADD again, this time as ADHD, and redefining ADD as inattention. Psychiatry had reached a new level: they were now willing to invent an illness to justify a treatment. It would not be the last time this was done.
In the last twenty years, a new, more disturbing trend has become popular: the re-branding of legacy forms of mental disturbance as broad categories of childhood illness. Manic depressive illness and infantile autism, two previously rare disorders, were redefined through this process as “spectrum” illnesses with loosened criteria and symptom lists that cover a wide range of previously normal behavior. With this slim justification in place, more than a million children have been treated with psychotropics for bipolar disorder and another 200,000 for autism. A recent article in this magazine “The Bipolar Bamboozle” (Flora and Bobby 2008) illuminates how and why an illness that once occurred twice in every 100,000 Americans, has been recast as an epidemic affecting millions.
To overwhelmed parents, drugs solve a whole host of ancillary problems. The relatively low cost (at least in out-of-pocket dollars) and the small commitment of time for drug treatments make them attractive to parents who are already stretched thin by work and home life. Those whose confidence is shaken by indications that their children are “out of control” or “unruly” or “disturbed” are soothed by the seeming inevitability of an inherited disease that is shared by so many others. Rather than blaming themselves for being poor home managers, guardians with insufficient skills, or neglectful caretakers, parents can find comfort in the thought that their child, through no fault of theirs, has succumbed to a modern and widely accepted scourge. A psychiatric diagnosis also works well as an authoritative response to demands made by teachers and school administrators to address their child’s “problems.”
Once a medical illness has been identified, all unwanted behavior becomes fruit of the same tree. Even the children themselves are often at first relieved that their asocial or antisocial impulses reflect an underlying disease and not some flaw in their characters or personalities.
Conclusions In the last analysis, childhood has been thoroughly and effectively redefined. Character and temperament have been largely removed from the vocabulary of human personality. Virtually every single undesirable impulse of children has taken on pathological proportions and diagnostic significance. Yet, if the psychiatric community is wrong in their theories and hypotheses, then a generation of parents has been deluded while millions of children have been sentenced to a lifetime of ingesting powerful and dangerous drugs.
Considering the enormous benefits reaped by the medical community, it is no surprise that critics have argued that the whole enterprise is a cynical, reckless artifice crafted to unfairly enrich them. Even though this is undoubtedly not true, physicians and pharmaceutical companies must answer for the rush to medicate our most vulnerable citizens based on little evidence, a weak theoretical model, and an antiquated and repudiated philosophy. For its part, the scientific community must answer for its timidity in challenging treatments made in the absence of clinical observation and justified by research of insufficient rigor performed by professionals and institutions whose objectivity is clearly in question, because their own interests are materially entwined in their findings.
It should hardly be necessary to remind physicians that even if their diagnoses are real, they are still admonished by Galen’s dictum Primum non nocere, or “first, do no harm.” If with no other population, this ought to be our standard when dealing with children. Yet we have chosen the most invasive, destructive, and potentially lethal treatment imaginable while rejecting other options that show great promise of being at least as effective and far safer. But these other methods are more expensive, more complicated, and more time-consuming, and thus far, we have not proved willing to bear the cost. Instead, we have jumped at a discounted treatment, a soft-drink-machine cure: easy, cheap, fast, and putatively scientific. Sadly, the difference in price is now being paid by eight million children.
Mental illness is a fact of life, and it is naïve to imagine that there are not seriously disturbed children in every neighborhood and school. What is more, in the straitened economy of child rearing and education, medication may be the most efficient and cost effective treatment for some of these children. Nevertheless, to medicate not just the neediest, most complicated cases but one child in every ten, despite the availability of less destructive treatments and regardless of doubtful science, is a tragedy of epic proportions.
What we all have to fear, at long last, is not having been wrong but having done wrong. That will be judged in a court of a different sort. Instead of humility, we continue to feed drugs to our children with blithe indifference. Even when a child’s mind is truly disturbed (and our standards need to be revised drastically on this score), a treatment model that intends to chemically palliate and manage ought to be our last resort, not our first option. How many more children need to be sacrificed for us to see the harm in expediency, greed, and plain ignorance?
Schafer Autism Review
http://www.sarnet.org/lib/todaySAR.htm
There are two articles which follow this introduction which have great bearing on your health and, eventually, your ability survive.
Agricultural chemicals have been known since their inception to pose significant threats to human, animal and environmental health. They are, in fact, only approved for use on the food supply of people and animals because, in my opinion, of the enormous wealth which chemical companies, which are, in essence, a branch of the pharmaceutical industry, have have available to throw at compliant regulators and legislators, plus deceptive and misleading advertising bulwarked by corporate junk science.
Agricultural chemicals are not, however, limited to herbicides, fungicides, pesticides and fertilizers. Other chemicals quality for that designation, too. For many years, the US has permitted the spraying of fluoride and mercury on crops after harvest to prevent mold growth during storage despite the well characterized dangers of those substances.
Now, another toxin, also well known for its adverse effect on the brain, the nervous system, the endocrine system, perception, mood and vascular integrety has been approved by the supposed guardians of our health, the FDA, EPA and USDA for direct application, without any upper limit, on our foods.
Read this article and ask yourself whether you ever want to eat non organic food again. Then ask yourself why regulators are permitting known toxins in our food.
And then click on this link (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to make a donation to the Natural Solutions Foundation, a totally donation-supported Non governmental organization (NGO) devoted to your right to make your own choices in your health. Among the freedoms that we believe belong to you and that we are fighting for on your behalf, and ours, is the right to know what your food has been sprayed with, genetically modified with, contaminated with or irradiated with. In short, if food is contaminated you have a right to know it.
And you have another right, too, as I see it.
You have a right to be protected by the regulators from the self-interested companies that do not care at all about the damage their chemicals and processes bring to you and yours. That is, after all, what we believe regulatory agencies are supposed to do. But the sad truth is that we need to be protected FROM the regulatory agencies.
That’s one of the things that Natural Solutions Foundation does, in fact. And, of course, we need your help. Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to become a supporting sponsor with a tax deductible recurring donation. And visit the Natural Solutions Foundation home page, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org, to sign up for our free, secure Health Freedom eAlerts.
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.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
MSG is being sprayed right on fruits, nuts, seeds, grains, and vegetables as they grow —
even those used in baby food
In the 1970s, reluctant food processors “voluntarily” took processed free glutamic acid (MSG) out of baby food. Today it’s back, in fertilizers called “Omega Protein Refined/Hydrolyzed Fish Emulsion” and “Steam Hydrolyzed Feather Meal,” both of which contain hydrolyzed proteins; and in a product called AuxiGro WP Plant Metabolic Primer (AuxiGro) produced by Emerald BioAgriculture (formerly Auxein Corporation), which contains both hydrolyzed protein(s) and “monosodium glutamate.” AuxiGro is being sprayed on some of the vegetables we and our children will eat, into the air we and our children must breath, and onto the ground from which it can move into drinking water. Head lettuce, leaf lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, and peanuts were among the first crops targeted. On September 12, 2000, the Auxein Corporation Web site gave the following information:
Crops registered include: Celery; Fresh Market Cucumbers; Edible Navy and Pinto Beans; Grapes; Bulb Onions; Bell, Green and Jalapeno Peppers; Iceberg Head Lettuce; Romaine and Butter Leaf Lettuce; Peanuts; Potatoes; Snap Beans; Strawberries; Processing Tomatoes; Fresh Tomatoes; and Watermelons.
