I Don't Have To Share My Toast

For the first time in over a decade, I do not have to share my toast. I can come out of my office midmorning, wander to the kitchen, get out the bread and maybe some peanut butter, and have a piece of toast without a smiling face (or two a couple of years ago) coming in to meet me and demand a share of my repast.

Maggie, our yellow lab, was put down this past Tuesday. A battle with a cancer that ultimately put her in a position where we could no longer keep her.

The hardest part of putting an animal down, to me anyway, is not the loss I feel for myself, though I do miss her (and her sister a couple of years ago), but the feeling you get when you take them to meet their destiny...and you just can't communicate to them what is going on. It's a feeling of betraying an old friend - even if it is the right time to take them. You can't express to them the whats and wherefores of the situation. You can only get their eyes looking at you, maybe sad eyes or happy eyes or anxious eyes, but still they are the eyes that have trusted you for all these years....that is the hardest and saddest part of letting them go.

"Too Big to Fail" by Sorkin

As I finish up Andrew Ross Sorkin's book, "Too Big To Fail", and also reading this article about Rodge Cohan....I can't help but wonder how much commission was offered to the writers to pen these ego boosts. A book about the largest financial scams in history and I find myself searching desperately to find the antagonist(s). Instead, Sorkin paints most of the players as heroes doing Patriotic dealing to save us (and add to their income)....yikes. Upon introduction of many of the players it is as if Sorkin asked them to "please relate an amusing and cuddly anecdote of yourself so that you appear to be a mere mortal to the taxpayers you raped".

One of the most nauseating moments (of many) of Sorkins book comes as TaxEvading Timmy was set to take a morning jog along the East River after a hellish weekend of commandeering taxpyers money to bailout AIG (so they could give it to Goldman Sachs). Young Timmy gazes out at the morning commuters wondering if he has done the right thing. Seeing us, the unwashed non-financial masses, he thinks "it is about them", "Never mind the staggering numbers. Never mind the ruthless complexity of structured finance and derivitives, nor the million-dollar bonuses of those who made bad bets. This is what saving the financial industry is really about...protecting ordinary people with ordinary jobs" (page 409). Gee whiz, thanks Tim. Thanks for being there for us!!! No matter that the guys you are bailing out cost us "ordinary" folks untold amounts of present and future wealth and earnings, and taxes.

No need for Syrup of Ipecac after a dose of that...

The Pharma Game - Sell You More

Most every drug that Pharma creates has a natural counterpart that can be taken, or eaten, with little or no side effects. Natural remedies generate little profit and are not patentable and therefor of no interest to Pharma for the treatment of the people of the world. A lot has been written along these lines.

Pharma exist for the sole purpose of profiting from the patenting and sales of unique molecules claimed to have some curative powers on the human body. Mostly, our bodies do not recognize these unnatural molecules and we get some degree of "side effects"...their way of saying we are poisoning you slowly, or sometimes not so slowly.

Anyway, here are a few tidbits from some papers that I have come across. First, from Price Waterhouse Coopers publication entitled "Pharma 2020: The Vision". Ooh, sounds intriguing and insightful. I downloaded the pdf, I forget where I found it, but I imagine it is still available somewhere on the web.

Page 7

...pharma 2010 report contended that the industry's best hopes of earning higher returns lay in the development of packages of products and services targeted at patients with specific disease subtypes, if it was to make such "targeted treatments"...

So, this "vision" hinges on specific "profitable" diseases. And, packages of products...sell them more drugs at a time. Maybe that'll make us better in more of a hurry? And "targeted treatments"...is that a code word for "disease mongering"? The PLoS had an entire issue devoted to disease mongering

Page 22

"The vaccine sector is growing rapidly, then: there are 245 pure vaccins and 11 combination vaccines in clinical development, and some industry experts estimate that the market could be worth as much as $42 billion by 2015.

...includes vaccines for cocaine addiction, diabetes, hypertension, Alzheimers disease, psoriasis, food allergies, rheumatoid arthritis and nicotine withdrawal.

...there are 90 therapeutic vaccines for cancer in the pipeline"

I don't like to be a Negative Nelly, but this is undoubtedly going to offer false hopes to many people. And it is, yet again, a "give me a pill, Doc" false cure for a personal behavior issues. And, we are talking about targeting drugs and treatments for The Healthy. Pharma can't live with only treating the sick and in need...they must expand and grow. The healthy are next in line.

