While some psychologists argue that it’s not ethical to brand a child a psychopath before he has a chance to grow and mature, others argue that ignoring the problems could make it even worse. Some are also hinting that the problems are neurological, like autism or diabetes in that it’s not something that can be “cured,” even with early intervention and treatment.

This is the same age group that has had the most cases across the country, and mostly in fully vaccinated children. The nationwide outbreak has led epidemiologists at the CDC to conclude that the whooping cough vaccine wears off a few years after it’s given.

According to AlterNet, the lengths to which corporate America will go to protect their profits includes campaign donations, attacking science, asserting constitutional rights, and threatening federal agencies with smear campaigns. The results were that nearly 200 lawmakers buckled on the guidelines and ignored the nationwide health epidemic affecting millions of children and teenagers.

What it proves is just how much of Washington is ingrained in protecting profits, as opposed to standing up for the public interest, AlterNet said.

A majority of the injuries involved 1-year-olds with bottles as the most common culprit. Injuries tended to occur at home, and resulted in cuts to the mouth and face, usually when children were running or walking, The New York Times reports. Other dangerous items are button batteries, which can be swallowed.

The conventional cancer therapies currently available are surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy; aka the "cut, poison, burn" model. Chemotherapy is typically the main regimen for most cancers.

However, many tumors develop resistance to these harsh drugs, known as chemoresistance, which can complicate matters, to say the least. Chemoresistance also leads to other complications.

Hence researchers are looking for effective chemosensitizers that can help overcome such resistance. This strategy basically uses one drug to enhance the activity of another, by modulating the mechanisms that cause the resistance.

A number of natural products and compounds have been shown to act as effective chemosensitizers. Two of the most promising are resveratrol and curcumin, which I'll address here. Last year, several interesting studies were published on these two products, pertaining to their value in the treatment of cancer.

Resveratrol—A Natural Chemosensitizer

Natural agents such as resveratrol, a potent antioxidant chemical found in red wine and other foods, have multitargeting properties, which make them ideally suited for anti-cancer drugs. In fact, more than 60 percent of the cancer drugs currently available are based on natural ingredients for this very reason. Natural compounds are also inexpensive, low in toxicity, and are readily available.

In a 2011 review of dietary agents that sensitize tumors, making them more susceptible to the treatment with chemotherapy drugs, resveratrol was featured as a clear candidateⁱ. Specific types of tumors shown to respond favorably include:

Lung carcinoma	Acute myeloid- and promyelocytic leukemia	Multiple myeloma
Prostate cancer	Oral epidermoid carcinoma	Pancreatic cancer

The first evidence of resveratrol's anti-cancer effects was published in 1997. The findings received great interest from cancer researchers, and many studies have been devoted to this potent antioxidant since then. Resveratrol, which can be found in red wine, red grape skins, fruits, vegetables, legumes and weeds, has been found to have the following actions and functions:

• Broad-spectrum antimicrobial
• Anti-infective
• Antioxidant
• Cardio-protective
• Anti-cancer

According to the review, published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciencesⁱⁱ:

"The anticancer activities of resveratrol are mediated through modulation of several cell-signaling molecules that regulate cell cycle progression, inflammation, proliferation, apoptosis, invasion, metastasis, and angiogenesis of tumor cells. It has been shown that resveratrol can sensitize resistant cells to chemotherapeutic agents by overcoming one or more mechanisms of chemoresistance. In some tumor cells, however, resveratrol has been shown to act as chemoprotector."

The fact that it can in some cases act as a chemoprotector, meaning, it can reduce the efficacy of chemotherapeutic agents, "present a major caveat for use of resveratrol as a chemosensitizer," the authors warn. In an earlier study, the researchers concluded that using resveratrol with the cancer drug Paclitaxel, for example, was detrimental in certain types of cancers, such as breast cancerⁱⁱⁱ.

Resveratrol May Help Alleviate Cancer Treatment Side Effects

In another study from last year, published in the journal Experimental Biology and Medicine, resveratrol was found to help alleviate many of the debilitating side effects of conventional cancer treatments^iv, such as:

The authors point out there's mounting evidence indicating that these symptoms are primarily caused by dysregulation of inflammatory pathways in your body. Hence anti-inflammatory compounds that can modulate the inflammatory pathways and influence inflammatory molecules may help improve these symptoms in cancer patients. They name several nutritional agents known to do just that, including:

• Resveratrol
• Curcumin
• Genistein
• Epigallocatechin gallate
• Lycopene

According to the authors^v:

"These nutraceuticals are chemically diverse and affect production of various inflammatory cytokines. Extensive research in recent years has indicated that chronic inflammation leads to various chronic disorders associated with cancer. A central role in the induction of chronic inflammation is played by a set of genes encoding proinflammatory cytokines such as IL-1, IL-2, IL-6, TNFa and monocyte chemotactic protein 1. What is common to all these molecules is that they are regulated by the transcription factor NFkB. This makes NFkB an appealing target for therapeutic intervention.

A number of compounds have been identified that can suppress NFkB activation, including antioxidants, protease inhibitors, proteasome inhibitors, salicylates, immunosuppressants and anti-inflammatory agents." [Emphasis mine]

This brings us to the next interesting fact about natural products like resveratrol and curcumin, namely their impact on your genetic expression. As just mentioned, your genetic expression plays a central role in chronic inflammation, and certain nutrients can have a potent protective influence by either turning genes on or off.

Understanding Epigenetics

The role of epigenetics in health and disease is becoming ever clearer, and I firmly believe this field of study will eventually supplant the current medical paradigm. The conventional belief has been that genes controlled their own expression and were therefore the direct cause of certain diseases. This laid the groundwork for the idea that your genes predetermined your health.

But genes are in fact NOT self-regulating. Having "bad genes," does not at all mean you're doomed to suffer some inevitable fate like cancer!

Genes are merely blueprints, and these blueprints are activated and controlled by something else entirely, namely their environment. This environmental information—which includes diet, toxic exposures, as well as thoughts and emotions, and more—can create more than 30,000 different variations from each blueprint, allowing for an astounding amount of leeway in modifying the expression or "read-out" of each gene. As a result of these findings, we're now finally seeing science alter its course to investigate the power of optimal nutrition to improve health and prevent chronic disease from occurring in the first place.

In May last year, a study investigating curcumin's ability to affect epigenetic regulation was published in the journal Genes & Nutritio^vi. The authors write:

"Epigenetic regulation, which includes changes in DNA methylation, histone modifications, and alteration in microRNA (miRNA) expression without any change in the DNA sequence, constitutes an important mechanism by which dietary components can selectively activate or inactivate gene expression.

Curcumin, a component of the golden spice Curcuma longa, commonly known as turmeric, has recently been determined to induce epigenetic changes... [E]pigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), and resveratrol, have [also] been shown to alter epigenetic mechanisms, which may lead to increased sensitivity of cancer cells to conventional agents and thus inhibition of tumor growth." [Emphasis mine]

Curcumin—A Potent Anti-Cancer Herb

Curcumin currently has the most evidence-based literature supporting its use against cancer among all nutrients^vii. Interestingly this also includes the metabolite of curcumin and its derivatives, which are also anti-cancerous. Best of all, curcumin appears to be safe in the treatment of all cancers, and has been shown to be nontoxic. Researchers have found that curcumin can affect more than 100 different pathways, once it gets into the cell. More specifically, curcumin has been found to:

Another study from last year, published in the Natural Product Reports describes curcumin as being therapeutic for a wide range of diseases aside from cancer^viii, such as:

A persistent question has been: How can a single agent possess such diverse effects? Part of the answer lies in the herb's ability to affect signaling molecules. For example, curcumin has been shown to directly interact with:

According to the authors of the NPR paper^ix:

"The molecular basis of a disease is related to dysregulation of an array of signaling molecules. With the advent of advanced molecular tools, we now know that over 500 different genes of the signaling pathways control any given disease. However, most currently available treatments are based on the modulation of a specific single target. Curcumin is a functionally labile molecule with the potential to modulate the biological activity of a number of signaling molecules either indirectly or directly..." [Emphasis mine]

How to Use Curcumin

To get the full benefits curcumin has to offer you need to understand that it is very poorly absorbed. You simply can't blindly choose a supplement and expect to achieve the results described in this paper. There is extensive research going on by a number of organizations to provide a commercial product. 

You can look for a turmeric extract that contains 100 percent certified organic ingredients, with at least 95 percent curcuminoids. The formula should be free of fillers, additives and excipients (a substance added to the supplement as a processing or stability aid), and the manufacturer should use safe production practices at all stages: planting, cultivation, selective harvesting, and then producing and packaging the final product.

Unfortunately, at the present time there really are no concentrated commercial formulations available for the use against cancer. Keep in mind that concentrated curcumin is really only needed by people who seek to use it as a drug, in which case you need it in very high doses in order to achieve therapeutic effect. The most classic case would be those using it to treat, not prevent, cancer. If you do not have cancer, then using a turmeric supplement is sufficient.

According to Dr. William LaValley, one of the leading medicine cancer physicians I personally know, typical anticancer doses are up to three grams of good bioavailable curcumin extract, three to four times daily. One work-around is to use the curcumin powder and make a microemulsion of it by combining a tablespoon of the powder and mixing it into 1-2 egg yolks and a teaspoon or two of melted coconut oil. Then use a high speed hand blender to emulsify the powder.