Today, there is no crop that we know of that has not been approved for treatment with MSG by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Even in California — the only state where there are any restrictions on the use of AuxiGro — AuxiGro has been approved for use on a number of crops, and Emerald BioAgriculture continues to push for more. Field tests in California have been — and may continue to be — conducted on a variety of crops, and those AuxiGro treated crops may be sold in the open market without revealing that they have been treated. We can’t tell you which crops those are because the CDPR has refused to send records of test trials (which are public information) to the Truth in Labeling Campaign.
As of June 13, 2002, AuxiGro was registered for use in California on tomatoes, almonds, apricots, cherries, plums, nectarines, peaches, prunes, grapes (including grapes to be used in wine), and onions. At that time, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation said they were not aware of any testing of AuxiGro for use on other crops. They also said that they did not have any proposals presently in house to register additional crops for AuxiGro. It would appear, however, that what the CDPR said was not true, for the CDPR subsequently announced that Emerald BioAgriculture had applied for permission to use AuxiGro on tomatoes (new use), and on melons (new crop) — and, to the best of our knowledge, approval is always preceded by field testing.
On July 7, 2004, Emerald BioAgriculture requested approval of use of AuxiGro as a desiccant, disinfectant, fertilizer, fungicide, growth regulator – for increased yield and prevention of powdery mildew in various crops such as almonds, grapes, and melons. They also asked to add cole crops (including broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, collards, turnips, rutabaga, mustard, watercress, and kohlrabi) to the list of crops approved for AuxiGro use.
Approval for use on organic crops–in all states–has been requested.
What’s wrong with using glutamic acid, an amino acid found in protein, as a spray on crops?
– In protein, amino acids are found in balanced combinations. Use of free glutamic acid as a spray on crops throws the amino acid balance out of kilter.
– It’s not the glutamic acid found in protein that is being sprayed on crops, it’s a synthetic product. The spray being used most widely is called AuxiGro. The “free glutamic acid” or so called “L-glutamic acid” component being used by its manufacturer, Emerald BioAgriculture, contains L-glutamic acid, an amino acid found in protein; but it also contains D-glutamic acid, pyroglutamic acid, and other chemicals referred to in the industry as “contaminants.” The free glutamic acid used in AuxiGro is processed free glutamic acid. It is manufactured — in chemical plants — where certain selected genetically engineered bacteria — feeding on a liquid nutrient medium — excrete the free glutamic acid they synthesize outside of their cell membrane into the liquid medium in which they are grown. In contrast, the free glutamic acid found in protein, and the free glutamic acid involved in normal human body function, are unprocessed. free glutamic acid, and contain no contaminants.
– No one knows what the long term effects of spraying processed free glutamic acid on crops will be.
– That the processed free glutamic acid (MSG) will be absorbed into the body of the plant and into the fruit, nuts, seeds, or vegetable it produces seems undeniable. If it were not, the plant would not be stimulated to grow. Neither Emerald BioAgriculture or the EPA will address this issue.
– That there will be residue left on crops has not been disputed by Emerald BioAgriculture. But no study of either the amount of that residue, or the least amount of processed free glutamic acid needed to cause a reaction in an MSG-sensitive person, has ever been done. “It should wash off” doesn’t mean it will wash off. “It seems unlikely that such a small amount would cause a reactions” doesn’t mean that a small amount will not cause a reaction or have long term health effects.
– Free glutamic acid is known to be toxic to the nervous system. But the neurotoxic effects that processed free glutamic acid will have on animals that consume the plants on which it is sprayed – effects over and above any effects caused by external glutamic acid residue – have never been evaluated. Neither are there data on the effects that spraying processed free glutamic acid will have on drinking water.
– Consider, also, that children are most at risk from the effects of processed free glutamic acid. Their undeveloped blood-brain barriers leave them most at risk from exposure to processed free glutamic acid. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that infant animals fed processed free glutamic acid when young develop neuroendocrine problems such as gross obesity, stunted growth, and reproductive disorders later in life, and that they also develop learning disabilities. Emerald BioAgriculture did not address that particular safety issue in its application to the EPA.
– No one knows how little glutamic acid is needed to kill a single brain cell or to trigger an adverse reaction.
– Free glutamic acid is a neurotransmitter. It causes nerves to fire, carrying nerve impulses throughout the nervous system.
– Free glutamic acid is a neurotoxin. Under certain circumstances, free glutamic acid will cause nerves to fire repeatedly, until they die.
– Processed free glutamic acid kills brain cells. The free glutamic acid ingested by laboratory animals that caused brain lesions and neuroendocrine disorders was very often given in the form of the food ingredient “monosodium glutamate.” “Monosodium glutamate” is the name of a particular food additive. Processed free glutamic acid is the reactive component in “monosodium glutamate,” just as processed free glutamic acid is a reactive component in AuxiGro.
The glutamate industry research done in the 1970s that was submitted to the EPA by the Auxein Corporation, that pretended to find that processed free glutamic acid is “safe,” has been long refuted by independent scientists. Indeed, at the present time, neuroscientists attempting to develop drugs to block the toxic effects of free glutamic acid are using processed free glutamic acid to selectively kill certain kinds of brain cells.
– Processed free glutamic acid causes neuroendocrine disorders in maturing animals that ingest processed free glutamic acid early in life.
– Processed free glutamic acid causes learning disorders in maturing animals that ingest processed free glutamic acid early in life.
– Processed free glutamic acid crosses the placental barrier and causes learning disabilities in animal offspring of dams that ingest it.
– Processed free glutamic acid has access to the brain through the blood-brain barrier, which is not impervious to the unregulated flow of processed free glutamic acid. The blood-brain barrier is immature at birth and may continue to develop up to puberty. In certain areas called the circumventricular organs, the blood barrier is never impervious to the unregulated flow of free glutamic acid. In addition, the blood-brain barrier is easily damaged by such events as high fever, a blow to the head, drug use, stroke, ingestion of processed free glutamic acid, and the normal process of aging.
– The National Institutes of Health recognize glutamic acid as being associated with addiction, stroke, epilepsy, degenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and ALS, brain trauma, neuropathic pain, schizophrenia, anxiety, and depression.
– For years, free glutamic acid has been produced and used in food additives with names such as monosodium glutamate, sodium caseinate, and hydrolyzed soy protein. In some people, the processed free glutamic acid in food additives causes adverse reactions that include migraine headache, asthma, arrhythmia, tachycardia, nausea and vomiting, depression, and disorientation. The processed free glutamic acid in prescription and non-prescription drugs, food supplements, and cosmetics can also cause adverse reactions.
There are badly flawed industry-sponsored studies that have pretended to find that processed free glutamic acid does not cause adverse reactions. Inappropriate procedures used by the glutamate industry have included limiting subjects to people virtually guaranteed not to be sensitive to processed free glutamic acid, and/or using processed free glutamic acid or other similarly reactive substances in placebos as well as in test material. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has based its claim that processed free glutamic acid causes only mild and transitory reactions on those badly flawed industry-sponsored studies.
– Even the EPA admits that the food additive called “monosodium glutamate” causes adverse reactions.
– Even the FDA admits that the food additive “monosodium glutamate” contains processed free glutamic acid.
<>– Even the FDA admits that many consumers refer to all free glutamic acid as “MSG.”