Page 24

"...seen from Pharmas persective, non-compliance thus represents a huge opportunity to maximize the value of its products. Indeed, Datamonitor estimates that better compliance could generate more than $30 billion a year in additional sales"

Non-compliance, meaning someone gets a prescription from the Doc and either says, I am NOT going to fill it, or take it...or maybe does fill it and does take it for a while and has side effects, etc. Pharma sees you as the enemy. They need you to take that drug, and mostly thye NEED you to get the refills. Imagine a Public-option government controlled healthcare system - where lobbyists have "sold" (actually bought) the idea to government that you can't be "cured" if you are not taking your meds, and that you can't be trusted to take them on your on. That knock on the door is your GCO (Government Compliance Officer), there to give you the pill and watch it go down the hatch. Could happen, very easily that could happen.

Next, some excerpts from a new article I came across titled "The Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex: A Deadly Fairy Tale"

...two other areas America excels as a leader above all other developed nations is in being the premier breeding ground for the pharmaceutical industrial complex’s greatest profits and, second, as the world’s exemplar in medical fraud and corruption. The fairy tale of America’s health as being best served by drugs is a creation of this complex, a lullaby that brings ill citizens repeatedly to their doctors and hospitals for diagnosis and treatment, or simply to deny healthcare altogether to the uninsured.

The country is pacified by a blind belief that the drugs being prescribed to them have been proven safe because our government health agencies have our physical health and well-being in their best intentions. This is a lie, an extraordinarily deadly lie. Iatrogenesis, medically induced injury and death, is the number one cause of death in American medicine annually, since only a small percentage of these deaths are actually reported. Each year more Americans die from preventable deaths due to our medical system than all military causalities in the two world wars combined. This is tantamount to medical genocide. One of the major causes of these deaths is the overmedication of Americans in all ages. The constant need for profits has created an environment that allows the pharmaceutical industrial complex to use their enormous financial and political clout to literally make normal life experiences into new diseases, such as social anxiety disorder, in order to sell its drugs. The pharmaceutical industry has been given the authority to pathologize life, with the drugging of our children, seniors, etc. For example, the leading cause of AIDS deaths today is a result of liver failure. This is not a condition of HIV infection, but a direct result of the anti-HIV drug AZT. Is it little wonder then that we are being intimidated and frightened into believing that mandatory vaccination is being touted even though the science of efficacy and safety, even the need, for these new swine flu vaccines is patently unproven. It is perhaps one of the largest falsehoods ever perpetuated on humanity that dwarfs the sleaze on Wall Street.

and

According to OpenSecrets.org, there are 3093 lobbyists in the health field and Big Pharma now spends approximately $1.2 million daily to persuade Congress to act according to their script. An investigation conducted by Medical Verdicts & Law Weekly found that 30 key lawmakers are involved in health legislation totaling $11 million in health investments. Three of every four major health firms have at least one lobbyist who worked for a congressman. Startlingly, nine lobbyists employed by Big Pharma are former congressional staffers who are still well-connected to Capitol Hill. The conflicts of interest are everywhere. Judd Gregg (R-NH), the Obama nominee for Commerce Secretary, who withdrew because of opposition to the Administration's agenda, is a senior member of the Health Committee. He revealed that he has $254,000-$560,000 in health stocks.

and last, but certainly not least

In order to understand how we can spend 2.6 trillion this year on healthcare, but not reduce the incidence of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, mental conditions, arthritis, etc., we must realize this is a game. With each piece of the puzzle, feeding into a single picture of a massively corrupt, unethical, and frequently illegal system controlled by relatively few corporations within the pharmaceutical complex and the health insurance industry, are the ring leaders. They in turn influence thousands of lobbyists, paid-off scientists and academicians, and policymakers, especially those who rule on important health oversight committees. Health officials and legislators in turn solicit expert witnesses, preselected by the cartels, to position their drug agendas in the most favorable manner. The pharmaceutical cartel also has direct connections with its supporting scientific advisory boards and key foundations. These foundations, supported by policy think tanks who supply the so-called independent experts, then lobby the upper echelon within the FDA, NIH, CDC, NIMH, HHS. Ideally they hire former health commissioners and legislators previously players in the game to assist those same federal agencies to see their drugs guided through the regulatory process. Public relations and advertizing firms are contracted to give the public impression that these drugs are effective and safe for the sole reason they have received official licensing. In addition, the cartel creates front organizations with consumer-friendly titles whose representatives appear at national conferences and seminars beholden to special drug interests. Finally, the drug corporations set money aside to be paid out in settlements. With the exception of class action suits, the majority of cases for injury and death are accompanied by confidentiality clauses to prevent public disclosure of data the companies wish to remain secret.