Another strategy that can help increase absorption is to put one tablespoon of the curcumin powder into a quart of boiling water. It must be boiling when you add the powder as it will not work as well if you put it in room temperature water and heat the water and curcumin. After boiling it for ten minutes you will have created a 12 percent solution that you can drink once it has cooled down. It will have a woody taste. The curcumin will gradually fall out of solution however. In about six hours it will be a 6 percent solution, so it's best to drink the water within four hours. Dr. LaValley is also helping us beta test new curcumin preparations that will radically simplify this process.

Cancer Prevention 101...

It is certainly encouraging to see cancer research on herbs such as turmeric, and antioxidants like resveratrol. However, it's virtually impossible to discuss cancer prevention and treatment without touching on one of the absolute best cancer prevention nutrients ever discovered, namely vitamin D.

As a powerful neuro-regulatory steroid, vitamin D is likely more potent than curcumin, as its epigenetic influence covers more than 2,000 genes in your body—or about 10 percent of all genes! There are also more than 830 peer reviewed scientific studies showing vitamin D's effectiveness in the prevention and treatment of cancer. In terms of protecting against cancer, vitamin D has been found to offer protection in a number of ways, including:

• Regulating genetic expression
• Increasing the self-destruction of mutated cells (which, if allowed to replicate, could lead to cancer)
• Reducing the spread and reproduction of cancer cells
• Causing cells to become differentiated (cancer cells often lack differentiation)
• Reducing the growth of new blood vessels from pre-existing ones, which is a step in the transition of dormant tumors turning cancerous

Personally, I believe it is virtually malpractice to not optimize vitamin D levels when treating someone with cancer. In this case, your vitamin D levels should be around 70-100 ng/ml. For more information about optimizing your vitamin D levels, please see my previous article Test Values and Treatment for Vitamin D Deficiency.

If the notion that sun exposure can actually help prevent cancer is still new to you, I highly recommend you watch my one-hour vitamin D lecture to clear up any confusion. It's important to understand that the risk of skin cancer from the sun comes only from excessive exposure. Meanwhile, countless people around the world have an increased risk of cancer because their vitamin D levels are too low from lack of sun exposure.

Other Natural (and Epigenetic) Cancer Prevention Strategies

When it comes to cancer and other chronic diseases, effective prevention trumps progressive treatments in my eyes. I believe you can virtually eliminate your risk of ever developing cancer (and radically improve your chances of recovering from cancer if you currently have it) by following some relatively simple risk reduction strategies—all of which help promote a healthful biological environment in which your cells can thrive and combat disease naturally.

You don't read or hear much about these strategies because they have not been formally "proven" yet by conservative researchers. Beyond what's already been covered above, the remainder of my cancer prevention strategies include:

1. Reduce or eliminate your processed food, fructose and grain carbohydrate intake.
2. Control your fasting insulin and leptin levels.  Normalizing your insulin levels is one of the most powerful physical actions you can take to lower your risk of cancer, and improved insulin and leptin control is the natural outcome of reducing or eliminating fructose, grains, and processed foods from your diet
3. Normalize your ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats by taking a high-quality krill oil or fish oil and reducing your intake of most processed vegetable oils.
4. Get regular exercise. One of the primary ways exercise lowers your risk for cancer is by reducing elevated insulin levels, which creates a low sugar environment that discourages the growth and spread of cancer cells. Controlling insulin levels is one of the most powerful ways to reduce your cancer risks. Additionally, exercise improves the circulation of immune cells in your blood. Your immune system is your first line of defense against everything from minor illnesses like a cold right up to devastating, life-threatening diseases like cancer.
   
   The trick about exercise, though, is understanding how to use it as a precise tool. This ensures you are getting enough to achieve the benefit, not too much to cause injury, and the right variety to balance your entire physical structure and maintain strength and flexibility, and aerobic and anaerobic fitness levels. If you have limited time Peak Fitness exercises are your best bet but ideally you should have a good strength training program as well.
5. Get regular, good quality sleep.
6. Reduce your exposure to environmental toxins like pesticides, household chemical cleaners, synthetic air fresheners and air pollution.
7. Reduce your exposure to environmental toxins like pesticides, household chemical cleaners, synthetic air fresheners and air pollution.
8. Limit your exposure and provide protection for yourself from EMF produced by cell phone towers, base stations, cell phones and WiFi stations. On May 31, 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), declared that cell phones are "possibly carcinogenic to humans."^x
9. Avoid frying or charbroiling your food. Boil, poach or steam your foods instead.
10. Have a tool to permanently reprogram the neurological short-circuiting that can activate cancer genes. Even the CDC states that 85 percent of disease is caused by emotions. It is likely that this factor may be more important than all the other physical ones listed here, so make sure this is addressed. Energy psychology seems to be one of the best approaches and my particular favorite tool, as you may know, is the Emotional Freedom Technique.
11. Eat at least one-third of your diet in the form of raw food.

References:

• ⁱ Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences January 2011; 1215: 150-160
• ⁱⁱ Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences January 2011; 1215: 150-160
• ⁱⁱⁱ European Journal of Cancer July 2010;46(10):1882-91
• ^iv Experimental Biology and Medicine 2011, 236:658-671
• ^v See reference iv
• ^vi Genes & Nutrition May 2011 6(2): 93–108
• ^vii GreenMedInfo.com Curcumin Medical Literature list
• ^viii Natural Products Report 2011; 28: 1937-1955
• ^ix See reference viii
• ^x ElectromagneticHealth.org, WHO/IARC Classifies Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields as Possibly Carcinogenic 

You may be aware that vitamin D and calcium are a powerful duo for bone health, including the prevention of osteoporosis. One of the undisputed benefits of vitamin D is that it helps you ABSORB calcium – this link has been known for many decades.

But there is also evidence that vitamin K, and specifically vitamin K2, is another key player in your bone health, and may be just as crucial in helping you prevent bone fractures as you age.

A Powerful Nutrient Trio to Reduce Your Osteoporosis Risk

A study published in Osteoporosis International has concluded that lifetime supplementation with vitamin K1 or, even better, K2, vitamin D3, and calcium is likely to reduce fractures and increase survival in postmenopausal women. Bone loss speeds up most dramatically during the first 10 years after menopause, which is the period when osteoporosis is most likely to develop.

Many are under the mistaken impression that a prescription drug combined with calcium supplements is the answer to strong healthy bones, but the regular consumption of a healthy diet, along with safe sun exposure and extra supplementation when appropriate, is likely to be far superior.

Theorizing that vitamin K might have a role in the primary prevention of fractures, researchers studied the cost-effectiveness of various interventions for preventing fractures in 50-year-old postmenopausal women. They learned that the vitamin K1, vitamin D3, and calcium combination could reduce the lifetime probability of at least one fracture by 20 percent, but adding vitamin K2 to vitamin D3 reduced it by 25 percent.

Vitamin K1 and K2: Which is Better for Your Bones?

In case you weren't aware, vitamin K comes in two forms, and it is important to understand the differences between them before devising your nutritional plan of attack.

1. Vitamin K1: Found in green vegetables, K1 goes directly to your liver and helps you maintain a healthy blood clotting system. (This is the kind of K that infants need to help prevent a serious bleeding disorder.)
2. Vitamin K2: Bacteria produce this type of vitamin K. It is present in high quantities in your gut, but unfortunately is not absorbed from there and passes out in your stool. K2 goes straight to vessel walls, bones, and tissues other than your liver.

There are several different forms of vitamin K2: MK4, MK7, MK8, and MK9. The form of vitamin K that has the most relevance for health benefits is MK7, a newer and longer acting form with more practical applications. MK7 is extracted from the Japanese fermented soy product called natto. You could actually get plenty of MK7 from consuming natto, as it is relatively inexpensive and available in most Asian food markets.

Few people, however, easily tolerate its smell and slimy texture, so oftentimes people who find natto unpalatable prefer to take a supplement. Most vitamin K2 supplements are in the form MK7. You can also get MK7 by eating fermented cheeses. There has been some remarkable research about the protective effects of vitamin K2 against osteoporosis:

• A number of Japanese trials have shown that vitamin K2 completely reverses bone loss and in some cases even increases bone mass in people with osteoporosis.ⁱ
• The pooled evidence of seven Japanese trials show that vitamin K2 supplementation produces a 60 percent reduction in vertebral fractures and an 80 percent reduction in hip and other non-vertebral fractures.ⁱⁱ
• Researchers in the Netherlands showed that vitamin K2 is three times more effective than vitamin K1 in raising osteocalcin, which controls the building of bone.ⁱⁱⁱ

Why Vitamin K is So Important if You Take Calcium and Vitamin D

If you currently take calcium and vitamin D for your bones, it's important that you also get plenty of vitamin K2. These three nutrients have a synergistic effect that cannot be achieved when one piece of the puzzle is missing. Specifically, here's a simple explanation of why the benefits of calcium and vitamin D are largely dependent on vitamin K:

• Calcium: There is new evidence that it is vitamin K (specifically, vitamin K2) that directs calcium to your skeleton, while preventing it from being deposited where you don't want it -- i.e., your organs, joint spaces, and arteries. A large part of arterial plaque consists of calcium deposits (atherosclerosis), hence the term "hardening of the arteries."

Vitamin K2 activates a protein hormone called osteocalcin, produced by osteoblasts, which is needed to bind calcium into the matrix of your bone. Osteocalcin also appears to help prevent calcium from depositing into your arteries. So while increasing calcium is good for your bones, it is not so good for your arteries, which can become calcified. Vitamin K helps protect your blood vessels from calcifying when in the presence of high calcium levels.

