FTC descends on unapproved cancer cures - NewsGrabs 21 September 2008
US Federal Trade Commission warns consumers about 'bogus' cancer cures
The Federal Trade Commission charged five companies with making false and misleading claims for cancer cures and said Thursday that it has reached settlements with six others. "As long as products have been sold there has been somebody out there selling snake oil to consumers," said Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC's bureau of consumer protection. She said the agency, along with the Food and Drug Administration and Canadian authorities, is launching a consumer education campaign warning about bogus claims for cures."There is no credible scientific evidence that any of the products marketed by these companies can prevent, cure, or treat cancer of any kind," said Parnes.
Now let's compare this to the treatments being "protected" from competition by natural cures: Is there credible scientific evidence that poisoning the patient with chemicals or burning the tumor with radiation can prevent or cure cancer?I think you know the answer.
The medical monopoly has no product. That is nowhere as clearly evident as in the case of cancer. Yet health authorities think they must "protect consumers" from looking around for a natural alternative - ANY natural alternative to the unworkable treatments proposed by the medical/pharmaceutical mainstream.
The difference between these cures is that some are owned by pharma and therefore are studied and promoted, while others aren't profitable and therefore have "no evidence" supporting them.
If you like a rant, see Mike Adams' opinion piece about this operation: FTC Launches Operation False Cures to Suppress Natural Cancer Remedies
Here is the FTC's information: FTC Sweep Stops Peddlers of Bogus Cancer Cures
Note the FTC's sledgehammer approach. Their standard operating procedure, also visible from their own report here, is to assess huge fines that can't possibly be paid and then to offer a 'settlement' which leaves the target literally gasping, while having to promise to never offend again, as otherwise they will lose everything. If you can't hire a first class law firm for your defense, you might as well give up. Justice is served - or is it?
Vast majority of Cancer studies remain unpublished
A search of the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed database showed that just 17.6 percent of the trials were eventually published in peer-reviewed medical journals.The finding raises concern about publication bias in cancer treatment trials, according to the researchers, Scott Ramsey and John Scoggins of University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
The researchers suspect the rate of negative results is much higher in the studies that have gone unpublished. “It is likely that many unpublished studies contain important information that could influence future research and present practice policy,” they wrote.
Natural Health at European Social Forum
The European Social Forum, regional counterpart of the World Social Forum is hosting, for the first time, a Forum for Natural Health, highlighting the loss of freedom of choice in health and nutrition that is a consequence of recent European legislation in the areas of medicine, nutrition and natural remedies.
Food supplements and mobile phones - two petitions to the EU Parliament
The question: is this tolerance or intolerance of risk really the result of a careful weighing up of risks and benefits to public health? Or has it perhaps got more to do with the sheer gravity of corporate influence on policy makers and regulators?We urge you, as a Member of the European Parliament, to consider carefully two issues about which we have just submitted petitions to the European Parliament Petitions Committee. These affect risk assessment and management methodologies for vitamin and mineral food supplements and sources of EMF respectively.
Vitamin D: Poor health 'due to wet climate'
Dr Oliver Gillie linked the "extreme" weather to vitamin D deficiency, which is caused by low exposure to sunlight.He has called for "urgent" government action to encourage people to take a daily dose of vitamin D to help tackle diseases such as cancer and MS.
Majority of osteoporosis patients not receiving calcium and vitamin D with treatment
"Patients with a low intake of calcium and vitamin D may not be receiving the full benefit of their osteoporosis treatment if they do not take enough supplementation", said Professor Steven Boonen MD, PhD, of Leuven University in Belgium and lead author of the abstract reporting the research results. "It is important that patients not only take both their calcium and vitamin D supplements, but also to ensure that they take them regularly".
Broccoli 'may help protect lungs'
US scientists found that sulforapane increases the activity of the NRF2 gene in human lung cells which protects cells from damage caused by toxins.The same broccoli compound was recently found to be protective against damage to blood vessels caused by diabetes.
Brassica vegetables such as broccoli have also been linked to a lower risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Strict Mediterranean diet offers big health boost
Sticking strictly to a Mediterranean diet rich in fruits and vegetables offers substantial protection against cancer, heart disease and other major chronic illnesses, Italian researchers said on Friday. People who did this had a 9 percent drop in death from heart disease, a 13 percent reduction in incidence of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease and a 6 percent reduction in cancer compared to those who were not as diligent, their study found.
Drink tea: prevent tooth decay, heart disease and some cancers
Tea not only rehydrates as well as water does, but it can also protect against heart disease and some cancers, UK nutritionists found. Experts believe flavonoids are the key ingredient in tea that promote health. Other health benefits seen included protection against tooth plaque and potentially tooth decay, plus bone strengthening.
Autism: US researchers call off chelation study
Chelation (kee-LAY'-shun) removes heavy metals from the body and is used to treat lead poisoning. Its use as an autism treatment is based on the fringe theory that mercury in vaccines triggers autism - a theory never proved and rejected by mainstream science. Mercury hasn't been in childhood vaccines since 2001, except for certain flu shots.Chelation may be fringe, but it seems to work - unlike the mainstream's treatments. So in order to be able to continue to say that chelation is not scientifically proven, let's just cancel the study that would have given definitive results.