The EPA’s approvals of use of MSG in agriculture are simple, straightforward, and in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act
In reviewing the application of Auxein Corporation (now Emerald BioAgriculture) for use of processed free glutamic acid in a spray to be applied to crops as they grow, the EPA failed to conform to the requirements of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which require, in part, that the EPA review any proposed action for validity, completeness, reliability, and relationship to human risk. The EPA also ignored Executive Order 13045 which requires government agencies to consider available information concerning the variability of the sensitivities of major identifiable subgroups of consumers, including infants and children. For example, Auxein Corporation sent the EPA 14 industry-sponsored toxicological studies from the literature, all done in the 1970’s, but failed to mention hundreds of studies in the literature that refuted those 14 studies. Auxein Corporation even failed to send the EPA independent studies that appeared in the same book(s) as the industry-sponsored studies sent to the EPA. For example, although processed free glutamic acid causes brain lesions and neuroendocrine disorders in infant animals, this special hazard faced by infants was ignored by Auxein Corporation. It would appear that Auxein Corporation restricted its consideration of “available information” to information made available by the glutamate industry; and the EPA, even after having been sent abstracts from other “available information,” has not challenged the Auxein Corporation applications. A more complete discussion of the shortcomings of the EPA approvals granted to Auxein Corporation has been submitted to the EPA.
Questions about the safety of spraying processed free glutamic acid on plants and into the environment have been raised by the Truth in Labeling Campaign and by individual consumers. The EPA has refused to address those concerns. The EPA, and, in particular, EPA spokesperson Dr. Janet Andersen, has failed to respond to allegations that in approving the spraying of processed free glutamic acid, the EPA failed to consider the reliability, validity, and completeness of the Auxein Corporation application or comply with Executive Order 13045 entitled Protection of Children from Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks, except to say that the EPA had complied with executive order 13045. Moreover, while responding to letters that asked direct questions of the EPA, Andersen failed to respond to most, if not all, of the direct questions contained in those letters.
AuxiGro, the first MSG-laced plant “growth enhancer” to hit the market, has been approved for spraying on every crop we know of, with no restrictions on the amount of processed free glutamic acid (MSG) that may remain in and/or on crops when brought to market. Even before consumers had an inkling that crops were being sprayed, the Truth in Labeling Campaign received reports that MSG-sensitive consumers had gotten sick from head lettuce and potatoes.
Federal Register notices chronicling the application and approval of processed free glutamic acid are available on the Web via GPO Access, the Federal Register, through: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/index.html. Application for approval of use of AuxiGro was made to the EPA in 1997. Testing of the product was also approved in that year, and many of the test crops sprayed with AuxiGro were brought to market without notifying consumers. Glutamic acid was granted an exemption from establishment of a tolerance limit in January, 1998. AuxiGro was also approved for use on a number of crops in January, 1998, and approved for use on other crops later. No announcement of these approvals was made in the Federal Register.
Due to a technical glitch in the system, the glutes came to need one more approval to make their California registrations work. The glutes were asking for AuxiGro to be approved for use as a fungicide in California, but the EPA had only approved AuxiGro for use as a pesticide produce or plant growth enhancer. And when application was made for this addition to their approvals, the application was brought to our attention; and the Truth in Labeling Campaign filed a formal protest to this approval of AuxiGro. The Formal Objection of the Truth in Labeling Campaign was filed on August 16, 2001 with the EPA.
By law, formal objections filed in a timely manner must be responded to within six months. Also, by law (we were told) even though the Final Rule had not been promulgated, this additional use of AuxiGro would be considered approved unless and until the EPA determined that it should be otherwise. In July, 2004, we received a conference call from Dr. Andersen and a number of other EPA players, including an EPA lawyer — a “courtesy call” telling us that our objections had been discounted and that the Final Rule allowing use of AuxiGro as a fungicide would be published shortly in the Federal Register.
What’s wrong at the EPA?
Neither the EPA nor Janet Andersen, Ph.D., director of the Biopesticides and Pollution Prevention Division (BPPD), are stupid. Rather, all evidence would appear to suggest that the EPA, which is charged with protecting the health of Americans, says it is protecting the health of Americans, when in fact the EPA acts to protect the bottom line of big business. Don’t think for a moment that MSG is the only toxin unleashed on the American public by the EPA. Let the words “methyl parathion” and “DDT” jog your memory.
The EPA, in granting the chemical referred to as “L-glutamic acid” an exemption from the requirement of a tolerance for residues of “L-glutamic acid” on all food commodities when applied/used in accordance with good agricultural practices (thereby allowing unrestricted amounts of processed free glutamic acid (MSG) residue to remain in and on any and all food crops that come under the EPA’s jurisdiction) violated Section 408(c)(2)(A)(i), Section 408(c)(2)(ii), Section 408(c)(2)(B), and Section 408(b)(2)(D) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
Neither “L-Glutamic Acid and Gamma Aminobutyric Acid; Exemptions from the Requirement of a Tolerance; Final Rule” (Federal Register June 21, 2001) nor “Glutamic Acid; Pesticide Tolerance Exemption; Final Rule” (Federal Register January 7, 1998), which preceded it, met the criteria established by law for granting exemptions from the restriction of a tolerance.
How did spokesperson Andersen excuse the fact that the EPA approved processed free glutamic acid for use in an EPA approved spray? First, said Andersen, the free glutamic acid used in the spray is naturally occurring, and it’s 99.3 per cent pure pharmaceutical grade L-glutamic acid. Yet, in admitting that the free glutamic acid in AuxiGro is not 100 per cent pure L-glutamic acid, and that it is pharmaceutical grade, Andersen contradicted herself, and actually made the point that 1) if the free glutamic acid used in AuxiGro were truly natural, it wouldn’t be “pharmaceutical grade;” and 2) if the free glutamic acid used in AuxiGro were truly natural it would be 100 per cent, not 99.3 per cent pure L-glutamic acid.
Andersen said something else very interesting. She said that the EPA is well aware of the fact that MSG causes adverse reactions. However, when Andersen used the term “MSG” she was referring to the one food ingredient called “monosodium glutamate,” and not to the free glutamic acid in “monosodium glutamate” that causes adverse reactions. Failure to define terms, as Anderson did (and does) so handily, is both deceptive and misleading.
What Andersen did is very clever. What she said makes no sense at all. No one has ever claimed that the processed free glutamic acid in AuxiGro comes out of a box labeled “monosodium glutamate.” So for her to say it doesn’t, is meaningless. On the other hand, the claim has been made that the free glutamic acid in AuxiGro will cause the same brain lesions, neuroendocrine disorders, adverse reactions and other diverse disease conditions that are caused by the free glutamic acid in “monosodium glutamate” and the other food additives that contain processed free glutamic acid. That claim is true, but Andersen does not address it. How do you refute someone who ignores legitimate questions and spews out irrelevant statements as though they pertained to your legitimate questions? You don’t. The EPA defense of its approval of use of processed free glutamic acid in plant “growth enhancers” and its registration of AuxiGro has two parts to it: 1) ignoring those who question EPA actions, and 2) making the irrelevant statement that AuxiGro does not contain MSG (monosodium glutamate).
Neither Andersen nor anyone else at the EPA ever addressed the criticism that approvals given by the EPA to allow the use of free glutamic acid and the product AuxiGro were inappropriate.
The EPA, which approved the used of processed free glutamic acid in plant “growth enhancers,” made a grievous error. But instead of recognizing and remedying that error once it was pointed out to them, the EPA began a cover-up. That cover-up included use of ambiguous words and phrases, half-truths, and downright lies told to consumers. The cover-up continued (and continues still) with a variation of those ambiguous words and phrases, half-truths, and downright lies told to legislators who inquire about spraying MSG into the environment.
