Written by Pett (Petya) Corby    (personal friend)

Overpopulation and rapidly depleting natural resources are engaged in a dangerous lock-step toward human extinction. Add pollution, contamination, out-of-control rising birth rates, and the drum roll countdown beats faster and louder. Increased awareness and commitment to replacing archaic, highly destructive technologies with “green” solutions must include effective, natural methods for avoiding unplanned pregnancies. “Natural methods” for avoiding pregnancy? What's wrong with all the contraceptive drugs and devices that Western societies have come to depend on for the past 48 years? Most of us are familiar with Einstein's famous aphorism that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Let's get real; these methods are not working. “Dealing with climate change and peak oil holds the potential to allow us to create the kind of world that we actually want,” write global activists Paul Allen and Alex Randall. “It doesn't have to be a huge disaster, although business as usual will not see us through. We now have a chance to change everything, because everything must be changed. But we should use the time and the oil we have left to its very best effect now.” (Ref. 1) Richard Heinberg, peak-oil author, states: “The problems of Climate Change and Peak Oil both result from societal dependence on fossil fuels... for Climate Change analysts and activists, emissions are the essence of the problem, and so anything that will reduce emissions is viewed as a solution.” (Ref.2) Overpopulation, contamination, increased consumption of energy, rapid industrialization of developing countries such as China, are all contributing factors to increasing greenhouse gas emissions. If we could control population with drugs and contraceptive devices, we would have witnessed lower birth statistics long ago. The alarming fact is, however, that contraceptive drugs not only are ineffective, but side effects can be harmful and life-threatening, particularly among ovulating teenagers: “Sixty per cent of women (in Australia) who'd had an unwanted pregnancy were using contraception.” (Ref 3) “The risk of developing breast cancer was 820% higher in women starting the pill before the age of 20 than for healthy non-users of the same age.” (Ref 4) “Even 3 months use of the pill has been reported to be associated with 100% increase in breast cancer.” (Ref 5) “Women who used the pill for only 1-6 months had a 190% increase in cervical cancer than non-users.” (Ref 6) MORE IMPORTANT ARTICLE HERE:  http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=196&Itemid=1>

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 31, 2008 — According to a new Center investigation, Perils of the New Pesticides, pyrethrins and pyrethroids were responsible for more than 26 percent of all major and moderate human incidents involving pesticides in the United States in 2007, up from just 15 percent in 1998 — a 67 percent increase. This is based on an analysis of adverse reaction reports filed with the Environmental Protection Agency by pesticide manufacturers.

As a result of the Center’s investigation, the director of the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs said the agency would begin a broad study of the human health effects of these chemicals this year.

“The alarming rise of pesticide-related incidents attributed to pyrethrin and pyrethroid affiliated products is a serious concern for the millions of households that use them,” said Center Executive Director Bill Buzenberg. “The Center for Public Integrity uncovered this public safety issue through more than a dozen Freedom of Information Act requests and crunching the data. This should be basic public information if the EPA were doing its job.”

Data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers reveals a similar trend that supports the EPA data analyzed by the Center. The number of reported pyrethrin and pyrethroid incidents to poison centers across the country jumped from 16,000 in 1998 to more than 26,000 in 2006, a 63 percent rise.

Pyrethrins, naturally-occurring compounds with insecticidal properties derived from chrysanthemum flowers, are used in commonly available household products to control insects in the home, on pets, and on people. Their synthetic counterparts, pyrethroids, have similar properties to pyrethrins, and were created as safer alternatives to an earlier class of pesticides (organophosphates), originally derived from nerve gas. Manufacturers’ use of pyrethroids has grown widely to include thousands of household products, ranging from bug repellants, anti-lice shampoos, pet shampoos, and carpet cleaners.

MORE ARTICLE HERE:   http://www.publicintegrity.org/news/entry/485/

No Wonder Our Hospitals Are a Disaster -- People with Marketing Degrees Are Running Them By Maggie Mahar, Health Beat Business school graduates have replaced doctors and public health experts as CEOs of hospitals, often at patients' expense. Read more »

 

House Passes First-Ever Comprehensive Tobacco Regulation Bill By Marie Cocco, Washington Post Writers Group Smoking is an addiction, not a choice. The public has long known this. Finally, Congress is catching on. Read more »

The Misshapen Mind: How the Brain's Haphazard Evolution Left Us with Self-Destructive Instincts By Sasha Abramsky, The American Prospect Evolution didn't quite hit perfection when it comes to human thought processes. Read more »

 

How Do Obama and McCain Compare on Health Care? By Julia Eisman, Stand Up for Health Care A new report from Families USA details their differences. And it's not good news for McCain. Read more »

 

The Democratic Convention Platform Must Include Guaranteed Health Care for All By Norman Solomon, AlterNet Health care as a human right? What a concept. Read more »

Stigma: What Hollywood and the Media Teach Us About Mental Illness By Richard A. Friedman, The American Prospect From Virginia Tech's Cho to Hannibal Lecter, exaggerated portraits of mental illness show how much we have yet to learn about psychiatric disorders. Read more »

How Big Pharma Is Fooling You -- and Your Doctor -- with Junk Science By Niko Karvounis, Health Beat To the pharmaceutical industry, "research" is just a code-word for "smart-sounding marketing." Read more »

 

 

The AMA at its worst

Hoxsey: How Healing Becomes a Crime   

Suppressing cancer research Harry Hoxsey's treatment for cancer was endorsed by senators, judges and even some doctors. Two federal courts upheld its therapeutic value and by the 1950s his clinics were found in seventeen states. It spite of this, the AMA targeted him and drove him out of business.