Research Links Plastics Containing Bisphenol A to Heart Disease and Diabetes
Dr. Melzer and his team found that average BPA concentrations, adjusted for age and sex, were higher in those diagnosed with cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. In fact, even a slightly raised BPA concentration was associated with a 39 percent increased risk of having cardiovascular disease (angina, coronary heart disease, or heart attack combined) and diabetes.Those with the highest BPA concentration had nearly three times the odds of heart disease and 2.4 times the risk of diabetes when compared with those with the lowest levels.
Yet the FDA - suspect some industry pressure here - says that BPA is just fine, nothing to worry about.
Govt. Report Says Fluoride Added to Water Supply May Harm Population
A government-sponsored report has concluded that levels of fluoride that people are regularly exposed to in drinking water can cause serious malfunctioning of the thyroid glad, leading to even more serious health problems.
Psychiatrist And Neuroscientist Says Antipsychotics Cause Brain Shrinkage
"I haven’t published this yet. But I have spoken about it in public lectures. The big finding is that people with schizophrenia are losing brain tissue at a more rapid rate than healthy people of comparable age. Some are losing as much as 1 percent per year. That’s an awful lot over an 18-year period. And then we’re trying to figure out why. Another thing we’ve discovered is that the more drugs you’ve been given, the more brain tissue you lose."
Government study confirms relative harm of newer antipsychotics in youth
"The safety findings related to weight gain and metabolic problems raise important public health concerns, given the widespread use of second-generation antipsychotics in youth for nonpsychotic disorders.""I think the reason the use of these newer drugs has gone up so fast is that there was this widespread assumption that they were safer and more effective than what we had before. Well, we're seeing now that that's not the whole story."
There we have it --psychiatry's paradigm of care is based on invalid "widespread assumptions" NOT scientific evidence. What's more, psychiatry's "widespread assumptions" -- promoted by psychiatry's leadership-- are crafted by the marketing divisions of the pharmaceutical industry.
This study confirms the findings of Swedish researcher Janne Larsson in his report on suicides in Sweden (PDF), a majority of which were accompanied by and quite possibly caused by the preceding treatment with psychiatric drugs.
Aspartame Study Finds 67% of Female Rats Developed Visible Tumors
As a private citizen, Victoria Inness-Brown performed a 2-1/2 year scientific study putting aspartame in the form of packets of NutraSweet in the drinking water of 60 rats and keeping 48 rats as controls.Of the 30 females in the aspartame group, 20 developed tumors the size of golf balls or greater.
Aspartame: Is the Sweet Taste Worth the Harm?
When you question how such a substance has not been banned, one simply needs to look at the billions of dollars generated by the sale of aspartame each year. In light of the staggering number of dollar signs involved, it’s easy to see that the artificial sweetener industry has reached Big Tobacco status. With so much money at stake, the truth suffers almost as much as the health of the consumers, while the shareholders' wealth continues to grow exponentially.
British FDA Report Finds Healthcare Blogs As Influential As Old Media
What the MHRA learned from this report is that blogs and the people who write them are as influential as many traditional media websites and traditional corporate websites and are more influential than are many well-financed healthcare websites such as WebMD.
Congress Probes Wyeth Vitamin Claims
Centrum Cardio is advertised as the “First and only complete multivitamin that lowers cholesterol,” and a TV commercial claims Centrum Cardio is “the only complete multivitamin that can lower cholesterol,” the letter states. Moreover, Wyeth’s web site indicates that users of Centrum Cardio can “Lower Cholesterol within a Month!” with “a natural ingredient derived from soybeans that blocks cholesterol absorption & significantly lowers bad (LDL) cholesterol.”
Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs For Eight-Year-Old Kids?
Two-thirds of North America is overweight or obese. Our kids are getting fatter, too. And these children's cholesterol is going up so fast that the American Academy of Pediatrics wants kids as young as eight years of age to take cholesterol-lowering drugs. (1) But before you let any pediatrician put your child on drugs, check what may be a reason behind the recommendation: money.
Australia: Corporate Terrorism Inquiry Needed
Raiding and subsequently closing down PAN Pharmaceuticals in 2003, officials of the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration embarked on an orchestrated litany of lies, falsified evidence, shredded documents and fraudulently claimed that there was an 'imminent risk' of death and serious harm, despite knowing that its expert advisory committee had concluded there was no serious risk.Officials even falsified the advice of the solicitor general during a briefing to the then Australian Prime Minister.
"The Australian TGA has claimed for years that it is a world class regulator. Now we know that they are drug cheats of the worst kind; a regulator unfit to regulate!" says Ron Law.
Corruption: Bayer Portugal bribes doctors - no investigation
In 1997 drugs industry insider Alfredo Pequito informed the public that pharmaceutical companies in Portugal are bribing thousands of doctors to prescribe their products.Pequito is a former employee of the German pharmaceuticals giant Bayer. He collected the names of nearly 2,500 Portuguese doctors who have been induced with gifts including cash and travel vouchers to prescribe Bayer drugs.