You might find the Emerald BioAgriculture sales literature interesting
Sales literature promoting AuxiGro was once found on their Web site, but is now long gone. While Federal Register notices included the fact that there is processed free glutamic acid (MSG) in AuxiGro, the sales literature from Auxein Corporation did not mention the fact that their product contains free glutamic acid until the Truth in Labeling Campaign began to broadcast that information. In November, 1999, Auxein added deceptive, misleading, and untrue statements in an elaboration of its Product Page, wherein they essentially make the untrue assertion that the glutamic acid used in AuxiGro is chemically and biologically identical to that found in plants and animals.
Sales literature did (on September 12, 2000), however, contain the following:
“PRECAUTIONARY STATEMENTS
HAZARDS TO HUMAN AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS – CAUTION”
If you think you might be reacting to AuxiGro sprayed on crops, you might want to try to (contact Emerald BioAgriculture (formerly Auxein Corporation) at the addresses that follow. (A friend recently told us that he tried to contact them by e-mail, but his e-mail was returned unopened.) By law, the company is required to forward reports of adverse reactions to the EPA. You might want to ask the EPA if Emerald BioAgriculture did so.
John L. Mclntyre, Ph.D.
President & CEO
Emerald BioAgriculture (formerly Auxein Corporation)
3125 Sovereign Drive, Ste. B
Lansing, MI 48911-4240
Phone: (888) 828-9346
Fax: (517) 882-7521
E-Mail: mailto:%20sales@auxein.com
(From time to time, their web page, http://www.auxein.com , can be accessed by password only.)
www.Truthout.org
Evidence of poison
Fiona Macleod
08 March 2007 11:59
A Limpopo medical doctor has documented a string of physical abnormalities — including
breasts on a five-year-old girl — that he believes are directly linked to the unregulated
use of agricultural chemicals.
Dr Johan Minnaar (44) has produced evidence of serious illnesses and disorders among his
patients in Groblersdal, where commercial farmers are spraying large amounts of
pesticides on crops.
Horrific cases include teenage boys temporarily “growing breasts” during spraying
seasons, miscarriages, partial facial paralysis, cancers and ear malfunctions. Many of his
patients suffer from milder poisoning symptoms, such as asthma, sinusitis, headaches,
dizziness and depression.
Minnaar, who has been practising as a doctor in Groblersdal since 1997, took the unusual
step of coming forward with his evidence after unsuccessful attempts to get government
and regulatory authorities to intervene.
He said: “Groblersdal is surrounded by farms growing mostly citrus and grapes, but also
cotton, vegetables and maize. Throughout the year there is constant crop spraying with
pesticides containing organophosphates and carbamates. No one has informed the
community what pesticides are being used, even though the law states people must be
notified before spraying.”
Minnaar started investigating after realising that symptoms he had experienced over six
years followed a pattern.
“I experienced chronic fatigue, nausea, muscle aches and pains, skin rashes and arthritis,
particularly from August till November, when there is a noticeable increase in the spraying.
On investigation, it became clear that other people had these symptoms at the same time.”
Last August, he became so ill that he had to stay at home for two weeks. His wife and
three children also showed symptoms. He began regularly testing his and his spouse’s
blood and the tests showed they were exposed to organophosphates and carbamate
pesticides.
Minnaar laid complaints with the registrar of the national agriculture department, the
water affairs department and the labour and health departments of the Limpopo
government. He also tackled the farmers, chemical companies and crop sprayers.
The spraying continued and, on two days in February this year, large amounts of
carbamate were released during the aerial spraying of citrus orchards. Residents were not
warned beforehand. Among those who later showed signs of poisoning were pupils of two
schools located in the orchards.
Minnaar said pupils regularly played on the sports fields during spraying. The teenage
boys who had consulted him about “growing breasts” in the spraying seasons attended the
schools.
In late January, a woman brought a five-year-old girl who had developed breasts to his
consulting rooms. Minnaar suspected it could be linked to poisoning and referred her case
to Limpopo government officials, who he met two days later.
“As with many patients, she had no access to medical facilities or funds. The authorities
undertook to get her medical testing and treatment, but we’ve heard nothing,” he said.
According to Professor Leslie London of the University of Cape Town’s health sciences
faculty, premature puberty and other hormonal abnormalities are symptoms of
contamination by pesticides containing “endocrine disruptors”.
A 2005 study of girls in Mexican farming areas, titled Altered Breast Development in Girls,
indicated that pesticides could affect breast development and lead to early puberty.
Said London: “It has been shown that endocrine disruptors can also affect sexual
maturation and differentiation. A study in Sri Lanka of a pesticide called endosulfan found
that boys living in villages below cashew nut plantations sprayed with endosulfan had
impaired sexual maturity and other reproductive impairments.”
London researched aerial crop spraying around Groblersdal in 2005, with a focus on risks
to small farmers rather than health impacts. Last year, he published research on possible
links between aerial organophosphate spraying in the Northern Cape and Guillain-Barré
Syndrome, a neurological disorder.
“The problem of rural towns affected by agricultural application of pesticides is
ubiquitous,” he said. “Present regulatory and safety management methods really don’t
address this problem sufficiently.
“I think there is a view that if you choose to live in the country, you should accept this as a
way of life. That is a societal value decision, not a matter of science.”
The health department’s directorate of environmental health has announced plans to
launch a chemical safety programme in Groblersdal at the end of March. According to its
draft concept document, “the aim is to launch the programme to inform provinces that
national [government] is willing to assist them in the management of chemicals”.
The draft programme identifies schoolchildren, women, farmers and farmworkers, shack
dwellers, informal traders and manufacturers as the “most vulnerable communities in
municipalities that lack capacity to properly and satisfactorily deal with chemical safety
issues”.
South Africa is a signatory to international conventions aimed at promoting chemical
safety, and the labour ministry said in October that chemical safety was “high on the
minister’s agenda”. But crop spraying is a highly technical industry, and pinpointing
contamination is difficult.
London said it was almost impossible for applicators in planes to control the drift of
chemical sprays. “Aerial application has been shown in some studies to drift more than
2km, even in the absence of strong winds.”
European countries strictly regulate the industry through buffer zones around residential
areas and warning systems, he added.
Gerrit van Vuuren, an aerial application consultant at Croplife South Africa, blamed mist-
spraying of crops on the ground. “It is absolutely wrong to conclude that because there is
a yellow aircraft spraying agrichemicals in an area, it must the reason for ill health effects,”
he said.
Van Vuuren said mist-blowers apply more than 1 000 litres of spray mixture a hectare,
compared to 30 to 40 litres in the case of aerial spraying. They also blow a significant
volume of the spray higher than 6m into the air.
“A couple of mist-blowers spraying thousands of litres of spray mixtures at night are less
visible than an aircraft spraying a couple of hundred litres in the morning.”
He said it was up to farmers to notify inhabitants and issue warnings. They were also
supposed to ensure no one entered their fields during spraying.
The environmental health unit at the Elias Motsoaledi municipality, under which
Groblersdal falls, said it was “busy investigating the usage of pesticides being sprayed
from aeroplanes, as nuisances do occur from these activities”.
But Minnaar is frustrated by government promises to investigate. “For all practical
purposes, the supposed controls are not working. While they keep promising to sort it out,
we are getting poisoned,” he said.
This article is written from the point of view of a parent who does not want her children vaccianted and reports on her efforts to protect them.
She mentions many good resources and a host of useful information but left out the Natural Solutions Foundation Vaccine Exemption eBook (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=699) which offers much more in-depth information than generally available without expensive and intensive legal consultation.
Written by two attorneys specializing in health rights and options, this is a remarkable document which should be on your computer (print it out if you want it on your shelf) when you are considering how to protect yourself and your children from the specter of vaccination.