This is how the medical system is rigged and it is why we can watch 60 Minutes or read the New York Times serving as pharmaceutical shills to encourage vaccination, yet refusing to air or print the dissenting voices who have the scientific evidence to show it is a massive fraud. Therefore, the public is misled every step of the way.

My best advice...read up on healthy lifestyles, healthy foods, dietary supplements, etc. Get some exercise and sunshine. Only go to the doctor after giving it careful consideration and reconsideration.

Just say "No"...to flu shots

As usual...follow the money.

They have game plans to sell us on the "need" to be vaccinated:

the Seven Step Recipe. Glen Nowak, now the Director of the CDC’s Media Relations, outlined a concise public relations template while serving as the communications spokesperson for the National Immunization Program. Speaking at the 2004 National Influenza Vaccine Summit, he presented the CDC’s seven steps. After a careful review of Nowak’s Powerpoint presentation we discover a very detailed and concerted PR and multimedia campaign that includes the following (quotes are from CDC’s materials):

• To encourage the belief that influenza infection can “occur among people for whom influenza is not generally perceived to cause serious complications (e.g., children, healthy adults, healthy seniors).” In other words, promote flu vaccination to those who don’t really need it.
• In order to “foster the demand for flu vaccinations” the CDC should target “medical experts and public health authorities publicly (e.g., via media) [to] state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes) – and urge influenza vaccination.”
• By focusing on the message of dire health threats and human casualties upon those who don’t really need to be vaccinated, the CDC will reach its milestone of “framing of the flu season in terms that motivate behavior (e.g., as “very severe,” “more severe than last or past years,” “deadly”).”
• Throughout the flu season, the campaign would continue issuing reports “from health officials and media” to emphasize that “influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people – helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza.”
• Of course, no marketing strategy is thorough without images. Ergo another ingredient in the recipe is to use “visible/tangible examples of the seriousness of the illness (e.g., pictures of children, families of those affected coming forward) and people getting vaccinated (the first to motivate, the latter to reinforce).” link
  

A very good new article published in The Atlantic entitled "Does the Vaccine Matter?". IT is well worth the time to read, but cutting to the chase, basically No, it doesn't matter. Healthy people don't derive much, if any benefit, and unhealthy people are not likely to develop the necessary antibodies after being vaccinated to protect them from the viruses. Here are a couple of clips from the article.

He [Cochrane Collaboration’s Tom Jefferson, who’s also an epidemiologist trained at the famed London School of Tropical Hygiene] leads an international team of researchers who have combed through hundreds of flu-vaccine studies. The vast majority of the studies were deeply flawed, says Jefferson. “Rubbish is not a scientific term, but I think it’s the term that applies.” Only four studies were properly designed to pin down the effectiveness of flu vaccine, he says, and two of those showed that it might be effective in certain groups of patients, such as school-age children with no underlying health issues like asthma. The other two showed equivocal results or no benefit.

and

The history of flu vaccination suggests other reasons to doubt claims that it dramatically reduces mortality. In 2004, for example, vaccine production fell behind, causing a 40 percent drop in immunization rates. Yet mortality did not rise. In addition, vaccine “mismatches” occurred in 1968 and 1997: in both years, the vaccine that had been produced in the summer protected against one set of viruses, but come winter, a different set was circulating. In effect, nobody was vaccinated. Yet death rates from all causes, including flu and the various illnesses it can exacerbate, did not budge. Sumit Majumdar, a physician and researcher at the University of Alberta, in Canada, offers another historical observation: rising rates of vaccination of the elderly over the past two decades have not coincided with a lower overall mortality rate. In 1989, only 15 percent of people over age 65 in the U.S. and Canada were vaccinated against flu. Today, more than 65 percent are immunized. Yet death rates among the elderly during flu season have increased rather than decreased.

