Category Archives: healthcare

List of Heirloom Seeds

by

A member of the organic farmers group I belong to posted this website promoting heirloom seeds with lists of companies that provide them.  I thought I’d pass it along to anyone interested.

Here’s the main page and think it’s a pretty cool site on the harm caused by Monsanto, et al.   (As a side note~look at the end of this article–boy, does that hit close to home! <sigh> 1996…pre-9/11…)

Link to their “booklet” on the website–can’t read it all but the first few pages look very good.

Here’s another informative article.

The Pusher Man

by

commondreams has this up on the re-definition of a “pusher-man”.   How can Big Pharma get away with creating drugs that are addictive–that they know will keep permanent customers in the loop? Look at all the pharmacy robberies that have cropped up since the introduction of oxycontin?

It’s along the lines of creating a drug for one condition that causes so many side effects that the person needs another drug to combat them, and another drug to combat the second drug’s side effects…and so on…neverending customers…neverending profits…

~~~A commenter brought up the song by Steppenwolf “Pusher Man”   

I used to have a coworker who played that song on a regular basis.  He was a Vietnam vet and I think he dabbled a little in the illegal stuff, but had straightened himself out.   The amusing thing (to me) was that he played this loudly and his office cubicle was right near the front door so every client that came in the door could hear “God Damn the Pusher Man…” coming over the cubicle wall…you should have seen some of the looks on their faces…

 

 

GMO monsters; Nanoparticles and Karl Rove…

by

Jill Richardson has this up at PR Watch.  Can anyone make sense of this?  The chemical/bioengineering industry is a monster running amok—make more toxic food that makes people, animals sick and poisons the atmosphere…

…so they can grow more food per acre.

I have a question:  if people are dying from the poison food and poison atmosphere, who is this serving?  Not us.

~~~~~~

More from PR Watch on the propaganda of Monsanto, et al…

Good Grief. Nanoparticles are nothing to worry about??  Just a little benzene (one of the most toxic chemicals out there)  isn’t going to hurt…/snark

And the debate on sunscreens also questions their validity and necessity.