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
Vaccinations: Parents’ Informed Choice
By Destiny Dawn | September 2, 2008
To my friends and family that know how I feel about vaccinations you will be happy to hear I have finally learned how to deal with the school district about this matter in time for enrollment.
After many hours of research I found an article that is very well written on the subject that I decided to share. Below is a intro for the article, to continue reading click the “more†link after the excerpt.
Vaccinations: Parents’ Informed Choice
By Lynne Born
Because the misinformation surrounding vaccination is so extensive, many parents don’t even question whether or not they should vaccinate their child, overlooking one of the most important decisions a parent can make. Since medical authorities say vaccination is safe, most parents simply go ahead with vaccination, completely unaware of the potential dangers and unable to recognize a serious reaction when it does occur.
And since government health departments and school authorities give the impression that vaccination is mandated for every child in the United States, most parents believe they are legally required to vaccinate their child. But in all 50 states, you are free to decline vaccination entirely, or adopt a partial vaccination schedule, an important decision about the health and welfare of your child.
However, parents face tremendous pressure from doctors, the media, schools and even other parents, to follow the standard vaccination schedule and subject their child to an ever-escalating protocol of multiple injections at various stages of their young lives, even including injections with several vaccines in the same shot.
Misinformation
Because vaccines are used predominately on our precious children, most people assume that the many vaccines have been subjected to thorough trials and rigorous studies proving that vaccines are safe and effective. Parents have been told that mass vaccination campaigns ended multiple epidemics around the world, that vaccines are effective at preventing the illnesses they are targeted against, that side effects are rare and generally consist of sore arms or mild fevers that pass quickly, and that the few serious negative reactions are carefully tracked and monitored, keeping adverse reactions to a minimum.
However, parents who take the time to dig deeper and pierce this veil of misinformation find that these assertions lack solid scientific backing. Not only has there never been a single long-term study comparing the health and welfare of vaccinated to unvaccinated children, multiple examples can easily be found of vaccinated children acquiring the very illness they have been vaccinated against. Furthermore, there is overwhelming evidence that vaccines can be extremely harmful, permanently disabling and even deadly to our children. And the current system for tracking and reporting adverse reactions to the FDA is sloppy, poorly executed and voluntary rather than mandatory, even when a child has been permanently disabled or killed by a vaccine.
Vaccination Prevents Natural Immunity
When a baby becomes infected with a communicable disease, his immune system responds through a sophisticated web of interlocking reactions that can produce immunity for life to naturally acquired childhood diseases. These miraculous defenses exist, in part, to keep invading microbes and viruses from taking hold in the deeper systems and organs of the body.
But vaccines, which contain both live and dead viruses, killed bacteria, genetically engineered DNA and chemical preservatives, are injected directly into the bloodstream, bypassing the natural immune response. This deprives the body of the ability to naturally develop life-long immunity in all its multifaceted complexity to normal childhood diseases like measles, mumps and chicken pox. Mass vaccination is a manmade attempt to remove the natural infection response from human development and replace it with a series of artificially imposed infections and immune responses determined by the doctor’s vaccination schedule.
So Many Shots
Thirty years ago, children received a total of four vaccines, but today a fully vaccinated child receives a whopping 37-50 vaccines during the early, formative years of life, when his developing immune system is most vulnerable. Even an adult immune system would be challenged by so many vaccines given during such a short period of time. While unvaccinated children will never develop every disease for which children are given a vaccine, their bodies are forced by the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) vaccination schedule to respond to them all. Furthermore, the DPT vaccine forces an immune response to diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis on the same day, an event that would never happen in real life. Plus, there are virtually no studies or scientific research on the effects of multiple viral and bacterial vaccines given in combination or in close succession, and how they affect the human body.
Evidence of Vaccine Harm
The medical profession is extremely reluctant to acknowledge adverse reactions to vaccination, even when the reaction is instantaneous or occurs within a few hours, and even with adults who can clearly verbalize their negative reactions, which infants are unable to do. And since no studies have ever tracked negative effects that occur over the long term, reactions that occur days, weeks or years later are almost never attributed to the vaccine.
It is a little-known fact that not a single study exists to prove that vaccines are safe over the long term. “It would be such an easy study to organize. Use three groups of children–the first group fully vaccinated, the second group partially vaccinated, and the third group no vaccinations. Then follow them for up to 10 years and we would be able to see the kinds of problems that are manifesting from these vaccines,†says Barbara Loe Fisher, President of the National Vaccine Information Center.1 However, evidence of vaccine harm is not really a secret– hundreds of published medical studies have documented both vaccine failure and vaccine harm, even though most pediatricians continue to vaccinate and most parents remain completely unaware of these studies.2
One well known example of a long term negative vaccine reaction occurred with the polio vaccine used in the late 1950s into the early 1960s. This vaccine was later found to be contaminated with a monkey virus, SV40, which had tainted the vaccine during production. And even though the virus was discovered in 1960, the contaminated vaccine continued to be given to American children for three more years with the full knowledge of government health authorities, until it was withdrawn in 1963. Thirty years later, SV40 has been isolated in bone, brain and lung cancers of disabled and deceased adults. The SV40 vaccine debacle proves a direct connection between a vaccine and a slow-growing cancer which developed decades after the vaccine.3 Unfortunately, authorities made no effort to find and track adult recipients of the vaccine, study and catalog their health status, or note their rate of cancer, even though a clear opportunity exists to study long term effects of a vaccine in a very direct and concise way.
Delayed negative reactions have also been confirmed by the work of Dr. Viera Scheibner, who developed a baby monitor in an effort to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Her monitor sounds an alarm if the baby stops breathing or shows patterns of stress breathing during sleep. In designing the monitor, she had no preconceived intention of specifically tracking vaccination reactions, as she had never conceived of the fact that vaccinations were in any way problematic or harmful.
In due course of tracking infant breathing at night, she recorded the breathing patterns of babies following the DPT injection. She found that the vaccine caused babies a great deal of stress and that this stress showed a remarkable uniformity, with stress flare-ups immediately following the vaccine on day 2 or 5, or delayed reactions on the 15-16th or 20-25th day in babies who recovered and those who subsequently died from SIDS. Scheibner’s monitor proved that death from the vaccine sometimes occurs weeks after the injection, in correlation with the stress patterns it identified. However, the longer time frame gives doctors and health authorities every excuse not to attribute it to the DPT shot.
Adverse Events Not Reported Or Tracked
One of the great dangers of the current pro-vaccine mentality is the fact that negative vaccine reactions are very rarely reported to the adverse event reporting system, a system rife with problems. When a vaccine is released onto the market, post-marketing surveillance is supposed to track any negative reactions from the millions of people taking the newly released vaccine. However, not only is the adverse reporting system entirely voluntary, 90 to 99 percent of all adverse reactions are never reported, according to David Kessler, head of the FDA for most of the 1990s.4 And no oversight of any kind ensures that reports made directly to the pharmaceutical companies are then forwarded to the FDA–the process is run entirely by the “honor system.â€
A very clear example of the poor adverse event documentation occurred during President Bush’s recent Smallpox Vaccination Program of 2003. Before the program, the public was repeatedly told to expect death rates from the vaccine of one to two per million. In fact, there were three deaths (that we know of) among the approximately 36,000 civilians and few hundred embedded reporters who were vaccinated.5 This makes the actual death rate 80 times higher than that which the CDC told the public to expect. Serious adverse reactions such as brain swelling, heart inflammation, heart attacks, uncontrolled ulceration of the skin, among others, were one in 583, seven times higher than the CDC’s original guesstimate of one in four thousand. And yet medical authorities and mainstream news continue to use the old, inaccurate numbers rather than update the risk estimate as they should.