If a low cost, reliable treatment for cancer were discovered outside the medical establishment would the general public ever find out about it?

Watch this film and find out Here>   http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/69.html

See the complete catalog of
free Brasscheck TV videos    

Dear friends, Earlier this year you took a stand and told the pharmaceutical industry to STOP selling your prescriptions by signing our Prescription Privacy Petition.  Our fight continues and we need your help to spread the word.  Last week two articles came out in Business Week and The Washington Post exposing how prescription data is used by insurance companies to deny coverage:

 

They Know What's In Your Medicine Cabinet: How Insurance Companies dig up applicants' prescriptions-- and use them to deny coverage, Business Week, 7/23/2008

Prescription Data Used to Assess Consumers: Records Aid Insurers but Prompt Privacy Concerns, The Washington Post, 8/4/2008

 

For at least ten years, the international fur industry has waged a coordinated, well funded and slick global PR campaign aimed at dispelling the moral stigma attached to wearing fur.Mixing fur with silk, wool, suede and leather, employing new manufacturing processes such as shearing and knitting, as well as new fashionable colors, have added novelty and versatility to fur. Steadily increasing marketing of fur accessories and clothing and footwear with fur trim (e.g. collars, scarves or on hoods) has almost imperceptibly brought fur back out onto the streets.

 

The public needs to know the truth about how the animals on Chinese fur farms were forced to live, and the way they had to die.

Video «Fur Industry in China»
(NEW:  Length: ~ 14 minutes; english commentary)

To watch the Video click on the correct file format below that matches your computer system.

Version Windows Media  
>>  wmv-file

Version Quicktime  
>>  mov-file

 

 MUCH MORE HERE:  http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=72879

 

 

It seems unbelievable, but the Bush Administration is quietly trying to redefine "abortion" to include birth control. The Houston Chronicle says this could wipe out dozens of state laws that protect women's reproductive freedom and protect rape victims. And this proposed "rule change" doesn't need congressional approval.

I just signed a message to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, whose department is considering this rule change, telling him: "Contraception is NOT abortion." Can you add your voice to this cause? Click here to sign the message: http://pol.moveon.org/contraception/?r_by=-10012929-m05Zbcx&rc=confemail

 

Last week, you and thousands of others signed our petition to Send Karl Rove to Jail. You agreed that Rove should pay for his dirty voter suppression tricks. You stood up for democracy and the rule of law. And for that, we thank you.

Our allies at Brave New Films created a short video that exposes Rove's recent crimes. Share this email and video with your friends. Together, our voices will have a bigger impact on landing Rove in jail.

Now, we're also working to eliminate one of the darkest corners of Rove's legacy -- stolen elections. Remember, the U.S. Attorneys scandal happened because Rove asked Republican appointees to shut down minority voter registration drives and disenfranchise voters. There is a way to stop his voter suppression tactics -- by electing reform-minded Secretaries of State to run fair, clean elections.

Here's how we do it. We target Secretary of State races in key battleground states, and work hard to help reform candidates defeat Rove / Bush cronies there. Our goal is simple: Stop the next Katherine Harris. In 2006, our community of donors gave over $500,000 to seven Secretary of State races. We won 5 of those 7 campaigns. The 2008 elections will be dramatically different because of our success.

Secretary of the State Project:  http://secstateproject.org/

 

 

Sign the petition

U.S. Hands Off Georgia and Russia - END NATO NOW!

TELL BUSH, CHENEY, RICE AND CONGRESS: U.S. HANDS OFF GEORGIA AND RUSSIA - NO NEW WAR - END NATO NOW!

It is with growing concern that we observe that the U.S. government is threatening new military moves that carry the danger of another war-this time against Russia.

The Bush regime and the corporate U.S. news media have launched an anti-Russia hate campaign. Yet just as with the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and the threats on Iran, the threatened military confrontation with Russia is also based on a lie.

The truth, hidden by most of the corporate news media, is that Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili, unleashed his U.S.- and Israeli-armed and-trained forces on the tiny autonomous region of South Ossetia, murdering civilians and attacking Russian peacekeeping troops stationed there. Only then did Russian troops respond.