• Vitamin D3: As mentioned, vitamin D helps your body to absorb calcium, but vitamin K directs that calcium to your skeleton where it's needed. You can think of vitamin D as the gatekeeper, controlling who gets in, and vitamin K as the traffic cop, directing the traffic to where it needs to go. Lots of traffic -- but no traffic cop -- means clogging, crowding and chaos everywhere!

In other words, without the help of vitamin K2, the calcium that your vitamin D so effectively lets in might be working AGAINST you -- by building up in your coronary arteries rather than your bones. There is even evidence that the safety of vitamin D is dependent on vitamin K, and that vitamin D toxicity (although very rare with the D3 form) is actually caused by vitamin K2 deficiency.^iv

How to Get These Nutrients From Natural Sources

Calcium, vitamin K2 and vitamin D3 are obviously available in supplement form, but you should know that you can also get them naturally from food and the sun.

Calcium, in particular, is better utilized by your body if it's food-based calcium. Good sources include raw milk and cheese from pasture-raised cows (who eat plants), leafy green vegetables, the pith of citrus fruits, carob, sesame seeds and wheatgrass, to name a few. Calcium from dietary sources is typically better absorbed and utilized than calcium from supplements, which may increase your risk of heart attack or stroke.

As for vitamin D3, exposing your skin to natural sunlight is the best way to get enough of this important nutrient. Vitamin D from sunlight acts as a pro-hormone, rapidly converting in your skin into 25-hydroxyvitamin D, or vitamin D3. The next best option is using a safe tanning bed to achieve similar results as that from natural sunlight exposure, and the third best option is taking an oral vitamin D3 supplement whenever natural sun exposure is not an option, then monitoring your levels to be sure you're within the therapeutic range.

Ideally, optimize your vitamin K2 through a combination of dietary sources (leafy green vegetables, fermented foods like natto, raw milk cheeses, etc.) and a K2 supplement, as most people don't get sufficient amounts of vitamin K from their diet to reap its full health benefits. You must use caution with vitamin K if you take anticoagulants, but if you are generally healthy and not on these types of medications, I suggest 150-300 mcg daily.

The Vitamin That Is 'as Good as Drugs' at Reducing Blood Pressure

One of the best parts about optimizing your levels of vitamin D3 is that you will experience a host of beneficial "side effects" – even above and beyond your bone health.

In research presented at the European Society of Hypertension conference in London, scientists studying the effects of vitamin D3 supplementation on heart health reported that they've found that patients with high blood pressure can experience significant improvements in their condition by taking only the supplement, without high-power drugs. The majority of the study's participants were deficient in vitamin D, and while scientists stopped short of recommending vitamin D be substituted for blood pressure drugs, they did say the study shows that supplementation with vitamin D was "as powerful" as the drugs.

Both vitamin D3 and vitamin K2 are important for your heart health, as they work together to increase Matrix GLA Protein (or MGP), the protein responsible for protecting your blood vessels from calcification. In healthy arteries, MGP congregates around the elastic fibers of your tunica media (arterial lining), guarding them against calcium crystal formation.

4 Steps to Help Protect Your Bones No Matter What Your Age …

One of the best ways to achieve healthy bones is a diet rich in fresh, raw whole foods that maximizes natural minerals so that your body has the raw materials it needs to do what it was designed to do. In addition, you need healthy sun exposure along with regular, weight-bearing exercise. To sum it up:

• Optimize your vitamin D3 either from natural sunlight exposure, a safe tanning bed or an oral vitamin D3 supplement. Check your blood levels regularly to make sure you're within the optimal range.
• Optimize your vitamin K1 through a combination of dietary sources (leafy green vegetables, fermented foods like natto, raw milk cheeses, etc.) and a K2 supplement, if needed. Although the exact dosing (for oral supplementation) is yet to be determined, and you must use caution on the higher doses if you take anticoagulants, if you are generally healthy and not on these types of medications, I suggest 150-300 mcg daily.
• Make sure you do weight-bearing exercise, which has profound benefits to your skeletal systems. My favorite is Peak Fitness but it is also very important to do strength-training exercises to produce the dynamic electric forces in your bones that will stimulate the osteoblasts to produce new bone.
• Consume a wide variety of fresh, local, organic whole foods, including vegetables, nuts, seeds, organic meats and eggs, and raw organic unpasteurized dairy for calcium and other nutrients. The more of your diet you consume RAW, the better nourished you will be. Minimize sugar and refined grains.

References:

• ⁱ Eur J Nutr. December 2004;43(6):325-335
• ⁱⁱ Arch Intern Med. 2006; 166: 1256-1261
• ⁱⁱⁱ Blood. 2007 Apr 15;109(8):3279-83.
• ^iv Weston A Price Foundation February 13, 2008

According to industry experts, pea fiber is increasingly used in place of beet pulp and wheat, corn and soy fibers in pet foods – apparently to answer consumer demand for dog and cat food formulas with fewer cheap fillers.

Let’s take a closer look at this latest peculiar entry in the pet food ingredient follies.

Pea Fiber 101

There are two types of pea fiber available on the market -- one is derived from a dry process; the other from a wet process.

In the dry process, the seed coats and hulls are separated from the seed as part of the normal operation of cleaning the peas.

In the wet process, the pea starch is separated from fiber.

The seeds are ground, and then water is added to decant the fibers.

The pea fiber resulting from the dry process has a higher concentration of dietary fiber (over 85 percent) and is rich in xylose sugar.

The pea fiber produced from the wet process contains about 65 percent dietary fiber and is rich in three other sugars.

Both types of pea fiber contain more than 75 percent insoluble fiber and from 5 to 25 percent soluble fiber.

When pea fiber is compared to other, comparable fibers, it performs about the same, except that it doesn’t seem to produce as much gas as other vegetable fibers.

Pea fiber is very low in fat and high in crude fiber (35 to 40 percent). This makes it a perfect ingredient to lower the calorie content of those 'low fat' and 'weight management' pet foods I NEVER recommend for overweight dogs and cats.

Pea fiber doesn’t have much protein -- and what little it does have is vegetable protein, not the animal protein your pet’s body requires -- but it’s high in lysine and also contains tryptophan.

Use of Pea Fiber in Pet Food

The pea fiber that goes into pet food is a light colored, nearly odorless powder. It has a bland taste that doesn’t affect the palatability of the food it is added to.

It can be used with both wet and dry ingredients. It is used to bind water and fat, and also as a thickener in wet foods.

Pea fiber and pea hulls aren’t recognized by AAFCO, however, it seems the FDA has acknowledged them as a fiber source as part of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act.

Apparently there are actually a few published studies on pea fiber in the diets of companion animals. However, no studies to date have involved cats, nor have any provided data on the effects of pea fiber on stool consistency.

According to PetfoodIndustry.com, in pet foods, pea fiber “…is used as a nutritionally functional fiber due in part to the laxation effects imparted from the water-holding capacity (about13 mL water per g pea fiber) of the insoluble fiber and secondly for the fermentability of its soluble fiber.”

Functional fibers are non-digestible carbohydrates that have been isolated from foods. They aren’t the same as the dietary fiber found naturally in foods like vegetables, grains and legumes – not that your dog or cat needs much of that type of fiber, either.

On food labels functional fibers appear as maltodextrin, polydextrose and cellulose. Cellulose is derived from different types of fiber, including pea fiber. Human food manufacturers use “functional fibers” in their packaged products to increase the fiber content of the food, making it appear to be more nutritious than it actually is.

To take this a step further, pet food manufacturers add various types of fibers, grains and other carbohydrates to their formulas to give the appearance – to human consumers – that the foods are nutritious for companion animals. This completely ignores the fact that balanced nutrition for canines and felines is not what is commonly considered balanced nutrition for humans.

My Take on Pea Fiber in Pet Food

It’s a filler and high in insoluble fiber. Neither ‘fillers’ nor high fiber ingredients are part of a balanced, species-appropriate diet for dogs and cats.

You won’t find pea fiber in high quality commercially available pet foods, nor will you find it in healthy recipes for homemade pet meals.

Where you’ll find it are in very affordable, highly processed, low-quality pet foods.

If you’re wondering about the quality of pet food you’re feeding your own dog or cat, take a look at 13 Pet Foods Ranked from Great to Disastrous.

Gorgeous little Cosmo moved from the garden right into his new family’s heart.

The Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT, was originally developed for people.

It’s a healing method that operates on the body’s energy system rather than on the body itself.

Unlike massage or acupressure therapy which involves applying a certain amount of force to certain areas of the body, EFT uses a light tapping or touching technique.

The goal of tapping is to send healing energy pulses from the fingers and hands to the body’s energy system.

EFT also involves using intention and focus to direct healing energy to the problem being worked on.

“Energy flows where attention goes.”

This is a fundamental concept in energy work.

For an extremely comprehensive introduction to EFT for people, visit Dr. Mercola's EFT website.

EFT for Animals

Contrary to what most people assume when they first hear about EFT for pets, the technique doesn’t involve tapping on the animal being worked on.

Animals have a meridian system, of course, but many of the points on the system are located in spots where pets don’t like to be touched. What’s amazing about animal EFT is that you tap on yourself to make positive changes in your pet.

The technique is called proxy tapping, and you can do it from anywhere. You don’t even have to be in the same room with the animal you’re working on, which of course makes it possible to work on wildlife, pets that don’t belong to you, and a wide variety of animals that are rarely handled by humans.