Even worse, these numbers were probably vastly under-reported since, just as with childhood vaccination reactions, reporting adverse reactions during the smallpox vaccine was not mandatory and was also limited to an arbitrary and ill-defined time frame of 2-4 weeks. What was the rate of death and injury from the vaccine over the next few months and years? All of these important risks should have been studied and tracked for an honest assessment of the true risk of this vaccine, but researchers missed this valuable opportunity due to the usual shoddy and incomplete tracking system that reflects the poor science behind vaccine development.
Hepatitis B Vaccine At Birth
Let’s look at the hepatitis B vaccine as a way to examine problems with the development and introduction of any new vaccine.
Hepatitis B is primarily an adult disease transmitted through blood and body fluids. High risk populations include drug users, heterosexuals and homosexuals with many sexual partners, health care workers exposed to blood, and babies born to infected mothers. In 1996, 270 children under the age of 14 were infected with hepatitis B, with only 54 cases reported in the 0-1 age group.
In spite of the low risk for children in general, and in spite of the ability to target at-risk children by specifically testing their mothers before birth, the CDC added the hepatitis B vaccine to the recommended vaccination schedule in 1991, with the first of three doses to be administered on the very day of birth before leaving the hospital.
In 1986, Merck & Co. began marketing the first genetically engineered hepatitis B vaccine. A flagrant example of the poor science behind vaccination development, the FDA approved the vaccine for use after only 1636 doses of Recombivax HB were administered to only 653 children who were subsequently monitored for only 5 days after each dose.6 Since the vaccine is recommended for the first day of life, Merck was asked for safety data on newborns. They replied, “We have none. Our studies were done on 5- and 10-year-olds.â€7 Further, Merck admitted in 1996 that no data is “available for the simultaneous administration of Recombivax HB with other vaccines†even though children are routinely given other vaccines along with Recombivax HB vaccine.
Since the introduction of this vaccine, there have been hundreds of reports in the medical literature (mostly published in international medical journals outside of the United States) citing central nervous system diseases, multiple sclerosis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, arthritis, severe rashes, fever, chronic fatigue, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) as a direct result of the vaccine. Parents have filed tens of thousands of adverse event reports with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, including emergency room visits, hospitalization and deaths. A study in New Zealand reported a 60 percent increase in juvenile diabetes after a massive campaign to vaccinate babies from 1988 to 1991 with the hepatitis B vaccine.8 Even Merck itself admits to systemic complaints such as fever, joint pain, fatigue and weakness in up to 17 percent of all hepatitis B injections. And perhaps most telling of all, over 50 percent of the doctors surveyed in the UK refused to take the hepatitis B vaccine themselves, citing the known dangers from the vaccine, even though as medical professionals working in hospitals, they belong to a high risk group exposed to blood products and needles in the daily course of their work.
But most disturbing is the fundamental question of why this vaccine was recommended for infants in the first place. In 1996, there were 1,080 reports of adverse reactions among 0-1 year olds from the vaccine, including 47 deaths. If only 10 percent of the true deaths and injuries are being reported–an extremely conservative estimate–this means that there were actually over 10,800 adverse reactions and 470 deaths from the vaccine. Yet in that same year, there were only 54 cases of the disease reported in the 0-1 year old group. This frightful equation reveals that for every child that acquires hepatitis B, the vaccine kills 9 babies and injures 200.
Why subject tens of millions of infants to the known dangers of this vaccine when the few babies actually at risk for the disease can be identified by simply screening the mother?9 And finally, even if parents opt to include this vaccine in their child’s vaccine schedule, why is the vaccine given on the day of birth? Parents need time to get to know their child first, so they can compare the baby’s health status before and after vaccination, so any harm can be noticed, tracked and treated.
In addition to problems with genetically engineered vaccines, many vaccines–notably the MMR, chickenpox and Sabin polio vaccines–inject live viruses into the body. Various stabilizers and preservatives are added including formaldehyde, lead, aluminum and MSG. Unknown amounts of RNA and DNA from animal and human cell tissue culture have been found as well. And even though concerned parent groups have fought for the removal of the mercury-based preservative thimerisol from childhood vaccines, the pharmaceutical industry still uses mercury in flu vaccines, a new addition to the recommended yearly vaccination schedule for children starting at age 6 months. Additionally, the medical industry has continued to use old lots of thimerisol-containing vaccines until supplies are exhausted, rather than pull them from the market immediately, as they should.
Families “Compensated†For Loss Of Their Child
Because of the dramatic increase in the number of injuries from childhood vaccines over the past decades, Congress enacted the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, setting up a fund to compensate parents for injured or dead children (as if a parent could ever be “compensated†for the loss of their child due to vaccination). Application to this fund is the first step parents must take when their child has been harmed; thus, the fund serves to shield the pharmaceutical company from all initial liability. To date, the fund has paid out over $1.2 billion to parents with over 12,000 reports made every year. This is a staggering number considering how many reactions occur that medical authorities refuse to attribute to the vaccine. And if David Kessler is correct and 90-99 percent of all injuries are not even reported, the true number of children injured or killed by vaccines would be 1.2 million or more per year.
The many excellent organizations10 that work to inform doctors and parents of the risks of vaccines describe the anguished phone calls they receive, recounting the devastation, guilt, confusion and distress that follow.11 Parents describe babies who within hours or days of their vaccination, run fevers, become restless or listless, fall into deep sleeps interspersed with piercing screams, arch their backs strangely while they cry, fall into comas or repetitive seizures, twitch, jerk, or stare into space blankly. Or, parents describe a general decline in overall health with constant ear infections, sudden sensitivities to foods and food allergies, sleep disturbances, asthma, unexplained rashes, and loss of developmental milestones replaced instead with repetitive head banging or body rocking.
Many parents and doctors believe the staggering increase in chronic childhood illness is a reaction to the dozens of vaccines that are now part of the standard vaccination schedule. Fifty years ago, autism affected less than 1 in 10,000 families, but now 1 in every 68 families have an autistic child. The rate of schoolchildren with autism has increased 1700 percent nationally from 1992 to 2002, creating a huge drain on families, school resources and social services that can never be remedied if the root cause turns out to be vaccination as many suspect, and the true solution is never addressed. Childhood asthma, diabetes, attention deficit disorder, and obesity have skyrocketed as well. As the SV40 polio debacle proved what can happen, “We may be trading mumps and measles during childhood, for cancer and leukemia in adults,â€says Barbara Loe Fisher.
Do Vaccines Even Work?
Even if parents find out about the risks of vaccines on their own, their doctors usually assure them that the risk is worth the almost certain benefit of freedom from infectious disease that their child receives. However, time and again, vaccines have simply not worked against the disease they are targeted to prevent. A 1978 survey of 30 states showed that more than half of all children who contracted measles had been fully vaccinated. Sweden abandoned its whooping cough vaccine after it examined 5,140 cases of whooping cough in 1978 and found that 84 percent had been vaccinated three times. A 1990 Journal of American Medicine Association article stated that “Although more than 95 percent of school-aged children in the US are vaccinated against measles, large measles outbreaks continue to occur in schools and most cases. . . occur among previously vaccinated children.†The medical literature is filled with example after example of the failure of vaccination to furnish protection against common childhood diseases.
But rather than accept the premise that the entire system of vaccination is fundamentally flawed, the medical industry calls for “booster†shots and re-vaccination, without any solid, long-term studies to see whether immunity is actually achieved and, if so, for how long.
