Simmering Hope

For the second time in less than two months, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) makes the news again.
Previously it was the diet pill Alli, under investigation by FDA.

Now it’s Cervarix, the cervical cancer vaccine developed by GSK and chosen by the Brits for its cost which was more appealing to them than Gardasil, the version offered by Merck.

I still found it mind boggling that a national health authority will have a mandatory campaign for vaccinating girls for something that it should be better approached like a good sexual education (safe sex anyone?), rather than jumping on the big pharma boats.
Now a young life was lost for what? For making GSK guys richer?
The girl was only 14 for God’s sake. She was given a vaccine she did not really need it. It’s true that Human Papilloma Virus may – emphasis on ‘may’ – lead to cervical cancer later on in life, but are the young girls so promiscuous these days to need a vaccine against this virus? Or is the HPV pandemic to justify the need to make the vaccination mandatory? I don’t think so.
Maybe the schools and parents should start giving the kids a better sex education; maybe if they are told that it’s not really ‘cool’ to start having sex at 12 because it does not make you smarter or more popular, they would start paying attention and instead of getting drunk and engaging in stupid ‘get pregnant competition’ they would choose to enjoy life without taking extra responsibilities they are not prepared to deal with at 12 or 14 year old.

The truth is that mass vaccination programs are just money grabbing schemes.
Side effects including multiple seizures and some deaths after the use of HPV vaccines (both Cervarix and Gardasil) have been reported from around the world.
Still, the official position is that it’s necessary and the benefits outweight the risks.
Really?

Maybe the governments should spend money on nicely designed condoms and offer them for free to school kids.

My husband got sick last Tuesday.
I got sick on Thursday evening. The whole day at work I had a dry, annoying cough.
As soon as I climbed down of the car in front of my house, I could feel tremendous body aches.
I laid down in bed and in about 2 hours my fever spiked to 39.5°C. During the night it got higher and I could not sleep because I was having chills and could not stop shaking.
I have never been so sick with the flu in my whole life, which made be believe that I was dealing with a different, mutant strain of influenza than anything encountered before.
Now it is Sunday evening and although my fever is manageable- in the 37.5°C range- I still have body aches. And tomorrow I have to go to work. That will not be funny.

Anyway, I just wanted to summarize the symptoms of the flu, just in case somebody else may fall sick and won’t know that NOTHING works!!! So don’t bother with Tamiflu or Relenza, or any kind of antibiotics. You are going to feel so ill in the beginning that you will need to stay in bed and by the time you could drag your tired body to the doctor’s office it’s too late to take any anti-viral, which is effective in the first maximum 48 hours.

Symptoms in order of appearance:
- dry cough
- chest congestion
- severe all over body aches – lower and upper back mostly
- sinus congestion and horrible headaches that won’t go completely away
- fever rises to almost 40°C in matter of hours (sometimes even less)
- you can’t get out of bed and have to keep your eyes closed most of the time because of the constant pain/pressure behind your eyelids
- can’t eat and don’t even try it because you are going to feel like vomiting right away
- dizziness

What we still have after four days of illness, days spent almost exclusively in bed:
- cough (not dry anymore)
- headaches
- dizziness
- low grade fever
- body aches- less severe than before

What we could eat progressively- after two days of no food basically:
- chicken soup
- boiled potatoes
- a small piece of grilled halibut
- oranges

Remedies:
We drank lots of tea with lemon, had one attempt to drink coffee but felt ill after that and renounced.
We took Vitamin C, Echinacea- probably it was too late when we started taking it, Cold FX, Advil- to ease the fever and the headaches. On top of that, I applied compresses with water and vinegar on my husband forehead when Advil was not efficient enough to deal with the high fever.
For cough we were given Robitussin, which I found absolutely horrible and could not take it. Instead of that I opted for a natural syrup, made from pine shoots. Delicious and very efficient.

Now we pray that our five year old will be spared. So far so good.

What the heck is going on? I was so proud for living here, in Canada, where people’s rights are respected. Not anymore.
I have the right to chose what I believe is good for me and my family. I don’t want or need Big Pharma to tell me what I have to put into my body.
If I don’t want to give my kid antibiotics, I want to have the option of a natural way to enhance his immunity by giving him natural supplements. But it looks like the big pharmaceutical companies are feeling that their profits are not big enough, so they decided to change the legislation.

Here comes Johhhnnnyyy!!!!