The proxy tapping technique is simple to learn, and once you know it, you can apply it with any animal with any sort of problem. You don’t have to study the physiology of the animal to be successful – you only need to learn the tapping technique.

How Proxy Tapping is Effective

According to Animal-EFT.org, the use of proxy tapping as a healing tool was actually discovered by a new mother with a premature baby. Mom was sitting at her tiny son’s incubator, unable to touch him, and feeling helpless and distraught. She began tapping on herself while focusing on her baby’s condition, and amazingly, the child began to improve.

Since then, people all over the world have successfully made changes in others by establishing an energy system connection and tapping on themselves. Now, this may sound preposterous to you. But keep in mind EFT creates healing through energy systems, which is difficult for the mind (especially minds conditioned by traditional Western medicine) to grasp. The tapping itself isn’t what heals – it simply opens the door, or ‘primes the pump’ to allow healing to take place.

When you perform EFT to help a pet, obviously, the one focusing attention is you, and you direct it toward the animal you’re working on. As soon as you do, your energy system connects with your pet’s energy system. It’s the connection of the two energy systems that allows you to make changes in your pet or other animal without actually handling him.

The focus of your attention must be on the specific problem with your pet you’re working to solve, whether it’s a physical illness, an undesirable behavior, a depressed emotional state, or some other issue.

With the connection of the two energy systems established, when you tap on yourself and change your system, you simultaneously change the animal’s system through that connection.

How It Works

The EFT process is essentially in three steps:

• Tuning in
• Setting up
• Tapping

Tuning in involves thinking about your pet and the specific problem – physical, emotional, behavioral -- you want to affect.

When you’re fully tuned into the specific issue you want to work on, the set up step involves coming up with a simple phrase or sentence that describes the problem very clearly in your mind. It should be a straightforward statement – something along the lines of, “Buddy is feeling depressed,” or “Bella is constantly scratching her ear.”

Once you’re tuned in and have your set-up phrase very present in your mind, you can begin tapping.

Tapping follows a sequence that starts at point 0, the heart center. (This is also where each tapping round finishes.)

Place both hands flat at the center of your chest in the Heart Healing Position. Take three deep breaths, say your set up statement, and tap in the following sequence:

Tapping Point	Location
1	Top of the Head (highest point on the top of your head
2	Third Eye (the center of your forehead)
3	Start of the Eyebrow (above the bridge of the nose)
4	Corner of the Eye (bone at the corner of eye)
5	Under the Eye (bone below the eye, in line with the pupil)
6	Under the Nose (below nose, above upper lip)
7	Under the Mouth (below lower lip, above chin)
8	Under the Collarbone (meeting point of collar and breastbones)
9	Thumb (side of thumb in line with nail bed)
10	Index Finger (side of finger, in line with nail bed)
11	Middle Finger (side of finger, in line with nail bed)
12	Ring Finger (side of finger, in line with nail bed)
13	Little Finger (side of finger, in line with nail bed)
14	Karate Chop Point (side of hand, in line with life line)

 

Return to point 0 (the heart center), place hands in the Heart Healing Position and take three deep breaths to finish the tapping round.

Don’t Focus on the Activity of Tapping

I want to repeat a point I made earlier about how EFT works. It works using energy, which isn’t a concrete concept to most of us. While it’s true you are using certain parts of your body to touch other parts of your body, the touching/tapping is simply the vehicle for energy exchange.

This isn’t the greatest analogy, but think of a time when you gassed up your vehicle. You can’t get fuel from the pump into your gas tank without the hose attached to the pump. The hose is a necessary part of the process, but it’s not the focus. The exchange of fuel from the pump to your gas tank is the focus. Once the gas tank is full, the hose has done its job transferring energy from the pump to your vehicle. How the hose ‘performed’ is unimportant as long as it served its purpose in transferring the fuel. The ‘hose’ when you’re practicing EFT is the finger you’re tapping with.

My point is, don’t get overly focused on the physical activity of tapping – how hard to tap or how fast to tap. It’s not so much about how you’re tapping. It’s about tapping with awareness. Focus on the contact between your fingertip and each point as you tap – this will help direct energy from your hands to your body.

Tap All the Way Through to Joyfulness

Don’t stop tapping at the point where the problem you’re working on seems to have receded. There’s more work to be done!

From EFT for Animals:

When you tap EFT for an animal, let the feelings be your guide.

You can feel in your own body when the energy flow starts to improve.

In all modern energy work, it is extremely important to not just "tap the bad feelings away" but to keep tapping further rounds until you feel energized, happy, even joyful.

Once you can feel the pain or the problem has gone, think of positive energy forms you want to send to the animal and tap on those instead - love, courage, joy, strength, health all are good energies to send to the animal you're tapping on.

Keep going until you really feel energy tingling in your own body and you KNOW you did a good job because you can FEEL that you did.

I think this is a very important point to make. Although we may start out saying “Indie doesn’t feel well” as our tapping statement, we can shift to a more positive statement such as “Indie will feel very well in her body.”

You can find case studies, success stories and testimonials about EFT for animals here at Little Big Cat and at the Animal EFT website.

A Final Word on EFT for Animals

EFT for animals is a completely harmless, natural, non-invasive therapy that has proved beneficial in dealing with a wide range of issues in all kinds of animals. However, it should never take the place of regular veterinary wellness exams, or vet checkups when a pet is showing signs of pain, illness or behavioral changes.

EFT can be used in conjunction with veterinary treatment and behavior modification, but it should not be considered a replacement for other therapies.

The idea of overdiagnosis is exacerbated by studies showing that the very tests designed to rule out cancer can actually CAUSE cancer to grow from the inflammation and bruising that occur as a result of the surgery. Concerns about overdiagnosis in both breast and prostate cancer have been increasing over the years. In 2009, NBC New York interviewed Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, an expert in cancer screening, who said:

“Screening for cancer means that tens of thousands of patients who never would have become sick are diagnosed with this disease. Once they’re diagnosed, almost everybody gets treated―and we know that treatment can cause harm.”

But the committee ignored their pleas and did it anyway. The FDA doesn’t have to follow the recommendations of its advisory committees, but it often does. The drug, Truvada, is manufactured by Gilead Sciences Inc. It’s not cheap―a month’s supply costs about $1200. The committee’s approval gives Gilead a whole, new, wide-open market for selling the drug.

In the most egregious cases, corporate boards and college leadership overlap; in 2009, for example, South Dakota State’s president joined Monsanto’s board of directors. While some people might say it shouldn’t matter whose board a college president sits on, the implications are huge because corporate funding can influence the results of supposedly “scientific” studies done at the respective universities. A perfect example, AlterNet said, is what happened with a team of researchers at the University of Illinois who were funded by a statewide fertilizer “checkoff” after they published work on how fertilizer affects organic matter in the soil.

The fluoridation debate on the dangers of fluoride has been ongoing for more than six decades. Study after study shows that fluoride is a dangerous, toxic poison. Yet, even while it’s being dumped every day into municipal water systems, health officials that should know better are flooding the media with lies and propaganda singing the praises of fluoridation.

The CDC calls fluoridation one of the public health achievements of the 20^th century. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. The information for this quote comes from 1999 issues of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), which includes fluoridation in a list of “Ten Great Public Health Achievements―1900-1999.” But what most members of the public don’t realize is that the early fluoridation reports were written by people with conflicts of interest and no experience in scientific methods or studies.

This, and other important investigative facts are included in this short video, which exposes  the zealous fluoridation promoters, their hidden agenda, and the harms that have come to people who have no choice in whether fluoride is added to their drinking water.

According to an ABC 7-TV investigation, Whole Foods is selling products grown in China, where no one’s verifying whether the products meet U.S. organic standards. It’s common knowledge that at least 10 percent of China’s groundwater is contaminated with deadly chemicals, and that the country overuses pesticides contaminate both land and water. It’s also no secret that food scandals are rampant in China.

And this is troublesome since Whole Foods simply trusts a Chinese third party to say the foods the company is importing are certified organic.

By Dr. Mercola

The video above features three distinguished guests:

1. Dave Murphy, founder of Food Democracy Now
2. Ronnie Cummins with the Organic Consumers Association, and
3. Pamm Larry, founder of LabelGMOs.org

Here, we discuss one of the most important projects we have ever been involved with, namely the labeling of genetically engineered foods, to give every consumer the right to know what's in their food and to choose whether they want to buy and consume it or not.

Extending through May 26, a broad coalition of farmers, health groups, and organic food manufacturers, will attempt to raise one million dollars to support the California labeling initiative. Battling against the labeling initiative is the entire biotech industry, led by Monsanto.

They have deep pockets, and will do everything they can to defeat our attempt to get genetically engineered foods labeled, so I urge you to make a donation to the Money Bomb Against Monsanto campaign, no matter what state you live in, because if California passes this law, its impact will reverberate across the entire nation. Donations can be made online, via regular snail mail, and over the phone.

By Dr. Mercola

The video above features three distinguished guests:

1. Dave Murphy, founder of Food Democracy Now
2. Ronnie Cummins with the Organic Consumers Association, and
3. Pamm Larry, founder of LabelGMOs.org

Here, we discuss one of the most important projects we have ever been involved with, namely the labeling of genetically engineered foods, to give every consumer the right to know what's in their food and to choose whether they want to buy and consume it or not.

Extending through May 26, a broad coalition of farmers, health groups, and organic food manufacturers, will attempt to raise one million dollars to support the California labeling initiative. Battling against the labeling initiative is the entire biotech industry, led by Monsanto.