Controlled drugs dumped uncontrolled into water
Federal narcotics regulators impose strict rules meant to keep controlled pharmaceuticals out of the wrong hands. Yet those rules also make these drugs nearly impossible to handle safely as waste, say hospital environmental administrators.Many would like to send controlled substances to landfills or incinerators to keep them out of waterways as much as possible. Instead, they are nearly always dropped into sinks and toilets by hospitals, nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
A glimpse of the magnitude of the problem ... (Article in USA Today)U.S. hospitals and long-term care facilities annually flush millions of pounds of unused pharmaceuticals down the drain, pumping contaminants into America's drinking water, according to an ongoing Associated Press investigation.
The doctor who said his vitamins would cure Aids
The Guardian is in stitches over Dr Rath dropping a defamation lawsuit against the paper, which had reported critically on a Rath-initiated program to supply needed nutrients to poor people in South Africa who had been diagnosed as infected with HIV.A comment sent to the paper by a friend, Aids survivor and activist for correct information on HIV and Aids:
"As an upper middle class American, I can the afford micronutrient vitamins that have contributed to the maintenance of normal health since I tested positive more than 15 years ago. People like me don't want or need the toxic chemicals promoted by pharmaceutical spokespersons like Wainberg and Moore. Rath is a humanitarian who simply makes the same possibility of life and health available to those of us in the developed world available to poor, undernourished people in the developing world. Wainberg and Moore are mendacious cowards who deserve to be thrown in the same cell as Achmat. They refuse to defend their idea that toxic drugs offer the only solution to AIDS in any public forum where informed challengers are present. They run from any public discussion of the inaccurate HIV tests. The only time they dare to speak is when given the type of slanted forum offered by this one-sided article. This is not news, it is drug company PR. Shame on your publication."
HAART 'saves lives' — but doesn’t prolong them!
There is general agreement, then, that antiretroviral treatment has yielded substantial extension of life to people already diagnosed with AIDS. The interval between an AIDS diagnosis and death should now be measured in decades rather than a year or two.As with so many other contentions of orthodox HIV/AIDS belief, however, this expectation is contrary to actual fact. The greatest risk of death from “HIV disease” comes at ages in the range of 35-45, just as at the beginning of the AIDS era. There was no dramatic increase in median age of death after 1996 following the adoption of HAART
Italy Bans Pesticides Linked to Bee Devastation
The Italian government banned the use of several neonicotinoid pesticides that are blamed for the deaths of millions of honeybees. The Ministero del Lavoro della Salute e delle Politiche Sociali issued an immediate suspension of the seed treatment products clothianidin, imidacloprid, fipronil and thiamethoxam used in rapeseed oil, sunflowers and sweetcorn. The Italian government will start a monitoring program to further investigate the reasons of recent bee deaths.
'Electrosmog' could kill beekeepers' buzz
Mobile phones, Wi-Fi systems, electric power lines and similar sources of "electrosmog" are disrupting nature on a massive scale, causing birds and bees to lose their bearings, fail to reproduce and die, a conference has heard.Dr Ulrich Warnke - who has been researching the effects of man-made electrical fields on wildlife for more than 30 years - told the conference, organised by the Radiation Research Trust at the Royal Society in London and held in the past week, that "an unprecedented dense mesh of artificial magnetic, electrical and electromagnetic fields" has been generated, overwhelming the "natural system of information" on which the species rely.
European Parliament Recommends Stricter Safety Limits for Cell Phones
The European Parliament has voted 522 to 16 to recommend tighter safety standards for cell phones. In light of the growing body of scientific evidence implicating cell phone use with brain tumors, the Parliament says, "The limits on exposure to electromagnetic fields [EMFs] which have been set for the general public are obsolete."The European Parliament "is greatly concerned at the Bio-Initiative international report concerning EMFs, which summarises over 1500 studies on that topic and which points in its conclusions to the health risks posed by emissions from mobile-telephony devices such as mobile telephones, UMTS, WiFi, WiMax and Bluetooth, and also DECT landline telephones."
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More information out there...
There is much I cannot cover but other sources for this kind of information exist and are active.
...
Dr Mercola's health blog and Mike Adams' Natural News have great health information.
The Alternative Medicine Yahoo Group is a place where you can discuss and exchange information on what is happening in the world of natural health.
For the influence of electromagnetic waves from radio, mobile phones and other radio emitting devices, check out the emfrefugee group on Yahoo.
If you are interested in a different take on the news that isn't health centered but is certainly fun, check out Robin Good TV News.
A few sites to keep up to date with the other side of world affairs, the stuff you won't necessarily find on your tv or in the papers:
http://therealnews.com/
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.commondreams.org
http://www.globalresearch.ca/
http://rawstory.com/
http://www.truthout.org/... and remember,
The individual is supreme and finds its way through intuition
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday September 21 2008
updated on Wednesday August 15 2012URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2008/09/21/ftc_descends_on_unapproved_cancer_cures_newsgrabs_21_september_2008.htm