All of those millions of doses of vaccine go to bottom line profits for a few pharma's, but do little for, and possible even harm, the millions getting the shots.

"The vaccine market is booming," says Bruce Carlson, spokesperson at market research firm Kalorama, which publishes an annual survey of the vaccine industry. "It's an enormous growth area for pharmaceuticals at a time when other areas are not doing so well," he says, noting that the pipeline for more traditional blockbuster drugs such as Lipitor and Nexium has thinned.

As always with pandemic flus, taxpayers are footing the $1.5 billion check for the 250 million swine flu vaccines that the government has ordered so far and will be distributing free to doctors, pharmacies and schools. In addition, Congress has set aside more than $10 billion this year to research flu viruses, monitor H1N1's progress and educate the public about prevention.

Drugmakers pocket most of the revenues from flu sales, with Sanofi-Pasteur, Glaxo Smith Kline and Novartis cornering most of the market. Link

And a couple of other reads....

NVIC vaccine news

and

Take Vitamin D Instead

Why Do We Believe Them At All Anymore?

Another admission of feeding us a line by the government...

Mr. Barofsky’s office also says that regulators were wrong to tell the public last year that the earliest bailout recipients were all healthy.

Former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., for instance, said on Oct. 14 that the banks were “healthy,” and that they accepted the money for “the good of the U.S. economy.” The banks, he said, would be better able to increase their lending to consumers and businesses.

In truth, regulators were concerned about the health of several banks that received that first bailout, the inspector general writes.

The inspector general said government officials need to be more careful when describing their actions and rationale. In a letter included with the report, the Federal Reserve concurred with Mr. Barofsky’s concern about the statements made last year, but the Treasury Department said that any review of announcements last year “must be considered in light of the unprecedented circumstances in which they were made.” Link

Ya gotta love that last line from Treasury and Tax Evading Timmy...

I guess they weren't fans of Kennedy philosophy of government truths. Oh, for the return to the days of the Honorable and Competent Government Liars.

Profiting Under Guise of Philanthropy - Another Entry

I couldn't decide if this qualifies exactly as PUGP, but it seem close enough...for me. Yet another example of how those of wealth create the rules to their liking, while appearing to be doing deeds for the "common good". This example comes from an article written by economist, businessman Gary North.

Mount Desert Island, Maine, is the prototype Establishment enclave in America. There are three of them, all islands: Mt. Desert, Jeckyl (Georgia), and Jupiter (Florida). Mt. Desert Island is where a major aspect of the modern environmental movement was created: the lock-out.

In 1910, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. bought a 104-room granite mansion there, importing tiles from the Great Wall of China. [Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976), p. 97.] Rockefeller then used Mount Desert Island as his first great experiment in permanently sequestering property away from the free market, which has an unappreciated tendency to develop properties aimed for sale to middle-class buyers.

Rockefeller and his elite neighbors – Edsel Ford was one of them – were concerned about "overdevelopment." [John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Century (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), p. 199.] This is an elitist code word for "real estate sales to the upper middle class." They created an association and donated 5,000 acres to it; then they gave it to the Federal government. President Wilson used executive authority in 1916 to create a special monument; in 1919, Congress passed a law making it Lafayette National Park. Junior bought more land and donated it to the government; this is now Acadia National Park.

He and his peers repeatedly adopted the lock-out strategy, using tax-deductible money, to remove prime real estate from the market in wilderness areas surrounding elite enclaves. This raises the value of the remaining properties, and it secures an insulated social world for them. The area around Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is one of the prime areas where the Rockefellers own large tracts. This area has long been the focus of a Rockefeller-inspired lock-out, beginning in 1919. [Harr & Johnson, pp. 201-211.] Land values there reflect this: astronomical. But the original model was Mount Desert Island.

The Rockefeller family biographers say of Junior’s role: "Very shortly, he became a towering figure, the greatest ally the National Park Service ever had." [Ibid., p. 198.] The assistance was mutual. The National Park Service provides the authority to keep the rest of us out of these areas on a permanent basis.