CDC link here: http://www.ewg.org/analysis/toxicsunscreen

Natural News has a story here.

~~~~~~~~

Finally there’s this story on Rove controlling the purse strings…the behind the scenes and under the radar guy.

“Baffling new disease…”

by

AP has this up on a yet another disease that implicates a destroyed immune system.

Let’s break this down, shall we?

She was from Vietnam, and came here after the war, in 1975.  Although the article doesn’t state that, she most likely was exposed to Agent Orange–exposure to Agent Orange can cause immune system deficiency.

I also wonder about Celiac.  When doing my research on it, I had read that Asians don’t get it–it’s just unheard of in that population…but knowing how the medical profession likes to make pronouncements of entire classes of people with a small sampling, I’m suspicious that she might have it and not be diagnosed nor tested.  I didn’t have any overt symptoms–it was only because of my Irish-German heritage that I put the puzzle together.  And it’s interesting that I have become more sensitive as I have adopted the GAPS diet–allowing my gut to heal.

There isn’t any mention of her diet, nor of the doctor asking her about diet….so one is left to wonder if she’s adopted the Western diet and is suffering because of it.  I think the age thing is a big clue–our bodies are miracles that can take a lot of abuse before the cells break down and start to wreak havoc.  This is something I’ve noticed on the mercury poisoning support group–some folks will have good health up ’til the time they reach 40, and then things start happening.

There’s also no discussion on toxin exposure.  She lives in Tennessee, ranked 11th in toxic exposure.  (What? Indiana is *only* ranked 4th? …we must be slipping in polluting our environment./snark)   Note the assertion of the article that the EPA is right on top of things… the reporter apparently didn’t get the memo of the corporate polluters who worked to get those regulations repealed.

From the article:

The NRDC also framed its report in a political context, indicating that Sen. Lamar Alexander voted against an attempt by Sen. James Inhofe, R.-Okla., to repeal the Mercury and Air Toxics standard. Sen. Bob Corker supported it.“For too long, Americans have had no choice but to breathe toxic air pollution. Thanks to the EPA, the air is getting cleaner,” said Franz Matzner, NRDC associate director of Government Affairs. “But we need lawmakers who will help clean up the air we all breathe — not lawmakers who do the bidding of big polluters trying to repeal safeguards that protect children’s health. This and future Congresses should let the EPA do its job so all Americans can breathe easier.”

Here’s another article on the toxic junk in Tennessee by Kelly Hearn ( The Nation).  Pay attention to the date–I think it could be significant to this woman because she began getting ill in 2009.  Holy Crap.  Mysterious disease…my arse.

Here’s another discussion on it (same blog).  A good discussion on Celiac reaching across several populations that the medical profession has refused to acknowledge. Good Grief.  The misery and diseases they have caused by their ignorance.

 

 

GMO backers

by

Grist also has this up on the companies who don’t want the public to know what’s in their food.

Again, I go back to the often used Bush-era phrase:  “If you have nothing to hide…”  Why would one object to the GMO labeling unless they know that the public is going to stop buying that trash food in droves when they realize it’s GMO?  Or perhaps they’re afraid that people will finally be able to link their health issues with GMO food–gut inflammation, allergies, skin rashes, lung issues, heart issues, etc.?

 

 

Numbers of importance

by

(Okay, feeling a little more lucid today…back to business…)

People who starve in America per given year.

More statistics on the world here.

More debate about the *cough* non-issue here.  Repeat after me:  “If you don’t acknowledge there’s a problem, then there’s no problem.”

Deaths from prescription drugs here--a whopping 100,000 people die every year from prescription drugs and 2 million are seriously injured…but you wouldn’t know that by the lack of attention it receives.  I’m sure that the drug companies buying advertising on the TV networks has *nothing* to do with the lack of sunlight on the issue.  /snark

But those same TV nooz stations will begin (if they haven’t already, since I’m cable-less, I don’t know and I don’t have time to search the web to find out) their onslaught of dire warnings to the American public on the upcoming flu season and how they better get on the stick and get those poisonous vaccines shot into their already beleaguered bodies.  The radio stations here are doing their best to get the hype going on West Nile again…today they announced that horses have died of West Nile, so owners are being urged to get their horses vaccinated.  Wanna know how many horses have died?  Three.  Yep.  I wonder if those horses die from the vaccine if it will be duly noted and reported to authorities? Nah, we can’t have that.  That would be responsible and accurate.

Other deaths by pharmaceutical companies here.  Keep the kleenex handy.  A story of a mother’s heartbreak over the belief she was doing what a good mother does…

More on vaccine deaths here.    Note the similar blanket excuse of SIDS. Here’s a site that blames the parents (mother) for SIDS…oldest trick in the book–that way, she’ll feel guilty for being a poor parent instead of questioning the vaccines the child received. More blaming here…by National Polite Republican.

More parents’ stories here.  But the public is going to be urged to put this poison into their children…and then be blamed if their child dies as a result.  This is criminal.  I can’t even read them all because it’s just too hard.

I’m struggling with this issue with my own kids now–they’ve been brainwashed to believe vaccines are okay and I’m being an alarmist.  I’ve seen how they have affected a sibling’s grandkids and how the child changed dramatically after receiving these horrible shots.  I can’t convince my kids that there is a connection.  I don’t have grandchildren yet, but I’m trying to prevent a tragedy.