They have deep pockets, and will do everything they can to defeat our attempt to get genetically engineered foods labeled, so I urge you to make a donation to the Money Bomb Against Monsanto campaign, no matter what state you live in, because if California passes this law, its impact will reverberate across the entire nation. Donations can be made online, via regular snail mail, and over the phone.

How One Grandmother's Conviction Led to a Consumer Revolution

The California Right to Know grassroots campaign was initiated by Pamm Larry, a grandmother and former midwife and organic farmer from the small town of Chico in northern California. She had no formal training, no major resources, no connections, and no previous political experience. But what she did have was passion—for healthful food, for the truth, and for doing the right thing. In this interview, she shares her inspiring and empowering journey.

"I have always cared about nutrition, whole foods, and unadulterated foods," Pamm says. "I mean they just taste better... They're more nutritious... Genetically engineered foods started coming on my radar about eight or nine years ago... The more I learned, the more horrified I got, wondering what kind of a planet I was leaving my grandchildren.

What were we doing? What were we not doing as people?

Like everybody else that I have talked to on the streets, we all feel pretty powerless, because here we've got this huge multinational corporation; a conglomerate—it's not just one company. It's a number of them. But they seem to be kind of in cahoots with our government. In the fall of 2010, I got actually very depressed about this... The Organic Consumers Association came out with their Truth-in-Labeling campaign. I immediately wrote to them [offering to volunteer]... But it just wasn't enough for me. I was increasingly depressed, crying a lot...

[Then] it hit me, just like that. I literally sat up and it was like, 'Okay, then. It's your job from now until November of 2012 to do everything you possibly can to just get something on the ballot, because nobody is doing this for us... Nothing is working. People are working really hard, but we the people, have got to stand up and take over.' My depression went away... I have been angry, I have been frustrated, I have been enraged since then, but I have not been depressed one second!"

At this point, volunteers and staff from the California Right to Know Campaign have submitted nearly one million signed petitions from registered voters across the state of California to county officials, to place Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act on the Ballot for November 6. Now, the campaign is in urgent need of funds—to counteract the propaganda put out by Monsanto, and to educate millions of registered California voters to show up at the voting booths and vote "Yes" for the Right to Know Act.

"We all have this communal belief that there's nothing that we can do, because we aren't up there in the high powers. We don't have megabucks. We don't have this. We don't have that. We believe this lie, so it gets perpetuated. If everybody says, "No, this can't happen," whether you're an individual, a business, or a nonprofit organization, if you all decide that "this isn't going to work," then it's not. My new question is: What happens if we all just decide to say yes?" Pamm says.

Joining Forces

The Organic Consumers Association was the first organization to get involved, although Ronnie Cummins was initially a bit skeptical. The Organic Consumers had worked to do the same back in 2004, but could not raise the funds to complete the task of labeling genetically engineered foods.

"We had gotten an email from Pamm Larry, who's starting this new group. We said, "Well, the odds are pretty low that we can raise the millions of dollars that we need to win the ballot initiative in California." However, people on the street are ready to do it, especially the moms and grandmothers. So, we said, "Let's tell our network in California... Let's tell them about LabelGMOs.org, and let's see if they volunteer and get in contact with Pamm..." We did, and it caught on."

Next, they decided to bring it to the attention of the organic industry at a national meeting, as well as other non-profit organizations and public interest groups. Like Cummins, a lot of the leadership in the organic industry and the nonprofit world were skeptical at first.

"They said, "Well, this is a David versus Goliath type of thing. What makes you think that grassroots action can defeat the most powerful combination of corporations in California, biotech and corporate agribusiness?" Ronnie says.

"But gradually, over time, a number of organic companies stood up, like Nature's Path, Eden Foods, and Lundberg Family Farms. Then the decisive factor was we said, "There are a hundred million people in the United States who are interested in natural medicine and who are reading websites like Mercola.com and others. If we can get the alternative food and farming movement together with the alternative health movement, this combination can create a massive movement."

And that's exactly where we are today. We're all tired of the biotech bullies dictating the rules and deciding whether we have the right to know what we're eating or not. We're all tired of the industry simply bribing their way through the political landscape in an effort to create a monopoly on food that threatens the health and welfare of people everywhere. If you're sick and tired of it too, then I urge you to take a stand, and participate in any way you can.

Why the Biotech Industry is so Afraid of Labeling

As Ronnie says, it's quite clear that the biotech industry knew the only way their genetically engineered foods would ever get put to use is if they could keep consumers in the dark.

"There's not a ban on genetically engineered foods and crops, for the most part, in the European Union," Ronnie explains. "What there is, though, is a requirement for labeling.

You'll see that companies like McDonald's, for example, are GMO-free in the European Union. You know, Wal-Mart subsidiaries are GMO-free in the European Union. Now, why is this? Is it because they have a bad conscience about force-feeding people genetically engineered food in Europe, but they don't have a bad conscience about doing that in the United States? No. It's because in the European Union, they can no longer conceal from the public that they were pushing these controversial, likely-hazardous foods on them.

In the United States, they have managed to squelch democracy now for 20 years. We now have an opportunity in California to break this control that the biotech industry has over what we're eating. We have an opportunity for consumers to regain their right to know how their food was produced.

... Fifty countries across the world required labeling, but the biggest producer of genetically engineered foods, and the most powerful nation in the world, will not. So, we're going to turn the tables in California."

Polls show that 80 to 90 percent of the public want genetically engineered foods to be labeled. Most people do want to be able to read the label and determine whether or not it contains something they want, or don't want, to eat.

"It doesn't matter if Monsanto and their allies spend 50 billion dollars lying to people, saying, "It's going to raise your grocery bills, it's an undue burden on California farmers, and the Feds should be the one doing this." We're going to beat them. This is going to be – I believe – a watershed for democracy in this country," Ronnie says.

If Politicians Won't Do it, Will YOU Stand Up to Protect Your Child's Future?

People are finally waking up to the reality that the big corporations that control everything are NOT invincible. When consumers get together, organize, and use the tools of democracy that are still available to us, we can force the will of the people on the politicians.

"But it's not going to be easy. We can't afford to lose this strategic battle," Ronnie warns. "We've got to win. We've got to raise millions of dollars. Even more importantly in California, we have to convince six or seven million Californians to go to the voting booth on November 06 and vote "Yes" for labeling of genetically engineered foods."

I hope you'll join us in this campaign, either by volunteering your time in California, or by making a financial contribution.  Dave Murphy was instrumental in getting Barrack Obama to make his promise to label genetically engineered foods while he was still a Senator and a hopeful Presidential candidate. He made this now-famous pledge at the Iowa Farmers Union Presidential Summit in 2007.

"We recognized it was a unique moment, and a unique opportunity to have... a Senator of his caliber... on video saying that they would label genetically engineered foods," Dave says. "He didn't say it in Berkeley. He didn't say it in Brooklyn. He came to Iowa, the heartland of genetically engineered food production, and made it in front of farmers. He got applause. ... We're certainly looking forward to the day that he does label genetically engineered foods."

In this interview, Dave Murphy describes a number of other successes his grassroots organization Food Democracy Now has accomplished.

"The most important change in American history has always come from the grassroots," he says. "It's always risen from the bottom up. It happens faster and it lasts longer when it happens that way. I think today, Americans are really awakening to the fact of how harmful the industrial food supply is to their health, to their environment, in all aspects in life, but even more important their democracy. If we don't stand up now, we'll lose it permanently."

Genetically Engineered Food Industry is Based on Multiple Lies

Ronnie Cummins also lists a few of the many lies that the entire genetically engineered food industry is based on, such as:

• Genetically engineered foods are equivalent to conventional foods.

  "That's absolutely not true," he says. "These are patented foods that are gene spliced with bacteria, viruses, and genetic constructs that humans have never eaten before. The whole process of gene splicing is quite imprecise, unpredictable, and hazardous... For 10,000 years, farmers have been looking at their crops, noticing which seeds work in certain conditions, saving the seeds, trading the seeds with their neighbors or with other people in the region, and coming out with improved varieties.

  But you could never cross an apple tree with a pig. You could never put genetically engineered bacteria into the genome of a potato. You couldn't take a soil microorganism like Bt and put it into corn. Nature does not allow this sort of trans-genetic transfer. They've learned how to do this in laboratories, but they didn't do this for any other reason than to have stronger patents on the seeds."

• Genetically engineered crops were created for an altruistic purpose; to save a starving world from hunger by increasing yield.

  "Unfortunately, even the statistics from the USDA have shown that this is not the case," Ronnie says. "Genetically engineered crops do not produce higher yields. In fact, studies after studies have shown that they produce lower yields. Because when you forcefully inject a foreign DNA into a genome of a plant, you harm that plant. The plant may then be able to survive enormous sprayings of toxic pesticides... but they're not going to grow as well...

  And when you look at the era that we're going into now, climate chaos and long droughts, torrential downpours, the weird weather, and the March summer we have just had across the United States, not only do genetically engineered crops have a yield drag or produce the least, but they don't grow at all under adverse conditions—whereas organic crops grow 20 to 50 percent better in these adverse conditions of too much rain or too little rain."

• Genetically engineered foods are more nutritious.

  "Not a single genetically engineered crop that they have ever applied for commercialization has even made the claim that it will be more nutritious," Ronnie says.

  Ronnie also points out that there are literally hundreds of studies in the developing world demonstrating that organic farming outproduces chemical farming and genetically engineered crops by a factor of anywhere between 10-100 to 1.