This program to seal off prime wilderness areas from economic development had its origins in the special role of wilderness in the coming of age for the sons of the super-rich. It is one of the three ordeals of youth and early manhood: the wilderness summer (wealthy scion Teddy Roosevelt is the most famous exemplar); the academy (Exeter, Groton, etc.), and military service in wartime (again, Roosevelt the "Rough Rider" is most famous). [Nelson Aldrich, Jr., Old Money: The Mythology of Wealth in America (New York: Knopf, 1988), ch. 5: "Three Ordeals."] Mount Desert Island has been a big part of this. [Ibid., pp. 164, 166.] Nelson Aldrich, Jr., as part of the Old Money Establishment, is quite forthright about environmentalism’s social function for the Establishment: "The social religion of Nature, which began with rich kids going outdoors for their health, ends in political action against the condo developers, the shopping-mall impresarios, the army of entrepreneurs whom Old Money (and not Old Money alone) imagines despoiling Arcadia." [Ibid., p. 169.]

Well, they gave "us", the little people, a few National Parks, while they get to keep out "us", the little people, from having elbow room next door to them.

"Smart Choice" Program is a Joke

You may have seen a commercial on TV recently for some Kellogg's cereal including Fruit Loops and Cocoa Krispies...indicating that these cereals were "Smart Choices" for feeding your kids for breakfast. I guess the likes of John Stossels would say, "Give me a break". Labeling on these cereals indicate that they contain up to 41% sugar content per serving - the number one ingredient on the label...followed by corn flour - a high GI food. Talk about setting your kids up to become another member of the obese metabolic syndrome crowd. Pharmaceutical companies are probably wetting themselves watching these commercials in glee.

Here is a look at the head of the program and some "thought" behind the program

Eileen T. Kennedy, president of the Smart Choices board and the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said the program’s criteria were based on government dietary guidelines and widely accepted nutritional standards.

She said the program was also influenced by research into consumer behavior. That research showed that, while shoppers wanted more information, they did not want to hear negative messages or feel their choices were being dictated to them.

“The checkmark means the food item is a ‘better for you’ product, as opposed to having an x on it saying ‘Don’t eat this,’ ” Dr. Kennedy said. “Consumers are smart enough to deduce that if it doesn’t have the checkmark, by implication it’s not a ‘better for you’ product. They want to have a choice. They don’t want to be told ‘You must do this.’ ”

Dr. Kennedy, who is not paid for her work on the program, defended the products endorsed by the program, including sweet cereals. She said Froot Loops was better than other things parents could choose for their children.

“You’re rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal,” Dr. Kennedy said, evoking a hypothetical parent in the supermarket. “So Froot Loops is a better choice.”

Wow...so it ranks as better than a donut...so let it have the appearance of being good for you? That is some sound logic? Huh?

I was watching a show on UCTV recently (University of California), a show they put on called Mini Medical School for the Public, a great show for the crowd that cares about things like their own health and well-being in a world run by idiots. Anyway, this particular show had a nutritional componenet to it, as many of them do. The lecturer showed a series of charts on some research done on kids blood glucose levels...and how they were affected by what they ate for breakfast. Kids that ate a high sugar breakfast, like Fruit Loops, had a significant spike intheir serum glucose levels as compared to kids that ate "other" foods lower in sugar. The elevated glucose continued for a few hours...but out at around 5 hours, or lunchtime, their glucose dropped to slightly below baseline, or becoming slightly hypoglycemic.

So, the kids were then offered free choice lunches. The kids that ate the sugary breakfast cereal, and became slightly hypoglycemic, ate 81% more calories at lunch than the other group....EIGHTY ONE PERCENT!! But Fruit Loops are a "Smart Choice"!!! Good Grief.

Maybe you guys on this Smart Choices Board need to get a second opinion...and get the conflicts of interest off of the board as well.

Oh, and just for your info, Smart Choices Board, since you obviously don't follow the news...in the last week or two here are a couple of things you might have missed:

A spoonful of sugar? Americans are swallowing 22 teaspoons of sugar each day, and it's time to cut way back, the American Heart Association says. link

and from the same article

Sandon said that parents can help lower that sugar intake by getting soda out of the house, looking at how much sugar is in their kids' cereal and substituting snacks like cookies with popcorn.

and Obama and friends are considering a sugary drink tax. So, why not tax sugary cereals as well?