Saakashvili is the president who sent 2,000 Georgian youth to join the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. The U.S. supplies the weapons to his army. U.S. Special Forces and Israeli advisers and mercenary contractors direct the Georgian military, which just held three weeks of joint exercises with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in July. We must take note that like Iraq and Iran, Georgia itself is a prize for U.S. oil companies, as it is a major transit point for Central Asian oil.

There is little doubt that U.S. arming of Georgia and its push to get Georgia into NATO set the scene for the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia and created the threat of a new major war. Now Washington also threatens Russia by placing missile bases  in Poland and the Czech Republic against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the people there. Surrounding Russia with this military alliance of new NATO members is the greatest danger to peace and stability on a global scale.

It is time to remember that NATO was established as an anti-USSR military alliance aimed at reinforcing capitalist control and preventing socialist revolutions in the colonialist powers of Europe weakened by World War II. Since the end of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the U.S. has attempted to vastly expand NATO and turn it into a military instrument to consolidate U.S. corporate power, surround Russia and China and re-conquer the former colonial world.

Consider these examples:

Yugoslavia. Based on the lie that NATO was defending small nations, U.S.-NATO intervention and bombing destroyed multinational Yugoslavia and turned the Balkans into a collection of dependent ministates ruled by the U.S. and Western Europe powers.

Afghanistan. Based on the lie that this was a police action against terrorists, U.S.-NATO have carried out a seven-year occupation leaving the country in ruins and enslaved.

Iraq. Here the lie about weapons of mass destruction was so blatant, and the U.S. position so weak, that most NATO countries refused to join the occupation and utter destruction of Iraq.

No one can believe Bush is promoting peace in Georgia. It is time not only to stop this expansion but to end the NATO war machine completely by dissolving NATO.

It is encouraging to anti-war people worldwide that Georgians themselves have issued a statement condemning the Saakashvili machine. "The entire responsibility for this fratricidal war," the Georgian Peace Committee says, "for thousands of children, women and elderly dead people, for the inhabitants of South Ossetia and of Georgia falls exclusively on the current president, on the Parliament and on the government of Georgia." (Aug. 11)

We cannot do less than the people of Georgia who oppose the current president and want no part of NATO. We demand from Washington:

(1) Stop interfering in Georgia and the Caucasus

(2) Stop attempting to expand the NATO military organization into the countries of Eastern Europe and those that border on Russia.

(3) End the aggressive NATO military alliance

(4) No new wars!

 

On February 13, 2007, Judge Jack Weinstein issued a permanent injunction, prohibiting attorney, Jim Gottstein, and Dr David Egilman, an expert witness in litigation involving Zyprexa, from further disseminating certain Eli Lilly documents that were sealed with a court order until Mr Gottstein released them to the media in December 2006.

After reviewing the documents as a plaintiff's expert in the underlying Zyprexa litigation, Dr Egilman became so alarmed over what he found that as a doctor, he believed he had an obligation to find a way to make the information public.

In an effort to get the documents out from under the court order, Attorney Gottstein subpoenaed Dr Egilman for a deposition in a lawsuit unrelated to the Zyprexa case and asked him to send the documents for review ahead of the actual deposition date.

As soon as Mr Gottstein received the documents he provided copies to reporter, Alex Berenson, at the New York Times, along with a number of other journalists and patient rights activists and groups.

Mr Gottstein argues that the public has a right to know the truth about the risks associated with the drug. "The files show that the manufacturer hid vital information about the drug's safety," he states, "not only from patients, but also from doctors."

"Zyprexa has killed and permanently sickened thousands of people who have taken it," he says.

Mr Gottstein openly admits that he wanted to get the information out to save lives. "The bottom line is patient safety," he said.

The documents quoted by Mr Berenson in articles for the Times, showed that Lilly had concealed Zyprexa's links to weight gain, high blood sugar, and diabetes for a decade.

The documents also reveal that Lilly trained its sales representatives to increase prescriptions for Zyprexa by influencing doctors to prescribe it for off-label conditions, and with patient populations such as children, for uses that have never been tested or approved by FDA.

Zyprexa is an antipsychotic approved for the limited use of treating adults diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and yet it is currently Lilly's number one selling product with sales over $4 billion last year and 20 million people have taken the drug.

MUCH MORE HERE:  http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_evelyn_p_070214_more_zyprexa_postcar.htm

IMPORTANT NOTE LATER IN ARTICLE:

The Update also spoke of a plan to pay the National Alliance on Mental Illness "NAMI", the most notorious Big Pharma backed front group in the US, millions of dollars to help downplay the news about diabetes and Zyprexa.

The memo said the plan was to "mobilize our allies" and provide "NAMI a multimillion dollar grant to stage a national screening" to "help educate physicians and patients on the inherent risks of diabetes--regardless of the antipsychotic."

MORE HERE: Alliance for Juman Research Protection>  http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/05/eli-lilly-tooth-fairy.html

 

Suicide Hot Line Got Calls From 22,000 Veterans