  "Genetic engineering is really a tactic, if you will, to starve the world into submission; to get them into a position where they have to depend on giant chemical farms and giant transnational corporations in order to eat," Ronnie says.

It's Time to Take Back Control

About 20 years ago, the FDA decided to deny consumers the right to know whether their food was genetically altered or not. This shameful regulation was spearheaded by Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto lawyer who transferred into the offices of the FDA. Taylor is not the only ex-Monsanto employee that ended up in a position of power within the U.S. federal government and its regulatory agencies, and this is precisely why previous efforts to get genetically engineered foods labeled have been blocked.

Not so this time! Ballot Initiatives like the one in California is one way for citizens to take back control from compromised politicians and government officials and bypass them entirely. According to Ronnie:

"If we pass the law on November 2012, it's going to have the same impact as a national law. Because a company like Kellogg's, for example, they're not going to label their cornflakes as genetically engineered in California and then not in the other 49 states. This will be a terrible public relations disaster for them. So it's going to have an impact on national labeling."

To offer further incentive to participate, a group of "Right to Know" public interest organizations and organic companies have pledged to match the first one million dollars raised in the nationwide "Drop the Money Bomb on Monsanto Campaign." These "Right to Know" groups include:

The Organic Consumers Association	Food Democracy Now	Lundberg Family Farms	The Organic Consumers Fund
Mercola.com	Nature's Path	Eden Foods	Institute for Responsible Technology

Don't Delay—the Time for Action is NOW!

Today, I ask you to invest in this Initiative. Invest in your future. And invest as generously as you can. If you've already sent in your donation, thank you! If not, please contribute to this historic and critical campaign today. And then please forward this email to your friends. Share it on Facebook and Twitter. Print it out, hand it to all your friends. Every action, and every dollar, counts! As stated by Ronnie Cummins with the Organic Consumers Association:

"Monsanto is one of the most powerful, arrogant and destructive companies in the world. For decades, they have controlled the world's food supply by buying off politicians and regulatory agencies, intimidating small farmers, manipulating the outcome of scientific studies, lying to consumers - and threatening to sue states like Vermont if they dare to pass a GMO labeling law.

... Despite Monsanto's claims to the contrary, scientists are clear: genetically engineered food has been linked to a wide range of health hazards, including kidney and liver damage, infertility, auto-immune disorders, allergies and autism, accelerated aging, and birth defects...

We have the right to know if the food we buy has been genetically engineered.... It's time to take back our food. Our farms. Our power. It's time to show Monsanto what ordinary people like us can do when we come together. It's time to drop the money bomb on Monsanto."

Hundreds of thousands of people making small donations can help the coalition behind this initiative run a dynamic, effective campaign to bring down Monsanto and the rest of the Biotech Bullies.

So please, join us, and make a donation right now! You can donate online, by phone, or by dropping a check in the mail.

The initiative also needs more volunteers, because that's how we're going to win this battle. The biotech industry may outdo us in funding ability, but we as consumers still outnumber them. Pamm Larry, the California grandmother who started this initiative, is correct when she says we need to reach every single California community—large and small.

I urge you to get involved and help in any way you can. Be assured that what happens in California will affect the remainder of the U.S. states, so please support this important state initiative, even if you do not live there!

• If you live in California and want to get involved, please visit the California Right To Know website at http://carighttoknow.org/ and sign up for emails, received Facebook and Twitter news items. One of the most important things you can do is spread the word, and the easiest way of doing this is by sharing these messages.
• If you'd like to help volunteer for grass roots events, please join and read more at Pamm Larry's LabelGMOs.org's "Spread the Word!" page.
• Whether you live in California or not, please donate money to this historic effort through the Organic Consumers Fund.
• Talk to organic producers, retailers, and stores and ask them to actively support the California Ballot. It may be the only chance we have to label genetically engineered foods. Businesses may contact campaign manager Gary Ruskin at gary@carighttoknow.org.
• Distribute WIDELY the Non-GMO Shopping Guide to help you identify and avoid foods with genetically engineered ingredients. You can also download the free iPhone application that is available in the iTunes store. You can find it by searching for ShopNoGMO in the applications.
• For timely updates, please join the Organic Consumers Association on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter.

There's great hope. We know that the vast majority of people want labeling, and supporting the California ballot initiative will allow for the democratic process to occur to give all Americans a choice. The consequences of each individual person's actions are profound!

So, please, share this message with others. Put it on your Facebook page. Put it on your blog. Give it to your friends or relatives. Then encourage them to likewise participate and volunteer. Because collectively, as a group, we can have a profound impact not only on our own lives, but on the lives of our children and future descendants.

In its latest move against small farmers who dare to operate outside the umbrella of CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) and Monsanto-dominated crops, the U.S. government has seized $70,000 from a small dairy farmer in Maryland. The feds did this under the "Bank Secrecy Act," which requires that paperwork be filled out for any cash deposit in excess of $10,000.

The farmers, Randy Sowers and his wife Karen, made deposits totaling more than $295,000 from May 2011 to February 2012, but each transaction was less than $10,000.

Now they are being accused of "structuring," a violation of federal currency reporting requirements, as the feds are accusing them of deliberately depositing money in increments of less than $10,000 in an attempt to evade Currency Transaction Reporting requirements.

Government Seizes $70,000 On What Grounds?

The dairy farmer's "crime" stems from his weekly sales at local farmers' markets. The sales averaged about the same amount each week and, dutifully, the Sowers deposited them. They'd reportedly never even heard of the Bank Secrecy Act or "structuring," but that was of no interest to the feds—the consistency of the amount the Sowers deposited, always less than $10,000, raised red flags to the feds, who claimed that this was indicative of a crime.

The government promptly seized about $70,000 from the bank account, then issued a warrant for the seizures. As reported by Food Freedom News:ⁱ

"The Dept. of Justice has since sued to keep $63,000 of the Sowers' money, though they committed no crime other than maintaining their privacy. Without funds, they will be unable to make purchases for the spring planting. When a similar action was taken against Taylor's Produce Stand last year, the feds seized $90,000, dropped the charges, and kept $45,000 of Taylor's money.

Knowing that most farms operate on a very thin margin, such abuse of power wipes out a family's income, and for a bonus, the feds enhance the monopoly power of Monsanto, Big Dairy and their supply chain.… Former Maryland assistant U.S. attorney Steven Levin told the paper [City Paper], "The emphasis is on basically seizing money, whether it is legally or illegally earned. It can lead to financial ruin for business owners, and there's a potential for abuse here by the government.""

The raid on the Sowers was conducted by an agency created in 2009 to go after money-laundering criminals. The agency started out with a bang by seizing $1.2 billion from a real money launderer, but it appears that what it's interested in now is making criminals out of small business persons, including small farmers.

Why Are Family Farms Under Attack?

If they're not seizing bank accounts, it seems the government will find other ways to attack small farmers. A family farm in rural Michigan—and possibly others—may be shut down by a new state law that designates certain breeds of hogs as a threat to neighboring hog breeders and croplands.

Basically, the fight is over the definition of feral hogs vs. domestic hogs. The dictionary definition of "feral" refers to an animal running wild. But Michigan authorities have taken it a step further and extended the definition to include enclosed private hunting preserves and small farms that house what authorities call an "invasive species" of hogs.

There is no genetic test to determine whether the species on these farms are truly invasive, so authorities are basing their cases against these farmers solely on visual observations. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) uses this vague description to describe the prohibited hogs, and makes it clear that this does not apply to the domestic hogs raised on CAFOs:ⁱⁱ

"Wild boar, wild hog, wild swine, feral pig, feral hog, feral swine, Old world swine, razorback, eurasian wild boar, Russian wild boar (Sus scrofa Linnaeus). This subsection does not and is not intended to affect sus domestica involved in domestic hog production."

Other descriptions supplied by the MDNR include such a wide variety of characteristics that virtually any pig other than the familiar pink domestic breed raised on CAFOs could potentially be deemed "feral":

• Erect or folded/floppy ear structure
• Straight or curly tail
• Solid black, wild/grizzled, solid red/brown, black and white spotted, or black and red/brown spotted coat colorations
• "Other characteristics" not currently known to the MDNR

Interestingly, the Big Pork industry has been planning this anti-feral pig campaign for years, and even bragged about it in a 2010 newsletter.ⁱⁱⁱ It was the same newsletter where they declared a win against the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in Ohio, where HSUS was seeking legislation to end the practice of sow gestation stalls (cages so small the sow can't turn around or move).

What this means for residents of Michigan is that soon they will be unable to purchase sustainably and humanely grown meat from the Mangalitsa "wooly" hogs raised on Baker's Green Acres farm. This particular breed is being raised by only a handful of small farms across the country; whereas more than 2 million pigs are slaughtered each week in the United States, only about 50 of them are Mangalitsas (which have been called the "it" pig by the New York Times, as several high-end restaurants and specialty markets have featured the rich, naturally raised meat^iv).

But, of course, this issue is about much more than pasture-raised pork from a heritage breed ... it's about your ability, your right, to purchase and consume pure, unadulterated food – a right that continues to be threated for those living in the United States.