A new law being pushed in Canada by Big Pharma seeks to outlaw up to 60 percent of natural health products currently sold in Canada, even while criminalizing parents who give herbs or supplements to their children. The law, known as C-51, was introduced by the Canadian Minister of Health on April 8th, 2008, and it proposes sweeping changes to Canada’s Food and Drugs Act that could have devastating consequences on the health products industry.

Among the changes proposed by the bill are radical alterations to key terminology, including replacing the word “drug” with “therapeutic product” throughout the Act, thereby giving the Canadian government broad-reaching powers to regulate the sale of all herbs, vitamins, supplements and other items. With this single language change, anything that is “therapeutic” automatically falls under the Food and Drug Act. This would include bottled water, blueberries, dandelion greens and essentially all plant-derived substances.

The Act also changes the definition of the word “sell” to include anyone who gives such therapeutic products to someone else. So a mother giving an herb to her child, under the proposed new language, could be arrested for engaging in the sale of unregulated, unapproved “therapeutic substances.” Learn about more of these freedom-squashing changes to the law at the Stop51.com website: http://www.stopc51.com

New enforcement powers allow Canadian government to seize your home or business

At the same time that C-51 is outlawing herbs, supplements and vitamins, it would grant alarming new “enforcement” powers to the thugs enforcement agents who claim to be “protecting” the public from dangerous unapproved “therapeutic agents” like, say, dandelion greens. As explained on the http://www.Educate-Yourself.orgwebsite ((http://educate-yourself.org/cn/canadian…), the C-51 law would allow the Canadian government’s thugsenforcement agents to:

• Raid your home or business without a warrant
• Seize your bank accounts
• Levy fines up to $5 million and a jail terms up to 2 years for merely selling an herb
• Confiscate your property, then charge you storage fees for the expense involved in storing all the products they stole from you

C-51 would even criminalize the simple drying of herbs in your kitchen to be used in an herbal product, by the way. That would now be categorized as a “controlled activity,” and anyone caught engaging in such “controlled activities” would be arrested, fined and potentially jailed. Other “controlled activities” include labeling bottles, harvesting plants on a farm, collecting herbs from your back yard, or even testing herbal products on yourself! (Yes, virtually every activity involving herbs or supplements would be criminalized…)

There’s more, too. C-51 is the Canadian government’s “final solution” for the health products industry. It’s a desperate effort to destroy this industry that’s threatening the profits and viability of conventional medicine.

Natural medicine works so well—and is becoming so widely used—that both the Canadian and American governments have decided to “nuke” the industries by passing new laws that effectively criminalize anyone selling such products. They simply cannot tolerate allowing consumers to have continued access to natural products. To do so will ultimately spell the destruction of Big Pharma and the outdated, corrupt and criminally-operated pharmaceutical industry that these criminally-operated governments are trying to protect.
Join the rally to protest C-51

On May 9th, 2008, Canadian citizens will be gathering at the Calgary Federal Court to protest C-51 and help protect their access to natural health products. Call 1-888-878-3467 to learn more, or visit the action page of Health Canada Exposed at: www.stopc51.com
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Source: www.globalresearch.com

I am totally and utterly disgusted. We have the option of buying natural products; nobody forces us to do it. And we do buy them because they are better than the drugs that have a gazillion of side effects which makes you think twice if you are going to take them or not.
Comm’on, you turn on the TV and at least one commercial is about drugs. If you pay a little bit of attention, by the end of the peachy-nice-living-on-could-nine presentation, the voice will tell something like:”the side effects include” and a long list follows. Then you put in balance two options: deal with your illness or face the risk of dying of hemorrhage or other nasty side effects of the drug? I am not absurd, there are situations when you have to take drugs and not follow the natural way. But for minor cases, why would the government take our right to chose? Just because the big pharmaceutical companies want more money?

I remember when a few years ago, some guys started the ‘organic’ business. The hell broke loose, with the food giants screaming bloody murder and the small ‘organic’ entrepreneurs forced to fight the bureaucratic system trying to sell their products.
Now it gained popularity because it is better for your health to eat meat without hormones and antibiotics, or vegetables not treated with pesticides.

Shame for the Canadian government for even taking into account the proposal dubbed Bill C-51 and damn you for getting your conscience bought with dirty money. Would you go so far as to ‘criminalize’ parents for giving natural products?
What about criminalizing parents who sexually abuse their kids??!!
What’s wrong with this freaking society??!!!!!!!