Vaccination Did Not End Epidemics
While we have all been taught that vaccination ended the world’s many deadly epidemics, an honest and careful review of original historical medical sources, publications and statistics from the past two hundred years reveals that infectious diseases declined 90 percent before mass vaccination was ever introduced.
Experts attribute the cessation of epidemic diseases not to mass vaccination, but to a major sanitation reform movement that swept Europe during the 1800s. These reforms included moving human waste out of streets via plumbing systems; regularly cleaning streets and stables of horse manure and human waste; improving roads so that meats, vegetables and raw milk could be distributed in cities while still fresh; and upgrading water distribution systems to prevent bacterial contamination.12
All the old terror diseases of plague, black death and cholera responded to these reforms, and epidemics declined throughout the 1800s, long before the advent of vaccination. Even the CDC reported in 1999 that infectious diseases declined in the past century due to improvements in sanitation, water and hygiene. Vaccination against whooping cough, diphtheria, measles and polio all occurred only at the very end of the life cycle of each epidemic, exposing the fallacy of the claim that vaccination ended epidemics.13
The only exception to this decline in epidemic disease is smallpox, which, contrary to all we have been taught, actually increased with the advent of mandatory vaccination and decreased only after an organized uprising by parents and doctors forced European governments to end their mandatory vaccination programs.14 Even though the World Health Organization claims credit for the eradication of smallpox worldwide through vaccination, the fact is that smallpox declined in countries around the world whether the population had been vaccinated or not. As Dr. Glen Dittman said in 1986, “It is pathetic and ludicrous to say we vanquished smallpox with vaccines, when only 10 percent of the population were ever vaccinated.â€
Big Business Creates Pressure to Vaccinate
The children of the United States represent the most highly vaccinated population in the world. Millions of dollars are provided by the multi-national pharmaceuticals to create front organizations like “All Kids Count†and “Immunization Action Coalition,†groups with friendly, neutral names that disguise the pharmaceutical funding behind their mandate to promote vaccination. Vaccines produce billions of dollars a year for the drug companies, in part because the federal government funds massive vaccination drives by buying vaccines with our tax dollars and then giving state health departments millions of dollars with the goal of achieving 100 percent vaccine compliance. If they fail, the money can be withdrawn from the state. The result of all of this money available to state health authorities is enormous pressure applied to the schools, which in turn pressure parents by requiring proof of vaccination for entry into school at every level of a child’s development.
Resistance
Yet resistance to the mandatory vaccination schedule is growing and millions of parents are questioning both the underlying science of vaccination and expressing concerns about side effects. A 2003 study found that 93 percent of pediatricians and 60 percent of family physicians reported at least one family that had refused a vaccine for their child.
When a parent chooses to limit or opt out of the vaccination schedule, a wide variety of official responses have been reported ranging from no difficulties at all, to the opposite extreme, official threats of medical child neglect charges. It is an unfortunate fact that parents who decline vaccination have been thrown out of their doctors’ offices and children have been refused entry into school. In extreme cases, officials have charged parents with medical child neglect and forced them to go to court to retain the right to raise their child.15 Parents receiving benefits such as welfare, food aid and medical care risk the loss of such aid when they wish to opt out of vaccination.
Yet it is also true that many parents experience no resistance from authorities with their right of vaccination refusal unchallenged, as long as they follow the various state laws for exemption.
Polio, smallpox and diphtheria were in decline before the introduction of vaccinations. Mandatory smallpox vaccination in England and Wales resulted in a huge increase in the disease. Typhoid fever died out with no vaccination program.
How To Opt Out
Since this short article cannot examine every vaccine, if you have questions about a specific vaccine, please see the footnotes and recommended reading list at the end of this article to help you decide which, if any, vaccines you feel are safe for your child. While vaccines may be “mandated†by the CDC, they are not “legally required.†No one has the legal authority to vaccinate your child against your wishes.
If the birth will take place in a hospital, you can amend the medical treatment forms or your birth plan, and clearly state that you do not want any vaccines for your baby while in the hospital. You should also communicate your request verbally with the staff on all shifts, either yourself or by having your spouse or advocate communicate your wishes clearly and directly.
Once your child is born, the pressure to vaccinate comes from two sources–medical authorities and school authorities. Medically, you are free to make any decision at any time you feel is best regarding your child’s vaccination schedule. However, if you opt out of vaccination, many doctors may lie about vaccines being mandatory or frighten you with exaggerated statistics about the dangers of not vaccinating and refuse to treat your child. Unfortunately, the “bread and butter†of pediatric practice are the many “well baby†visits that include vaccination throughout your child’s development.16
However, it is the entry into day care or school that triggers the need for legal exemptions. There are three types of exemptions–philosophical, medical and religious. There are medical exemptions in all 50 states, religious exemptions in all but two states (West Virginia and Mississippi), and philosophical exemptions in 16 states. You can check the laws for your particular state at www.thinktwice.com or www.909shot.com/state-site/legal-exemptions.htm
Private schools have their own rules and may reject children that have not been vaccinated. Public schools, however, are required by law to accept your exemption, when properly prepared according to the laws of your state. Home schooling sidesteps the issue entirely.
Once you check the laws for your particular state, you can choose the exemption type that is best for your situation. It is very important to submit the appropriate paperwork to the school so that your refusal to vaccinate cannot be interpreted as parental neglect. A philosophical exemption generally requires a short letter simply stating that you object to vaccination. The religious exemption also requires a letter, but some states stipulate that you actually belong to, and are a practicing member of, a religion that specifically objects to vaccination. The medical exemption is usually the most difficult to obtain because doctors are subject to review and censure by state medical authorities when they grant exemptions. In some cases medical exemptions may be obtained from the school nurse–and are often easier to obtain than from a physician.
Happily, simply signing and submitting the exemption is generally all that is needed. Some exemption letters must be notarized or drafted as a signed affidavit. And some School Immunization Records have an exemption section on the form itself, that you simply fill out. Here is an example for California: www.dhs.ca.gov/publications/forms/pdf/pm286b.pdf. For examples of exemption letters for all possible scenarios and all states see www.vaclib.org/pdf/exemption.htm
When discussing your decision to opt out, it is best to remain calm, courteous and diplomatic, even in the face of ignorance or resistance from authorities. Do not enter into arguments with authorities and draw attention to your decision. There is no need to attach documents to your exemption proving evidence of the problems with vaccination or explaining your reasons for opting out–you simply want an exemption for your child. If you encounter belligerent or arrogant authorities who intimidate you with threats of sending you to jail or taking your child away, try to sidestep their resistance in a non-confrontational manner and leave the situation as soon as possible. If you run into this kind of resistance, you should put your wishes in writing, escalate your exemption request to someone above that official, and demand a written response. You’ll be surprised how quickly resistance from authorities can fade once they must put their illegal statements and intimidations in writing.17
Above all, remember that no authority has the legal right to vaccinate your child without your permission. Should they do so, they open themselves up to legal liability and you have all the resources of the law behind you. While you may experience resistance, they are breaking the law, not you. Do not be coerced or intimidated into vaccinating your child–it is your choice and your right to do what you feel is best.
Naturally Derived Immunity
Those of us involved in the Weston A. Price organization have an intimate understanding of the lies and distortions that various government and corporate forces use to control our food choices. The grassroots Campaign for Real Milk started with research into the facts of the situation, analyzed how the media and agribusiness distorted the true history of raw and pasteurized milk, the organized a drive for freedom of choice, and supported the farmers committed to producing raw milk.