FDA Also Threatens Your Right to Food Choice …

Another glaring example of government going out of its way to prohibit your access to pure, unprocessed food is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) war against raw milk. When the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) filed a lawsuit against the FDA over their raw milk ban, stating that banning raw milk in interstate commerce is unconstitutional, the FDA rebutted with the following extremely concerning and outrageous statements:

• "There is no absolute right to consume or feed children any particular food."
• "There is no 'deeply rooted' historical tradition of unfettered access to foods of all kinds."
• "Plaintiffs' assertion of a 'fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families' is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish."
• FDA's brief goes on to state that "even if such a right did exist, it would not render FDA's regulations unconstitutional because prohibiting the interstate sale and distribution of unpasteurized milk promotes bodily and physical health."
• "There is no fundamental right to freedom of contract."

Since when did the FDA have authority to tell you what you can and cannot eat and feed your children? Apparently they believe they've had it all along. If you go by these assertions, it means the FDA has the authority to prohibit any food of their choosing and make it a crime for you to seek it out. If, one day, the FDA deems tomatoes, broccoli or cashews capable of causing you harm (which is just as ludicrous as their assertions that raw milk is harmful), they could therefore enact such a ban and legally enforce it.

What this means is that freedom of food choice is a myth if you live in the United States, and this simply is not acceptable. No one, and certainly not any government agency, should be able to restrict your access to pure, unadulterated food, but the dairy industry and other industrial farmers that depend on CAFOs employ powerful lobbyists will stop at nothing to persuade government to remove the small farmers from the market entirely. The truth is, if enough people start demanding naturally, sustainably and humanely raised meat, dairy and produce, the giant farming monopolies that currently dominate the market would not be able to compete.

Their businesses depend on pesticides, CAFOs, genetically modified seeds, growth hormones and the like … so when they see all-natural creameries like the one operated by Randy Sowers and his wife Karen, or natural farms like Bakers Green Acres gaining loyal and growing customer bases, they get nervous – and they get the government involved in any way they can.

Please Support Your Local Small Farms

The healthiest food choices are nearly always those that come from responsible, high-quality, sustainable sources.

This is why I encourage you to support the small family farms in your area. This includes not only visiting the farm directly, if you have one nearby, but also taking part in farmer's markets and community-supported agriculture programs. Now that summer is almost here in the United States, fresh produce and other wonderful whole foods are available in abundance. Not only is the food so much tastier and healthier when you get it from sustainable, non-CAFO sources, but there is something about shopping for fresh foods in an open-air, social environment that just feels right. An artificially lit, dreary supermarket -- home to virtually every CAFO food made -- just can't compete.

If you want to experience some of these benefits first-hand, here are some great resources to obtain wholesome food that supports not only you but also the environment:

1. Alternative Farming Systems Information Center, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
2. Farmers' Markets -- A national listing of farmers' markets
3. Local Harvest -- This Web site will help you find farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.
4. Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals -- The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns, and hotels, and online outlets in the United States and Canada.
5. Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) -- CISA is dedicated to sustaining agriculture and promoting the products of small farms.
6. FoodRoutes -- The FoodRoutes "Find Good Food" map can help you connect with local farmers to find the freshest, tastiest food possible. On their interactive map, you can find a listing for local farmers, CSA's, and markets near you.

Finally, for more information on the ongoing attacks against small family farms in the United States consider watching Farmageddon: The Unseen War on American Family Farms, a documentary by Kristin Canty. But I warn you … the injustices it contains may just make your blood boil.

References:

• ⁱ Food Freedom News April 23, 2012
• ⁱⁱ Michigan Department of Natural Resources December 13, 2011
• ⁱⁱⁱ Michigan Pork 2010
• ^iv NYTimes.com December 29, 2010

1. The ester form of parabens in the breast tissue indicated it had gotten there dermally, possibly from products like skin care products and underarm deodorants.
2. The paraben residues were found at concentrations up to 1 million times higher than the estrogen levels found naturally in human breast tissue.
3. Propylparaben was found in the highest concentration in the underarm area (axilla), where underarm deodorants are most used and breast cancer prevalence is at its highest.

Scientists said additional exposure sources such as other cosmetics were also implicated in the study, since some of the women whose tissue was examined reported having never used deodorants.

It turns out other tiny patients the doctor had described in testimony supporting toxic flame retardant materials didn’t exist either. 

Another flaming example of a corporate giant that gets caught lying again and again is Monsanto which, in 2009, was found guilty by France’s highest court of false advertising for claims that its toxic weed killer Roundup is biodegradable and leaves “the soil clean.” The French court noted that Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, is dangerous for the environment and toxic for aquatic organisms. But that's just one example of the lies Monsanto tells to keep on selling its products; this company has a long history of fraudulent statements about the safety of Roundup.

For example, in a bust to beat all the others they’ve made so far, federal agents charged 197 people in schemes that cheated the Medicare system out of a record $452 million. The sweep included major cities such as Miami, Tampa, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles and Baton Rouge.

The government also suspended payments to 52 provider organizations as part of the bust. The types of medical care involved ran the gamut of health services; for example, in Baton Rouge seven people who ran two community health centers are accused of defrauding the government of $225 million in false claims. The health centers allegedly rounded up drug addicts, homeless people and the elderly, and used them to submit false claims for treatment―and if they’re not caught, cheaters can make bundles of bucks, sometimes upwards of a billion dollars a year just through filing false or “upgraded” payment claims to the feds.

The latest drug company to get caught is Abbott Laboratories, which pled guilty to promoting its drug Depakote to nursing homes and other healthcare providers for treatment of patients with dementia. Abbott agreed to pay the government $1.5 billion to resolve the criminal investigation.

What would you say if you knew someone had killed 60,000 people? Would you call it a felony of the worst kind, times 60,000? If you totaled up the value of all those lives in criminal court, what would you say they're worth?

Billions? Trillions?

Or—how about a measly $321 million in exchange for a guilty plea to a misdemeanor? When you consider that this involves the second-largest drug maker in the U.S.—Merck—and its deadly drug Vioxx, then you'll probably agree that a misdemeanor and a $321 million fine amounts to nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

Business analysts were estimating a $25 billion judgment when the drug was taken off the market, but even when combined with the $4.85 billion in payouts to patients who suffered heart attacks and strokesⁱ, the final bill is nowhere close to original estimates of the damage.

Yet that's the plea agreement Merck recently made with a federal court in Boston on April 19ⁱⁱ, after being charged with illegal promotion of Vioxx for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, before it was approved for that use.

The sad tale brings up memories of what I tried to warn readers about in 1999, when I showed that people taking this drug were at a massively increased risk of dying from heart disease and stroke. It's tragic that Vioxx was removed only AFTER 60,000 people died.

It's even more tragic that a court would consider Merck's illegal promotion of the drug a misdemeanor rather than a felony, since this tactic clearly exposed far more people to the dangerous drug than it would have otherwise. And, adding insult to injury, instead of the billions that Merck anticipated paying out, it got away with such a paltry sum.

Hired Writers Responsible for Some of Merck's Vioxx Studies?

Particularly galling is the fact that these deaths could have been so easily avoided, were it not for the deceptive maneuvering of parties who stood to profit handsomely from the success of the drug.

Ghostwriting has become an increasingly troublesome problem in the medical science community, and the Vioxx debacle is a perfect example of why ghostwriting medical research is a devious practice that needs to be rooted out.

Merck has previously acknowledged that it has been known to hire professional writers to develop research-related documents that eventually get published under the name of reputable leaders in the medical community. Critics rightfully doubt the validity of such research, and question the actual involvement of the scientists listed as authors of these ghostwritten papers.

Back in 2008, Dr. Joseph S. Ross of New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine came across ghostwritten research studies for Vioxx while reviewing documents related to lawsuits filed against Merck.

According to an April 16, 2008 article on MedHeadlinesⁱⁱⁱ:

"In about 96 journal publications, Ross and his colleagues discovered internal Merck documents and e-mail messages pertaining to clinical study reports and review articles, some of which were developed by the company's marketing department, not its scientific department. In others, there is little evidence that the authors recruited for the report made substantial contribution to the research itself. ... Some of the authors listed in the Merck study reports of concern... question the true nature of ghostwriting. One neurologist originally listed as "External author?" and then listed as Dr. Leon J. Thal, of the University of California, San Diego in the final draft, died a year ago in an airplane crash."

An editorial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)^iv that year by Drs. Psaty and Kronmal also questioned whether Merck might have deliberately manipulated dozens of academic documents published in the medical literature, in order to promote Vioxx under false pretenses.

Blockbuster Drugs Tend to Be More Unnecessary than Others

Vioxx was a so-called blockbuster drug—a designation given to extremely popular drugs that generate a minimum of $1 billion in annual sales. Vioxx was marketed in more than 80 countries, and pulled in $2.5 billion in worldwide sales in 2003 alone (the year before it was pulled from the market due to its heart risks). So despite paying out fines in various lawsuits over the drug, Merck certainly made enough from it to cover all such expenses and still make obscene profits while patients were dying in droves.

An important strategy for creating a true blockbuster drug—at least in the United States—is the use of direct to consumer advertising.

A little over 20 years ago direct-to-consumer advertising for drugs was not allowed in the US. Drug advertising is still illegal in most countries around the world, except for the US. If Big Pharma wanted to sell a product, they had to do it through the person prescribing it—your doctor. If a physician didn't have time to listen to sales reps or attend conferences where new drugs were pushed, well then, sometimes they just didn't get pushed on you.

But ever since drug advertising became legal in the U.S., Big Pharma has been making big bucks selling you pills that not only are expensive, but intended to keep you hooked on them for life. As with most advertised consumer products, drugs with blockbuster potential are not necessarily important life-saving drugs. No, rather than curing actual disease, these drugs tend to be focused on the treatment of symptoms—symptoms that many people tend to experience, and which may or may not be caused by a particular disease...