As a child I remember hearing once in a while that somebody died because of botulism, and without knowing at that time if that was a poison or an infection, but knowing that in almost all the cases it was associated with fish, I developed a slight paranoia fish- related.
Later on, after I took some courses in Bacteriology, I found out that botulism is caused by Clostridium botulinum (C. botulinum), which is a bacterium that inhabits rivers, soil, and the guts of mammals, fish, and shellfish worldwide. These bacteria secrete a neurotoxin (nerve poison) so deadly that a few billionths of a gram could kill you. This is botulin toxin, one of the most dangerous substances known. Botulism is the condition of having been poisoned with botulin toxin.
The most common botulism occurs via food, not only fish. Most food-borne botulism is attributed to home-canned foods and it can also be transmitted by foods that are not heated, or not heated thoroughly, before eating. Almost every type of food has been associated with outbreaks of botulism, but the most commonly implicated foods are vegetables, particularly “low-acid” (i.e., higher pH) vegetables such as beans, peppers, carrots, and corn. Botulism has been related to honey as well, this being the main reason for not recommending honey to infants.

All right, so we know that botulin toxin is dangerous, and even more, it can be developed into a biological weapon.
In February 28, 2001, there was an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, titled ‘Botulinum Toxin as a Biological Weapon’
An abstract from the article, reads:

“Botulinum toxin poses a major bioweapon threat because of its extreme potency and lethality; its ease of production, transport, and misuse; and the need for prolonged intensive care among affected persons. An outbreak of botulism constitutes a medical emergency that requires prompt provision of botulinum antitoxin and, often, mechanical ventilation, and it constitutes a public health emergency that requires immediate intervention to prevent additional cases. Timely recognition of a botulism outbreak begins with an astute clinician who quickly notifies public health officials.
Botulinum toxin is the most poisonous substance known. A single gram of crystalline toxin, evenly dispersed and inhaled, would kill more than 1 million people, although technical factors would make such dissemination difficult. The basis of the phenomenal potency of botulinum toxin is enzymatic; the toxin is a zinc proteinase that cleaves 1 or more of the fusion proteins by which neuronal vesicles release acetylcholine into the neuromuscular junction.
It is regrettable that botulinum toxin still needs to be considered as a bioweapon at the historic moment when it has become the first biological toxin to become licensed for treatment of human disease. In the United States, botulinum toxin is currently licensed for treatment of cervical torticollis, strabismus, and blepharospasm associated with dystonia. It is also used “off label” for a variety of more prevalent conditions that include migraine headache, chronic low back pain, stroke, traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, achalasia, and various dystonias.
Terrorists have already attempted to use botulinum toxin as a bioweapon. Aerosols were dispersed at multiple sites in downtown Tokyo, Japan, and at US military installations in Japan on at least 3 occasions between 1990 and 1995 by the Japanese cult Aum Shinriky . These attacks failed, apparently because of faulty microbiological technique, deficient aerosol-generating equipment, or internal sabotage. The perpetrators obtained their C botulinum from soil that they had collected in northern Japan.”

After this long introduction let’s get to the question: knowing all that, are you still interested in trying Botox injections to get rid- temporarily- of wrinkles?
I had a friend who tried it and I was not impressed with the results. After getting Botox injections you look like you are wearing a mask; you can’t smile let alone laugh.
Even if it’s a cheapest alternative to an expensive plastic surgery, it is still bringing the question: is it worth poisoning yourself for the sake of looking a little bit younger?

Recently, FDA ( Food and Drug Administration) warned over Botox’s side effects, including possible deaths. Although the FDA has never formally approved that use for the drugs, some other countries have.
The warning includes both Botox Cosmetic and its competitor, Myobloc, both of them using botulinum toxin to block nerve impulses, causing them to relax.
In rare cases, the toxin can spread beyond the injection site to other parts of the body, paralyzing or weakening the muscles used for breathing and swallowing, a potentially fatal side effect, the FDA said.
The FDA said the deaths it is investigating so far all involve children, mostly cerebral palsy patients being treated for spasticity in their legs.
However, the FDA warned that it also is probing reports of illnesses in people of all ages who used the drugs for a variety of conditions, including at least one hospitalization of a woman given Botox for forehead wrinkles. The agency warned that patients receiving a botulinum toxin injection for any reason — cosmetic or medical — should be told to seek immediate care if they suffer symptoms of botulism, including: difficulty swallowing or breathing, slurred speech, muscle weakness, or difficulty holding up their head.
The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen petitioned the FDA to strengthen warnings to users of Botox and Myobloc — citing 180 reports of U.S. patients suffering fluid in the lungs, difficulty swallowing or pneumonia, including 16 deaths.

If you asked ‘what is the link?’ I am going to tell you right away.