And thanks to Senator Frist, you can’t touch Big Pharma.   Profit$ without penalty nor accountability. More here.

…let’s not forget Frist killing kittens for “medical research”.   Paragraph here:  http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/usa/bill-frist/

And more here.

And speaking of cruelty to animals, the FW radio stations were reporting this morning that allegedly a man had tied a firecracker to a kitten’s tail, and it appears that he allegedly threw the kitten into a fire.  The story went on to say that the man’s girlfriend owned the cat and she was quoted as saying that the boyfriend was complaining that the “cat was always around.”    Sounds like a great guy. /snark

 

West Nile

by

…well, it’s that time of year for the Health Dept to put out its dire warnings of West Nile virus, spread by mosquitoes.  This is an annual warning by the dept. so you would think that thousands of people die of the disease...nope.

Here’s  a story on a death by West Nile.  Note that it’s the first one since 2007:  http://www.statesman.com/news/local/west-nile-death-first-since-2007-2425637.html

The state’s Health Dept. was recommending people use DEET to avoid mosquitoes, and subsequently, the virus.  I was at the beginning of chemical awareness and asked the director of the office I was in whether citronella was as effective.  He said yes, but citronella had to be applied every 30 minutes.  When I asked about an article I had just read about DEET being linked with epileptic seizures, he confirmed that it did cause seizures in some people.  So, I asked why the public wasn’t informed of this, and that citronella was a non-chemical solution, he blew me off. The health dept. denied people information so that they could make their own decisions.  This was another reason I left that job.

Here’s  a link (gov) on it: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002763.htm

Here’s a less biased link:  http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/2005/DEET-Cox-NCAP17oct2005.htm

A good link here.  She outlines the dangers and then gives helpful suggestions on natural repellants.   When I still had my house, I would light three or so citronella candles before going out to the patio, and never had a problem with being bitten.  And I also had natural citronella bug repellant wipes that I used when I was out.

I tried to look up deaths from DEET, and there are few reported cases.  Since it is known to cause seizures, and other neurological issues, I have to be skeptical of the statistics–how many had seizures that caused death, but it was not attributed to DEET?  Since there is such denial in the medical profession of the devastating effects of chemicals (toxins) on our health, I’m just not that confident that they are inquiring about the chemicals a person uses.

Dow sponsoring Olympics

by

Helen Clark at commondreams has this up on Dow being a sponsor of the Olympics.   I think the time is long past of the Olympics being held in high regard…

Here’s a pretty good page on Agent Orange’s effects.

…and yet the lessons still haven’t been learned…

…and the unsuspecting folks who were unaware they were being poisoned…  Be sure to click on the link at the top of the page.  Unfortunately, I don’t have time to click on all the links on the page.  The one at the top is absolutely stunning.

Along these lines–

I looked up a couple of pages on the chlorinated hydrocarbons–insecticides– here and here. 

Michigan’s state website has this:  http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-10370_12150_12220-27249&#8211;,00.html

It’s just mindboggling that so much is known about the dangers of these chemicals, but still they are used.

Population, Resources and Environment

by

…is the name of the book I found at the library.  Authors:  Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich (1970, revised 1972)

As promised, this is the text concerning nuclear disaster–specifically, they were concerned with nuclear war (as were we all) but I think with all of the nuclear reactors out there, their theory could be applied:

[…] The entire climate of the Earth would soon be altered.  In many areas, where the supply of combustible materials was sufficient, huge fire-storms would be generated, some of them covering hundreds of square miles in heavily forested or metropolitan areas.  We know something about such storms from experience during the Second World War.  On the night of July 27, 1943, Lancaster and Halifax heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force dropped 2.417 tons of incendiary and high-explosive bombs on the city of Hamburg.  Thousands of individual fires coalesced into a fire storm about 6 square miles in area.  Flames reached 15,000 feet into the atmosphere, and smoke and gases rose to 40,000 feet.  Winds, created by huge updrafts and blowing in toward the center of the fire, reached a velocity of more than 150 miles per hour.  The temperature in the fire exceeded 1,450 degrees F, high enough to melt aluminum and lead.  Air in underground shelters was heated to the point where, when they were opened and oxygen was admitted, flammable materials and even corpses burst into flames.  These shelters had to be permitted to cool 120 days to two weeks before rescuers could enter.  [the authors make note of the book The Night Hamburg Died by Martin Caiden].

[…]

In many areas the removal of all vegetation would no be the only effect;  the soil might be partly or completely sterilized as well.  There would be no plant communities nearby to effect rapid repopulation and rains would wash away the topsoil.  Picture defoliated California hills during the winter rains, and then imagine the vast loads of silt and radioactive debris being washed from northern continents into offshore waters, the site of most of the ocean’s productivity.  Consider the fate of aquatic life, which is especially sensitive to the turbidity of the waer, and think of the many offshore oil wells that would be destroyed by blast in the vicinity of large cities and left to pour their loads of crude oil into the ocean with no way of shutting them off. [BP oil spill, anyone?]