Oftentimes, symptom complexes will be given official-sounding designations, to make it appear more like an actual disease. Either way, since these types of drugs cannot cure anything, they must be taken indefinitely—until you die or cannot afford them anymore. According to Melody Petersen, author of Our Daily Meds^v:

"Most blockbusters are pills for conditions such as anxiety, high cholesterol or constipation that must be taken daily, often for months or years. They are designed for rich Americans who can afford to buy them."

6 Kinds of Pills Big Pharma Tries to Get You Hooked on for Life

There are two effective marketing strategies employed by drug companies on a regular basis, and they include:

1. Convincing you that drugs you used to take only when you needed them are now everyday "prevention" necessities in the form of a prescription; and
2. Selling you the idea that just being at risk for a chronic disease makes you someone who should be taking a drug for the disease.

What makes these two strategies so successful is that by seeing the advertisement, YOU are the one who sells it to your doctor, by suggesting that you need a certain drug, or outright asking for it. According to a recent article by Martha Rosenberg^vi:

"Since direct-to-consumer drug advertising debuted in the late 1990s, the number of people on prescription drugs -- especially prescription drugs for life -- has ballooned. Between 2001 to 2007 the percentage of adults and children on one or more prescriptions for chronic conditions rose by more than 12 million, reports the Associated Press and 25 percent of US children now take a medication for a chronic condition^vii. Seven percent of kids take two or more daily drugs.

Who says advertising doesn't work? Of the top-selling drugs in 2011^viii, led by Lipitor, Nexium, Plavix, Advair Diskus, Abilify, Seroquel, Singulair and Crestor, none is taken occasionally, or "as needed" and the treatment goal is never to get off the drug, like an antibiotic."

She lists six types of drugs that are "marketed for perpetuity," meaning they're intended to be taken for life. Sadly most of these drugs come with potential side effects that can be far worse than your original symptom, and few of them have been definitively proven to actually provide any significant health benefits. In fact, some of these drugs have been found to worsen the very condition they're meant to treat (such as antidepressants, statins, proton pump inhibitors, and asthma-control meds), and/or cause other serious diseases. For more information, please follow the hyperlinks provided:

ADHD Drugs and Drugs for Pediatric Psychopathologies, such as "pediatric bipolar disorder"	Antidepressants	Statins
Hormone Replacement Therapy	Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPIs)	Asthma-Control Medicines

Bribery, Fraud, and Deception Hurts YOU in More Ways than One...

Unfortunately, all of this medical deception (and at times outright fraud) is part and parcel of a much larger problem: the near unchecked system of corporate bribery that drives our political processes.

The pharmaceutical industry is the BIGGEST political lobby in the U.S.. There should be no doubt about the power the drug industry wields in shaping the U.S. health care system and all the laws relating to the industry. Political lobbying is one of the primary reasons why the drug companies control nearly the entire health industry, and why alternative medicine is under such constant legislative attack. For greater insight into this problem, please review this previous article, featuring a 60-Minutes segment with Jack Abramoff, a former lobbyist.

In recent news, we get further indications of how pervasive lobbying fraud and illegalities are.

In a submission to the Internal Revenue Service under the Tax Whistleblower Act, a nonpartisan advocacy organization, Common Cause^ix, has exposed what amounts to a tax scam run by a legislative group known as ALEC, for some of American's largest companies. ALEC stands for the American Legislative Exchange Council, which describes as a public-private partnership between member legislators and business leaders.

According to legal papers filed with the IRS, Common Cause believes that ALEC's lobbying efforts for "model" legislation are tailored to boost the profits of its corporate members—a violation of its tax-exempt status. While ALEC claims it doesn't do lobbying, the Huffington Post reports that at least one state, South Carolina, has written a special exemption for ALEC so it can engage in a type of lobbying. The whistleblower letter to the IRS reads in part:

"... This matter concerns the massive underreporting of lobbying by the American Legislative Exchange Council ("ALEC"). While ostensibly a nonprofit organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, ALEC's primary purpose is to provide a vehicle for its corporate members to lobby state legislators and to deduct the costs of such efforts as charitable contributions. ALEC drafts "model" legislation provided by its corporate and legislative members, and lobbies for the adoption of that legislation. These goals are fundamentally inconsistent with ALEC's claimed tax-exempt status as a charitable organization under 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(3), because (i) "no substantial part" of a charity's activity can be "attempting to influence legislation," and (ii) ALEC's activities do not qualify under any of the enumerated purposes of Section 501(c)(3).

This scheme causes harm to taxpayers in two distinct ways. First, ALEC's activities constitute an abuse of its 501(c)(3) tax exemption, which is reserved for organizations "operated exclusively " for a limited number of purposes, such as "religious, charitable, scientific ... or educational purposes ...." 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(3).

Second, ALEC's corporate members improperly deduct from their taxable income the dues and other contributions made to ALEC; such expenditures are non-deductible lobbying expenses under Section 162(e). In fact, because ALEC solicits very few contributions from individuals, its false claims of tax-exempt status appear driven by the desire of ALEC corporate members to deduct lobbying expenses as charitable contributions..."

Why are Soldiers Dying in Their Sleep?

While lobbying may have its place—when done in a transparent and legal way to inform legislators, and not to simply buy their votes by any means necessary—the practice has deteriorated to the point that it is endangering the health and welfare of people everywhere. Dangerous drugs are brought to market and used in lieu of harmless alternatives, and polypharmacy, the taking of too many drugs, is becoming ever more dangerous.

A case in point is the growing problem of U.S. soldiers literally dying in their sleep...

They survived the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But instead of bombs and guns, a growing number of U.S. veterans of these wars, whether they're still deployed or back at home, are being downed by something else. They die in different ways but they all have one thing in common—at the time of their deaths they're on a cocktail of drugs prescribed for them by military doctors.

Video description: CNN Reports on military personnel dying from drug toxicity.

Such deaths have been occurring for years, but they were recently brought to light by a West Virginia couple who shared the story of their son, Andrew White, with ABC News. Andrew died in 2008 of fatal drug intoxication. The Whites blame the prescriptions their son was on for his death. According to a report by ABC11^x:

""We call it the lethal cocktail. It's antidepressants, antipsychotics and analgesics. It's just overloading, and your body can't take it," Stan [White] explained. The Whites said Andrew was taking Seroquel, Klonopin, and Paxil. They still have the pills prescribed by Veteran's Administration doctors to treat Andrew's post-traumatic stress disorder... "He made that choice to trust the VA and that trust cost him his life," [Mrs. White] continued."

The twist to the story is that within weeks of Andrew's death, three other war veterans—all of whom were taking the same drugs Andrew was on—also died in their sleep. It seemed like too much of a coincidence to San Diego neurologist Dr. Fred Baughman, so he combed newspaper articles and obituaries and created a list of 300 military deaths linked to sudden cardiac arrest. Surprisingly, they were all men in their 20's, many of whom died quietly in their beds. According to Dr. Baughman, these deaths appear to be caused by the antipsychotics and antidepressants these young men were all taking.

Just weeks before White died, U.S. Surgeon General Eric B. Schoomaker had also publicly acknowledged that the military was experiencing a series of deaths that "often (were) a consequence of the use of multiple prescription and nonprescription medicines and alcohol." Antipsychotics and antidepressants have been linked to many of the deaths. Another family who has stepped forward with their story is John and Mary Nahas, who nearly lost their son Michael after he returned from Iraq. ABC11 reports:

"Look at all the drugs they had him on," Mary said, showing ABC11 cameras a list that includes Oxycodone, Xanax, Percocet, Klonopin, Celexa, Lunesta, and Ambien.

"I ran the list of medications by my niece - who was a psychologist in a psychiatric hospital - and she said: 'Oh Mary, that's a cocktail of death, they're trying to kill him,'" said Mary. "When they returned our son to us, he looked like a concentration camp victim. He was thin. He was gray in color," she continued. The Nahas say the medication prescribed for their son's PTSD made him attempt suicide."We noticed a decline in his personality from the drugs. They change cognition and behavior. We noticed anger, just couldn't think straight," said Mary. "The drugs had messed him up so badly."

The Veterans Administration investigated Andrew White's death and ruled that his doctors had done nothing wrong, as they met "the community standards of care." Sadly, just as with conventional cancer treatment, the "standard of care" is oftentimes just as deadly as the disease... Still, the White's are pushing for a Congressional investigation into the overmedication of military service personnel. They want VA doctors to reduce their reliance on toxic drugs, and focus on other therapies such as counseling and outdoor activities.

I couldn't agree more.

There's a mountain of evidence supporting the use of such alternatives, and there's very strong evidence that some alternative treatments, such as exercise, are FAR more effective than any of the drugs currently in use. For more information about this, please listen to my interview with Robert Whitaker, author of Mad in America, and Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America.

References:

• ⁱ The New York Times November 10, 2007
• ⁱⁱ Reuters April 19, 2012
• ⁱⁱⁱ MedHeadlines April 16, 2008
• ^ivJAMA 2008;299(15):1813-1817
• ^v AlterNet April 26, 2012
• ^vi AlterNet April 26, 2012
• ^vii The Wall Street Journal December 28, 2010
• ^viii Forbes Magazine April 19, 2011
• ^ix Common Cause April 20, 2012
• ^x WTVD-TV Raleigh-Durham April 26, 2012