Let’s start by saying that mozzarella is a big and profitable business in Italy, with an annual turnover of $500 million. Out of 33,000 tonnes of mozzarella cheese produced each year, about 16% is exported.
The water buffalo herds, the source of milk for making mozzarella, are concentrated around the city of Naples, in the Campania region.
The Naples mafia, or Camorra, is heavily involved in waste disposal in the Campania region around the city of Naples (Do you remember Tony Soprano’s main business? Waste disposal, right?), on agricultural land used for pasture.
Toxic waste contaminates buffalos’ food. The result?
In about two weeks interval, Italy was confronted with two problems: Brucellosis – found in herds- and dioxins- found in mozzarella cheese.

First problem: Brucellosis
Brucellosis is an illness characterized by fever, night sweats, extreme tiredness, loss of appetite, weight loss, headache, and arthralgia (pain in the joints). It is caused by an infection with bacteria of one of the Brucella species. The infection occurs worldwide. Areas currently listed as high risk are the Mediterranean Basin (Portugal, Spain, Southern France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, North Africa), South and Central America, Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East.
Anyone can get brucellosis if they are infected with bacteria of one of the Brucella species. Persons at highest risk for brucellosis are those who work with animals that are infected, such as veterinarians and ranchers, and persons who consume raw milk or cheeses or ice cream made with raw milk.
Brucellosis is spread to humans through contact with tissues or bodily fluids of animals who are infected with Brucella bacteria, and although direct person-to-person spread of brucellosis is extremely rare. Mothers who are breast-feeding may transmit the infection to their infants. It can also be transmitted through food to humans, causing severe intermittent fever - though the milk which produces the cheese is perfectly safe when it is pasteurized.

A preventive measure to avoid being infected with Brucella bacteria is to not consume raw milk or anything made with raw milk.
Treatment for Brucellosis: antibiotics.
Usually, doxycycline and rifampin are used in combination for 6 weeks to prevent reoccurring infection. Depending on the timing of treatment and severity of illness, recovery may take a few weeks to several
months. Mortality is low (<2%), and is usually associated with endocarditis

According to Italian papers, the Brucella bacteria had been present in herds for the past 10 years, spreading to about 30% of them, and the local vets who are supposed to test and put down infected animals have been intimidated by the Camorra - who also controls some of the farms. As an extreme measure, the Italian government will start the slaughter of 32,000 buffalo, infected with Brucellosis. In the coming weeks, armed police will accompany government vets to help with the cull and it’s going to cost Italian government closer to $97 million.

Second problem: Dioxin
Most people heard about dioxins in relation to the plastic containers heated in microwave (myth or not, it’s not up to debate right now)
Dioxin is the name generally given to a class of super-toxic chemicals, the chlorinated dioxins and furans, formed as a by-product of the manufacture, molding, or burning of organic chemicals and plastics that contain chlorine. It is the nastiest, most toxic man-made organic chemical; its toxicity is second only to radioactive waste.
Dioxin is a powerful hormone disrupting chemical. By binding to a cell’s hormone receptor, it literally modifies the functioning and genetic mechanism of the cell, causing a wide range of effects, from cancer to reduced immunity to nervous system disorders to miscarriages and birth deformity. Because it literally changes the functioning of your cells, the effects can be very obvious or very subtle. Because it changes gene functions, it can cause so-called genetic diseases to appear, and can interfere with child development. There is no “threshold” dose - the tiniest amount can cause damage, and our bodies have no defense against it.
Dioxin accumulates in the fat cells of the animals, and re-appears in meat and milk. Dioxin is virtually indestructible in most environments, and is excreted by the body extremely slowly.

The contamination in mozzarella cheese emerged during checks last week. Dioxins were found at higher than permitted levels at some mozzarella producers.
The French agriculture ministry on Friday ordered shops to withdraw the imported buffalo mozzarella as a precautionary measure. But it later reversed the decision.
Italy says it has traced the farms at the source of the contamination, and destroyed their milk.
Japan and South Korea imposed an import ban on the cheese.
Italian officials told the European Commission that 130 mozzarella production sites had been checked and dioxins above the EU limit had been found at 25 of them- which I would say it’s pretty scary, considering that it’s almost a quarter of the total production sites.

To be objective, we have to mention that dioxins could be found not only in mozzarella, but also in beef and pork, and this, only if we don’t want to touch the subject of many chemicals around us that we are happily using without realizing how much damage they bring to our health, among them chlorine bleach and all the bleached products, including food like flour (that’s exactly the reason for buying unbleached flour).