~~~~~~~~~~~

So…if there were a disaster such as Japan’s here, it would affect the entire area in much the same way.  Not as catastrophic as the above, but nevertheless, it would affect the area in much the same say, just on a smaller scale.  And what kind of domino effect would there be?  Because we all know that what happened in Japan didn’t stay in Japan–it migrated here, causing fish to become radioactive.  I found a more in-depth article here with the same researcher–puts a different light on it with him saying, in so many words, “it’s not that bad.”  Pfft.  What kills me is that they only measured fifteen fish, and ALL of them had it.  Yeah, nothing to see here, folks…move along….

Incidentally, the researcher mentions that funding for the project came from Noah.  I think that was the writer’s error, and he was actually saying NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

~~~~~~~~~~

Onto the next topic:  Synthetic Insecticides (same book)

Chlorinated Hydrocarbons

This group includes DDT, benzen hexachloride (BHC), dieldrin, endrin, aldrin, chlordane, lindane, isodrin, toxaphene, and similar compounds designed to kill insects.  DDT is the most thoroughly studied of the chlorinated hydrocarbons, and much of the following discussion is based on it.  Its behavior is more or less typical of the group, although other chlorinated hydrocarbons are more soluble in water, more toxic, less persistent, etc.   In insects and other animals these compounds act primarily on the central nervous system in ways that are not well understood, but the effects range from hypersexcitability to death following convulsions and paralysis.  Chronic effects on vertebrates include fatty infiltration of the heart, and fatty degeneration of the liver which is often fatal.  Fishes and other aquatic animals seem to be especially sensitive to chlorinated hydrocarbons.  Oxygen uptake is somehow blocked at the gills, causing death from suffocation.  That chlorinated hydrocarbons apparently can influence the production of enzymes may account for their wide range effects.

1.  Chlorinated hydrocarbons have a wide range of biological activity; they are broad-spectrum poisons, affecting many different organisms in many different ways.  They are toxic to essentially all animals including many vertebrates. 

2.  They have great stability.  It is not clear, for instance, ho long DDT persists in ecosystems.  Fifty percent of the DDT sprayed in a single treatment may still be found in a field 10 years later.  This does not mean, however, that the other 50 percent has been degraded to biologically inactive molecules;  it may only have gone somewhere else. […]

3.  Chlorinated hydrocarbons are very mobile.  For example, the chemical properties of DDT cause it to adhere to dust particles and thus get blown around the world.  Four different chlorinated hydrocarbons have been detected in dust filtered from the air over Barbados; frog populations in unsprayed areas high in the Sierra Nevada of California are polluted with DDT.  Furthermore, DDT codistills with water; when water evaporates and enters the atmosphere, DDT goes with it.  Chlorinated hydrocarbons thus travel in the air and surface waters.

(I found this reference, but was sorely disappointed at the statement that chlorinated hydrocarbons have only been used for the last ten years. Good Grief, a research paper that doesn’t have historical data.)

4. Finally, chlorinated hydrocarbons become concentrated in the fats of organisms.  If you think of the world as being partitioned into nonliving and living parts, then these pesticides may be thought of as moving continually from the physical environment into living systems.  To attempt to monitor DDT levels merely by testing water (as has been frequently done) is ridiculous.  Water is saturated with DDT –that is, can dissolve no more–when it has dissolved 1.2 parts per billion.  Besides, the chemical does not remain for long in water, it is quickly removed by any organisms that live in water. 

It is these four properties –extreme range of biological activity, stability, mobility, and affinity for living systems –that cause biologist’s fears that DDT and its relatives are degrading the life-support system of our planet.  If any one of these properties were lacking, the situation would be much less serious, but in combination they pose a deadly threat.

Organophosphates

This group includes parathion, malathion, Asodrin, diazinon, TEPP, phosdrin, and several others.  These poisons are descendatns of the nerve gas Tabun (disopropyl-flurophosphate), developed in Nazi Germany during WWII.  All of them are cholinesterase inhibitors; they inactivate the enzyme responsible for breaking down a nerve “transmitter substance,” acetylcholine.  The result is, in a acute cases of poisoning, a hyperactivity of the nervous system; the animal dies twitching and out of control. 

Unlike chlorinated hydrocarbons, organosphospates are unstable and non-persistent; thus, they tend not to produce chronic effects in ecosystems or to accumulate in food chains.

Organophosphates inhibit other enzymes as well as cholinesterase.  Indeed, some of those that show relatively high insect toxicity and low mammalian toxicity do so because they poison an esterase that is more critical to the functioning of insect rater than of mammalian nervous systems.  Malathion, which is violently poisonous to insects, is relatively nontoxic to mammals because the mammalian systems contain an enzyme, carboxy-estrase, that destroys malathion.  But toxic effects on mammals can occur when malathion is used in combination with other organophosphates, which apparently inhibit the carboxy-esterase enzyme. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was trying to find something written about the effects of the pesticides on enzymes–much is talked about them in health circles–the general consensus is that with the advent of the chemical age, enzymes have been diminished.   They advocate raw foods, non-microwaved foods, and organic foods to increase enzyme activity.  Enzymes are even more reduced in toxic people like myself, so taking a supplement of enzymes is needed.

I’ve looked at photos of our parents and grandparents when they were our age, and they don’t look as old as the Boomer generation does at that same age.  Our skin doesn’t look as healthy, either–it doesn’t have that glow.    I have to think it’s from unhealthy food coupled with the toxins in the atmosphere.    FW has had many “Ozone days” this summer due to the stupid, unrelenting heat.  I didn’t think it affected me that much until I went out for a jog last week on an Ozone day.  I felt pretty good jogging, but when I was going up the stairs to my apartment, I started to wheeze.  Well now that was not good.  So now, when I could be jogging outdoors, I have to do aerobics inside.  Not that I mind aerobics, because it’s fun, but I’d rather be outside jogging.

Anyway, I’m concerned about the long term exposure of the chlorinated hydrocarbons–we’ve all been exposed.  How much?  How long a period?  How has our DNA been affected?  And just because at the writing of this book the organosphosphates were not of big concern, it was written decades ago–what new information has been uncovered?  And is it information that was researched without $$ from chemical companies or those with an agenda?