It is these same kinds of distortions and propaganda regarding drugs and vaccines that are sometimes overlooked in the natural food community. The doctor who tells parents that raw milk will give their child TB is the same doctor who assures parents that vaccines are safe, effective and nothing to be concerned about.
We know that children of the many cultures that Weston Price studied needed no vaccination–they grew up vibrant, healthy and strong, able to fight off infectious disease as long as they maintained their original, native diets. Should a child be in any danger from an infectious disease, we have many powerful tools available to us–nutrient-dense healing foods along with homeopathy, acupuncture, herbalism and naturopathy, all systems of earth-based healing that take into account the full well being of the whole person to restore and maintain true health.
The recent avalanche of drug scandals exposing death and injury from drugs fully approved by the FDA demonstrates harm far greater than specific problems with individual drugs. Western medicine operates under the assumption that synthetic, genetically engineered drugs and vaccines heal the sick and protect the young from disease, an assumption that parents are expected to accept without question. But when it comes to your child, you are the expert most qualified to decide what is best for your child, using your intelligence and common sense in the same way we fight for our right for real food.
About the Author
Lynne Born has been an alternative health care activist, writer and independent medical researcher for over 20 years. She is a longtime member of the Weston A. Price Foundation and enjoys a diet based on homemade full-fat foods, bone broth, raw milk and fermented foods.
ENDNOTES
1. Barbara Loe Fisher, National Vaccination Information Center, http://www.909shot.com. Nevada County, California, has the highest percentage of unvaccinated children in the state of California, providing a perfect setting for this simple study. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/05/25/CM171959.DTL.
2. For their excellent collection of hundreds of peer reviewed, published articles on the dangers, side effects, and inefficacy of vaccination, see Vaccination: 100 Years of Orthodox Research shows that Vaccines Represent a Medical Assault on the Immune System, by Viera Scheibner, Ph.D., 1997. Available from New Atlantean Press, 505-983-1856. See also any of the excellent books by Neil Z. Miller, including Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective?, 2002. Check his website for additional books, http://www.thinktwice.com.
3. Even Dr. Jonas Salk who developed the first polio vaccine admitted under oath that most cases of polio in the USA since 1961 were actually caused by the vaccine.
4. David Kessler, †Introducing MedWatch: A new approach to reporting medication and device adverse effect and product problems,†Journal of American Medical Association, July 2, 1993, 269(21): 2765–68.
5. As the deaths followed one after another in March and April 2003, headlines read “First death: Nurse dies after smallpox vaccinationâ€; “Second worker dies of heart attack after smallpox vaccinationâ€; and “Coroner rules [smallpox] vaccinations contributed to reservist’s death.†(An internet search easily reveals these articles.) Yet, by June 2003, mainstream media articles were not only ignoring the earlier deaths, they continued to use the old, inaccurate figures of one or two deaths per million rather than the newly updated, more truthful numbers that had become apparent during this vaccination program.
6. Merck & Co. 1993 product insert for Recombivax HB.
7. 1997 Illinois Board of Health hearing, The Congressional Quarterly, August 25, 2000, pg. 647.
8. Barthelo Classen, M.D., CEO of Classen Immunotherapies Inc. Epidemiologic study in the New Zealand Medical Journal, 1996.
9. See http://www.909shot.com/History/Newsletters/hepbnlr.htm for more detailed information about the dangers and risks of the Hepatitis B vaccine.
10. National Vaccination Information Center, http://www.909shot.com; Think Twice Global Vaccine Institute, http://www.thinktwice.com.
11. See http://www.thinktwice.com/stories.htm, http://www.mothering.com/articles/growing_child/vaccines/wake.html.
12. The concept that epidemic diseases were ended by sanitation reforms is reinforced when natural disasters destroy sanitation systems and roads, bringing epidemic diseases with the collapse of the infrastructure. Vaccination does not end these epidemics – only the restoration of basic services restores health.
13. See charts showing the decline of epidemics in my article “Smallpox Vaccine has the Poxâ€, http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Aug2003/born0803.html, July/August 2003.
14. For an in-depth study of the unscientific and fraudulent development of the smallpox vaccine, see my article referenced in footnote 13.
15. See Immunization, The Reality Behind the Myth, by Walene James, 1995, Chapter 10 “Appointment with Tyranny†for a story of a court battle over the right to not vaccinate in 1981.
16. See How To Raise a Healthy Child In Spite of Your Doctors, by Robert Mendelsohn, M.D. for an excellent resource on parenting without vaccination.
17. Dr. Joseph Mercola has written an excellent article that details how to handle resistance in your state: How to Legally Avoid Unwanted Immunizations of All Kinds, http://www.mercola.com/fcgi/pf/article/vaccines/legally_avoid_shots.htm.
RECOMMENDED BOOKS AND WEBSITES
Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective? by Neil Z. Miller, 2002. Check his website for additional books, www.thinktwice.com.
National Vaccination Information Center, www.909shot.com. Check www.908shot.com/ResourceCenter/ResourceCenter.htm for recommended reading.
Immunization, The Reality Behind the Myth, by Walene James, 1995.
Vaccination: 100 Years of Orthodox Research Shows that Vaccines Represent a medical Assault on the Immune System, by Viera Scheibner, PhD., 1007, New Atlantean Press, (505) 983-1856.
How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctors, by Robert Mendelsohn, MD.
MERCURY IN VACCINES AND AUTISM
The mercury-autism connection has surfaced to the public’s attention with the publication of “Deadly Immunity,†by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in the July issue of Rolling Stone magazine, simultaneous with publication in Salon. Kennedy describes a Center for Disease Control and Prevention meeting held June 2000 at which CDC epidemiologist Tom Verstraeten presented evidence to industry and government officials that thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative in vaccines, was responsible for the epidemic of autism in America’s children. Instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the attendees spent the rest of the meeting discussing ways to cover up the damaging data.
Subsequently, powerful friends in Congress have tried to protect vaccine manufacturers with legislation to shield them from more than 4000 pending lawsuits. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $837,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, quietly slipped a rider known as the “Eli Lilly Protection Act†into the homeland security bill. The measure was repealed by Congress in 2003 but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders. “The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists,†says Andy Olsen, a legislative assistant to Frist.
More than 500,000 children suffer from autism, with 40,000 new cases diagnosed every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among eleven children born after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.
The CDC counters parental anger and negative publicity by citing studies that vindicate thimerosal, studies opponents claim are doctored and highly suspect. “You couldn’t even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe,†says Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world’s authorities on mercury toxicity and head of the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. “It’s just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage.â€
Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage. Yet the lure of profits proved greater than the company’s concern for the public. Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that contain multiple doses. The larger vials cost half as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, and are needed to make in mass vaccination programs cost effective.
The introduction of thimerosal into vaccines coincided with an increase in the number of vaccines given to children. Infants who receive all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of six months are exposed to levels of ethylmercury, injected directly into the bloodstream, 187 times greater than the EPAs limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin.
Kennedy describes a burgeoning scandal that has the potential to bring down the pharmaceutical industry. To read his article, see www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7395411.
IF YOU MUST VACCINATE
* Wait until the child is at least 2 years old.
* Do not give more than one vaccination at a time.
* Never vaccinate when the child is sick.
* Be sure that the vaccines are thimerosal-free.
* Supplement the child with extra cod liver oil, vitamin C and B12 before each shot.
* Obtain a medical exemption if the child has had a bad reaction to a vaccination before or if there is a personal or family history of vaccine reactions, convulsions or neurological disorders, severe allergies and/or immune system disorders.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts,
the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Summer 2005.